R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 356

Transcript: The Briefing 06-06-14

The Briefing

 

June 6, 2014

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

 

It’s Friday, June 6, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

Gambling is hardly a new human enterprise. As a matter fact, archaeologists suggest that they have uncovered artifacts demonstrating that from the earliest epochs of civilization, human beings been involved in some form of gaming or gambling. But gambling is, from a Christian perspective, inherently problematic. As a matter fact, even secular analysts understand that there are diminishing returns to gambling, and that affects not only the society at large but the individuals whose money will be wagered in the gambling events. Two recent headlines have demonstrated the problematic nature of gambling. The first has to do with horseracing. And tomorrow of course in Maryland the Belmont Stakes will be run — the third event in thoroughbred racing’s famed Triple Crown. The Kentucky Derby and the Preakness have already been run and the same horse that won those two races is the favorite to win the Belmont Stakes tomorrow. That horse of course is California Chrome. But the New York Times, in not one but two articles, is demonstrating the kind of corruption that is now routinely expected in terms of the highest echelons of thoroughbred racing in the United States. Juliet Macur writes:

 

Horse racing is still stumbling in its push to end drugs – that is not the drugging of jockeys but the drugging of horses.

 

One of the contemporary controversies has to do with the chemical Lasix given to some horses to enable them to run faster, but as the report in the New York Times makes very clear, these horses are being given all kinds of drugs including almost assuredly drugs that cannot even be detected. For example, it is known that at least some horses have been given cobra venom to dull their pain so that they can run faster, harder, and longer. As Juliet Macur makes clear in this article, this is having a severe negative effect on the horses.

 

She reports that:

 

On average 24 thoroughbreds have died each week during the year of 2012, and they have died at racetracks.

 

Furthermore, later in the article, she demonstrates the fact that most of the horses that are the age of those that will be running in the Belmont Stakes, ran in over 40 events back in the 1950s, but now the average only twelve. Macur then writes:

 

Because of lax drug testing rules, horseracing is failing all the bettors in this country who think have a fair chance of winning, just as it is failing the horses who love to run fast but are often pumped with drugs to do so.

 

She quotes Travis Tiger, Chief Executive of the world anti-doping agency who said concerning the United States:

 

I’ve been told that is the wild, wild West.

 

He went on to say:

 

It’s 1,000 times worse than anything we have seen because people in the sport can go out and bet on themselves. Our experience has shown that it’s impossible for anyone to both promote a sport and attempt to police the drug issue at the same time. There is a massive conflict of interest.”

 

Well that’s a massive understatement. The situation in thoroughbred racing is truly equivalent to letting the fox guard the hen house. You can’t have the people who are supposed to be preventing the use of drugs able to go out and benefit richly by using those very drugs.

 

But it is not just horseracing that is an opportunity for corruption when it comes to gambling — major media around the world are reporting that as the World Cup soccer competition is about to begin in Brazil, there are expectations that at least one-third of the soccer games leading up to the World Cup competition were fixed. That is not just slightly corrupted, but absolutely fixed and not as a rare event, but one out of three of all the worldwide soccer competitions that lead up to that ultimate event in Brazil. But we are also aware that that is not going to keep people from gambling on the World Cup. There are estimations that the total gambling money devoted to the World Cup could be well over $1 billion. In other words, even knowing that much of the competition is fixed doesn’t keep people from gambling. That is because gambling is not really a rational enterprise. Those who involve themselves in gambling really aren’t thinking it through in terms of the map, the statistics, the probabilities. Instead, they are actually operating on some kind of vain hope. They are just hoping that somehow the odds will be in their favor and they will win something.

 

And of course what you have here in addition is what the Bible warns as the disconnect between labor and reward. The hope for the kind of gain that is promised by gambling without labor without producing anything of value — without earning that kind of income is the very kind of thing the Bible says is a vain hope. It also points out that even if one wins, it is a corrupting win. The Bible also makes a very different point about gambling, and that is this — gambling like every other form of sin always fails to deliver on its promises. There are all kinds of evidences to this fact when it comes to gambling, from the fact that there are so many tragically fractured families, so many people who lose everything and ruin their family’s finances. It is no secret that if you go near a casino or other gambling facility you are likely to find a surrounding ring of pawn shops and other financial institutions, if you want to call them that, that cater to those who are desperate to be able to cover their gambling losses or even borrow money in order to gamble more. But the problem with gambling in the 21st century in America is that the entire society is complicit in the gambling. It puts government in the position of preying on its own people as governments do through the lottery in particular by localizing the lottery in selling the most lottery tickets in the most impoverished neighborhoods in virtually every state that has a lottery. Governments sell the idea of legalize gambling because of the promises of vast revenue that will come in the state coffers. Many times you will see states guarantee or at least pledge that the increased money — the massive revenue coming from the states take in the gambling golfers will go to causes that are supported by the public such as increased police protection or increased money for the schools.

 

That is why report by Alan Blinder, also published in the New York Times is so important. He goes to Tunica Resorts Mississippi where there on the Gulf Coast Mississippi a massive Harrah’s Casino closed this past Monday. It did so because of a massive falloff in business. That falloff in business is one of the testimonies in the common world to the fact the sin does not deliver on its promises. Once governments got in the business of legalizing gambling, neighboring states decided to do the same, and so these massive casinos and other gambling enterprises that were put together that at one-point thrived because there was no competition, they are now collapsing. And, as the New York Times now reports on the Gulf Coast Mississippi that the Gulf Coast to there in that state that it sold gambling as the way toward an economic and rich future. There are now no less than nine vacated casinos.

 

Anthony Lucas, who is a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and specializes in research on the gambling industry, told the Times:

 

“No one knew in 1993 or 1994 what it was going to be like and then Mississippi showed the world that it could be a viable industry, and that encourages everybody else that there is a possible way into the gate that they can compete.”

 

He went on to say:

 

“I think governments are generally receptive because, in a way, it is almost like attacks, but they do not get blamed for.”

 

But this kind of gaming revenue that comes to the states to gambling is not almost like attacks — it is precisely attacks, attacks in this case on those who are stupid enough to gamble away their income.

 

Going back to the horseracing scandal, Juliet Macur makes the point that even as many people will watch what appears to be the elegance and glory of thoroughbred racing, most people won’t be thinking about all of those dead horses nor the moral scandal surrounding the use of drugs on the horses they are watching race. And then think about those vacant casinos on the Gulf Coast Mississippi. Just think back to when those casinos opened and every community leader and elected politician wanted to stand in line to have a picture taken on opening day. You can well bet they will not have their picture taken in front of a vacant casino.

 

Earlier in the week, we reported on the controversy concerning the swap of prisoners between the United States government and the Taliban that led to the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. And as we saw earlier this week, there was an enormous controversy building about the wisdom, morality, and legality, even the constitutional authority, whereby this transfer had taken place. But now we know that the situation was even more complicated and problematic than we knew then. And it has become clear that those are the critics of this swap are not only President Obama’s political enemies, but many of his political friends.

 

A good number of Democrats in Congress, especially in the United States Senate, have registered their outrage, their concern, and their perplexity that the president involved himself in this kind of negotiation with terrorists and with this particular negotiation that led to the release of five senior Taliban figures in exchange for one American surgeon, who is himself in a very morally problematic position having been captured by the Taliban and then used a bargaining chip in this negotiation only after having deserted the United States Army.

 

Columnist Mark Sappenfield, in an article that is run in several leading American newspapers in recent days writes this:

 

President Obama negotiated with terrorists. He broke the laws that govern transfers at Guantánamo Bay. He has strengthened the enemies of the Afghan government that the United States is thought to establish with blood and treasure for a decade. Mr. Obama, he writes, has opened himself to all these charges with his decision to transfer five, high-level Taliban detainees from Guantánamo the Qatar Saturday in exchange for Sergeant. Bowe Bergdahl, the only US prisoner of war in Afghanistan.

 

The obvious question on the minds of many is this: Why did President Obama, at this particular time, make this decision violating the will of Congress, perhaps violating the letter of the law and doing so in a way that has brought opposition not only from his political opponents but from his political allies.

 

Sappenfield writes:

 

There must be an explanation for this and of interest to us is the fact that he says the basis for understanding why President Obama did this is his worldview. Yet in the administration’s answers all these criticisms it becomes apparent that this weekend’s prisoner swap is about more than Sergeant Bergdahl. It is a statement of President Obama’s deeply held views about American foreign policy, which unapologetically see the world in innumerable shades of gray and are willing to challenge how the country has conducted itself internationally in the past.

 

And then to underline what’s at stake in terms of this transfer, Sappenfield writes:

 

The five Taliban men sent to Qatar after all, were not naïve foot soldiers caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were precisely the sort of men for whom the Guantánamo detention camp was created. Taliban leaders ranging from provincial governors to government ministers to top military officials. In the past, even Democrats have questioned the wisdom of transferring these men out of Guantánamo something that has been discussed within diplomatic circles for years.

 

But on the side of the Taliban, what did they expect to gain from this, in addition to the five leaders they got back in this prisoner swap? Well, this is where it becomes very apparent in the reporting of Nathan Hodge of the Wall Street Journal that what the Taliban craves is publicity of being treated as a legitimate government. And that in essence is exactly what President Obama did, even over against the advice of many of the senior defense and foreign policy analysts. In this prisoner exchange, the Taliban not only got five of their senior leaders back, they also gained a huge win in terms of international publicity and public relations.

 

As Nathan Hodge documents, in this prisoner exchange that was caught on video, the Taliban are seen meeting with Americans on equal footing. And the Americans even having come to insurgent turf. In other words, it was a huge publicity coup for the Taliban.

 

Shifting back to domestic policy, yesterday’s front page of the Anchorage Daily News from Alaska read:

 

High School Exit Exam Ends. The text under the headline: About 3,300 Alaska students who failed since 2004 can now get diplomas.

 

The article is a very interesting example of what happens when a government assumes responsibility and then fails at fulfilling what that responsibility requires.

 

As Jill Burke reports for the Anchorage Daily News:

 

Back in 2004 the Alaska schools put in place a test of three-day series of tests that was to be undertaken by 10th graders in the state’s public schools. The 10th graders had to pass that test in order later to graduate. If they did not pass, they had two additional years in which they had the opportunity to pass the test and graduate.

 

All this was put in place because of complaints that too many students were graduating without basic knowledge and basic skills. But ten years later they decided to call off the entire enterprise, not because it works so well, but because it revealed that so many of Alaska’s public school students couldn’t pass the test. Not one time, not after a second try, not after a third try. And so here is a deeply instructive lesson in how government works — the government said, “We have to be held accountable. We have to have specific metrics, numbers by which we can be held accountable.” And once those numbers were as bad as they turned out to be, the government says, “We don’t want to ask the question anymore.” They don’t want the metrics they demanded and they are actually virtually apologizing to the people of Alaska by saying the 3,300 students that failed the exam since 2004 are now going to be given their diplomas anyway. It is very hard to put the words “government” and “accountability” together and make it stick.

 

Here is a prime example of just how unstuck those two words can become. The government put the tests in place in order to hold the schools accountable. Once the reports were so bad, the test scores so low over ten years, they decided, “Well we don’t want that kind of accountability so we will just call the whole thing off.”

 

Finally, we need to recognize that 70 years ago today, America and its allies launched the greatest invasion force in the history of humanity. The day has become immortalized over the past 70 years simply as D-Day. The allied invasion of the continent of Europe from the north came after three protracted years of deadly battle — tremendous frustration, gains, and losses. And yet by June of 1944, it was clear that an invasion was imminent. The United States and its allies tricked the Nazis into believing that the invasion would probably come at the Pas de Calais, but instead it came at Normandy, an intimidating spit of land with high cliffs, dangerous tides, and very heavy German defenses. Christians looking at the experience of human history come to terms with the fact that we cannot separate history and divine providence. There are mysteries here to be sure. We cannot disassociate what happens with the reading of providence that is to our advantage, but we can certainly look back and see without question that June 6, 1944 was one of the most crucial turning point days in all of human history. It is one of those dates that looked at objectively raises the question, “If that day had not gone as it did, where would we now be? How would we now live?” The scale of the invasion force absolutely staggers the imagination even now, 70 years later. 6,483 vessels were involved. 132,715 troops landed in Europe on that single day. There were 27,400 paratroopers alone.

 

The beaches are now immortalized in terms of American history and the history of our allies. They included Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. The day was marked by various blunders miscalculations and successes, but at the end of the day it was very clear that the Americans and their allies have landed and that the valorous action undertaken by American and allied troops had not only surprised the Germans but also laid the foundation for the eventual German defeat.

Military historians remind us that most of those young men who hit the beach on June 6, 1944 were ages 19 and 20. They were private sergeants and junior officers. They were the first to hit the beach and as one American commander said to those as they landed on the beach, “Get off this beach as fast as you can because the only people left on the beach are the dead and those about to die.” There are still thousands of living veterans of D-Day as the day became known as the longest day as many call it who are alive among us today. But as that recounting of the age of those who landed on the beach now makes clear, even the youngest of those now alive are either 90 or just about to approach the 90th birthday. The vast majority of the veterans of D-Day have long ago died, and even as we have the opportunity to honor those now living among us, we recognize that when the 80th anniversary of D-Day rolls along in 2024, it is unlikely that many of them will be around to observe it with us.

 

The Christian worldview reminds us that military issues and military history are often complicated and they are often issues that are difficult to untangle. We recognize even as the great church father Augustine noted in the late fourth in early fifth centuries that the Christian soldier finds himself in an agonizing position, but there are times when the decision to fight is absolutely necessary, and the Allied defeat of the Nazi forces in 1945 was one of the most absolutely necessary moral acts in all of military history.

 

I close this edition of The Briefing marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day by reading the general orders issued on the early morning of that day by the supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary force, General Dwight David Eisenhower. He wrote:

 

Soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied expeditionary force: You are about to embark upon the great Crusade toward which we have striven these many months the eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well-equipped, and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and  their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons ammunitions of war and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck and let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking. Signed Dwight D Eisenhower.

 

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. Remember that last Saturday we released the final installment for the spring of 2014 for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. The new season will begin in late summer, and we are inviting you to call right now with your question in your voice. Remember the phone number is 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. I’m speaking to you from Seattle, Washington and I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.

The Briefing 06-06-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Corruption and decay of gambling venues reveal vain hopes of gambling

Horse Racing Still Stumbling in Antidrug Push, New York Times (Juliet Macur)

Harrah’s Tunica Casino to Close, Hinting at Gambling Glut, New York Times (Alan Blinder)

2) Controversial prisoner swap statement about Pres. Obama’s worldview

Republicans slam Obama over Bowe Bergdahl swap. Why he won’t care. , Christian Science Monitor (Mark Sappenfield)

Release of Taliban Detainees Alarms Afghan Villagers, Wall Street Journal (Nathan Hodge)

Taliban Deftly Offer Message in Video of Freed U.S. Soldier, New York Times (Matthew Rosenberg)

3) Alaska high school exit exam ended for sake of government, not children

Alaska students who didn’t pass exit exam can now get diplomas, Anchorage Daily News (Jill Burke)

4) 70th anniversary of D-Day, one of most crucial days in history

D-day statement to soldiers, sailor, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, 6/44, National Archives (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

 

 

Transcript: The Briefing 06-05-14

The Briefing

 

June 5, 2014

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

 

It’s Thursday, June 5, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

Pearce, reporting for the Los Angeles Times, gets the key issue absolutely correct when he writes, “The story sounds like an urban legend – but it’s real.” Pearce continues his report:

 

On Saturday morning [of last week], a bicyclist found a 12-year-old girl in the middle of a path in Waukesha, Wis. Her clothes were caked with blood. She had been stabbed 19 times — but she was still alive, and had crawled out of the woods for help.

 

After calling 911, her rescuer asked the girl, “Who did this to you?” and, as Pierce reports, the answer according to police accounts would be as shocking as the reason she had been attacked in the first place, with the Internet being blamed as a dark and wicked influence. As the police now report, two 12-year-old girls, two girls the same age as the girl who was attacked nearly to death, have been charged as adults on suspicion of attempting to murder their friend and fellow middle school classmate after inviting her to a sleepover last Friday night. According to The Los Angeles Times, the plot was months in the making. It was apparently inspired by a digital-age urban legend named “Slender Man.” The Los Angeles Times reports this slender man is a “not-quite-human figure with spindly fingers and an empty face who shows up in the background of photos from haunted places.” Of course, this is a fictional character, but these two girls had apparently decided he was real enough that they want to please him by murdering a friend. According to news reports in The Los Angeles Times and far beyond, the game actually operates by having this character demand anyone who will follow him and join his cult must first kill a fellow human being, kill a friend.

 

Now remember all this is taking place last Friday and Saturday in the village of Waukesha, Wisconsin. And now we have two 12-year-old girls charged with the attempted murder and the savage attack of a fellow 12-year-old girl, and it turns out they had invited her to a sleepover only to lure her into what they planned to be her murder. According to Waukesha Police Chief Russell P. Jack:

 

The Internet has changed the way we live. It’s full of information and wonderful sites that teach and entertain. The Internet can also be full of dark and wicked things. Unmonitored and unrestricted access to the Internet by children is a growing and alarming problem.

 

The same kind of alarming problem was registered in the coverage of The Wall Street Journal, where Carolyn Porter reports:

 

The case of two 12-year-old girls who allegedly lured a middle-school friend into the Wisconsin woods and stabbed her repeatedly before leaving her for dead has reignited a debate about the potentially damaging influence of the Internet on children, with local police calling it a “wake-up call for parents.”

 

The Wall Street Journal story also quoted Police Chief Russell Jack, who told that newspaper, “Unmonitored and unrestricted access to the Internet by children is a growing and alarming problem. Parents,” he said on Monday, “are strongly encouraged to restrict and monitor their children’s Internet usage.” As Porter continues:

 

The victim, also a 12-year-old girl, remained in stable condition [earlier this week]. She suffered 19 stab wounds. After the attack, the victim crawled out of the woods to the side of a road, where a passerby found her and called 911.

 

But the Wall Street Journal also gives additional important background information. As they write, “The two alleged perpetrators, who read a website called Creepypasta.wiki and followed Slenderman, a fictional character, had planned the attack for months.” The girls intended to flee to a mansion where they believed this Slender Man had his home and they intended to become his followers, which required that they first kill someone. The complaint issued by the Waukesha Police Department indicates that upon interrogation, the two 12-year-old girls admitted stabbing their friend and attempting to kill her. They have been charged as adults due to the Wisconsin state statute that says that anyone who commits this kind of attempted murder is charged as an adult.

 

Sherry Turkle—we’ve quoted her before. She’s a psychologist and a specialist in terms of the digital revolution. She’s also a faculty member at MIT, that is, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She said, “This is a tragic story about our vulnerability to a medium where the lines between what’s real and what’s a game are blurred.” She went on to say, “We’re not providing the guidance for these two 12-year-olds to sort out [fact from fiction] when a website tells them to kill someone.” But something is horrifyingly missing from Professor Turkel’s account here, or at least from the coverage in The Wall Street Journal that cites her. Professor Turkel says that we’re not giving our young people—12-year-old girls in this case—adequate information in order to analyze their engagement with sites like this on the World Wide Web, the Internet. The horrifyingly missing question is this: Why would these girls be allowed into such sites in the first place? Where were their parents? Apparently, as the police chief of Waukesha indicates, these girls had unrestricted and unfettered access to the darkest corners of the Internet.

 

But we should not be surprised about the soul-crushing and morality-corrupting influence of the World Wide Web, that is, of the Internet, on persons of any age or either gender. What we’re looking at here is a revolution not only that is represented by a new technology—in this case, the digital revolution, the Internet, and all that goes with it—but the revolution that is taking place in the parenting of children. Here you have 12-year-old girls and the affidavit from the police indicates that for some number of months and years, these 12-year-old girls from middle-class homes in Waukesha, Wisconsin, have been involved in this kind of really sinister dark corner of the Internet. And what you have here from Professor Turkel and in the coverage of The Wall Street Journal is that these girls were not given adequate guidance as they engaged this kind of Internet presence. But the larger question is this: How can any parent justify allowing children into the dark corners? It’s bad enough that adults find their way there, often by intention, and those adults also risk the same kind of soul corruption and morality confusion. But we’re talking here about elementary or middle school-aged girls, two 12-year-old girls, and what we’re talking about here is a grotesque dereliction of parental duty.

 

And, as we very well know, this is not limited to the case of two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The reality is that many parents are simply abdicating their responsibility to parent. That is perhaps even a generalized reality, but specifically the concern here is in terms of their children’s digital engagement. Children and teenagers do not deserve unfiltered and unrestricted access to the Internet. As a matter of fact, directly to the contrary, parents must take the responsibility, and exercise and fulfill the responsibility, to protect their children from entering into these very dark neighborhoods on the World Wide Web. And those neighborhoods are countless. They are virtually everywhere. Some about sex; some about violence; some about religious cults; and some a combination of just about all these things put together. These two 12-year-old girls now stand accused as adults of attempting to murder their friend, having been convinced by a videogame, or at least an Internet game, to find their way into luring a 12-year-old friend to their home for a sleepover and then trying their very best to kill her, eventually stabbing her 19 times and leaving her for dead.

 

Now when you look at a story like this, we should be thankful that this kind of thing does not happen more often. But, of course, what we also must think about when we see a story like this is how much damage takes place in the lives of untold young people—children, middle schoolers, high schoolers, teenagers—who thankfully never resort to this kind of horrifying and violent behavior, but nonetheless have their moral systems grotesquely distorted; have their understanding of the distinction between the real and the unreal horribly confused. God gave children to parents precisely so that parents would protect them from this kind of thing, and we should understand that parents bear a nonnegotiable, non-delegatable responsibility and authority to see to it that their children stay out of these very dark places on the Web.

 

Christians, in general, and Christian parents, specifically, must rethink our entire understanding of the stewardship of this digital revolution. We have to think about the principles and boundaries we would put in place not only for our children, but for ourselves. And we must also understand and affirm quite clearly that ignorance is no excuse. Some of you, I’m sure, are still able to remember those public-service commercials from the 1960s and the 1970s, when the voice came on the television saying, “It’s 11:00 p.m. Do you know where your children are?” Well let’s translate that into the digital age. Regardless of the time it is, do you know where your children are on the World Wide Web, on the Internet? If not, you should, and if not, they may be in grave danger. As this story indicates, the danger may extend not only to themselves, but to others as well.

 

Meanwhile, while we’re talking about the inability of many people playing these digital games to distinguish between the real and the unreal, we need to consider an article that appeared earlier this week in The New York Times. The article by Chris Suellentrop has to do with escape rooms or Escape the Room, an Internet game that now fuses the real and the unreal. Rather than just being played in the digital environment, in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, Toronto and New York City, there are now computer games, that is, digital games, video games, that take on a real-life dimension as well, fusing, as The New York Times says, art and theater. But The New York Times is also very clear about the fact that some of these games are very violent and others of them are inherently pornographic, and that is also verified by other national media coverage on these escape rooms. And as you look at this—and most of these, of course, are being played by either older teenagers or those who are young adults—you come to understand that this is not a problem that is isolated to children. We are all responsible for our digital engagements. We’re also responsible for our entertainment choices. And with something like this, the intentional blurring of the real and the unreal with some very negative and sinister issues already attached to it, should be a significant warning to Christians that the escape room is something Christians had probably better not enter in the first place, much less need to escape.

 

Shifting to the intersection of politics and the Christian worldview, we need to understand that politics for anyone is an expression of the worldview that shapes that individual’s thinking. Keep that in mind when you consider William Galston’s recent column in The Wall Street Journal. He writes:

 

Today’s political polarization is more than a journalistic trope. It is more intense than at any time in the past century, and it pervades our political system from top to bottom. It feeds legislative gridlock and damages trust and confidence in political institutions.

 

He goes on to say this is true not only in the United States, but also in Europe, and in particular in the United Kingdom. He says this condition did not develop overnight. He then goes on to say:

 

Half a century ago, the two parties agreed on Cold War anticommunism as the core of foreign policy and on a broadly Keynesian approach to economics. Most of the cultural issues that dominate today’s landscape and divide the parties were not matters of public conversation.

 

Well if you look at the opening paragraphs by William Galston in this column, he actually asks a question and then answers it. The question he implicitly asks is this: Why are Americans now seemingly more divided than in any point in recent history across the political spectrum? Why are Democrats more Democratic and Republicans more Republican when it comes to political philosophy? He then points to the consensus that certainly shake the postwar period in the United States; a consensus that included a moderate Keynesianism in economics and also, he gets it exactly right, a uniform approach to foreign policy especially centered in anti-communism. If you go back to the race, for instance, for president in 1960, and you look at the platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties, and then you look at the two standard-bearers for those parties—John F. Kennedy, the Democrat, and Richard Nixon, the Republican—you’ll discover that they differed very little in economic theory. They differed even less in foreign-policy. So, again, as Galston asked, “Why are Americans so politically divided or polarized today?” Just consider how he also writes in that final sentence of the paragraph I quoted that most of the cultural issues that dominate today’s landscape and divide the parties were not matters of public conversation.

 

Now that’s profoundly true, but, again, that means he has just answered the question that he raised. If you go back to 1960, there was no discussion of abortion. If you go back to 1960, there was no polarization between the political parties on the issue of same-sex marriage. Those issues were simply undebatable. They weren’t even present on the American scene. So let’s go back to Galston’s question. It’s implicit in his entire column: Why are Americans now more politically divided than in any recent point? It’s because of the very issues he says were missing before, but are present now. The political landscape is divided in America not mostly on economic issues, though economic issues do continue to play an important role, but it’s more on the cultural issues as he addresses them. He writes in his column:

 

By 1980 this postwar consensus had collapsed. Democratic support for Cold War anticommunism waned in reaction to the Vietnam War. Republican support for Keynesian economics had given way to the supply-side revolution. The country had split over new social issues—notably feminism, abortion and the counterculture. And the civil-rights movement triggered political realignments in the South and among the white working class in the Northeast and Midwest.

 

All these shifts pointed in the same direction, toward increased unity within each political party and more-intense divisions between them. Today, ideology, policy preferences, partisanship and voting behavior are aligned as never before.

 

Well now that’s a bit of an overstatement because if you go back to the founding era of the United States, if you go back to the early presidential administrations, you’ll discover that they were far more partisan than America is today. But the very interesting thing about Galston’s column is that he appears to be making some very interesting arguments. He argues, for example, that Republicans in recent years have moved further to the right than Democrats have moved to the left, and yet even the data he cites within his article don’t make that argument very clearly. For instance, he writes:

 

Among voters, the picture is more complex. In 1972, for example, 29% of Democrats called themselves liberal or very liberal, a figure that rose by 18 points to 47% by 2012. During those four decades, the share of Republicans regarding themselves as conservative or very conservative rose by fully 30 points, to 76% from 46%.

 

Well let’s just think about that for a moment. One of the basic understandings of the Christian worldview is that culture produces the politics; the politics does not produce the culture. In other words, we have to change the culture more fundamentally than we have to change the politics. The Christian worldview also affirms the fact that an individual voter’s worldview is what produces the political decisions—inescapably so. We vote who we are, and we vote our own convictions; our own analysis and worldview. Inevitably, either in a sophisticated way or in a very unsophisticated way, either consistently or sometimes rather inconsistently, our worldview produces our political choices, and that is something that is just basically missing from Galston’s analysis.

 

But there’s something else here as well because even as he suggests that over the last several decades Republicans have moved further to the right than Democrats have moved to the left, that now appears to be reversing course with the Democrats now moving far more in a liberal direction than you have Republicans moving in a more conservative direction. Interestingly, confirmation of that came in the previous day’s issue of The New York Times, when Michael Powell wrote an article about the fact that the current governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has had to move significantly to the left in his quest for reelection. As a matter of fact, the specific event that prompted this article in The New York Times is the fact that New York’s very liberal Working Families Party has decided to endorse Andrew Cuomo because he has agreed to move left in his second administration in a far more progressive, according to their designation, or liberal direction. The big article in The New York Times was a debate over whether or not the New York governor actually is as liberal as he is now claiming and posing to be. Similar reports have been issued related to, for instance, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is presumed to be a leading Democratic candidate for president in 2016.

 

But there’s now an open debate in the Democratic Party about whether or not Hillary Clinton is liberal enough to be the standard-bearer for the party in 2016. In recent days, former President Bill Clinton has had to defend his own presidential legacy over the attacks by his own party’s left wing, accusing him of being basically a closet Republican as president of the United States. So there’s ample evidence here of the fact that the Democratic Party is lurching to the left, and there’s ample evidence to the fact that William Galston is onto something when he points out the increased political and ideological polarization that has taken place in the United States.

 

But what’s missing from this is what’s most essential, and that is the understanding that this kind of political and ideological polarization is the inevitable result, indeed, it is the outworking, of a basic conflict over worldview. And when it comes to those very issues that William Galston now says divides Americans more than any others, those cultural issues—the issues of cultural conflict such as euthanasia, abortion, the sexual revolution, same-sex marriage, and all the rest—those are the very issues that are shaped most acutely and most urgently by worldview. And, thus, we come back to the point that we make over and over again. Worldview matters immensely because as our worldview is so are we, and that is how we vote. And both political parties, having become more polarized over the last several decades, are now poised almost assuredly to be even more polarized in the future. Why? Because the issues aren’t going away; they’re only looming larger and, of course, coming in greater number.

 

One final point that informed and intelligent Christians must always keep in mind is this: if we want to change an individual’s position on these intensely controversial issues, if we want to change the nation’s consensus on these very controversial issues, we have to affect change first at the worldview level and then convince on the issues. It simply doesn’t work to try to reverse that direction and change people’s minds on issues in order to change their worldview. We had better keep this truth in mind all the time.

 

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. Remember that last Saturday we released the final installment for the spring of 2014 for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. The new season will begin in late summer, and we are inviting you to call right now with your question in your voice. Remember the phone number is 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. I’m speaking to you from Anchorage, Alaska, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 06-05-14

Podcast Transcript

1) “Slender Man” stabbing by 12-year olds reveals need for responsible internet parenting

Internet blamed as ‘dark and wicked’ influence in Wisconsin stabbing, Los Angeles Times (Matt Pearce)

Child Stabbing Raises Alarm About Web and Youths, Wall Street Journal (Caroline Parker)

2) Escape Room games and Christian thoughtfulness in entertainment choices

In Escape Rooms, Video Games Meet Real Life, New York Times (Chris Suellentrop)

3) Political polarization of America on social issues reveals worldview differences

Americans Are as Polarized as Washington, Wall Street Journal (William Galston)

After a Pledge of Allegiance, Some Doubters, New York Times (Michael Powell)

 

Transcript: The Briefing 06-04-14

The Briefing

 

June 4, 2014

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

 

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

 

It’s hard for most modern Americans to imagine, but as recently as two centuries ago, just 200 years ago, virtually all the peoples of the earth were ruled over by autocratic monarchs who were at the heads of hereditary monarchies. And now 200 years later, very few nations of the earth are actually ruled in this way. The rare exceptions are largely found in the Pacific Rim and also in the Islamic world, especially in regimes such as Saudi Arabia. But when you consider the fact that if you go back two hundred years ago, virtually all of Europe, all of the European nations, were ruled by hereditary monarchs. If you go back just 100 years, a good many of those monarchs who were at the head of those autocratic regimes were actually the descendants of one British Queen, and that being Queen Victoria.

 

But now we’re living in a very different world, a world so utterly and radically different that most modern people can’t imagine that there once was a day when people had the right to rule, and to rule in terms of an autocratic power, simply by the fact that they were born to another set of people who also ruled. Hereditary monarchy seems something that is as out of place, in terms of modern society, as just about anything we can imagine, and yet those hereditary monarchs are still around. Many of those thrones and dynasties still continue to exist even if they are greatly reduced in power and authority.

 

A reminder of that came on Monday of this week when Spain’s King Juan Carlos announced that he was abdicating in favor of his son, 44-year-old Crown Prince Felipe. Spain’s government made the announcement and King Juan Carlos himself made an address on the airwaves in which he said, “The time has come for a younger generation to take over.” He went on to speak to Spain’s recent political trials and said, “The long and deep economic crisis has left social scars in the country, but is also showing the way forward, and one is full of hope.” Well those hereditary monarchs in Spain had better hope that the new king, to be known as Philip VI, will be able to restore some of the luster and respect that King Juan Carlos had at the beginning of his reign.

 

King Juan Carlos himself is a very interesting artifact of modern monarchy. His grandfather who ruled was king, but had to leave the nation. His father never ruled. King Juan Carlos was announced as the successor head of state by military leader Francisco Franco. Eventually, Juan Carlos did take over the throne in 1975 upon Franco’s death, and almost immediately, he became a national hero. The restoration of the monarchy was very popular, but it became especially popular in 1978 and in the early 1980s in a time of political unrest in Spain. In particular, the king grew in influence and respect amongst the Spanish people when he took the side of democracy over against an attempted coup, and this was credited as a major intervention by the young king in a way that made a decisive difference and one for democracy and freedom. But in more recent years, Juan Carlos has been ensnared in controversy, and even more than the king; the royal house, including at least one of his daughters and the king himself. The Spanish people seem to be growing impatient with scandals concerning the royal family.

 

But from a Christian worldview perspective, it is very interesting to note the fact that, in the last two years alone, there have been a record number of royal abdications. The examples include Benedict XVI, the pope who resigned, and also Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and King Albert II of Belgium. Now King Juan Carlos joins the heads of state and those who were holding royal thrones who have abdicated just in the last several months. This leads to a very interesting question. How in the world can you have the existence of hereditary monarchies when hereditary monarchs don’t act like the heads of the dynasties that they had inherited? This is a very interesting question, but the more important question is this: Why is there such a hunger for a king? Why is there so much interest in the heads of royal houses of Europe, especially when there is virtually no political power now assigned to those royal houses?

 

Well to answer that modern question, we have to go back to a very pre-modern source, and that is the Old Testament. The Bible reveals that Israel demanded a king. The nation of Israel said that as they look to the other nations around them, those nations had kings and they felt envious, and Israel demanded a king. God told Samuel that he did not intend for Israel to have a king; that He Himself intended to be Israel’s King, but when Israel demanded a king, God eventually gave Israel that king. But God did warn through Samuel that the nation had better be careful what it hoped for, because if it really wanted a king, then it would have a king. And once it had a king, it probably would not want that king.

 

But there is a very interesting aspect of this we need to recognize, and that is that human beings seem to long for the kind of grandeur and majesty that is associated with the throne. We tend to be drawn to it in some kind of imaginative magnetism. We tend to yearn for the kind of benevolent monarch who would rule with equity and justice and righteousness. And that points to a hunger that has been put into our hearts by none other than our Creator. And it reminds us that the Christian gospel includes a royal story; the royal story of the King, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will come to reign and who will reign with his saints and who will be the King over a kingdom that will have no end. The kind of King that is promised, even as the shepherds heard that declaration on that hillside in Bethlehem; the kind of King that is recognized as the one who whose throne would exist forever; the kind of King foretold by the prophet Isaiah, in terms of the wonderful Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of peace; and the kind of King that is promised in Scripture. The Lord Jesus Christ, who will rule and who will reign, described in such royal monarchial language in the book of Revelation; the one who would reestablish the throne of David and rule as sovereign, as monarch, as mediator, and as Messiah, the anointed one.

 

Perhaps the news associated with the abdication of King Juan Carlos and the hopes that are reportedly invested in his successor, soon to be King Philip VI, all this should remind us of the fact that we really do yearn for a king, but we don’t yearn for the kind of king who is going to sit on an earthly throne, certainly not the kind of impotent and powerless earthly throne that will be inhabited by the new Spanish king, but rather the one who will sit upon a throne and will reign and rule forever, and will rule with perfect righteousness and justice. We rightly yearn for that King. We rightly yearn for the full coming of His kingdom. And as the triumphant Hallelujah chorus of Handel’s Messiah reminds us, He shall reign forever and forever.

 

Next, we move to China, where we face today a very significant and tragic anniversary. The anniversary is, of course, of the Chinese crackdown on the student protesters who had been supporting and calling for democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The attack upon the protesters began on June 3, 1989, but it was on June 4th that the military cracked down and shots rang out. Eventually, at least hundred and potentially thousands of young people protesting in Tiananmen Square were murdered by the Chinese military. The reality is that even to this day, 25 years later, we do not know the total of the death toll. We do not know how many of the Chinese young people were sacrificed by their own nation. We do know that, earlier in 1989, a push for democracy led Chinese students onto the streets and into Tiananmen Square, prime real estate in the city of Beijing with great historical circumstance and importance for the Chinese government and especially for the Communist Party. It harkens back to some of the most seminal events in the Communist Revolution that took place in China in the years after World War II. But in 1989, the students began to build statues to liberty. They began to speak openly of calls for a democratic openness in the government, and the government seemed to tolerate the protesters for a matter of weeks. But the patience of the Communist Party ran out, and on June 3rd, the military began to encircle Tiananmen Square. On June 4th, 25 years ago today, the Chinese military opened fire, and, as we’ve said, at least hundreds were killed. Western media reporters indicated that the death toll could have been in the thousands, but because China is still a closed society and because Tiananmen Square and the actions of the military there are still largely denied by the Chinese government, there is no way of knowing the death toll of those events.

 

But one of the most chilling aspects of this 25th anniversary today is that the Chinese people seem utterly unconcerned about the fact that they have intentionally forgotten the events. It is as if all those hundreds and potentially thousands of young people died for nothing. As a matter of fact, many observers have noted that even as the Chinese government has been making very clear that there would be no anniversary commemorations whatsoever. As a matter of fact, Tiananmen Square is off-limits, especially to Westerners, and there’s been a crackdown, indeed, even the Chinese social media have been forbidden to make any kind of reference or allow any reference to the events in Tiananmen Square or, for that matter, the protest calling for democracy. But as other Chinese scholars have pointed out, the most chilling and surprising aspect of all of this is that the Chinese people seem to be going along with the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party. There seems to be something of a tacit agreement between the population, especially in major metropolitan areas such as Beijing, and the Communist Party. And, as those who are watching China have indicated, the deal that seems to cement that relationship is this: if the Chinese Communist Party offers the people some level of prosperity, they will forgo calls for democracy. That’s the kind of devil’s bargain that seems to be what is operational now in China, and it is a chilling reminder of the fact that humanity does not uniformly long for the kind of democracy that those students were calling for 25 years ago. It’s also a reminder that horrifying events from history can be intentionally forgotten, whitewashed out of the record. Twenty-five years after China’s government and military killed hundreds and potentially thousands of the nation’s young people, the commemorations and remembrances of that horrifying event will take place not in China where such events will be illegal and where even the population appears to have no interest in bringing the matter to mind, but rather in places such as the United States. It’s a very chilling reminder of what can happen to history. Perhaps we should consider intentional forgetting a form of intentional sin. But the sinners in this case are not just the leaders of China and of China’s Communist Party, but the people of China, who appear to be going along with the intentional forgetting. But this kind of amnesia is of great moral consequence. Perhaps we should all keep in mind that on that Day of Judgment, we will each give an answer, both for what we remember and for what we forget.

 

Hear in the United States, big news came in recent days when the Obama Administration announced that Medicare may no longer exclude sex-reassignment surgery from coverage. As Roni Caryn Rabin reports for The New York Times, the Obama Administration said that the current exclusion was “no longer reasonable because the surgery is safe and effective and can no longer be considered experimental.” It turns out that an appeals board of the Department of Health and Human Services came down with the ruling in recent days. It comes, as The Times says, as a small but growing number of university health plans and large companies, including some Fortune 500 companies like Shell Oil and Campbell Soup, have started covering gender-transition services, and could signal, the paper says, further changes since many health plans follow Medicare’s lead on coverage. Or as Stephanie Armour of The Wall Street Journal reports, even though the appeal was made on the case of just one patient, the end of the exclusion opens the door for the floodwaters to come in terms of increased numbers of Medicare-covered sex-reassignment surgeries. Also, as Armour reports:

 

The total cost of transgender-specific care for one person is estimated at between $25,000 and $75,000, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. It also said that many providers of gender-reassignment surgery might not accept Medicare coverage, posing a challenge to those seeking the procedure.

 

But the big news here is that the exclusion has now come to an end, and this means that the floodgates are now open for the federal funding of sex and gender-reassignment surgery.

 

From a Christian worldview perspective, the most important aspect of all of this is the fact that this change in Medicare policy points to the fact that the insanity now absorbed and embraced by our entire society on the issue of sexuality and gender has now required the kind of policy change that was announced just in recent days by the Department of Health and Human Services. In other words, this is the mainstreaming of what just a few years ago would’ve been considered absolutely radical, if not unimaginable or unthinkable. But now it’s going to become standard fare, and once this kind of exclusion is eliminated in federal policy, there’s simply no way that this doesn’t lead to a radical increase in the number of these procedures, many of them now to be paid for by the taxpayer, that is, by the government. And here’s the big issue of worldview importance: we need to keep in mind that what the government pays for, it endorses. That’s a major matter when you consider anything from contraceptives to abortion, you could go down the entire line, but when it comes to this kind of sex-reassignment surgery, if the federal government is paying for it, if the Department of Health and Human Services says it can no longer exclude the procedures, if it pays for it, it is endorsing it, and that is a massive cultural change.

 

Finally, keeping in mind all the controversy about the fact that many commencement speakers scheduled to speak at major colleges and universities were forced to withdraw because of the kind of liberal protest that came on those campuses, consider the fact that Harvard University’s commencement speaker this spring was none other than former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And speaking at his alma mater, at least for his business graduate degree, Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor, went right at Harvard University and he accused the university of a liberal, closed-mindedness. The former mayor said this:

 

Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species.

 

Those are very brave words. Here you have New York’s immediately former mayor speaking of the fact that at Harvard University conservatives are, to use his words, “an endangered species.” And furthermore, he accused the liberals, who make up the majority of those on the Harvard faculty, of shutting down all dissent and silencing conservative voices. But then he went directly to documentation. Speaking at the commencement exercises, Mayor Bloomberg said that 96% of those who work for Ivy League universities, who contributed to the 2012 presidential campaigns, contributed on one side, that is, for the Democratic ticket. That is a hugely significant data point. Let me repeat it: of all those who reported working for either on the staff or faculty of an Ivy League institution, contributing to the 2012 presidential campaign, 96% of those donors contributed to the campaign of President Barack Obama. Bloomberg said, “Ninety-six percent. There was more disagreement among the old Soviet Politburo than there is among Ivy League donors.” The mayor went on to say:

 

That statistic should give us pause – and I say that as someone who endorsed President Obama for reelection – because let me tell you, neither party has a monopoly on truth or God on its side.

 

When 96 percent of Ivy League donors prefer one candidate to another, you have to wonder whether students are being exposed to the diversity of views that a great university should offer.

 

Well, indeed, you not only have to wonder that, the very assessment made by the former mayor makes the point with absolutely incontrovertible logic. Ending his address, Mayor Bloomberg said:

 

If the faculty fails to do this [that means to provide for a very intentional forum for the free exchange of ideas], then it is the responsibility of the administration and governing body to step in and make it a priority. If they do not, if students graduate with ears and minds closed, the university has failed both the student and society.

 

Well it will remain to be seen if Mayor Bloomberg’s address had any impact upon the faculty, the administration, and the governing board of Harvard University. One senses that it probably will have very little effect. But we need to keep in mind what the mayor documents in terms of the radical one-sidedness of the intellectual profile of major American colleges and universities; in particular, the most prestigious universities of the Ivy League. Considering the outsized influence of those institutions, this is a very clear signal of why those schools and the graduates and faculties of those schools leans so far left in terms of politics and worldview.

 

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. Remember the release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition this past Saturday. And remember that even as the spring season has come to a close, a new season will begin in late summer. So call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. I’m speaking to you from Anchorage, Alaska, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 06-04-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Debate after abdication of Spanish king reminder of human longing for a good king

King Juan Carlos to abdicate Spanish throne, The Telegraph (Fiona Govan)

Abdication of King Juan Carlos Leads to Debate on Spanish Monarchy, Wall Street Journal (Olivia Crellin, Jeanette Neumann, and Christopher Bjork Bjork)

2) Intentional forgetting of Tianenmen Square 25th anniversary an intentional sin

Tiananmen, Forgotten, New York Times (Helen Gao)

Collective amnesia prevails in China 25 years after Tiananmen Square, Los Angeles Times (Julie Makinen)

Wary China keeps close watch as Tiananmen anniversary arrives, Reuters (Sui-Lee Wee)

3)New Medicare policy embraces mainstreaming of sex changes

Medicare to Now Cover Sex-Change Surgery, New York Times (Roni Caryn Rabin)

Medicare Ban on Sex-Reassignment Surgery Lifted, Wall Street Journal (Stephanie Armour)

4) Bloomberg critiques radical onesided political profile of major American universities

Bloomberg, at Harvard, blasts Ivy League ‘liberals’ for ‘trying to repress conservative ideas’, Washington Post (Valerie Strauss)

Transcript: The Briefing 06-03-14

The Briefing

 

June 3, 2014

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

 

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

 

The prisoner exchange between the United States military and the Taliban has led to a host of questions; some of them having to do with the ethics of negotiating with terrorists and others with the deep questions that involve the soldier who was rescued. In this case, the American soldier was Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. He was taken possession and captive by the Taliban back in 2009 and he was just released and will soon be in American custody in a prisoner exchange that was arranged between the Obama administration and the highest echelon of the leadership of the Taliban in Afghanistan. If this is newsworthy to you, it’s newsworthy to just about everyone because the assumption has been that, since 2012, the United States government had no direct contact with the Taliban whatsoever. There are very deep questions involved in this prisoner transfer. As Brad Knickerbocker reports for The Christian Science Monitor, “For now, the story for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is one of physical and mental recovery and reunion with his family.” But the next paragraph is this:

 

But very soon it will involve debriefings about the nearly five years of his captivity by Taliban fighters, who apparently held him in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, where his infantry unit had been engaged in combat.

 

Military and intelligence experts will want to know how [the Alaska-based soldier] was treated, anything he can tell them about his captors, and what he learned about insurgent capabilities.

 

Then comes the next paragraph:

 

But for the young soldier – 23 when he became a prisoner of war, now 28 – those debriefings also will include difficult questions about how and why he happened to be in a position where he fell into the hands of Taliban fighters.

 

At this point in the developing narrative, Sgt. Bergdahl seems to have grown disillusioned with the mission, bitter about the Army and especially higher ranking enlisted men and officers, and simply walked off – gone “outside the wire” or protective base limits – and disappeared.

 

The official newspaper of the Army, The Army Times, reported:

 

Though Americans may be celebrating the release of the only American soldier held prisoner in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the reaction of the military community has been mixed at best.

 

That indicates something of the deep and very difficult questions that are embedded within this prisoner release and even in just the story of the American prisoner now released, Bowe Bergdahl. As Elizabeth Weise of USA Today reports, Bowe Bergdahl grew up in a conservative Christian family in Idaho. He studied ballet, was homeschooled, and then, according to USA Today and other major media, he spent time in a Buddhist monastery. Eventually, he served in a parachute infantry regiment of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division. The former pastor of the young man when he was a teenager at the Sovereign Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Boise said, “If there’s anyone I think of pulling through this and doing well, it’s Bowe. He has the mental and physical stamina not to be crushed by this experience.”

 

And yet the young man’s story also reveals a good many questions. As a matter of fact, more questions than answers. Even in the USA Today coverage, the pastor is quoted as saying about the time that the young man spent after being homeschooled in a Christian home to spending time in a Buddhist monastery, he said, “He was going through an exploratory phase in his life. He’d grown up in a conservative Christian home and was trying to figure out if this was his faith or his parents’ faith.”

 

Another very troubling aspect of this story is the fact that at least five American soldiers died in rescue attempts for Bowe Bergdahl over the past five years; most of them very early in his capture by the Taliban. Furthermore, back in the year 2012, his parents gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine and they gave the reporters for the magazine access to letters and emails that Bowe had sent them during his time in Afghanistan. Among the communications he sent to his parents, just before he walked off the base, he said this:

 

The U.S. Army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It’s the Army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good sergeants are getting out as soon as they can and they are telling us privates to do the same. I am sorry for everything here.

 

Again, as the major national media are reporting, at this point as the story is unfolding, it appears that he simply grew disillusioned with the mission of the United States Army in Afghanistan. He grew very bitter about the Army’s leadership there and in Washington, and he simply walked off the American premises, gone “outside the wire,” as the military says, and then he simply disappeared. We now know that he was taken capture by the Taliban and that he spent five years there. He was 23 when he was captured and, thus, 28 when he was liberated just in recent days. While all persons of goodwill should celebrate with Bowe Bergdahl’s parents about the knowledge that their son has been rescued from the Taliban, these other very difficult questions will continue.

 

And then there is the even larger context of the issue of negotiating with terrorists. Almost every American president, going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, has insisted that America never negotiates with terrorists and must never enter into a negotiation with those who intend to do this kind of evil. But, as just about everyone who knows the situation in every administration has acknowledged, almost every president faced with a similar kind of challenge has found some way to negotiate to some extent with those who can only be rightly described as terrorists. One of the most troubling aspects of the release of Bowe Bergdahl is the fact that the prisoner exchange involved the American release of five of the most dangerous and senior leaders of the Taliban that had been held in custody in Guantánamo Bay in the detention facility there. And, thus, it was a trade of five for one, and it was also a trade of one American sergeant for five very senior leaders guilty of terroristic war crimes among the Taliban. The Christian worldview informs us that this kind of situation is excruciatingly complex and difficult. In the fog of war, we face basic questions of morality that simply cannot be easily answered or easily dismissed. The questions surround this kind of prisoner exchange and they will continue to be debated.

 

In its coverage of the deeply moral issues involved in this situation, USA Today quotes Bruce Hoffman, director of Georgetown University Center for Security Studies. He said that even as America continually says, especially through its presidential administrations, “We do not negotiate with terrorists,” he describes this as more of a mantra that a fact. He said, “We have long negotiated with terrorists. Virtually every other country in the world has negotiated with terrorists, despite pledges never to do so. We should be tough on terrorism,” he said, “but not our fellow countrymen who are their captives, which means having to make a deal with the devil when there is no alternative.” Well that very expression “deal with the devil” indicates something of the difficult morality involving this kind of question. What kind of exchange of prisoners is fair and just and righteous? Is it fair to trade five for one? Is it fair to trade an American soldier, who committed no war crimes, for five Taliban leaders, who were known to have plotted and accomplished mass murder? Perhaps the sanest analysis of all this comes from the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. They wrote:

 

The return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of the Taliban is cause for relief for his family and all Americans, but there’s no denying that the price of his recovery is high. The Obama Administration swapped five of the hardest cases at Guantánamo in a fashion that will encourage terrorists to kidnap more Americans to win the release of more prisoners.

 

Was the Obama Administration right to trade one American sergeant for five hardened Taliban leaders? I think it’s almost impossible for us to say. This is one of those situations in which we have to acknowledge that we do not have all of the information that was available to our national leaders. As a matter of fact, it would be impossible for us to have access to all of the knowledge they had at the time. We are certain of the fact that they will sometimes make the right decision and sometimes they will fail. We are also aware that sometimes, in the fog of war, in the difficult moral situation of armed conflict and the war on terror, decisions have to be made that sometimes are not known or proved to be either right or wrong, just or unjust, until some considerable time has passed.

 

The Christian worldview reminds us that in a fallen world we find ourselves often in situations that are just this virtually impossible to unpack in any simple moral terms. But this much is clear: if the trade of Sergeant Bergdahl for the five seasoned Taliban leaders leads to the capture of more Americans in order for the Taliban to negotiate the release of even more of their leaders, it will have been a very bad deal indeed, or, to quote Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University, “a very bad deal with the devil.”

 

President Obama was swept into office in 2008 and reelected in 2012 largely on the promise that he intended to be as uninvolved in international relations as possible. But one of the situations President Obama has had to face is the fact that the world has not cooperated with his ambition and he’s been drawn into international conflict again and again. And there is every reason to believe that this president, who did not savor involvement in these international situations, is also not at his best when having to deal with the challenges of very difficult international relations and, in particular, the war on terror. This president appears to have a great deal of difficulty knowing how to answer aggression, and, as the situation in Syria made very clear, he’s seemed to be willing to draw lines in the sand, only to retreat from his own line. There is every reason to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin has noted this kind of American withdrawal and this kind of presidential hesitation and he sees this as his opportunity to capture the Crimean Peninsula from the nation of Ukraine, and, furthermore, to try to intimidate and destabilize that country as a whole.

 

Last Wednesday, delivering the commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, President Obama tried to reset his entire foreign-policy with a major address. The end result, in terms of the coverage of the event and response from world capitals in the days after the address, is that the world does not have any clearer picture of how the American president sees the role of the United States on the world picture in the present and in the years ahead. The president’s speech was mostly a repeat of what he had said in previous addresses. He held up the polarities of interventionism and isolationism and said that America must give itself to neither, and yet the president really offered no understanding of what he believes America’s role in the world to be or what it should be, either in the present or in the future. The American president seems to be deeply hesitant and ambivalent about America’s role in the world scene and, to give him just a little bit of credit here, perhaps one reason for that is that the American people themselves seem to be quite ambivalent and somewhat hesitant about understanding America’s role on the world scene. This adds up to a time of global danger that is made even worse by the fact that the United States is the only major nation on earth that has had, at least in terms of recent decades, the ability to settle some issues short of the kind of disaster they would otherwise become. Even the French Foreign Minister recently related the fact that the world complains when America is involved in the world, but the world is now complaining when America is not involved in the world.

 

But perhaps the most important aspect of the president’s address at West Point last week was his affirmation of the fact that the war on terror, which he had largely dismissed when running for president, is actually more acute now that in any point in America’s history. He said, “For the perceivable future, the most direct threat to America at home and abroad remains terrorism.” The president went on to say that the challenge of world terrorism directed toward the United States is no longer primarily a centralized leadership such as Al Qaeda, but is now a diffused set of terroristic cells around the world. What the president did not say is that virtually all of these are somehow related to Islam.

 

That takes me to yesterday’s edition of The New York Times where there was a major story on a controversy that has emerged over the 9/11 Museum there in New York City. The museum, of course, has to identify the cause of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The text panels in the museum include language such as this, “Al Qaeda represents a tiny fraction of the world’s Muslims,” but in our politically correct age, which often embraces nothing less than intellectual dishonesty, that kind of language isn’t enough because it links the terror attacks with Islam, and now there are those within the Islamic community and the larger interfaith community of New York City who are calling for a change. The newspaper quotes Peter Gudaitis, who said, “We give Muslim extremist too much credit when we call them Islamic or Islamists.” He said, “They are perverters of the faith, and to allow them to carry that mantle is exactly what they want.”

 

But it’s very interesting to see that the newspaper article of The New York Times yesterday also reveals that Muslims in New York City are trying to remove one woman who was on the board of the museum’s organization. That woman, Debra Burlingame, has been targeted for removal because she told Fox News, “When are citizens going to rise up and demand that the government acknowledge that Islam is a transnational threat? That government denial is killing us.” Fox News host Megyn Kelly then said, “They think you are an Islamophobe.” Ms. Burlingame then responded, “There’s no such thing as an irrational fear of Islam or Muslims when we know that virtually 80% of terror attacks in the world are committed by radical Muslims.”

 

Another example of the kind of political correctness I’m talking about appears in a syndicated column by Leonard Pitts that also appeared last week. Pitts writes movingly about the plight of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim. She’s a 27-year-old mother who is now threatened with execution because she is charged with the capital crime of converting to Christianity. She is, of course, in Sudan where international attention has recently been directed to her. There, under the penalty of death and awaiting a death sentence, she has given birth to a baby who is now with her in the jail, along with Mrs. Ibrahim’s 20-month-old son. Leonard Pitts writes movingly about her plight. He even goes so far as to state correctly that converting from Islam is against the law in Sudan and Muslim women are forbidden from marrying outside their faith. Ibrahim’s crimes, he says, against that code were apparently reported by her own brother. She was tried in order to disavow her faith, but she refused to do so, and for that, the authorities in Sudan gave her the death penalty. Before she dies, he says, she is to be whipped 100 lashes—the court having also found her guilty of adultery. She was found guilty of adultery, by the way, because they did not recognize her marriage to Daniel Wani, a Sudanese Christian who has American citizenship.

 

But the problem with Leonard Pitts’ article, the demonstration of the political correctness that is so deadly here, is that he tries to enlarge this to suggest that this is just an example of something that is found in many places of the world among many religions of the world. But that is manifestly false. This kind of capital crime, this kind of death sentence, handed down for conversion from one faith to another, is found almost exclusively in the Muslim world, and honesty compels us to say that it is found pervasively through the Muslim world.

 

Sadly, as if to make the very point we’re making here, the same issues of the newspapers of the last several days, dealing with these issues, has related, for instance, this headline, “Apparent Suicide Bomber in Syria Was From the United States,” dealing with the fact that United States officials have confirmed that it was an United States citizen who is believed to have died in Syria, blowing himself up in a suicide attack. He did so after becoming a Muslim extremist.

 

Similarly, yesterday’s edition of The New York Times includes a major news story indicating that French authorities announced on Sunday that they had arrested the man who is now believed to have killed three people last month at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. The suspect has been identified as a 29-year-old Frenchman with a long criminal history who traveled to Syria last year to join with radical Islamist fighters there. As The New York Times acknowledges, this brings to mind the killings that took place in March of 2012 in southern France by Mohammed Merah, a self-proclaimed member of Al Qaeda. Mr. Merah was a French Algerian dual citizen. He spent time in prison and was believed to have traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan for combat training with Islamist fighters. He killed three French soldiers, later a rabbi, and then three Jewish children outside a Jewish day school.

 

I can only wonder if the editors of The New York Times noted the incongruity of these news stories that appeared simultaneously on the same day in the same section of their newspaper in its print edition. But my reason for giving these stories so much attention today is this: we live in an increasingly secular world and many of the people who are trying to shape the news and interpret it for us are operating out of radically secular worldviews. The postmodern worldview that now takes the shape of political correctness is one of those highly secular worldviews. It seems almost impossible to someone operating out of that worldview that theology would matter, but, as we say again and again, theology matters, and in this case the theology of Islam matters intensely, deeply, inextricably to the pattern of Islamic world terrorism. The people who largely shape public opinion in America increasingly do not believe that theology can matter and when it obviously does matter, they try their best to find some other explanation for what has taken place. But as Christians understand, theology does matter. It always matters. And as we also understand, every single human being operates out of some kind of a worldview. And as we also understand, every one of those worldviews is in some degree theological. It simply has to be. Even the atheist operates out of a worldview that is inescapably theological.

 

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. Remember last Saturday’s release of the new edition of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. And remember that even as the spring season has now come to a close, we’re getting ready for the season that will begin in late summer. So give us a call with your question in your voice. Call us at 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. I’m speaking to you from Anchorage, Alaska, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 06-03-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Controversy over POW trade example of moral complexity of fallen world

Did Bowe Bergdahl go AWOL in Afghanistan?, Christian Science Monitor (Brad Knickerbocker)

Military community reaction mixed to Bergdahl release, Army Times (Joe Gould)

Is it ever right to negotiate with terrorists?, USA Today (Alan Gomez)

Sergeant Bergdahl’s Duty, Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board)

2)  President’s ambivalence over America’s global role reflects nation’s ambivalence 

Full transcript of President Obama’s commencement address at West Point, Washington Post (President Barack Obama)

3) Secular worldview unable to recognize significance of theology in Islamic violence

Visitors Fault Sept. 11 Museum’s Portrayal of Islam, New York Times (Sharon Otterman)

Faith cannot be coerced, Miamia Herald (Leonard Pitts, Jr)

Apparent Suicide Bomber In Syria Was From U.S., Wall Street Journal (Devlin Barrett)

Suspect Held in Jewish Museum Killings, New York Times (Scott Sayare)

Transcript: The Briefing 06-02-14

The Briefing

 

June 2, 2014

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

 

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

 

The issue of homosexuality now looms over every denomination, every church, every school, every politician, and eventually every American citizen, including, of course, every American Christian. That becomes increasingly clear as any option to evade the issue evaporates, and as so-called middle positions also continue to crumble. As I’ve been saying for some years now, this is inevitable. There is really no middle position on this issue and recent events have made that abundantly clear. In fairly short order and sooner rather than later, every American is going to be put on the spot, asked the question about beliefs on the issue of homosexuality and, of course, the related issue of same-sex marriage.

 

In recent days, that very argument is being made from the opposite side of the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage. On the other side, you have Tony Jones who has been known for years now as a major figure in the emergent church. Tony Jones, writing back on May 20th, pointed to the fact that there really is no third way on the issue of homosexuality and gay marriage. Jones points to the example of mainline Protestantism in general, the Presbyterian Church USA in particular, when he suggested that a denomination or a church may study the issue, but eventually it takes a vote and it takes a vote about whether or not to allow its clergy to perform same-sex unions. He then writes:

 

And the same goes for an individual congregation. At some point, every congregation in America will decide either, YES, same-sex marriages will take place in our sanctuary, performed by our clergy; or NO, same-sex marriages will not take place in our sanctuary, performed by our clergy. There is no third way on that. A church either allows same-sex marriages, or it doesn’t. 

 

He then writes in conclusion:

 

What I’m saying is that a church or an organization can study the issue in theory, and they can even do so for years. But this isn’t really a “third way” or a “middle ground.” Instead, it is a process. And at some point, that process has to end and practices have to be implemented. At that point, there’s no third way. You either affirm marriage equality in your practices, or you do not.

Now I rarely find a point of agreement with Tony Jones, at least to my mind this is the very first, but on this argument I am in profound agreement with him. On the opposite side of the question, of course, but in profound agreement with the importance of the question and with the essential fact that this is not just a question of theory, but inevitable church practice. And eventually the church will make its decision, and when a church or organization, a denomination, or an institution makes that decision there is no possibility of a third way.

 

Now a very interesting issue on this has appeared earlier this year when a Vineyard pastor by the name of Ken Wilson wrote what he entitled “A Letter to My Congregation.” It was subtitled, “An Evangelical Pastors Path to Embracing People Who are Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender in the Company of Jesus.” Ken Wilson released that letter as a short book form, available electronically and digitally, and in that book, he made the argument that there is the possibility of a third way and he intended to at least demonstrate a third way in a congregation that would be made up of those who were in various places on this issue. But that’s a matter of theological and intellectual dishonesty because if the church is allowing openly gay persons, gay persons in open relationships, and the performance of same-sex ceremonies and the related kinds of rights within the church, then it is a gay-affirming church. It is affirming the normality and acceptability of homosexuality and same-sex relationships. There is no way then to declare that there’s a third way. Tony Jones is exactly right: a church either will or will not allow the performance of same-sex ceremonies and, for that matter, allow the clergy and ministers of that church to perform same-sex ceremonies. The church that does allow such is a church that affirms homosexuality whether it intends to say so explicitly or not. And a church that does not do that is going to be well recognized as a church that, having faced the decision, is taking its stand in the biblical understanding of marriage as the exclusive union of a man and a woman, and is rejecting so-called gay marriage or same-sex marriage as something that is not only not going to be practiced by the church or accepted by the institution, but is that which is understood to be directly contrary to Scripture.

 

But all of this hits very close to home when just a few days ago blogger John Shore at Patheos.com put up an article entitled “Southern Baptist Pastor Accepts His Gay Son, Changes His Church.” John Shore printed a letter written by Pastor Danny Cortez of the New Heart Community Church near Biola in suburban Los Angeles. The pastor wrote:

 

My name is Danny Cortez and I pastor a small Southern Baptist Church in La Mirada, CA. We’re about a mile from Biola University in a very conservative neighborhood.

 

Anyway, I recently became gay affirming after a 15-year journey of having multiple people in my congregation come out to me every year. I scoured through your whole website and read everything I could. And it was especially the testimony of my gay friends that helped me to see how they have been marginalized that my eyes became open to the injustice that the church has wrought.

 

He then writes about one specific day in August of last year, that is, in August of 2013. He describes being at the beach on a sunny day and he said, “I realized I no longer believed in the traditional teachings regarding homosexuality.” He then went on to say, “As I was trying to figure out what to tell my church, I was driving the car with my 15-year-old son Drew,” and as he tells the story, a song came on that was associated with homosexuality. It was, to use the expression used by the pastor, “gay affirming.” Pastor Cortez then told his 15-year-old son, “I told him that I did know and that’s why I like the song.” That is, the song was gay affirming. He said, “I also told him that I no longer believed what I used to believe.”

 

But if the pastor surprised his 15-year-old son with that statement about the change in his position on homosexuality, just moments later, the son turned the table, and the 15-year-old told his father, “Dad, I’m gay.” Pastor Cortez then writes:

 

My heart skipped a beat and I turned towards him and we gave one another the biggest and longest hug as we cried. And all I could tell him was that I loved him so much and that I accepted him just as he is.

He went on to say this:

 

I couldn’t help but think that my 15 year journey was in preparation for that moment. If it wasn’t for this 15-year journey and my change in theology, I may have destroyed my son through reparative therapy.

Well, as the pastor continues to tell the story, on February 7, 2014, his son Drew made a coming-out video. On February 9th, he told the church about his position, and the pastor has posted on the Internet the hour-long message he gave to his congregation about his change on the issue of homosexuality. After he told his church about the change in position, the church voted on March 9th to prolong a period of study in prayer and discernment until May 18th. On May 18th—that’s just a few Sundays ago—the church voted not to dismiss the pastor and “instead to become a “Third Way” church (agree to disagree and not cast judgment on one another).” He went on to say, “This is a huge step for a Southern Baptist church.” Lest anyone missed the point, he says:

 

So now, we will accept the LGBT community even though they may be in a relationship. We will choose to remain the body of Christ and not cast judgment. We will work towards graceful dialogue in the midst of theological differences. We see that this is possible in the same way that our church holds different positions on the issue of divorce and remarriage. In this issue we are able to not cast judgment in our disagreement.

But that particular paragraph is directly contradicted by the one that follows; the very next paragraph in the pastor’s letter. He then writes:

 

Unfortunately, many who voted to remain traditional will now separate from us in a couple of weeks. We are in the period of reconciliation and forgiveness. Please pray for us in this. Then on June 8, we will formally peacefully separate, restate our love for one another, and bless each other as we part ways. It has been a very tiring and difficult process.

Well let’s just look at those two paragraphs again, and the one is stacked right on top of the other. In the first, Pastor Cortez says that the church has chosen to agree and yet to disagree; to agree to disagree to allow all positions, both positions, any number of positions within the congregation. But then he states explicitly that many who hold to the traditional position are separating from the church and will do so formally on June 8th. That’s this coming Sunday. But he is also contradicting himself not just in the paragraph that follows his declaration that they will agree to disagree, but also in the preceding paragraphs where he makes very clear that “We will accept the LGBT community even though they may be in a relationship. We will choose to be in the body of Christ,” he says, “and not cast judgment.” Well, as you look at that, it’s very clear that the church is not taking a third-way position. It’s not taking a position of neutrality. It is declaring itself, and all those who remain within the congregation and all congregations that remain in fellowship with that church are also affirming the gay-affirming position. That is simply inevitable given the fact that if you choose to become a part of this congregation or to remain a part of this congregation, you’re profoundly making that statement. And if the Los Angeles Southern Baptist Association, the larger California Southern Baptist Convention, and the Southern Baptist Convention itself maintains any kind of association with this church, the entire denomination and all its component parts will also be inevitably gay affirming.

 

To his credit, in his video, Pastor Cortez is very clear about the fact that he recognizes that his change in position represents a radical shift in the understanding of his own church and the biblical teachings the church has understood since its founding, and also, he understood that his position, his new position, is a radical shift in terms of the confession of faith of the Southern Baptist Convention—the Baptist Faith and Message that was revised in the year 2000 in such a way as to make explicit the fact that Southern Baptists believe that the Bible reveals very clearly the sinfulness of homosexual acts and homosexual relationships, and thus the biblical impossibility of endorsing same-sex relationships, much less so-called same-sex marriage.

 

But as you look at this, you come to recognize that what we have just days before the meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Baltimore in June is that the Southern Baptist convention will now be forced by the action of this congregation to take the action to dis-fellowship the church from the fellowship of the Southern Baptist Convention. Otherwise, the SBC and all of its member churches and all of its component parts will join in an act of biblical infidelity. This is a very difficult issue for any denomination, but it is also an inescapable issue. And I am absolutely assured that when Southern Baptists meet in Baltimore in a matter of just a few days—as a matter of fact, convening just 48 hours after this church will say goodbye to its traditional members that disagree with the new direction of the church—I’m absolutely convinced that the Southern Baptist Convention and the messengers to that convention will do what responsibility requires the convention to do. Several years ago the convention adopted membership requirements that made very clear that any church that affirms homosexuality is to be excluded from the Southern Baptist Convention and its membership. That’s the kind of position that reflects the biblical reality. There is no third way. And even as this kind of decision is necessary, it is done with a brokenness of heart that is the case any time a disciplinary action must be taken either in the context of a local church or in the context of a Baptist Association or denominational agency or unit.

 

The constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention explicitly excludes from membership congregations “which act to affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior.” The denomination’s position on the issue is clear. The resolve of the denomination is also, I believe, very clear. But the convention now faces just that kind of decision that will eventually be faced by every denomination, by every church, by every Christian institution and school. But this much is already clear and in this case, graphically clear: there is no third way. There is no middle ground. A church or a denomination or a denominational school or Christian institution will either affirm homosexuality or it will not. There is no middle ground. And when it comes to something like same-sex marriage, that becomes even more clear because either it will be allowed and recognized or it will not. And if so, there will be no question about where the church or institution stands. So Southern Baptists now head to Baltimore next week with a very big issue on the agenda and, as we’ve stated so often, an inescapable issue, an unavoidable issue, an issue that demands—and demands urgently—a decision.

 

Shifting to China and the issue of religious liberty, last week, at the end of the week, The New York Times reported on the fact that crosses are fast disappearing from a city that had recently been described as the Jerusalem of China. As Ian Johnson describes:

 

 

For nearly a year, the Sanjiang Church was the pride of this city’s growing Christian population. A landmark in the fast-developing northern suburbs, its 180-foot spire rose dramatically against a rocky promontory. Wenzhou, called “China’s Jerusalem” for the churches dotting the cityscape, was known for its relaxed ties between church and state, and local officials lauded the church as a model project.

 

But, as Johnson goes on to report, that was then and this is now. Now, late last month, “the government ordered the spire torn down, saying that it violated zoning regulations.” As a of matter of fact, as Johnson reports, the entire city, in terms of government officials, has led to a destruction of many spires and steeples and the removal of highly visible crosses from the city in a very clear crack down upon religious liberty and, in particular, upon public demonstrations of Christianity. One believer known as Mabel said, “People are stunned. They have completely lost faith in the local religious authorities.” Part of this is because this was a registered church. The church was officially government sanctioned and it had permission from the government to build the facility with the spire and the cross.

 

But a crackdown on Christianity in China that is especially prominent in this particular province—but is also true for the rest of the country at large—it is part of a crackdown by the Communist Party on what is declared to be the influence of Western systems of thought with Christianity described as one of those Western systems. But here we have a very clear example of what in the New Testament is described as the scandal of the cross. But we also have a very clear testimony to the fact that it is Protestant Reformation-based Christianity that is really the problem here. That’s made clear in Ian Johnson’s report in The New York Times when he writes:

 

Protestantism is also linked to a national debate about “universal values.” Some Chinese Protestants argue that rights such as freedom of expression are God-given, and thus cannot be taken away by the state. These beliefs have led many Protestants to take up human rights work. A disproportionate number of lawyers handling prominent political cases, for example, are Protestant.

 

So here you, have all the way from China, a New York Times story, a story in the nation’s leading secular newspaper, that demonstrates that not only does theology matter, but a theology that was rooted in the Reformation that gave birth to modern notions of religious liberty, matters in the nation of China right now; matters so much that this explains why the Communist Party has Protestant Christianity clearly in the bull’s-eye of its attack and why the removal of crosses in this province of China points to a crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party upon Christianity writ large.

 

The New York Times deserves credit for very good reporting on this issue, including the fact that the paper got a hold of an internal government source from the province, a nine-page document that suggested that due to the fact that there would be international outrage over the forced removal of the crosses, it should be claimed that this was simply because of zoning regulations. But, very clearly, the Communist Party, once again, has not only violated religious liberty, but has done so in a way that has exposed itself to the very righteous indignation of the entire world, or at least the world in so far as there is respect for religious liberty. Writing for Christianity Today last week, Kate Tracy reveals that it’s not just in Wenzhou that this is taking place, but in other major Chinese cities as well. She mentions in particular Ningbo where a campaign known as Three Rectifications and One Demolition led by the Communist Party has affected the ability of churches to hold services in the city where the famed missionary Hudson Taylor once very famously worked.

 

Christians in the United States should pray for our brothers and sisters in China, even as we recognize that the Chinese Communist Party well understands the challenge it faces because, as The New York Times reports, Christianity is the fastest-growing religion, and thus the fastest spreading worldview in China. And the Communist Party is absolutely right about this: in so far as Christianity grows, there is a direct threat to the supremacy and the oligarchy hold on power of the Communist Party. Because as even the secular New York Times recognizes in this report, where you find true Christianity, you find powerful arguments for religious liberty.

 

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. Remember that this past Saturday we released another issue of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition—the last one for this spring season. A new season will start late summer, and we invite you to call with your questions in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. I’m speaking to you from Anchorage, Alaska, and I’ll meet you tomorrow for The Briefing.

There Is No ‘Third Way’ — Southern Baptists Face a Moment of Decision (and so will you)

Southern Baptists will be heading for Baltimore in just a few days, and the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention is to be held in a city that has not hosted the convention since 1940. This time, Baptists attending the meeting will face an issue that would not have been imaginable just a few years ago, much less in 1940 — a congregation that affirms same-sex relationships.

Just days before the convention, news broke that a congregation in suburban Los Angeles has decided to affirm same-sex sexuality and relationships. In an hour-long video posted on the Internet, Pastor Danny Cortez explains his personal change of mind and position on the issue of homosexuality and same-sex relationships. He also addressed the same issues in a letter posted at Patheos.com.

In the letter, Cortez describes a sunny day at the beach in August of 2013 when “I realized I no longer believed in the traditional teachings regarding homosexuality.”

Shortly thereafter, he told his 15-year-old son that he “no longer believed what he used to believe.” His son responded with an even more direct word to his father: “Dad, I’m gay.” As Cortez writes, “My heart skipped a beat and I turned towards him and we gave one another the biggest and longest hug as we cried. And all I could tell him was that I loved him so much and that I accepted him just as he is.”

According to the pastor, events then came rather quickly. On February 7, 2014, his son, Drew, posted a “coming out video” on YouTube. Two days later, the pastor told his church about his new position on the issue (also posted on the Internet). In his message to the New Heart Community Church congregation, Cortez admitted that his “new position” represented a “radical shift” that put him into conflict with both the position of the church and the convictions of the denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. He acknowledged that his change of heart on the issue of homosexuality put him at odds with the SBC’s confession of faith, the Baptist Faith & Message.

In his letter, the pastor said that his aim was to see the congregation “allow for grace in the midst of disagreement.” To his regret, he said, many in the church were not pleased and the church had to consider whether to terminate the pastor. After voting on March 9 to prolong the time of consideration and prayer, the church voted on May 18 not to dismiss the pastor and “to instead become a Third Way church.”

Cortez cited Vineyard pastor Ken Wilson’s book, released earlier this year, A Letter to My Congregation. Wilson, who serves a Vineyard church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, describes his book as “an evangelical pastor’s path to embracing people who are gay, lesbian, and transgender in the company of Jesus.” Wilson argues that, even as he has come to affirm same-sex behaviors and relationships, the issue need not divide congregations or Christians.

Pastor Cortez cited Wilson’s argument as foundational to the position he and his church are now taking — “agree to disagree and not cast judgment on one another.”

But, there is no third way. A church will either believe and teach that same-sex behaviors and relationships are sinful, or it will affirm them. Eventually, every congregation in America will make a public declaration of its position on this issue. It is just a matter of time (and for most churches, not much time) before every congregation in the nation faces this test.

The impossibility of a “third way” is made clear in Pastor Cortez’s own letter.

In one paragraph, he writes:

“So now, we will accept the LGBT community even though they may be in a relationship. We will choose to remain the body of Christ and not cast judgement. We will work towards graceful dialogue in the midst of theological differences. We wee that this is possible in the same way that our church holds different positions on the issue of divorce and remarriage. In this issue we are able to not cast judgement in our disagreement.”

But in the very next paragraph, he writes:

“Unfortunately, many who voted to remain traditional will now separate from us in a couple of weeks. We are in the period of reconciliation and forgiveness. Please pray for us in this. Then on June 8, we will formally peacefully separate, restate our love for one another, and bless each other as we part ways. It has been a very tiring and difficult process.”

In two successive paragraphs the pastor refutes himself. His church is not going to take a middle ground. He states clearly that “we will accept the LGBT community even though they may be in a relationship.” And his church did not unanimously “agree to disagree,” for a significant portion of the church is leaving on June 8, just 48 hours before the Southern Baptist Convention convenes in Baltimore. Many “who voted to remain traditional” are now forced by conviction to leave the church.

Why? Because there is no “third way.” The New Heart Community Church has voted to “accept the LGBT community even though they may be in a relationship.” Even if it is claimed that some continuing members of the church are in disagreement with the new policy and position, they will be members of a church that operates under that new policy. At the very least, their decision to remain in the congregation is a decision to stay within a church that affirms same-sex behaviors and relationships. That is not a middle position. It is not a “third way.”

For some time now, it has been increasingly clear that every congregation in this nation will be forced to declare itself openly on this issue. That moment of decision and public declaration will come to every Christian believer, individually. There will be no place to hide, and no place safe from eventual interrogation. The question will be asked, an invitation will be extended, a matter of policy must be decided, and there will be no refuge.

There is no third way on this issue. Several years ago, I made that argument and was assailed by many on the left as being “reductionistically binary.” But, the issue is binary. A church will recognize same-sex relationships, or it will not. A congregation will teach a biblical position on the sinfulness of same-sex acts, or it will affirm same-sex behaviors as morally acceptable. Ministers will perform same-sex ceremonies, or they will not.

Interestingly, a recent point of agreement on this essential point has come from an unexpected source. Tony Jones, long known as a leader in the “emerging church” has written that there is no “third way” on same-sex marriage. As Jones notes, denominations may study the issue for some time, but eventually it will take a vote. At that point, it will either allow for same-sex marriage, or not.

In his words:

“And the same goes for an individual congregation. At some point, every congregation in America will decide either, YES, same-sex marriages will take place in our sanctuary, performed by our clergy; or NO, same-sex marriages will not take place in our sanctuary, performed by our clergy. There is no third way on that. A church either allows same-sex marriages, or it doesn’t.”

Tony Jones and I stand on opposite sides of this issue, but on the impossibility of a “third way” we are in absolute agreement. Conservative evangelicals have understood this for some time. It is interesting that those on the left now understand the issue in the same “binary” terms. There is no middle position.

Once again, Tony Jones gets right to the essential point:

“What I’m saying is that a church or an organization can study the issue in theory, and they can even do so for years. But this isn’t really a ‘third way’ or a ‘middle ground.’ Instead, it is a process. And at some point, that process has to end and practices have to be implemented. At that point, there’s no third way. You either affirm marriage equality in your practices, or you do not.”

Actually, as we have seen, Pastor Cortez makes the same point. The practice of his congregation is now to accept openly-gay members and members in openly-gay relationships. That does not allow for any middle ground, and that is why his church faces an exodus of members next Sunday.

Now, the Southern Baptist Convention also faces a moment of unavoidable decision. A church related to the Convention has officially adopted a gay-affirming position. The Baptist Faith & Message, the denomination’s confession of faith, states that homosexuality is immoral and that marriage is “the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime.”

Furthermore, the Convention’s constitution states explicitly that any congregation that endorses homosexual behavior is “not in cooperation with the Convention,” and thus excluded from its membership.

There is nothing but heartbreak in this situation. Here we face a church that has rejected the clear teachings of Scripture, the affirmations of its confession of faith, and two millennia of Christian moral wisdom and teaching. But the Convention also faces a test of its own resolve and convictional courage.

I am confident that the Southern Baptist Convention will act in accordance with its own convictions, confession of faith, and constitution when messengers to the Convention gather next week in Baltimore. But every single evangelical congregation, denomination, mission agency, school, and institution had better be ready to face the same challenge, for it will come quickly, and often from an unexpected source. Once it comes, there is no middle ground, and no “third way.”

Sooner or later — and probably sooner — the answer of every church and Christian will be either yes or no.

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

John Shore, “Southern Baptist Pastor Accepts his Gay Son, Changes His Church,” Patheos.com, Thursday, May 29, 2014. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnshor...

Tony Jones, “Why There’s No ‘Third Way’ on Gay Marriage,” Patheos.com, Tuesday, May 20, 2014. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjone...

Ken Wilson, A Letter to My Congregation: An Evangelical Pastor’s Path to Embracing People Who Are Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender in the Company of Jesus (version 1.0), 2014.