R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 340
November 4, 2014
The Briefing 11-04-14
1) Election Day looms large on America’s political, cultural and moral horizons
Land of the Fearful: A Nervous America Prepares to Vote, USA Today (Susan Page)
2) Partisan divide in America points to a demographic divide
Democrats Count on Edge With Women to Limit Election Losses, New York Times (Jackie Calmes)
Democrats Lose Their Grip on Voters With Keys to the House, Wall Street Journal (Kristina Peterson and Dante Chinni)
Planned Parenthood vs. personhood in Colorado, Washington Post (Katie Zezima)
3) Obama comments about stay-at-home moms reveals priority of professional over family life
3 Reasons President Obama Is Wrong About Stay-At-Home Mothers, The Federalist (Mollie Hemingway)
Remarks by the President on Women and the Economy — Providence, RI, White House (President Barack Obama)
The crucial importance of stay-at-home wives, American Enterprise Institute (Charles Murray)
4) Population control solution to climate change horrifying example of anti-natalism
The Climate-Change Solution No One Will Talk About, The Atlantic (Jason Plautz)
The Briefing 11-04-2014
1) Election Day looms large on America’s political, cultural and moral horizons
Land of the Fearful: A Nervous America Prepares to Vote, USA Today (Susan Page)
2) Partisan divide in America points to a demographic divide
Democrats Count on Edge With Women to Limit Election Losses, New York Times (Jackie Calmes)
Democrats Lose Their Grip on Voters With Keys to the House, Wall Street Journal (Kristina Peterson and Dante Chinni)
Planned Parenthood vs. personhood in Colorado, Washington Post (Katie Zezima)
3) Obama comments about stay-at-home moms reveals priority of professional over family life
3 Reasons President Obama Is Wrong About Stay-At-Home Mothers, The Federalist (Mollie Hemingway)
Remarks by the President on Women and the Economy — Providence, RI, White House (President Barack Obama)
The crucial importance of stay-at-home wives, American Enterprise Institute (Charles Murray)
4) Population control solution to climate change horrifying example of anti-natalism
The Climate-Change Solution No One Will Talk About, The Atlantic (Jason Plautz)
November 3, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 10-03-14
The Briefing
November 3, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Monday, November 3, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Tragedy of Brittany Maynard ending her life reminder humans are not self-defining beings
Sadly, on Saturday Brittany Maynard ended her life. People magazine, that had an exclusive with her and her family, reported on Sunday that she who had become the public face of the controversial Right to Die Movement over the past few weeks ended her own life Saturday at her home in Portland, Oregon at age 29. People had a statement she had released that had said, and I quote,
“Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me … but would have taken so much more. The world is a beautiful place, travel has been my greatest teacher, my close friends and folks are the greatest givers. I even have a ring of support around my bed as I type … Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!”
That was also pasted to her personal Facebook page. According to People’s report, doctors had told Maynard she had six months to live in the spring of this year after she was diagnosed with a likely stage four glioblastoma – that’s a brain tumor. She made headlines around the world, says People, when she announced she intended to die under Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, and that she had decided to do so by taking a fatal dose of barbiturates prescribed for her by a doctor. She had decided to take the barbiturates when her suffering became, in her judgment, too great, and when she feared losing total control.
Last month she told People magazine that her brain tumor,
“…is going to kill me and that’s out of my control,”
She said,
“I’ve discussed with many experts how I would die from it and it’s a terrible, terrible way to die. So being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying.”
How should Christians think about this? Well, first of all, we need to recognize this as an unmitigated human tragedy. We need to sympathize with Brittany Maynard, with the struggle that she faced in these end months of her life; when she faced the almost sure prospect of a death, indeed a very difficult death, by this aggressive brain tumor. We need to sympathize with her family and loved ones who surely grieve her even now and grieved in anticipation as they knew she was suffering from this disease. But Christians also know that something is fundamentally wrong with this picture. Even though we grieve with this young woman in her struggle and even though we understand her intention to try to avoid losing control of her life in these end stages, and to avoid what was in her mind unacceptable and unbearable suffering, we also recognize that what she was doing was taking her own destiny into her hands. She was effectively saying, ‘I will determine how and when I will die.’
Steadfastly throughout this public controversy she insisted that she was not actually committing suicide. We need to look very closely at that. Sympathetically we need to understand that in her mind she was not committing suicide because she had faced a death sentence – a rather soon death sentence by the medical diagnosis of this glioblastoma, a very aggressive brain tumor from which there are very few survivors. And yet we also need to understand that even as in her own mind she was not committing suicide, actually she was. Her death on Saturday came by means of an act, of an act of ending her own life, by taking what will be defined as an overdose or a lethal dose of barbiturates. And she did so intentionally, making very clear by her public statements that she intended to end own life on her own terms and on her own timing. The Christian concern about this has to do with the fact that we do not number or order our own days. We also need to understand that there is a hopelessness that was very evident, indeed writ large, in terms of Brittany Maynard’s action on Saturday. And that’s a hopelessness we need to note that might actually makes sense in terms of a secular worldview; it simply doesn’t make sense in terms of the Christian worldview.
The Christian worldview does not embrace death, indeed quite the opposite, it sees death as the enemy which is to be resisted and it promises that death is eventually the enemy that is defeated in the cross and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the Christian worldview based in Scripture also tells us that we are not those who hold in our own hands the destiny of either our birth or our life; or for that matter even all the days and hours in between. The Bible tells us that we simply are not in control of ourselves, we are not self-defining creatures and the hopelessness that marks the very end of Brittany Maynard’s life and the hopelessness that is actually evident in her death by suicide on Saturday is evidence of the fact of the Christian worldview actually runs, not at many points, not at some point, but at every point over against the secular worldview.
Looking at the public controversy that emerged when Brittany Maynard announced her intention, and the public controversy that now continues after her tragic death, we come to see that that public controversy in itself demonstrates the direct collision between the Christian biblical worldview and the secular worldview. It comes down to such issues as this: Brittany Maynard’s decision is celebrated by those certainly within the Death with Dignity Movement – and that’s a very cleverly devised and named movement. It’s a moment that says not only she, but every American, indeed every human individual, should eventually have the right – this is always presented as a right – to end one’s own life on one’s own terms, depending on whatever circumstances may lead an individual to believe that life is not now worth living.
One of the things we need to note is that this Death with Dignity Movement almost always centers first and foremost on those who are suffering from intractable or incurable, even terminal, diseases. And yet, country by country, state-by-state, where there is evidence of why people decide to take their own lives, this is not limited to terminal diagnoses. It is not limited even to those who are suffering from what are described as terminal illnesses. In much of Europe, especially in nations like the Netherlands and Belgium, even Switzerland now, we know there are people who are ending their lives because as they define the quality of life, it comes down to the fact that life is not now worth living – not because of a terminal medical diagnosis or even some kind of intractable and incurable suffering, but because they decided on the basis of some other impact upon their life, some other life condition, that it isn’t worth living. There so many sad cases coming out of Europe of people who actually reached the point of what is probably rightly described as despair. When that despair turns deadly and they decide to go to a place like the Netherlands or Belgium or Switzerland, through what is now even described in the media as death tourism or euthanasia tourism in order to end their own lives. The Christian worldview throws it back upon us to understand that when we look at a tragedy like this it speaks not only to the collision between these two worldviews but to the fact that we as Christians have to understand that we are not self-defining creatures; that we do not have the right biblically speaking even to define the terms by which we would find life livable. At any number of points human beings in any number of context, suffering from any number of diseases, or even for just afflictions of life, might come to terms with the fact that so far as we believe ourselves at that time, life is not worth living. But that’s where the Scripture comes in to tell us that that is a sign of a hopelessness that simply is not compatible with Christian faith. It is also a sign of the human being overreaching, in terms of defining our own lives on our own terms, and that’s the real issue here.
A tragic story like this should cause Christians to respond with genuine sympathy. We should not look with condescension at a young woman who was struggling with such a horrifying diagnosis; we should not look with dismissal at the fact that she had very real concerns about horrifying things that might lie in her future. But we also have to understand that even as we sympathize, even as we empathize, we cannot follow the same lines of thinking. And we have to see this is a fundamental challenge, not so much to her nor even to her own movement but to us, that we understand the dignity of human life at every point along the continuum of development and the lifespan in terms of the fact that we live it as creatures of a benevolent and loving sovereign Creator, whose intentions for us go beyond ourselves to His glory and to those who are around us. And who is also a God of great surprises; because most of us probably know, even now, someone who has received a diagnosis such as this and has gone through horrifying months of treatment, perhaps even years of struggle, but is still now very much alive and very much contributing to the glory of God and to human flourishing; very much contributing to the good of those around them and very much a living encouragement of the fact that life is precious, that it is a divine gift, and it is not to be forfeited – it is certainly not to be ended by her own hand on her own terms.
Brittany Maynard’s final words as posted on Facebook and reported by People magazine are particularly haunting,
“… Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!”
Those are interesting words coming from a young woman who is announcing her decision, actually now posthumously, to take her own life. A faithful Christian’s last words can’t come close to something like Brittany Maynard’s ‘Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!” But those last words do need to be very much in our mind as we think about her death today and we recognize just what’s missing from those words and what must be present in our own faith – very much present as we consider a tragedy like this.
2) UN Climate report raises question of nature of scientific authority
Yesterday saw a major release of a climate change report from United Nations panel. The report was much-anticipated and yet it’s not really full of surprise since much of what the panel would eventually report yesterday was previously reported over the last 18 months by United Nations sources. But as Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney of the Washington Post report, the panel released a statement saying that
“The Earth is locked on an ‘irreversible’ course of climatic disruption from the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the impacts will only worsen unless nations agree to dramatic cuts in pollution.”
The report warned of extreme weather, rising sea levels, and melting polarized from soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases. The statement from the report said,
“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts,”
The report came from United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, known as the IPCC, and is drawn from contributions from thousands of scientists says the Washington Post, from all over the world. In one of the strongest statements to come from any similar group, the report said that some impacts of climate change will “continue for centuries,” even if, as the scientist said, all omissions from fossil fuel burning were to stop right now. As the Washington Post reports,
“The question facing governments is whether they can act to slow warming to a pace at which humans and natural ecosystems can adapt, or risk ‘abrupt and irreversible changes’ as the atmosphere and oceans absorb ever-greater amounts of thermal energy within a blanket of heat-trapping gases.”
One of the authors of the report is a Princeton University geosciences professor known as Michael Oppenheimer. He said,
“The window of opportunity for acting in a cost-effective way — or in an effective way — is closing fast,”
That’s what makes this report so interesting and interesting at so many different levels. First, at the scientific level this report comes with what is intended to be a unique authority coming from this panel of scientists and other leaders bearing the official imprimatur of the United Nations. And yet as you look at it you come to understand that the statements are incredibly stark. For instance, as the Associated Press reports,
“Climate change is happening, it is almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero this century,”
As the Associated Press continued,
“But it underlined the scope of the climate challenge in stark terms. Emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, may need to drop to zero by the end of this century for the world to have a decent chance of keeping the temperature rise below a level that many consider dangerous.”
Now let’s look at this again, just at the scientific level; what’s present and what’s missing? What’s present is dire predictions. What’s present are very clear warnings. What’s present is the claim that this is a vast scientific consensus. As a matter fact as the New York Times and many others are reporting this morning, what this really reveals is the fact that there are very few scientist – to use the language often employed – who are outliers, denying in any way, that human beings are causing this kind of global warming and that it has to be addressed and addressed now. What’s missing from the report is any adequate or honest consideration of what kind of modeling is involved in coming to these conclusions. What’s required is a massive leap of imagination as you understand that scientists are here coming up with ways of modeling geothermal change over centuries and millennia of the past in which there are no available records. And as many have pointed out from the scientific community, the actual models vary tremendously. What’s glossed over in so much of the major media reportage on this is the fact that these models actually incorporate vast very important presuppositions that simply can’t be tested.
This gets to a second issue of the scientific import; how is it that we are to understand scientific authority on a question of this magnitude? Christians should understand that the world is indeed intelligible, that God gave us the cosmos that we are intended to try to seek to understand. There’s nothing in this sense that is wrong with scientist asking these questions. What’s wrong is the assumed authority that is claimed by scientists in terms of trying to come to an intelligible understanding of something that simply requires data that is not available. Now on the one hand we need to understand that vast areas of science require this kind of speculation, this kind of employment of presuppositions, but on something with this magnitude the import of these presuppositions looms larger than the public conversation is yet allowed or accepted or admitted.
This report put into a political context also reveals the fact that what is really intended by the release of this kind of report, that was after all released on a Sunday by the United Nations, is to try to get the world’s attention in order to create political momentum for a particular kind of change; political momentum for the demand of and acceptance of certain policies that are also embedded within this report. And yet when you look at that you see that the political challenge is actually vast because when you look at the report itself here’s what becomes clear: if we are indeed to bring the use of fossil fuels down to zero over the next 100 years and if indeed we are to make radical changes right now, this will require a massive change in the quality of life – even the means of life – for not only Americans but for people in all parts of the world. We are so dependent upon fossil fuels that any suggestion that we can simply now escape the problem of fossil fuels and their use is simply imagination, imagination run wild – it’s irresponsibility. We’re not going to shut down power plants, we’re like a turn off electricity; the impact upon human flourishing of that kind of act would be immediate, vast, deadly, and devastating – far more damaging and devastating as a matter fact than even the climate change impacts that are threatened or promised in this kind of report.
But this is not to say that Christians should not take a report like this with deep seriousness – of course we should. We are given by God, as the creatures made in his image, a stewardship responsibility for the entire cosmos in so far as we have the power or the influence to affect change for the better. We are given the responsibility of dominion, but that dominion is in the context of a stewardship. We are not to be the mere users and abusers of the cosmos, but it is within the biblical context that we see that we are those who were assigned attending of a garden – that’s the metaphor for creation – and our task is to tend the garden well, to tend the garden faithfully, even as the good farmer, the good gardener knows that is our responsibility. And to hang it off to generations yet to come, understanding that is not just a matter of a human stewardship but it’s a matter of what it means to glorify the Creator and to exercise the responsibility He has given us in faithfulness. But as we look at a report like this we understand that there is an inevitable quandary that we all now face. What authority do we ascribe to a report like this? How do we read this kind of scientific consensus? What were the presuppositions, not only of the report but of the scientists involved? And what actually is being demanded of us?
One of the alarm bells to Christians is reported in the New York Times in their coverage of the report when United Nations general Secretary Ban Ki-moon is quoted as saying,
“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”
We can understand why the Secretary-General of the United Nations might sense a bit of urgency in this; there is urgency in it. But the statement that science has spoken, there’s no ambiguity in their message as if that is supposed to end the discussion, is not only irrational, it’s fundamentally dangerous. Christians are indeed to take science seriously but we are to investigate its findings and its presuppositions. We cannot simply defer to scientists or to science as if it is the ultimate authority of the age, though for many in the secular world it functions as precisely that.
And that leads to another story that also appeared in the New York Times this one on Saturday with the headline, “Alarmed by Ebola, Public Isn’t Calmed by ‘Experts Say’” as Richard Pérez Peña reports,
“When public health leaders and government officials make the case against isolating more people returning from the Ebola hot zones in West Africa, or against imposing more travel restrictions from that region, time and again they cite science and experts. It isn’t working very well.”
An amazing statement from the New York Times. It turns out that when Pres. Obama and others say, ‘scientists assure us this is the right thing to do;’ scientists say ‘that isn’t the right thing to do,’ the public isn’t buying the arguments. Because when it comes to something as directly threatening is the Ebola virus, the American people say ‘look, all of a sudden our confidence in what the experts say or what the scientist say is shaken by the fact that the experts haven’t kept their story straight and the scientists haven’t shown their ability actually to maintain their authority by the exercise of the policies they present. It comes down to the fact that the New York Times reflecting a great deal of frustration in Washington, New York, and elsewhere has to face the fact that the American public, the American people, aren’t buying the arguments when there ended by ‘this is what the experts say’ or when introduced by ‘scientists say this.’
When it comes to the mishandling of so much of the Ebola crisis, not only in West Africa but in the United States, scientists, as important as they are and as much as they contribute to our public discussion and to our knowledge, as much moral authorities as they are often recognize to have, simply don’t have the authority to say ‘trust us’ – not an issue like this. And as the climate change report also makes abundantly clear, not on a host of other issues as well.
3) Election day is an exercise of political and Christian responsibility
Finally, faithful Christians in the United States must keep in mind that tomorrow is Election Day in the United States. And that is a part of the exercise of our political responsibility as Christians. But we also need to understand that not voting is itself a moral act, it’s also a huge moral problem because in a democracy where citizens have the responsibility and opportunity to vote, failure to exercise that responsibility means giving others a far greater vote; it means by not voting allowing things to happen otherwise would not happen, it means failure to exercise that stewardship. It is a right that is recognized and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and is recognized as a part of the great Democratic experiment of representative democracy. Failure to vote is a failure of Christian conviction and a failure of Christian stewardship.
And there’s something very important about Election Day. Writing in USA Today Robert Zubrin, who is the president of Pioneer Energy, speaks about the fact that in Colorado there actually isn’t any more of voting day. The pageant of democracy whereby voters went to the polls on the same day to vote exercising by means of that action and by that priority in the day what it means to fulfill that Democratic stewardship – that’s now gone in Colorado; where voting is now taking place by other means and voting is now stretched out over days and weeks, even a month. And as he writes,
“In Colorado, you can still drop off your mail-in ballot at a few places on Tuesday, but the traditional local polling places no longer exist. For all intents and purposes, [he writes] Election Day has been abolished in my home state. Instead, we now have Election Month.”
Now in writing this article Robert Zubrin is concerned that this plays to the advantage of political incumbents. And his argument is probably sound; it probably does. But as George Will has argued in the Washington Post with a similar kind of concern, the loss of election day is the loss of something that symbolizes a representative democracy and symbolizes the equality of all Americans showing up, giving priority in the day, to a polling place, where the exercise of democracy is commemorated and visible for us all. Furthermore the opportunity for malfeasance in the election system is multiplied when you abstract the democratic process from a voter standing in the voting booth.
There is of course something to be said for increasing access to voting, there will always be the need for some absentee voting as people will not be able to get to the voting place they are assigned on that particular day, but for the vast majority of voters Election Day should be a part, not only the pageant of democracy but of the conscious exercise of the stewardship the vote. Elections have consequences; we’ve learned that over and over again. Your vote matters and your stewardship as Christian especially matters and is what makes tomorrow, Election Day, a test not only of Christian interest but a test of Christian citizenship.
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 11-03-14
1) Tragedy of Brittany Maynard ending her life reminder humans are not self-defining beings
Terminally Ill Woman Brittany Maynard Has Ended Her Own Life, People (Nicole Weisensee Egan)
Death With Dignity Advocate Brittany Maynard Dies in Oregon, NBC News (Bill Briggs)
2) UN Climate report raises question of nature of scientific authority
Effects of climate change ‘irreversible,’ U.N. panel warns in report, Washington Post (Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney)
U.N. Climate Change Report Offers Stark Warnings on Global Warming, Wall Street Journal (AP)
U.N. Panel Issues Its Starkest Warning Yet on Global Warming, New York Times (Justin Gillis)
Alarmed by Ebola, Public Isn’t Calmed by ‘Experts Say’, New York Times (Richard Pérez-Peña)
3) Election day is an exercise of political and Christian responsibility
Save Election Day, USA Today (Robert Zubrin)
George Will: The stakes of Florida’s special election, Washington Post (George Will)
October 31, 2014
Transcript: The Briefing 10-31-14
The Briefing
October 31, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Friday, October 31, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
Apple CEO proclaims homosexuality a divine gift, revealing extent of cultural shift on issue
Yesterday the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, announced that he is a homosexual. He said this,
“While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now. So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”
This came in the form of an article published at Bloomberg BusinessWeek; it’s entitled “Tim Cook Speaks Up.” Tim Cook himself is the author. He began by saying that throughout his professional life he’s tried to maintain a basic level of privacy and yet he says now is the time for him to make a public statement about his sexual orientation. And he’s doing so, he says, in order to give comfort and confidence to others who need to do the very same thing. He said,
“Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple.”
Now the announcement made by Tim Cook yesterday really wasn’t a surprise because even in the transition when Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple in the wake of the death of Steve Jobs, there was wide discussion in the public square about the fact that he would likely become the most visible and high profile gay CEO in corporate history worldwide. The key word here is ‘openly’ and that’s the distinction that was made yesterday in his announcement. Tim Cook made the open statement, ‘So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay,’ clearly identifying and that’s the reason why yesterday’s announcement is newsworthy and why it does become something of a milestone, if even a minor milestone, in the great cultural transition on the issue sexuality and homosexuality.
A closer look at Tim Cook’s statement also reveals something that is of even greater importance. And that is exactly how he phrased his out of the closet statement. He said,
“So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, [the next words are very crucial] and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”
That’s a very interesting way of putting it. That’s a very interesting choice of words, because with the choice of those words Tim Cook says ‘I believe this is a gift; that being gay is a gift, a gift that has come just not from nature’ but as he says – to use his own words – “being gay [is] among the greatest gift God has given me.” Now, that again is one of those statements that might just be a part of the decoration of a public declaration. The use of the language about God here could be just something like corporate window-dressing, but let’s assume that it’s not. Now let’s just assume however that Tim Cook meant exactly what he said; we should give him the benefit of the doubt and just take him at his word. If so, that reveals something of even deeper importance and that’s this: a worldview change of this magnitude, a moral shift, a moral revolution, on the issue of human sexuality eventually has come full circle. Eventually, as we’ve discussed so many times in the past, what is condemned must be celebrated, what was celebrated has be condemned, and those who will not celebrate it are themselves condemned. In order for that full cycle to come around there is a theological aspect of the cycle as well. Something like homosexuality in times past was seen as a sin – something God not only did not design, but something that God explicitly condemned. In order for the moral revolution to come full circle there has to be something very much like what Tim Cook has articulated here. The assertion that homosexuality is not only a sin but actually a divine gift. In Tim Cook’s words, one of the greatest gifts God has given him.
Now there you have the worldview differentiation, the great chasm between the Christian worldview and the worldview of the modern sexual revisionists. And you have it in the form of a very clear statement made by Tim Cook as he made his first big public declaration of the fact that he’s gay; and as he said, he’s proud to be gay. And of course if being gay is a divine gift, why wouldn’t one be proud of it? If the worldview is established upon the presumption that in this case God has given homosexuality as a gift, then there is no reason not to be proud of it. And this shows the great chasm from beginning to end in terms of the worldview of biblical Christianity and of the sexual revisionists. Because the moral authority on which we know homosexual acts and homosexual relationships to be sinful and contrary to God’s design is what is revealed in Scripture. Now Scripture itself says that’s also revealed in nature. But as is made now abundantly clear, in terms of public debate, that revelation in nature is no longer being taken seriously by those who are in the culture pushing this moral revolution. It’s Scripture, the explicit words of Scripture, that basically stand in their way and thus you have a very clear conflict set up, whether intended by Tim Cook or not, between the claim that God has given homosexuality – gayness – as a gift and whether homosexuality is a sin – contrary to God’s design and contrary even to nature.
When people talk about the possibility of finding some kind of middle ground, Tim Cook’s statement actually helps us to understand not only the inevitable full revolution in terms of theology required here, but the fact that there actually isn’t any middle ground. There’s no middle ground between saying that homosexuality, homosexual acts, same-sex relationships, are sinful and saying that they’re one of God’s greatest gifts. Tim Cook’s statement actually helps to make that very clear and for that, at least, we should be thankful. We also need to look at other statements made by Tim Cook; in particular one. He said this,
“Part of social progress is understanding that a person is not defined only by one’s sexuality, race, or gender. I’m an engineer, an uncle, a nature lover, a fitness nut, a son of the South, a sports fanatic, and many other things.”
Well on that statement we need to say Tim Cook is actually absolutely right. We should not, as Christians, reduce ourselves or anyone else to a sexual orientation. We should not say that that is all you need to know about the person. He used other qualifiers as well. He said that one should not be defined only by one’s sexuality, race, or gender. On that score, we need to emphatically agree with him. We’re not saying that those issues are not important. We’re actually saying they are important because of God’s plan and design. But we are saying that’s not all you need to know about anyone. That’s now not all you need to know about Tim Cook, that’s not all you need to know about any single human being made in the image of God. And Tim Cook’s statement, both of them put together here, help us to remember that you can’t get away from a basic theological worldview, even if you think you’re purely secular because even in a secular context Tim Cook says homosexuality is one of God’s greatest gifts to me. And even in this secular context, the reason why we actually know that no individual should be reduced merely to race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or gender is because we know every single human being – characterized by any or all of those things – is made in the image of God and that’s why it matters.
2) Taiwan gay pride march displays importance of theological beliefs to culture’s morality
And speaking of the intersection between theology and sexuality, that inevitable intersection, how about this story by Andrew Jacobs from October 29 in the New York Times; headline is “Taiwan Shines as Beacon for Gays in Asia.” And you ask me, what does theology have to do with that? Well as it turns out – everything. As Jacobs reports, Taiwan is now becoming kind of the lead place for the moral revolution on homosexuality within Asia.
“For the 13th year in a row [he reports], the gay pride march took over the streets of the capital [it is as he says, ]…a boisterous, freewheeling demonstration of how far Taiwan has come in the two decades since multiparty democracy replaced martial law and authoritarian rule.”
The moral revolution has now proceeded apace and he says, there are gay pride marches in New York, other places, now also in Taiwan. And that’s what sets it apart from other Asian cultures and that’s why Andrew Jacobs is writing about it in the New York Times.
But there’s another theological aspect of this as I promised. Andrew Jacobs traces the fact that many of the cultures in Asia are shaped by Islam, including Indonesia, the most populous Islamic nation on earth. There’s not much chance you’re going to find a gay pride march in Indonesia. Other Asian nations, he says, are also rather reluctant to go this way in terms of endorsing public displays of homosexuality. But Taiwan, he says, is running the lead. And then, he gets to the theological dimension.
“Religious life here, for the most part, is dominated by Buddhism and Taoism, faiths with little doctrinal resistance to homosexuality.”
Well there’s the theology, right here in the pages of the New York Times, right in an article about why Taiwan is running point on the issue of the homosexual advance and gay-rights in the continent of Asia. And it’s right to the point of why theology is always so close to the surface, so readily at hand. Even in a secular age when people are determined to be a secular as they can possibly be, you can’t discuss a gay pride march in Taiwan without dealing with theology. Oh and by the way, Jacobs is exactly right. Taoism and Buddhism have little doctrinal resistance to homosexuality. It’s not fair to say they have no doctrinal resistance to homosexuality; Buddhism basically frowns on homosexuality but it doesn’t have the notion of sin and in terms of the basic rupturing the fabric of the universe and a violation of God’s law, it’s a very different religious worldview and Jacobs is exactly right that the reason Taiwan is situated differently from other nations, and in particular some other Asian nations, is because it’s worldview is dominated by Buddhism and Taoism and he is profoundly right – those are faiths “with little doctrinal resistance to homosexuality.”
Which also points in contrast to something else: why is it that homosexuality, homosexual acts, homosexual relationships, same-sex marriage, why do they remain controversial or opposed in so many cultures where Christianity had framed the worldview? Well there you have it, because by any question – Christianly has had a very strong doctrinal resistance to homosexuality. So in the West where you find the normalization of homosexual acts and relationships, you find the secularization of the culture, you find Christianity in retreat. That’s a very important notion. This notion found in the New York Times of doctrinal resistance to homosexuality, where it’s found and where it’s not, where it used to be and where it has disappeared.
3) Colorado governor warns rapid legalization of marijuana as too costly
As we have often noted, the moral revolution on the issue of sexuality is being mirrored in many ways by the moral revolution on the issue of marijuana – certainly not the same consequence in terms of these issues in the larger culture, but marijuana simply is not going to go away. The New York Times also reported just on October 28,
“Two years after voters in Colorado and Washington State broke the ice [that’s the word of the New York Times] as the first states to legalize sales of recreational marijuana to adults, residents of Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., will vote next week on ballot measures patterned on those of the two pioneers. People on both sides of the issue say these initiatives could determine whether there will be a national tide of legalization.”
Well my only caveat, my only concern with that paragraph, is that I think that barn door has opened and I think the horse ran away long time ago. I think in terms of this national tide to legalization, there’s a tide that is coming. The real question is can anything stop it? And that’s where some recent developments really ought to have our attention.
As I pointed out, when you’re looking at the legalization of marijuana, you’re talking about another one of those cultural U-turns – moral U-turns. You’re looking at something that was clearly condemned that is now being celebrated; and the celebrated in this case were marijuana laws that are now being condemned. And you’re also looking at the fact that cultural momentum is coming up fast on the issue of this legalization. You’ll also note exactly how it’s phrased: ‘recreational marijuana for adults.’ But hold that thought for just a moment because here are the two things need to keep in mind. Just a few days ago, I reported that the Washington Post editorial board came out against the measure in DC, that proposal in the District of Columbia, to legalize marijuana. The editors of the Washington Post, one most liberal newspapers in the United States, came out and said ‘it’s just too dangerous, there are too many things to be concerned about.’ And one of the things they mentioned explicitly was the fact that the states that have legalized marijuana have found it virtually impossible to keep it out of the hands of teenagers.
But now something else has developed and this maybe even more interesting. The Financial Times of London now reports that the governor of Colorado, one of those two states that two years ago legalized marijuana, is now warning other states not to follow the example of his own state. Barney Jopson writing for the Financial Times from Denver writes,
“The governor of Colorado, which pioneered the legalisation of cannabis in the US, has warned policy makers elsewhere that it would be ‘reckless’ to follow in his state’s footsteps in a grab for new tax revenues.”
Really interesting; that’s why so many of these states say they want to legalize marijuana, it’s because they want to regulate its sale and they want to gain tax revenue. And many people have been pointing to the 40+ million dollars added to the tax coffers of Colorado as evidence of why there states should do the very same. And that’s why what Gov. Hickenlooper has to say in the Financial Times looms as hugely important, because embedded in this article is the fact that indeed the state of Colorado has collected about $40 million in tax revenue from the sale of cannabis; from the sale of marijuana. And where those tax revenues gone? Well, as the Financial Times reports, they have gone to the regulation of marijuana, the enforcement of marijuana laws, education and treatment having to do with marijuana. In other words, all this tax revenue has gone right out the window – it’s gone up in smoke because it’s been spent by the state trying to limit the damage done by the very legalization of marijuana that promised all this tax revenue income.
This stands as a true parable of our age. Here you have states saying, ‘look at all the income, we’re missing that income’. They’re not telling their own residents all that income is going up in smoke paying for the damage done by the legislation itself or at least by the mechanics of trying to make the legislation work; regulating the sale of marijuana, trying to keep it out of the hands of teenagers – ineffectively as we’ve noted – and doing all the things that had to be done in the aftermath of legalizing so-called ‘recreational marijuana’ because inevitably it causes all kinds of problems someone’s going to have to pay for and the state is going to pay for it with very money it tries to get by gaining revenue by the sale of the same product.
In an interview with the Financial Times Gov. Hickenlooper voiced his concern about the rest of Colorado’s experiment posed to the health of the public, especially to teenagers. He advised governors and other states to, “go slowly with legalization.” He said,
“The counsel I offer is that you don’t lose anything by waiting a couple of years. And to try and do this in pursuit of tax revenues, now that is reckless,”
Well now who might be offended by the Gov. of Colorado saying that the decision by voters to legalize marijuana was reckless? Well it turns out some of the people of Colorado got angry at their governor – who by the way is running for reelection in a very tight race – for saying that they had acted recklessly. At that point Gov. Hickenlooper decided he better backtrack; he said,
“I think that was the wrong word. I think [legalization] posed great risk. ‘Reckless’ I think was disrespectful for the voters,”
Well that’s what he has to say because he’s running for reelection, but it’s not what we have to say – reckless was the right word all along.
4) Cultural influences creating and influencing celebration of Halloween crucial to consider
Finally today is that day known as Halloween and one of most interesting things about American society is how big a holiday Halloween has become. As a matter fact Americans will spend money on Halloween ranking it second only to Christmas; Halloween now surpasses Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and every other holiday except Christmas itself. Shoppers are now expected to spend over $1 billion on costumes – actually over $2 billion, almost $3 billion, and adults are going to spend more on their costumes then parents will spend on costumes for their children. And then there’s this number $350 million, let me repeat it, $350 million – that’s how much the National Retail Federation thinks will be spent this year on holiday Halloween costumes or animals – mostly dogs.
The average shopper in America is expected to spend $77.52 on Halloween – that’s the average keep in mind – that the 63% increase since 2005. And the spending issue is traced by consumer sales points to the looming importance of Halloween in the larger cultural meaning of America. For instance, one of the persons looking at it from a business side, that’s Kathy Grannis of the National Retail Federation, said,
“There was a time when mom and dad simply put their child in a costume and helped them trick-or-treat and now, parents are wearing their own costumes and throwing parties; They’re dressing as their favorite ‘Breaking Bad’ or ‘Game of Thrones’ characters.”
She goes on to say however that its $350 million expected to be spent for “getups for our furry sidekicks this year.” We have become a society that is spending $350 million a year on Halloween costumes for our pets.
And speaking of those costumes for adults, Juliet Lapidos, writing at Slate.com, points out that many an increasing number of these costumes have become sexually explicit. And she’s very clear writing at Slate.com that the reason for that is that these costumes became sexually explicit in the Greenwich Village culture in the 1970s in New York City, primarily amongst the homosexual population. It was gay culture that produced the sexualization of Halloween, she writes, and specifically with the kind of acting out and costuming that led to these very highly sexualized and eroticized costumes. One historian of Halloween, Lesley Bannatyne, said that Halloween is what she called a “rogue” holiday, not connected to an historical person or to a historical event so celebrants are free to express whatever’s in the air at the particular moment. And right now, according to Juliet Lapidos reporting in terms of the culture, what’s happening right now is the eroticization, the sexualization of Halloween especially among adults. And it’s actually important to know where that emerged from; in that Greenwich Village culture of the 1970s in New York City – which is also was the development of an openly gay culture in America’s largest metropolitan area.
At my website at AlbertMohler.com I reposted an article I had written entitled “Christianity and the Dark Side—What about Halloween?” I wrote the article as a concerned Christian simply because so many Christians are unaware of the background of Halloween in terms of its historic rootage and there are unaware of what many the symbols and cultural aspects of Halloween mean even now. Lots of Christian parents are asking the question, ‘Should I allow my children to trick-or-treat? Is it okay to have a Halloween party?’ Those are big issues and it reminds us that the Christian worldview actually addresses all these issues and that we as Christians are morally and biblically obligated to make our response to these questions on the basis of biblical truth and sound Christian thinking.
One of the things we need to keep in mind is that there is a limitation to how a holiday can be separated from its roots. And when it comes to Halloween, the rootage is actually very easy to document. In my article, “Christianity and the Dark Side” you’ll find where I go to historical sources and historical authorities to point out the rootage of Halloween in terms of pagan ritual and pagan worship. And the reason why that’s so important now is because so much of it actually does continue, even if a greatly modified an almost cartoonish form. But there’s another aspect of this that’s really, really interesting and this is addressed in an article published recently about why Americans shouldn’t fear Halloween. In this article is actually a reason to fear it. Jack Santino writing for the Washington Post last week writes,
“Yes, devils remain a symbol of Halloween — and you may see a few of them scurrying from door to door. But Halloween is a time when people project their fears in a safe and playful way.
Listen carefully to the last sentence,
“When else will you see images of death on suburban lawns?”
You see in writing this article Mr. Santino seems to think that finding death symbolized in our front yards is something that is just a safe expression of our human imagination. But from a Christian worldview perspective it’s something else, it’s a certain embrace of death or a laughing at death – it’s a superficial mockery or even in many cases an almost nihilistic embrace of death. None of those are compatible with biblical Christianity. Now this may have absolutely nothing to do with the question about your little ones going around as cowboys and Indians or princesses on Halloween going trick-or-treating, then again it might have a great deal to do with it, this is where Christian parents need use biblical discernment. And that’s why I’ve reposted my article on Halloween, perhaps to help you to think through these issues. But it does seem important that at least some of the people trying to defend Halloween also serve to remind us of why many of us have concerns.
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.
This past week on the campus of Southern Seminary, we had the 2014 Expositors Summit. Joining me as preachers were H.B. Charles Jr., pastor of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville, FL and Dr. John MacArthur, host of Grace to You and pastor teacher at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. I was thrilled to have those guest and friends with me, we preached the Summit together and you can find those messages in video and audio online at sbts.edu. Thanks again for listening; I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.
The Briefing 10-31-14
1) Apple CEO proclaims homosexuality a divine gift, revealing extent of cultural shift on issue
Tim Cook Speaks Up, Bloomberg Businessweek (Tim Cook)
2) Taiwan gay pride march displays importance of theological beliefs to culture’s morality
Taiwan Shines as Beacon for Gays in Asia, New York Times (Andrew Jacobs)
3) Colorado governor warns rapid legalization of marijuana as too costly
For Marijuana, a Second Wave of Votes to Legalize, New York Times (Kirk Johnson)
Go slow on pot, says Colorado governor, Financial Times (Barney Jopson)
4) Cultural influences creating and influencing celebration of Halloween crucial to consider
Shoppers to spend $350 on Halloween costumes this year – for their pets, Washington Post (Sarah Halzack)
When Did Halloween Get So Tawdry?, Slate (Juliet Lapidos)
Christianity and the Dark Side—What about Halloween?, AlbertMohler.com (Albert Mohler)
Five myths about Halloween, Washington Post (Jack Santino)
October 30, 2014
Halloween and the Dark Side — What Should Christians Think?
Over a hundred years ago, the great Dutch theologian Hermann Bavinck predicted that the 20th century would “witness a gigantic conflict of spirits.” His prediction turned out to be an understatement, and this great conflict continues into the 21st century.
The issue of Halloween presses itself annually upon the Christian conscience. Acutely aware of dangers new and old, many Christian parents choose to withdraw their children from the holiday altogether. Others choose to follow a strategic battle plan for engagement with the holiday. Still others have gone further, seeking to convert Halloween into an evangelistic opportunity. Is Halloween really that significant?
Well, Halloween is a big deal in the marketplace. Halloween is surpassed only by Christmas in terms of economic activity. According to David J. Skal, “Precise figures are difficult to determine, but the annual economic impact of Halloween is now somewhere between 4 billion and 6 billion dollars depending on the number and kinds of industries one includes in the calculations.”
Furthermore, historian Nicholas Rogers claims that “Halloween is currently the second most important party night in North America. In terms of its retail potential, it is second only to Christmas. This commercialism fortifies its significance as a time of public license, a custom-designed opportunity to have a blast. Regardless of its spiritual complications, Halloween is big business.”
Rogers and Skal have each produced books dealing with the origin and significance of Halloween. Nicholas Rogers is author of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Professor of History at York University in Canada, Rogers has written a celebration of Halloween as a transgressive holiday that allows the bizarre and elements from the dark side to enter the mainstream. Skal, a specialist on the culture of Hollywood, has written Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween. Skal’s approach is more dispassionate and focused on entertainment, looking at the cultural impact of Halloween on the rise of horror movies and the nation’s fascination with violence.
The pagan roots of Halloween are well documented. The holiday is rooted in the Celtic festival of Samhain, which came at summer’s end. As Rogers explains, “Paired with the feast of Beltane, which celebrated the life-generating powers of the sun, Samhain beckoned to winter and the dark nights ahead.” Scholars dispute whether Samhain was celebrated as a festival of the dead, but the pagan roots of the festival are indisputable. Questions of human and animal sacrifices and various occultic sexual practices continue as issues of debate, but the reality of the celebration as an occultic festival focused on the changing of seasons undoubtedly involved practices pointing to winter as a season of death.
As Rogers comments: “In fact, the pagan origins of Halloween generally flow not from this sacrificial evidence, but from a different set of symbolic practices. These revolve around the notion of Samhain as a festival of the dead and as a time of supernatural intensity heralding the onset of winter.
How should Christians respond to this pagan background? Harold L. Myra of Christianity Today argues that these pagan roots were well known to Christians of the past. “More than a thousand years ago Christians confronted pagan rites appeasing the lord of death and evil spirits. Halloween’s unsavory beginnings preceded Christ’s birth when the druids, in what is now Britain and France, observed the end of summer with sacrifices to the gods. It was the beginning of the Celtic year and they believed Samhain, the lord of death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans, who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves.”
Thus, the custom of wearing costumes, especially costumes imitating evil spirits, is rooted in the Celtic pagan culture. As Myra summarizes, “Most of our Halloween practices can be traced back to the old pagan rites and superstitions.”
The complications of Halloween go far beyond its pagan roots, however. In modern culture, Halloween has become not only a commercial holiday, but a season of cultural fascination with evil and the demonic. Even as the society has pressed the limits on issues such as sexuality, the culture’s confrontation with the “dark side” has also pushed far beyond boundaries honored in the past.
As David J. Skal makes clear, the modern concept of Halloween is inseparable from the portrayal of the holiday presented by Hollywood. As Skal comments, “The Halloween machine turns the world upside down. One’s identity can be discarded with impunity. Men dress as women, and vise versa. Authority can be mocked and circumvented, and, most important, graves open and the departed return.”
This is the kind of material that keeps Hollywood in business. “Few holidays have a cinematic potential that equals Halloween’s,” comments Skal. “Visually, the subject is unparalleled, if only considered in terms of costume design and art direction. Dramatically, Halloween’s ancient roots evoke dark and melodramatic themes, ripe for transformation into film’s language of shadow and light.”
But television’s “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” (which debuted in 1966) has given way to Hollywood’s “Halloween” series and the rise of violent “slasher” films. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff have been replaced by Michael Myers and Freddy Kruger.
This fascination with the occult comes as America has been sliding into post-Christian secularism. While the courts remove all theistic references from America’s public square, the void is being filled with a pervasive fascination with evil, paganism, and new forms of occultism.
In addition to all this, Halloween has become downright dangerous in many neighborhoods. Scares about razor blades hidden in apples and poisoned candy have spread across the nation in recurring cycles. For most parents, the greater fear is the encounter with occultic symbols and the society’s fascination with moral darkness.
For this reason, many families withdraw from the holiday completely. Their children do not go trick-or-treating, they wear no costumes, and attend no parties related to the holiday. Some churches have organized alternative festivals, capitalizing on the holiday opportunity, but turning the event away from pagan roots and the fascination with evil spirits. For others, the holiday presents no special challenges at all.
These Christians argue that the pagan roots of Halloween are no more significant than the pagan origins of Christmas and other church festivals. Without doubt, the church has progressively Christianized the calendar, seizing secular and pagan holidays as opportunities for Christian witness and celebration. Anderson M. Rearick, III argues that Christians should not surrender the holiday. As he relates, “I am reluctant to give up what was one of the highlights of my childhood calendar to the Great Imposter and Chief of Liars for no reason except that some of his servants claim it as his.”
Nevertheless, the issue is a bit more complicated than that. While affirming that make-believe and imagination are part and parcel of God’s gift of imagination, Christians should still be very concerned about the focus of that imagination and creativity. Arguing against Halloween is not equivalent to arguing against Christmas. The old church festival of “All Hallow’s Eve” is by no means as universally understood among Christians as the celebration of the incarnation at Christmas.
Christian parents should make careful decisions based on a biblically-informed Christian conscience. Some Halloween practices are clearly out of bounds, others may be strategically transformed, but this takes hard work and may meet with mixed success.
The coming of Halloween is a good time for Christians to remember that evil spirits are real and that the Devil will seize every opportunity to trumpet his own celebrity. Perhaps the best response to the Devil at Halloween is that offered by Martin Luther, the great Reformer: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him for he cannot bear scorn.”
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther began the Reformation with a declaration that the church must be recalled to the authority of God’s Word and the purity of biblical doctrine. With this in mind, the best Christian response to Halloween might be to scorn the Devil and then pray for the Reformation of Christ’s church on earth. Let’s put the dark side on the defensive.
I am always glad to hear from readers. Just write me at mail@albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler
For more information on Southern Seminary, visit SBTS.edu and for more information on Boyce College, visit BoyceCollege.com.
Transcript: The Briefing 10-30-14
The Briefing
October 30, 2014
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Thursday, October 30, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Houston withdrawal of sermon subpoenas does not negate danger subpoenas represented
Houston Mayor Annise Parker announced yesterday that the subpoenas issued to five evangelical preachers would be rescinded, the legal term is withdrawn. As the Houston Chronicle reports, the city of Houston will withdraw its controversial subpoenas of five pastors tied to a lawsuit over the city’s equal rights ordinance. Mayor Annise Parker announced that yesterday at a news conference. The decision according to the Chronicle comes amid a national firestorm over the subpoenas which had prompted outrage amongst Christian conservatives. Parker last week had left the subpoenas in place with a narrower wording, removing any mention of sermons. However, the Mayor also admitted that the sermons were not excluded and in so far as they addressed the issues of the subpoena, they were included in the demand for information as well.
In her press conference yesterday the mayor said,
“The move is in the best interest of Houston and is not an admission that the requests were in any way illegal or intruded on religious liberties.”
That’s one of those statements that lead you to scratch your head and say, ‘well, then why did you do it?’ But the mayor had more to say,
“I didn’t do this to satisfy them [speaking of the pastors]. I did it because it was not serving Houston.”
Now the background of this is really important. The mayor and the city council narrowly pushed through a gay-rights ordinance that included one specific provision that said that transgendered persons in public facilities could use whatever restroom they demanded and that if they were not accommodated they could then file suit or file charges. Those who are in the city of Houston upset about that ordinance tried to use the constitutional means of a citizen recall; they collected petitions of needed signatures in order to get the issue before voters by referendum. But after collecting more than enough, indeed multiples of enough of those signatures, they then had the effort thwarted by the fact that Houston city attorney called most of those signatures invalid and thus turn back the referendum attempt. The lawsuit currently pending is from citizens in Houston suing the city government for that ruling; and that’s what led to the subpoenas that led to the current controversy.
But the controversy isn’t going to go away. As the Houston Chronicle reported,
“[Mayor] Parker said [yesterday] she was persuaded, in part, by the demeanor of the clergymen she met with Tuesday, saying they were concerned not about the ordinance or politics but about the subpoenas’ impact on the ongoing national discussion of religious freedoms.”
Now as a matter fact, subsequent to this, some of those pastors did say they had discussed the religious liberty issues with the mayor but they did not say what, she insinuated here, and that is that they weren’t primarily concerned in the first place about the ordinance itself. The Mayor went on in a somewhat confusing statement saying,
“That was the most persuasive argument, because to me it was, ‘What is the goal of the subpoenas?’ The goal of the subpoenas is to defend against a lawsuit and not to provoke a public debate. I don’t want to have a national debate about freedom of religion when my whole purpose is to defend a strong and wonderful and appropriate city ordinance against local attack. And by taking this step today we remove that discussion about freedom of religion,”
Well I think she sincerely hope so. I think by this action she hopes she can get out of the mess she created for herself and her city on the issue of religious liberty. Well I don’t think the Mayor’s hope is going to be fulfilled; several reasons for that. First of all, the fact that the subpoenas were later withdrawn doesn’t remove at all the fact that they were at first issued. And furthermore they weren’t just issued by attorneys working on behalf of the mayor and the city; they were defended by the mayor and the city attorney. This is the same mayor who said about the subpoenas that sermons are – to use her very words – “fair game.” This is the same city attorney who, in a very public statement, said if these preachers were talking by issues he deemed political, then their own content was not going to be protected – their own speech was not going to be protected.
But let’s remember why the mayor rescinded the subpoenas; she has said so in her own words: she did so because the issue had become a vast controversy nationwide and even internationally over religious liberty. She said that wasn’t the reason the subpoenas were issued. But here’s the problem: the subpoenas were issued to pastors for materials that were germane to their pastoral ministry. Those are the only subpoenas that are here in question and the only reason those subpoenas were ever issued was to get the material that the subpoenas demanded. There’s no way the mayor can get out of the argument she made herself.
Christians looking at the story should surely be glad that the subpoenas were withdrawn. Just as a fact, that’s a very good fact. But we can’t forget that the subpoenas were already issued and we can’t ignore the fact that this represents a form of intimidation not only against the pastors whose sermons were first subpoenaed but to any preacher who will teach or preach on the terrain that some civic official will call political. And in this case, what city officials were deeming political was what was opposed to their own political agenda – plain and simple.
Nathan Koppel and Tamara Audi reporting for the Wall Street Journal reported,
“Christian leaders said the mayor’s decision doesn’t signal an end of threats to religious freedom.”
That’s profoundly true. The Wall Street Journal called me and in the next sentence of that paragraph quotes me as saying,
“This is a real warning shot showing how close we are to real infringement on religious liberty. A very clear signal has been sent, and we will have to watch this and other situations closely.”
I stand by that statement, a very clear signal has been sent. We’re going to have to watch this situation and others very, very closely. And we have to remember that this does indeed underline just how close to us very real infringements and threats to religious freedom actually stand. It is undeniably a news story that these subpoenas were withdrawn, but that pales over against the significance of the news story that the subpoenas were ever issued.
2) Article against hell displays its significance for entire biblical worldview
Many years ago my hometown newspaper, that the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, ran a church ad. The church had placed both the morning and evening services advertise (the morning service above the evening service). The morning service sermon title was “What Is Hell Like?” The wording for the evening service, “Come Hear Our New Organist.” Well that ad led to no shortage of laughter in South Florida but now Time magazine is out with a headline new story that isn’t a laughing matter at all – the headline, “What Christianity Without Hell Looks Like.” The article is written by John Shore, again it’s published at Time, and he begins the article by writing,
“The idea that the Bible declares hell a real and literal place is no more valid than…”
Let me interrupt him here and say, what would you expect to come next? Well here is what comes next.
“The idea that the Bible declares hell a real and literal place is no more valid than the toxic lie that the Bible condemns homosexuality.”
That’s his first line. It’s really important. One of the things that Christians need constantly to keep in mind is that the way we approach the Scripture shows up not just in one question but in all questions. And inevitably when you compromise Scripture ,when you come up with a revisionist hermeneutic (that is a method of interpreting Scripture) that allows you to say the Scripture doesn’t mean what it apparently does mean, then you won’t apply that to one area of life, you’ll apply that to many.
So at the very beginning of this article John Shore announces – he advertises – his own hermeneutic by denying the reality of hell as a real and literal place by saying it’s no more valid than what he calls the toxic lie that the Bible condemns homosexuality. Any faithful reading of Scripture reveals that every time same-sex acts or same-sex relationships are referenced, they are condemned and there’s no way to be faithful to the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture, no way to be faithful to the trustworthiness and the truthfulness of Scripture, and to deny that fact. But there are those who’ve been trying to get around the plain truth and the plain reading of Scripture for any number of years on other issues, those issues preceded same-sex acts and homosexuality, but that’s the key issue on the front of our cultural conversation right now and that’s the key issue of biblical interpretation in many circles in the present. And that’s what makes a story really interesting, because even though he thinks he’s writing about hell, he’s actually writing about hermeneutics – that is, the science or the discipline of interpreting the Scripture.
Recall that what he says here is that the idea of a real and literal hell is no more biblical than the idea of the condemnation of homosexuality – but he goes on. He writes,
“Yet the idea that hell is real persists. Why?[He asks. He answers,] Because over the centuries those in positions of power within the institutions of Christianity have methodically, relentlessly, and with great art used the doctrine of hell to exploit the innate fear of death that is harbored by one and all.”
He goes on to say,
“Show me a Christian terrified of hell, and I’ll show you a Christian ready to pay good money for the assurance that he is not going there.”
Well let’s just back away for a moment and say, let’s look at that last sentence. He says, “Show me a Christian terrified of hell, and I’ll show you a Christian ready to pay good money for the assurance that he is not going there.” Well, let me tell you – if you find a Christian terrified of hell, that’s a Christian who doesn’t understand Christianity. In other words, a Christian is one who no longer has any need to have fear of hell. A Christian is one who is assured that he or she is now in Christ and thus safe in Christ, never to be plucked out of the Saviors hands, safe from the fire and the threat of hell; safe eternally. But the real argument he’s making here is that hell has been used by those who are in power in the church in order to keep people faithful to Christianity or attract people to Christianity by the fear of hell. But then he raises the question, ‘what would Christianity without hell look like?’ He says, and I quote,
“A Christianity without hell would be literally fearless. [He goes on to say] A Christianity without hell would have nothing to recommend it but the constant and unending love of God. It would allow Christians to point upward to God’s love—but never downward to His/Her wrath.”
He says, and I quote,
“A Christianity without hell would be largely unevangelical, since there would be nothing to save anyone from. A Christianity without hell would trust that God’s loving benevolence towards all people (emphasis on all) extends beyond this life and into the next. Bringing peace about the afterlife, a Christianity without hell would free Christians to fully embrace this life, to heed Christ’s commandment to in this life love our neighbors as we love ourselves. In short, a Christianity without hell would be a fearless, trusting, loving, divinely inspired source of good in the world. And this Christianity would be more biblical [that’s his last argument]—would be truer to not just the words but the very spirit of Christianity—than any Christianity that posits the reality of hell.”
Time magazine has never done us a better service by demonstrating what’s theologically at stake in the doctrine of hell. Some years ago I participated by interview in a cover story in Time magazine, the very same magazine, on the issue of hell. And it’s interesting that we can’t get away from hell; not just believers in terms of our imagination and our knowledge of health, but the secular world actually can’t get away from the notion of hell. Theologically that needs to be explained. Why is it so? The Bible tells us that it so simply because God made us moral creatures, he made every single human being in his image, and a part of being made in his image is that we have an innate knowledge, not only of the Creator, but of the fact that he will judge us. That point is made explicitly in the opening chapter to the book of Romans, Romans 1.
You also have in this gift from Time magazine, a very clear indication of what’s at stake theologically in the doctrine of hell because what he’s calling for here is a Christianity without hell and then he asked honestly what would that Christianity look like. And let’s just consider what he said, ‘a Christianity without hell would look like a religion that points merely to the love of God, never he says, downward to his wrath.’ Well let’s think about that for a moment. Do even secular people really think that they want a God who is only love and never wrath? How would we know what love is unless there is something to which it’s contrasted? How would we know what the gospel is in terms of good news unless there’s bad news over against which it appears to be truly infinitely eternally good? But even secular people who want to say that all they want to believe in is a loving and entirely benevolent God, they don’t want that under all circumstances. Not when they look at the grotesqueness of unspeakable human evil; they don’t want a God who doesn’t judge such things as the Holocaust, as genocide, as child abuse, as ritual murder. They actually do want judgment, they just don’t want judgment on their own sins – which very typically they see to be much less consequential than the sins of those who were involved in such extreme sin – to use the way many secular people try to evaluate relative sinfulness.
He says in short, a Christianity without hell would be fearless, trusting, loving, divinely inspired, as a source of good in the world, and as a way that Christianity would be made better, he says, it would be non-evangelical. His term is actually ‘largely unevangelical.’ Since as he says explicitly, very honestly, there will be nothing to save anyone from. Well then again let’s just look at what’s at stake. So a Christianity without hell – which is what John Shore is calling for – is a Christianity that would actually be Christian only in the sense that there might be some vocabulary left from the Christian tradition and from Scripture because what’s being left behind is not just the doctrine of hell. The point here I want to make emphatically is he really helps us here by demonstrating you can’t just leave hell behind; if you leave hell behind, you’re living a lot else behind. You’re not only rejecting hell, you’re rejecting the wrath of God – which means you’re not only rejecting the wrath of God, you’re rejecting the holiness of God, and you’re rejecting the justice of God. Because as the Bible makes clear, God can’t be just if he allows human sin to go unpunished. No one would consider a judge just who judges the guilty and innocent on exactly the same terms. That’s not justice, that’s not even benevolence.
Furthermore, John Shore also helps us here by saying that a Christianity without hell would have to give up on evangelism which means it gives up on the gospel, there’s no bad news in terms of divine judgment from which the gospel would then be seen as good news in terms of salvation. But he also makes very clear even as he argues the opposite, he says that this Christianity about hell would be more biblical. Well now that’s very interesting, of course it wouldn’t be, but how is he going to reconcile that? Well his next words are abundantly clear and wow, are they clarifying. Because what he say is,
“…this Christianity would be more biblical [he then goes on to say]—would be truer to not just the words but the very spirit of Christianity—than any Christianity that posits the reality of hell.”
Well there you have the real argument because John Shore is here arguing that a Christianity without hell will be more biblical but not when it comes to the words of Scripture but rather to what he calls its spirit. Well there you have it, if somehow you can claim that the message of Scripture is found in its spirit but not in its words, you really had come to the point that you are denying that the Bible is the word of God. You’ve really come to the point that there is no binding authority left, none whatsoever, when it comes to the Scriptures. When you finally reach the point that the only ways to understand the Scripture is to abandon the words, you’ve actually reached the point of hermeneutical nihilism – that is to say you’ve reach the point where your interpretation of Scripture is absolute nothingness, it’s whatever you say it is, there’s no corrective by the actual text of Scripture. And that ought to alert Christians to the fact that when people say we can have Christianity without hell, you need to understand you can’t have it just without hell, a whole lots going to go out with hell – and that includes the character and holiness of God, the justice of God and evangelism, the goodness of the gospel and any coherent reasonable honest interpretation of Scripture.
3) Population control anti-natalism of cultural elite closely tied to eugenics
Shifting to Britain, on Tuesday the Guardian, that’s one of London’s most liberal newspapers and yet a newspaper that is vastly read not in Great Britain but in the United States, that newspaper ran a story entitled, “How to save the planet? Stop having children.” It’s one of those articles that tells us just where the worldview of the age is headed. Frankie Mullin wrote the article. She first quotes Pippa Hayes, age 56, who wrote,
“I was sterilised after the birth of my second son because I believed I had no right to have more than two children – it would have been more than my reproductive share. Humans are tipping the balance with the natural world, to the detriment of both humanity and the other species that share our lovely, finite planet.”
Well it turns out she’s a medical doctor and it turns out that she’s trumpeting this opinion, not only in this article but elsewhere. She feels strongly that medical professionals should – to use the words of the article – “encourage people to have smaller families.”
“Doctors should be promoting replacement number of children; two per couple, one per single parent. We don’t need to do this by coercion, we just need to talk about it.”
Well this is a very interesting argument. It’s one of those arguments that tells us where the worldview of the ages is coming because of this. It tells us of the anti-natalism that is now shaping so much of elite opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. Anti-natalism means anti-babies, it means not having babies is held up as the virtue rather than having them. One of the first things we need to point out is that when that happens in a society, it is embracing what the late Malcom Muggeridge called the great liberal death wish – which is the you can have liberals without having babies. And that’s why he suggested liberalism is never a stable worldview because it doesn’t reproduce itself; not only ideologically but even biologically.
But the most interesting aspect of the comment made by this medical doctor is that she can’t actually mean to be speaking to the people likely to read this article. Why? Because people on both sides of the Atlantic, in North America and in Europe, are basically having children below the replacement rate. The average American family is having children below the replacement rate, so also is the average couple in Europe, so that’s not who she’s really talking about. As a matter fact, later in the article The Guardian concedes that, conceding that in 97 countries the average woman now has fewer than two children, in the United Kingdom (where this article is published), the average couples having 1.7 children. She said the limit should be two, so she’s not talking about those people – who is she talking about?
That’s where you need to see this second aspect of this that’s even more frightening. Because what’s really going on here is the claim that certain people shouldn’t have so many children and that goes back to the fact that the population limitation movement has been historically and is almost always tied to what is called eugenics. The actual agenda is not just about the total number of babies born, but the fact that babies are being born to the wrong people in the wrong places and that’s the real issue. For instance the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger in the United States, was very committed to eugenics. The motto of many in the movement was, ‘more from the fit, less from the unfit’ and that’s an undisguised form of racism. The same thing was true in terms of the same kind of movement in Great Britain. Again eugenics was at the very beginning of the call for contraception and birth control and abortion there in Great Britain as well. And the article becomes pretty clear as it continues that the real issue is that in other parts of the world people are having too many babies.
Finally we need to note the Dr. Hayes said earlier in her comment,
“We don’t need to do this by coercion, we just need to talk about it.”
Well evidently in terms of North America and in Europe, you don’t even need to talk about it because people already are having babies below the replacement rate. And by the way that’s a problem. So she must be talking about somewhere else when she says ‘we don’t need to do this by coercion, we just need to talk about it.’ But here’s the reality, the people who are trying to force this kind of movement elsewhere in the world aren’t just trying to talk about it – they are trying to coerce it. The most coercive form of all is China’s infamous one child only policy that is so coercive it leads to infanticide and forced abortions and sterilization. When you look at this kind of argument, it’s almost never what it first appears to be. It appears to be a very quiet argument based in a consideration merely the number of children and merely in talking about it but as you look at the issue clearer, as this article makes abundantly visible for us, what you’re actually looking at is a form of coercion. And the only way this can ever be regulated is by state action and by coercion. And in the end this just goes to prove how anti- natalist, how anti-baby our society is really going. Because the real problem is we’re not having enough, and here you have an article in The Guardian saying, still saying, we’re having too many or at least some people – those people – are having too many.
4) Geographic clustering of worldview in America evidence of changing landscape of nation
Finally time and again we come back to the reality that geography does have an impact on worldview and communities do tend to sort themselves out in terms of even the spectrum between conservative and liberal. And now The Economist of Great Britain is out with a list of the most conservative and the most liberal cities in the United States; ranking these city’s from those conservative to most liberal. Most conservative all according to The Economist is Mesa, Arizona followed by Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Virginia Beach, Virginia Colorado Springs, Colorado, Jacksonville, Florida, Arlington, Texas, Anaheim, California, Omaha, Nebraska, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Aurora, Colorado. At the other end of the spectrum the most liberal city is San Francisco, California – there’s a shock – followed by Washington, DC the nation’s capital. Then Seattle, Washington, Oakland, California, Boston, Massachusetts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Detroit, Michigan, New York, New York, Buffalo, New York, and Baltimore, Maryland.
You’ll notice some clustering here. New York State tends to have a cluster, California tends to have a cluster of liberal cities, and so also the cluster around Washington, DC – that would include Baltimore, Maryland. And on the conservative side you also have clusters – clusters especially in the great heartland of the country in states like Colorado and Texas and of course Nebraska and Oklahoma. And also interestingly when you’re looking at this report you see that there can be a state with one the most conservative and one most liberal cities in the same state; in this case you can look at Oakland and San Francisco, California on the one hand and Anaheim, California on the other. So even in the same state, a state as vast as California you can have more liberal and more conservative regions. Just look at the representation and House of Representatives and Congress and you’ll see the same thing.
But there’s a final aspect to look at here in terms of worldview and demography. It comes down to this, by every study representation it almost is uniformly true that cities tend to be more liberal than the countryside surrounding them; that the metropolitan environment itself seems to be very conducive toward more liberalizing trends. So that tells you that around these conservative cities, the countryside is probably even more conservative; and around those liberal cities, you can’t count on the people outside those cities being nearly so liberals as the people inside them.
So once again we learn that demography is never just a matter of statistics and studies of maps and graphs, it’s a matter worldview as well. And that really does tell us something about how we come to our worldview and how we maintain them. It turns out that where we live isn’t inconsequential. But that leads to a final question, do we choose where we live so that’s in accordance with our worldview or do we have our worldview shaped by where we live? The answer that is probably a bit of both, but the interesting this: most social scientist say that America is now becoming increasingly clustered by choice, by moving, such that over time before are actually moving to states and regions – even cities – that are closer to their own worldview. So if the demographers know it, intelligent Christians ought to know that as well.
Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
The Briefing 10-30-14
1) Houston withdrawal of sermon subpoenas does not negate danger subpoenas represented
Pastors speak up on city’s decision to drop subpoenas, Houston Chronicle (Mike Morris and Katherine Driessen)
Houston Mayor Tries to Calm Uproar Over Transgender Ordinance, Wall Street Journal (Nathan Koppel and Tamara Audi)
2) Article against hell displays its significance for entire biblical worldview
What Christianity Without Hell Looks Like, TIME (John Shore)
3) Population control anti-natalism of cultural elite closely tied to eugenics
How to save the planet? Stop having children, The Guardian (Frankie Mullin)
4) Geographic clustering of worldview in America evidence of changing landscape of nation
The 10 most conservative (and liberal) cities in America, Salon (Allegra Kirkland)
Urban ideologies, The Economist
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