R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 347

Transcript: The Briefing 09-04-14

The Briefing

 

September 4, 2014

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

 

It’s Thursday, September 4, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Obama draws clear red line against Russia’s aggressive ambitions

Standing and speaking in Tallinn, Estonia, the President of the United States spoke not only for the United States but also for NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, when he declared, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

 

It was not the government in Kiev that destabilized eastern Ukraine; it’s been the pro-Russian separatists who are encouraged by Russia, financed by Russia, trained by Russia, supplied by Russia and armed by Russia,

 

The background of this is itself very interesting. President Obama has found himself being criticized in terms of ineptitude and caution in foreign-policy, not only by his more conservative Republican critics but also now by an increasing number of voices from within his own party – and even some within the Pentagon and his own administration. Speaking just a few days ago, Dianne Feinstein, the California Senator, a prominent Democrat who is herself the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described President Obama as

 

Very cautious — maybe in this instance too cautious

 

That’s been a rather mild criticism of the President, many have voiced even stronger criticisms and the President now appears to be gaining at least some voice in terms of drawing a line in the sand that is going to be very difficult to ignore. The President drew what he called a red line on Syria, a matter of about a year ago, and yet he didn’t stand by his own line; Bashar al-Assad  crossed it, and not only that, it has been crossed by many others thereafter.

 

But standing in Tallinn, Estonia, the President made comments that ought to have our attention. The big question, of course, is whether it has the attention of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Intelligent Christians trying to understand this will want to get a couple of facts straight. Number one, President Obama was speaking at a NATO meeting in Tallinn, Estonia – Estonia is one of the three breakaway Baltic Republics that left the Soviet Union in its crackup in the early 1990s. And of these particular countries, one thing has been absolutely certain – Russia has never been satisfied with the fact that they left the former Soviet Union. Just as Vladimir Putin, in terms of his vision of greater Russia, has looked to Ukraine with a sense of very greedy ambition, the same fear is now upon the leaders of the Baltic nations that they may well be next. But we need to understand a very crucial distinction, the three Baltic republics – not only Estonia, but also Latvia and Lithuania – all three of them are now member states of NATO – Ukraine is not.

 

Many of us are old enough to remember when the world was divided during the Cold War between two great power blocks, as they were known – on the one hand the Soviet Union and its allies known as the Warsaw Pact and on the other hand, the United States and its allies known as NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But NATO still continues to exist and it exists for good reason. Many people have felt that NATO had fallen into a certain sort of disuse, or perhaps even irrelevancy, as the Cold War was understood to come to an end. But if anything is come to light in recent years and months it is this – the reason for NATO’s existence still continues to persist, and it persists because of the persistence of those who would threaten freedom; in this case the enemy of freedom and democracy and self-determination is an old enemy of those things, and that is Russia.

 

Russia, in this case, are turning not only to the kind of autocracy that was represented by Soviet communism in the 20th century, but also by old-style Russian autocracy that goes back to the imperialistic ambitions of the czars. Speaking to fellow NATO leaders in Tallinn, Estonia, President Obama yesterday said,

 

An attack on one is an attack on all, and so if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, ‘Who’ll come to help?’ you’ll know the answer: the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America.

 

Now there are red lines and there are red lines; the red line that President Obama drew months ago in Syria was one that could easily be overcome and the President, at least hoped, easily forgotten. This is not one of those lines. The President here has drawn a line in the sand that is one of those lines that is indelible. When the President of the United States says to the people of Estonia, when you ask who will come to help, and the answer comes with these words

 

You’ll know the answer: the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America.

 

Something is happening, and that something is the very real threat of war.

 

On Tuesday in this program we asked the question, if a world war was on the near horizon, would we see it coming? Well if the answer to that is yes, this is one of the signs we would expect to see. We would expect to see the President of the United States, pressed against the forces of reality, to have to say words no President wants to state. To declare, for the entire world to hear, that if one of these states, Estonia Latvia and Lithuania, is invaded, not only will NATO respond in terms of economic sanctions but as he said the Armed Forces of the United States of America. President Obama, compared to most recent inhabitants of the Oval Office, has been particularly reluctant to use this kind of language. And now, as the last two years of his administration, his time in office looms before him, he finds himself in a position he did not seek – and yet, it is a position he cannot now avoid.

 

This point was made graphically clear in an editorial that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. It’s one of those editorials that should go down in history for being well timed. Because the editorial is entitled “Deterring a European War;” we need to note that title very carefully – this isn’t about calling for a European war, nor merely warning about the possibility of a European war, it is about the logic and the argument of deterring a European war. As the editors write,

 

This week’s NATO summit in Wales is being billed as one of the most important in its 65-year history, and with good reason. The Atlantic alliance needs to prove it is serious about deterring the no longer unthinkable prospect of another major war in Europe.

 

 

And as they went on to say,

 

Lest you think we overstate, on Monday the Italian newspaper La Repubblica quoted Vladimir Putin telling European Commission President José Manuel Barroso that “if I want, I can take Kiev in two weeks”—a statement the Kremlin did not deny…Mr. Putin is talking openly about “New Russia,” with specific mention of the cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine as well as Odessa on the Black Sea.

 

Well the editors of the Wall Street Journal are getting right to the heart of the matter. Going back to the end of the 1930s, one of the things we now see very clearly in retrospect is that Adolf Hitler announced exactly what he was going to do. And yet, most people, many people, tried their very best to believe he didn’t mean it. When it comes to Vladimir Putin, just ask the people in Crimea if he meant what he said. And now when he holds up a map, featuring a country the he invented out of thin air, Novorossiya, what we’re looking at is a threat – a threat made openly, and a threat made more blatantly than many people could have even imagined when he told the leader of the European commission, ‘if I want to take Kiev, I can take it in two weeks.’

 

That’s a statement that goes beyond most of the comments made by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s. The words written by the editors of the Wall Street Journal deserve very close attention when they continue to write, “Wars happen when aggressors detect the lack of will to stop them.”

 

The editors went on to say that this was the case in 2008 after Russia invaded Georgia; when NATO warned that Ukraine, which has been pushing Russia to move its Black Sea Fleet headquarters, could be next. The editorial in the Wall Street Journal demands our attention also because of the moral and historical clarity of a couple of the things that are clearly cited within this essay. In the first place, the editors write,

 

Wars happen when aggressors detect the lack of will to stop them.

 

The history of the 20th century, taken as if it were the only history we know, would make that point graphically and clearly. But then they end the editorial with these words and I quote,

 

 

The temptation of democracies is to believe that autocrats treasure peace and stability as much as we do. Europeans in particular want to believe that their postwar institutions and economic integration have ended their violent history. But autocrats often prosper from disorder, and they need foreign enemies to feed domestic nationalism. This describes Russia under Mr. Putin, who is Europe’s new Bonaparte. His goal is to break NATO, and he’ll succeed unless the alliance’s leaders respond forcefully to his threat.

 

One of the challenges faced by anyone who speaks about world affairs is the fact that many people, in particular many Americans, have a limited attention span for foreign-policy. But if that attention span is short, that’s a part of the problem. And even if it’s short, it better be directed to this problem and directed very fast.

2) Federal judge breaks trend by upholding Louisiana same-sex marriage ban

Shifting back to the United States, a federal judge in Louisiana yesterday upheld that state’s ban on same-sex marriage. This ended a run of about 20 straight successes for the proponents of same-sex marriage in federal courts since the United States Supreme Court handed down its Windsor decision in 2013. Ryan Reilly reporting for the Huffington Post writes,

 

Bucking a nationwide trend, a federal judge in Louisiana upheld a state ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, writing that “any right to same-sex marriage is not yet so entrenched as to be fundamental” [he also pointed out] that gay marriage was “inconceivable until very recently.”

 

This judge may find that his decision, which does end 20 decisions in the opposite direction in the federal courts since 2013, will be overturned. It might be, at either the appellate court level or by the United States Supreme Court, but in any event, he deserves credit for making a very serious argument. In this case, this federal judge has had the courage to point out, that even if some court were to find that there is a right to same-sex marriage, it would not be a right described in the law as fundamental – so fundamental as to trump every other issue in the law. Furthermore, as he writes, if it is a right, it has been, as he writes, inconceivable until very recently. That’s an important piece of moral clarity brought to this, often unclear, issue when it comes to the court’s deliberations. This judge, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, wrote and I quote,

“The Court is persuaded that a meaning of what is marriage that has endured in history for thousands of years, and prevails in a majority of states today, is not universally irrational on the constitutional grid,”

That is an extremely important sentence. Here you have a federal district judge who points out, that even right now, in the month of September in the year 2014, a majority of states in the United States of America by democratic processes have bans, either in the law or in their state constitutions, against same-sex marriage. And thus as he writes, it’s not, to use his words, universally irrational on the constitutional grid; these states, acting in a way that they believed was constitutional took an action that they intended to serve to protect marriage. Furthermore in his decision, the judge says that he “hesitates with the notion that this state’s choice could only be inspired by hate and intolerance.”

 

That’s a response directly back to the Windsor decision, which also points back to another decision 10 years earlier in the case Lawrence v. Texas, in which the same Supreme Court Justice wrote the majority opinion, in both cases, it was Justice Anthony Kennedy when he pointed out that this kind of law had to be rooted, in his judgment, in the fact that there are some animus against gay Americans. This judge said that isn’t at all apparent in the actual legislative and political history of the ban on same-sex marriage in the state of Louisiana. Instead he says, Louisiana

 

Has legitimate interest whether obsolete in the opinion of some, or not in the opinion of others, in linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents.

 

Again a very important sentence, because just imagine the moral courage that this judge brought to that statement. He declared, after making clear the state is not acting irrationally in defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, by coming back to the fact that the legitimate interest of the state is, to use his words,

 

In linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents.

 

In other words, asserting that it does make a difference as to whether or not the family is defined as having both a mother and a father. That is a very important statement, and it’s a statement that no previous generation, or any previous culture, would’ve found, in any way, controversial to the very least.

 

A couple of things are going to be immediately interesting, the state of this judge’s decision, as undoubtedly the case is appealed to the US appellate court and eventually upon appeal probably to the United States Supreme Court, the only real question with the Supreme Court is which one of these cases it decides to take. That will frame the issue actually going into the court’s deliberations, expected to be this fall, within eventual decision by the U.S. Supreme Court likely to come early next summer.

 

But the second thing that’s going to be very interesting is to see how the national press deals with this judge’s decision. This does break a string of over 20 decisions in the federal courts thus far since Windsor. And it does break it in a very decisive way because this judge did not merely rule that the state of Louisiana’s ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional, he gave an argument for why it should be understood as constitutional, and a legitimate state interest, and one that recognizes the needs of children – to live in an intact family with their biological parents, otherwise known as a mother and a father. The very fact that that judge’s ruling will be considered wrong by some, controversial by many, and perhaps even shaky in terms of future appeals by most, that just points to the reality of the moral rebellion we are now experiencing, and the scale of the moral revolution that is now utterly reshaping the entire world around us.

3) Osteens’ prosperity cannot be preached in Mosul, should not be preached in Houston

Yesterday on my website at Albert Mohler.com I posted an article entitled “The Osteen Predicament — Mere Happiness Cannot Bear the Weight of the Gospel.” My essay was prompted by controversy over comments made by Victoria Osteen, the wife of Houston megachurch pastor Joel Osteen – she’s also identified, by the ways, as one of the pastors of the church – when she stated in terms of the video that’s been circulating on the Internet and I quote,

 

 

I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God–I mean, that’s one way to look at it–we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we are happy. . . . That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. . . .”

 

 

She continued by saying,

 

So, I want you to know this morning — Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. . . . When you come to church, when you worship him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?”

 

As you might expect, the congregation responded with a very loud “amen,” and in that amen what you heard was the entire theological logic of the Bible turned absolutely upside down – telling us that the purpose of our living is not about God, and the ultimate purpose of life is not the glory of God, but rather our own happiness, which is, Victoria Osteen says: God’s greatest happiness as well, if we’re just happy, he will be happy.

 

There are monumental problems with this argument and most of you have figured that out a long time ago. The first problem is the word ‘happiness’ simply doesn’t even work here. The word ‘happiness’ is an emotive state used by most people in the United States in terms of the English language, and certainly that’s exactly what Victoria Osteen was talking about. The kind of happiness the she pointed to quite explicitly was not the joy that the Puritans and Reformers spoke about, nor the joy that the psalmist will refer to, but rather happiness as an emotional state. And the happiness that she’s talking about is one that she mentioned explicitly in the furtherance of her message, and that was a message about material benefits, about promotions at work, about the health and wealth that she claims – along with her husband Joel – are promised to believers. What we’re looking at here is a revival of the persistent old American heresy known as prosperity theology.

 

The Prosperity Theology movement, or the prosperity gospel, immerged out of Pentecostalism – especially in the first decades of the 20th century. And it was directly addressed to those who were identified at that time as the dispossessed, the very poor, those who had difficulty even having a roof over their heads and food to feed their families. In the context of that kind of poverty, the early proponents of the prosperity theology, or the word of faith movement, suggested that what God wants for all people is to bless them with innumerable, or to use Joel’s phrase: immeasurable blessings, including the blessings of health, of wealth, of prosperity – and it was a message that sold. It’s also a message that fails every conceivable test, it fails the biblical test, not only is that not taught in Scripture, it’s untaught in Scripture. Not only does it fail the biblical test, it fails the theological test, it isn’t compatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is, in contrast, a false gospel. It sits alongside the gospel as that which draws people away from the cross and resurrection of Christ, and certainly away from the biblical summons to faith in Christ and repentance toward God for our sins.

 

Furthermore, it’s the kind of message that very clearly fails a practical test; because those who preached the health and wealth gospel, well to be honest, many of them have become wealthy – but those who follow the gospel generally, have not. And when it comes to health, well even the proponents of prosperity theology tend to die right on time; afflicted with all the same illnesses and physical problems as the rest of us. The health and wealth gospel, the prosperity theology fails the biblical test, the theological test, it fails the gospel test, and it fails the practical test – but it is popular.  As one recent historian of the movement pointed out, what you see in the Osteen’s is the repackaging of an old message, what you see is a new softer version of prosperity theology – but scratch under the surface, it’s the same old prosperity theology, the same old false gospel.

 

I refer you to my essay for the argument in full, but I want to point to the title. “The Osteen Predicament” – why that title? It is because of this – it’s hard to believe with any straight face, with any moral sense of gravity whatsoever, anyone can preach this kind of message in a world in which recent headlines of Christians being evacuated from the Middle East, of Christians being beheaded in the city of Mosul, of Christians being assaulted and killed by forces such as Boko Haram in Africa. How can anyone preach the gospel of prosperity theology saying that God is obligated to give us health and wealth if we will only name it and claim, if we’ll only conceive it and believe it, when there are Christians who are paying the price of their Christian testimony with their lives, with their blood going into the sand in places such as Mosul in Iraq. The point of the Osteen Predicament is this, if you can’t preach that gospel in Mosul, you shouldn’t be preaching it in Houston. A reminder to us all, less we find ourselves in a similar predicament; if we can’t preach our gospel to the persecuted church, we shouldn’t be preaching it anywhere.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information to my website 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.

 

Are you or someone you know considering college? I would really look forward to introducing you to the work of Boyce College. I would love to tell you more about Boyce at our Preview Day that comes up on October 31. Come learn how we are preparing the next generation of Christian young men and women to serve the church and to engage the culture. Learn more by going to Boyce College.com/preview

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 09-04-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Obama draws clear red line against Russia’s aggressive ambitions

Obama Calls Ukraine a ‘Moment of Testing’ for NATO, The New York Times, (Julie Hirschfeld Davis)

Sen. Feinstein: Obama may be ‘too cautious’ in dealing with Islamic State, Washington Post (Josh Hicks)

Deterring a European War, Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board)

2) Federal judge breaks trend by upholding Louisiana same-sex marriage ban

Louisiana Gay Marriage Ban Upheld By Federal Judge, (Huffington Post) Ryan Reilly

Federal judge upholds La. gay-marriage ban (Associated Press)

3) Osteens’ prosperity cannot be preached in Mosul, should not be preached in Houston

The Osteen Predicament — Mere Happiness Cannot Bear the Weight of the Gospel, AlbertMohler.com (Albert Mohler)

Transcript: The Briefing 09-03-14

The Briefing

 

September 3, 2014

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

 

It’s Wednesday, September 3, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Letter from clergy decrying U.S. military response to Islamic State underestimates human sinfulness

Forces aligned with the group known as the Islamic State claimed yesterday to have beheaded a second American journalists, in this case Steven Sotloff, an American freelance journalist who has done work for Time magazine and other international publications. What makes this particularly striking is that it came after Sotloff’s mother made a very emotional appeal to the one who identifies as the caliphate of the entire group known as the Islamic State, but now the Islamic State has responded with a video that presents itself as his execution. I raise that today to throw into stark relief an article that appeared over the weekend in Religion News Service. David Gibson writes that a group of Christian leaders has called for an end to US strikes in Iraq, that’s strikes in particular on the Islamic State, and is said to focus on peaceful resolution. Gibson writes,

 

Even as some prominent Christians are calling on the U.S. to take more forceful military action against Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria, more than 50 mainly Catholic and Protestant leaders are telling President Obama to halt American airstrikes and pursue solely peaceful means to resolve the conflict.

 

53 members of the clergy – including theologians, pastors and religious sisters, nuns – wrote,

 

While the dire plight of Iraqi civilians should compel the international community to respond in some way, U.S. military action is not the answer.

 

I raise this because of the obvious question, if United States military action is not the answer, what is the answer? In looking at the graphic violence of the Islamic State, in looking at the fact that they have beheaded now hundreds and hundreds of people, looking at the fact that they’re using terror as the main instrument of their political purposes, looking at the fact that they have threatened to kill Yazidis and Christians by the tens, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, what exactly would be the proper response if not military action? This raises one of the most persistent questions of the 20th century, a question that vexed many Christians and Christian churches over the period of what historians call the long bloody 20th century – a century that tested just about every theory imaginable of how to confront dramatic institutional political evil.

 

This consideration for example takes us back to the dawn of American involvement in World War II, when two famous theologian brothers – the brothers known as the Niebuhr brothers, H. Richard Niebuhr and Reinhold Niebuhr – were involved in a very public debate over the morality of military action. H. Richard Niebuhr, who taught at Yale, insisted that it was ever and always wrong for any military force to be used by a Christian. In response, Reinhold Niebuhr – his more famous brother who taught at New York’s Union Theological Seminary and was declared by Time magazine to be the dominant American theologian of the 20 century – Reinhold Niebuhr simply responded back by saying, if the challenge of Adolf Hitler does not call forth and justify a military response, then nothing does. And furthermore, the refusal to meet the deadly ambitions of Adolf Hitler with military force would consign millions, not only to enslavement but to potential death – and as we know, it wasn’t just potential we know that in the genocide at least 6 million Jews were killed and untold millions of others. This reporter of Religion News Service points back to that debate between H Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr, and it points to the fact that that is a persistent conversation even now. And you look back to this letter and it says and I quote,

 

Lethal weapons and airstrikes will not remove the threat to a just peace in Iraq. As difficult as it might be, in the face of this great challenge, we believe that the way to address the crisis is through long-term investments in supporting inclusive governance and diplomacy, nonviolent resistance, sustainable development, and community-level peace and reconciliation processes.

 

At this point, this letter almost ceases to be a serious communication. It fails at the point of making a serious argument. Juxtapose two images in your mind; on the one hand, the image of a video – now repeated videos – with members of the Islamic State beheading American journalists and others, and then on the other side of the juxtaposition, just feature the picture, of say, 53 Catholic and Protestant theologians sending a letter to the White House, saying that this isn’t the time for military action, and that instead –  as hard as they can see it might be – the West, led by the United States, should respond with – and I am going to use their list exactly as it is stated in the article –

 

Long-term investments in supporting inclusive governance and diplomacy, nonviolent resistance, sustainable development, and community-level peace and reconciliation processes.

 

The Christian understanding that has been distilled through the centuries as Just War Theory reminds us that military action that risks the taking of human life should never be deployed until it is the last option available; in the parlance of Christian ethics, until it is the last worst thing to do, at that point it simply becomes unconscionable not to use military action. And one of the lessons of human history, especially clear in the 20th century – but quite honestly, seen throughout almost all the centuries of human existence – is that there are some who will not be deterred from their evil intentions with anything short of deadly military force. It’s hard to believe that anyone alive in the 20th century, and morally aware to any extent, could fail to see the point that if you rewrite the 20th century and you insert only nonviolent resistance, you end up with a disaster that not only points to further loss of life – perhaps by the tens of millions – but you also point to the enslavement of entire continents. Operating out of the Christian worldview, any seriously minded Christian would understand that these are very difficult issues; that there is no absolute clear mandate or manifesto for how to gain victory over a group such as the Islamic State, and how to do so in a way that best honors human dignity and human rights. But the reality is that the American people, and people increasingly around the world, have the basic sense of moral gravity that something has to be done. And that something is going to be more than economic development, inclusive governance and diplomacy, and community level peace and reconciliation processes.

 

The letter sent to the White House by these Catholic and Protestant theologians demonstrates one very important theological issue – they simply underestimate the reality of human sinfulness and the reality of the fact that people who give themselves over to evil, in terms of evil intent and have the ability to carry out those evil intentions, they are not likely to be stopped by anything short of deadly force. And in the case of the Islamic State, they’ve already made that point abundantly clear.

2) Stolen and leaked nude celebrity pictures symptom of sexually explicit culture

The BBC has a major story out on the intersection of morality in the new digital culture and it’s actually, upon closer observation, an even more interesting story than first appears. Actually there are two different kinds of stories coming into a convergence here. The first are these new stories coming over the weekend in which you have Hollywood actresses claiming that nude photographs of themselves have been stolen from their iCloud accounts and posted on the Internet. They’re declaring this to be a gross violation of the personal privacy; and of course it is. They’re also claiming that there should be someone who would answer for these things – the theft of intellectual property and the gross violation of their privacy by posting these naked images that they intended to keep unto themselves.

 

The other story that leads into this has been out there for recent weeks, even months now, as some political leaders have been calling for legislation to outlaw so-called revenge porn. It’s a very similar story in one respect. When it comes to revenge porn you have sexually explicit pictures, generally taken with smart phones, that were taken by people who were in a romantic relationship, generally speaking a couple. When the relationship ends, one party of that couple decides to punish the other one – perhaps even to blackmail – by threatening to or actually posting those sexually explicit photographs as an act of revenge; thus the title, revenge porn.

 

And of course we need to stipulate right up front that both of these things are wrong, the theft of intellectual property is wrong, the violation of personal privacy is wrong, revenge porn – or furthermore any kind of porn – is wrong. But the society seems, in its moral confusion, to believe that that’s the end of the moral issue. Without recognizing the fact that in this new digital age, with all kinds of new digital possibilities, there are also new digital possibilities for misbehavior – including sexual misbehavior, including photographic misbehavior. Here’s a bottom line point that no one seems to be willing to say with any conviction or clarity out there in the public debates over these two huge stories, and that’s this: if you don’t have naked photographs of yourself taken, no one can use revenge porn against you and no one can steal photographs that don’t exist in order to post them on the Internet.

 

By now anyone who understands the Internet world must recognize, for sure, that eventually, if a naked photograph of yourself exist, it is likely one day to end up somewhere you do not want it to go. And that means, just to be intellectually honest, that taking that kind of photograph is the intentional decision to take that kind of risk. And furthermore, it’s just a symptom of how sexually explicit the entire culture has become. We’re living in such a pornographic culture that the use of the term revenge porn actually makes sense, and that’s scary enough in itself. But in this morally confused age we’ve reached a point that many people think that the only moral issues involved are the misuse of such images or the theft of such intellectual property.

 

So let’s remind ourselves of something fundamental when it comes to the theft of these kinds of images and posting them on the Internet – that’s wrong. When it comes to anything called revenge porn, or for that matter, any kind of porn – that’s wrong. But to say that that’s all that’s wrong is actually wrong. It confuses the issue, and it does so in such a way that we recognize that not only in this digitally confused age, but in this sinfully confused age, sometimes the obvious just is missing from the story.

3) Sexual confusion now evident in admission policies of historic women’s colleges

And speaking of confusion, two stories that have appeared in the national media over the last several days underline perhaps better than anything we can imagine the kind of confusion that is now being embraced as normal, and furthermore as policy, on the part of many Americans.

 

For instance USA Today’s Khorri Atkinson reports that Mills College, that’s an historic women’s college in the area of San Francisco, has changed its policy to allow transgender women to enroll. As Atkinson reports,

 

In an unprecedented move, Mills College changed its admissions policy and has become the first of the 119 single-sex colleges in the country to consider enrollment applications from “self-identified women” to its undergraduate program. The revised policy at the San Francisco-area college was recommend by the college’s Gender Identity and Expression Committee and was unanimously approved by the board of trustees’ enrollment committee in May. It will go into effect for the first time on September 1 [and classes were to begin on that date].

 

Though as you might imagine, this level of confusion is going to result in a very confusing policy. So, let me read to you from the coverage of the policy itself,

 

The policy states that the college will not consider female-born students, who have undergone a legal change of gender to male prior to the point of application. But female students who become male after enrollment may stay and graduate.

 

Now, just try to unpack that sentence, or that paragraph, in terms of any previous century of human existence and you see the problem. What in the world could this possibly mean? This is an historic women’s colleges as it identifies itself, and that means that it limits its enrollment to women. But in this sexually confused age, not only sexually confused but gender confused age, they have simply now surrendered to the transgender agenda, at least in part, so that they’re willing to go this far. A woman who has transitioned to become a man prior to entering the colleges admission process will not be admitted; but one who is admitted as a woman and later transitions to being a man during the time the individual is a student at Mills College, will be allowed to graduate. Still following me? I go back to cite from the policy,

 

Students who self-identify as female are eligible to apply for undergraduate admission. This includes students who were not assigned to the female sex at birth but live and identify as women at the time of application. It also includes students who are legally assigned to the female sex, but who identify as transgender or gender fluid.

 

You know, looking at this policy the question is then, who wouldn’t be included in this policy? Who would be denied admission?  Trying to use the imagination to come up with this list, we would say: well anyone who actually identifies as a man or as male without regard for the fact that they were assigned as either male or female at birth in terms of biology and anatomy. The other persons who might not be accepted here are those who are born as males at birth, but have not clearly declared just how female they might be at the point of the application to Mills College.

 

One of the controversies in the background of this is that there is no definition, no set definition on the part of most people, including most people who have joined this revolution, as to just how female or just how male a transitioning individual would be to be recognized as a legitimate applicant for something like a same-sex college. But of course this just throws into absolute insanity the whole idea that this is a same-sex college; because this new policy acknowledge the fact that there will people were born male and born female who were there. And, as the opening statement makes very clear, there could be those were born women who are transitioning to men such that they will allow only women to apply and be admitted, but they’re now going to allow those they consider as both women and men to graduate.

 

Now just a few months ago on The Briefing we discussed the fact that major media were giving attention to the reality that these historically women’s colleges were going to be in a very tight space because here you have a trap they set for themselves. They had so adopted the feminist mentality, and joined the gender revolution in that respect, that they were defenseless against the arguments being made by the transgender advocates. And yet, there are those who still steadfastly in the feminist movement want nothing to do with this. As we saw just a matter of a few weeks ago, you had major feminist authorities saying that it still is an exercise of, in their terms, of male privilege for a man or for a male to decide to transition to being a woman. In so far as many feminist are concerned, this is not a woman at all. It’s going to be really interesting to see how the alumni of Mills College respond to this new announcement.

 

Then just yesterday it was reported that Mount Holyoke College, one of the so-called seven sisters of the women’s college movement – they were called the seven sisters because they were originally intended as the female analogs to the then male Ivy League universities and colleges – but as Kate Winick reports for culture news at Elle,

 

It seems transgender rights have never been more visible in media and pop culture than they are right now. Today [that is yesterday], in a gesture of support for the trans community (and an acknowledgement of reality), Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, announced that it will admit “any qualified student who is female or identifies as a woman.”

 

College president Lynn Pasquerella, according to the report, announced the newly defined policy yesterday at convocation – the ceremony that begins the academic year. And, in answer to the question of whether or not this affects their fundamental mission of educating women, the college responded in what is described in the report as “no uncertain terms.” Anyone interested in what’s happening in our culture in this confused age needs to listen very carefully to how the college explains this change. And I quote,

 

Traditional binaries around who counts as a man or woman are being challenged by those whose gender identity does not conform to their biology. Those bringing forth these challenges recognize that such categorization is not independent of political and social ideologies. Just as early feminists argued that the reduction of women to their biological functions was a foundation for women’s oppression, we must acknowledge that gender identity is not reducible to the body. Instead, we must look at identity in terms of the external context in which the individual is situated. It is this positionality that biological and transwomen share, and it is this positionality that is relevant when women’s colleges open their gates for those aspiring to live, learn, and thrive within a community of women.

 

But perhaps at this point you’re wondering, like evidently some students at Mount Holyoke College, what does it mean to say “Who is female or identifies as a woman,” then there comes this list in the official policy statement from the college announced yesterday,

 

The following academically qualified students can apply for admission consideration [listen carefully to this list]: [1] Biologically born female; identifies as a woman, [2]Biologically born female; identifies as a man, [3] Biologically born female; identifies as other/they/etc,[4]Biologically born female; does not identify as either woman or man, [5]Biologically born male; identifies as woman, [6]Biologically born male; identifies as other/they/ze and when “other/they” identity includes woman, [Last,]Biologically born with both male and female anatomy (Intersex); identifies as a woman.

 

Then there is simply one, there is a list of one that then follows this heading,

 

The following academically qualified students cannot apply for admission consideration: [One list, one item] biologically born male; identifies as man

 

 

And if you’re ready to ask the question everyone must be just ready to ask, what happens to a student who, accepted under one of those very diverse characteristics, then decides to transition, given the ideology of this movement, to the opposite or to a different gender identity while a student. Turns out, that’s not a problem. The only way you can’t gain admission, in terms of your gender or sexual identity according this policy, is if you are – let me quote it again,

 

Biologically born male; identifies as man

 

 

In other words, any individual on the planet – academically qualified – who wasn’t born biologically male and doesn’t now identify as a male can be counted in some sense as a female for the purposes of applying for admission to Mount Holyoke College. And if nothing else, the fact that they had to come up with a list of almost 10 different permutations demonstrates the insanity of this moral revolution.

 

At the end of the day, the fact that these two stories have come out in the wake of the controversy over how in the world women’s colleges are going to handle the transgender question; the fact that they came out in such close proximity to one another and the fact that they’ve come out in such equally confused ways, is proof positive of the fact that this transgender revolution – isn’t just a great challenge – it simply can’t work. The inner logic of these statements is so confused it’s impossible to imagine that these policies can survive, even for a very short amount of time, without adding to the confusion. And the list that you see here, of all the permutations that might now be allowable, that list can’t possibly stop where it stops today. This revolution is forever unfolding, and it gets right down to the most basic issues of personal identity. Even the fact as to whether or not an individual is a man or a woman. And even as it demonstrates the worldview collision between modern feminism and the transgender revolution, it also points to an even deeper worldview collision. Between the reality that is based upon the Scriptural worldview that tells us that gender is a part of the goodness of God’s creation, indeed God’s gift to every single human being, and the fact that gender – in so far as it is known today – is nothing more than a socially constructed binary that oppresses people, that we have somehow got to overcome. But that’s the point isn’t it? These policies demonstrate one thing with profound clarity – try as they may, they can’t overcome it.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information to my website 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.

 

Keep this always in mind, a call to ministry is also a call to prepare for that ministry. And we look forward to discussing that with you at Preview Day of Southern Seminary, coming up on October 17. For just $25, we will cover two nights of lodging, as well as your meals on preview day. For more information visit us as sbts.edu/preview. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

 

Transcript: The Briefing 09-02-14

The Briefing

 

September 2, 2014

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

 

It’s Tuesday, September 2, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Dismissal of warning of European war as scaremongering denial of reality

Anne Applebaum writing in Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post writes about the experience many of us have had. Looking back at photographs of countries just on the brink of World War II and recognizing that even as many people then knew the war had to be coming, and in some places the war was already raging, they were trying to live life as if it could go on normally. She writes back in particular to Poland in the year 1939. She writes about pictures of weddings and other family celebrations, and she says,

 

All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house.

 

Her reference back to one specific photograph of one family at one wedding is haunting to us in the year 2014. But Anne Applebaum has a point in raising that photograph and its meaning now, and that point is this – are we now looking at Europe on the brink of another major war? Are we looking at the fact that many people around the world right now are denying the obvious, even as we’re the people that wedding photo in Poland in 1939? As she writes,

 

In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?

 

Anne Applebaum is a veteran of Foreign Affairs and a keen observer of the contemporary world. And she writes this article in the Washington Post acknowledging that many people around the world would read her article and think that she must be scaremongering; that this must be an example of apocalyptic kinds of warnings. And yet she writes, if the questions sounds to some as hysterical, it’s only because they are not yet seeing what people in Eastern Europe are seeing right now. As she writes,

 

In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow.

 

Even more complicated and more concerning, she writes, those maps of a country that does not now exist, and is recognized only by Russia – this country of Novorossiya, it includes cities that are hundreds of miles away from the current fighting. Some Russian maps now place Novorossiya along the coast so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian occupied province of Moldova. She goes on to warn that even if this country starts out as what many in world affairs have called Russian rump states, the reality is that it keeps growing like so many these other states over time.

 

The main thrust of Anne Applebaum’s essay is this: Europe is actually already at war. The war may at this point be rather localized, mostly in what is now called the east of Ukraine, but is localized only because it has not yet reached other parts of the globe, and in particular other regions of Eastern Europe. And the thing that Anne Applebaum was warning us about, when you look at the parallels with World War II, is that Vladimir Putin is exactly like Adolf Hitler in terms of the fact that he has announced what his intentions are. And he’s made very clear that the map he has of Europe is one that includes a greater Russia; a Russia that includes, as the czars used to claim, all the Russias – which means the lands where any major population of Russians may be found – and furthermore, the greater Russia Vladimir Putin also includes land and especially corridors that would unite Russia with most important ports and other kinds of facilities. You put this all together and the thesis of Anne Applebaum is exactly right. What we’re looking at here is an almost parallel recreation with 1939. Of course there is a huge question hanging over this: Is Vladimir Putin actually able to carry out, as it turned off Adolf Hitler was close to carrying out, his ambitions? Is he actually as determined as Hitler was? And is he as ruthless as Hitler was? At this point, it’s hard to say.

 

But let’s look at the signs that have appeared already just in recent months. A major airliner, filled with hundreds of innocent people, shot down over East Ukraine; lands that had formally been uncontested as part of Ukraine, simply annexed by Russia and taken over by Vladimir Putin; an influx of troops going into a neighboring country under the pretext of maintaining order and protecting the Russians who are there, and now troops wearing the uniform of a country that doesn’t even exist, Novorossiya, now in Ukraine, now fighting. Fighting and killing; fighting in already taken territory; taking conquest of cities.

 

To put it another way, it doesn’t sound at this point that Anne Applebaum is actually hysterical; it sounds like the historical parallel she’s drawing is one that ought to have our attention. And she presses the point even further. She goes back to 1939 and asks, with over a half-century of retrospect, why is it that people who were alive in 1939, who knew exactly what was going on in Czechoslovakia and Poland and elsewhere, why did they deny the obvious? Why did they furthermore go to weddings as if nothing was wrong? Why do we now look in retrospect to see that as hopelessly naïve? What would we now tell them they should’ve been doing in 1939? That’s the question Anne Applebaum is asking of the United States and our European allies. What must we be doing now to make certain that this is not a repeat of 1939? It’s about time someone asked the question in just that way. Time and again we discussed the fact that we live in a fallen world – in a dangerous world – but here’s one of the realities that Christians often have to come to terms with; human beings have a huge capacity to deny reality when it is set right before us. We can look reality in the eye and call it something else because our defense mechanisms, emotionally and otherwise, tell us that it simply can’t be as bad as it looks. And as Anne Applebaum argues, when you look at Vladimir Putin we do know, note this: it is as bad as it looks, at least in terms of his ethics, in terms of his character, and in terms of his imperialistic ambitions. Is it as bad as it looks in terms of his ability to pull off anything analogous to what Adolf Hitler in World War II? At that point Anne Applebaum is again honest, no she says; he doesn’t have the capacity at this point to have those kinds of global military ambitions. But here’s the point, he doesn’t have to. In the world of 2014, he doesn’t have to have troops everywhere with boots on the ground. Given the interrelation of the economy, given the fact that we are now part of a global economic and political system, all he has to do is have enough territory and enough economic control and enough ability to leverage the kind of pressure against his neighbors in the world system. He can largely get what he wants; even without having boots on the ground everywhere. But if you’re in East Ukraine right now, the boots are already on the ground.

2) Coverage of abortion by mail indicates pro-abortionist perceive no alternative to abortion

And speaking about war, we transition out to a different kind of war: a moral war – a war having to do with the issue of abortion. And one of the things we need to keep in mind is the fact that the pro-abortion side is fundamentally unable to understand why this is still an issue. You go all the way back to 1973, in the Roe v. Wade decision, the pro-abortion side was convinced that the issue of abortion was soon going to be just a settled moral fact in the United States, that people all across this country, in all advanced economies, would simply come to terms with legal abortion and come to terms with the fact that it must be a good thing. And now, over 40 years after Roe v. Wade, the fact is that America’s more divided over the issue of abortion than ever before. And pro-lifers understand why, but the pro-abortionists fundamentally cannot understand why the issue persists as a matter of controversy. And yet, it does.

 

And this is leading some very interesting analyses and reports in the world press; one of the most significant is this Sunday’s cover story in the New York Times Magazine; the title, “Abortion by Mail.” Emily Bazelon’s writing about the effort on the part of some in the international community to get abortion where it is not now legal – by making it available by pill by mail. It’s a very interesting article indeed – it’s a very troubling article – the article begins with someone we’ve talked about before on The Briefing and someone whose been well known in terms of the abortion issue for a matter of decades. The woman is a doctor who goes by the name of Rebecca Gomperts. She came to the world’s attention back in 2001 when she established a ship as an abortion clinic. She started an organization known as Women on Waves and she went to places like Ireland, which did not have legal abortion, and she brought abortion – or intended to – as a publicity stunt, she now admits, in order to gain attention for abortion and to help to catalyze an abortion-rights movement in Ireland and beyond. Very similar efforts took place in Portugal, two years after her effort in Portugal, that country legalized – at least in part – abortion.

 

What we’re looking at here is a veteran of the abortion wars and now she’s gone from Women on Waves to Women on the Web. And her current effort does not consist of trying to take an abortion ship, but rather to ship abortion; in this case, by shipping abortion pills where abortions are not legal. The interesting thing about this article and what’s caught the attention of the New York Times is that several women in the United States, dozens a month she reports, are now contacting the organization wanting to gain an abortion by means of an abortion pill without the intervention of a doctor by going to Women on the Web. She has, at this point, steadfastly refused to send any of these abortion pills into the United States. She says it is because abortion is legal the United States, and even as she believes that women should have unfettered access to these pills, she argues that it’s a political problem in the United States. What she does not acknowledge is the fact that she knows that if she did involve herself in that activity in the United States, she would find herself very quickly behind bars.

 

Rebecca Gomperts started her career as an activist with Greenpeace, but even as she was working with that organization she transitioned to the cause of abortion. As Emily Bazelon asks her, why, as a Greenpeace activist, did she choose abortion as her cause? The response was

 

Her philosophy, she said, was about the “reduction of suffering” but also about self-determination. She said she was “interested in finding the blind spots of the law.” She liked upending the system. “I enjoy that,” she said. “If I was interested in money, I’d have a company in the Cayman Islands, getting all the tax deductions I could to get rich.”

 

That’s a very interesting sentence in that response to Emily Bazelon. In this case Dr. Gomer says, my first concern is “the reduction of suffering,” but she’s never clear, indeed she’s never even specific about what kind of suffering she’s talking about, what kind of suffering, who’s suffering. She then says that her next concern is self-determination, well at that point we’re on firmer ground; because the abortion-rights movement clearly claims over and over again, consistently in virtually every way possible, and in every context imaginable, that the only moral issue at stake is the right of a woman to absolute unfettered uncomplicated self-determination. But she’s not even finished there because she goes on to add a third reason why she is a Greenpeace activist shifted to the issue of abortion, and she said she is, “interested in finding the blind spots of the law.”

 

So this is something of a gain, she says, “I enjoy that.”

 

This cover story in the New York Times magazine makes a couple of very interesting points right up front. First of all, the fact that this is the cover story tells us that the New York Times considers this a very important story. And even as Americans are mildly interested in Foreign Affairs, they’re very interested in controversies here at home; and this article makes that turn pretty quickly; turning from the context of Women on the Web, in terms of an international mission having to do with abortion, and turning it to political controversies of a very current form here in the United States.

 

In recent weeks several issues related to abortion have appeared at the federal courts, both district court and appellate courts, and in most of those cases these have been appeals against restrictions on abortion passed in states such as Texas and Mississippi. A similar ruling was handed down just recently in the state of Alabama. The interest of the New York Times magazine in that context is this, that raising the question, could something like women on the web be the answer for women in the United States who might not be able to obtain an abortion immediately, locally, by other means? It’s a very interesting question, it interests the editors of the New York Times magazine clearly. And yet it also is going to raise a host of profound questions. Emily Bazelon recognizes that, and she writes,

 

In the United States, the idea of terminating a pregnancy without much or any medical assistance can sound troubling, reminiscent of the sorts of procedures women were forced into before abortion was legal. Yet in March, she writes, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reviewed the medical literature and concluded that women can “safely and effectively” use telemedicine to have a medical abortion.

 

But not all obstetricians and gynecologists are buying the argument, and to her credit Emily Bazelon recognizes that. She cites Monique Chireau, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Duke University School of Medicine; she’s also a board member of Americans United for Life; she says the number of women who die or suffer serious complications from abortion may be higher than reported. As she states,

 

The truth is we have no idea what the rates of morbidity and mortality for abortions are in the United States, because the data system is flawed.

 

Some states don’t accurately report, Emily Bazelon tells us, and the numbers may not be dependable because women who go to the doctor or emergency room with complications may be reluctant to say they’ve had a medical abortion. Monique Chireau then said,

 

Despite all we may hear about abortion being a benign procedure, it’s really not…And it’s important to remember it’s elective. This is not lifesaving surgery or surgery for cancer.

 

So many aspects of the story should trouble us and also gain our attention, because when you’re looking at a story like this it tells us of the issue of abortion looms so large on the moral horizon of this country that it’s almost impossible to exaggerate just how perplexing this issue is to many. There are many people on the side of the abortion-rights movement who simply look at this and wonder how in the world almost a half-century after Roe v. Wade can it be possible that the issue is still a controversy? And yet, if you look at this article you recognize immediately why. It’s because one person who never appears in this entire consideration is the baby. There is no baby in this picture. It’s all about a woman and the way a woman determined at abortion might be able to gain access to that kind of abortion, whether by an abortionist in a clinic or by a pill that may come by mail.

 

And you also see the fascination here with a woman who admits that as a Greenpeace activist, she shifted to abortion at least in part because she’s interested in finding loopholes in the law, and here you have this woman, Rebecca Gomperts, who is shifting from Women on the Waves to Women on the Web. And it’s clear that many people in the United States, in particular in the pro-abortion movement, are beginning to ask themselves, ‘could this be the wave of the future?’

 

But to those who affirm the sanctity of human life and who will not allow this discussion without putting the baby in the picture, we see here just what we’re up against. Here you have the most influential newspaper in the United States of America, and its Sunday magazine – very prized real estate – here you have an article that they clearly expect will gain the interest of their own readership and furthermore reinforce the worldview that the paper itself represents. And it makes perfect sense according to that worldview that if you can’t get an abortion one way, you simply press on to gain abortion some other way. There simply is not even the acknowledgment that there might be an alternative to abortion itself.

 

The only alternatives that are of any consequence in this article are alternative ways of getting or giving an abortion. There is no alternative to abortion even under consideration here.

 

Consistently and persistently the abortion-rights movement refers to the pro-life movement as extreme, but in terms of radical arguments, it’s hard to imagine anything more extreme than this.

3) Global division over sex education due to concept of supposed human autonomy

Finally along similar lines Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post featured an article by Jonathan Zimmerman entitled “Sex Education is a Global Dividing Line Between Liberals and Conservatives.” Sometimes you look at headline like this and ask the obvious question; how did this become a headline? Who thinks this is news? How in the world can it be news in the year 2014, the claim that sex education is a global dividing line between liberals and conservatives? It has been for the better part of the last several decades. And that’s actually something that Jonathan Zimmerman admits right up front.

 

He goes back to September 5, 1994. 20,000 delegates from 179 countries, they gathered in Cairo for the International Conference on Population and Development. As he writes,

 

Unlike prior population meetings, which focused mainly on family planning services, the Cairo convention endorsed equal access to education for girls. It also demanded “reproductive rights” — including rights to contraception and information about sex — for adolescents of both genders.

 

That was back in 1994, and Jonathan Zimmerman is written his article now because fast-forward 20 years later, guess what hasn’t happened? What the Cairo agreement called for simply hasn’t come to pass. And I think Jonathan Zimmerman is probably right when he says the world is even more divided now over this question than it was then.

 

Jonathan Zimmerman reports,

 

But sex education has stalled. In most countries, children and adolescents receive a smattering of information about their reproductive organs and a set of stern warnings against putting them to use. Whereas the Cairo meeting envisioned preparing youths to be autonomous sexual beings, most contemporary sex education simply admonishes them against sex itself.

 

That sentence includes a most important statement. That the Cairo agreement was that teenagers, adolescents and young adults, were to be treated as autonomous sexual beings. There’s the great myth of the secular modern mind; the fact the human beings themselves whether adults or teenagers are to be considered autonomous. Human autonomy is the great idolatrous first principle of the modern secular worldview, and the modern secular worldview is what produced that Cairo agreement. And that Cairo population conference came back to say that teenagers, as a matter of fundamental human rights, should be given the kind of sex education that will treat them as and prepare them to be autonomous sexual beings. Well here’s the problem with that right up: front human autonomy is a mirage. It isn’t even real.

 

The claim of absolute human autonomy is a claim that should make any intelligent human blush. It simply runs up against the fact that we didn’t create ourselves, we can’t sustain ourselves. The reality is were not autonomous, and even those who do not operate out of the Christian biblical worldview have to define that kind of autonomy such that it’s relegated to certain sectors of life. And guess where they start first? Sex. Again, this conference said that teenagers are to be considered autonomous sexual beings. And writing about the fact that were now according to this worldview further behind than more ahead in terms of this effort to turn teenagers into autonomous sexual beings, he writes

 

And that’s not because certain parts of the world are “conservative” or “traditional” on the topic. Instead, conservatives around the globe have united across borders to block or inhibit sex education. On issues of sex and reproduction, [he writes] it’s not East vs. West anymore. It’s liberals vs. conservatives, each of which often have more in common with their ideological soulmates in other parts of the world than they do with people next door.

 

Now that’s a fairly accurate statement. The problem with this article is the insinuation that this great divide on the issue of sex education between liberals and conservatives globally is something new. What he does the knowledge is that the people who often represented countries in Cairo didn’t represent those countries. If you go back to the Cairo conference in 1994, you will become immediately convinced of the fact that many of those were in those meetings were far more liberal than the people they were there to represent.And that was true of those representing the United States of America as well as those who were represent many other countries around the world.

 

These international agreements on sex education globally, such as the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s definition of 2009 are all way out there on the left. And furthermore, it’s hard to believe that even the people in the meetings think that these goals are going to take place. And looking back at that 2009 declaration by United Nations , here we see it again, it included the goal that teenagers “could develop their own sexual selves.” There’s that autonomy coming back just without the word.

 

Zimmerman ends his article by quoting a Swedish sex educator who wondered aloud back in 2004, “how can a sexuality reproduction and health perspective based on individual rights become a global norm?” Zimmerman says, “Ten years after that, we’re no closer to a global norm on sex education. We might even be further from it. And it’s an interesting article but what makes this article even more interesting is what’s not in it. What’s not in it is the acknowledgement that if you take out global here, you take out any reference to a worldwide reality, and you just talk about the United States it’s still pertains. In other words you can rewrite the sentence to say “how can a sexuality reproduction in health perspective based on individual rights become a national norm?”

 

It’s not even in this country a national norm. You talk to parents in one state and another state, or for that matter, in one neighborhood and another neighborhood, or for that matter, one house on the street at another house on the street and you’re likely to come up with very divergent understandings of what kind of sex education should be given to American children and teenagers. The reason for that should be immediately apparent to anyone who operates out of an intelligent Christian worldview. The Christian understands this when you’re talking about sex education, quite obviously you’re talking about sex. And when you’re talking about sex, you are talking about an issue that is invariably, always, consistently, every single time a moral issue. And when you’re talking about the morality of sex, that’s where you see that Americans are deepest in their deep cultural and moral divide. And that’s why in the United States of America there is no consensus about sex education, and thus it’s a bit disingenuous to point to the world scene and act as if we’re shocked to there’s no consensus globally. There’s no consensus because in the world today, in this nation today, perhaps even in your PTA meeting today is no consensus about sex education. And that’s because we don’t have a moral consensus on sex. And that’s because, at the most basic level, we are morally divided people. And that becomes very evident perhaps preeminently evident an issue like sex education, and in a news story that isn’t really news.

 

Thanks to listen to The Briefing. For more information 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 boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for the Briefing.

 

The Briefing 09-03-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Letter from clergy decrying U.S. military response to Islamic State underestimates human sinfulness

Islamic State issues video of beheading of U.S. hostage, Reuters (William MacLean)

Christian leaders call for end to US strikes in Iraq, focus on peaceful resolution, Religion News Service (David Gibson)

2) Stolen and leaked nude celebrity pictures symptom of sexually explicit culture

Apple confirms accounts compromised but denies security breach>, BBC

Reps respond to Jennifer Lawrence nude photo leak, USA Today (Alison Maxwell)

3) Sexual confusion now evident in admission policies of historic women’s colleges

Mills College changes policy to allow transgender women to enroll, USA Today (Khorri Atkinson)

Historic Women’s College Will Admit Transgender Students, Elle Magazine (Kate Winick)

Admission of Transgender Students, Mount Holyoke

The Osteen Predicament — Mere Happiness Cannot Bear the Weight of the Gospel

The evangelical world, joined by no shortage of secular observers, has been abuzz about the latest soundbite of note from the Pastors Osteen — this time offered by Victoria Osteen as her husband Joel beamed in the background. It is a hard video to watch.

In her message, Victoria Osteen tells their massive congregation to realize that their devotion to God is not really about God, but about themselves. “I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God–I mean, that’s one way to look at it–we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we are happy. . . . That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. . . .”

She continued: “So, I want you to know this morning — Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. . . . When you come to church, when you worship him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?”

As you might predict, the congregation responded with a loud “Amen.”

America deserves the Osteens. The consumer culture, the cult of the therapeutic, the marketing impulse, and the sheer superficiality of American cultural Christianity probably made the Osteens inevitable. The Osteens are phenomenally successful because they are the exaggerated fulfillment of the self-help movement and the cult of celebrity rolled into one massive mega-church media empire. And, to cap it all off, they give Americans what Americans crave — reassurance delivered with a smile.

Judged in theological terms, the Osteen message is the latest and slickest version of Prosperity Theology. That American heresy has now spread throughout much of the world, but it began in the context of American Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century. Prosperity theology, promising that God rewards faith with health and wealth, first appealed to those described as “the dispossessed” — the very poor. Now, its updated version appeals to the aspirational class of the suburbs. Whereas the early devotees of Prosperity Theology prayed for a roof over their heads that did not leak, the devotees of prosperity theology in the Age of Osteen pray for ever bigger houses. The story of how the Osteens exercised faith for a big house comes early in Joel Osteen’s best-seller, Your Best Life Now.

According to Osteen, God wants to pour out his “immeasurable favor” on his human creatures, and this requires a fundamental re-ordering of our thinking. “To experience this immeasurable favor,” Osteen writes, “you must rid yourself of that small-minded thinking and start expecting God’s blessings, start anticipating promotion and supernatural increase. You must conceive it in your heart before you can receive it. In other words, you must make increase in your own thinking, then God will bring those things to pass.”

There is nothing really new in this message. Anyone familiar with the New Thought movement and later books such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich will see a persistent theme. The important issue is this — Prosperity Theology is a false Gospel. The problem with Prosperity Theology is not that it promises too much, but that it aims for so little. What God promises us in Christ is far above anything that can be measured in earthly wealth — and believers are not promised earthly wealth nor the gift of health.

But to talk of the promises of God to believers is actually to jump outside the Osteen audience. The Osteen message does not differentiate between believers and unbelievers — certainly not in terms of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In their sermons, writings, and media appearances, the Osteens insist that God is well-disposed to all people and wills that all flourish, but there is virtually no mention of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No reference to sin as the fundamental issue. No explanation of atonement and resurrection as God’s saving acts; no clarity of any sort on the need for faith in Christ and repentance of sin.

Instead, they focus on happiness and God’s “immeasurable favor” to be poured out on all people, if they will only correct their thinking.

As a thought exercise, let’s just limit the consideration to those people who have identified as Christians throughout the centuries. Does the Osteen message come close to their experience? Would it even make sense?

Just consider the fact that most Christians throughout the history of the church have been poor, and often desperately poor. They were not hoping to move into a suburban mini-mansion, they hoped to be able to feed their children one more day. That picture is still true for millions upon millions of Christians around the world today.

And that is just the start of it. What about all those who are even now suffering persecution for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? What about the loved ones of the martyrs in Mosul? What about the Christians forced out of their homes and threatened with genocide? What about the children of Christians slain in Iraq and Syria just in recent weeks, or those martyred by Boko Haram in Africa? How does Prosperity Theology work for them? Can anyone look them in the eye and say that God’s plan for believers in this life is to know Your Best Life Now?

In her recent work on Prosperity Theology, historian Kate Bowler traces the shift from what she calls the “hard prosperity” message of the early Pentecostals to the “soft prosperity” message of modern preachers like Joel Osteen. As Bowler explains, the new “softer” version of the prosperity message has “become the foremost Christian theology of modern living.”

Well, maybe. Prosperity Theology certainly sells books and draws crowds in the United States, but what does it possibly say to a grieving Christian wife and mother in Iraq? How can it possibly be squared with the actual message of the New Testament? How can any sinner be saved, without a clear presentation of sin, redemption, the cross, the empty tomb, and the call to faith and repentance? Prosperity Theology fails every test, and fails every test miserably. It is a false gospel, and one that must be repudiated, not merely reformatted.

Victoria Osteen’s comments fit naturally within the worldview and message she and her husband have carefully cultivated. The divine-human relationship is just turned upside down, and God’s greatest desire is said to be our happiness. But what is happiness? It is a word that cannot bear much weight. As writers from C. S. Lewis to the Apostle Paul have made clear, happiness is no substitute for joy. Happiness, in the smiling version assured in the Age of Osteen, doesn’t last, cannot satisfy, and often is not even real.

Furthermore, God’s pleasure in his human creatures centers in his desire and will that they come to faith in Jesus Christ and be saved. The great dividing line in humanity is not between the rich and the poor, the sick and the well, or even the happy and the unhappy. The great divide is between those who, in Christ, have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s glorious light.

Mere happiness cannot bear the weight of the Gospel. The message of the real Gospel is found in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That is a message that can be preached with a straight face, a courageous spirit, and an urgent heart in Munich, in Miami, or in Mosul. 

If our message cannot be preached with credibility in Mosul, it should not be preached in Houston. That is the Osteen Predicament.

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

Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Section cited is on page 78.

Photo: Facebook, Joel Osteen Ministries

 

The Briefing 09-02-14

1) Dismissal of warning of European war as scaremongering denial of reality

War in Europe is not a hysterical idea, Washington Post (Anne Applebaum)

2) Coverage of abortion by mail indicates pro-abortionist perceive no alternative to abortion

The Dawn of the Post-Clinic Abortion, New York Magazine (Emily Bazelon)

3) Global division over sex education due to concept of supposed human autonomy

Sex education is a global dividing line between liberals and conservatives, Washington Post (Jonathan Zimmerman)

 

Transcript: The Briefing 08-29-14

The Briefing

 

August 29, 2014

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

 

It’s Friday, August 29, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Rising number of Americans dependent on welfare threatens ability to reform system

Monday’s edition of Investor’s Business Daily has a very interesting article asking the question as to whether America is reaching a tipping point. As the paper reports,

 

The Census Bureau found 51 million on food stamps at the end of 2012 and 83 million on Medicaid, with tens of millions of households getting both. Another 4 million were on unemployment insurance.

 

Furthermore, the percentage of American households on welfare has now reach 35%.

 

If we include other forms of government assistance such as Medicare and Social Security, almost half of all households are getting a check or other form of government assistance. The tipping point is getting closer and closer.

 

So what is the tipping point? The tipping point is an economic measure in which nations are warned that once this point is reached, it becomes virtually impossible to fix the financial crisis of entitlement programs. Putting these numbers together, America’s growing close to the point when almost 100,000,000 people will be receiving, in one way or another, federal assistance. And that means that roughly one third of the American people will be directly receiving financial benefits from the government. One third of the population is huge and when you take out children and think just of the voting population, it becomes very apparent that approximately half of all voters in the nation could well be soon receiving some form of direct government financial assistance. Once that point has been reached in other countries, it has become virtually impossible to reform and restructure those programs simply because, given the number of people involved, it’s politically impossible to do anything that that number of people would oppose. In the case of several European nations, that tipping point was reached over a decade ago; in some cases, even earlier. Those nations were forced to go through an extremely traumatic restructuring of the entire economy in order to overcome the entitlements crisis, and in some cases they just kicked the can down the road, so to speak, setting the stage for an even more traumatic and potentially disastrous event yet to come.

 

Back in 1996 the Republican Congress worked with then-President Bill Clinton to reform the welfare system, moving those on welfare to the necessity of work. As the paper reports,

 

This was a huge policy success as millions of former welfare recipients — more than half that were enrolled in the program — moved on to the economic ladder by getting jobs

 

 

But even as most Americans still think that the welfare system has been reformed, the paper reports that the number of those on welfare, currently covered by those provisions, is down to 5% – meaning for 95% of recipients, those provisions aren’t even in play. Furthermore, the entitlement system in some states is so out of proportion that persons can make more by not working than by working. In the state of Hawaii for example, a recent report indicated that a family, if participating in all qualified programs, could receive as much as $60,000 a year in entitlement payments. As the study also indicated, a public school teacher in the state averaged a salary of approximately $15,000 less per year. Meaning that those on welfare, if they participated at the top of the program, would actually be receiving about 25% more than a school teacher in the same state would be making by working.

2) Integrity of labor important to recognize this Labor Day weekend

While the editors of Investor’s Business Daily are certainly trying to make a moral point, along with the math they relate, the Christian worldview points to an even deeper dimension of the issue in play here. The Christian worldview points to the dignity of work, of the integrity of labor. And as Americans get ready for the Labor Day weekend, Christian should pause for a moment to reflect upon the meaning of work and what it means to be made in God’s image. In Genesis 1:28 the human creatures given the responsibility of dominion and also the assignment of labor and work. The biblical theology reveals it to be made in God’s image is at least in part to be given the capacity to make things, to do things, to make things happen, to work and the labor, and to see the link between labor and its reward. The Bible dignifies labor, stating explicitly that the workman is worthy of his hire.

 

Furthermore the biblical worldview includes a severe sanction upon sloth and laziness. The apostle Paul told Timothy that as he thinks about the life of the church, a man who will not work to support his family is defined as being worse than an unbeliever.

 

The Labor Day holiday in the history of United States is an opportunity to pause and reflect upon the contributions of labor, originally organized labor, to American society and the building of the nation. Sadly, as is the case with so many national holidays, most Americans simply see it is a long weekend with a day off. But Americans should ponder the contribution of labor to our society, and Christians, at an even deeper level, should ponder the meaning of work and what it means to be faithful to God, even as made in his image we are given the assignment of labor, the assignment of work, and the dignity of a task.

 

Evangelical Christian should also keep in mind that the Reformers in the 16th century, Martin Luther in particular, taught that every single believer had a vocation from God. A calling. The Latin word for that calling is ‘vocation,’ and while the church historically understood that vocation to be extended those who are called into the ministry of the church, Martin Luther retorted that every single believer had a vocation, a calling, to which he or she was fitted by God and to which every single believer should aim with faithfulness in order to be obedient to God and to display the glory of God in a fallen world.

 

It’s sad enough that Americans would forget the meaning of Labor Day. It’s a far greater tragedy if Christians do not pause to reflect upon what it means for God to love us, and show that love in such a way that he gives us a calling, a vocation, prepares us for a special purpose, and give us the opportunity to find both fulfillment and joy in that vocation.

 

Furthermore the Christian church should validate and honor those vocations, understanding that together the church is called to deploy and fulfill those locations, not only to the glory of God (which is paramount), but also for the good of the church, and for human flourishing, for the building up of community, and for the valuing of the things that last and matter. Keep in mind, of course, what we read in Genesis 3; as a result of the Fall Adam is told that his labor will be harder than it should have been. He will now work by the sweat of his brow. But throughout the Scripture, work and labor are still dignified, and furthermore vocation is honored. Even a fallen world where work is often very difficult, where work is often demonstrated by the sweat of the brow, that sweat has a certain dignity and that labor has a certain integrity.

 

We are to honor that integrity, we are to celebrate that dignity, and we are to honor those who labor. Furthermore, the biblical worldview also, as so often, turns the conventional wisdom of the world upside down. The world looks at those who labor and those who work and makes a distinction between white-collar and blue-collar, between the professional class and the laboring class. But if anything, the Bible gives ample honor to the laboring class. While honor is certainly due to professionals, in terms of the preparation dedication to the calling and the vital urgency of the task, we need to keep in mind that laborers are of equal importance and dignity, and that those who find their calling in the trades are making a priceless and essential contribution to human flourishing and to the building up a society.

 

Just imagine where we would be without plumbers for example, or electricians or carpenters. How many Christians pause the ponder the integrity and the value of a garbageman?

 

So even as Christians join with our neighbors in enjoying the long weekend and the Labor Day holiday, we should pause to think about more than our neighbors may contemplate: the meaning of this holiday isn’t just a day off, it’s the recognition of the importance of the days on.

 

And keep this in mind to even as most Americans are taking a day off, a lot of Americans are at work and if they were working, we couldn’t take the day off.

3) Moderate Christians viewed as threat to sexual revolution by Vanderbilt administration

Next, we often had to note that the sexual revolution and the legalization of same-sex marriage and the normalization of homosexuality in particular have brought very real challenges is to religious liberty, especially for Christians and Christian organizations. And now this week a blockbuster article hass appeared in the magazine Christianity Today. Written by Tish Harrison Warren, it’s entitled “The Wrong Kind of Christian.”

 

As she begins the article,

 

I thought I was an acceptable kind of evangelical.

 

I’m not a fundamentalist. My friends and I enjoy art, alcohol, and cultural engagement.

We avoid spiritual clichés and buzzwords. We value authenticity, study, racial reconciliation, and social and environmental justice

 

With those words Tish Harrison Warren does her very best to establish her identity in the left dimension of American evangelicalism. As it turns out, she was involved in a ministry on the campus of Vanderbilt University, a dimension of the work of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an organization that has long been respected for its work with American college and university students, as well as the international programs for students around the world.  But as she writes, even as she had clearly situated herself on evangelical left (as it turns out she’s also now an ordained minister), she makes very clear that even being that kind of evangelical did not prevent a head-on collision with the new moral authorities at Vanderbilt University.

 

Some time ago we reported on the fact that that university, on the front edge of discrimination against Christian organizations, had instituted a so-called ‘all comers policy’ for all students recognize organizations including Christian organizations. The all comers policy meant that persons had to be received into the organizations life without any discrimination whatsoever on the basis of race or ethnicity or of sexual orientation. But the policy actually went even further requiring that there be no test or criterion that would invalidate anyone from becoming a leader or officer in the organization. Effectively, Christian organizations were told that they could continue to be organized and recognized on the campus of Vanderbilt University so long as they actually ceased being Christian, at least in any meaningful theological or moral sense.

 

The story told by Tish Harrison Warren is truly important. In her words,

 

In May 2011, Vanderbilt’s director of religious life told me that the group I’d helped lead for two years, Graduate Christian Fellowship—a chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship—was on probation. We had to drop the requirement that student leaders affirm our doctrinal and purpose statement, or we would lose our status as a registered student organization.

 

I met with him to understand the change. During the previous school year, a Christian fraternity had expelled several students for violating their behavior policy. One student said he was ousted because he is gay. Vanderbilt responded [she says] by forbidding any belief standards for those wanting to join or lead any campus group.

 

Later in her essay, she writes these words,

 

Like most campus groups, InterVarsity welcomes anyone as a member. But it asks key student leaders—the executive council and small group leaders—to affirm its doctrinal statement, which outlines broad Christian orthodoxy and does not mention sexual conduct specifically. But the university saw belief statements themselves as suspect. Any belief—particularly those about the authority of Scripture or the church—could potentially constrain sexual activity or identity. So what began as a concern about sexuality and pluralism [she writes] quickly became a conversation about whether robustly religious communities would be allowed on campus.

 

Her next words deserve are particularly close attention. She writes,

 

In effect, the new policy privileged certain belief groups and forbade all others. Religious organizations were welcome as long as they were malleable: as long as their leaders didn’t need to profess anything in particular; as long as they could be governed by sheer democracy and adjust to popular mores or trends; as long as they didn’t prioritize theological stability. Creedal statements were allowed, but as an accessory, a historic document, or a suggested guideline. They could not have binding authority to shape or govern the teaching and practices of a campus religious community.

 

As she says later, she thought all this had to be a misunderstanding, and that reasonable parties could sort it out. But as she relates, when she met with university administrators the tone of the conversation began to change. The administrators began to use the word ‘discrimination’ is used a lot, as she says, specifically regarding creedal statements. In her words, “it was lobbed like a grenade to end all argument.” Quite explicitly the word ‘creedal’ was made to be the analogy of ‘racist’

 

As she later writes,

 

The line between good and evil was drawn by two issues: creedal belief and sexual expression. If religious groups required set truths or limited sexual autonomy, they were bad—not just wrong but evil, narrow-minded, and too dangerous to be tolerated on campus.

 

It didn’t matter to them [she writes] if we were politically or racially diverse, if we cared about the environment or built Habitat homes. It didn’t matter if our students were top in their fields and some of the kindest, most thoughtful, most compassionate leaders on campus. There was a line in the sand, and we fell on the wrong side of it.

 

Eventually she makes clear they were forced off the campus, denied official recognition and direct access to students on the Vanderbilt campus. They were forbidden from even using the name of Vanderbilt University in identifying the organization. They communicated their existence to other students by wearing T-shirts that simply said “We are Here.”

 

She then concludes,

 

What’s happening at Vanderbilt is happening at other universities. Increasingly, orthodox beliefs and practices are forbidden as those in power forfeit a robust understanding of religious pluralism.

 

As I’ve long argued, what we see in America right now is a clash of liberties; an inevitable class of liberties in the wake of a moral and sexual revolution. The way I would put it is this; we see a direct head-on collision between religious liberty and what we might call erotic liberty, rooted in sexual autonomy. And time and again, what we are witnessing is the victory of erotic liberty over religious liberty. This is happening not only on college campuses, but also in the courts. And keep in mind, of course, that the United States Constitution neither includes and certainly does not state anything about erotic liberty. It does emphatically and explicitly include protection for religious liberty, but the growing supremacy of erotic liberty in our culture means that religious liberty is simply being trampled upon. In many cases marginalized, in other cases it simply denied outright.

 

There are other important dimensions of Tish Harrison Warren’s article as well, keep in mind the fact that she did everything possible to situate herself on the evangelical left; to make very clear that she and her organization were by no means fundamentalist. But that wasn’t enough. As she included in her article, so far as the secular administrators were concerned, there is no distinction whatsoever between the fathers of the Church and contemporary fundamentalists. What she didn’t make clear in her article is the fact that in the view of so many secular authorities, to hold any specific theological beliefs is to be a fundamentalist.

 

As I said it’s a blockbuster article the demands our attention. It’s like to make a lot of waves in the Christian community. What is not likely to do is change anything on the campus of Vanderbilt University.

4) Newspapers are more conservative, if the terms are redefined

Finally, the “Uncommon Knowledge” called of Sunday’s edition of the Boston Globe included a very interesting article, the headline “Newspaper’s Not so Liberal After All.” Well, since the article appeared in a very liberal newspaper, it caught my attention.

 

Here’s what it stated,

 

Are newspapers dominated by liberals? Not really, according to an analysis that compared newspapers’ editorial positions on ballot propositions with the positions of voters, parties, and interest groups. It turns out [says the report] that newspapers are relatively moderate and that newspapers leaning left are balanced out by newspapers leaning right. In fact, [the paper reports] newspapers seem to be more libertarian.

 

Looking deeper the report it becomes very evident that in the case of this research, liberal and conservative are in the eyes of the beholder. The position labelled here as conservative and the evaluative mechanism used to measure conservatism indicate that what these researchers call conservatism isn’t a conservatism American conservatives would recognize. The researchers also tended to undermine their own argument with this fact,

 

A majority of voters supported the conservative, antigay rights alternative on 68 percent of [ballot propositions]. Newspapers, however, endorsed this alternative only 3 percent of the time.

 

So, even as 68% of the people living in these communities supported efforts to define marriage, for example, as the union of a man and a woman, and the newspapers to the same option only 3% of the time, they’re not liberal. At least that’s their story and they’re sticking with it.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information to my website 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.

 

And speaking of Boyce College I look forward to introducing you to the college and to its programs and mission. We’re holding a special preview data Boyce College this upcoming October 31. Come learn how we are preparing the next generation of Christian men and women to serve the church and to engage the culture learn more@BoyceCollege.com/preview. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Labor Day weekend, and I’ll meet you again on Tuesday for The Briefing.

 

 

The Briefing 08-29-14

1) Rising number of Americans dependent on welfare threatens ability to reform system

Government Dependency In U.S. Nears The Tipping Point, Investors’ Business Daily (Editorial)

2) Integrity of labor important to recognize this Labor Day weekend

3) Moderate Christians viewed as threat to sexual revolution by Vanderbilt administration

The Wrong Kind of Christian, Christianity Today (Tish Harrison Warren)

4) Newspapers are more conservative, if the terms are redefined

Newspapers, not so liberal after all, Boston Globe (Kevin Lewis)

Transcript: The Briefing 08-28-14

The Briefing

 

August 28, 2014

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

 

It’s Thursday, August 28, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Utah polygamy ban struck down furthering absolute confusion on marriage

While in a federal appeals court issues related to same-sex marriage were being debated, yesterday in the US district court in Utah, a federal judge decisively struck down that state’s ban, not on same-sex marriage, but on polygamy. At the end of last year, the same judge had put Utah’s ban on polygamy on hold, but yesterday he struck it down. Utah’s law required by the federal government of Utah before it was allowed to enter the Union, prohibited polygamy in very clear terms, but without using the word. Instead, inserted in the law in Utah was a prohibition that included the language:

 

…or cohabits with another person.

 

In his decision handed down yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups ruled that that phrase is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. The ruling comes after the lawsuit had been filed by reality TV polygamist Kody Brown and his wives. They had left Utah fearing prosecution but they sued the state, claiming that the law was an infringement of their religious liberty. At the end of last year, just days after yet another federal district court judge had stuck down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage, Judge Waddoups had appeared to believe that Utah’s ban on polygamy also violate the Constitution. The attorney that represented the Brown family in this case, Jonathan Turley of the George Washington Law Center in Washington, is a very well-known litigator with a national reputation. Responding to the judge’s decision handed down yesterday; he declared this a victory for families. Declaring it a moral good that such families can integrate now into society and,

 

…not fear prosecution merely because of their family structure.

 

As calls for the legalization of same-sex marriage began to increase in the last decade, those who defended traditional marriage as the union of a man and a woman, were often accused of exaggerating and using scare tactics by suggesting that the legalization of same-sex marriage by inference and implication would throw the door open wide for the legalization of polygamy as well. The defenders and proponents of same-sex marriage suggested that this would not be the case. As a matter of fact, several federal district court judges and others who have ruled in favor of same-sex marriage did so while insisting that logic of their decision would not, in any way, open the door to polygamy. But even as a federal judge in Utah at the end of last year struck down that state’s ban on same-sex marriage, it was not a matter of years – not even a matter of months, just a matter of days – before yet another federal district court judge began the process of dismantling the state’s law against polygamy. Yesterday Judge Waddoups put the final nail in the coffin of Utah’s law against polygamy.

 

It’s actually hard to exaggerate the moral meaning of Judge Waddoups’ ruling. After all, what we are talking about here is something that most Americans still believe is largely unthinkable, the legalization of plural marriage and of polygamy. In making his ruling, Judge Waddoups made one very interesting observation. Around America today is not uncommon at all for people to cohabitate and to have multiple romantic partners, but once they begin to live in a domestic context, they are now ruled to be violators of the law and their relationships are criminalized. The legitimacy of that insight from Judge Waddoups is that our society has basically itself, weakened any defense against polygamy by accepting routine cohabitation as well as sex and romantic relationships outside of the institution of marriage. But Judge Waddoups ruling goes far beyond any striking down of the law against same-sex marriage in terms of dismantling the entire cultural logic and moral meaning of marriage as the central institution of civilization. The reason for that should be immediately apparent when you put those two federal court decisions together. Just handed down days apart in Utah, and now finalized yesterday.

 

What we are looking at here is the effective end of morals legislation when it comes to marriage. Just a couple of years ago when U.S. Federal Court Judge Vaughn Walker struck down California’s proposition eight, a constitutional amendment approved by voters there in 2008 defining marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman, he also struck directly at the heart of the moral meaning of marriage, ruling that it was a form of oppression and discrimination to prevent members of the same-sex, in this case a couple of the same-sex, from getting married and enjoying the legal and societal recognition benefits of marriage. But when you fast forward to Judge Waddoups decision handed down yesterday, Judge Waddoups basically declared that the issue of number in the marital relationship doesn’t really matter either – or in terms of his specific ruling that any law criminalizing polygamy is unconstitutional. So put these two decisions together, while at this point Judge Waddoups ruling does not require the state of Utah to recognize the plural marriage of the Browns, it does require the state to no longer criminalize polygamy – effectively authorizing it. So Judge Walker, followed by a host of other federal judges now, has dismantled marriage in terms of its historic structure of gender. Now you have another federal district court judge who has dismantled it in terms of number. So, redefining marriage in terms of both number and gender, leads to an almost absolutely confusion when it comes to what marriage is and who made be recognized as married. Several attorneys are now getting in line for an effort to require states now to recognize plural marriages with the same kind of benefits and protections offered to marriage throughout the centuries.

 

Back in July of 2011 when attorney Jonathan Turley first took up the case of the Browns, he published a column in the opinion pages of the New York Times in which he tied the legalization of polygamy directly to the US Supreme Court’s decision striking down all walls against sodomy, the case known in 2003 as Lawrence v. Texas. As he wrote,

 

Since the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, Americans have enjoyed unprecedented freedom in their lifestyles and private relationships. The decision held that states could no longer use the criminal code for social engineering, dictating the most intimate decisions of citizens in their choice of partners and relations. But even as states have abandoned laws criminalizing homosexual and adulterous relations, they have continued to prosecute one group of consenting adults: polygamists.

 

Looking at that statement we can see the worldview there revealed. For, when he speaks about laws that had prevented polygamy, he speaks of the states, not being involved in the protection of marriage, but rather involving themselves in what he terms “social engineering.” In explaining his defense of polygamy he argued that in our society today there are numerous ways to have plural relationships, it’s widely accepted he says, that a person can have multiple sexual relationships outside of marriage and can even now have children with such partners. But, he says, the minute that person expresses a form of formal and spiritual commitment and then, using the word of the law, “cohabits” with those partners, it’s defined as a crime. You may recall that back in 2003, when the Supreme Court handed down the Lawrence decision, Justice Antonin Scalia retorted with a dissenting opinion in which he accused the majority in that case, the opinion written by Anthony Kennedy, not only if opening the door for legalization of same-sex marriage, but of polygamy as well. And on that count, Jonathan Turley responds,

 

Justice Scalia is right in one respect, though not intentionally. Homosexuals and polygamists do have a common interest: the right to be left alone as consenting adults. Otherwise he’s dead wrong. There is no spectrum of private consensual relations — there is just a right of privacy that protects all people so long as they do not harm others.

 

Couple of other quick observations, in the first place, what we see here is a classic expression of the current sexual morality. That sexual morality now holds that the only defining and important moral principle is consent. So long as the persons involved in any sexual relationship are consenting adults, then there is understood to be no moral problem whatsoever, and society is told that it must simply accept the new arrangements. Finally, we also note that in his protest against laws against polygamy, Jonathan Turley says that the only factor of real interest here is whether or not the law is proved to prevent a harm to others. Well just consider that for a moment.

 

The only harm that he would consider here is a harm that is limited directed to the individuals involved. No reference here is allowable to the larger harm to society, or the injury to marriage as an institution. But as we have seen in the forward march to the legalization of same-sex marriage, the issue of harm to marriage and the larger society is simply excluded from moral consideration. That’s very telling. And it’s also very ominous

2) ‘Euthanasia tourism’ boom in Switzerland reveals quiet moral revolution on sanctity of life

Have you heard one of your friends or neighbors perhaps say that they have plans to go to Switzerland? Well as Julie Beck reports at the Atlantic, you’d better wonder what they mean if you hear someone making that expression, because as she explains, Switzerland does not yet have clear regulations on assisted suicide. And it has become a destination of choice for persons of other countries seeking assisted suicide, or euthanasia.

 

This kind of ‘euthanasia tourism’ is expanding, and as she explains, “the six voluntary right-to-die organizations in Switzerland, each operating solely by its own criteria, have offered their services to residents outside of Switzerland.”

 

So, as she explains, when people for instance in England say that they’re going to be going to Switzerland, what they really mean is that they’re going to be seeking assisted suicide. It has become a shorthand or a euphemism for the intention to take one’s life. But not only to commit suicide, but to have assistance in doing so.

 

Switzerland, a nation known for its commitment to liberal moral values, is itself somewhat shocked and troubled by this development. The Swiss government is at least considering tightening restrictions and laws in order to prevent the nation from becoming the prime destination for euthanasia tourism.

 

But, as Beck indicates, previous efforts to try to legislate some kind of restriction on assisted suicide and abortion in Switzerland have met with no success. But as her report in the Atlantic indicates, virtually half of all the euthanasia tourists heading to Switzerland recently have come from Germany. Coming in next, in terms of countries of origin, were the United Kingdom and France.

 

Most Americans, by now, are at least aware of the moral revolution represented in the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage. Fewer seem to be aware of the moral revolution that is taking place mostly in Europe, but also in some American states, towards the redefinition of the sanctity of human life and the end of life when it comes to assisted suicide and euthanasia. But Americans had better get schooled on it, and fast, because the states of New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Montana already have a right-to-die provision, known in the United States more commonly as ‘aid in dying.’

 

Efforts to legislate the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia are becoming contemplated in other American states as well. Keep in mind the deadly logic of this movement. After all, the earlier European nations that legalized assisted suicide or euthanasia have demonstrated the fact that they have been unable to draw the line in terms even of the criteria defining the persons who could seek the end of their life by assisted suicide or other assisted means.

 

For instance, in the nation of Belgium, it has now become legal for children to seek assisted suicide, even if they do not have an intractable or interminable disease. In other European nations, persons have sought and received assisted suicide solely because they were dissatisfied with their quality of life, something, we should add, that often changes in an individual’s experience. Not only for the worse, but for the better.

 

Furthermore, the logic of voluntary euthanasia often slides almost immediately into involuntary euthanasia. And even when it is claimed that the euthanasia is always voluntary, it isn’t voluntary in a true moral sense. For instance, often times pressure is now put on the elderly to end their lives by means of assisted suicide or euthanasia because, it is claimed, they are representing (in terms of their long term care and cost) a financial burden to their family. It may well be that there is no legal involuntary nature in the euthanasia in that count, but it’s certainly not un-coerced. And you can see how this will almost immediately apply to others in society as well. Those who are the aged, the infirm, anyone who is an expense to the family or the society may face the logic of being told that the society, or their family and loved ones, would be better off if they were dead.

 

There’s also another major moral concern on this issue, staring us in the face in our own nation. As bioethicist Wesley J. Smith has recently written in the pages of First Things, there is now a direct threat to the conscience provisions whereby physicians and other medical personnel have been able to refuse to cooperate in the engine of death because of their religious and moral convictions. But, as Smith argues, this is now being threatened by direct action by groups such as the ACLU, which in Washington state, in his words,

Began trolling for potential clients to sue medical professionals or facilities that refuse to participate in certain legal procedures or transactions based on religious objections.

 

In their statement seeking plaintiffs, the ACLU wrote, “The ACLU believes that everyone in Washington has the right to receive health care that is not restricted by the religious beliefs of others.” The so-called ‘healthcare’ explicitly documented by the ACLU included abortion, assistance in suicide, and the dispensing of drugs in pharmacies.

 

Currently, legal protections are in place to prevent physicians from being forced to participate in abortions, although in some cases, medical students claim they are being required to take part in abortion as a part of their medical training and certification. But the same protections are more rarely extended to other health care professionals, including pharmacists. In many states, pharmacists are required to dispense abortifacient drugs, including the morning after pill. And Wesley Smith now warns that there are efforts in various states to extend that lack of protection to physicians as well. And, not only on the issue of abortion, but also on assisted suicide.

 

As Smith reports,

 

Quebec just legalized euthanasia, and requires every doctor to either euthanize, legally qualify patients, or cooperate in finding a doctor willing to provide a lethal injection. Victoria, Australia has a similar law requiring all doctors’ participation or complicity in abortion.

 

Furthermore, and even more ominously, closer to home, he reports that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has published an Ethics Committee opinion that denies conscience provisions on the issue of abortion to its members.

The statement reads, and I quote,

 

The first important consideration in defining limits for conscientious refusal is the degree to which a refusal constitutes an imposition on patients who do not share the objectors’ beliefs. One of the guiding principles in the practice of medicine is respect for patient autonomy, a principle that holds that persons should be free to choose and act without controlling constraints imposed by others. Respect for autonomy has particular importance in reproductive decision-making, which involves private, personal, often pivotal decision about sexuality and childbearing.

 

Thus, an official panel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is sending a message; ‘Give up your moral concerns about the sanctity of life, and start performing abortions and participating in the abortion process, or at some future date, risk losing your certification.’

 

As Smith concluded his article,

 

Indeed, in coming years, medical professionals who believe in the Hippocratic Oath’s prohibition against killing could well be driven out of medicine.

3) Japan’s looming population crisis evidence of dangers of liberal worldview

Finally, the issue of falling birth rates in advanced industrial nations has caught the attention even of the Journal for Foreign Affairs. In a book review of a recent publication by Steven Philip Kramer on ‘how governments can address the issue of falling birthrates,’ the very respectable journal indicates that some governments, at least, are beginning to wake up to the problem. And in most of the world, especially, in the modernized world, the problem is not that there are too many births, but now, far too few. In Europe, virtually all countries have a current birthrate that is far below the replacement rate, meaning a decline in population, a decreasing number of young persons, and a vastly increasing percentage of older citizens. This is financial and demographic disaster, because in any economy, there have to be more young people working than old people who are being supported in terms of the economy.

 

Furthermore, the decline of birthrates in these countries now threatens not only the economy, but other aspects of the culture as well. But, ground zero of the population implosion isn’t actually even in Europe, where most nations now have that birthrate under the replacement rate.

 

No, ground zero in Japan. And just this week the Japan news has reported that the number of babies born in Japan in the period from January to June dropped 2.7% from a year earlier to a low of 496,391 births, “pointing,” the paper says, “to the possibility of the annual figure slipping below the one million mark for the first time on record.”

 

The government of Japan, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abo, is doing its very best to encourage citizens to have more babies. But whatever they’re doing, this most recent report indicates that is it not working; the birthrate is already falling. This same newspaper a matter of months ago reported that nursing homes and care facilities in Japan have had to turn to robots in the care of elderly patients. There simply aren’t enough younger people in the work force to do the work. There are too many old people, not enough young people. And so Japan’s answer at present is, ‘bring in the robots.’

 

Christians looking at this situation recognize that a birthrate is not just a measure of demographics and population. It is an indicator of moral values, and worldview. And a society that no longer has a central interest in welcoming babies is a society that is writing its own birth warrant. And when you consider what’s going on in so many western industrialized nations, and also in some nations such as Japan, you have to wonder if British writer Malcom Muggeridge in the last century wasn’t right when he pointed to the death of Western civilization and said that it would likely come as an answer to what he called ‘the great liberal death wish.’

 

This report out of Japan, combined with reports from other nations may well indicate that that great death wish is closer to fulfillment than even we feared. Put simply, an empty nursery for the nation indicates that the nation has no future.

 

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 boycecollege.com.

 

Do you think that God might be calling you into the ministry? The faculty of Southern Seminary and I would look forward to discussing this with you and helping you determine God’s will for your life. We would like to invite you to be our guest at Southern Seminary’s preview day coming up on October 17. For just $25, we’ll cover two nights of lodging and all of your meals on preview day. Our faculty will look forward to meeting you. And I assure you, I would too. For more information, go to SBTS.edu/preview. I’ll meet you again on Tuesday for The Briefing