R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 340
October 13, 2014
Why Expository Preaching Matters
Originally delivered at Cutting It Straight Expository Preaching Conference. For more information on Cutting It Straight and the ministry of H.B. Charles, visit hbcharlesjr.com
Transcript: The Briefing 10-13-14
The Briefing
October 13, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Monday, October 13, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Second US Ebola case reminder humanity has not mastered plague, despite medical advances
The news out of Dallas yesterday is deeply concerning. An American healthcare worker has contracted the Ebola virus while caring for the Liberian man who came to the United States, developed the disease, and died in a Dallas hospital last week. Healthcare authorities described what is called a “breach of protocol” for the fact that the healthcare worker has contracted the disease. This comes after thousands of people have developed the disease in West Africa, and thousands of them have died. It comes as the death rate in West Africa is now somewhere between 60 and 70%, and in some locations close to 90 to 100%. And it comes after we were assured that American healthcare professionals would be in good position to deal with the threat of the Ebola virus. This comes after we were told that healthcare workers have been thoroughly briefed and were completely ready to deal with the disease should it appear in the United States. And the so-called breach of protocol that led to this healthcare worker developing the disease is not the first breach of the protocol.
As a matter fact, the man, Thomas Eric Duncan, who developed the disease in the United States after contracting it in West Africa; when he grew sick and went to a Dallas area hospital on 23 September, he was turned away and given antibiotics – only later to show up on the 28th with a full-blown case of Ebola. And now we know that the radically contagious disease was spread to at least one of the healthcare workers. And this came of course a week after the same ominous development came in Spain, where the Spanish medical authorities were completely scandalized and traumatized by the fact that a nurse assistant there had developed the disease after caring for an Ebola patient in Madrid.
What we’re looking at here is the fact that humanity is facing a new plague, and this new plague is one that is obviously catching the most skilled medical professionals on the planet unprepared and by surprise. We are now being told by authorities, including sources at the Centers for Disease Control, that the Ebola virus was never actually expected to show up here in North America. It showed up, of course, first when there were airlifts of some American medical personnel who contracted the disease and were treated – all of them at this point quite successfully – here in the United States; either in Atlanta or in Nebraska. But now we have the story of a healthcare worker in Dallas who has contracted the disease and has a case of Ebola.
And we also have the euphemistic description of a breach of protocol that led to this. And the protocols are absolutely extensive, because now are being told by health authorities in Texas that virtually everything they knew to do was done – or at least they thought it was done. This indicates just how dangerous it is if there is even the slightest breach of protocol, and in this case an almost assuredly unknown breach of that medical protocol. The protocol itself, medical authorities say, is still quite substantial and safe. There should be no reason why the American healthcare system should not be able to stop this disease from being spread to others. But now, following the example of Spain, the same thing has happened here.
A further concern is the fact that this healthcare worker was not listed among the 48 people being watched for the disease after Thomas Eric Duncan showed up at the hospital and was confirmed to be an Ebola patient – in other words, there could be others. And it also comes after the woman in Texas, who has now developed the disease, was surely in contact with many others – especially her family. She remains unidentified, but the virus is all too well identified and now we have the first case of Ebola spread as a contagion in the United States of America.
The panic that spread through the Spanish medical authorities is now surely spreading to the United States and its medical authorities as well. Evidence of that came yesterday when President Barack Obama, being updated about the fact that the disease had been transmitted in the United States, ordered federal authorities to take even more steps to make sure that hospitals and healthcare providers are ready to follow all the proper procedures in dealing with the Ebola virus. The statement from the White House said that the President had ordered federal authorities to take all immediate additional steps to ensure that hospitals and healthcare providers nationwide are prepared to follow protocols should they encounter an Ebola patient. What’s interesting, when you look at the statement coming from the White House is that virtually everything that was said in the statement was said a week ago – there’s nothing new here. And there really nothing new to say – not in terms of what should be done, but there is clearly something that should be said in terms of what must be done.
But as we watch and see Americans, not just healthcare authorities but grassroots Americans, growing more and more concerned about this virus, we come to understand that humanity has not defeated the ancient foes that include plague. Even though we have the radical medical advances for which we should be just astoundingly thankful when it comes to antibiotics, modern surgery, and antisepsis, and all the rest – the reality is that viruses are still deadly and furthermore, they can continue to develop, mutate, and they continue to spread. And when you’re looking at a virus as deadly as the Ebola virus, there is no set of protocols that can guarantee 100% that the disease will not spread. And that is a matter that should humble every single human being, including the proud people of the United States who are proud of our medical authorities, and our modern medical system, who now want to face the recognition that even the most advanced medical system, with the most advanced medical protocols, can experience what is called here a breach of protocol – and that breach of protocol can be nothing less than deadly.
2) Supreme Court acting as barometer of evolving morality in same sex marriage non-decision
It was just a week ago today that the United States Supreme Court decided not to decide the issue of same-sex marriage nationwide, and yet that momentous non-decision has now led to the fact that there are either 30 or 31 states that are likely now to have legal same-sex marriage. That count was 19 as of just a week ago, but now it’s either 30 or 31 – we’re not actually sure. And this points to a very interesting development just in recent days. The first of these development came at the end of last week having to do with the states of Nevada and Idaho – because just one Supreme Court Justice, Anthony Kennedy, in just one 24 hour period, first put a stay on a federal judge’s decision that Idaho must have same-sex marriage and then just in the same 24 hour period, removed that stay. Now this led many people on the left, as well as on the right, to a process of handwringing in both concern and consternation. Because it hardly seems to fit the decorum of the highest court in the land that in 24 hours you would have just one justice issue conflicting orders.
Furthermore, it’s about an issue as important as marriage. And furthermore in this case, the justice is the very key hinge justice with a hinge vote on the issue of same-sex marriage. Gay-rights advocates, advocate for same-sex marriage, point to Anthony Kennedy as the crucial fifth vote in gaining the momentum toward the legalization of same-sex marriage. And yet it was the same justice who now apparently, according to his own clerks, misread the issue and then 24 hours went back to the right position. One liberal commentator was so frustrated he said, evidently it matters whether Anthony Kennedy is ruling on the issue before or after lunch. And while lunch hardly seems to be the issue, this rather eccentric way of dealing with an issue of such momentous importance is something that does not add credibility to the United States Supreme Court, no matter which side of this issue one is on.
But the issue of the math comes down to the fact that all the states covered in the Supreme Court’s inaction last Monday amount to about 30 states – in fact to exactly 30 states. But then there’s another state that entered the fray just yesterday – yes that’s on Sunday – when a federal judge in Alaska ruled that that states 16 year old ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional; which would make Alaska either within the 30 or now the 31st state. Even the New York Times reporting on these developments said that evidently now same-sex marriage is legal, to use their words, “in about 30 states.” That also points to a certain confusion over this issue that does not add to the credibility of the nation’s highest court. The court was trying, many legal observers believed, to protect its reputation by not ruling on the issue. But by not ruling, they have certainly diminished their reputation by first appearing to be cowardly and secondly by adding confusion to confusion when it comes to issue same-sex marriage.
Christians watching this development, having the first concern as marriage itself, also have to have the concern about the legal process. And one thing becomes apparently clear – very, very clear – and that is the fact that the least political branch of our government turns out to be far more political than it claims to be. As a matter fact, looking at the issue of same-sex marriage the Supreme Court did not rule on the issue until 2013, in striking down the Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA as it was known, the legislation by the federal government that defined marriage for the government as the union of a man and a woman exclusively. The court had opportunities to do that earlier, but it did not do so until public opinion had shifted. But the court’s responsibility, its constitutional charge is not that of a barometer of public opinion, but rather as interpreters of the United States Constitution. And that just points to the revolution in constitutional law that is represented by the current trajectory of the Supreme Court. It is now, according to its own words, now ruling in light of evolving public opinion and the evolving understanding of American moral values. And that just points out the fact that the Constitution itself is not what is really being judged, it is now the current situation and the current status of American moral values. We should expect to look to survey takers and researchers to tell us what American moral values are, not to look at the evolving judgment of the United States Supreme Court on the evolving morality of the American people.
3) Colorado faces moral insanity of celebrating marijuana for adults while condemning for teens
And speaking of evolution of American moral values, it may well be that the issue of marijuana would compete with the issue of same-sex marriage in terms of being a barometer for just how American morality is changing. And we’ve seen that on the issue of same-sex marriage where there’s been a revolution in morality, not in the matter of a century nor a half-century or even a decade, but just about 5 to 6 years. As a matter fact the last 24 to 48 months have been absolutely crucial in terms of documenting the change of opinion on the issue of same-sex marriage among Americans. The issue of marijuana legalization is almost just as rapid in terms of the moral change that is here reflected. And just last week the editorial board of the New York Times added its own moral authority to calls for the law to be changed in the states of Alaska and Oregon and also in the District of Columbia when it comes to legalizing marijuana. The headline of the editorial in the New York Times a simple, “Yes To Marijuana Ballot Measures.” And the ballot measures in all three of these jurisdictions, Alaska and Oregon and the District of Columbia, decriminalize or legalize the possession and use of a certain amount of marijuana – generally defined as recreational marijuana – for those who were aged 21 and older. And in every one of these cases, broken out into separate paragraphs in this editorial the editorial board of the New York Times says it’s time to get this done.
There’s one absolutely crucial paragraph in the New York Times coverage, it reads this way:
“Opponents of legalization warn that states are embarking on a risky experiment. But the sky over Colorado has not fallen, and prohibition has proved to be a complete failure. It’s time to bring the marijuana market out into the open and end the injustice of arrests and convictions that have devastated communities.”
The most crucial part of that paragraph is where it says that the sky over Colorado has not fallen. It’s just been about a year since the state of Colorado decriminalized and legalized marijuana; in what is called recreational marijuana. Well it may well be that the sky over Colorado has not fallen, but it certainly appears to be drooping in one sense because in the very same day that the New York Times editorial board ran that editorial as it’s lead voice on the issue for the day, that very same day the Wall Street Journal ran an article by Dan Frosch and it was datelined from Denver, Colorado. And it deals with the fact the Colorado is dealing with a huge problem when it comes to trying to get minors there, those under age 21, from using marijuana. It turns out that all of these promises, that marijuana will be available only to those 21 and older, are worth absolutely nothing because the state of Colorado’s experience is that teenagers are now more likely as their first smoke to have marijuana than tobacco.
Getting right to the point, Dan Frosch writes,
“In a state where legal marijuana seemingly is everywhere, Colorado public health officials have taken an unusual approach to warning teenagers about the dangers of the drug: likening young pot smokers to laboratory animals.”
Now this is one of these news stories that if it appeared virtually anywhere but in the Wall Street Journal, you’d have to wonder if it’s credible – but it’s actually credible and it’s actually being done in the name of the state of Colorado. As Frosch reports,
“Does Marijuana really cause schizophrenia in teenagers? Smoke and find out,”
That’s on a sign that also says,
“Subjects needed. Must be a teenager. Must smoke weed. Must have 8 IQ points to spare,”
As Frosch reports,
“The public-awareness campaign, which was launched in August and includes television commercials, [he says it] may not be having the impact the state intended. [That’s likely to be an understatement. As he continues,] The cages, which were first set up in Denver, have been criticized by Colorado’s legal pot industry and mocked by some young people, who have dismissed it as a scare tactic.
Now, you wonder why they’re mocking the state of Colorado? Because the state of Colorado is publicly displaying laboratory rat cages sized to fit American teenagers, with a water bottle attached to the side, suggesting that teenagers who are smoking pot are actually subjecting themselves to a medical experiment – just like they are lab rats. The campaign is funded with $2 million in grants from the Colorado Attorney General’s office; foundations have kicked in money, additional money has come from the city of Denver and the County of Denver. Frosch writes,
“In addition to the lab-rat campaign, the state legislature has allocated $5.68 million [that’s $5.68 million dollars] from marijuana sales taxes this fiscal year for the department to engage in a more sweeping prevention and education effort [around pot.]”
That money is drawn for marijuana sales taxes. Mike Sukle, who is Denver’s advertising agency and who designed the lab rat campaign said, it is – and these are his words –
“…a ‘monumental task’ to get young people to avoid marijuana, given the excitement over legalization [in Colorado].”
And thus Frosch reports, his group conducted focus groups of young Coloradans seeking to figure out what messages would resonate; they settled on the 8 by 12 foot cages which stand about 9 feet tall and have a giant water bottle fashion to them. And now you might understand why teenagers and young adults in Colorado are making fun of this effort. It is because it’s the kind of effort one can only make fun of.
As we discussed just recently, even the secular press is dealing with the fact that there’s a moral quandary at the heart of Colorado’s pot legalization. That quandary is this: how do you tell teenagers and young adults they can’t do what adults can do? And as the Colorado media has also pointed to, the problem is excruciatingly different for many Colorado parents. How can they openly celebrate the legalization of marijuana and use it in their homes and then tell their teenagers that it’s dangerous? Now there are medical study showing that marijuana use is particularly dangerous to the teenage adolescent mind; that the development of the adolescent brain can be considerably impacted with the loss of several IQ points by the early use of marijuana, and the consistent use of marijuana can have even more devastating results. But as anyone who has been a teenager or knows a teenager knows – trying to tell teenagers that something is uncool, if adults are yelling that it is extremely cool, is almost impossible. It is impossible for Colorado parents, using marijuana and celebrating its legalization, to say to teenagers, “Oh there might be some loss of 8 to 10 IQ points if you use weed.” There might be some teenagers who will be move by that argument, but their likely teenagers that would already be moved by the medical evidence long before this advertising agency decided to put up 9 x 12’ lab rat cages as a visual experiment and warning. What these cages are actually communicating is this: it is morally insane to celebrate the legalization of marijuana and the use of it, especially by adults, especially out in the open, and then say to teenagers you shouldn’t use it. That’s not making sense to Colorado teenagers; it’s not making sense because their parents and other adults are undermining the moral authority to say “no.”
There was an eminently forgettable book published about a generation ago entitled How To Get Your Kids To Say No In The 90s When You Said Yes In The 60s. The book wasn’t worth reading, but the title is worth a million dollars; and that is the quandary we now face – or at least it’s the quandary now faced by the state of Colorado – because those kids of the 1960s now got their way politically – they legalized marijuana; and how will they say to their kids and now to their grandkids “no” when they’re even now they are saying yes.
4) Changing name of Columbus Day superficial attempt to address issues of colonialism
Finally, today is Columbus Day in United States. It’s been so ever since the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing of Bahamas in 1492, because it was in 1892 that the United States President Benjamin Harrison first established the American celebration of Columbus Day. But you won’t know its Columbus Day this year in the cities of Seattle and Minneapolis you won’t know it because as far back as 1992 Berkeley, California is thought to be the first city, says CNN, to adopt Indigenous Peoples Day, but this year now Seattle and Minneapolis have joined also – identifying the day as Indigenous Peoples Day. According to CNN 16 states, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Oregon, don’t recognize Columbus Day as a public holiday, South Dakota has changed it to Native American day ever since 1990. What we’re looking at here is some pretty deep worldview significance, because it tells us that in this life virtually everything is political – including holidays, and especially what you call holidays.
Communities that change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, or something similar, find that they too face a political backlash; sometimes from Italian Americans for whom Columbus Day has been a very proud national holiday. The controversy over the holiday points to controversy, a deep moral controversy, over the entire issue of colonization, the entire movement of colonialism, the fact that when Columbus came and supposedly discover the New World in 1492 there were already people here and they had been here for some time. They weren’t exactly indigenous either. As a matter fact, the history given to us by anthropologists is that people migrated here according to the current anthropological explanation from somewhere in Africa generally across land bridges or by other means. And so even indigenous peoples aren’t truly indigenous, they’re just more indigenous than the people who came later.
But a controversy over this holiday points to the fact that a moral issue as huge as colonialism, its effects, and its impacts, can’t be reduced to a simple matter of right and wrong. Because undoubtedly colonialism, like so many other major historical developments, brought great progress; it brought great advantages and advances to the places where it reached. But it also brought great harms, and especially harms to indigenous peoples. It would seem that perhaps the best way to deal with this would be to say there were positives and negatives; there were things that colonialism brought that we certainly don’t want to give away and there were things that were in the worldview of the colonists that were not something that we would not want to embrace now. So perhaps it would be better to say we’re going to have a day to reflect upon the legacy of what it meant for Columbus to come to the New World to be followed by so many millions of others. The fact is that now all of us here have been born into a society that has been shaped not only by the indigenous peoples, but also by the colonialism that brought so many others here – including most of us. A serious moral conversation about that would always be in order, but just changing the name of the holiday doesn’t suffice for that serious moral argument. But perhaps for today it will simply suffice to say that worldview is at stake, even with a holiday and what you decide to name 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 10-13-14
1) Second US Ebola case reminder humanity has not mastered plague, despite medical advances
Second U.S. Ebola Case Confirmed; Caregiver Remains in Isolation, NBC News (Maggie Fox and Elisha Fieldstadt)
Obama Orders Immediate Federal Action To Help Halt Spread Of Ebola, Huffington Post (AP)
2) Supreme Court acting as barometer of evolving morality in same sex marriage non-decision
Supreme Court Allows Same-Sex Marriage in Idaho, New York Times (Adam Liptak)
Judge Blocks Alaska Gay Marriage Ban, New York Times (AP)
3) Colorado faces moral insanity of celebrating marijuana for adults while condemning for teens
Yes to Marijuana Ballot Measures, New York Times (Editorial Board)
Colorado ‘Lab Rat’ Campaign Warns Teens of Pot Use, Wall Street Journal (Dan Frosch)
4) Changing name of Columbus Day superficial attempt to address issues of colonialism
Instead of Columbus Day, some U.S. cities celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, CNN (Emanuella Grinberg)
October 10, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 10-10-14
The Briefing
October 10, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Friday, October 10, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Assisted suicide plan of 29-year-old illustrates cultural demand for autonomy over end of life
Bill Briggs, reporting for NBC News begins the story this way;
“If everything goes as planned in her life, 29-year-old Brittany Maynard’s death will occur on Saturday Nov. 1 — in her bed, on an upper floor of her Portland, Oregon home, with cherished music filling the room.
Lately, though, [according to Briggs] nothing in Maynard’s life has flowed like she once dreamed — no children with her newlywed husband, no more time. She has brain cancer, grade 4 glioblastoma. In April, a doctor told her she had six months to live.”
Brittany Maynard is now on the front page of many the nation’s newspapers, and not only the United States, but far beyond. Her decision to end her life on November 1 of this year is caught the attention of many people around the world, and by her own effort in recent weeks, she’s become a symbol of the effort to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. Her own plan to end her life on November 1 is an indication of just where we have come as a nation in this discussion; because many people point to Brittney main art and the fact that she is a 29-year-old young woman and point to the fact that this just might get young people interested in the euthanasia issue as they have not been previously. Again, Bill Briggs, reporting for NBC News, he says that Maynard made three choices that are in his words, “elevating her final days to viral immortality” – speaking of the viral in this case having to social media, not an infectious disease.
He says,
She moved with her husband, Dan, from San Francisco to Oregon — one of five states where doctors can legally prescribe life-ending drugs to the dying. She obtained the two bottles of lethal pills and selected the precise moment, place, guests and soundtrack for her last breaths. And she posted the reasons for all this in a video that, as of [Wednesday], had received more than 5 million views.”
That’s the use of the word viral. It has to do with her video, and it’s a video with a message. In the video Brittany Maynard says,
“I can’t even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don’t have to die the way it’s been described to me, that my brain tumor would take me on its own. I hope to pass in peace. The reason to consider life and what’s of value is to make sure you’re not missing out. Seize the day. What’s important to you? What do you care about? What matters? Pursue that. Forget the rest.”
Her husband’s voice also appears on the video he says death with dignity allows for people who are in the predicament of facing a lot of suffering that they can decide when enough is enough.
Then Briggs reports,
“Advocates in the “death-with-dignity” cause — a decades-long push to give more Americans access to legal, end-of-life options — view Maynard’s crusade as “a tipping point.” They assert she seems to be engaging scores of younger people who likely never mulled this tortuous issue, typically faced by older folks.”
NBC cites Barbara Coombs Lee, president of the group known as Compassion and Choices, identified as a national nonprofit dedicated to expanding the rights of the terminally ill;
“This movement is gaining traction by the hour… You have had Stephen Hawking saying, ‘I want this option,’ and Desmond Tutu saying he is devoting the last years to death with dignity. Then, suddenly, here’s this thing with Brittany, and you say: ‘It’s really happening. The tide has turned.’”
Well time will tell if the case of Brittany Maynard is the kind of tipping point to some of the advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide are hoping for. But that remains to be seen, because this kind of cultural change reveals itself over time, not in an immediate flash of headlines. But there’s really something interesting in the statement by Barbara Coombs Lee, the president of the group the names itself Compassion and Choices.
In her first illustration she says, “You have had Stephen Hawking saying, ‘I want this option.’” That’s very revealing because as you read the autobiographical materials from Stephen Hawking and other biographies about him, you come to understand that it was decades ago that he received a diagnosis of a terminal disease, and was given a very short amount of time to live. If he had followed the advice that many of the advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide are now offering, he would’ve exited this world a long time ago. Thankfully he has not, and that just points to the fact that even when people try to pull out illustrations for their cause of euthanasia, many of them actually make profoundly the opposite point. You’ll note that as NBC reported, Brittany Maynard left California for Oregon because Oregon is one of the states in the US that has legal assisted suicide. Recent reports indicate that up to 750 people in that state have committed suicide in accordance with that law.
NBC report for Oregon ranks among the states with the highest suicide rates that came from Jennifer Popik, who is the legislative counsel for the National Right to Life committee, and she calls every one of these assisted suicides a preventable tragedy. In her comments,
“While the case of Brittany Maynard is tragic, the fact of the matter is that in the states where doctor-prescribed suicide is legal and records are kept, most people seek suicide not because they are experiencing pain from illness, but because they feel like they are becoming a burden or losing autonomy,”
It is at this point to the Christian worldview demands of the take a closer look at the assisted suicide movement, at the calls for euthanasia and understand what is really at stake. For one thing, one of the things we certainly come to understand is that when the sanctity of human life is compromised at one end-of-life spectrum in particular prenatal life, the unborn life, it inevitably becomes discounted at the other end as well. For instance, even the advocates of abortion and the pro-abortion movement concede that there are financial issues – they often cite them themselves in terms of the causation for abortion. But financial concerns also play a large part of the end-of-life spectrum, especially when there are calls for assisted suicide and euthanasia. One of the major arguments put forth in the European context is that there are far too many elderly people and others in advanced stages of disease using up too many scarce medical resources. And of course, you also have the implication that those who continue receiving these treatments become a burden on the society. Perhaps even a burden on their own loved ones.
No one can read the story of Brittany Maynard without understanding the sheer tragedy of all of this. The tragedy of a life at age 29 cut short by this kind of disease shortly after she was married, interrupting and in fact, ending her hopes to have children with her new husband, and to continue along a normal lifespan. The tragedy here is undeniable and we certainly respond with sympathy to this young woman and her loved ones. But we need to look at exactly what is being plotted here. It is a suicide. And the suicide that is plotted here is being accompanied with plans for who’s going to be in the room where exactly she will be, how the room is to be set up, and what is to be the soundtrack of her suicide.
One of the things has become clear in the experience of the states of Oregon and Washington by their own government reports is that most of the people who been seeking assisted suicide by means of this new legislation are not in the final stages of cancer, they’re not doing so because of untreatable pain – they’re doing so because they sense that they are losing autonomy, or that they’re becoming a financial burden, or they do not want to allow themselves to get into the end stages of disease where other kinds of things can happen that they want to avoid. But other medical doctor suggested the appropriate response should be palliative care. Palliative care that would relieve those who are at any stage of this kind of disease of the worst aspects of suffering. And furthermore, we almost all know people who received the diagnosis of a terminal illness and were told that they had only a few months to live, and many of them years later are still quite alive.
One of the things the Christian worldview reminds us of is that we are simply not sovereign over our lives. We’re not sovereign over our birth not one of us decided to be born and in terms of our death. It is a new thing made possible only by a radically secularizing society in which you have a mass movement calling for our own individual right of determination in terms of the end of our lives.
We can hardly imagine even fathom the sadness of the heart of the situation and is compounded by the fact that at least in terms of the media reports this is taking place in an entirely secular context. But Brittany Maynard’s decision to end her life and the way she is publicizing this decision with all of its choices and all of its preplanning made very clear, this points to the fact that there are hard questions that are now pressed upon us. At what point would it be right for an individual this kind of diagnosis to commit suicide? At what point would one enter into this kind of understanding and make these arrangements? At what point? When would it be too early? When might it be too late? One of the hard questions has to do with the fact that so many people are celebrating the elaborate plans this young woman has made for her suicide. This is the kind of thing that was plotted in some ways by the ancient Greeks, whom we are told sometimes plan to their desk with inordinate kinds of detail in order to surround themselves with the kind of people, the kind of experiences, even the kind of music they wanted at the end of their life.
But in terms of the Christian understanding of death, it is not understood in these terms. It is not something that is supposed to be planned and plotted with this kind of aesthetic consideration. For one thing – and this is absolutely fundamental to the Christian worldview – death is understood as the enemy. One of the signs of a radically and rapidly secularizing culture is that death is increasingly embraced not as enemy but as friend, as liberation, as means of escape. The Christian worldview understands that death is the enemy, that our mortality is indeed a result of God’s judgment and his wrath upon human sinfulness. And we also come to understand that the only way that death can be transformed is through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only those who are in Christ can understand what it means or death, not to be the end, but rather the beginning, and for death be transformed into sleeping as Jesus said, and waiting.
But one thing is certain, the Christian worldview also reminds us that when faced with a story like this; our response must be to pray for Brittany Maynard and all those who love her. And not only to pray for her and to pray for her healing and recovery, but also to pray issue will have an opportunity to hear the gospel, the word about life out of death, which is a word she, and every single one of us desperately needs to hear right now.
2) Canadian Christian’s job rejection reveals profound intolerance towards Christians
Next, the vast cultural change now taking place, especially in terms of morality, is revealing itself in some very interesting and some very deeply troubling headlines. Here’s one from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, just across our northern border. The article by Natalie Clancy has the headline “Trinity Western grant attacked for being Christian in job rejection.” This is one of those stories that hardly seems to be possibly real and yet the closer you look at it, the more real it clearly becomes an visiting published in the official leading most influential media source in the entire nation of Canada, the CBC.
Natalie Clancy reports,
“A Trinity Western University [that’s an evangelical university in Canada] says she was “attacked” over her religion by a Norwegian wilderness tourism company, just for applying for a job.
Bethany Paquette claims her application to work in Canada’s North for Amaruk Wilderness Corp. was rejected because she’s Christian.”
She is an experienced river rafting guide and she applied to be a wilderness guide for the company’s Canadian operations in the North. She says she was shocked when she read her rejection email that was sent to her by Olaf Amundsen, the company’s hiring manager. He wrote that Bethany wasn’t qualified and “unlike Trinity Western University, we embrace diversity, and the right of people to sleep with or marry whoever they want.”
So hear you have the hiring manager of a Norwegian company doing business in Canada, turning down a young experienced river guide not so much because she’s inexperienced – though that’s what they claim – but as the correspondence from the hiring manager makes very clear, because of her evangelical identity and the fact that she graduated from one of Canada’s very rare evangelical universities.
There at Trinity Western, students have to agree to a covenant for having sexual intimacy outside heterosexual marriage, and that is led to no end of controversy in Canada, where the quest of Trinity Western’s law school for accreditation has run into all kinds of controversy. But actually the email that was sent by the hiring manager of this company in Norway to Bethany Paquette is even more revealing than the previous words have indicated.
He also wrote, and I quote,
The Norse background of most of the guys at the management level means that we are not a Christian organization, and most of us actually see Christianity as having destroyed our culture, tradition and way of life.”
Well, what might be that way of life? Well it turns out they identify themselves as Vikings and Norsemen, and they suggest that it was Christianity (which by the way, was willingly embraced by the Norwegian people) they’re suggesting that Christianity meantt the end of that ancient lifestyle and worldview, and thus, as they say, Christianity destroyed our culture, tradition and way of life.
But what’s really important about that statement is that it’s becoming rather typical of some of the things coming out of Norway and beyond that Scandinavia and even generalized to Europe as a whole. And because Canada so closely identified with Europe, culturally speaking, we shouldn’t be surprised at the same arguments now showing up there. The CBC reports that Paquette wrote Amundsen back defending her faith saying,
“your disagreement with Trinity Western University, simply because they do not support sex outside of marriage, can in fact be noted as discrimination of approximately 76 per cent of the world population!!! Wow, that’s a lot of diverse people that you don’t embrace!”
She then concluded her email with ‘God bless.’ It clearly irritated Amundsen, who wrote back describing himself as “a Viking with a PhD in Norse culture. So propaganda is lost on me.” He also ended the email writing,
“‘God bless’ is very offensive to me and yet another sign of your attempts to impose your religious views on me.
“I do not want to be blessed by some guy… who has been the very reason for the most horrendous abuses and human rights violations in the history of the human race.”
Now, again, in this post-Christian age, we shouldn’t be all surprise of people hold to this worldview, or that there even talking in these terms, but for this to show up in official correspondence about employment with a major Norwegian company operating in Canada, this is far more revealing the just hearing this on the bus or in the subway is to people might be talking.
But just when you think it can’t get worse, it does, because in an email exchange that followed on the World Wide Web, the co-CEO of the very company responded to the controversy by saying,
“Trinity Western University believes that two men loving each other is wrong… we believe a man ending up with another man is probably the best thing that could happen to him… [He goes on to say,] But we do not force these views onto other people, and we are completely fine if a guy decided to go the emasculation route by marrying a B.C. woman.”
Now, again, this kind of language wouldn’t even be worthy of our attention but for the fact that it is revealed in official employment context in Canada. When the provincial Civil Liberties Association began to look into the situation Amundsen responded saying that Bethany Paquette’s job application had been rejected,
“solely based on the fact that she did not meet the minimum requirements of the position…[He then continued] Any further discussion after that, including the fact that we strongly disagree with the position that gay people should not be allowed to marry or even engage in sexual relationships, would have been a mere expression of opinion.”
Well it’s an expression of opinion all right but now it’s going to go into the legal process in Canada, where the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal is expected to review the situation very soon. But the real shock in Canada isn’t that these things were said these kinds of opinions are becoming more and more common, but rather that they were said in the context of an employment conversation and that raises it to a whole new level. That’s the only reason is made the Canadian media and that’s really the only reason is come to our attention as well. But it gets down to the basic point, the when you hear this kind of thing in this kind of context, you realize that this hiring director simply say what many others are surely thinking.
3) Discipline of KY Christian t-shirt company shows tolerance only extended in one direction by secular society
Meanwhile this week in Lexington, Kentucky a T-shirt company known as Hands On Originals was found to have discriminated against the Gay and Lesbian Services Organization of Lexington when it refused to print the group’s Lexington Pride Festival T-shirts in the year 2012. That as the result of a human rights process that came to a conclusion this week. Cheryl Truman, reporting for the Lexington Herald-Leader says that now this company must agree if it’s going to do business in Lexington not to discriminate, and furthermore its employees are going to have to undergo diversity training within the next year. Hands On Originals told the tribunal that it declined a T-shirt order because it’s a Christian company and it disagreed with the message of the shirt. The shirt was a stylized 5 on the front, on the back was Lexington Pride Festival and a list of sponsors of the gay pride event.
But the Lexington Fayette Urban County Human Rights Ccommission released on Tuesday morning its judgment that Hands On Originals is in violation law is going to have to be in compliance with the law if it’s going to stay in business in Lexington. And of course, as I said earlier, its employees are now going to have to undergo diversity training, which is a form of ideological intimidation, and one that is intended to be just that. But you’ll notice something else here… Assume that there’s a company very similar to this one, that isn’t run and owned by Christians from an evangelical worldview, but rather by a same-sex couple. Would they then be required to print T-shirts that would be in violation of their own moral principles and their own moral judgment? That’s the current conundrum in our post-Christian culture. Those who are arguing for toleration become very intolerant when they’re in the position to judge what’s tolerant and what’s not. As in so many cases the regime of tolerance defines tolerance in only one direction.
4) Pew study indicates belief in God most significant factor in differing parental values
And speaking of tolerance, in recent days, the Pew Research Center’s come out with a major study on parents and the kinds of values there trying to inculcate in their children and what makes this really interesting is that the parents, not the children were evaluated in terms of their worldview. And as it turns out those who are very liberal and those who are very conservative tend to agree that one of the values that should be instilled in children is responsibility, and another one is a work ethic. Basically everyone across the political spectrum is in agreement at least that far. But when it comes to that word ‘tolerance’ it turns out that liberal parents, identified in the study is consistently liberal, tolerance is one of the main values they want to see in their children, whereas conservative parent put tolerance in a very different category.
But the most revealing part of the study isn’t about tolerance and it isn’t about responsibility and it isn’t about a work ethic. It’s about a as is defined in the study. It’s about religious belief. As the Pew Report reveals, the starkest ideological differences are over the importance of teaching religious faith. Among those who have consistently conservative attitudes across a range of political values, 81% think it’s especially important for children to be taught religious faith, 59% say for the three most important of the 12 qualities included in the study. Only by half, that’s 54%, of those with mixed ideological views say it’s important to teach children religious faith. 29% say is most important. But among those who are consistently liberal, just 26% rate the teaching of religious faith is especially important and only 11% regard it as among the most important child-rearing qualities.
Thus says Pew,
“the relationship between ideology and opinions about the importance of teaching religious faith is partly, but not wholly, explained by the strong association between religious affiliation and ideological consistency.[This gets really important.] About four in 10 consistent liberals are religiously unaffiliated, compared with just 6% of consistent conservatives, however, differences among ideological groups in these opinions hold even after controlling for religious affiliation and demographic factors.”
What does that mean? That means you can look at this study and you can look at the categories of very liberal and very conservative, identified and labeled here is consistently liberal and consistently conservative, and you can actually an almost direct correlation say secular and the less secular. It turns out that the gradation and political ideology here between consistently liberal and consistently conservative is also the gradation between very religious and exceedingly secular.
Once again we really shouldn’t be surprised by that, because it just points to the fact that most individuals over time actually worked towards consistency in worldview, not so much because of the determined intellectual effort to become consistent, but because the more they think through these issues, the more they have to make decisions based on their worldview, the more the worldview tends to come together as a cohesive whole. And in America, as this report from the Pew Research Center points out, those who are in the consistently liberal category tend also to be consistently secular, and those in the consistently conservative category tend also to be consistently religious.
Once again, Christians have a good explanation for that, because if you hold to revealed religion, then you really see the revealed truth of their religion as the very foundation of life. Not an interesting beginning point for discussion, but rather as the very word of God. That’s the great distinction in the worldview cleavage of our day. It shows up an issue after issue, but time and again, and in this case were helped by the Pew Research Center to see it, it comes back to the basic divide; theism. Belief or unbelief in God.
5) Family dining habits reveal inversion of authority in secular culture
And finally, as the week comes to an end, how about a story that brings together worldview, tolerance, parenting – just about everything you can imagine – secularization, morality, all-in-one, here it is. And the headline “When chicken fingers come off the Menu.” It’s written by Pamela Paul; it’s in the Food section of this week’s New York Times, and Pamela Paul writes about the fact that she has a friend who just happened to mention that her seven-year-old daughter had gone vegan.
“I stifled a sigh of relief [she said]. Thank God I’m not raising children in Brooklyn…. What a fool I was. This summer, my 9-year-old returned from sleep-away camp a vegetarian.”
The amazing thing about this article is not just that appeared in the New York Times, but that it was intended to be taken seriously. This is a worldview evidently shared by many readers, if not most of the New York Times in which it makes sense for an eight-year-old, a seven-year-old, a nine-year-old, to show up and declare him or herself a vegan or vegetarian and declare that mom and the entire household is to come to terms with this new moral and dietary reality.
Pamela Paul writes about herself. She says,
“I fear I am doomed to turn into the dreaded Restaurant Mom, tailoring meal planning to each of my children’s fancies. For the most part,[ she says] my other two kids continue to live in a world of chicken and cheese, though pasta now comes with turkey meatballs or chicken sausage on the side.”
The actual content of the article doesn’t demand much more of our attention, but what does demand our attention is that evidently for a very large sector of the readership of the New York Times. It makes sense for an elementary school child to show up and declare him or herself a vegan and say to mom deal with it. I can just imagine how that would’ve gone over in my home growing up.
This just shows the inversion of authority between parents and children that now marks so much of America’s secular culture. This inversion of authority means that it is parents have to come to terms with the children rather than children having to come to terms with the parents. And if indeed we had American moms turning in the restaurant moms, it’s because they allow their children to order off of the menu. That’s the problem in the first place. I can guarantee my mother never had such a concept.
But perhaps nothing else, this new story indicates that are parenting styles and our worldview come into an intersection in the oddest place on her child’s play with what they do we or they don’t eat or what they at least at this point, won’t eat. And it just might be that it’s at the dinner table such as anywhere else where we really find out who’s in charge.
Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information to my website at: Mohler.com before 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 boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing
Transcript: The Briefing 10-09-14
The Briefing
October 9, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Thursday, October 9, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Continued spread of Ebola reminder that plague is not merely a matter of the past
Well, now we’ve reached a whole new level of concern. The death, announced early yesterday morning, of Dallas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan brings an exclamation point to the crisis that is now being faced by public health professionals not only in Texas, not only in The United States and not only in West Africa but virtually everywhere in the world.
This is because one of the things has been brought to our attention, in this medical crisis, is the fact that we truly do live in a global community. Transportation networks make it possible for someone to get on a plane in West Africa and fly usually to a European destination only to be getting on another plane and end up in the United States. We are no longer in a situation, as was the case throughout most of human history, well up to the midpoint of the 20th century, when local issues would stay local. The global situation means that when a contagion like Ebola breaks out now in West Africa it is probably only a matter of days or weeks before there’s the very real danger of the spread of the contagion to other parts of the world. Potentially to all parts of the world.
The tragic nature the case in Dallas is accentuated by the fact that the man who died of the disease, Thomas Eric Duncan, almost assuredly caught the disease and West Africa in his role as a good Samaritan, helping a family whose daughter had evidently contracted the disease. There is no reason to suspect that when he got onto that airplane and came to the United States, he believed he had the disease. Although public health officials have rushed to say he must’ve known that he been exposed to it. In any event, the tragedy is compounded by the situation with his extended family and loved ones there in Dallas. As Manny Fernandez and Dave Phillips of the New York Times report,
“For Louise Troh word of the death of her fiancé Eric Thomas Duncan unfolded Wednesday as everything else has since he was found to have Ebola – at a distance.”
The paper then reports that Dallas County Chief Executive Clay Jenkins and the Rev. George Mason of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas drove to the home where Ms. Troh, age 54, has been under quarantine with her 13-year-old son and two other young men, all of whom had been living with Mr. Duncan during the time he began to show symptoms of The Ebola virus.
“They have been [says the paper] under orders from state health officials not to leave the premises for 21 days.”
That is the maximum incubation period for the virus. The New York Times quoted the pastor in this situation – that’s the Rev. George Mason of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas who said,
“We never sat down, we did not touch them. We kept about a 3 foot distance from them at all times. This is simply a matter of extreme caution.”
Public health officials there in Dallas are scrambling to explain why Eric Thomas Duncan was turned away from a hospital earlier in September when he showed up with symptoms of the Ebola virus. Evidently, hospital officials did not surmise that he might actually have the disease, even though he told them he had come there from West Africa. When he did show up at the hospital on September 28th he lived only eight days after arriving, not only with signs of the disease, but with a full-blown virus. Furthermore, the period of time between when he first went to the hospital and when he went back with the full-blown disease allowed him the opportunity to expose many others to the virus. Before he lost consciousness, Mr. Duncan said that was the greatest regret that he faced in the entire situation which led up, of course, to his own death yesterday morning.
In the United States transportation officials indicated a new line of scrutiny, with passengers coming from West African nations to be subjected to a thermometer test in order to determine whether or not they have a fever, as they enter the country. But many public health officials have rushed to say that simply will not be enough, since there is a 21 day incubation period for the virus. Someone could show up, fully exposed to the virus, and one who would develop it later, but at the time of arrival showing no indication of fever whatsoever. Meanwhile, the map, globally, of known and suspected cases of Ebola continues to grow and there is no sign of at this point, that health officials either in West Africa, nor in the rest of the world are getting an adequate handle on this challenge.
The Bible reminds us that there have been several persistent enemies of humanity; poverty, war, famine and of course, plague. And in this case, the situation with Ebola reminds us of the fact that is much as we believe or want to believe that plague is a matter of the past, this kind of pestilence is actually something that will never leave us; not until Jesus comes. Not until there is a new heaven and a new earth. Because so long as we live in a Genesis 3 world, germs and viruses find a way to mutate into even more dangerous diseases. We should be exceedingly thankful, those of us who live in the advanced West, for having such improved and advanced medical services. For having such things as antibiotics and, of course, vaccines and other medications that cannot only be used to treat many of these deadly diseases but also in many cases to prevent them. But one of the things that Christians must always keep in mind, with the biblical worldview ever in focus, is that when it comes to matters of these viruses, germs and infections, we are always playing defense. And humanity from time to time is reminded, tragically, of just what it means, in the face of disease, to be constantly on the defensive.
2) Lincoln, Nebraska middle school policy of gender neutrality reveals secular influence of universities
Just last week on The Briefing we discussed a new acronym: PGP, for ‘preferred gender pronoun.’ This is part of the sexual revolution, the gender revolution taking place on American college and university campuses, and even as we discussed some of the materials being handed out to students on those campuses. We suggested a very soon. This kind of gender or sexual revolution is almost certain to come to a campus near you, but we were talking about college and university campuses – the kind of campuses where for the last several years, there’s been an effort to blur the distinctions between male and female actively even to deny the ‘binary system’, as it’s called, of separating humanity and the genders of male and female. The preferred gender pronoun chart found in some these materials points out that according to the new ideology every single individual gets to choose what that individual wants to be known as when it comes to a gendered or nongendered pronoun, and it can be in constant flux; what a person says that person’s preferred gender pronoun is today might change tomorrow. And as those who celebrate this revolution of made very clear everyone else is simply going to have to get in line and get used to it, even though this kind of proposal is absolutely irrational and insane. Furthermore, it won’t even work; there’s no way to keep up with an endless number of individuals with an endless number of preferred pronouns. The fact is that this is now becoming standard fare on many college and university campuses and as I said, it’s coming soon to a campus near you. But what I didn’t know last week is that the next time one of these stories would break the headlines it would be on a college and university campus, but in a middle school. Katherine Timpf reporting for National Review Online writes,
“A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls,” and use “gender inclusive” ones such as “purple penguins” instead.”
We’re not making this up.
One of the handouts passed out the middle school teachers in Lincoln, Nebraska in Lincoln public schools reads like this,
““Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys and girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention… [Instead], Create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet on the rug.”
The document according to Timpf also warns against asking students to line up as boys or girls and suggest asking them the lineup by whether they prefer skateboards or bikes, milk or juice, dogs or cats, summer or winter talking or listening. “Always ask yourself; will this configuration create a gendered space?”
I was able to get a copy of the handout given to these middle school teachers. It came from the group known as Gender Spectrum, and in one of the enumerated issues listed on the sheet, I read this;
“Provide an opportunity for every student to identify a preferred name or pronoun. At the beginning of the year or at back-to-school night, invite students and parents to let you know if they had a preferred name and/or pronoun by which they wish to be referred.”
Now there’s that PGP – preferred gender pronoun. But this time it’s not one of the liberal college campuses were talking about, it’s a middle school system in the Lincoln public schools of Nebraska, of all places. We’re not talking about Berkeley, California. Here, but Lincoln, Nebraska.
Another one of the handouts identifies a figure known as a ‘genderbred person’ – not gingerbread, but genderbred – although the drawing looks like a gingerbread cookie. The genderbred person is divided by identity, attraction, expression, and sex. ‘Identity’ is pointing to the brain, ‘attraction’ is pointing to the heart, ‘expression’ to the entire body, and ‘sex’ points to what could be called the private parts. I’m going to clean up the instructions on the sheet, but let me read this much.
“Gender is a tough subject to tackle. There are many facets to consider, and many pressures at play. And we’ve all been conditioned in such a way that our first instinct is almost unanimously wrong. But we’re going to tackle it. Coming to our aid, I would like to present you the genderbread person. Now let’s talk about it.”
Well there’s a lot to talk about in this case, of course, but one of the things we need to talk about is the response of the parents in Nebraska’s public school systems to what’s going on here in Lincoln. What will the parents of these affected middle schoolers do? Will they simply allow their children to be influenced in such a way by the gender revolutionaries? Are they basically going to hand their children over at these most impressionable ages to those who are trying to indoctrinate them that the very idea of a boy and a girl is an outmoded unanimously wrong gendered category that simply has to be left behind?
National Review magazine indicates the school superintendent Steve Joel said that he was happy and pleased with the training documents. “We don’t get involved with politics,” He told KLIN Radio “We don’t get involved with gender preferences. We’re educating all kids and we can’t be judgmental.”
Now one might surely hope that a school superintendent would be a bit more coherent than that, but it’s hard to achieve clarity when the proposal is this radically wrong. It’s hard to imagine how parents in the Lincoln public school system can take such comments seriously when the superintendent says we don’t do politics and we don’t do gender preferences, when that’s exactly what they’re doing. That’s exactly what they get caught doing.
The big picture here for Christian parents is the realization that the revolutionaries when it comes to the new morality want the minds of your children. And they understand very well that the way to get at them is in the school system, as well as to the larger entertainment system in the media. The two main vehicles for reaching the minds of younger Americans are the public school system and popular culture, and the left is increasingly in charge and in control of both. And this kind of evidence coming from Lincoln, Nebraska tells us that no place is safe, but it also tells us something else the Christian ought to note very carefully.
We often look at something like the electoral map, commonly divided into red and blue. We look at that vast heartland of America painted deep red, and we see the two coasts that are deep blue. There is a deep and undeniable moral divide in America and it is at least partly geographical. The further you get toward the coast, the more liberal the culture tends to become in a state like Washington state the coast is very deep blue, while in the east, the more rural areas tended be deep red. So when we’re looking at a national map, we need to keep in mind that that national perspective can mask some very local realities. And that brings to our attention a very important principle of moral change now taking place in America. It’s not just the two coasts that are deep blue, it is also college and university towns, or at least many of them in the main. Sociologists recognize that the closer you get to a university community, the closer you get to an academic center, the more the society turns left, the more one finds agreement with the very most progressive ideals. The more you see evidence of the sexual revolutionaries and the more secular the space becomes. And of course the Christian worldview explains those things very commonly if not always tend to go together.
You’ll recall that I’ve mentioned before, Peter Berger that great sociologist of secularization who pointed out that the most radical waiver secularization didn’t affect most of the United States uniformly. But as he said about two decades ago, the kind of secularization you find in Europe didn’t work in the United States, except in one place, and as he said, it worked profoundly on the college and university campus.
So as Berger said some time ago, if you want to find the most thoroughly secularized space, take a trip to Europe or to your local American college or university campus. That’s not true of all campuses, of course, but it is true, and increasingly true of most of the major academic centers in the United States.
And so when you look at a state like Wisconsin, you’ll notice that there is a very important blue dot over the city of Madison, where the University Wisconsin is found. In the red state of Texas the most famous blue dot is the city of Austin, where the University of Texas is found, and evidently increasingly in a state like Nebraska a deep red state, there is an increasingly blue dot over the city of Lincoln. And the latest evidence of that quite tragically comes in the form of a handout to middle school teachers in Lincoln, Nebraska. As my late father-in-law, a proud native of Nebraska and two-time graduate of the University of Nebraska, would surely say, “Aw nuts!”
3) Connecticut effort to control homeschooling attack on parental rights over children
The rapid expansion of homeschooling in America can surely be traced to developments such as these, but homeschooling itself is now in the headlines as Matthew Hennessey of City Journal reports that in Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s Sandy Hook advisory commission has returned the curious and controversial draft recommendation, that is, as Hennessey reports, the state should increase its oversight of homeschooled children with emotional or behavioral challenges. As he writes,
“The proposal has outraged the state’s homeschoolers, who, like homeschoolers everywhere, are keenly aware of their sometimes conditional freedoms. In Connecticut, as elsewhere, the law allows parents to homeschool if they choose. But the practice has always been viewed as threatening by left-wing academics, social architects, and teachers’ unions—all well represented [he says, on the governor’s] 16-member panel. Sadly, this is only the most recent assault on the rights of Connecticut homeschoolers.”
Hennessey’s report is actually quite ominous and it points to the fact that the sexual and moral revolutionaries see homeschooling as one of the great enemies of their cause. Hennessey points out that after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school, the Connecticut Governor appointed this panel that brought an interim report in 2013. In that report, nothing was said of homeschooling whatsoever.
Now he writes
“The panel has determined that among the things that went wrong in the run-up to that tragedy was that the killer, Adam Lanza, was homeschooled briefly as a teenager. They are recommending the state give local officials approval power over parents who wish to homeschool children with social, behavioral, and emotional challenges.”
Commissioner Howard I. Schwartz Psychiatrist in Chief at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living said, “Given the individuals involved in the tragedy that formed the basis of this commission, we believe that it is very germane.”
He also said, “The facts leading up to this incident support the notion that there is a risk in not addressing the social and emotional learning needs of homeschooled children.”
As Hennessey writes,
“inherent in the draft recommendations is the commission’s belief that government and state institutions have and should have the ability to shape social outcomes.
‘We need a holistic approach that will follow children from birth to adulthood; identifying risk factors, reinforcing protective factors, and promoting positive development throughout.’”
That was said by University of Connecticut law professor Susan R. Schmeiser, who also helped to draft the recommendations, according to Hennessey. She said the school should serve as “a locus of this more integrated system of care and should adopt a comprehensive, integrated approach that is not reactive but proactive.”
As Hennessey writes, “A reformed school mental health system should do more than just scan the horizon for disorder.[She said it should, to use her words]prioritize social and emotional learning within the curriculum.”
As Hennessey then says,
“Couched in Schmeiser’s jargon, the committee’s recommendations may seem unobjectionable, but they’re really an opportunistic bid for in loco parentis—schools as substitute families and teachers as substitute parents.”
The bottom line, as Hennessey makes very clear, is an assault on parental rights, with the understanding that the community and in particular school officials have every responsibility and right to determine what students ought to be taught, the context in which they would be taught, the outcomes that are be sought in education, and whether or not parents are in any way qualified to be the educators of their own children. As Hennessey also writes and I quote,
“Nuances aside, the issues raised by the commission’s draft recommendations are fundamentally about agency: Who’s in charge of a child, and who decides how, where, and what that child learns? Is the first and final decision about a child’s development made by the family or by the state, as represented by the local school district’s trained professionals?”
Hennessey’s final paragraph demands our attention. He writes,
“Governor Malloy’s handpicked commissioners have indulged a dangerous impulse, common on the left, to reorder society at the expense of the family. In the process, they have trampled on the rights of homeschoolers to raise their children as they see fit.”
One of the aspects of the proposals found in this report is that homeschooling parents would have to submit a plan, a learning plan with proposed outcomes in order to be approved as homeschoolers. And furthermore, the state would reserve the right to the school district and its professionals to judge whether or not the parents are successful in bringing about the desired social outcomes.
In other comments about her panel’s report, law professor Susan Schmeiser said,
“We need a holistic approach that will follow children from birth to adulthood. Homeschooling,[she said] may not adequately address those children’s needs. Or help them develop the skills they will need to function in society.”
But the basic dishonesty behind all of this is the fact that Adam Lanza was in the public school system from kindergarten through the eighth grade. And his removal to a homeschool situation was made at the suggestion of his therapist. This development should help all Christian parents to be aware of the fact that it is not just homeschooling that is in the bull’s-eye of the social revolutionaries. It is the whole idea of parents and parental rights.
The 20th century in the United States saw a vast erosion of parental authority and parental rights. This went back to the public school movement in the early 20th century, when luminaries such as John Dewey, one of the primary agents of secularism in America and also one of the architects of the modern public schools, said that one of the functions of the schools should be to reduce the likelihood that children would bear the moral and religious prejudices of their parents. He called for the public schools, back in the early decades of the 20th century, to be the engines of creating a new common American identity that would reduce the influence of parents and raise the influence of the larger society.
The revolutionaries at work on this panel in Connecticut are representing the same logic, but it is now operating at a much higher intensity and in a much more brazen manner that was found in the 20th century. The 21st century in America is going to find parents in the position of having to make very clear that we intend to be the primary educators of our children- that indeed they are our children. They are given to us for our care and they are our responsibility. Homeschooling parents in Connecticut are rightly going to have to push back against Governor Malloy’s panel and the suggestion that the homeschoolers would have to get approval for homeschooling from some kind of public school authority. But Christian parents understand something even more fundamental: we will give an answer to God for how we raise our children; that is much higher standard. But it also means that it is God that will hold us accountable, not the government, for the raising of our children. This significant alarm from Connecticut should be heard everywhere in America.
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 10-10-14
1) Assisted suicide plan of 29-year-old illustrates cultural demand for autonomy over end of life
Why Newlywed Brittany Maynard Is Ending Her Life in Three Weeks, NBC News (Bill Briggs)
2) Canadian Christian’s job rejection reveals profound intolerance towards Christians
Trinity Western grad ‘attacked’ for being Christian in job rejection, CBC News (Natalie Clancy)
3) Discipline of KY Christian t-shirt company shows tolerance only extended in one direction by secular society
Hands On Originals discriminated against gay organization, hearing officer rules, Lexington Herald-Leader (Cheryl Truman)
4) Pew study indicates belief in God most significant factor in differing parental values
Families may differ, but they share common values on parenting, Pew Research Center (Kim Parker)
5) Family dining habits reveal inversion of authority in secular culture
Chicken Fingers Are Off the Menu, New York Times (Pamela Paul)
October 9, 2014
The Briefing 10-09-14
1) Continued spread of Ebola reminder that plague is not merely a matter of the past
Death of Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas Fuels Alarm Over Ebola, New York Times (Manny Fernandez and Dave Phillips)
2) Lincoln, Nebraska middle school policy of gender neutrality reveals secular influence of universities
School Told to Call Kids ‘Purple Penguins’ Because ‘Boys and Girls’ Is Not Inclusive to Transgender, National Review Online (Katherine Timpf)
12 easy steps on the way to gender inclusiveness…, Gender Spectrum
3) Connecticut effort to control homeschooling attack on parental rights over children
Connecticut Targets Homeschoolers, City Journal (Matthew Hennessy)
October 8, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 10-08-14
The Briefing
October 8, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Wednesday, October 8, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Protests over fate of Ebola-infected nurse’s dog reveals drastic worldview confusion
Concerns over the spread of the Ebola virus into Western nations dramatically increased this week with news that a nursing assistant in Spain had contracted the disease in Spain. This is an altogether different situation that is faced in the state of Texas, at least at present, where a man who had come from West Africa later developed symptoms of the disease. That patient in Texas is now clinging to life, kept alive by a respirator and kidney dialysis, and his situation has been downgraded to extremely critical condition. But the nursing assistant in Spain is an altogether new development; she caught the disease after taking care of a priest who had been carried to Spain after contracting the virus in West Africa. And furthermore, this comes even as all the assurances had been given that in modern Western nations, including Spain, the kinds of public health precautions that might be expected would’ve prevented the spread of the disease. But clearly it did not, and this is leading to a sense of almost panic among health workers not only in Spain, but elsewhere.
CBS News reported that the nursing assistant
“…Highlighted the dangers that health care workers face caring for Ebola patients – officials said she had changed a diaper for the priest and collected material from his room after he died [of the disease]. Dead Ebola victims are highly infectious and in West Africa their bodies are collected by workers in hazmat outfits.”
But if that’s true in West Africa now, why wasn’t it true in Spain? And how is it that Spain, with a much respected public health network, found itself in the position of having a transmission of the Ebola virus take place not only in healthcare facility, but to a healthcare worker? Public health authorities in Spain are now scrambling to respond to the situation. The woman’s husband has been placed in quarantine inside a hospital and as CBS News reports,
“By Tuesday, authorities had gotten in touch with 22 people – including relatives and personnel at the hospital [located in a suburb of Madrid] where she went early Monday with a fever. They were also[reported to be] monitoring about 30 other members of the health care team that treated Manuel Garcia Viejo, the priest who returned from Sierra Leone and died of the disease.”
CBS also quoted Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, who said
“The nursing assistant’s illness illustrates that health care workers are at risk even in more sophisticated medical centers of Europe and the United States, ‘At greatest risk in all Ebola outbreaks are health care workers,’”
In the United States the Obama Administration is also scrambling to respond, even as the administration deals with several simultaneous crises. Federal aviation officials and officials with the United States Coast Guard indicated that there will be increased screenings for vessels and airlines coming in the United States. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said however that a travel ban from the affected nations is not currently under consideration, instead President Obama and the federal government would be – according to the spokesman –
“working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States.”
As CBS noted, he did not outline any details.
But the worldview significance of this particular news story also points to a very unexpected development that has to do not what this nursing assistant, nor with her husband, but with their dog – a 12 year old dog who Spanish officials said would be euthanized in order to limit the possibility of any transmission to other human beings through the dog. And that has led, as the Wall Street Journal says, to an outcry among Spaniards and to the fact that the nursing assistant’s husband has launched a public effort to try to prevent the euthanization of the dog. As the Wall Street Journal reports,
“The outpouring of solidarity for [the dog named] Excalibur is part of Spaniards’ growing concern for the plight of animals, …[that according to] Silvia Barquero, a spokeswoman for Partido Pacma, a political party focused on animal rights. Catalonia, a wealthy region of northeastern Spain, banned bullfighting three years ago.”
And the Wall Street Journal says that the animal rights movement is now concentrating on Excalibur as its current cause.
“My country is advancing hugely in our concern for animals, and this makes me so proud,”
Once again those comments came from Silvia Barquero of the Partido Pacma political party focused on animal rights. She said that as she was standing with a throng of fellow protesters outside the house of the nursing assistant and her husband.
“This never would have happened 10 years ago.”
That’s probably absolutely true, not only would it not have happened 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have happened in any previous epic of human history. What we’re looking at here is a huge worldview confusion where people are confusing the life of an animal for the life of human beings. We’re not talking about some kind of hypothetical threat here, we’re looking at the very real and shocking reality that a nursing assistant working in a highly sophisticated medical center nonetheless contracted the deadly Ebola virus from a patient or from a corpse. We’re also looking at the fact that the public health guidelines have broken down. But perhaps most alarmingly, we’re looking at the fact that many Spaniards, including this major political party, are focusing on the right of the animal rather than on the public health crisis.
The Christian worldview rooted in Scripture dignifies the life of animals; understanding that they are not, like human beings, merely accidents of some kind of evolutionary process, rather the Bible indicates that God created them for His glory and furthermore not only God, but His human creatures are to delight in these animals. Thus, Christians should stand in solidarity with anyone who opposes the abuse or misuse of animals – but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about, in this case, a profound worldview confusion; a confusion about the worth of a human being versus the worth of an animal. And we’re looking at the fact that the very real threat of an outbreak of the Ebola virus that has already killed thousands of people in Africa and now has infected at least one nursing assistant there in Spain, it threatens to spread. And public health authorities are simply in Spain responding to the obvious, if this dog could be a means of transmitting the disease, public health considerations in light of the very real threat to human life, must lead to the fact that the dog should be euthanized and the threat removed. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this story is the fact that the man who is leading the effort to save the dog is the husband of the nursing assistant who has contracted the deadly disease. The fact that this dog is now making headline news around the world is indication of a horrifying worldview confusion.
2) Significance of midterm elections underlined by radical abortion view of CO Senator Udall
In terms of worldview issues, they are always clearly on display in a major electoral contests. And this year’s midterm elections, especially with the United States Senate hanging in the balance, is certainly no exception. And that’s why last night’s Senatorial debate in Colorado is a focus of particular interest. Last night in Colorado the incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Udall was asked a question:
“We know that you support a woman’s right to choose, but given the advances in scientific understanding of fetal development, where pregnant mothers know at which week babies grow fingernails and can swallow, would you support a ban on late-term abortions and if so at what week?”
Senator Udall, who has become emblematic in the national media of the Democratic Party’s new effort to reach out to women voters, largely by an unembarrassed affirmation of abortion rights, Senator Udall responded by citing the case of a woman he knew who had a medical emergency in the eighth month of pregnancy. And as he stated,
“We ought to respect the women of Colorado and their point of view,”
What the senator did not say is consistent with what he has refused to say in every other point, and it is also consistent with his voting record. He refused to say that he would oppose any abortion, at any point, for any reason. As John McCormack of the Weekly Standard explained,
“Udall gave no indication that he supports any legal limits on aborting healthy infants late in pregnancy or any other restrictions on abortion,”
This is an issue to keep very much in focus as the midterm elections now loom before us in less than a month, coming on November 4. Because what we’re watching is a radicalization of the abortion-rights argument. And we’re also watching what we commented on from news stories in the New York Times and elsewhere, that many Democratic senators or Senatorial candidates are now taking very radical positions. Recall that just several years ago when the partial-birth abortion ban act was adopted, that even a good number of Democrats voted with Republicans to pass that legislation. Legislation that outlawed one of the most heinous and horrific surgical procedures imaginable – the murder of a child at the very point of birth when part of the child is left in the birth canal so that the murder could take place and it still be considered an abortion. As the late Democratic Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said in that debate, “The partial-birth abortion procedure is not something that is close to infanticide, it is infanticide.” And yet, now we have several incumbent Democratic senators and a considerable number of Democratic Senatorial candidates who are also now opposed even to any ban on partial-birth abortion or on late-term abortions; abortions clearly taking place after the point of viability when the baby could thrive and live outside the womb.
The radicalization of this pro-abortion position is one of the saddest developments in our recent political history. But it affirms the fact that this isn’t just our political history, this is also our moral experience. It is pointing to the kind of nation we will become, a nation in which it will inevitably, given the fact that Americans have an opportunity to vote, it will inevitably be a place where it is either safer to be in the womb or more dangerous to be in the womb. And when it comes to Senator Udall in the debate just last night in Colorado, it is clear that the voters of that state have been put on notice that in Senator Udall’s America, the womb is an exceedingly deadly place to be; from the beginning of pregnancy to the very end.
3) Instructing teens on ‘sexual etiquette’ for sexting poor substitute for morality
Next, researchers in Texas looking at teens have found that adolescents who are involved in the practice of ‘sexting’ – that is sending sexually explicit text messages, usually by smart phones – are usually doing so as a precursor to actually having sex; as if you needed researchers to tell you that. But the research project is gaining attention all over the world. One headline news story that appeared in a British newspaper, the Independent, indicates that sexting is becoming a new first step to sexual activity for adolescents. The research was conducted in Texas and it found that sexting, defined as sending sexually explicit pictures or asking to receive one, is becoming part of growing up for some teenagers before they become sexually active. The researchers also found that some of the teens who were involved in sexting do not quickly become involved in sexual activity – but those who do are far more likely than those who don’t, quickly to find themselves involved in sexual activities.
The research is published in the current edition of Pediatrics, a major respected medical journal in the United States. One of the researchers told the Washington Post,
“Sexting preceded sexual behavior in many cases, the theory behind that is sexting may act as a gateway or prelude to sexual behaviors or increases the acceptance of going to the next level. This behavior isn’t always new, it’s just a new medium. But it’s not safe because it can be shared.”
Well once again, if you need a research project to tell you that, you’re probably not very aware in the first place. But the fact that the research was undertaken is important, and the fact that it was published in the journal Pediatrics makes it even more important. But the worldview revealed in the research by the researchers is absolutely jaw-dropping. One of the researchers in this case is Josh Temple, an associate professor and psychologist the University of Texas medical branch at Galveston, said that the research is a “call to arms to talk to your kid about sexual health or behavior. I think the really cool thing about this study in answering the question of what comes first is … this could hold the key to prevention programs.”
Of course that raises the question, the prevention of what? The researchers don’t seem to be too concerned about teenagers involved in sexual activity. They’re concerned about what they define as ‘premature sexual activity.’ And sexting they say is not so much a problem in itself – the morality of sexting doesn’t even feature in the research – but rather it serves as something of an early warning system that a teenager might soon become sexually active. And it is at that point that the new sexual revolutionaries jump in the deep end of the pool. Amanda Marcotte writing at Slate.com says
“Sexting is, in the end, just another form of flirting, and flirting has always been something that can and does lead to sexual activity.”
She says that parents shouldn’t be too concerned or hung up about this because their kids are going to sext and they are going to have sex. Parents should just be involved in conversations with their adolescent, she says, in order to make sure that they do so responsibly. She then turns, as an ally in her cause to none other than Professor Temple, one of the authors of the study. As she writes,
“Sure, as Temple admits, there are dangers, particularly around the ongoing problem of young people, mostly young men, using nude photos to publicly humiliate young women. But instead of combating this by telling kids simply not to sext, Temple recommends that parents ‘need to talk about it as something they’re going to want to do and present both sides, and give adolescents more credit than they are typically given.’”
Marcotte then says,
“After all, there are plenty of teenage boys who aren’t predators and can handle the responsibility of sexting without violating a girl’s boundaries—and there could be more if adults bothered to talk to them about the etiquette of sexting without getting judgmental about the fact that kids are going to explore.”
Well here you meet one of the sexual revolutionaries at full speed. She says that parents shouldn’t be talking in morally judgmental turns to their teenagers; they should instead understand that adolescents are going to sext. And then she has the audacity to suggest that what parents really need to be involved with when it comes to talking with their kids is the suggestion that they teach them – I’m going to use her very words – “the etiquette of sexting without getting judgmental.”
This is one of the most recent hallmarks of our moral insanity. Here you have someone arguing that what American parents should simply do is understand that teenagers are going to sext; they’re going to be sending sexually explicit text messages. And instead of being judgmental and suggesting that their kids ought not to do such a thing, much less suggesting that sexting is wrong – morally wrong – rather parents should avoid any judgmental-ism, and instead help their kids to sext following a proper sexting etiquette. But of course at that point the article comes to an end. This author lacks either the courage or the candor to be very clear about what this sexting etiquette might look like. Frankly it is because the very proposal is insane. But it’s the kind of insanity that’s now becoming standardized and institutionalized in many public health sex education programs. It’s actually quite indicative of the approach to adolescent sexuality that is now standard on American college and university campuses. It explains why, in the state of California last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed that ‘yes means yes’ law into effect; effectively legalizing what perhaps Governor Brown would call the etiquette of fornication or the etiquette of premarital sex. A society that reaches the point in which it is simply trying to teach sexual etiquette to teenagers – etiquette about premarital sex, etiquette about sexual consent, etiquette about sexting; sending sexually explicit text messages – such a society has already abandoned moral sanity. All that’s left is a negotiation over what is termed etiquette. Actually Amanda Marcotte’s article is very interesting. And it’s important for us because it underlines exactly what’s going on in the culture around us – a culture ready to abandon any sane morality for the false substitute of mere etiquette.
4) Investment in wedding not equivalent to investment in marriage
Finally Brett Arends of the Wall Street Journal reports on a very different research project, and this one really does demand our attention. The researcher was undertaken by professors at Emory University and it has to do with the correlation between the cost of a wedding and the length of the marriage. Professors Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon of Emory University in Atlanta published a paper last month; the title was “‘A Diamond Is Forever’ And Other Fairytales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Wedding Duration.” As the Wall Street Journal reports, the study was based on the wedding budgets and marriage track record of more than 3,000 US adults. After analyzing the data, the authors of the study found that women whose weddings cost more than $20,000 – that’s in 2014 dollars – ended up getting divorced 60% more often than those whose weddings were cheaper. And men who spent between $2,000 and $4,000 on their engagement ring got divorced 30% more than those who spent between $500 – 2,000.
The point made by the researchers is actually quite obvious; those who pay so much attention and pay so much cost for weddings often actually set up failure in marriage. We now face in this country what can only be described as a wedding industrial complex. And by some reports, the median cost of a wedding in this country is now $29,000. There turns out to be an inverse relationship between investment in the wedding and investment in the marriage. The Wall Street Journal reports that last year 1 out of 10 weddings cost between $50,000 and $100,000. Brett Arends then writes,
“In a desperate bid to control costs, brides and grooms these days are starting to trim the number of guests,”
And the number of guests at an American wedding has now dwindled to an average of 138. But then he writes,
“The paradox: The Emory research suggests that instead of spending more money but having fewer guests, we should be doing the opposite. [As the authors of the report said] ‘The evidence suggests that the types of weddings associated with the lower likelihood of divorce are those that are relatively inexpensive but high in attendance,’”
The research paper demonstrates that those who pay so much attention to the wedding ceremony itself and all the festivities involved with it, often are actually not investing in the kind of premarital preparation that would make for a longer lasting marriage. And furthermore, so many of these extravaganzas called weddings are so focused on the ceremony there is actually very little focus on the vows – on the fact that the wedding ceremony, biblical defined, is to be an opportunity for folks to gather in order to witness the husband and the wife exchange covenantal vows. Vows that are to end with the affirmation ‘till death do us part,’ When all the attention is given to the festivity of the ceremony, when families believe that they have to invest enormous amounts of money – not to mention attention and planning – in trying just to pull off a wedding, it often ends up being a precursor to a very short marriage. Just consider the lavish weddings undertaken by so many Hollywood celebrities. Their lavish weddings are often undertaken without even the pretense that there is any ‘until death do us part’ vow to be taken seriously in the wedding ceremony. Oh, and the wedding industrial complex continues to expand. The recent wedding of George Clooney to a civil rights lawyer is estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $13 million. The beat, as they say, goes on.
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.
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