R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 329

The Briefing 12-17-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Deliberate targeting of Pakistani children clear rejection of just war theory

Pakistani Taliban Attack on Peshawar School Leaves 145 Dead, New York Times (Ismail Khan and Salman Masood)

Pakistani forces reclaim school after ‘horrific’ Taliban attack kills at least 141, Washington Post (Tim Craig)

Statement by the President on the Terrorist Attack on the Army Public School in Pakistan, White House

2) Plummeting Russian rouble will reveal citizens’ priority – nationalism or food

A wounded economy, The Economist

Sorry, Putin. Russia’s economy is doomed, Washington Post (Matt O’Brien)

3) China’s Communist control of family planning undermines effort to buoy birth rates

Why reform of China’s one-child policy has had little effect in boosting fertility levels, University of Oxford (Policy)

4) Gender-specific toys continue to confound the ‘anti-gender agenda’

Toys Are More Divided by Gender Now Than They Were 50 Years Ago, The Atlantic (Elizabeth Sweet)

Transcript: The Briefing 12-16-14

The Briefing

 

December 16, 2014

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

 

It’s Tuesday, December 16, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Exodus movie underlines significance of supernaturalism and historicity to biblical worldview

It is Christmas season and that means a blockbuster movie release season, and one of the ones most discussed is Ridley Scott’s new movie Exodus: God’s and Kings and it is a very interesting movie. I saw it along with some others over the weekend and I was ready to talk about it precisely because it raises so many of the issues related to how Christians look at Hollywood, and its products, and at the intersection of the Christian worldview, and the artifacts of culture.

The movie was timed for Christmas release and it knocked the latest Hunger Games movie off of its first-place ranking and yet the Exodus movie was an under seller in terms of what had been expected. It wasn’t a critical success and thus far it hasn’t been a popular success either. My response to the movie is well encapsulated by a statement made by Eric Snyder of the GeekNation. He said,

“This big dud isn’t blasphemous enough to be outrageous, emotional enough to be inspiring, or interesting enough to be good.”

That’s kind of a pithy way of analyzing the movie and I partly agree with his first two points – I actually don’t agree with the last. I think it is an interesting movie. It’s not a movie I would suggest that mature Christians should not see, but there are big concerns with the movie and they really are very big concerns.

You’ll recall the fact that earlier this year we talked about the Darren Aronofsky movie Noah and all the problems with that movie. Basically Aronofsky tried to present Noah as a hallucinogenic homicidal maniac and then he seemed to be surprised – along with the rest of Hollywood – when Christians were offended by the very notion. Furthermore Aronofsky presented a picture of Noah that was largely invented – one of the reasons for that by the way is that the actual biblical text on Noah is relatively short, including the entire account of the flood and the Ark, which meant that anyone making a major motion picture had to invent a great deal. That’s one of the issues that makes his movie, Exodus: God’s and Kings, a good deal more biblical than Aronofsky’s take on Noah. There is, after all, a tremendous amount of biblical material on Moses and the Exodus – including a lot of dialogue and an incredible volume of detail in the text itself. That means that if Ridley Scott was going to make a movie, he had a lot more he was accountable to in terms of Scripture.

But one of the things we discussed in terms of Aronofsky’s Noah movie was the fact that Aronofsky himself described his movie as “the least biblical, biblical film ever made.” Viewing the Noah movie I felt that I simply could not recommended it in any sense for Christians, but when it comes to the Exodus movie, I’ll simply say, I think mature Christians would find it very interesting. But it also should lead to some very interesting conversations, especially among Christians, especially about not only what is in the movie but what is absent from it.

In terms of the movie being interesting and compelling, I’ll simply tell you that it was a pretty fast two hours and 20 minutes. I found myself rather surprised when the movie came to an end and it’s not a short movie. Certain parts of the movie are simply very compelling and very moving. In particular the depiction of the 10 plagues by Ridley Scott in this new movie is far more interesting and far more dramatic than anything that Cecil B. DeMille could’ve imagined in his fame movie, the classic, The 10 Commandments. That’s especially true of the last of the plagues, the death of the firstborn sons. It is not only moving, but it’s a fairly horrifying scene of divine judgment.

The critics are piling on – a couple of things to note. Critics are a rather eccentric sort, movie critics that is, and they’re not always easy to please, nor often even to predict. The second thing you need to note is that the link between the public popularity of the movie and its critical acclaim is not a one-to-one equation. Oftentimes the public likes movies that critics hate and critics love movies that the public simply doesn’t go to see. But the critics are piling onto some interesting points in terms of the Ridley Scott movie; for one thing, a racial angle. Public Radio International, published a review noting that Hollywood has a race problem in which the reviewer said this,

“Virtually all the leading roles are played by white actors, even though the ancient Egyptians were certainly not Caucasian. Ramses, the Egyptian pharaoh who enslaved the Jews in the Old Testament, is played by a white actor. In fact, the entire lead cast of ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ is white. Moses is white. Moses’ mother is white. The Egyptian prince is white. The African queen is white, too.”

I think it’s quite a legitimate point and it’s something that is quite common to Ridley Scott movies. One of the other things noted by at least some reviewers is that the lead characters in his movie sound as if they were educated at Oxford or Cambridge. One of the things Ridley Scott seems to do to try to add gravitas to his main characters is to make them sound as if they were educated in Britain. Needless to say, the skin tones and the accents simply don’t match the actual story but that’s the big issue because the movie itself doesn’t match the actual story as found in Scripture. That’s a bigger point and it’s important to see that this movie fails as a whole even more than it fails in its parts. What’s missing is the very point of Exodus in biblical history and theology, what’s missing is the truth that God acted in history in faithfulness to the covenant he had made with Abraham, rescuing Israel from captivity in Egypt. In Ridley Scott’s version, God is actually hidden from view and you don’t have any idea from this movie as to God’s purposes, motivations, or character. Instead of hearing from God, we have the vision of an 11-year-old boy – one of the most controversial aspects of the movie – who repeatedly appears to Moses as a theophany or divine appearance. God’s presumed words flow from the mouth of this 11-year-old who appears as something of an unmoved mover, that is to say he doesn’t appear to be highly emotionally involved in the entire story himself.

As for Moses, the depiction offered by actor Christian Bale grounds Moses’ sense of divine call in a severe knock to the head from a rockslide; rock hitting him in the head, leading to what might be described as an hallucination in which the 11-year-old boy speaks to Moses beside the bush that burned but was not consumed. Completely missing from the entire movie is any explanation that has God’s chosen Moses as his instrument for bringing Israel out of captivity and that God was acting in faithfulness to the covenant that he had made with Abraham. Moses instead appears as something of a tribal chieftain, a cunning general and a killing machine rooted in what Scott presents as Moses’ experience as a great general during his life as a prince of Egypt – something by the way that simply isn’t found in the Scripture whatsoever. Moses never in the movie seems to understand a divine purpose beyond his military exploits, and his relationship with God is troubled to say the very least. But wait just a minute, even in the Bible Moses’ relationship with God is troubled we might say, to say the very least. And yet in the Bible Moses is always placed within the context of his calling and his calling is always placed within the context of God’s covenant. Even though Moses is judged by God and unable to leave the children of Israel into Canaan, into the Promised Land, he is honored as one who in the end followed God and did what God called and commissioned him to do. The entire story of Moses is revealed in Scripture as one of God’s providential plan to rescue his children Israel from their captivity to Pharaoh in Egypt. The movie eventually leaves viewers with a view of Moses riding alongside what must be the Ark of the Covenant as Israel moves on from the parting of the Red Sea. But the Ark is never identified, nor, by the way, is the covenant itself.

Before the movie was released we already had advance warning of exactly the kind of approach that Christian Bale, and more importantly Ridley Scott, were taking in terms of the movie. Ridley Scott made clear that he didn’t believe that Moses had ever lived and that the Exodus account was not to be taken as historically true. He told Religion News Service that he looked at the film much as he looked at the entire genre of science fiction:

“‘Cause I never believed in it, I had to convince myself every step of the way as to what did make sense and what didn’t make sense and where I could reject and accept. And therefore I had to come to my own decisions and internal debates.”

Accordingly Ridley Scott presents the plagues and miracles as non-supernatural events with a naturalistic explanation. Unlike Cecil B. DeMille, Scott offered no vision of a supernatural miracle of the Red Sea. He described his own dilemma in these words,

“So I have to part the Dead Sea and I’m not going to part the Dead Sea because I don’t believe it. I don’t believe I can part the Dead Sea and keep shimmering water on each side. I’m an absolutely very, very practical person. So I was immediately thinking that all science-based elements placed come from natural order or disorder–or could come from the hand of God, however you want to play that.”

Presumably Ridley Scott meant Red Sea not Dead Sea, but in the end he played it all in naturalistic terms – or at least he did his very best to do so. The most interesting aspect of the film in this respect was the role played by the nervous vizier in service to Ramses. This character does his very best to offer a strictly naturalistic explanation for the succession of plagues; trying to calm the Pharaoh about his fears that something even worse might be coming. This vizier appears as something of an ancient demythologizing; trying to say I know that’s what it looks like but let’s not read this is as a supernatural event. He offered natural explanations involving red clay in the Nile, and a complicated series of basically environmental plagues that followed. Those explanations, I would say, would be familiar to anyone versed in the liberal Bible scholarship of the last 200 years.

As Ridley Scott tells the story, the real event at the Red Sea was the receding of the waters due to a tsunami after an earthquake. Let’s just say that’s not exactly what you read in the book of Exodus. But Scott simply can’t be as anti-supernatural as he wants to be and that becomes apparent in the film especially in terms of the 10th and final plague – the death of the firstborn sons of Egypt. Because even as he attempted some kind of naturalistic explanation for those other plagues, when it came to the death Angel he had no choice but to play it supernaturally – to use his own phrase – and played it he did. And it is, I must tell you, one most compelling scenes I think I’ve ever seen on film. Seeing it not only as a viewer and as a Christian but as a father, it is a horrifying scene of divine judgment. No one in the film, nor does the goal itself, try to offer any demythologizing understanding of that final plague.

As much as Ridley Scott wanted it to be non-supernatural when it comes to telling the story of the Exodus he actually can’t help bringing in the supernatural elements and Christians understand why. When it comes to Moses as the character in the film, of course he was played by actor Christian Bale, he told ABC’s Nightline program stunningly enough that Moses in his view was, “one of the most barbaric individuals that I’ve ever read about in my life.” That leaves with some obvious questions, including the question, what exactly does Christian Bale read? Evidently not much because when it comes to Moses what is presented in the Scripture is not barbaric at all. But always becomes clear later in the interview that Christian Bale did with ABC’s Nightline when it’s clear that he thinks that Moses was behind the plagues rather than God. And that’s a rather confusing thing because in the actual movie the 11-year-old boy who appears as the theophany or appearing of God simply express frustration with Moses that he’s not leading the Exodus fast enough and with reference to the coming plagues tells Moses simply to watch.

Christians looking at the movie will also want to understand that this movie is put in terms of our cultural conversation the issue of the historicity of Moses and the trustworthiness of Scripture right front and center. We’re looking at those questions and the culture now can’t escape them because this movie presents them. The movie presents them both by how it tells the story and how it miss tells the story. And interestingly the conversation in both the United States and Great Britain, where the movie is already out in release, has brought these issues to the fore.

Andrew Brown writing in The Guardian, that’s a liberal London newspaper, wrote an entire essay on how the movie demonstrates that even though Moses, according to him, didn’t exist and the Exodus didn’t happen, what we have to do is to separate truth from history. Brown simply wrote,

“There is no historical figure of Moses, and no reason from archaeology or history to suppose any of the exodus story is true.”

Now before we go any further, let’s just stipulate this: we are not dependent upon external historical or archaeological corroboration for the historicity of the biblical accounts. That’s especially true in the Old Testament where quite frankly the historical and archaeological evidence for everything that happened in the ancient world is very scant and sparse. That’s a good thing for evangelical Christians to keep in mind. We believe in the authority of Scripture not the authority of Scripture after it’s been corroborated by some effort of historians or archaeologists. In his article Andrew Brown wrote,

“Since the central rite of Jewish identity is the Passover festival, which commemorates the moment that Moses freed his people from slavery in Egypt, the absence of evidence outside the Bible story is potentially embarrassing, [that was said by Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner], who leads Reform Judaism in this country [the Rabbi said]: ‘When I heard for the first time that the exodus might not have happened, I did want to weep … then I thought, what does this matter? You have to distinguish between truth and historicity.’”

Well that’s the great liberal conceit, that you can – much less must – separate truth, in this case, from historicity. Not when the Bible is making very clear historical claims, the Bible essentially, unavoidably, irrevocably, makes the historical claim that Moses was a real person and that the Exodus really happened. The entire history of the Bible, especially the history of Israel, makes very clear the historicity of the Exodus and of Moses is front and center; it’s paramount and nonnegotiable.

Andrew Brown goes on in his article to cite an entire realm of Jewish authorities as arguing that it really doesn’t matter to Judaism if Moses ever existed. Now he cites even an Orthodox rabbi who said that he’s not sure that Moses did exist but he is sure that the giving of the law happened. Andrew Brown notes that Orthodox Jews have to affirm the Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Bible. That raises the obvious question, at least it would seem to any fair-minded viewer or reader, and that’s this, how can you have Mosaic authorship without Moses? But I’ll let Jewish authorities debate that one. I think it’s probably fair to say that that Orthodox rabbi is not fully representative of Orthodox Judaism.

The fact remains that even if the historical Moses is not central to contemporary Judaism, at least by some Jewish accounts, the historical Moses is vital and essential to Christianity. Moses is a central character in the Bible’s narrative of Israel and the metanarrative of the gospel itself. Jesus, we should note, is presented in Scripture as the new Moses – leading his people out of captivity to sin. Moses is a divinely commissioned lawgiver; Christ Jesus is the divine Savior who perfectly fulfills the law and redeems sinful humanity. The Bible clearly presents the Exodus as history and the history of Christianity is built upon that historic foundation.

In the final analysis perhaps the best way to understand Ridley Scott’s movie Exodus is to understand Ridley Scott’s own words because he also told RNS,

“Any liberties I may have taken in terms of how I show this stuff was, I think, pretty safe ground because I’m always going always from what is the basis of reality, never fantasy….So the film had to be as real as I could make it.”

As real, in other words, as Ridley Scott’s version of “this stuff” as he says could have been presented “from what is the basis of reality” in so far as Ridley Scott defines reality. What we see in the film is Moses without the supernatural, in his own words, that is Ridley Scott’s own words, that’s how he decided to ‘play it.’ It turns out the real vizier is none other than Ridley Scott.

2) Lack of controversy over atheist billboard campaign in Deep South positive sign of Southern piety

Speaking of demythologizing or trying to secularize the culture and its narratives, a very interesting article appeared in terms of several newspapers both in the United States and United Kingdom about the group known as American Atheists, launching what is described as a provocative billboard campaign in the deep South in the United States. Peter Foster reports,

“Atheist activists are taking their campaigns to the Bible Belt this Christmas with a provocative billboard campaign that is expected to stir controversy in America’s religious heartlands.”

Now I chose this particular source to look at this story because The Telegraph has published in Great Britain, which in its highly secularized state doesn’t have any region like the American South which might be compared to it, thus Britain’s reading this news article must find it something of a puzzlement. Peter Foster’s report continues,

“The giant advertising hoardings in the Tennessee cities of Memphis, Nashville, St. Louis and Fort Smith, Arkansas show a mischievous-looking young girl writing her letter to Father Christmas: ‘Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is to skip church! I’m too old for fairy tales,’”

According to Foster the advertising campaign by the atheist group, again known as American Atheists will run until Christmas Eve and is,

“…the first time the group has aimed its anti-God adverts directly at residential religious areas, having previously targeted urban audiences in big venues such as Times Square in New York.”

In other words, leaving the more secular city of New York for the more deeply inherently evangelical regions of the Deep South.

There are a couple of interesting little tidbit in this article. For one thing, the atheist group is unable to find a single billboard site in Jackson, Mississippi – no one as willing to rent them the billboard space. They called this hostility,

“The fact that billboard companies would turn away business because they are so concerned about the reaction by the community shows just how much education and activism on behalf of atheists is needed in the South,”

That was said by Danielle Muscato, identified as the head of American Atheists. Completely missing from this analysis is the fact that perhaps these billboard companies simply didn’t want to rent space to atheist for this kind of message. Again the British context is shocked by the religiosity, not only of the American South but of America. As the article cites,

“America remains deeply religious relative to Europe, with not a single self-professed atheist among the 535 members of the US Congress. US presidential candidates are also expected to believe in God.”

The most interesting aspect of this article, from a worldview perspective, is the fact that the atheists are looking for controversy and they’re not finding much. The articles about the controversy are appearing more in secular Europe and in secular American cities than in the Deep South where the American atheist group had the intent to outrage. That probably says something good about piety in the American South where even though there are very few atheists it turns out that most Southerners aren’t intending to do anything dramatic about billboards that appear trumpeting an atheist theme even a Christmas. It does tell us a great deal that European observers are shocked by the fact that such a thing might be controversy in the first place and they seem to be somewhat disappointed at the lack of any kind of actual controversy on the ground where the billboards have appeared.

And that leads to the last observation. Should we fight fire with fire? From the Christian worldview perspective, as we are ordered in Scripture always to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us, we should be always ready with a bold and compassionate winsome witness to the gospel, we should always be ready with arguments for the faith that is the ground of our hope. But there is no Christian insistence; there is no biblical mandate, to go picking fights with those wanting to pick fights with us. And when it comes to war of the billboards, quite frankly, it’s probably not very conducive to either side of the argument. One of the interesting things about this is that the American atheist group evidently, according to this article, thinks they’ll make some headway with this kind of a billboard, even appearing in the Deep South.

But the reality is there not making a great deal of headway elsewhere with this kind of billboard either. This really isn’t just a southern thing, even as The Telegraph notes, there isn’t one single openly atheist member of the United States House of Representatives or Senate – whether from the South or from the north or any spot from the East or West or in-between.

3) Widespread acceptance of nativity story reveals Americans not as secular as they believe

But that leads to another great distinction between the United States and Europe, or the United States and Great Britain in particular, as is made clear by report from Pew Research Religion in Public Life Project that came out just early this week. It has to do with the fact that over 60% of Americans believe all of the Christmas story to be true, historically true, true as if it took place in space and time and history.

According to the report and I quote,

“The new survey also suggests that most Americans believe that the biblical Christmas story reflects historical events that actually occurred. About three-quarters of Americans believe that Jesus Christ was born to a virgin, that an angel of the Lord appeared to shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus, and that wise men, guided by a star, brought Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh. And eight-in-ten U.S. adults believe the newborn baby Jesus was laid in a manger.”

Now looking at those statistics there is a stunning gap between United States and secular Europe on these issues. Even though it is accurate to say that there are deep and abiding secularizing trends in the United States, even as those secularizing trends appear to be increasing in terms of velocity, there is still a deep commitment to the Christian worldview that becomes apparent even amongst those Americans who are not confessing believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the most interesting portion of the Pew Study, 65% of all US adults surveyed believe that all of the historical aspects of the Christian story are true: the virgin birth, the journey of the Magi, the Angels announcement to the shepherds, and the manger story – they are all according to pew believed to reflect events that actually happened. Now how should Christians armed with a Christian worldview look to this? A couple of quick things; In the first place we should not gain false assurance from this. The fact that eight out of 10 Americans believe that Jesus Christ was conceded to a virgin, the fact that six out of 10 Americans believe that all the Christmas story is revealed in the Gospels took place does not mean that outside of the Christmas season that Americans are giving a great deal of thought to these truths in which they say they believe or that they’ve had any effect on them to the point of a personal confession of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

But the second thing that also needs to be said, even in an increasingly secular America, Americans aren’t nearly as secular as many actually claim themselves to be. The economist often speak about rent seeking, in which people gain advantages from other people who are actually carrying the freight and paying the costs. That’s exactly what’s taking place in terms of American culture. Where the vast majority of Americans say they at least believe in the truth of the Christian faith, even if they don’t consider themselves Christians, they apparently have some sense in which they are dependent upon the truth of Christianity even if they’re not themselves committed to the Christian faith.

Christians looking at this kind of research shouldn’t have an overconfidence in the fact that this means that the vast majority of Americans are believing Christians – it just means that the vast majority of Americans believe in the truth of something about Christianity. But this does point to an enormous chasm between America and our European cousins. There is a true secularism that is deeply infected and is now shaping the culture there pervasively and comprehensively. It isn’t taking place here yet. Thoughtful and intelligent Christians understand the importance of this kind of research and understanding it in truly gospel terms.

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. There you’ll find for example a full written version of my review of Ridley Scott’s Exodusmovie. 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 12-16-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Exodus movie underlines significance of supernaturalism and historicity to biblical worldview

Moses Without the Supernatural — Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings”, AlbertMohler.com

Hollywood has a race problem — and it’s on display in Ridley Scott’s new movie ‘Exodus’, PRI (T.J. Raphael)

Christian Bale and Ridley Scott talk religion and ‘Exodus’: An RNS interview, Religion News Service (Jonathan Merritt)

Christian Bale on Studying Moses: He Was a ‘Freedom Fighter’ for Hebrews, ‘Terrorist’ to Egyptian Empire, ABC Nightline

Man versus myth: does it matter if the Moses story is based on fact?, The Guardian (Andrew Brown)

2) Lack of controversy over atheist billboard campaign in Deep South positive sign of Southern piety

American Atheists launch provocative campaign in religious Deep South, The Telegraph (Peter Foster)

3) Widespread acceptance of nativity story reveals Americans not as secular as they believe

Most Say Religious Holiday Displays on Public Property Are OK, Pew Research Center

Transcript: The Briefing 12-15-14

The Briefing

 

December 15, 2014

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

 

It’s Monday, December 15, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Sydney hostage situation points to importance of government preventing evil

This morning, about 10 o’clock Sydney, Australia-time apparently a lone gunman took control of what is known as the Lindt Chocolate Café in Sydney (that is of course Australia’s largest city). And in so doing apparently began what is an ongoing example of Islamic terrorism, or at least it is certainly intended to be understood that way. The lone gunmen put a flag known as a shahadah outside the café for everyone to see this morning that reads: ‘There is no God but God. And Mohammed is the prophet of God.’ That is the most central theological affirmation of the religion of Islam. And one that will be recognized by Muslims anywhere and this does send a very clear signal.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he and his government at this point do not know the motivation for the hostage taking but he also said,

“…we don’t know whether this is politically motivated — although obviously there are some indications that it could be,”

That’s one of those statements in the midst of a controversy or a crisis like this that is often spoken by politicians or government officials who don’t want to say anything but have to say something. With full sympathy to the Prime Minister’s predicament, in this case he actually succeeded in doing both; saying something and saying nothing. He went on to say,

“The whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society and nothing should ever change that,”

Well that certainly true, nothing should ever change that. But this kind of attack is a significant indication that something could change that. A society cannot sustain the kind of continual suspicion and fear that this kind of terrorist approach is intended to engender. And that’s why when Western governments respond to this they have to respond in such a way that not only tries to explain what took place but to assure the people in their own societies that this is not a routine occurrence and should not occur again.

At least in that respect Tony Abbott and his government deserve some very important credibility because over the last several months the Prime Minister and his government and been very clear about what they saw as mounting signs of Islamic terrorism within Australia. As this event unfolds we can only hope and pray that no lives will be lost but it’s also very important that Western security agencies learn not only how to explain this kind of incident, not only how to end it, but how to prevent it in the first place.

As we speak about this incident at this point it also serves to underline the fact that we simply don’t know how big a story is, not just when it begins but until it ends. But the issue for Christians and for anyone intellectually serious engaging the news media is often not only how big a story is this, but is this a story at all? Or does the story turn into the story?

2) Confusion on Pope’s view of pets’ in eternity reveals priority of sentimentality, not Scripture

That’s what took place over the weekend when many headlines around the country, indeed around the world, trumpeted the fact that Pope Francis the first had declared to a young preschool boy that he should expect to meet his dog in heaven. The media headlines all around the world immediately trumpeted that the Pope declared that animals, indeed pets, would be in heaven and that we would know them. This was applauded by groups such as the Humane Society in the United States, and animal rights groups, and so many others, and it reached the point that I was receiving – in terms of my own mailbox – questions as to whether or not it was true that pets would be in heaven.

When I first started receiving those emails I wondered what in the world could be the source of such an urgent issue for it to arrive from so many people in so many different places all at once. And then I discover the headlines and came to understand that the Pope had told a five-year-old boy – distressed over the death of his dog – that he should expect to meet his dog in heaven. As a matter fact what was reported that the Pope had said was this, he had supposedly said,

“One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

Now, to state the obvious, the Pope saying it so doesn’t make it so. But, to state another equally obvious issue, it would be important to know that the Pope actually said it – which in this case, Pope Francis most assuredly did not.

The first thing to learn in looking at this story is that there is a certain credibility factor that is built in to anyone claiming that someone like the Pope said anything. The President of the United States, a Prime Minister of a country, a major celebrity, or in this case, the Pope, when they are said to have said something, it often gets repeated before anyone has the opportunity to find out if the words actually were said. And one of the things that also has to be said is that when you have the kind of religious celebrity that Pope Francis the first is – someone who is very media-genic and who tends to say things the media loves – it sounded like him, indeed it sounds like the one he chose as his namesake, Francis of Assisi. But, once again, the more important question is, did the Pope say it? And he didn’t.

There is a lot to learn from this. The Pope gave a general audience at the Vatican on 26 November, that’s where this story originated. And according to the transcript from what the Pope had to say there, he said,

“Sacred Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this marvelous plan [he’s speaking of eschatology] cannot but involve everything that surrounds us and came from the heart and mind of God.’

He went on to say,

“The Apostle Paul says it explicitly, when he says that ‘Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God’ (Rom 8:21).”

The Pope there is explicitly citing Romans 8:21. He goes on to cite the text about a new heaven and a new earth from 2 Peter 3:13 and Revelation 21:1. In this sense, he says,

“…the whole universe will be renewed and will be freed once and for all from every trace of evil and from death itself. What lies ahead is the fulfillment of a transformation that in reality is already happening, beginning with the death and resurrection of Christ. Hence, it is the new creation; it is not, therefore, the annihilation of the cosmos and of everything around us, but the bringing of all things into the fullness of being, of truth and of beauty. This is the design that God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, willed from eternity to realize and is realizing.”

Notice what the Pope didn’t say: anything about dogs, anything about pets, anything about consoling a little boy. The immediate confusion of the Pope’s comments came after an Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera,interpreted the Pope’s remarks to say that dog should go to heaven. It is not at all clear how the newspaper jumped to that conclusion.

The newspaper actually then drew a comparison between what Pope Francis the first was said to have said and what a late Pope, in this case Pope Paul VI, actually said. So a Pope did say the words attributed to Francis the first but as Pope Paul VI back in the 1960s or 70s. It was not Pope Francis I, but it was Pope Paul VI who said to a little boy, consoling him upon the death of his dog,

“One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

A couple of footnotes in terms of Catholic theology here: Pope Pius XII explicitly denied that animals will be in heaven. One of the successors to Pope Paul VI, that is his second successor, Benedict the XVI, currently the ex-Pope, the only living ex-Pope in centuries, he said that dogs and cats will not be in heaven in terms of a conscious identity with what they had been on earth as pets, because they lacked that kind of soul or` consciousness. Now Pope Francis I, as far as we know, is actually not intoned on the issue at all. What he was talking about in that November 26 General Audience is something that is rather common to Christian eschatology whether it is found in the Roman Catholic tradition or among Protestant evangelicals.

So if the Pope didn’t actually say it, and even if the Pope did, it wouldn’t make it so, how in the world has this become a major issue for us? Well in the first place, there is a big lesson here about the news media. When you see a comment like this, especially one that was first offered in an alternative language, in this case the language first spoken was Italian, you simply can’t always trust what you see is exactly what was said. But something else to count on is this: you do have cross reporting and you do have media watching and reading each other and you do have professionals in journalism who are going to pretty quick to say, ‘now wait just a minute the Pope didn’t say that.’ but what does that say about us? That is as journalists.

So looking at the issue from this first dimension it is interesting to see how many major news media outlets, including those as venerable and professional as the New York Times and others, are trying to say, ‘whoops, we got the story wrong. We were dependent upon a translation from another newspaper in another nation and they got it wrong and we’re trying to get the story right now.’ But the bigger dimension from a Christian worldview perspective is this: why is it that so many people want to believe that their dogs and cats, in particular their pets, will be with them in heaven?

The Christian worldview based in Scripture makes very clear that animals are not an accident, that indeed animals are part of the diverse glory of God’s kingdom, that God created these animals, these beings, for his own pleasure and for ours as well. And for his rule and for ours as well, as is made very clear in the stewardship and dominion assigned to the human creature – the only creature made in God’s image – even in the book of Genesis, in the first two chapters of the Bible. It is Adam who names the animals for example; the animals do not name Adam. So one of the first things we need to affirm is that the animals are part of the goodness of God’s creation. God declared the creation he had made, with the diversity of all these wonderful creatures, to be good and for these animals themselves to be good.

Furthermore, the biblical worldview also affirms the fact that there is consciousness found in the animal kingdom. There is a consciousness that is there and we know it and we recognize it. We do know that we can have something of a relationship with some of these creatures. And any of us who has a pet or has ever had a pet understands the incredibly strong bonds that can then emerge from that kind of relationship; a relationship of mutuality. That is invaded by a couple of very important things that are important for us to know. The first of these is the fact that we tend toward sentimentality. That is, as sentimental creatures, we tend to read onto not only animals but other objects of creation sentiments and emotions and knowledge that simply are not there. We tend sometimes to want to see things and we judge we have seen them because we want to. This relates to the fact that our sense of apperception, our rationality, our intelligence, is itself affected by the fall. This is known theologically as the noetic effects of the fall; we simply think we know things that we actually do not know. And even if we know them partially we don’t know them in whole. Or in some cases we are partly right but in other ways partly, indeed sometimes largely, wrong.

The second thing for us to keep in mind here is the tendency of human beings towards anthropomorphizing. That is, we tend to look at these creatures and read onto them our own intelligence, our own spiritual understanding, our own language ability, our own intelligence and emotional states. And so especially when it comes to pets – and it’s not only house pets but it’s also (as any farmer or rancher will tell you) the relationship that inevitably emerges out of those who were involved in that kind of animal husbandry and the animals themselves – when it comes to that kind of relationship there is a desire within us that it would continue beyond this life. Now by the way here’s a very important issue in terms of apologetics, that is the evidence for the reality and truth of the Christian faith, if secularists are indeed as secular as they think they are, why would they be concerned for the fact that there will be any continuation of consciousness or of knowledge or relationship beyond death because they believe that our life is basically a cosmological accident and our death is simply the end of the story. So when you’re looking at this, it is one of those very odd affirmations of the fact that even in a highly secular age even the most secular people aren’t close to being as secular as they think themselves to be.

But backing out of that issue for just a moment, understanding our tendency toward sentimentality and toward anthropomorphizing there’s another tendency and that is we sometimes want to answer a biblical silence with some kind of answer we think we can infer and then justify in terms of the biblical text. What does the biblical text say about our pets in heaven? It says absolutely nothing.

One of the most sophisticated analyses of the question about pets in heaven came from C.S. Lewis in the 20th century. Lewis wrote in two different of his writings about the continuation of pets in heaven. In The Great Divorce he actually wrote about in terms of it happening. But, as he said himself, that was a work of fiction that was intended to have a larger spiritual meaning. But in a work that wasn’t fiction at all and in which he wasn’t telling a story, in his book The Problem of Pain, he dealt in that book with the continuation of animal life – indeed with our pets in heaven. In the book he actually suggested that some of his colleagues had warned him against even thinking or writing about this since it would put him “in the company of old maids” – that is simply in a sea of sentimentality. But Lewis wrote back,

“The complete silence of Scripture in Christian tradition on animal immortality is a more serious objection.”

However, he went on to say that silence doesn’t mean it isn’t true. He said,

“…the curtain has been rent at one point, and one point only, to reveal our immediate practical necessities and not to satisfy our intellectual curiosity.”

So Lewis said the fact that the Bible doesn’t say that our pets will be in heaven doesn’t mean that Bible says that they will not be – which is a profoundly of saying the simple truth that the Bible actually is silent on the question. The Bible is not silent however on the fact that there will be a new heaven and a new earth and that on this new earth there will be animals. As a matter fact, we have eschatological references to Lions and the lambs but that is a different thing altogether than suggesting that there will be the conscious continuation of our own pets in terms of lives in the eternal life to come in that new heaven and new earth.

The deeper problem from a Christian worldview, from a theological consideration, is the fact that the human being is the only creature made in God’s image, is the only creature able to know God directly, to have a personal relationship with him, and to be directly morally accountable to him. And in that sense the human being stands out from all the rest of the creatures in terms of that conscious continuation of life. Christian eschatology points to the fact that the life to come on that new earth is going to be richer and fuller than anything we could have imagined even in Eden, such that every good thing here is not only present but present in its idealize perfect form.

One most emphatic points made in terms of eschatology and animals is the predation will cease. The lion and the Lamb will safely sleep together. It does tells us great deal that so many people, secular folks and Christians, seem to want to jump to affirm and to celebrate the fact that Pope Francis I said to that little boy who needed consolation that he would see his little dog in heaven. Quite honestly I can tell you I would be very happy to know that it’s so but that’s all I can say because the Bible says nothing directly about it. And indeed, even as we are told that there will be animals in the eschaton, we are given no indication whatsoever that they will be a continuous personality with one’s that we’ve known here on earth. But we do know this, the creatures we know right now, even in this fallen Earth, the creatures we know as pets are creatures that do show the glory of God and we should celebrate that in them. But we should be very aware of the sin of anthropomorphizing, of reading on to them more than they are because that is not only to do something that is wrong to the animal, it is to do something wrong in terms of understanding the human creature – the only creature made in the image of God, the creatures for whom Christ died.

3) Declining birth rate despite rising economy shows rewriting of ‘adult script’

For the last several years we’ve been talking about a falling birthrate in the United States and one of the points we’ve tried to make over and over again based on the data, and more importantly based on the biblical worldview, is that a birthrate is a very important signal of worldview because it is the deepest convictions about life, it’s one basic worldview that eventually determines whether or not one aims life towards having children and sees children as great and good gifts or whether or not children simply become something like an accessory, something that can well be done without. In the United States fewer and fewer children are being born. Tamara Lewin reporting for the New York Times last week tells us that the birth rate has declined for a sixth consecutive year. The last part of the headlines is really important; it’s these words, “Economy Could be Factor.” Now why is the second part of that headline so important? It’s because for the last several years as America has been experiencing these lower birthrates, we’ve been told over and over again that economics is the factor. We’ve been told by economist, by sociologist, and by demographers, that the reason the birthrate has been falling in the United States is the recession that began in 2007 and continued into 2008 and took several years for America to emerge from. But the point is this, America has now emerged for a number of years now out of that recession and the economy has improved dramatically. And yet, the birthrate has not only not gone up, it has actually gone down. That’s why you see that indecisiveness that, that question mark in effect at the end of that headline when the headline reads, “Economy Could be Factor.” Well, if it could be a factor, the obvious inference to draw is it might not be a factor after all.

Lewin reports the number of women in the United States who gave birth dropped last year according to federal statistics released just a week ago. The National Center for Health Statistics reported that there were 3.93 million births in the United States in 2013, down from 3.95 in 2012, 9% below the high in 2007. Now you’ll notice that’s almost a 10% fall in the number of births in the United States since 2007. As Lewin goes on to report,

“The general fertility rate in the United States — the average number of babies women from 15 to 44 bear over their lifetime — dropped to a record low last year, to 1.86 babies,”

That is below the 2.1 needed for replacement. So you need 2.1 merely to replace the previous generation. We have now dropped to not only under that, but we’ve dropped under any recently known statistic – to 1.86 babies.

One other factor this leading demographers to scratch their heads as Lewin writes, the decline is particularly notable because the number of women in their prime childbearing years – that’s rated between age 20 to age 39 – has been growing since 2007. So you have more women and remarkably fewer babies. In the most revealing statements of trying to evade the issue, Andrew Cherlin, a family demographer at Johns Hopkins University, says we shouldn’t worry about it because we’ve always got immigration. He said,

“Americans haven’t worried much about birthrates in the past, because we have the faucet of immigration to turn on and off. It’s a bigger problem in Europe, where countries like Germany and Spain have much lower rates. And even at 1.8, we’re in the ballpark with the highest rates in Europe.”

That reminds me of a statement I often think of said by former United States Senator Alan Simpson. When asked about an issue he said, ‘look, it doesn’t really serve to have your main ambition to be the last horse to the glue factory.’ In other words, saying that we’re basically keeping pace with the best of the European countries in the worst sort of way is not exactly something we should brag about.

A more directed mission of confusion came from William H. Fray, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, who said,

“On just about every demographic indicator involving young adults, whether it’s marriage, buying a home or delaying childbearing, it’s all been on hold since the beginning of the recession. I think it’ll come back up, and each time new numbers are coming out, I think maybe this will be the moment.”

But this statement is said in the context of the fact that moment has obviously not yet come. Other observers are actually speaking directly to the issue suggesting that clearly many Americans, especially those Americans who are young and not get married or married and not yet having children or for that matter are women who are not planning to have children, there’s obviously been a vast exchange of values that has taking place; a vast change in the target of light perception and of targeting of life ambition. What we have here is a fundamental rewriting of the adult script in the United States, whereas in almost any previous generation – not just of the United States but of humanity – the qualification of being an adult would’ve been in the main to aim towards having children. Now that has become something as an accessory, something of a hobby, seen in light of some younger Americans and something that can be done without – avoided altogether or postponed rather indefinitely.

Just keep in mind the fact that as we discussed several weeks ago you have Silicon Valley firms now offering to pay as a fringe benefit for egg freezing for their female employees – just put it off. But as many suggested even in responding to those headlines, it’s not so easy. One of the issues the Christian worldview affirms is the closer you get to the basic institutions of life the more apparent and abundant the worldview issues really are. Worldview issues determine more than anything else the most important decisions we make and those important relationships we create and nurture as well. Also our expectations, the picture of the life we expect to have and what and whom will be included within it.

One thing becomes abundantly clear, one of the great distinctions between the Christian worldview and the modern secular worldview comes down to, of all things, babies. What they mean when they are in the womb, what they mean once they are born, what they mean in terms of who has ultimate say over their lives in terms of their education, their health, and other choices, and of course whether they are in the picture at all.

Finally let me mention that tomorrow I’ll be bringing a review of Ridley Scott’s new movie Exodus: God’s and Kings. It’s a movie being talked about in the culture and for good reason. I’ll be talking about it tomorrow and will be positing a major review online at albertmohler.com as well.

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.

Christmas: A Sacred Holiday in a Secular Age – A Conversation with Tara Moore

Tara Moore teaches in the writing program at Pennsylvania State University in York. She has previously authored Victorian Christmas in Print. Her most recent work is Christmas: The Sacred to Santa.

Moses Without the Supernatural — Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings”

Timed for a Christmas season release, director Ridley Scott’s intended blockbuster, Exodus: Gods and Kings hit the big screens this past weekend. On its opening weekend the movie shot to the top of the box office charts, displacing the latest Hunger Games movie, but falling considerably short of expected receipts.

The best single line analysis of the movie and its failure to garner either critical acclaim or more viewers was offered by Eric D. Snider of GeekNation: “This big dud isn’t blasphemous enough to be outrageous, emotional enough to be inspiring, or interesting enough to be good.”

Well, I partly agree with the first two points of criticism, but I did find the movie interesting. Indeed, I even liked much of the movie, and I would not argue that mature and thoughtful Christians should not see it, even if the concerns about it are major. And make no mistake, the concerns are major.

Earlier this year, director Darren Aronofsky offended the faithful with his distorted depiction of Noah. Aronofsky’s Noah offered a portrait of Noah as a crazed homicidal maniac who hallucinated God’s will after drinking a potion given to him by Methuselah. Humanity itself is depicted as a blight upon the earth and the director himself bragged that his movie was “the least Biblical biblical film ever made.”

Ridley Scott’s Moses is not in the same category, largely because there are so many details of the Exodus narrative in the Bible with which the director simply had to deal. There are no Transformer-like invented creatures in Moses, and many of the film’s scenes and details are explicitly true to the biblical text. Indeed, Scott’s presentation of the ten plagues God brought against Egypt is spellbinding — far more moving than the same scenes as depicted in Cecil B. DeMille’s famed The Ten Commandments. The last plague, the death of first-born sons, is absolutely riveting and deeply emotional.

Critics are piling on. Film critics tend to be rather eccentric sorts and some of them seem almost impossible to please. As a general rule, critical acclaim and popularity with the public are not directly related. Some of the concerns are quite legitimate, however. Public Radio International published a review noting that “Hollywood Has a Race Problem.” Virtually all of the leading roles are played by white actors, even though the ancient Egyptians were certainly not caucasian. As PRI noted, “Ramses, the Egyptian pharaoh who enslaved the Jews in the Old Testament, is played by a white actor. In fact, the entire lead cast of ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ is white. Moses is white. Moses’ mother is white. The Egyptian prince is white. The African queen is white, too.”

Not only are they all white, the central characters speak as though they were educated at Oxford or Cambridge. This is rather typical of Ridley Scott’s films, with gravitas presumably added by a British accent. Needless to say, the skin tones and accents do not match the actual story.

But that fact points to an even more troubling dimension of the movie. The entire narrative does not match the actual story. It fails as a whole even more than it fails in its parts.

What is missing is the very point of the Exodus in biblical history and theology. What is missing is the truth that God acted in history in faithfulness to the covenant he had made with Abraham, rescuing Israel from captivity in Egypt. In Ridley Scott’s version, God is actually hidden from view, along with his purposes, motivations, and character. In his place we see an 11 year old boy who appears to Moses as a theophany, or divine appearance. God’s presumed words flow from the mouth of a small boy, who appears as something of an unmoved Mover in the film’s narrative.

As for Moses, the depiction offered by actor Christian Bale grounds Moses’ sense of divine call in a severe knock to the head from a rock, followed by what might well be a hallucination, with the 11 year old boy speaking to Moses beside the bush that burned but was not consumed. Completely missing from the portrayal is any explanation that God has chosen Moses as his instrument for bringing Israel out of captivity and that God was acting in faithfulness to the covenant made with Abraham. Moses appears as a tribal chief, a cunning general and killing machine, rooted in what Scott presents as Moses’ experience as a great general during his life as a prince of Egypt. Moses never seems to understand a divine purpose beyond his military exploits, and his relationship with God is troubled, to say the least.

It must be said that Moses’ relationship with God in the Bible is also troubled, to say the least. After all, Moses is not allowed by God to lead the children of Israel into Canaan. Nevertheless, the Bible steadfastly presents Moses within the context of his calling and his calling within the context of covenant. The movie leaves viewers with a depiction of Moses, riding alongside what must be the ark of the covenant, as Israel moves on from the parting of the Red Sea. But the ark is never identified, nor is the covenant.

The problems with the film could be anticipated, given the rather remarkable statements made by both Ridley Scott and Christian Bale, even before the movie’s release. Ridley Scott made clear that he did not believe that Moses had ever lived and that the Exodus account was not to be taken as historically true. He told Religion News Service that he looked at the film much as he looks at science fiction. “Cause I never believed in it, I had to convince myself every step of the way as to what did make sense and what didn’t make sense and where I could reject and accept. And therefore I had to come to my own decisions and internal debates.”

Accordingly, Scott presents the plagues and miracles as non-supernatural events with a naturalistic explanation. Unlike Cecile B. DeMille, Scott offered no version of a supernatural miracle at the Red Sea. He described his dilemma: “So I have to part the Dead Sea and I’m not going to part the Dead Sea because I don’t believe it. I don’t believe I can part the Dead Sea and keep shimmering water on each side. I’m an absolutely very, very practical person. So I was immediately thinking that all science-based elements placed come from natural order or disorder–or could come from the hand of God, however you want to play that.” Presumably, Scott meant Red Sea, not Dead Sea.

Well, Ridley Scott played it all in naturalistic terms, or at least he did his best to do so. The most interesting aspect of the film in this respect was the role played by a nervous vizier in service to Ramses, who did his best to offer a strictly naturalistic explanation for the succession of plagues. The vizier appears as an ancient demythologizer, offering natural explanations involving red clay in the Nile and a complicated series of basically environmental plagues that followed. Those explanations would be familiar to anyone versed in the liberal biblical scholarship of the last two hundred years. In Scott’s version of the story, the real story at the Red Sea was the receding of the waters due to a tsunami after an earthquake.

Despite himself, however, Scott’s depiction of the plagues appears quite supernatural indeed — especially the final plague, the death of first-born sons. Scott’s anti-supernaturalism utterly fails him on the final plague, and he does not flinch from presenting the horrifying divine judgment on the defiant Egyptians. The film’s scenes of dead and dying Egyptian boys and young men is deeply moving. By that point in the film the demythologizing vizier has been hung by a frustrated Ramses, and no character attempts to offer a “natural” or “scientific” explanation of the last plague.

The portrayal of Moses as a tribal warrior was explained by actor Christian Bale, who told ABC’s Nightline program that Moses, in his view, was “one of the most barbaric individuals that I have ever read about in my life.” Christian Bale may not read much, but those words betray his conception of Moses as quite different from anything found in the Bible. Where did he get his information about the “barbaric” Moses? Actually, in that conversation with Nightline and in other interviews, Bale revealed the real issue. Like Ridley Scott, he assumes a strictly non-supernatural storyline. Christian Bale’s comments indicate that he seemingly places the responsibility for the plagues at the hands of Moses, not God. Even so, in the film the 11 year old boy expresses frustration with Moses’ slow progress toward liberation and tells him to “watch” as he sets the plagues in motion.

The film has put the question of the historical Moses on the table of public conversation. In the Guardian, Andrew Brown declared: “There is no historical character of Moses, and no reason from archaeology or history to suppose that any of the exodus story is true.”

Brown then wrote:

“Since the central rite of Jewish identity is the Passover festival, which commemorates the moment that Moses freed his people from slavery in Egypt, the absence of evidence outside the Bible story is potentially embarrassing, says Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, who leads Reform Judaism in this country [Britain]: ‘When I heard for the first time that the exodus might not have happened, I did want to weep … then I thought, what does this matter? You have to distinguish between truth and historicity.’”

That is the great claim of liberal theology — that we must “distinguish between truth and historicity.” Brown’s article goes on to cite several Jewish authorities as arguing that it really does not matter to Judaism if Moses never existed. Brown even cited one Orthodox rabbi who argued that it was the giving of the law that had to be historical, not Moses. Brown also noted that Orthodox Judaism requires a belief that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, leading to the obvious question of how we can have Mosaic authorship without Moses. One may presume that other authorities in Orthodox Judaism would disagree with the cited rabbi.

In any event, the fact remains that, even if the historical Moses is not central to contemporary Judaism (by at least some accounts), the historical Moses is vital and essential to Christianity. Moses is a central character in the Bible’s narrative of Israel and the metanarrative of the Gospel itself. Jesus is the new Moses, leading his people out of captivity to sin. Moses is the divinely commissioned lawgiver. Christ Jesus is the divine Savior who perfectly fulfills the law and redeems sinful humanity. The Bible clearly presents the Exodus as history, and the history of Christianity is built upon that historic foundation.

As a film, Exodus: Gods and Kings is a mixed bag. I was deeply moved by parts of the film, and puzzled or troubled by others. But, in the end, perhaps the best way to understand Ridley Scott’s Moses is to put it in the context of Scott’s own comments. He told Religion News Service: “Any liberties I have taken in terms of how I show this stuff was, I think, pretty safe ground because I’m always going always from what is the basis of reality, never fantasy . . . . So the film had to be as real as I could make it.”

As real, in other words, as Ridley Scott’s version of “this stuff” could be presented “from what is the basis of reality” as Ridley Scott defines reality. What we see in the film is Moses without the supernatural. In his own words, that’s how he decided to “play” it.

It turns out that the real vizier is none other than Ridley Scott.

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

For more information on Southern Seminary, visit SBTS.edu and for more information on Boyce College, visit BoyceCollege.com.

Jonathan Merritt, “Christian Bale and Ridley Scott Talk Religion and ‘Exodus’ — An Interview,” Religion News Service, Wednesday, December 10, 2014. http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.c...

Andrew Brown, “Man versus Myth: Does it Matter if the Moses Story is Based on Fact?,” The Guardian, Saturday, November 29, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/...

T. J. Raphael, “Hollywood Has a Race Problem–And It’s on Display in Ridley Scott’s New Movie ‘Exodus,’” Public Radio International, Sunday, December 14, 2014. http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-12-14...

The Briefing 12-15-14

1) Sydney hostage situation points to importance of government preventing evil

Martin Place Lindt Chocolate Cafe siege: public transport and traffic diverted, Sydney Morning Herald (Patrick Begley, Tom Allard, and Jacob Saulwick)

Black Flag Is Hoisted as an Armed Person Takes Hostages in a Sydney Cafe, New York Times (Michelle Innis)

2) Confusion on Pope’s view of pets’ in eternity reveals priority of sentimentality, not Scripture

General Audience, Vatican (Pope Francis I)

Dogs in Heaven? Pope Francis Leaves Pearly Gates Open, New York Times (Rick Gladstone)

Pope Francis suggests that pets can go to heaven, The Independent (Andrew Buncombe)

Reports Wrongly Suggested Pope Francis Said Animals Go to Heaven, NBC News (Claudio Lavanga and Erik Ortiz)

3) Declining birth rate despite rising economy shows rewriting of ‘adult script’

U.S. Birthrate Declines for Sixth Consecutive Year; Economy Could Be Factor, New York Times (Tamara Lewin)

To Give Knowledge of Salvation to His People: The Mandate for Christian Ministry

Transcript: The Briefing 12-12-14

The Briefing

 

December 12, 2014

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

 

It’s Thursday, December 12, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Vast theological and moral chasm within Anglican Communion shows a church losing its center

The Times of London, one of the world’s most authoritative newspapers is out with a major story having to do with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who also serves as the primate – or the very head – of what is called the Anglican Communion. That’s the communion of all the church is related to the church of England in terms of the larger Anglican tradition. This includes churches in the United States known as the Episcopal Church USA and now, given the liberalism of that church, various Anglican communions as well. This also means churches in other parts of the world – in particular what’s called the Global South. Churches in Africa and Central and South America, far more conservative than the American and English churches now.

And this leads to the very reason for the article in the Times about the Archbishop of Canterbury. Because it turns out that he has just concluded a massive global tour of the Anglican Communion. He’s been a full 11 days on airplanes over the last two years. He has traveled more than 149,000 miles, visiting places as diverse as Brazil, New Guinea, Sudan, Rwanda, South Korea, and Myanmar – all as he was making visits to the primates, or that is the local heads of those Anglican churches in those nations. But even as the times article primarily has to do with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England and the Anglican Communion there are lessons here for all of us. For every church, every denomination, every Christian.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is quoted as saying that what he learned in terms of his worldwide visit to the entire Anglican Communion is that the communion may well break up. The first edition of the story in the Times carried the headline, “Conflict may Force Church to Split.” Subsequent editions of the story softened the headline somewhat, but the bottom line is still the same. There is every likelihood that the Church of England will break apart, and primarily over the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. There are larger issues but all of them are related to the great cleavage between theological conservatism and Protestant theological liberalism. What you’re looking at here is a massive division that is only growing wider. And that’s the reason for the likelihood of the breakup.

Now the Archbishop of Canterbury was elected as something of an evangelical. He’s at least identified with coming from the evangelical wing of the Church of England. But as the British Separatists and others of noted for a very long time, the conservative wing of the Church of England – though certainly including many theological conservatives – is after all in the Church of England. And the Church of England is by any measure in the Anglican Communion. And so what happens in one of these churches relates to all of them because of their interconnectivity, because of their fellowship, and indeed because of the fact they’re all unified in some sense under the Archbishop of Canterbury. And now you have a church, in particular the Church of England, and a communion , the Anglican Communion, that is trying to define itself as able to encompass this massive division theologically between those who believe that homosexuality is a sin and those who believe that it’s simply normal. Those who believe that the Bible is basically an ancient relic that includes some kind of divine inspiration, and those who believe that it is the inerrant and infallible word of God. Those who believe that what God did for us in Christ is a substitutionary atonement that achieves salvation from sin and those of believe that the gospel is instead more about a social message, more about liberation from social oppression.

You’re looking at a communion of churches that is losing not only any sense of the boundaries, but also any sense of the center. Leading to the obvious question, what exactly holds the Anglican communion together? And as this headline story indicates it might be that right now the answer is, ‘not much’.

A bit of history is instructive here; the Church of England makes a claim upon what is known as comprehensiveness. It’s a very important claim to understand. The Church of England basically claims (and not only the Church of England, but the larger Anglican Communion in some sense) to be able to encompass comprehensive theological views. That is to say, views on the far left and the far right. Views that in the Church of England include evangelical, absolutely radically liberal, and Anglo-Catholic. The question is can any church hold together with the kind a diversity of theological positions? Going back to the 19th century the strains were already there. You include those who hold the classical Christian orthodoxy and those that those very same persons consider also to be heretics.

Going back to the 20th century you already had bishops in the Church of England  that were denying the divine inspiration of Scripture, the exclusivity the gospel and other crucial doctrines. You also had bishops that were denying the existence of a personal God. So already in the 20th century this claim to comprehensiveness meant comprehensiveness in one church, or denomination, or fellowship of churches that included people who are orthodox Christian believers and those that are effectively described as atheists.

It should be instructive to us that that did not split the Anglican Communion apart. People weren’t talking about this kind a split over the issue of atheism but now they’re talking about it over the issue homosexuality. Some theologians looking at this explain that we are finally getting to an issue that virtually everyone can understand – what many sociologists refer to as a transparent issue. This relates to other churches as well. In the controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s and 90s the presenting issue was biblical authority, defined in terms of biblical inerrancy. But there were many laypeople the churches who didn’t understand the nuances of definitions about inerrancy. What they get understand was an individual’s position on abortion and the sanctity of human life, or on questions a sexuality. That same dynamic seems now to have appeared in the Anglican communion, where even though there many people who might not understand what a bishop is saying when he tries to obfuscate or confuse a theological issue, they do understand whether or not someone believes that a woman should serve as a priest or a bishop. Or whether someone believes that homosexuality should be normalized and same-sex marriage should be legalized.

One thing’s for certain, the current Archbishop of Canterbury sounds pretty much like the ones who came before him. Seeming always to speak in terms of an ‘on the one hand and then on the other hand.’ According to the article, the Archbishop said

“I think, realistically, we’ve got to say that despite all efforts there is a possibility that we will not hold together or not hold together, for a while. I could see circumstances [he said] in which there could be people moving apart, and then coming back together, depending on what else happens.”

Later he said,

“I’m not saying that it’s inevitable, even probable than not. I think it’s very much of up in the air at the moment, and my suspicion is that the vast majority people will stay within the communion completely.”

Or, we could simply say, on the basis what he himself has said, ‘or not.’

From the Christian worldview perspective the most interesting aspect of this article is where the Archbishop discusses the churches on the extremes of this claim of comprehensiveness. And the two churches given as an example are the church of Nigeria on the one hand, and the Episcopal Church US on the other hand. The church of Nigeria holds that all homosexual practice is inherently biblically defined as sinful. On the other hand Episcopal Church USA not only has normalized homosexuality but now endorses same-sex unions, even same-sex ceremonies, and elected even a decade ago an openly gay man to serve as a bishop. In other words it’s hard to imagine a distance, theologically speaking, greater than that between the Church of Nigeria and Episcopal Church US. Presumably trying to articulate something like what others have described as a ‘third way,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury said that he has profound disagreements with both of these churches – without particularly saying what his profound disagreement might be.

The article then states,

“And although the church in America almost provoked an open schism with the consecration of an openly gay Bishop, Gene Robinson, in 2003, Archbishop Welby said that his visit had been something of a breakthrough. ‘It was a real gift in terms of communication, at least there was understanding why we disagreed with one another when we disagreed, rather than simply disagreeing and not understanding each other.’”

Now when you hear that from a church leader here’s what you need to understand; the situation is almost never a lack of understanding and this is a situation that is well over a decade old. This is a situation the prompted an entire multi-year study commission of the Anglican Communion, and this is a situation that everyone has well understood for a very long time. And so it’s basically a dodge in terms of ecclesiastical responsibility to say, ‘we disagree but at least now we understand one another.’ No, the understanding actually came at the very beginning. This is a very clear disagreement, not a misunderstanding.

Just to make the point more emphatically, at the end of his comment the Archbishop said,

“The situation there [speaking of the Episcopal Church in the United States] is complicated, to put it mildly.”

Those who are committed to a biblical Christian worldview have to understand that the Bible itself says that belief cannot have fellowship with nonbelief. It is simply impossible. Two cannot walk together unless they are agreed. If that is true in terms of the biblical worldview, how in the world does a church actually claim comprehensiveness as something that it ought to be able to achieve, or even to claim? If comprehensiveness means claiming those within the church who are orthodox believers in terms of the Christian faith, and those who are no longer even theists, in what sense is that even defined as a church?

And when you consider the new comprehensiveness witch this communion is trying to achieve between those who believe that homosexuality is a sin like every other sin that leads to death, and those who believe that actually absolute normalized and even now celebrated, how in the world can that kind of comprehensiveness be sustained with any accountability to the Christian faith whatsoever? And the only way out of this is for the church to declare itself, for the Anglican Communion to define its doctrines and its boundaries and its doctrinal center, and then to make those an actual issue of accountability for the entire communion. It’s not enough, it’s not nearly enough, for the Archbishop of Canterbury to say “ the situation there is complicated to put it mildly.”

The situation is a complicated; it’s wretched.

2) Narrow repeal of LGBT ordinance in Fayetteville, AR  reveals rising threat to religious liberty

An important event took place in the United States this week in the city of Fayetteville, Arkansas, in which voters in that city repealed a law that had been passed by city officials; a transgender homosexual ordinance that many acclaimed would pose a direct threat to religious liberty. As Tom Strode for Baptist Press reports,

“In a special election Tuesday (Dec. 9), residents of Fayetteville — home of the University of Arkansas — approved repeal of the measure by fewer than 500 votes, with 52 percent … of voters in favor of repeal and 48 percent … opposed. The result rescinded a law passed by the city council in a 6-2 vote in August. Opponents of the ordinance collected enough signatures within a month to place its repeal on a special election ballot.”

The reason this ordinance gathered so much attention is because it posed very direct threats to religious liberty. It was written in the most vague language, and would’ve affected everything from public accommodations to virtually every aspect of business and institutional life within the city.

As Strode writes,

“The rejected ordinance included real or perceived “gender identity,” “gender expression” and “sexual orientation” among a list of classifications to receive protection from discrimination in employment and housing. It also barred discrimination by establishments that provide “goods, services, accommodations and entertainment to the public,” which would include hotels, restaurants and other businesses. In addition, the measure created the post of civil rights administrator, who would be responsible for investigating complaints and recommending prosecution.”

Interesting aspects of this included the fact that, churches could have been prosecuted if they refused to hire gay or transgender people for “secular” staff, that is, not with direct, demonstrated, ministry responsibilities. Christian schools and bookstores could have been required to violate their own convictions in terms of employment practices. Business owners with religious convictional objections would’ve been prosecuted for declining to provide services for same-sex weddings or commitment ceremonies.

These are typical kinds of issues that have emerged elsewhere. What’s important here is exactly what we saw in light of the Minneapolis transgender issue last week, and that is the fact that we’re not talking about here a liberal state on one of the two coasts. We’re talking about Fayetteville, Arkansas. It tells us something that this particular ordinance, vaguely written as it was and opposed even by the Chamber of Commerce simply because they said they couldn’t even advise businesses on how to comply with the law –  it tells us something to the commission there passed the law in August, it tells us something that it was repealed this week by fewer than 500 votes.

I want to draw particular attention to Tom Strode’s article when he says that the Fayetteville Arkansas measure had created “the post of civil rights administrator, who would be responsible for investigating complaints and recommending prosecution.” Now just keep in mind what this law thus authorized, the law that was just very narrowly repealed. It created a new regulatory entity, it created a new bureaucratic officer whose job was to investigate complaints made on these issues, and then “recommend prosecution.”

2) Narrow repeal of LGBT ordinance in Fayetteville, AR  reveals rising threat to religious liberty

Now at this point keep in mind the fact that I discussed just days ago the reality that a church here in Louisville, Kentucky, formerly related to the Southern Baptist Convention and the Kentucky Baptist Convention had performed a same-sex ceremony – not yet a same-sex marriage legally speaking, because Kentucky does not yet have legal same-sex marriage – but it was in terms of the religious event that which is tantamount to it. That was the Crescent Hill Baptist Church here in Louisville. That church was in the headlines just a matter of weeks ago because in November the Kentucky Baptist Convention removed fellowship from that church because, in the words of the Kentucky Convention ‘it had violated Scripture in terms of this new position.’

What links these two stories together, other than the issue homosexuality, is the fact that there is a commissioner involved. In this case, the Kentucky human rights commissioner wrote a letter to the local paper here in Louisville, the Louisville Courier-Journal, commending the church for its action and applauding the church even in the fact that it’d been excluded from the Kentucky Baptist Convention. In a letter published in the local paper on November 29, George Stinson, identified as Chair of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights wrote to the church saying,

“We write to you today on the occasion of your church’s recent separation from the Kentucky Baptist Convention. As a government body, we are obligated to respect the freedoms of speech, religion and association that are the rights of individuals and groups in our society.

“We commend you in affirming the worth and dignity of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LBGT) people and in your continued efforts to include LGBT people in the life of your community.

“As stewards of our state’s civil rights heritage, we see the rights of LGBT people to work, live and participate fully in society as a logical progression in our continued pursuit of equality. The inclusion that LGBT people seek today is comparable to the women’s suffrage movement, the dismantling of Jim Crow and so many other human rights efforts in the life of our nation.”

He concludes in writing,

“One lesson of the 50-plus year history of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights is that change is never easy and progress often has a price. We know the process has not been easy and you have lost both friends and resources in living your beliefs.

“A letter cannot assuage that reality, but we want you to know that many who have labored in the field for human equality stand with you, and your sacrifice has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. We commend your courage and compassion in standing for your principles and we know someday that courage and compassion will be vindicated.”

Thus says, or thus writes, the Chair of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights.We’ve been noting a political leaders looking to churches have been saying, as David Cameron said (that is the Prime Minister of Great Britain) to the Church of England, ‘get with the program.’ Now you have the commissioner of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights applauding a church that is been disfellowshipped from its larger denomination for a liberal stand on human sexuality, and saying to the rest of the denomination, more or less, ‘when will you get with the program?’

Furthermore, you have this head of an official Kentucky commission making very clear that he believes that the issue of LGBT rights is exactly synonymous with issues related to the rights of women and to those of ethnic and racial minorities in the United States. But when you think about what happened this week in terms of that very narrow vote to repeal that ordinance in Fayetteville, that ordinance that included the establishment of a commissioner just like the one who is described in this letter, just remember the opening words of this letter to the paper written by George Stinson, who is the chair the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. Let me remind you of his early words in this letter,

“As a government body we are obligated to respect the freedoms of speech, religion, and association that are the rights of individuals and groups in our society.”

Did you notice the use of that word ‘obligated’? Here you have someone who is head of an official commission for the state of Kentucky who says with very straightforward language that he is simply obligated –  it’s an obligation – that he respect the freedoms of speech, religion, and association that he says are rights of individuals and groups in our society. The use of the word obligated cannot be assumed here to be accidental. He sees this as an obligation. The question of course is this; how long will this commissioner or this commission feel obligated to respect religious liberty?

If it’s an obligation –  the very word he used – we can only assume that what he wants as quickly as possible is to be free of that onerous obligation.

4) Misleading scientific headline evidence of need for Christian discernment

Finally from time to time we see a news article in which the headline doesn’t possibly match the content of the article. And when the Christian worldview and its very central issues are concerned, this means it’s something that ought to have our attention. Here’s the headline: “Scientist Re-create What May Be Life’s First Spark.” This appeared in the Associated Press this week in an article by Seth Borenstein. Borenstein writes,

“Scientists in a lab used a powerful laser to re-create what might have been the original spark of life on Earth.

“The researchers zapped clay and a chemical soup with the laser to simulate the energy of a speeding asteroid smashing into the planet. They ended up creating what can be considered crucial pieces of the building blocks of life.”

Well, all right let’s consider those first two sentences. We are told that scientists just may have re-created what just might be life’s first spark. Evidently, a spark that somehow was to have been created in the primordial history of the entire universe when clay and chemical soup were somehow zapped by a high-speed asteroid. If you’re following that theory, you just might be able to follow the article.

The study was published Monday this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences included this statement,

“These findings suggest that the emergence of terrestrial life is not the result of an accident but a direct consequence of the conditions on the primordial Earth and its surroundings.”

Now one of the things it doesn’t become clear it all this article is why an asteroid hitting primordial clay in a chemical soup wouldn’t be described as an accident. It sounds to any fair-minded reader is something that might well be described as an accident. One scientist in Prague explained scientists have been able to make RNA bases – that’s a simpler relative of DNA described as a blueprint of life – in terms of using chemical mixes and pressure, but this( according to the Associated Press) is the first experiment to test the theory that the energy from a space crash could trigger the crucial chemical reaction that might eventually lead to the emergence of life. The article goes on to explain that this new research reveals something that just might have happened, that just might have been an accident, or just might not have been an accident. But the essential bottom line of the article is this, the headline is “Scientist Recreate What May be Life’s First Spark.”

But guess what didn’t happen? Anything. Anything described as life. They created what they say, in this headline, might have been life’s first spark, but there was no spark of first life. So when you’re engaging the media in any form and you see a headline or lead such as ‘scientists re-create what may be life’s first spark,’ you need to keep in mind that only the article will reveal if even the article reveals whether or not there’s anything to the headline after all. In this case the best line in the article comes from John Sutherland of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He said the amount produced of one chemical base was so small “that the results don’t seem relevant.” But as the week comes to an end, let’s remember the crucial, infinite distance between a headline that says ‘scientists re-create what may be life’s first spark, and those words that come to us in the book of Genesis, where God said “Let there be.” And there was.

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.

The Briefing 12-12-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Vast theological and moral chasm within Anglican Communion shows a church losing its center

Schism? More a temporary separation, The Times of London (Michael Binyon)

Conflict may force church to split, Welby says, The Times of London (Oliver Moody and Michael Binyon)

2) Narrow repeal of LGBT ordinance in Fayetteville, AR  reveals rising threat to religious liberty

 Fayetteville, Ark., LGBT law repealed, Baptist Press (Tom Strode)

3) KY advocate of LGBT rights views tolerance of religious opinion an obligation, for now

 Letter | Crescent Hill Baptist, Louisville Courier-Journal (George W. Stinson)

4) Misleading scientific headline evidence of need for Christian discernment

Scientists re-create what may be life’s first spark, Associated Press (Seth Borenstein)