R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 331
December 5, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 12-05-14
The Briefing
December5, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Friday, December 5, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) New Minnesota state athletic policy portrays velocity of transgender revolution
Yesterday we discussed the decision pending by the Minnesota State High School League Board concerning the issue of transgender athletes in high school athletics. And now, as of yesterday, the state of Minnesota has a new policy for high school athletics and it is exactly what we talked about yesterday. It is a policy that effectively means the end of boys and girls sports in that state.
As Paul Klauda reports of Minneapolis Star Tribune,
“The Minnesota State High School League board approved a new policy for transgender students [yesterday] morning that will begin with the 2015-16 school year. Criteria for determining eligibility of transgender students for high school sports teams would be applied in an appeal process that would be overseen by the high school league. Appeals would be heard by an independent hearing officer.”
As the news article makes very clear, this policy that was adopted yesterday by the league is one that basically involved input from only one side of the equation – even though there was massive public outcry about the draft policy, no one who was opposed to the policy was deeply involved in the drafting process. Instead, as we documented yesterday, the drafting process was inherently dependent upon ideological advocates for absolute transgender inclusion and furthermore, for the transgender agenda.
The vote yesterday in Minnesota wasn’t close, 18 of the 20 members of the league’s board voted yes – only one is identified as saying no, that’s Emmett Keenan, who is athletics director at the St. Cloud Cathedral. Governor appointed board member Paul McDonald participating in his first board meeting abstained. So 18 voted yes, one voted no, one abstained.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune also indicates that two days ago, on Wednesday, the boarded considered a different policy that would’ve allowed for a local option school district by school district but that was turned down because of the fear that it would eventually lead to chaos in terms of state athletics. One of the interesting aspects of this article is something new and that is that evidently the school districts, or at least representatives of those districts, didn’t want the question to arrive at their decision-making. They wanted to defer to someone else even that someone else was the school league and in this case the league voted.
One change that was made between Wednesday and the vote yesterday is that an exemption for religious schools was written into the policy. That’s very important, at least in terms of understanding the rights of Christian schools to remain Christian, but at the same time the previous exemption language proposed had included all nonpublic schools, now only religious schools are to be exempted from the policy. But remember this policy, and it is a policy now beginning in the 2015-16 school year, says that a student has to be recognized for inclusion on sports teams and locker rooms, in terms of bathrooms or on school trips, has to be recognized for the gender identity with which the student identifies.
As Stella Morabito noted in The Federalist earlier this week, that effectively means the end of boys and girls sports in the state of Minnesota. And the important thing for all of us is that this is not limited to Minnesota. If anything, what we’re noticing right now in states like Minnesota is that those who are pushing these agendas are pushing them to such warp speed that they’re trying to get states in the heartland of America such as Minnesota to adopt these policies so as to make it a coast-to-coast reality as quickly as possible. And, as Morabito noted, before America’s parents can become involved and organized in trying to block this kind of development. Furthermore this kind of action taken by an official state body is simply an indication of what is also happening in terms of the courts where those pushing for the transgender revolution are also going into litigation where necessary in order to push that agenda.
Now when we look at this from a Christian perspective, once again, we’re looking at a rebellion against creation that is deeper even then same-sex relationships and something like same-sex marriage as it’s called. We’re looking at a rejection of the very notion that what it means to be human is to be male or female and to have that assigned by the creator your for His glory and for our good. This is a much deeper and more subversive pushback in terms of the biblical worldview than even, and this is something that’s hard to say and yet it is true, even the advent of same-sex marriage.
The day before the league made its decision, and that is on Wednesday, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis ran a pro and con column of articles in which the argument was debated in the public square. Writing for the policy were Alison Yocom and Martha Burton, identified as writing on behalf of the group Transforming Families Minnesota, they wrote that transgender students deserve inclusion and that this policy is not only right but fair because it recognizes that without this kind of policy transgender athletes won’t be able to participate in high school athletics in the gender with which they identify. But they also make an astounding statement. They talk about a policy that was adopted by the NCAA in terms of a different context. In that policy, Dr. Nick Gorton, identified in this article, had stated,
“Transgender student-athletes fall within the spectrum of physical traits found in athletes of their transitioned gender, allowing them to compete fairly and equitably.”
But to that we simply have to say, saying it so certainly doesn’t make it so – I don’t think anyone with the slightest amount of common sense or knowledge of adolescence can say that the physical traits of someone born a boy and the physical traits of someone born a girl are the same when it comes to issues like muscle mass or even weight or strength or any number of other issues. That’s why common sense has for generations, indeed far more than that, for centuries and millennia, indicated that there ought to be an appropriate distinction between boys’ and girls’ sports. And that’s why, despite the adoption of this policy, will continue to be the expectation of most parents, and I think that’s an understatement, coast-to-coast in America right now. The statement nonetheless is put forward with a straight face that there is a spectrum of physical traits that are found in transgender student athletes that are again I quote, “found in athletes of their transition to gender, allowing them to compete fairly and equitably.”
In the con article published alongside the pro article, attorney John Hagan Junior responded making just that point. He writes,
“Imagine the following scenario. An adolescent… [boy]… declares: ‘I always have had a feminine self-image. I never told anyone, because of society’s expectations, but I’m revealing it now. My long hair is evidence of my sincerity and my feminine self-expression.’”
Hagan then writes,
“The High School League’s pending policy would compel the school to let this boy play power forward on the girls’ basketball team, regardless of safety considerations…. If the school resisted, it would promptly be faced with a lawsuit under the ‘will be eligible’ clause [of the new policy].”
“The language isn’t inadvertent. The pending policy is a redraft. The public challenged an original rendition early this fall, when some 10,000 e-mails were sent to the league. The redraft supposedly was to be prepared by a ‘task force’ representing multiple viewpoints on the issue. But opponents of the original draft … have been shut out of the process. The redraft, with its insidious language, was prepared by transgender activists and the bureaucracy of the league.”
Once again we face the velocity of the sexual and moral revolution that we are now facing. We’re looking at a velocity that is simply unprecedented in terms of human experience. And when we come to the transgender revolution, we’re talking about looking at a moral, a cultural, a societal, ethical, revolution that will simply wash away virtually every single norm previously known to men and women, to humanity, in times past.
And as Time magazine reports just days ago, reporter Katy Steinmetz writes,
“In one short paragraph of a 34-page memo released on Dec. 1, the Department of Education,”
Now, let me just insert, that’s the United States Department of Education,
“…articulated a clear stance on gender identity, saying transgender students in public schools should be enrolled in single-sex classes that align with how they live their lives day-to-day.”
Here again you see the revolution, this time being put forward by the Department of Education. And to Time magazine’s credit, they noted that this was a simple one short paragraph in a 34 page memo that was released by the Department of education and evidently most people in this country missed it. According to the memo,
“Under Title IX, a school must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity in all aspects of the planning, implementation, enrollment, operation, and evaluation of single-sex classes.”
Now the background of that is of course the fact that there is a resurgence of interest in single-sex classrooms – predominantly in terms of boys only classrooms because it is being increasingly recognized, and this is just common sense, that there is a characteristic learning style of boys that often breaks down in the presence of girls.
The Time magazine article makes very clear that the issue we’re talking about, the revolution we’re observing isn’t limited to Minnesota, not hardly. This is a United States Department of Education policy intended to take immediate effect for all public schools in all 50 states. And again, this largely escaped public notice.
2) Social science fails to recognize value of gender distinctions in classroom
According to Time magazine that memorandum from the Department of Education was handed down on December 1 – that is on Monday – which makes it more than slightly ironic that on that very same day, on the first of its national pages, the New York Times ran an article, again the same day, December 1, with a headline “Old Tactic Gets New Use: Public Schools Separate Girls and Boys.”
Reporter Mokoto Rich goes to my hometown of Pompano Beach, Florida, that’s where I went to high school, and looks at the fact that in some public school classrooms in that Florida town, educators are deciding to go back to single-sex classes because they tend to work better for both boys and girls. And the context, as the reporter makes very clear, isn’t that of some kind of experimentation undertaken at the leisure of educators, it is rather an innovation that is being done in the name of expediency and in emergency because so many boys in this Florida school district are falling behind; failing to progress in school, falling behind, and eventually failing to graduate and go on to college.
Mokoto Rich also points out in this article, and to the credit of the New York Times, it’s a really good article, the issue of teaching students in single-sex classes – that is girls only and boys only – is very popular with parents, it’s very popular with teachers, it’s not popular, as Rich writes, with social scientists. A very interesting paragraph, Rich writes,
“The theory is generally held in low regard,”
That is the theory that children do better in single-sex classroom. Again,
“The theory is generally held in low regard by social scientists.”
It’s a very interesting paragraph because that one sentence tells you who’s really driving the force in terms of education in so many not only educational discussions but educational classrooms is neither parents more teachers but social scientists. And what are the concerns brought forward by social scientists? Well here’s a paragraph from Riches article,
“Critics say that there is little evidence of substantial differences in brain development between boys and girls and that dividing children by gender can reinforce entrenched stereotypes.”
Now you’ll notice that has nothing to do with education, that has to do with social science – or what is called social science. The claim here is that you reduce the issue to the brain development of boys and girls. That’s simply something that parents don’t have the option to do, nor for that matter probably very much interest. They’re interested in what boys are actually doing in the classroom and whether their learning. And now you have a citation by scientists that there is no basis for any advantage of separating boys and girls in the educational context because their brains actually operate basically alike. But I’m pretty sure it’s the second half of that sentence that is really driving the equation. I go back and read that,
“…that dividing children by gender can reinforce entrenched stereotypes.”
That goes back to the gender revolution and the ideologues who are telling us that any notion of a distinction between boys and girls is simply a socially constructed patriarchal and intolerant remnant from an ancient prejudicial past.
Rebecca Bigler, a psychologist at the University of Texas, said that segregating by sex or any social category increases prejudice based on stereotype. She said,
“You say there’s a problem with sexism and instead of addressing the sexism, you just remove one sex.”
Well you’ll notice the article actually has a problem with boys not learning. The presenting issue here wasn’t sexism but the social ideologues will turn every issue into the issue of their primary, if not solitary, if not exclusive, ideological concern.
The article also makes clear that a lot of the educators actually involved in teaching these children and a lot of the parents see a big difference in terms of having boys and girls in separate classrooms. For instance, one of the teachers writing about having a classroom of boys says, if you let them play at learning in terms of competition, especially with something like math, the boys revel in it and tend to learn. They do not do so well if the educational context isn’t made into something that’s competitive. The competition brings out the very best in them. That doesn’t work the same way in a classroom full of girls.
One of the principal cited in the articles is Angela Brown, the principal at the Dillard School, that’s also in Pompano Beach, said,
“…boys in single-sex classes had better attendance than those in coeducational classes as well as better scores on state reading and math tests. But the biggest improvement was a decline in disciplinary infractions and bullying.”
So in another words, behavior also improved, especially in this case, among boys when the boys were studying just with each other.
“Boys are trying to impress girls, and girls are trying to impress boys… [we’ve] have removed that variable out of the way.”
What we’re looking here at the distinction between the way that educators and parents look at the question and those who are identified in this article as social scientists; in many cases, driven more by a sociological ideology than by anything that is rightfully called science. But the last word on this issue has to be given to the children. One of the boys cited in the article is Jaheim Jones, he’s age 8, he says he prefers “a girl free zone at school because girls are ‘bossy.’” Meanwhile nine-year-old Shenilla Johnson, a girl who is a third grader at Charles Drew elementary said she likes an all-girls class. She says it’s better, because boys “annoy you,” without them, she says, “we get to learn new things.” So for the worldview wisdom in this article here’s your choice between the social scientists and between an eight-year-old and nine-year-old who seem to know the difference between being a girl and a boy.
3) Report on rise of ‘gender-benders’ displays blind agenda of transgender movement
A final example of how we have to talk about this issue and why we can’t escape it comes from National Public Radio, in the last day of November they ran an article entitled “For These Millennials, Gender Norms Have Gone Out Of Style.” Lidia Jean Kott writing that when it comes to the millennial generation they decided to let all the distinctions between male and female go. She says the millennials say they find traditional notions of gender too confining, even ill-fitting. They are challenging, she says, the idea that men must dress a certain way and women another. And their rewriting the rules and refashioning clothes so they can dress and accessorize in whatever way feels right to them.
She then goes to social science research and says,
“More than two-thirds of people ages 14 to 34 agree that gender does not have to define a person in the way that it used to, according to a 2013 study conducted by the Intelligence Group, a consumer insights company. And 6 in 10 say that men and women do not need to conform to traditional gender roles or behaviors anymore.”
She comes up with a couple of millennials who fit this description of the gender benders and writes as if they are illustrating the trend of the generation as a whole; in fact, that the entire point of the article – from the headline to its introduction.
The article cites Caitlin Ryan, a clinical social worker at San Francisco State University, she study sexual orientation and gender identity in youth, she says the millennials are defined gender expectations,
“This generation views gender as a mark of self-expression — they view it as a way of displaying their full sense of self,”
Kott then writes,
“But for some millennials, expressing their gender in a way that feels right is less about finding one article of clothing, or a set style, and more about fluidity.”
She’s suggesting here that these Millennials are bending all the gender rules and adopting a fluidity when it comes to gender roles and gender self-expression. Given the headline, the introduction, and the first dozen or so paragraphs of these news articles, you would think that this must be the wave of the future until you reach the end of the article.
At the end of the article the entire case gets given away and it’s given away by Suzanna Walters who is director the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University. In response to the claim that the Millennials are just wholesale bending the gender rules, she comes back and says, most Millennials don’t push gender boundaries at all. As a matter fact, she cited in the article,
“It’s a real minority. And it gets played up in the media more than everyday life. The vast majority of people still obey gender roles,”
And then she says what is so obviously true, and what makes the article itself an indication of the confusion of the culture where you’d think the reporter would be clarifying. The clarification comes at the very end of the article by this professor at Northeastern University who basically refutes everything who came before. And what’s the evidence that she brings? She’s not citing a consumers study; she’s not citing social science research. She says, and I quote,
“Just walk down the street.”
More than anything else, I cite this article because it points out that there are those who are trying to create the impression in the culture that everyone is bending the rules and that this is just the way the entire culture is operating; this is the direction entire culture is going. But the best reputation of this is perhaps sometimes not an argument, just an observation. But as this professor says, it’s just not so – all you have to do is walk down the street; young men are dressing like young men, young women are dressing like young women, and they don’t seem to be operating in a fashion that can we well described as either revolutionary, or for that matter to use the word in this article, fluid.
4) DNA pioneers minimized human identity to pure biology
Finally yesterday’s edition of the New York Times as the first article in its New York section ran an article entitled “Scientist Seeks Redemption By Selling Nobel Prize.” Perhaps you didn’t know the Nobel Prize could be sold – well the prize itself can’t be sold, but the memorabilia of the prize, including the metal, can be. This is the first time, according to the Times, that a living laureate has sold the award and it’s being sold by scientist James D. Watson; who was awarded the Nobel Prize for science in 1962 with scientist Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins.
The three received the Nobel Prize in 1962 for the discovery almost a decade earlier of the double helix structure of DNA; that revealed how genetic traits are transmitted through heredity. As the time says,
“This has become the foundation of the now booming field of genomics, which has revolutionized the treatment of disease.”
Well let’s just say at this point one thing needs to be said and that is it has not yet revolutionized treatment of disease, but it may one day.
But remember the headline was that the scientist is seeking redemption by selling the Nobel Prize. It’s a very convoluted article but the bottom line of it is that James Watson has been in very hot water in recent years for statements he made that were inherently racist. And those racist statements basically put him in a bad position. He himself said that he had disappeared in terms of public life, now he says he wants to sell his Nobel Prize – hopefully for several million dollars – and give some of that away; only some of it in order to atone for his misdeeds and reenter polite public conversation.
Watson is now 86 years old; according to the Times he has expressed regret for his statement made back in 2007. He said quote,
“I can’t undo that. I do wish that I had been more careful in speaking about things I’m not expert in.”
That comment for which he got into so much trouble was a statement that there is a real hereditary racial disparity when it comes to IQ. The article by Anemona Hartocollis in the New York Times raises a host of moral issues. The most important one is this: can you actually gain redemption by selling your Nobel Prize and thus by giving away some of the proceeds in order to make your words go away? It’s a dubious proposition and the New York Times seems to present it in this news article as just that. But that’s not the main reason I brought it up. In terms of worldview significance, this man, nor his partner in his research, Francis Crick, because when it comes to James Watson and Francis Crick we’re actually talking about two people, who in the 20th century perhaps represented more than anyone else the redefinition of the human being in entirely materialistic form. Something that now forms so much of the modern secular worldview.
By the time Watson and Cricket concluded their research they basically made the point in public and in scientific journals that the human being is nothing more than a collection of molecules in genetic information; that the human being is basically just stuff. And they understood this quite straightforwardly as a rejection of the biblical and Christian worldview when it came to the understanding of humanity. It also reminded me of something which enables me to acknowledge a debt, as The Briefing comes to an end today, and that debt is to Francis Schaeffer.
His book, The God Who Is There was the 383rd book I bought for my personal library and I know that because at that point I was writing the number in the series it was bought in the front of the book. I bought it when I was a 17-year-old and it was Francis Schaeffer, one of most influential apologists and evangelical thinkers of the 20 century, who introduced me to James Watson and Francis Crick and to what it meant for this new secular understanding of humanity to replace the biblical understanding of what it means to be human. In this book The God Who Is There, Francis Schaeffer wrote, and I quote,
“The historic Christian position is that man’s dilemma has a moral cause. God, being non-determined, created man as a non-determined person. “
What Schaeffer is rejecting here is the modern secular determinism that is either by the social Darwinians or coming by biological determinism or by behavioral such as BS Skinner. Schaeffer then writes,
“This is a difficult idea to anyone thinking in 20th century terms because most 20th century thinking sees man as determined. He is held determined either by chemical factors”
That was held by the Marquis de Sade and, as he said, by Dr. Francis Crick, and by extension also Dr. James Watson.
“…or by psychological factors as Freud and others have suggested”
In either case, or as a result of the fusion of these two, man is considered to be programmed. If this is the case Schaeffer wrote,
“…then man is not the tremendous thing the Bible says he is, made in the image of God as a personality who can make a free first choice. Because God created a true universe outside of himself (not as an extension of his essence), there’s a true history which exists. Man as created in God’s image is therefore a significant man and a significant history, who could choose to obey the commandment of God and love him or revolt against Him.”
So Francis Schaeffer was rejecting this kind of determinism and reductionism by saying the human being is a man in full or a woman in full, a human being, a man or a woman, made in God’s image and answerable to him – not just a jumble of molecules and genetic information: a man, not a machine.
Francis Schaeffer published this book back in 1968 and now the headlines of the New York Times yesterday tell us the same story is ongoing, the same conflict endures. The conflict between the modern secular worldview and the biblical worldview is permanent and will be so until Jesus comes. But as The Briefing comes to a close, this allows me to thank Francis Schaeffer, who now has been with the Lord for two decades, for helping me to learn, even as a teenager, how to think as a Christian.
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 12-05-14
1) New Minnesota state athletic policy portrays velocity of transgender revolution
State high school league approves transgender policy, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Paul Klauda)
Minnesota High School League overwhelmingly approves new transgender athlete policy, Minneapolis Star Tribune (David La Vaque)
Pro: Transgender kids deserve inclusion, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Alison Yocom and Martha Burton)
Con: Transgender policy defies common sense, Minneapolis Star Tribune (John D. Hagen)
Transgender Eligibility Appeal Procedures for a Male to Female (MTF) Student, Minnesota High School League
Feds Say Transgender Students’ Gender Identity Must Be Respected, Time (Katy Steinmetz)
Questions and Answers on Title IX, US Department of Education
2) Social science fails to recognize value of gender distinctions in classroom
Old Tactic Gets New Use: Public Schools Separate Girls and Boys, New York Times (Mokoto Rich)
3) Report on rise of ‘gender-benders’ displays blind agenda of transgender movement
For These Millennials, Gender Norms Have Gone Out Of Style, NPR (Lidia Jean Kott)
4) DNA pioneers minimized human identity to pure biology
By Selling Prize, a DNA Pioneer Seeks Redemption, New York Times (Anemona Hartocollis)
December 4, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 12-04-14
The Briefing
December 4, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Thursday, December 4, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Grand Jury decision in Eric Garner case reveals law insufficient to respond to a moral crisis
Late yesterday it almost seemed that the headlines had accidentally jumped two weeks – backwards because once again the headlines began to tell us that a grand jury decision had been reached and the grand jury decision was one in which the jury decided not to bring criminal indictments on any charge against a white police officer in the death of a black man. This brings us right back to Ferguson, Missouri but that’s not where the scene is in yesterday’s development, but rather in Staten Island, New York. And in this case, it wasn’t a black teenager but rather a black father of six – a man who was suspected of selling cigarettes illegally in a bus terminal there in Staten Island – who was under arrest and resisted arrest and was eventually put in a chokehold by a white police officer only to die from that chokehold.
The case of Eric Garner is different than the case of Michael Brown because in the case of Eric Garner you actually have video testimony. Major media in the immediate aftermath of the death of Eric Garner were showing a cell phone video account of the arrest, of the chokehold, and eventually of Eric Garner’s death. And that led to the presumption on the part of many that that video evidence would be sufficient for any grand jury to bring a criminal indictment against the police officer in this case. And there are very serious issues here involved just given the New York City’s own guidelines, chokeholds are forbidden and yet in this case a chokehold was used, it was used on video, and was used to fatal force for a man who was under arrest for a nonviolent crime.
The act of selling cigarettes illegally is certainly a crime but it is not a violent crime. And yet as you look at the video, it is also clear that Eric Garner was resisting arrest but resisting arrest in that form is also generally not something that is responded to with the kind of overwhelming force – indeed the chokehold – that led to the man’s death.
The deep divisions that became very apparent in American society over the death of Michael Brown came right to the surface once again just about two weeks later when all the sudden the death of Eric Garner became a similar focal point. There are differences in these cases, there are differences in the locales, there are differences in the deliberations of the grand jury, but a lot of that will be lost in terms of the public conversation because what it looks like, at least to many Americans, is a second time that a grand jury failed or refused to bring a criminal indictment against a police officer.
On one side of the public argument will be the very clear and valid point that resisting arrest is never a good idea. And furthermore, resisting arrest brings on the very likelihood of a violent, perhaps even in terms of deadly violence, response from the police. But when it comes to Eric Garner the situation was that even as he was resisting arrest, he was not resisting arrest violently and that is demonstrated on the video. And that’s what led many people, especially those in New York, to believe that it was almost inconceivable that a grand jury would not bring a criminal indictment against the police officer.
But that raises a very important issue for the Christian worldview. We’re looking here at a situation that demands a moral response; it also demands a legal response. One of the problems with the law is that it is insufficient to respond to every moral crisis – even one that involves a police officer, even one that is captured on video. Because the law itself has to put into its own structure the kinds of protections for police officers and for others who are actually assigned by society the use of deadly force and that’s why it is so often the case that grand jury’s fail to bring criminal indictments against police officers to use deadly force – whether with a gun or in this case with a chokehold – in the line of their duties.
We actually expect police officers at times to break the law in order to serve the public. We expect them to do this, for instance, in terms of speed limits, in terms of a chase. We expect them to use violence in a way that we would not allow a common citizen to use violence. We assign to them a certain responsibility because they are acting on our behalf. This leads to the very crisis, not only in the situation in Ferguson, Missouri but now also in Staten Island. That requires a trust between the community and its police force, a trust that is clearly tenuous right now, endangered by these kinds of incidents, and in sad and very urgent need of rebuilding and rebuilding quickly.
More about that in just a moment, but right now we need to recognize that there are many things that are wrong, clearly wrong, immoral, spectacularly immoral, but they are not illegal. The law itself simply is not capable of covering every moral question, nor of resolving every moral crisis. And in this case the grand juries, if we presume that they acted in both cases rightly on the basis of the evidence, they were not making a statement about the morality of the situation in terms of his totality. They were bringing a very discreet, isolated and specific decision. And that decision has to do with whether or not an indictment was to be brought against a specific criminal statute.
The law is one of God’s greatest gifts to his human creatures. Without the law we would be in a situation quite literally of lawlessness. But the law itself is not competent, nor capable, to resolve all of our issues, which is one of the reasons why you have infinite misery which seems to be visited upon the courts by people who go to the courts in terms of tort litigation, lawsuits, divorce suits, or even criminal prosecutions, only to know that justice was evaded. There are clearly very legitimate moral issues, meta-issues, huge issues, having to do with race relations in America when it comes to Michael Brown case. Those are not the issues that can be well decided by a grand jury facing a specific set of facts and having to make a very specific decision about the law – those are two very different things. It is often the case that we are looking for a moral satisfaction out of a situation that cannot possibly produce it.
In the situation in New York the reality is compounded by the video. We are actually able to watch this event; we’re able to see it unfold. There seems to be no doubt, in terms of the video, that Eric Garner was in some sense resisting arrest and yet he was doing so in a way that certainly did not appear to be threatening to the officer. But the officer responded with what turned out to be deadly force. Did he intend it to be deadly force? That is unknown. It was against the principles and the policy of the New York Police Department for this officer to use a chokehold. Was it against the law? That’s another question altogether. Did the situation have anything to do with the reality that Eric Garner is a black man? That is beyond the capacity of a grand jury to infer or to decide. Nor was it the question that was presented to them. It is however the question that is presented in the public square and it’s a question that isn’t going to go away.
And one of the things that Christians need to recognize is that these two cases, related only in terms of the grand jury involvement, present cases in which many people among us – including many African-American followers of the Lord Jesus Christ – are asking very deep and pressing questions about whether or not the American justice system is fair; and not only fair in a general sense, but fair quite specifically to African-Americans. Conservatives, including conservative Christians, who have a rightful concern to uphold the law and uphold the system and structure of law and uphold law enforcement officers and to respect and to encourage them with great gratitude, we have an automatic reflex which leads us to say if there is a dispute between the police and an aggrieved party are prejudice is to side with the police; and there is actually a moral instinct there that is to be honored.
On the other side of the moral divide you have people who say look, there’s another moral imperative and that is to make sure that all persons are treated equally with the acknowledgment that any honest American must make that there had been structural and systemic issues of discrimination and prejudice against minority groups, including and especially, African-Americans. And that’s a reality that will be conceded by virtually anyone, including responsible spokespersons for law enforcement in America.
Once again, the first African-American President of the United States was very much on the spot needing to respond to the Garner situation even as he had to the Michael Brown controversy in Ferguson, Missouri. Speaking yesterday from the White House, the President said,
“…it’s time for us to make more progress than we’ve made. And I’m not interested in talk; I’m interested in action. And I am absolutely committed as President of the United States to making sure that we have a country in which everybody believes in the core principle that we are equal under the law…we are not going to let up until we see a strengthening of the trust and a strengthening of the accountability that exists between our communities and our law enforcement.”
That’s the kind of responsible statement that a President ought to make. And in this case, that same President of the United States is not only a lawyer but a former, at least part-time, law professor at the University of Chicago. He understands the law and he understand how a grand jury works and he was very careful not to suggest that a grand jury had made a mistake but rather that the grand jury had not resolved the problem.
In the most important section of the President’s remarks he said, and I quote,
“…right now, unfortunately, we are seeing too many instances where people just do not have confidence that folks are being treated fairly. And in some cases, those may be misperceptions; but in some cases, that’s a reality. And it is incumbent upon all of us, as Americans, regardless of race, region, faith, that we recognize this is an American problem, and not just a black problem or a brown problem or a Native American problem.”
Not just a black problem, or a brown problem, or a Native American problem – this, said the President, is an American problem. And this is an American problem, it is indeed an American opportunity, it’s an American responsibility. Our responsibility as a nation is to deal with this issue and to do it head on – to bring to the table, to bring to the public conversation, everyone who needs to have a voice in this and the to make certain that the rule of law is understood as absolutely necessary for the very kind a society in which we want to live. And that respect for police is absolutely necessary in the kind of society in which we want to live. And we want to live in a society in which teenage young men, African-American or otherwise, are not encountering police because they are suspects in a crime and thus you have a situation that can escalate as it did in Ferguson, Missouri. At the very least we recognize that all of these things are tragedies and we recognize that there is responsibility – human responsibility – that is embedded at every stage in every one of these. It’s now our national responsibility to have not only a national but a rational, caring, compassionate, and deeply honest discussion about what it will take to rebuild the kind of trust the president of the United States has rightly called for.
2) Proposed Minnesota sports transgender policy reflects profound consequences of sexual revolution
Next, while thinking about the kind of society we want to live in and be a part of, a very important article appeared this week at the Federalist by Stella Morabito; the headline is enough to get your attention, “Minnesota Plans To Eliminate Gender Distinctions For High School Sports.” I looked at the article and wondered, could that be an exaggeration? Well as it turns out, in one sense, it is. But in a deeper and even truer sense, it isn’t.
A closer look at the article is in order. Stella Morabito writes,
“Minnesotans are currently facing a fast and furious onslaught by the transgender lobby, which seems to be dictating policy to the Minnesota State High School League. The MSHSL decides policy for all extracurricular activities in public, private, religious, and home schools. It’s currently in the process of outlawing all sex distinctions in high-school sports. [Today according to this article], it plans to install an athletic policy granting transgender students the choice to play on either boys’ or girls’ teams.”
Stella Morabito writes that what is really going on is that…
“…there would be no accounting for sex differences in high school sports on the field or in locker rooms, bathrooms, and hotel rooms.”
The new policy will forbids any camaraderie, she says,
“…rooted in the biological reality of one’s sex, or any consideration of the reality of the opposite sex. In fact, to affirm that reality would basically be a crime [according to this new policy]. So the policy would ultimately abolish girls’ and boys’ sports alike.”
Now, that’s where the article is a slight exaggeration. The new policy doesn’t actually eliminate what will be labeled girls and boys sports. For the main part, there will still be girls teams and boys teams but this is not an exaggeration in terms of what Stella Morabito is actually writing about because as it turns out, those who will appear on girls teams and those will appear on boys teams are those who appear as girls and boys because they say they are in terms of their gender identity – not because they were born that way.
Morabito writes that Minnesota is a major trigger point for this policies application across the nation. If you haven’t noticed, she writes,
“…the trans agenda is being pushed throughout the nation in a media shock-and-awe style intended to have folks get with the program, just like the proverbial teenager who says: ‘Well, everybody else is going along with it.’ For the moment, on paper there will still be the illusion of male and female teams under this policy. . . . except that anybody claiming to be transgender can play on either the boys team or the girls team. In other words, there will not really be boys’ teams or girls’ teams.”
Morabito then writes,
“Follow me?”
Well at least some parents in Minnesota are resisting the trend. One parent put an ad in the Minneapolis Star Tribune stating
“A male wants to shower beside your 14-year-old daughter. Are you okay with that?”
According to the media report, Minnesotans sent in more than 10,000 protest emails to the league in the aftermath of that ad and many showed up at the meeting. The group then tabled the decision until today when it meets again and is expected to go forward with adopting the new policy. In her report, Stella Morabito not only quotes the policy to be considered, and expected be approved today, she also goes at background materials – including policy statements found at the league and published on its own website.
Here’s one of them, and I quote,
“It is important for policy-makers to understand that transgender girls (who were assigned a male gender at birth) are not boys. Their consistent and affirmed gender identity as girls is as deep-seated as the gender identity of non-transgender girls. The belief that transgender girls are not ‘real girls’ is sometimes expressed as a concern that allowing transgender girls to compete on girls teams displaces opportunities for ‘real’ girls to participate”
Now the very use of those quotation marks is meant to insinuate that there is no such thing as a ‘real girl,’ girl is now simply a social construct; it’s simply a matter of sexual identification, of gender identification. And that is the gender doublespeak that is now ruling his rationality in much of America – and believe it or not, to be considered today in Minneapolis for Minneapolis schools.
A couple of things come immediately to mind in terms of that paragraph just read. The first thing is it’s factually wrong. It’s not only ideologically loaded, it’s factually. The reality is that when the statement writes that the consistent and firm gender identity of transgender girls is as deep-seated as the gender identity of non-transgender girls, that is refuted by the facts as reported recently by the Wall Street Journal, that a majority of teenagers and children who experiment with this kind of transgender identity, abandon it at some point later. The other thing that should come immediately to mind when you read a paragraph like that is this: it’s unlikely that a group of athletic supervisors came up with that language and if that’s your assumption, it turns out you’re entirely right.
I decided to look behind the statement that was published on the Minneapolis leagues website and I found that the statement was derivative of one that was published; you’re not going to be surprised at this, at what is known as the National Federation of State High School Associations. And you’re also not going to be surprised that they really didn’t come up with this either – they hired it out. They franchised out that responsibility to an academic by the name of Pat Griffin. Pat Griffin is identified as Professor Emerita of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts. She also has what is known as “Pat Griffin’s LGBT sport blog” and it’s a blockbuster of worldview information let me tell you. For instance the most recent article that is up was posted February 28, 2013 and it’s against the use of any statement about family in the biographies of coaches published in athletic programs. She writes, and I quote,
“This personal information added to a professional biography is intended to provide the reader with information that rounds out the professional profile with a glimpse into the person’s family life.”
This is information such as,
“Coach Jones and her husband Frank have two children, Jane (2) and Linda (4).”
And she goes on to say,
“No big deal, right? Just a little piece of personal information volunteered by the staff member or elicited by sports information personnel.”
But then Griffin writes,
“I want to make the case that this common practice in sports media guides or on athletic department websites is actually quite a big deal. The decision whether or not to include this one sentence description of family in a professional profile is inextricably tied to heterosexism whether intentional or not, and provides an incredible opportunity to reflect on and take a stand against heterosexism in sports.”
So what’s she calling for? She says, make no reference, in terms of high school coaches, to whether or not they have a family because that’s heterosexism. Why? Because she says, in the first, place people generally don’t do the same for people in a same-sex relationship and so you would think that what she’s calling for then is doing that. Just leveling the playing field so that when a coach is mentioned, it’s mentioned that the coach is married to someone of the opposite gender or whether the person has relationships with someone of the same gender. That’s not what she does. She says, no, that would be heterosexism too because that would imply that having a family is better than not having one.
Later in her essay she writes,
“The invitation is to look at that one sentence at the end of professional bios through the lens of heterosexism and see it for what it is: a small piece of heterosexual privilege that places non-heterosexual coaches and other athletic staff at a disadvantage and can put them at risk of being discriminated against.”
I read that from her blog just to give an indication of the worldview that is behind the policy to be considered today for the schools, the high schools, in the state of Minnesota. This is one of those new stories that you might expect to be bylined in Berkeley, California or perhaps in somewhere in Massachusetts or New York State. But we’re talking about Minnesota here. We’re talking about the very heartland of the United States, which tells us, as Stella Morabito writes, that what we’re looking at here is a shock and awe advance of the transgender agenda in a way that has left many communities, many parents and Americans, absolutely unprepared in terms of response.
Stella Morabito also writes the what’s being counted on by these who are pushing the agenda is that the people in the communities won’t even understand what’s going on until, we might say, it’s too late. Because in the actual policy, and I’m holding a copy of it here in my hand to be considered today by the Minnesota State high school league, there is nothing that states explicitly what Stella Morabito says is going to happen and yet it is explicit if you understand what the words mean.
For instance, we read,
“If the administration of a member school is notified, in writing, by a student, the student’s parent(s)/legal guardian(s) that a student has a different gender identity than listed on the student’s school registration records or birth certificate and that the student wishes to participate in athletics in a manner consistent with their gender identity as provided by state statutes and federal law, schools must review the following as each participation determination is made.”
First,
“Gender identity used for school registration records.”
And then second, and listen carefully,
“Documentation from medical personnel, acting within their scope of licensure, that the individual has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and is receiving appropriate clinical treatment.”
Well, in that case, it would cover virtually anyone that any medical professional is ready to say or to certifying in any sense, is experiencing gender dysphoria and simply now, with the force of law, must be recognized as the gender with which the individual wishes to identify and is now, according to this policy, free to play on any team, to enter any bathroom or locker room, or to participate in any terms of athletic trip staying in hotel rooms according to the gender identity with which the individual identifies; which may have nothing to do with the gender assigned at birth.
From the Christian worldview perspective what we’re looking at here in terms of the transgender agenda is a moral revolution that is deeper and more consequential even than the normalization of homosexuality. Because the elimination of gender distinctions, in terms of biological gender identity is assigned at birth, is something that will lead to a massive confusion at the very heart of what it means to be human. We should note that according to the biblical worldview the assignment by the creator of human beings as male and female, and that being a biological essence revealed at birth and in creation that is made so abundantly clear in the first two chapters of the Bible that anything that follows necessarily builds upon that very understanding.
If nothing else, what the first two chapters of Genesis help to underlying is the fact that we don’t know what it means to be human except as to be gendered humans as male and female. Now, of course, there are many people who will immediately respond that there are certain persons who were born with a nonspecific gender identity – that’s a very small fraction of people and that’s not who were talking about here. We’re not talking here about persons who are intersex or have no clear biological sex assignment at birth, we’re talking about people who intentionally do not want to identify with what was clearly identified in terms of biological sex at birth.
According to these news reports of the league in Minnesota is going to be making their determination today concerning this policy and in a matter of hours, at least on those terms, we will understand their decision – the bigger decision comes thereafter. What in the world will the people of Minnesota now do with this? What will parents of Minnesota now decide when it comes to the participation of their own children enter to the public schools and school-based athletics. And the bigger question will come to all of us as Christians seeking to live faithfully under the authority of Scripture. How in the world do we make sense of a world that is throwing itself into such deliberate and intentional confusion? How do we make sense to a world that is simply intoxicated with nonsense?
Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
The Briefing 12-04-14
1) Grand Jury decision in Eric Garner case reveals law insufficient to respond to a moral crisis
In Eric Garner Chokehold Case, Grand Jury Is Said Not to Charge N.Y.P.D. Officer, New York Times (J. David Goodman and Al Baker)
Obama Says He’s Committed to Fairness After Garner Decision, NBC News
2) Proposed Minnesota sports transgender policy reflects profound consequences of sexual revolution
Minnesota Plans To Eliminate Gender Distinctions For High School Sports, The Federalist (Stella Morabito)
Participation in MSHSL Activities by Transgender Student Athletes, Minnesota State High School League
Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution, Wall Street Journal (Paul McHugh)
History of the Minnesota State High School League, Minnesota State High School League
Developing Policies for Transgender Students on High School Teams, National Federation of State High School Associations (Pat Griffin)
The Power of One Sentence: Heterosexism in Coaches’ Biographies, It Takes a Team (Pat Griffin)
December 3, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 12-03-14
The Briefing
December 3, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Wednesday, December 3, 2014, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Decline in divorce rates result of overall decline in marriage
The issue of marriage and divorce has been in the headlines for decades now but never more importantly than in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times. The article appeared right inside the front page of the newspaper on page 3; the headline, “The Divorce Surge Is Over, but the Myth Lives On.” With this article the New York Times is pointing to something that conservative scholars of marriage and others have been pointing to for some time and that is this: the rate of divorce in the United States is not going up, it’s actually going down and it has been for some time.
This is not to argue in any way that divorce is not a problem in American culture, it is profoundly a problem. As a matter fact, it is a more important problem than the problem of same-sex marriage in terms of the impact on families and especially on children. Far more damage will have been done to the institution of marriage by divorce than by the creation of so-called same-sex marriage. But the divorce culture in terms of American life is not what people think it is, and many in the Christian side of the equation have been pointing to this for a matter of years now. The reality is that the press, the national press in particular, has been following a narrative it simply has refused to let go of. And that narrative is that marriage is a very tenuous institution and that divorce is more the expectation than the exception.
But is Claire Cain Miller reports for the New York Times yesterday,
“It is no longer true that the divorce rate is rising, or that half of all marriages end in divorce. It has not been for some time. Even though social scientists have tried to debunk those myths, somehow the conventional wisdom has held.”
Now, she recounted an earlier paragraphs in the article how the national media and the national culture in general have been reporting the ‘half of all marriages end in divorce’ or even worse, that ‘more than half of all marriages end in divorce’ even though that hasn’t been true for a very long time. She writes,
“About 70 percent of marriages that began in the 1990s reached their 15th anniversary (excluding those in which a spouse died), up from about 65 percent of those that began in the 1970s and 1980s. Those who married in the 2000s are so far divorcing at even lower rates. If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never involve a divorce, according to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The [New York Times]).”
Now Miller goes on to suggest the many reasons for the drop in divorce; including later marriage, birth control, and the rise of so-called love marriages. She explains,
“These same forces have helped reduce the divorce rate in parts of Europe, too. Much of the trend has to do with changing gender roles,”
Before looking at some of the deeper issues, it is important to track some of the data that in this case Claire Cain Miller’s bringing to the article. For instance, two thirds of all divorces are initiated by women. That’s something that most people probably don’t know. When marriages break up, two thirds of them are the result of a divorce that was initiated by the wife not by the husband. Furthermore, as Miller writes,
“The marriage trends aren’t entirely happy ones. They also happen to be a force behind rising economic and social inequality, because the decline in divorce is concentrated among people with college degrees. For the less educated, divorce rates are closer to those of the peak divorce years.”
That’s a very important paragraph but it gets back to a basic question that is fundamentally unanswerable. And that is, which is the chicken and which is the egg? What caused this equation? Is economic inequality a result of marital breakdown or the absence of marriage or is it the result of it? There are good reasons to argue that it’s the result of the breakdown and marginalization of marriage, not because of it.
But it is a cultural achievement, it’s a moral achievement of sorts, to have the New York Times look at data like this and bring such an honest evaluation – even clarifying, in this case, is a genuine cultural and public service. Christians reading this article are going to read it with very different eyes because we look at marriage not just as a sociological institution but as a theological institution; as a spiritual institution. And in so doing we understand that marriage is not merely the product of some kind of human construction or social development, it is to the contrary one of God’s gifts – an institution given to humanity for God’s glory and for human flourishing and given to all humanity in God’s act of creation. Marriage, as you’ll recall, appears even at the conclusion of Genesis chapter 2.
Christians looking at this article are likely to see questions that weren’t asked and answers that weren’t contemplated. But what’s here is really powerful. And it’s powerful both because it’s printed in the New York Times and because it arrives with this kind of clarification – suggesting that the national culture simply has it wrong and the national media is often complicit in getting it wrong, in suggesting that divorce rates are rising or that they are even now at the rates they were back in the 1970s and 80s. But one of the questions that isn’t adequately addressed in this article is the question of ‘why?’ and even as the New York Times here tries to make the argument that the ‘why?’ is related to a different conception of marriage – what they call love marriage – and a changed gender roles between men and women, the bigger issue is actually addressed later in the article when Miller writes,
“Some of the decline in divorce clearly stems from the fact that fewer people are getting married — and some of the biggest declines in marriage have come among groups at risk of divorce. But it also seems to be the case that marriages have gotten more stable, as people are marrying later.”
Well let’s look at that for just a moment. First of all, the first part of that statement ‘some of the decline in divorce clearly stems from fewer people getting married,’ that is so true it should be earlier in the article. Looking at the marriage picture statistically there is no question that the main reason that there are fewer divorces is that there are fewer marriages in the first place. If you never marry, you’re obviously not at risk of divorce. This shouldn’t be buried lower in the article and as late as it arrives in this piece. It should be far closer to the very front of the article when the question ‘why?’ first appears but at least it is here and the New York Times deserves credit for allowing it to be here in such clear form. The fact is that the marginalization of marriage has had a devastating effect on marriage, upon human lives, especially upon children born outside of wedlock, and even as we certainly celebrate lower divorce rates and the fact that divorce rates are lower even just in terms of the aggregate number of marriage, still the fact that people are getting married is even a bigger problem.
The second part of that paragraph is found when Miller writes,
“…it also seems to be the case that marriages have gotten more stable, as people are marrying later.”
It also seems to be the case that marriages have grown more stable as people are marrying later. That’s an inference from the data that’s not clearly revealed in the data at all because there is also the argument available in the data to argue that marrying later has precisely the opposite effect because people who are not getting married earlier may not actually gain the social traction to marry at all.
The other major portion of this article dealing with marriage and how it has changed deals with what the New York Times calls the development of love marriage. Now this is termed in sociology, companionate marriage, it means a shift from marriage that is basically understood as a social institution with an economic function to being a romantic institution. And as a matter fact that’s not a particularly late development; it comes in the period of the Renaissance when all of a sudden you had the idea of romantic love eclipsing the idea of a family or clan relationship or an economic institution in terms of the definition of marriage. But what is absolutely appropriate in terms of the timeliness of this article is the understanding that many people marry today solely for what they understand to be romantic reasons.
The New York Times seems to celebrate that but it also seems to understand that there are implications of that development. One of them is that marriage now often doesn’t come, even in the view of those who are getting married, with all the parts, with all the components, with all the responsibilities that seem to be included in marriage in its original form – not to mention its biblical form. In one of the oddest paragraphs in the article Miller writes,
“The people who married soon before the feminist movement were caught in the upheaval. They had married someone who was a good match for the postwar culture but the wrong partner after times changed. Modern marriage is more stable because people are again marrying people suitable to the world in which we live.”
Now the first question in addressing that paragraph is asking the basic question, what could she possibly mean to say there? In her next paragraph she quotes Professor Wolfers who said quote,
“It’s just love now. We marry to find our soul mate, rather than a good homemaker or a good earner.”
Now what makes that so remarkable is that the very same newspaper has been running not just one but a series of articles in recent months suggesting that the reason many women are getting married is because they’re having a hard time finding a man who’s earning a decent wage. Now once again, one of the questions you should ask of a newspaper is whether the people who write it and edit it, read it, because if they did, this article would have to be considerably different.
There’s another matter addressed in the article that the article gets basically downright wrong, a fact that is also provable by other articles that have appeared in the same newspaper just in the last year. Miller writes,
“Perhaps surprisingly, more permissive attitudes may also play a role. The fact that most people live together before marrying means that more ill-fated relationships end in breakups instead of divorce. And the growing acceptance of single-parent families has reduced the number of shotgun marriages, which were never the most stable of unions,”
Now, in this case she’s quoting, you won’t be surprised here, Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State University, one of the nation’s leading exponents of marriage and family revisionism. The part in this article that is thus absolutely wrong is suggesting that cohabitation before marriage is actually somehow a defense of marriage itself. The recent reports coming out from the United States Census Bureau, and there’s been numerous news articles dealing with this, has to do with the fact that cohabitation is not serving now as a preparation for marriage but rather as a substitute for marriage, with most young Americans cohabitating without marriage even actually even being on the horizon.
To its credit the article does get to the effects of the marginalization and subversion of marriage in terms of the last paragraph where we read,
“And the effects could last for decades, as the children of stable marriages grow up with both the immediate benefits and the role models for successful future relationships — while at the same time, record numbers of children grow up in one-parent households.”
In this article the New York Times does perform a public service of clarification and truth telling. It also doesn’t get the story just quite right. This puts the secular press and the larger secular culture in a remarkably awkward position trying to say these developments are to be celebrated while pointing to the pathologies that indicate very serious negative results. But at least, and for this the New York Times deserves credit, it tells both sides of the story – in these days, that’s quite an achievement.
2) Muslim prayer in National Cathedral example of secularized religion in America
Next, a news story that is rooted in something that took place a couple of weeks ago is growing in importance as people begin to understand what took place in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul – otherwise known as the National Cathedral in Washington DC. As Carol Kuruvilla of the Huffington Post reports,
“On Friday [that would be November 14], the Washington National Cathedral was filled with the sounds of Muslim prayers. Muslims and people of other religious traditions have participated in Christian or Interfaith services at the Cathedral in the past. However, the November 14 event marks the first time American Muslims have been invited to lead their own traditional Jummah prayer inside the same sacred space that has hosted presidential funerals and other national religious services.”
Just prior to the event, Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post reported,
“The cathedral, part of the Episcopal Church, has long held high-profile interfaith events, and some mosques hold services in synagogues or churches if they need overflow space. But organizers said Monday that they are seeking to make a statement by having Muslim leaders come and hold their midday service in such a visible Christian house of worship.”
If they were attending to make a statement, I would argue they succeeded – wildly succeeded – in making a statement. But what is the statement? Boorstein also explains that the service developed out of a relationship between the Cathedral’s director of liturgy, the Rev. Gina Campbell, and the South African ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool who is Muslim. The two, she says, worked together on a moral service for Nelson Mandela.
“This is a dramatic moment in the world and in Muslim-Christian relations,”
That was said by Ambassador Rasool in a prepared statement,
“This needs to be a world in which all are free to believe and practice and in which we avoid bigotry, Islamaphobia, racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Christianity and to embrace our humanity and to embrace faith.”
The story gets only more interesting as it is looked at more closely. For instance, the Muslim participants, estimated about 100, brought their prayer rugs into the national Cathedral in order to hold the Muslim service and as they did so they faced the portion of the Cathedral in which they could most easily avoid all Christian symbolism – all crosses or stained-glass or anything that would have Christian symbolism within it. They of course had to face toward Mecca in order to fulfill Muslim tradition and teaching.
The Huffington Post reported that the Cathedral removed some chairs in the north transept in order to place carpeting on the floor. The north transept also has limited Christian iconography, said the Post, which the Cathedral said provided “an ideal space almost mosque-like with the appropriate orientation for Muslim prayers.” Now keep in mind this is being said by a spokesman for a supposedly Christian church. Ambassador Rasool said that the National Cathedral’s ornate carvings arches and long central aisle reminded him of what he described as ancient mosques. Meanwhile, the Cathedral’s director of liturgy said,
“What struck me was how he could look at our building and see his mosque. That was a powerful moment to realize we could be standing in the same spot in the same building and see our own prayer traditions.”
After the service the Very Rev. Gary Hall, identified as Dean of the National Cathedral, spoke of St. Benedict who he said believed equally in the importance of prayer and hospitality. According to the Washington Post,
“Marveling at the sounds of Arabic prayers [which he called ‘a beautiful sacred language in a beautiful sacred space’] Hall said he hoped the service would serve as the start of more efforts to work together for good”
Now as I said, those who are holding the service, those who were sponsoring it at the National Cathedral, indicated that they wanted to make a statement. And as I said, they fully succeeded in making a statement but the statement they made is this: when you have a group of Christians and Muslims gather together with this kind of confusion what you need to recognize is that you have Christians holding onto a very tenuous understanding of historic Christianity and you have Muslims who are not representative of worldwide Islam. And that’s exactly what you had with reference to both partners in this prayer service held in the nation’s National Cathedral. What you had was a very liberal Protestant church, in this case more liberal than Protestant, and you had a very liberal group of Muslims who actually weren’t very representative of Islam either in the United States or around the world.
To take just one example, if you were actually dealing with Islam in the Islamic world you would not have women present with the men in these prayer services. Men alone would be in the main area of the mosque. Furthermore, if you understand historic Christianity, biblical Christianity, you would understand that it would be impossible to welcome within the communion of the Christian church prayers to be offered in which the entire presupposition is that Allah has no son – in other words, it is a direct repudiation of Jesus Christ in His incarnation and in His deity. It also says a very great deal that this kind of service can only take place in a highly secularized nation with highly secularized versions of both Christianity and Islam. This kind of thing could not take place elsewhere and you can be absolutely assured that no major Islamic mosque of any stature whatsoever would allow a Christian service to be held within it and for the Christian gospel to be declared within its walls. That is absolutely incomprehensible and would be considered an entire abdication of Islamic responsibility by faithful Muslims.
But when thinking about the fate of authentic biblical Christianity in a highly secularized world, you have to look at the fact that this is exactly what the watching culture wants to take place. The culture around us, representing a very highly secularized worldview and especially as that worldview is representative of the cultural political and intellectual elites, this is exactly what they’re looking for – people who claim to be Christian but have very little hold upon historic Christianity, and those who claim to the Muslim but are not representative of Islam worldwide, gathering together in a beautiful space of remarkable so-called sacred architecture in order to make a point that a secular world would find reassuring and nonthreatening.
At least some in the national media pointed honestly to the fact that the South African ambassador in this case is also known to have connections to the Islamic Brotherhood – something that surely wasn’t mentioned in terms of the major presentation and explanation of the service offered by officials of the national Cathedral. There’s another point to be made here as well and that’s the point with which I began. The actual name of the National Cathedral chartered by Congress early in the 20th century is that it is the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. You can only imagine what the actual St. Peter and St. Paul would make of this; taking place in the Cathedral that, at least formally, is known by their names. But as I said just a couple days ago on The Briefing, I must say again, churches and denominations do not die by homicide, they died by theological suicide and here’s yet another example of what that suicide looks like.
3) Real Madrid removes cross from apparel to appease Arab partner
It is said that Vladimir Lenin said that the capitalists would compete to sell the rope when the time came to hang the capitalists. It’s not actually known whether he said that or not, but if he didn’t say it, he probably should have, because it reflected both his worldview and the way at least certain capitalist work. The example of that came in the articles that appeared in the international press in recent days over the Spanish football club, known in the United States as a soccer club, known as Real Madrid. In this case, one of are the world’s winningest soccer teams is also one of the most valuable sport franchises and it has a new partner; and that partner is in Abu Dhabi.
As The Telegraph in London reports,
“Real Madrid [has] removed the cross from their club crest as part of a lucrative three-year deal with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi. It is believed the European champions’ new crest, minus the Christian cross, was created so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates, where a marketing drive will take place.”
The President of the club, Florentino Perez, labeled the deal as,
“…a strategic alliance with one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.”
And by that he means the national Bank of Abu Dhabi. But as The Telegraph reports, the redesigning of the famous club badge shows, and this is reported by the Spanish newspaper Marca, how far the world’s top sport teams are now willing to go “including sacrificing part of their famous identity to generate new revenue streams.”
In this case the team is partnering with the bank and products that will include a cosponsor credit card, and the credit card is going to have the newly designed crest upon it which will be without the Spanish crown’s historic Christian cross.
The Guardian, another London newspaper, reported,
“The crest, which was originally designed in 1931, usually contains a cross on top of a crown but that has been removed for use in the Middle East in order not to offend Muslim sensibilities in the region. The original design will continue to be used in Europe.”
Also according to The Guardian this move could be,
“The first of several designed to appease Arab backers.”
Well as I said, Lenin may or may not have said that when the time comes to hang the capitalists the capitalists will compete to sell the rope but this much is clear. This is a team that was ready to sell out the Spanish crown and its Christian symbolism, historically rooted in the tradition of Spain, in order to have a deal that would also allow them not to offend Muslim sensibilities in accomplishing that deal. And that should simply underline what the apostle Paul made very clear in 1 Corinthian 1, the cross itself is offensive. But it’s one thing to understand that offense in the context of a marketing deal in the Middle East; it’s another thing altogether to understand that offence when people are trying to face away from the cross in national Cathedral.
Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
The Briefing 12-03-14
1) Decline in divorce rates result of overall decline in marriage
The Divorce Surge Is Over, but the Myth Lives On, New York Times (Claire Cain Miller)
2) Muslim prayer in National Cathedral example of secularized religion in America
Washington National Cathedral Hosts First Muslim Prayer Service, Huffington Post (Carol Kuruvilla)
In a first, Washington National Cathedral to host Friday Muslim prayer service, Washington Post (Michelle Boorstein)
Muslim Friday Services (Jumu’ah), National Cathedral
3) Real Madrid removes cross from apparel to appease Arab partner
Real Madrid lose Christian cross from club crest to appease Abu Dhabi bank, The Telegraph
Real Madrid drop Christian cross from club crest in Middle East, The Guardian
December 2, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 12-02-14
The Briefing
December 2, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Tuesday, December 2, 2014, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
Mixed messages on predicted climate catastrophe reveal intellectual dishonesty of movement
Headlines tell us a great deal about a news story, but often the news story tells us a great deal about the headlines. Yesterday’s edition of the New York Times has a front-page story entitled ‘Optimism Faces Grave Realities at Climate Talks.” The article is by Coral Davenport of the New York Times and let’sjust take those words apart for a moment; ‘optimism’ is the first word, the third word is ‘grave.’ How in the world do you put an optimistic face on a grave reality? Well the headline is only an indication of the deeper confusion that is found within the article. Coral Davenport writes,
“After more than two decades of trying but failing to forge a global pact to halt climate change, United Nations negotiators gathering in South America this week are expressing a new optimism that they may finally achieve the elusive deal.”
The next paragraph is key to why there’s such a mixed issue of themes within the article. she writes,
“Even with a deal to stop the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists warn, the world will become increasingly unpleasant. Without a deal, they say, the world could eventually become uninhabitable for humans.”
Now wait just a minute! We just read that there is optimism in terms of this news story – that’s the first word in the headline – and then in the second line of the second paragraph we are told that the grave part of the headline comes down to the fact that if the United Nations failed to reach a deal the world could “eventually become uninhabitable for humans.”
Now let’s just put reality in a more realistic frame. If indeed we’re talking about any realistic possibility that human beings could become extinct – well, let’s just state the obvious perspective, even from a secular worldview that’s bad news. As matter fact, it’s hard to come up with worse news. How in the world can you put optimism as the first word in a headline in which you seriously propose that your readers are supposed to imagine that if this conference fails to reach its goals the end result could be human extinction.
I have a dual purpose of bringing attention to this front-page article in the New York Times; the first is journalistic. When you look at a story like this it tells you that there is a very deep confusion about what exactly the reporter’s trying to tell us. And in this case was sympathy to this reporter, Coral Davenport, she’s really dealing with a very confused picture in the first place. But the one thing virtually every secular newspaper or secular authority now knows is that this is a really, really important story and the stakes are really, really high. And yet are the stakes really as high as possible human extinction? Even this news article doesn’t seem to make fit any context in which will make sense.
Davenport continues,
“For the next two weeks, thousands of diplomats from around the globe will gather in [the desert metropolis of] Lima, Peru, for a United Nations summit meeting to draft an agreement intended to stop the global rise of planet-warming greenhouse gases.”
But very quickly in the article she writes,
“But while scientists and climate-policy experts welcome the new momentum ahead of the Lima talks, they warn that it now may be impossible to prevent the temperature of the planet’s atmosphere from rising by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. According to a large body of scientific research, that is the tipping point at which the world will be locked into a near-term future of drought, food and water shortages, melting ice sheets, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels and widespread flooding — events that could harm the world’s population and economy.”
Now again, at this first point we’re simply looking at the journalism involved. How in the world can you write a paragraph in which you warn that if the world indeed now can’t be stopped from rising to a temperature of 3.6° higher than norm, that the events would be – let me just give her list again – drought, food and water shortages, melting ice sheets, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, and widespread flooding, how can you then end that sentence and paragraph by saying that these are events that “could harm the world’s population and economy”? If these things take place in the word harm there is something of an underestimate.
Before leaving the early paragraphs in her article, Coral Davenport tells us that there is optimism, new optimism about these meetings being held by the United Nations because there is the expectation that at long last an agreement may be reached. But a look back in the New York Times archives will reveal that every time this group meets, it’s preceded by article saying that there’s optimism that a final arrangement may indeed be worked out. And yet that is been optimistic ever since the meetings began, and when did they begin? 1992.
But my second point in raising this article isn’t journalistic. It’s rather a look at the issue of the climate change argument as it is now represented in this article and at this conference held in Peru by the United Nations. Coral Davenport reports,
“While a breach of the 3.6 degree threshold appears inevitable” - that is to say, she’s arguing here the scientists now believe that there is so much greenhouse emission now currently in the atmosphere that even if it were to be cut back drastically now, there will be enough to lead to this kind of threshold tipping point climate change – she writes,
“While a breach of the 3.6 degree threshold appears inevitable, scientists say that United Nations negotiators should not give up on their efforts to cut emissions. At stake now, they say, is the difference between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one.”
But again, shifting from the journalistic aspect to the supposedly scientific aspect, how in the world can use the word ‘optimistic’ or even the word ‘hopeful’ when your choice according to the scientists is between a world that is “newly unpleasant” and the other world that is “uninhabitable”?
I raise the issue in this way because I actually don’t believe these scientist believe what they’re saying. If they did they could be speaking in terms that they’re using in this article or in the United Nations conference being held in Peru. If they really did believe the kind of things that are reflected in this article, then they’d have to be taking actions more drastic than those that are being contemplated by the United Nations. Even far more drastic than those that are being supposedly celebrated in terms of the enthusiasm that is supposedly preceding this meeting of the United Nations panel. The scientific confusion is reflected later in the article when Davenport writes,
“The idea is for each country to cut emissions at a level that it can realistically achieve, but in keeping with domestic political and economic constraints.”
Now, let’s just end there to say that if you put all that together there is no way that any major changes going to take place. And that’s exactly what even many people, especially scientists, in the climate change world a been arguing for a long time. Davenport continues,
“World leaders would sign a deal in Paris next year committing all those nations to their cuts, including a provision that the nations regularly reconvene to further reduce their emissions.”
And yet you’re waiting for the next paragraph. Here it comes;
“The problem is that climate experts say it almost certainly will not happen fast enough. A November report by the United Nations Environment Program concluded that in order to avoid the 3.6 degree increase, global emissions must peak within the next 10 years, going down to half of current levels by midcentury.
“But the deal being drafted in Lima [remember that’s the one that hasn’t been passed, but there’s new optimism that might be passed.] will not even be enacted until 2020. And the structure of the emerging deal — allowing each country to commit to what it can realistically achieve, given each nation’s domestic politics — means that the initial cuts by countries will not be as stringent as what scientists say is required.”
And to that we simply have to say, if you bind to this worldview that can only be described as an irresponsible understatement. Davenport does her best to end her article on what might be described as a politically encouraging or optimistic note , but it’s important also to note that in the print edition of the paper yesterday this article continues on page A12, below the fold. And below the fold on page A12 is a scare quote. That’s the kind of quote that is popped out in large print in a newspaper, that reads this, “Without a deal scientist say eventual human extinction is possible.”
Now let me just to state the obvious once again. If anyone involved in the publication of this newspaper actually believed that to be true, would they possibly bury it below the fold on page A12 of yesterday’s print edition of the New York Times? I don’t think so. Nor, I’m guessing do you.
And while staying on this issue for a moment, an even more important article appeared in this week’s edition of the New York Review of Books, one most influential intellectual periodicals in America. Tthe article takes the form of a book review by Elizabeth Kolbert, who is one of the most veteran environmental writers for this most left-wing of American literary journals. And she’s reviewing a book by Naomi Klein entitled This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. The short form of Klein’s argument comes down to the fact that the climate change catastrophe, this emergency that she predicts, it’s going to present an opportunity to “cure capitalism.” And by that she means, come up with a completely new economic system. She says there’s good news embedded in the climate disaster and that is that the disaster may provide the political pretext for a complete reevaluation of capitalism itself. But by the time you finish her book, as Elizabeth Kolbert makes very clear, she hasn’t actually transformed capitalism and all. It’s still capitalism, and for fairly good reason.
But even more importantly Kolbert gets to the heart of the argument she writes,
“Klein’s analysis—of the direness of the situation, of the structural nature of the problem, of the generalized direct and indirect complicity—makes it sound as if This Changes Everything is a downbeat book. But it isn’t, or at least it isn’t intended to be. It’s deeply optimistic, indeed some may say maddeningly so.”
The reviewer goes on to write,
“Klein contends not just that emission trends can be turned around in time, but that pretty much everything else that’s wrong with society today—inequality, unemployment, the lack of access in large parts of the world to electricity or clean water or health care—can be righted in the process. Climate change, she writes, “if treated as a true planetary emergency,” could “become a galvanizing force for humanity, leaving us all not just safer from extreme weather, but with societies that are safer and fairer in all kinds of other ways as well.””
Now the important thing about Elizabeth Kolbert’s review is that she’s writing from a secular worldview in a very prestigious secular journal – one that is closely associated with the political and ideological left in the United States, and she responds to the book by Naomi Klein saying this isn’t even honest. Elizabeth Kolbert points out that if you’re actually going to make the kinds of cuts in greenhouse gases that would be necessary, then everyone on the planet is going to have to be reduced to what she calls the 2000 watt society, cutting personal energy used to 2000 W. She writes,
“if you’re American, you currently live in a 12,000-watt society; if you’re Dutch, you live in an 8,000-watt society; if you’re Swiss, you live in a 5,000-watt society; and if you’re Bangladeshi you live in a 300-watt society. Thus, for Americans, living on 2,000 watts would mean cutting consumption by more than four fifths…To investigate what a 2,000-watt lifestyle might look like, the authors of the plan came up with a set of six fictional Swiss families. Even those who lived in super energy-efficient houses, had sold their cars, and flew very rarely turned out to be consuming more than 2,000 watts per person. Only “Alice,” a resident of a retirement home who had no TV or personal computer and occasionally took the train to visit her children, met the target.”
Kolbert’s point is very clear; if you’re actually going to cut greenhouse emissions as the scientists supposedly say we must, then you’re going to have to return to something like a premodern lifestyle, and that’s not what those who are pushing this agenda are acknowledging. And so I want to give a tip of the hat to Elizabeth Kolbert and to the New York Review of Books are being honest about the situation. And to offer the honest analysis that the only way to read Naomi Klein’s book is to look to her category of “managed to de-growth” by which Klein means to say that the only way around this problem is to remove the idea of growth from our economic picture and go to a managed de-growth.
But let’s be honest about what that means. That means massive unemployment, that means a complete blackout in terms of energy for much of the world. It means that the emerging world stays emerging, the developing world doesn’t get to develop, and it means a massive economic retraction which in every single historic case means disaster for human flourishing. Just think of the rather minor economic dislocation after the recession of 2007-2008.
If you’re talking about de-growth in terms of Naomi Klein’s analysis, you’re talking about a reversion to a premodern lifestyle. Say goodbye not only to the personal computer, say goodbye to the modern hospital and air-conditioning.
Elizabeth Kolbert concludes her article paraphrasing former VP Al Gore. She writes,
“here’s my inconvenient truth: when you tell people what it would actually take to radically reduce carbon emissions, they turn away. They don’t want to give up air travel or air conditioning or HDTV or trips to the mall or the family car or the myriad other things that go along with consuming 5,000 or 8,000 or 12,000 watts. All the major environmental groups know this, which is why they maintain, contrary to the requirements of a 2,000-watt society, that climate change can be tackled with minimal disruption to “the American way of life.” And Klein, you have to assume, knows it too.”
In other words, she accuses those pushing this agenda with a massive intellectual dishonesty, a public dishonesty, because they’re not leveling with the American people. And that’s reflected in the confusion in yesterday’s front page article in the New York Times. If you really are talking about possible human extinction, even from a secular worldview you wouldn’t actually bury that below the fold on page A12.
Seriously committed Christians committed to a biblical worldview understand there’s a proper biblical environmentalism. But we can’t possibly look at human beings as the blight upon the planet. That gets back to yesterday’s discussion of Joseph Bottum’s cover story in this week’s Weekly Standard. But it also points to the point that bottoms made and that is thiswhat you have here is a doctrinal issue. The Christian understanding of the apocalypse replaced with a secular apocalypse. And in order to make that secular apocalyptic vision scary enough they have to talk about something like possible human extinction. And yet talking about it below the fold on page A12 indicates they don’t really believe it’s a likely possibility. Which takes us back to in the final analysis the most difficult issue at stake here, and that’s grasping in accurate and truthful terms, what we’re actually facing in terms of climate change.
2) Chaos of Colorado marijuana regulation shows sin will not be regulated
Next, another look at journalism. This case; kudos to USA Today for a very important article that appeared in Saturday’s edition or the weekend edition of that newspaper. The article is by Trevor Hughes, the title is “Regulators Can’t Answer Basic Pot Questions”. That’s one of those headlines that demands an explanation and that explanation comes in the very first paragraph of the article.
He writes,
“Despite a much-heralded system designed to track every marijuana plant grown and sold, and to independently test samples, Colorado’s recreational pot marketplace very much remains “buyer beware,” in large part because state regulators can’t answer basic questions about the industry they oversee.”
This is a blockbuster piece of investigative journalism – not something for which USA Today is usually known – but in this case the newspaper deserves high credit for an excellent piece of journalism. Hughes writes,
“State regulators, whose salaries are paid through the fees levied on marijuana growers, processors and retailers, say they’ve focused more on keeping the industry from running afoul of federal prosecutors. They admit they aren’t looking at large amounts of their own data, and acknowledge much of it would be useful to lawmakers and public health experts, as well as the general public.”
“There is no playbook to go off of,” said Lewis Koski, the state’s top marijuana regulator in the state of Colorado.
This is where the USA Today article gets really interesting. What is it that the state regulators don’t know about the very industry they’re supposedly regulating in Colorado? Well, according to this article as the newspaper documents they don’t know much of anything. USA Today entered into an investigative report with KUSA TV and they found,
“State regulators cannot even say how much marijuana has been grown and sold in the state since Jan. 1, despite creating a high-tech system designed to track the growth and sale of every single pot plant.”
They have the system, they just don’t know any of the numbers. Second the marijuana and edible products being sold the recreational consumers aren’t yet being tested for mold pesticides or other contaminants because state regulators of repeatedly rollback testing deadlines. USA Today and KUSA went together in this investigative report and because the state regulators wouldn’t allow any of their registered labs in the state of Colorado to offer test results to the news media, they had to go outside and get their own independent labs. Here’s what they found,
“Even though some marijuana being sold at Colorado’s stores is often twice and sometimes even three times as strong as consumers might expect, regulators don’t limit the potency.”
Next, the strength of popular marijuana infused foods known as edibles can vary widely. There is absolutely no quality control whatsoever, and that’s admitted by the state regulators whose job that presumably is.
“State regulators cannot — or will not — answer basic questions about the tests they require all marijuana growers and producers to conduct at special state-certified labs.”
Later in the article you find out they can’t even assure that the tests are actually being done.
“Colorado’s marijuana regulators don’t conduct an widespread independent testing to confirm results from the seven state-certified labs, and don’t require the testing of random samples.”
The USA Today/KUSA results indicated of much higher toxicity and potency of the marijuana than had previously been assumed. Trevor Hughes writes,
“One example: marijuana potency has been steadily rising for decades, according to federal scientists. In 1975, for instance, the average THC level was 0.75%. By 1990, it had risen to 3.82% and then 9.97% in 2000. Last year it rose to 12.55%. “
But the lab results cited by USA Today and KUSA indicated that at least one plant contained 32% THC. Hughes writes,
“Our testing results revealed wide variation in the strength of the marijuana, even when it was sold under the same name. For instance, three samples of what was sold as “Blue Dream,” a popular strain known to give a euphoric high tested at 13.54%, 13.63% and 18.73% THC.”
But about the names by which the marijuana sold, it turns out not those are registered trademarks and so they can be named anything. Anyone selling marijuana in Colorado can sell that marijuana under any name the individual chooses, whether it’s deliberately misleading or just made up out of thin air.
One important paragraph in the article reads,“Experts we consulted said wide variation is normal, but that the industry appears to be getting better at hitting the mark consistently.” But the next sentence gives it all away; “State regulators said they couldn’t access data that could illustrate that trend.”
The USA Today story is really important because it affirms what the Gov. of Colorado said himself, and that is that other state to better not follow the example of his state. In an unguarded political moment, the Gov. of Colorado said that his voters had acted in his words recklessly in legalizing marijuana. And it turns out the government acted recklessly in setting up the agency that was supposedly going to guarantee the safety of the marijuana sold within the state. But it should also tell us something that this article appeared in USA Today, a mainstream American media source. Indicating, that in the view of the editors of USA Today this is a very dangerous precedent set by Colorado, and one that should serve as a warning to other states as well.
But government accountability issues aside, intelligent Christians operating out of a biblical worldview should pay particular attention to the potency of the hallucinogenic effects that are indicated in this article by independent lab studies, as reported by USA Today. From the perspective of the biblical worldview the biggest problem with marijuana is the intentional consumption of marijuana in order to achieve an intoxicating effect. And here we have documentation from USA Today that that intoxicating effect is actually coming from marijuana with a potency that exceeds anything found even in recent years. And not by accident.And that tells us something, even if the state of Colorado doesn’t want to know what or says it can’t find its data.
One final thought on this new story, from time to time Christians need to contemplate the fact that when government claims its ability to somehow organize sin more responsibly, we need to understand the government is always incompetent to fulfill that promise. Governments try to assure citizens that they can control sinful behaviors and impulses, including something like gambling from which the state, of course, also hopes to reap a benefit. And that’s exactly what is taking place with marijuana as well. But as previous news stories have indicated, virtually all of the tax income from the sale and consumption of marijuana in Colorado has gone to efforts to try to prevent the abuse of marijuana. Efforts almost surely futile as the state also admits it’s incompetent to keep marijuana out of the hands of teenagers. But from the biblical worldview the point is this; you can’t gain control of her send by trying to regulate it. It simply doesn’t work. It has to be addressed as what it is. And especially, government put itself in a very compromised position when it says trust us, we can regulate it even as we will try to profit by it.
Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
The Briefing 12-02-14
1) Mixed messages on predicted climate catastrophe reveal intellectual dishonesty of movement
Optimism Faces Grave Realities at Climate Talks, New York Times (Coral Davenport)
Can Climate Change Cure Capitalism?, New York Review of Books (Elizabeth Kolbert)
2) Chaos of Colorado marijuana regulation shows sin will not be regulated
Colo. regulators can’t answer basic pot questions, USA Today (Trevor Hughes)
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