R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 357

The Briefing 06-02-14

Podcast Transcript

1) SBC affiliated church attempt to establish “Third Way” on gay marriage no middle way

Why There’s No “Third Way” on Gay Marriage, Patheos (Tony Jones)

Southern Baptist pastor accepts his gay son, changes his church, Patheos (John Shore)

2) Secularism of China clashes with Protestant Christians

Church-State Clash in China Coalesces Around a Toppled Spire, New York Times (Ian Johnson)

China Lifts High the Cross (Right Off Dozens of Churches), Christianity Today (Kate Tracy)

 

Ask Anything: Weekend Edition 05-31-14

1) How should a Christian with an unbelieving spouse raise their children?

2) What would be an appropriate “Twitter-theology”?

3) Should evangelicals participate in interfaith dialogues?

 

Transcript: The Briefing 05-30-15

The Briefing

 

 May 30, 2014

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

 

It’s Friday, May 30, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

Back in the 1960’s, sociologist Morton Grodzins developed the term “tipping point” to refer to the point when a minority reached the status of changing majoritarian behavior, or at least forcing changes in the larger culture. Grodzins borrowed that term “tipping point” from the discipline of physics and later, of course, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell published a book with that title, introducing those Americans not yet familiar with the term to the idea that certain movements could reach a tipping point. At that point, momentum shifted from one direction to the other.

 

Keep that in mind when you consider next week’s cover story for TIME magazine. TIME declares that the new tipping point is the transgender revolution. The cover features Laverne Cox, who transitioned from male to female and now stars in the Netflix drama “The New Black.” The text on the magazine’s cover read simply, “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier.” The cover story is by Katy Steinmetz of TIME magazine. After introducing Laverne Cox, Steinmetz writes:

 

Almost one year after the Supreme Court ruled that Americans were free to marry the person they loved, no matter their sex, another civil rights movement is poised to challenge long-held cultural norms and beliefs. Transgender people–those who identify with a gender other than the sex they were “assigned at birth,” to use the preferred phrase among trans activists–are emerging from the margins to fight for an equal place in society.

 

Now one thing we must note immediately is that first sentence that I just read from Katy Steinmetz. She writes, “Almost one year after the Supreme Court ruled that Americans were free to marry the person they loved, no matter their sex, another civil rights movement is poised to challenge long-held cultural norms and beliefs.” It’s that first series of words that is problematic. Back in 2013 in the two decisions having to do with the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, the Supreme Court did not do anything close to what Katy Steinmetz suggests in this very important article in TIME magazine. The Supreme Court did not at that time rule that all Americans have a right to marry whomever they love (to use the expression), no matter their sex. What the Supreme Court did just almost a year ago was to allow the judicial strike down of California’s Proposition 8 to stand—it did that mostly on a technicality—and then in a far more sweeping decision, the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. What the Supreme Court did not do back in June 2013 was to rule that all Americans have a right to marry someone of the same gender. Now it’s likely that that will eventually be a ruling by the Supreme Court, and the momentum since June of last year indicates that, at least in many jurisdictions, federal courts at both the district and the appellate level are moving in that direction even before the Supreme Court has an opportunity to revisit the matter. Steinmetz suggests that when it comes to this revolution, in her words, “The transgender revolution still has a long way to go.”

 

Now, by the way, she suggests in this article that the transgendered individuals in American society make up only an estimated 0.5%. She says that can make it harder for them to gain acceptance. But she goes on to say the biggest obstacle is that transgender live in a world largely built on a fixed and binary definition of gender. In other words, it’s not the tiny numbers that are the most determinative here. Rather, Katy Steinmetz says it is the fact that most Americans still operate on the basis of a fixed and binary understanding of gender. She goes on to write, “In many places, they are unwelcome in the men’s bathroom and the women’s. The effect is a constant reminder that they don’t belong.”

 

She offers an historical analysis, which, interestingly enough, dates the beginning of the transgender revolution to the period just after World War II. She points in particular to 1952 when the world was introduced to Christine Jorgensen, a man who had been a soldier named George who was looking for a surgeon to perform a transition from male to female. TIME described Jorgensen back in 1953 after an operation as “a blonde with a fair leg and a fetching smile.” Back in the early 1950s, the word transgender had not even been invented. Instead, Christine Jorgensen was referred to as a transvestite. Interestingly, Katy Steinmetz also notes that in 1980—that’s seven years after the psychiatric and psychological communities removed homosexuality from their list of mental illnesses—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders added the classification of transsexualism. Later, that particular category was changed to be called gender identity disorder. Now it’s called gender dysphoria.

 

In explaining how current gender theorists and the therapeutic community look at transsexualism and the transgender revolution, Steinmetz quotes Elizabeth Reis, who is a women’s and gender studies professor at the University of Oregon. She said, “Most people are happy in the gender that they’re raised. They don’t wake up every day questioning if they’re male or female.” But Steinmetz goes on to say, “For many trans people, the body they were born in is a suffocating costume they are unable to take off.” She then refers to the entire mentality behind the transgender revolution and writes this:

 

Understanding why someone would feel that way requires viewing sex and gender as two separate concepts–sex is biological, determined by a baby’s birth anatomy; gender is cultural, a set of behaviors learned through human interaction.

 

This is perhaps the most important sentence in the entire cover story in TIME magazine. In this sense, Katy Steinmetz is exactly right. The modern transgender theory and, for that matter, the transgender revolution requires a sharp distinction between sex and gender, between biological sex and sociologically-developed gender.

 

Before leaving that issue, we simply have to recognize that the Christian worldview allows for at least a partial distinction between sex and gender. We do understand—intellectual honesty compels that we understand—that at least some of the things that are associated with being male and female are indeed socially constructed. They also tend, as we note, to follow very similar patterns of social construction, society by society, generation by generation, even millennium by millennium. That points to something that Christians also affirm, and that is that the notions of sex and gender cannot be fundamentally severed. We do not deny that any culture—all cultures for that matter—read onto the notions of male and female certain notions of masculinity and femininity that are not right or true; they’re not biblical or proper. But we also understand that the bottom line is even more clear. There’s an essential link between sex and gender, biological sex and the social understanding of gender, and that’s not an accident. It has something to do with the fundamental order of creation. It draws attention to the glory of the Creator and to the structures he has created that lead to human flourishing. Respecting those structures—including the unity of sex and gender—respecting that leads to human flourishing; severing that, that is, to sever what God has put together, either hampers human flourishing or fundamentally destroys the foundation that allows flourishing even to exist.

 

TIME’s cover story that will hit newsstands next week is certainly a signal in our cultural development. It is, indeed, a very clear signal of what TIME declares to be a transgender revolution. It’s a declaration, indeed, by the magazine that we’ve reached a tipping point. But TIME is also trying to clarify the issue, and that is a big issue for us because as TIME tries to clarify the issue, it actually points to the fact that it cannot be fully clarified. For instance, consider this paragraph:

 

Sexual preferences, meanwhile, are a separate matter altogether. There is no concrete correlation between a person’s gender identity and sexual interests; a heterosexual woman, for instance, might start living as a man and still be attracted to men. One oft-cited explanation is that sexual orientation determines who you want to go to bed with and gender identity determines what you want to go to bed as.

 

Now if you’re confused by that, it’s because you’re fundamentally sane. If, indeed, that makes sense to you, then you’ve adopted a worldview that simply embraces irrationality as a fundamental understanding of both morality and identity. In other words, if you accept the fact that is boldly stated in this article that there is no concrete correlation between a person’s gender identity and sexual interest, then you’ve basically accepted a recipe for total gender and sexual nihilism.

 

This came to light in terms of a recent controversy having to do with a high school freshman: a child born as a boy that has transitioned to being known as a girl. But as a boy, this particular boy had a girlfriend. Now identifying as a girl, the individual still has the same girlfriend, and according to the logic of the transgender revolution, that simply means that as a boy, the person was involved in a heterosexual relationship, that now with the same person is a homosexual or same-sex relationship. Now remember we’re talking about the two same individuals. In other words, this kind of logic leads to a total moral anarchy, and that is perhaps what at least some people are really aiming for in terms of this larger gender and sexual revolution.

 

Inevitably, TIME magazine gets to the point of the greatest disagreement in public controversy when it comes to this revolution and that is the use of facilities, most importantly bathrooms. Recently we discussed this in terms of a controversy over a high school in Louisville, Kentucky, but now TIME magazine has to deal with this as the most contentious issue facing this revolution and those who are trying to push it. But as we’ve noted, those who seem to be equally for the revolution are actually at odds with each other over many of the questions related to the use of bathrooms and locker rooms and other intimate facilities, and also, as we shall see, such issues as admission to historically women’s colleges or participation in athletic contests as a woman rather than as a man.

 

But this also gets to boys and girls, and that’s a particularly poignant section of Katy Steinmetz’s article. She writes about students. She says:

 

One such student is Mac Davis, an 11-year-old from Tacoma, Wash., who just finished his first season on the boys’ basketball team. Through the window of a gym door, he looks like the other sixth-grade boys playing volleyball in gym class: sporting short, dirty blond hair and baggy jeans, checking his phone and playing rock, paper, scissors for the serve. School administrators have tried to be accommodating, instructing teachers to ignore the name on the roll-call sheet and letting him change in a private area before practice.

 

In other words, this particular boy identified in the article was born as a girl, still has the body of a girl, and is not going to be allowed to use the boy’s bathroom and locker room, but is instead using a private facility. But that’s not good enough for many who are pressing this revolution who say that whatever the child says the child is, in terms of gender, should determine access to locker rooms and bathrooms. But even parents who consider themselves unquestioned social liberals are often at odds about how to answer that question—which facility should the child use?

 

The most important aspect of this TIME cover story, however, is the fact that it is a TIME cover story. TIME magazine, going back to the period of the early 20th century, has become a clear cultural barometer for our country. Even in the digital revolution age when print magazines have lost much of their centrality to the culture, TIME magazine, the last of the continuing major weekly magazines in America, is very prized media real estate. It intends to send a signal with this cover story. It’s a signal that it intends to send loudly and clearly. It declares that the transgender revolution has now reached a tipping point. In other words, in its cover story, it says that those who oppose it had better get out of the way. The cultural momentum is now solidly on the side of those who are pressing for the total differentiation between biological sex and cultural gender, and those who are pressing for the kind of moral nihilism and sexual anarchy that this revolution will inevitably spawn. Even as it says this shouldn’t be a difficult issue for society to figure out, when it comes to something as simple as bathrooms, it’s clear that even those who are pressing this revolution aren’t on the same page about how to handle these issues.

 

And it’s not just bathrooms and locker rooms; it’s even admission to colleges. That’s what makes an important article that appeared in last Sunday’s edition of The New York Times equally important. It’s written by Kiera Feldman, who is a journalist and a reporter for the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, and she writes an article entitled “Who Are Women’s Colleges For?” And it comes down to the fact that women’s colleges are having a very difficult time handling the transgender revolution. As Feldman writes:

 

A handful of applications from transgender women have rattled school administrators over the past year, giving rise to anxious meetings and campus demonstrations. On April 29 [of this year], the Department of Education issued new guidance: Transgender students are protected from discrimination under Title IX.

 

In other words, these historically women’s colleges now find themselves in grave difficulty. They find themselves in a very difficult position. The federal government has just declared that they can’t discriminate against transgendered individuals. As I pointed out repeatedly, the transgender revolution brings on the secular left a clash of moral absolutes. That becomes very clear in Feldman’s article when she writes:

 

Administrators fear that admitting students who aren’t “legally female” will cause them to lose Title IX funding. But where the leaders of these schools were once in the vanguard, championing the equal rights of women, they are now in the reactionary position of arguing that biology is destiny. This is a losing battle.

 

In other words, the very arguments that these feminist colleges have been using about their right to discriminate on the basis of accepting of women and excluding men is now coming back to haunt them because their feminist argument is now seen as a reactionary argument. Because, after all, that feminist argument argues that, as we said earlier, biological sex and that cultural understanding of gender are unified. They’re unified in terms of the historic understanding of these feminist women colleges. But now these colleges are being told they can’t discriminate against transgender individuals and that raises the whole question—well that’s the very title of this article: Who are women’s colleges for? The article gets even more interesting when it raises this complication. As Feldman writes:

 

Before the recent Title IX ruling, [these historically women’s colleges] were already addressing the issue of transgender students on campus. But the accommodations they have made in housing and bathrooms are for a small but growing number, perhaps a hundred or so, of transgender men — students who enrolled as women and then transitioned in college. This has put the schools in the untenable position of essentially discriminating against women in favor of men.

 

But then Feldman goes on to say there’s a new wrinkle in all of us; that the biggest challenge of these colleges might not be those who were accepted as women who transitioned to being men, but rather those who were born as man but now have transitioned to being women, who now demand to be admitted to an historically women’s college even as they are in the process—even the early process—of transitioning. Go back to the fact that these gender theorists have simply declared that an individual has a right to state whatever gender that individual claims at any point and everyone else is supposed to respect it. Well now what have with these women’s colleges that have been on the secular left, in terms of pressing a feminist agenda for decades, they find themselves in the position of having their own arguments thrown at them as reactionary rather than as progressive.

 

If you’re looking for a classic expression of the insanity this breeds, Feldman quotes Audrey Smith, who is the vice president for enrollment at Smith College. She writes:

 

“Smith [College] was founded for a specific purpose — to educate and create opportunity for women. We don’t define what constitutes a woman — we leave that to other entities or agencies to affirm.” She added: “But we do require that it BE affirmed, at the point of admission.”

 

One Smith student quoted in the article, Eli Palmer, said, “I want Smith to be a place not just for women as we define them now.” But, of course, the logic of the entire article is this: you really can’t have a women’s college if you can’t define what it means to be a woman.

 

Well we might look back at next week’s cover story of TIME magazine as an indication of when the tipping point on the transgender issue actually happened. Then again we might not. Beyond question, however, is the fact that this cover story serves as ample evidence that we have crossed the tipping point when it comes to sexual insanity. This revolution is going to require evangelical Christians to respond with the deepest biblical conviction, the strongest and most urgent pastoral ministry, and the most careful worldview thinking.

 

Finally, as we a close the week thinking about the cultural insanity all around us, consider this story that appeared by David Bauder in the Associated Press this week. He writes:

 

A television producer is seeking teenagers as young as 13 who like to make their own rules and “party like a rock star” to participate in a reality television series about their lives.

 

The company is known as Metal Flowers Media. It placed a notice in Hollywood sources saying that it’s going to try to run “My Teen Life.” That’s the name of the proposed program and it’s looking for teenagers to audition for its cast. According to the text:

 

Parents, teachers and the haters are always in your business, but it’s your life and you live it how you want to. If you’re a modern-day teenage rebel with a hardcore lifestyle, we want to hear your story.

 

Now keep in mind the fact that this is a casting call for teenagers, that is, those as young as thirteen, both boys and girls, to appear in this oxymoronically named reality television program. One thing is very clear: you can’t have reality and television together as a simple compound.

 

But something else is very clear when you think about it. This shows the unreality of reality television. Children at the ages that are being called for in this casting call cannot show up as moral agents and economic agents in their own right. Some parent’s going to have to bring them; some parent’s going to have to sign off on their participation in the program. So here’s how it should have been written:

 

If you’re a teenage rebel or, at least, who considers himself or herself a teenage rebel, and you have parents who are going to celebrate your rebellion by bringing you to a casting call for teenage rebels, so if you’re raised in the kind of household where a parent’s proud that you be declared as a delinquent, then this is the program in which you should show up in terms of the casting call in order, perhaps, to find your way on the cast, in which you can act as a teenage rebel, but you can only do so because your parents cooperated in allowing you the reality television experience of being a rebel.

 

When you watch what’s advertised as reality television, just keep that in mind.

 

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. Remember the periodic releases of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. The season for the spring of 2014 is over, but we’re still taking your calls and we’ll try to use your question when the series begins later this summer. Just give us a call at 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I’m speaking to you from Anchorage, Alaska, and I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.

The Briefing 05-30-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Transgender movement reveals cultural momentum towards moral nihilism and sexual anarchy 

The Transgender Tipping Point, TIME (Katy Steinmetz)

Who Are Women’s Colleges For?, New York Times (Kiera Feldman)

2) Teenage reality TV show example of unreality of reality television

TV Show Seeks Teen Rebels For Reality Show, Associated Press (David Bauder)

 

Transcript: The Briefing 05-29-14

The Briefing

 

 May 29, 2014

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

 

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

 

Religion News Service is out with a very interesting article by Kevin Eckstrom. The title is this: “5 Reasons Gay Marriage is Winning.” All five of these reasons deserve our attention. He says the first reason is this—for this massive cultural shift with fast momentum—he says the first is rapid cultural shifts. In other words, the culture itself is now sending very different signals. As he writes:

 

The culture changed faster than conservatives thought possible. Led by the popular gay characters on “Will & Grace” and “Glee,” gays and lesbians are more visible in public life, and Americans are growing increasingly comfortable with that. A generation ago, coming out as gay was a career-killer; now it’s almost trendy.

 

That’s true, of course. He’s writing about the massive impact of popular culture. This points to the fact that Hollywood is massively important, the entire entertainment industry is massively important in fueling this kind of a moral revolution.

 

But they are not alone. Liberal religion is also a part of this rapid cultural shift. As he says, “The 2003 election of openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson dramatically shifted the conversation about gays and leadership.” It did do that in liberal Protestantism. The liberal Protestant denominations now are uniformly for virtually any kind of gay activity or gay relationship. The only holdout in that is the United Methodist Church and there are efforts to make that denomination also get in line with the rest of mainline Protestantism.

 

But the second issue, he says, in terms of explaining why there’s been this massive cultural shift is, as he says, an ally in the White House. Eckstrom writes:

 

It’s hard to overestimate the power of a bully pulpit, and there’s no bigger microphone than the chief executive’s. While President Obama may be the country’s first black president, he will also be remembered as the most pro-gay occupant of the Oval Office — even if it took him time to get there.

 

That refers to the fact that President Obama in 2012 ran as an advocate—he was running for reelection to the presidency—he ran as an advocate for same-sex marriage, but that was after in 2008 when he ran as an opponent to same-sex marriage. And that was after just years before that, as he was running for the state Senate in Illinois, he ran as someone who was for gay marriage. So he was for it, then against it, and for it again. But he’s now for it in a big way. And he, of course, has used the Justice Department and has instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to intervene in virtually any way possible in order to further the cause of same-sex marriage and other issues very important to the normalization of homosexuality.

 

The third issue that Eckstrom points to is what he calls a problem of overreach. He says:

 

Starting with the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, conservative activists concluded that the only solution to stopping gay marriage was a nationwide ban.

 

I think this is the weakest point of his entire article because, after all, it was not conservative activists who were solely behind the Defense of Marriage Act back in 1996. It passed with very little opposition in both the House and the Senate and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. That’s not well described as the effort by conservative activists. But he cites gay-rights activist Jonathan Rauch who said it was a critical mistake to try for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage. But I would just have to say, once again, I think that’s a weak argument because conservatives never actually coalesced around that agenda.

 

But he gets back on track in the fourth point when he says religious influence rises and falls. He writes:

 

In 2004, popular support for same-sex marriage was stuck in the low 30s. According to the latest Gallup Poll released this week, that number is now at 55 percent. It’s now rare to see a poll that finds only minority support for gay marriage.

 

That’s a rather awkward sentence, but what he means is most polls indicate that at least a bare majority of Americans support same-sex marriage. But he goes on to write:

 

Another poll number may be more telling about the underlying cultural shift: A decade ago, 71 percent of Americans said religion was “increasing its influence” on American life. Today, nearly the exact opposite is true — 77 percent of Americans say religion is “losing its influence” on public life.

 

So, in other words, secularization plays a very important role here. But it’s not just secularization itself. Eckstrom’s main point—and this is very interesting—is that the perception of secularization also plays a point. Americans believe that America is becoming more secular, and so they also tend to believe that its laws and its cultural and moral values are also going to become more secular. It’s a chicken-and-egg question, but it’s a very interesting point.

 

Fifth and last, he argues that one of the main reasons why momentum for same-sex marriage is building is because opposition to it has now been categorized as hateful and bigoted. Now that’s a very interesting and informative point because what you have here is an acknowledgment that the opponents of same-sex marriage, that is, the defenders of natural marriage, of what we might call traditional marriage, have been successfully demonized in the court of public opinion.

 

Those five points are very, very instructive. I think Kevin Eckstrom is onto something of great importance. Something has to explain this vast cultural shift and the momentum with which it’s happening. I thought one of his points was very weak, but four of them were very strong. That’s, all in all, a rather strong article.

 

But you need to keep that in mind when we move to Slate.com where William Saleton, a very intelligent observer, suggested what we’re now seeing is what he calls the collapse of anti-gay religion. He goes to an event sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a very influential think tank in Washington, DC, and he points to that conversation as evidence of what he suggests is the collapse of anti-gay religion. But what I want to point to in his article is one key paragraph. It’s so important I want to read it in full. He says:

 

That’s how fundamentalists retreat. They relocate their fundamentalism to less vulnerable terrain—all the while proclaiming their defiant adherence to the literal word of God—until the new position, too, must be abandoned. In the case of homosexuality, my guess is that the relocation will happen in two stages. First, churches will find ways to acknowledge faithful same-sex relationships. Then they’ll decide that these couples ought to get married, because sex outside of marriage is wrong. The new fundamentalist position will be that sexual activity is moral only within the confines of marriage, gay or straight, just as the Bible always taught us.

 

Now there’s a good deal of wisdom in that paragraph, but it’s embedded within a massive misunderstanding. He’s onto something alright, but he’s not on to the logic of conservative Christianity. But rather he’s onto the logic of liberal and moderate forms of Christianity because what he’s talking about is exactly what the Protestant left has been doing for well over a century. It’s exactly what the Protestant liberals did with issues, whether it’s the virgin birth or the claim of the physical and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ or virtually any other major Christian doctrine, and it’s what the Protestant left has done to the Bible’s very clear teachings on homosexuality and marriage as well. And they have been followed by those who describe themselves as moderates; those who are somehow in the middle in terms of the American Christian equation. They increasingly, forced by the culture to make a decision, are shifting left and not shifting right.

 

But what Saleton is really arguing is that conservative Christianity is going to find a way to come to peace with the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage. And I think on that issue he’s profoundly wrong because conservative Christians can’t relocate truth claims to what he describes as a less-vulnerable terrain. As a matter of fact, even as conservative Christians proclaim what he describes as defiant adherence to the literal word of God, we can’t shift to that position because the text itself isn’t going to shift. He is describing brilliantly the tactical moves undertaken by liberal Protestantism. As he says, the church has found ways to acknowledge faithful same-sex relationships. Then they argue that the people who are in them need to get married in order to normalize those relationships. That is exactly what is happening on the Protestant left, but it’s not what is happening in biblically faithful congregations. He’s onto something; he’s just not on to what he thinks he has. He’s not on to the logic of conservative Christianity. He’s onto the logic of Protestant liberalism, and, furthermore, the Catholic Church, or at least large parts of it, may follow in the same trajectory. But as for those who are bound by Scripture, there’s nowhere to go because Scripture isn’t going to change; the text isn’t going to shift. And if the Scripture doesn’t change, we can’t change our position; no matter how hard the culture may press against us.

 

Next, we shift to the relationship between the culture and politics, and we remind ourselves of the basic biblical insight that it is the culture that produces the politics. The politics cannot produce the culture. In other words, especially where you have a Democratic system of government, where you have citizens voting, they’re voting according to their worldview that represents the culture. That produces the political equation. It doesn’t work the other way around. Conservative Christians sometimes mislead ourselves on this. We do understand that politics is important; it’s just not as important as even the politicians believe it to be because they’re produced by the culture, not so much the other way around.

 

Now when you’re thinking about that, consider an article that appeared in Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. It’s by Lynn Vavreck, who is a professor of political science at UCLA. She writes about the power of political ignorance, and this is one of those articles that’s so important you ought not to be ignorant about it. It comes down to this. When you think about contested elections, you realize the fact that there are a good many people who, when you think of an election between two candidates, already know for whom they’re going to vote. They are politically active. They are politically informed. And by the time it comes to election time, they know exactly how they’re going to vote, especially when it comes to something—and it’s the concern of this article—like the United States Senate and when you consider an election of the United States Senator. Most people highly identified with either party are rather politically informed. As a matter of fact, this political scientist says that being actively involved in the political equation, being actively identified with either of the two political parties, is the greatest single indicator of whether or not one is likely to be politically informed. The more party identified a citizen is, the more informed they turn out to be.

 

But the reverse of that is also true; maybe even more importantly true. And as Professor Vavreck points out, when you look at the American political equation, you have a significant number of Americans, let’s say about 45%, who are highly identified with the Republican Party. And then you have another cohort of the population, say about another 45%, who are highly identified with the Democratic Party. That leaves about 10%. But this is where it gets really interesting. As it turns out, it’s that 10% who turn out to be the least informed and most ignorant, to use her language, about the politics and about the positions at stake. They’re the ones who actually decide the elections. Here’s the horrifying reality. The people who end up making the difference in elections by swinging one way or the other, these are the people who are likely to know the least about the impact of the vote they are casting.

 

She writes about the fact that when you look at people who split their tickets in terms of their voting—they’ll vote for a Democrat here and Republican there—they turn out to be far less politically informed than those who vote straight ticket. And that just points to the fact that the so-called swing voters are actually a huge problem because they are the least informed. The decisions, the big decisions in terms of our elections, are actually being decided by the people who have the least interest and are the least knowledgeable about what’s actually involved. As Professor Vavreck writes:

 

Despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, it is tempting to think that something as important as control of the Senate lies in the hands of voters who carefully pick and choose which candidates to vote for in each race on the ballot, but this seems unlikely. It is more likely that split-ticket voters are buffeted by idiosyncratic factors, like incumbency status, recent campaign advertising, and the tone and share of news coverage candidates receive.

 

All of this makes the quality of the campaigns and the fund-raising it takes to wage them very important. If the early ads for the midterm elections are any indication, cross-party voters are in for several months of intense appeals, whether they are interested in them or not.

 

Of course, the main importance from the Christian worldview here is, once again, the affirmation that it’s the culture that produces the politics. It just doesn’t work the other way around. And that means that whether you’re a liberal or a conservative you’re likely to invest too much hope in the politics because by the time you arrive with political success, you probably already won the argument.

 

But the other part of the Christian worldview that kicks in here is just the reality that in a fallen world sometimes it’s the people who know the least whose votes count the most. It’s a very interesting and somewhat depressing realization, but it also points out why when it comes to politics it’s not just about winning elections; it’s about winning arguments. And for Christians, that’s a good reminder anytime.

 

Finally, an incredibly revealing article appeared in Tuesday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. You’re going to love the headline. It appeared in the personal journal section. The headline is “Very Little and Acting Mean.” The scare quote under the headline points to the fact that by the time some children are ages 2 ½, they’re already using what is called relational aggression. They’re withholding relationships to punish those with whom they are displeased. They are aggressive in terms of their relationships and they are downright—well here’s the word in the headline—mean, at just age 2 ½. Does that shock you? Well evidently it’s shocking a lot of people who work with children today. That’s why it’s headline news in Tuesday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. As reporter Sumathi Reddy writes:

 

Children still in kindergarten or even younger form cliques and intentionally exclude others, say psychologists and educators who are increasingly noticing the behavior and taking steps to curb it.

 

Special programs are popping up in elementary schools to teach empathy as a means of stemming relational aggression, a psychological term to describe using the threat of removing friendship as a tactical weapon.

 

And she goes on to be very clear that while both boys and girls exhibit relational aggression, it’s thought to be a lot more common among girls because they are generally more socially developed and verbal than boys. Laura Barbour, a counselor at Stafford Primary School in West Linn, Oregon—she’s worked in elementary schools for 24 year—says, “I think it’s remarkable that we’re seeing this at younger and younger ages. Kids forget about scuffles on the playground, but they don’t forget about unkind words or being left out.” Well as Sumathi Reddy goes on to report, this was generally—this form of psychological relational aggression—was thought to be more common amongst middle schoolers, especially middle school girls, but, as it turns out, it’s being reported at younger and younger ages, even as young as toddlers at 2 ½ years of age. And, of course, what is called for, according to this article from a secular perspective, is another program to teach children, even those 2 ½ year olds, empathy so that they would feel guilt about withholding that kind of relationship and practicing that kind of relational aggression.

 

But even embedded in this article is a bit of subversion of its very idea—the fact that this is news that children as young as 2 ½ are actually practicing this relational aggression. It turns out that a good many mothers are saying, “No, we see this early. We see it even earlier than 2 ½.” And there are others who are saying, “I don’t think this is new at all.” Why? Because it’s not new; it’s Genesis 3 old. What we’re looking at here is the fact that these children are, as the secular worldview fails to understand, sinners. They are not morally neutral. They’re not morally good. We shouldn’t be surprised to find any kind of sinful impulse coming out in any of us at any age, but somehow there’s the idea that children have to learn bad behavior; that something has to happen to them that turns on a switch for bad behavior, for evil intent and sin. It’s the Christian worldview that comes along and very importantly affirms the biblical understanding of sin that doesn’t say we learn how to be sinners. It says we are sinners; we just learn how to sin more boldly and perhaps with greater complexity and sophistication. A Christian reading this article can understand that from the secular viewpoint, the secular worldview, it might come as a surprise to people that toddlers can be mean. But, as it turns out from the Christian worldview, we find out really early that toddlers can be mean.

 

Of course, as is usually the case, there’s a lot more embedded in this. Maybe some moms need to read this article in order to understand why sending their little boy to timeout doesn’t have the effect that they want. As this article makes very clear, relational aggression doesn’t work with boys. It rolls right off of them. As a matter of fact, they’re quite happy not to have that kind of relational pressure put on them. Being sent to their room and timeout can be exactly what a little boy sees as victory, not as punishment. Girls, on the other hand, they learn quite early, as this article makes clear, how to use relational aggression in order to be very mean. This isn’t to say that one gender is morally superior to the other—we know that’s not true—but as the article makes clear, boys are far more prone to physical aggression and girls to relational aggression. And what explains aggression? That simple, very short, three-letter word indispensable to the Christian worldview: sin. That one word, the secular worldview having rejected, that simply makes secularism unworkable, so unworkable that when they look at toddlers and they see relational aggression, they have to ask themselves, “How could this happen? Now what are we going to do about it? What program is going to solve this?” Sorry, folks. No program is going to solve this problem. It’s not a program problem. It’s a theological problem. It’s the sin problem.

 

Of course, looking at this we also realize that even as it shows the shortcomings of the secular worldview, it requires us also as Christians to remember how important it is that we actually think like Christians because a good many Christians reading an article like this, operating out of a basically secular worldview without perhaps even realizing it, they themselves may wonder how in the world did this child that I seem to know so well, how did this child all the sudden turn into such a sinful little critter? Well that’s where you need the Bible to correct our misperception and to let us know that that critter that looks so cute in the crib was a sinner all along. Now comes the opportunity, and, as the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 7, once it had the opportunity, it took it, which is to say, I took it. But once again we reflect upon the fact that it’s one thing for the secular world to be confused about this; it’s altogether a greater tragedy for Christians to be confused in the same way.

 

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. Remember the periodic releases of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. The season for the spring of 2014 has come to a close, but we’re still taking your questions. We’ll try to use your question when we start the new series later in the summer. Call at 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 05-29-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Pressures from  rapid cultural shift on gay marriage cannot change biblical teaching

5 reasons gay marriage is winning, Religion News Service (Kevin Eckstrom)

The Collapse of Anti-Gay Religion, Slate (William Saletan)

2) Culture produces politics, not vice-versa

The Power of Political Ignorance, New York Times (Lynn Vavreck)

3) “Relational aggression”  in toddlers reminder of innate sinfulness of humanity

Very Little and Acting Mean, Wall Street Journal (Sumathi Reddy)

Transcript: The Briefing 05-28-14

The Briefing

 

 May 28, 2014

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

 

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

 

We’re living in what is accurately described as a highly secular age, but one thing becomes more and more apparent as you look under the surface. Even the most secular people aren’t as secular as they think themselves to be. Evidence of that comes in various forms, but on Sunday, in the arts and leisure section of The New York Times, several articles appeared that made that point emphatically. On the front of that section of Sunday’s newspaper was an article by Lorne Manly entitled “Lost Without a Prayer.” It’s about a new HBO series called “The Leftovers.” It’s based on the novel of that name by Tom Perrotta. It’s described as an intimate family drama that examines faith, loss, and grief through a post-apocalyptic drama. Well as you come to see the story behind the story, you’ll see that director Damon Lindelof says:

 

This show is about the condition of living in a post-apocalyptic world where, if you look out the window, it doesn’t look like the apocalypse happened. But it did.

 

A closer look at this indicates that the origin of the story goes back to Tom Perrotta, who when writing a previous novel indicated an interest in several evangelical characters who appeared in the novel and, as he says, “while researching that unfamiliar world, he was constantly struck at how often the rapture came up as a literal part of people’s faith.” That’s very interesting. So in other words, trying to go and get background information to write realistically about evangelicals, he came to understand that several evangelicals, many evangelicals, believe in a rapture and they believe in it literally. That appears to be so odd to him that it became a part of his novel. He says that this interest in the rapture spilled over into the novel that became The Leftovers. He said, “One of the things that happened was I started to think of the rapture as an amazing metaphor for loss, and particularly sudden loss.” He asked the question about the rapture, “What if it was random?” He said that would take a wrecking ball to one’s entire belief system. Well, as a matter of fact, this takes a wrecking ball to secularism because, on the one hand, what it demonstrates is the fact that secularism, as we said, isn’t quite so secular. Secularism can’t get away from what Tom Perrotta calls even the rapture as a metaphor for sudden loss. Now he asked the question, “What if it were random?” and it is, at least in the story. In other words, there’s no differentiation, there’s no explanation for why the people who suddenly disappeared by the millions did, but there is the sense of loss and that loss brings forth the kinds of questions that the secular worldview can’t answer. So to answer them, the director in this case and the author of the novel had to go back and pick up the metaphor of the rapture because it turns out there’s no secular answer to these questions.

 

The second article is by Michael Paulson. It’s inside the same section. It’s about an off-Broadway theater group that is basing a new production on the hymns of the Shakers. And if you’re not familiar with the Shakers, they were a religious group that appeared back in early 19th century in the American Northeast; later had communities elsewhere. They were part of the utopian movement in American religion in the 19th century. They were a heretical offshoot of Christianity. After all, they believe that the founder of the movement, Sister Ann Lee, was the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. They got their name as Shakers because of shaking, an ecstatic dance that was a part of their corporate worship. They are also known, of course, in American culture for their food, their furniture, and their architecture, their simple hymns. What they’re also known for, however, is their celibacy. It was the central religious teaching of celibacy that more than anything else explains why there are no shakers around today.

 

But what’s really interesting about this group known as the Wooster Group, this off-Broadway production, is that they decided to take these Shaker hymns and put them on the stage. As The New York Times explains it, the way it works is that there are several women who are on the stage singing the hymns and they are later joined by four younger men. But once again, the story behind the story is what’s really interesting. The woman who came up with this, Elizabeth LeCompte, had a Christian upbringing. Her father was a Disciples of Christ minister, but, according to Michael Paulson, she now calls herself a pagan for whom theater is religion. She says that the Wooster Group itself is now a utopian community, even like the Shakers.

 

But even as they’ve decided to revive the Shaker hymns, they’re not reviving the Shaker theological principle of celibacy. This is another one of those attempts to go back and to pick something up from the religious past, demonstrating the exhaustion of a secular age. But the most insightful aspect of this comes at the conclusion of Michael Paulson’s article where Kate Valk, the director of the production is quoted as saying:

 

Original Shaker dancing was not just the beautiful steps and patterns you can read about or see in drawings or journals, but, during Mother Ann’s time, barking and leaping and unstructured ecstasy. We use the record as a relic that we are fetishizing, that we are committing ourselves to recreate, interpret, channel.

 

This is not historical or religious or anthropological. But there’s a love for the aesthetic and the dedication to the spiritual aspect of work, which is something that we find in our own house here. I love imagining that we sing these songs and make up these simple dances as an expression of what we do. It lifts my life up in the theater.

 

Well listen to what she said. She said this isn’t historical. It’s not religious or anthropological, but she says there’s a love for the aesthetic and a dedication to the spiritual aspect of the work. So there you have it. If you’re looking in a nutshell for how people are trying to be spiritual but not religious, there you have it. The director of this program who says we’re going back and singing Shaker hymns, we’re putting Shaker shaking right on the stage, but it’s not about religion. It’s just about spirituality, as if that were possible. What you have here is just another parable in human form, demonstrating the exhaustion of secularism. The secular age, as it turns out, can’t answer the questions it raises. Two articles from the arts and leisure section of Sunday’s edition of The New York Times make that point very powerfully.

 

Next, a case study on why you have to be very careful in analyzing news reports that come from the media. Last week, the United States Census Bureau put out a report on the population of American metropolitan areas. It’s an interesting report in itself. Immediately, chambers of commerce all over the United States rushed to find out where they ranked in terms of their metro area. But the headlines in two different newspapers, appearing on the same day, dealing with the same report, indicate how the news media can take the story in the direction that it wills.

 

For instance, you have an article by Neil Shah in The Wall Street Journal. The headline is “Suburbs Regain Their Appeal.” The same day in USA Today, the headline in the article by Greg Toppo and Paul Overberg is “Will This be the Decade of the City?” And what you have here are two headlines that indicate two different, radically different interpretations of the same data, of the same baseline report from the United States Census Bureau. By the way, there’s evidence for both of these headlines—at least in part. It turns out that cities continue to grow. That’s why USA Today came out with the headline “Will This be the Decade of the City?” indicating by the graphic that appears also with the article that if you look at America’s metropolitan areas, the inner cities are themselves growing, the larger metropolitan areas are growing even more. But why would The Wall Street Journal then come out with a headline that says “Suburbs Regain Their Appeal?” It’s because if you look at the same data, you come to understand that even as the growth in the inner cities has begun to slow down, the growth in the suburbs has begun to speed up. And that’s a very important issue.

 

So why in the world did USA Today come out suggesting that what we have here is just a continuation of the growth of the inner cities? Why would The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, believe that the suburbs regaining their appeal would be big news? Well it’s because they’re trying to sell different things. When you look at The Wall Street Journal, you’re looking at the major American newspaper for the business community, and the business community wants to know where the consumers are. And this is a big story indicating that the rise of the appeal of the suburbs indicates that if you’re looking for the consumers who are going to be buying the things that families buy, the suburbs are going to be hot again. Why would USA Today and The New York Times and so many other metropolitan newspapers point to the growth of the cities at the expense of the suburbs? Well it’s because, politically and culturally, the cultural elites have a great condescension toward the suburbs. They do not believe that real life happens in the suburbs. American novels in the 1950’s and 60’s forward have habitually pointed to what they would call the plastic, artificial life of the suburbs. Real life is what takes place in the cities.

 

So what you have here in one sense is a worldview clash appearing in conflicting headlines in two different newspapers, appearing on the same day, dealing with the same U.S. Census Bureau report. But if you look behind the headlines and you look at the articles themselves, you come to understand there’s a great deal of common ground. But if you just read the headlines, you’re going to go away with a false impression. Actually, you’re going to get a false impression if you read either of these only in terms of headline. You have to look at the story itself. Oh, in terms of worldview implications, there are many here, but one of them has to do with the fact that, indeed, the business community wants to know where people are and where people are going because, after all, they want to be there to sell them things. How much more important should those who are driven by a great commission imperative be very concerned to watch these population and demographic shifts to understand where we have to be because that’s where the people are?

 

Another indication that the vast change is taking place in American family life appears in a similarly unexpected place. Amy Gamerman, writing on May 22nd in The Wall Street Journal, in an article about architecture and homes, indicates that the big new development in luxury homes is the disappearing dining room. It turns out that in many American homes—and what you look at in an article like this is the fact that these are identified as architectural or home design trends. In other words, this is expected to spread throughout the rest of the country. The new “in” thing is going without a dining room. And why do you no longer need a dining room? It’s because families no longer sit down and have a meal together. It’s because the hospitality of the domestic setting in terms of the family meal, especially the evening meal, has disappeared in so many homes that the dining room is itself no longer necessary. That space is being devoted to other uses inside the home.

 

Christians looking at this have to recognize that, after all, there is no biblical architecture, but there is a biblical design of the family and there is something that is woefully wrong when all of a sudden one of the trends in American architecture is the fact that we don’t need dining rooms anymore. As the article by Amy Gamerman makes clear, increasing numbers of families, if indeed they are intact families at all, are eating in the kitchen, at the bar, before the television, on the go, or, as the article also makes clear, they’re not even eating in the house at all. The idea that there’s a meal that is prepared in the home, by the family, for the family, enjoyed by the family sitting together, with mother and father and children sitting at the table and having interaction, that has simply so disappeared from the picture that it’s now disappearing from the home designs as well.

 

But put this development alongside other reports that we have cited frequently, indicating that sociologists have pointed to the fact that whether or not a family has a meal together is a single determinant in many, many families of whether or not there’s an increased risk of the child, the children in the family, not graduating from high school, finding themselves arrested, and confronted by the police, or involved in any number of other pathologies. It turns out that the simple institution of the family meal has a massive impact on the family life. And it turns out that the absence of that meal has very damaging effects on the family. But now the family’s not even in the picture in terms of the meal and the dining room’s not in the plan and that tells a great deal not just about architecture, but about ourselves.

 

Continuing to look at issues related to secularism, there’s a headline new story out of London, published by The Telegraph. That’s one of the major London newspapers. The headline is this: “Christianity Will Rise as Skeptics Die Out, Geneticist Claims.” The geneticist is Steve Jones, a very well-known, very influential geneticist in terms of contemporary science. He has said that there could now be a resurgence of Christianity. Why would that happen? Well he makes the point very clearly. It’s because of two things that go hand-in-hand. One of those things is where you find an outbreak of population, you find also an outbreak of religious belief. It’s a very interesting demographic or sociological trend. Steve Jones, writing from a secularist perspective, points to that and says, “Look. Here’s what’s happening. Where you have growing populations, you find the very people who are most likely to believe in God.”

 

This goes back to a Thinking in Public conversation I had with Mary Eberstadt last year. Her book entitled, How the West Lost God, reverses the equation that many people think of in terms of secularization. Most people tend to think that America became secular or Europe as well—in fact, Europe before America—that the West became secular and then stopped having babies. But she points out that the stopping of having babies is what actually produced in many ways the secularism because, as it turns out, the experience of raising children makes one inherently more likely—in terms of documented research, clearly more likely—to attend church and to indicate that one believes in God. Somehow theism and the experience of parenthood seem somehow to go together. But now you have this geneticist in Great Britain saying that, well, maybe there’s going to be a resurgence in Christianity because, as it turns out, where you find population and especially population growth, you tend to find religious belief and that belief, as he points out, is more likely to be Christian.

 

But there’s a second issue here and this takes us back to The Wall Street Journal where years ago James Taranto, an economist who writes a column for that paper, wrote what later became known as the Taranto Affect. It doesn’t have to do with secularism per se; it has to do with abortion. Taranto wrote about the fact that eventually the population of the United States is almost assuredly going to become more pro-life. Why? Because pro-lifers have babies and they don’t abort them, so it’s simple math, said James Taranto. You’re going to have a society that’s becoming more pro-life because those who are more pro-choice or pro-abortion are having less babies, in the firsthand, and also aborting many of those babies on the other. It’s simply math, he says.

 

Now Steve Jones comes along to say the same thing about a resurgence of Christianity. Why? Because it’s Christians who are having babies and it’s secular people who overwhelmingly are not. There is a clear differentiation in birthrates between those who are religious believers of any sort, but Christians in particular, and those who are secular. So if you put that together, you have a new affect. We’ll call this the Steve Jones Affect and it comes down to this: there are going to be increasing percentages of believers in many societies, especially those that have a receding population, because the only people left having babies are likely to be religious believers, and in the West, they are most likely to be Christians. It’s a very interesting article. Christians can’t look at this as a sure thing because there are other factors involved, but it does tell us something. So along comes a prominent geneticist, looking at the biological and sociological data, to say, “Well if you look out there at the suburbs and you see all those people having babies, they’re not likely to be secular.” Now whether you see that as good news or bad news—he doesn’t exactly say which—the reality is it’s simply a matter of math. Christians shouldn’t look at this as any excuse for complacency, but it does reveal a great deal, once again, about the exhaustion of the secular worldview. So exhausted that those who are most committed to it are now, as even sociologists indicate, the least likely to have babies.

 

Finally, in keeping with our theme of looking for cultural signals about shifting worldviews, Sunday’s edition of The New York Times also had an article in the wedding section of the style section and it’s by Abby Ellin. It’s entitled “Raise Your Hand for an Engagement Selfie.” It’s about the fact that an increasing number of women getting engaged to be married in New York and in other major American cities are having therapy or procedures done on their hands so that the picture of their hand with their engagement ring put on social media can be more attractive. This is known as the engagement selfie, and, as Abby Ellin reports, an increasing number of women are doing this.

 

“Absolutely, the rise in social media is a reason people are getting a ton of stuff done, not just to their hands,” said Dr. David Bank, the director of the Center for Dermatology in Mount Kisco, N.Y., who has been offering hand lifts since 2005 and has conducted studies on hand injectables.”

 

By the way, there’s big money in terms of these cosmetic procedures on hands. Two treatments of something called I.P.L. (intense pulsed light) and chemical peel treatments and two syringes of an injected gel substance called Juvéderm Voluma XC cost $3000. In Manhattan, a single micro-dermabrasion treatment can range from $200 for one visit to $1000 for a package of six. There are other things here indicating that some women are spending multiple thousands of dollars for what are called “hand lifts” just in order to have an attractive engagement selfie.

 

Back in 2012, The New York Times reported on this hand-lift procedure, indicating that an enormous number of women, especially middle-aged women, were going to doctors asking for this kind of procedure. Well, if anything, this demonstrates it’s the fact that our worldview has absorbed a very toxic assumption, and that is that artificiality is to be preferable to the real. Here you have the Christian worldview distinction between the pretty and the beautiful; the beautiful and the good and the true. In the Christian worldview, these are always united. Where they are divided, something has gone horribly wrong. Genesis 3, by the way, is the explanation for the division of the good, the beautiful, and the true. And what you have here are increased numbers of women who are simply saying, “My hand has to be attractive in that selfie or my hand has to look like I’m 20 years younger than I am, or I’m not attractive; I’m not beautiful.” The Christian worldview alone can explain why the face of that child with Down’s syndrome is genuinely beautiful; while that face on the airbrushed fashion magazine is merely pretty. The loss of the distinction, the confusion between the beautiful and the pretty is what explains this headline in the style section of The New York Times. It explains why so many women are going to these lengths—insane lengths and very expensive lengths—just in order to have a hand that they believe will look good on their engagement selfie or a hand that will make them look considerably younger than they actually are.

 

Let’s look at it from a Christian perspective. Women and men, but in this case women in particular, get those hands by doing the kind of work that is honorable: by changing diapers, by washing dishes, by doing the kinds of things that demonstrate that these hands were made for some kind of use, not just for an engagement selfie. It is a denial of the beautiful to insist that everything has to be by our passing and very artificial standards pretty.

 

A headline like this in the style section of Sunday’s edition of The New York Times indicates that we have swallowed a poison pill of prettiness at the expense of true beauty. But it’s one thing for this to be true of The New York Times; it’s another thing altogether for Christians to swallow that same poison pill. We’re the ones who must ever keep in mind that the good, the beautiful, and the true are the same. And we’re the ones who have to keep in mind that it is our Christian responsibility to lean into beauty; never to settle for pretty. And it is our Christian responsibility to say to those among us, we won’t trade beauty for prettiness. After all, the cross itself isn’t pretty, but it is beautiful.

 

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. Remember the periodic releases of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. The season for the spring of 2014 has come to a close, but we’re still taking your questions. Call at 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. We’ll try to use your question when we start the new series later in the summer. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

The Briefing 05-28-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Secular revival of religious artifacts exposes exhaustion of secular age

Lost Without a Prayer, New York Times (Lorne Manly)

A Resurrection of Eternal Joy, New York Times (Michael Paulson)

2) Clash of worldviews in differing interpretations of Census Bureau data

Signs of a Suburban Comeback, Wall Street Journal (Neil Shah)

In latest U.S. Census figures, cities continue growing, USA Today (Greg Toppo and Paul Overberg)

3) Disappearing dining rooms reveal shift in American family life

Luxury Homeowners Who Ditched the Dining Room, Wall Street Journal (Amy Gameran)

4) Secularists are dying off while religious people reproduce

Christianity will rise as sceptics die out, geneticist claims, The Telegraph (Sarah Knapton)

How Does Secularization Really Happen? – A Conversation with Mary Ebderstadt, AlbertMohler.com (Albert Mohler with Mary Eberstadt)

5) Confusion of prettiness for beauty leads to popularity of ‘hand lifts’

Raise Your Hand for an Engagement Selfie, New York Times (Abby Ellin)

Transcript: The Briefing 05-27-14

The Briefing

 

 May 27, 2014

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

 

It’s Tuesday, May 27, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

It’s happened again; this time in Santa Barbara, California. There near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, a madman unleashed what is described as methodological murder, killing at least six people before killing himself; also injuring seven other, some of them gravely. And now we know more details about what took place and as these come clearer into view, it becomes also clear that this is an incident that is going to require some very careful thinking and perhaps even some rethinking about what we know or think we know about these cases of mass murder. As Ian Lovett and Adam Nagourney of The New York Times report, a gunman, who documented his rage against women for rejecting him, killed six people and wounded seven others during a spasm of terror on last Friday night. Three were stabbed to death in his apartment: two were believed to be his roommates; the third was a visitor, it is presumed. He then went out and methodologically shot as he drove through the crowded streets of Isla Vista, a community near Santa Barbara. The gunman is now identified as Elliot O. Rodger, a 22-year-old, and he left behind a manifesto he has described as “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution.” He carefully chose the date of his murders, that is, as May 25th, as the last day of the semester in order to catch students before they went home to be with their families. “It all has come down to this,” he said, “Tomorrow is the day of retribution; the day I will have my retribution against humanity, against all of you. For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me and all these years I’ve had to rot in loneliness.” In a video he left behind, he also said, “I do not know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.”

 

Santa Barbara police now believe that he began his method of retribution at about 9:27 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time this past Friday night. Investigators have spent the weekend trying to put it together and trying to gather evidence from nine separate crime scenes, including a deli, including this young man’s apartment, and including at least seven other places where either murder or assaults took place. So what we had in Santa Barbara on Friday night was a scene of absolute horror in which a young man, armed to the teeth and obviously mad, deeply insane, unleashed terror upon his classmates at the University of California Santa Barbara and anyone else who got in his way. He particularly targeted pretty young women and also athletic young men because in his manifesto and his video he said he was tortured by young women who were pretty because they did not have interest in him and because of the athletic young men because he said those girls did find interesting.

 

This kind of mass murder is not as unprecedented as we would wish that it would be. Events such as this have happened in the United States and elsewhere around the world. What makes this particular mass murder of such deep concern is that we now know so much about this young perpetrator and we know that there was a great deal of concern about him and about his mental state, and in spite of all of this, he was allowed to build a massive arsenal with which to conduct this kind of mass murder, and in the state of California that has some of the nation’s most restrictive gun laws. How in the world could this happen?

 

The situation turns out to be even more horrifying when Monday’s edition of The New York Times arrives, indicating that this young man’s parents had deep concerns about him and that just minutes after he began his rampage they opened the file of that 141-page document. They were immediately concerned, called law enforcement officials, and headed themselves from the Los Angeles area to Santa Barbara to try to intervene. It was too late. Police now believe that all of his killings had taken place even before his parents left Los Angeles. Elliot Rodger had written in that document his parents opened, “I couldn’t believe how wrong everything was turning out.” He indicated the fact he was going to kill his roommates and then he was going to turn his own apartment with his roommates dead into a platform for murder. As it turned out, his parents left, but did not arrive in time nor did law enforcement. As Adam Nagourney of The New York Times reports:

 

His parents’ frantic trip to Isla Vista was just one missed chance to avert the tragedy. In this case, the parents’ emergency call to the police and their arrival came well after the killing spree was over.

 

But it is the following paragraph in the Nagourney’s account that is even more chilling:

 

Only weeks earlier, in late April, deputies from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office had stopped by Mr. Rodger’s apartment at the request of state mental health officials, acting on an expression of concern by his mother. They left after a calm and polite Mr. Rodger assured them that there was nothing to worry about. The officers reported that Mr. Rodger was shy and had told them that he was having difficulties in his social life, but that he didn’t need to be taken in for mental health reasons.

 

News reports coming out of Santa Barbara indicate that this young man already was known for a long history of unusual and antisocial behavior. It was already known that he had given threats to kill people, including himself and others. As The New York Times also reports, he had posted on sites where other young men shared their rages and frustrations of being sexual virgins and complained about the difficulty of meeting women. He referred to himself as an INCEL—urban shorthand for involuntary celibate. This is not a young man who comes from a situation of poverty and want. Indeed, his father, Peter Rodger, is a British citizen who lives in Los Angeles. He’s well-known in Hollywood. He’s written screenplays and was the second unit director for the film “The Hunger Games.”

 

It is now known that Mr. Rodger was from a very young age described as emotionally disturbed. As The New York Times says, this was particularly since the divorce of his parents when he was in the first grade. One of his grade-school classmates, looking back, said, “We said right from the get-go that that kid was going to lose it someday and just freak out. Everyone made fun of him and stuff.” The Times also reports that Sheriff Bill Brown of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s office told CBS’s Face the Nation that his deputies had visited Mr. Rodger in April and on that visit, as was previously reported, they found him calm and lucid. They said he didn’t meet the criteria, in the view of deputies, by which the young man might have been brought in for observation. However, they were very close to uncovering a plot for mass murder. In his manifesto, Elliot Rodger wrote about that event. When the deputies came to the door, he said:

 

As soon as I saw those cops, the biggest fear I’d ever felt in my life overcame me. I had the striking and devastating fear that someone had somehow discovered what I was planning to do and reported me for it. If that was the case, the police would have searched my room, found all of my guns and weapons, along with my writings about what I plan to do with them. I would have been thrown in jail, denied of the chance to exact revenge on my enemies. I can’t imagine a hell darker than that.

 

So as we try to put this all together, it becomes very clear that this was a young man who was known from the time he was in elementary school to have been gravely emotionally disturbed. This is a young man whose mother had been so concerned she called mental health authorities who visited him in April and found him simply calm and somewhat socially in need. And we also now know that as though Sheriff’s deputies visited the young man they were within virtual feet of uncovering his stash of weapons, and not only that, but the manifesto in which he had already written out his intention to commit mass murder.

 

And if all that isn’t strange enough, this is the state of California. Jennifer Medina, also in The New York Times, writes, even in a state with restrictive laws, the young man was able to amass weapons and ammunition. And this leads to all kinds of perplexing questions. How in the world could this happen in California? California, after all, had supposedly passed the kind of gun control legislation that would prevent this from happening. For example, under federal law, anyone who has been involuntarily committed to psychiatric treatment is to be barred from buying firearms, but in California, there are stricter laws that prevail. In California, the state is also allowed to bar individuals who are considered a threat to themselves or others, who have ever made a threat against a specific person or to a therapist, who report such a threat to law enforcement. But, again, Sheriff Bill Brown of Santa Barbara said that when his deputies visited the young man’s apartment in April, they found nothing to indicate that he was “a danger to himself or anyone else.” The sheriff went on to say, “He just didn’t meet the criteria for any further intervention at that point.”

 

So what is the meaning of all this? From a Christian worldview perspective, there are so many lessons here and all of them horrifyingly real; all of them deeply troubling. The first is that in a Genesis 3 world there are persons who are horribly mentally tortured, and in this case, obviously have deep emotional and mental problems. But that goes hand-in-hand with the fact that we are, quite obviously, clearly unable to detect those persons who have these kinds of disturbances or to evaluate in any rational manner—or, for that matter, with much accuracy—whether they are actually a threat to themselves or to others. This is young man who on Friday night last week killed at least six people, injured seven others, and then killed himself. He was only stopped from further murders by the fact that police were after him and in that context he killed himself. This is a young man who would’ve killed far more had he had the opportunity. He had the weaponry. And so one of the lessons we learn from this is our inability to read another person’s heart and mind. We can certainly read signs of disturbance or trouble, but even mental health professionals in this case failed to understand that this was a young man who was so deeply troubled that he actually was poised to commit mass murder.

 

Something else we learn from all of this is that in spite of all the attempts to the contrary, this young man was able to convince people that he was sufficiently rational, safe, and sane to be able to amass a massive collection of guns, and this in the state that supposedly has among the nation’s strictest gun-control laws, indicating that no matter how you might try to control the guns, it’s the people who eventually become the problem. There is plenty of opportunity for a sane and rational discussion about gun-control laws, but this is now pointing out the bottom line fact that those laws are not the panacea that many people might believe them to be.

 

Another horrifying insight from all of this is the realization that during the 1970s and beyond our society’s quest for the ultimate affirmation of personal autonomy meant that we have made it virtually impossible in many situations to admit someone for psychiatric care against their will. Involuntary commitment to that kind of treatment or even evaluation is something that is increasingly difficult to get. And here you have a young man who from his earliest years of life was already identified by children, his fellow classmates, as being a danger, and many years later he is still free; not only free, but free to collect these weapons, and not only that, but to hit the streets by Isla Vista with murderous intent and effect.

 

Finally, another dark realization that also is very important from a Christian worldview perspective; it doesn’t just happen here. In the very same days that The New York Times and other newspapers were carrying the haunting news out of Santa Barbara, California, other headlines were also contained within those same daily editions; for instance, this new story out of Brussels, Belgium. Andrew Higgins reports, “Three Shot Dead at a Brussels Jewish Museum.” Here at the Jewish Museum on Saturday, the day after what took place in Santa Barbara, an unidentified gunman opened fire, killing three people. In an understatement, the Brussels police said this appears to have been an anti-Semitic attack. Then Andrew Jacobs, reporting from Beijing, China, says that:

 

Law enforcement officials in the western region of Xinjiang have identified five men they said were responsible for an attack on an outdoor vegetable market on Thursday that killed 43 people and injured more than 90, many of them elderly shoppers.

 

Now as you look at the details here, it turns out that the mass murder that was undertaken in China, killing at least 43 people, did not involve handguns. In other words, guns aren’t the only way to kill people. These involved vehicles. This was a mowing down of people in a vegetable market. And then you look at the news from Brussels and you realize that Belgium, as a part of the European Union, has some of the most restrictive gun control laws imaginable. And that didn’t keep a madman from killing at least three people in a Jewish Museum.

 

Even as our hearts and our prayers go out to all who either grieve or have suffered loss or pain in terms of these horrifying attacks, the realization is that there is something deep that is being revealed here. And it’s something far deeper than is being discussed in the secular media. This isn’t just a failure of policy. This is a failure of our ability to read human hearts and minds. This isn’t just a failure of the laws. This is a failure in a Genesis 3 world of any adequate structure to keep mayhem from breaking out. At the end of the day, we have to be constantly, urgently thankful for the restraining power of God’s grace, of God’s law, and God’s presence in a world that keeps even more of these murderous attacks from breaking out. There is no place on planet Earth that is truly safe. That’s something that we’re supposed to know and that knowledge is what should make us yearn for eternity and it should add urgency to our preaching of the gospel.

 

Staying on the international scene for just a moment, the 28-member countries that make up the European Union are now voting on a new European Parliament and almost everyone in the international media has noticed a very interesting development. The nationalistic parties are on the ascendancy, both on the left and the right in much of Europe, leading to the fact that many of the people who are voting for this election are actually voting to end the very idea of the European Parliament or the European Union. And that has led observers such as Gabriele Parussini of The Wall Street Journal to point out that as there are candidates on the ballot, it’s actually the European Parliament itself and perhaps even the European Union that is going to be on the ballot. Parussini reports the European Union, many now complain, has become a bureaucratic machine that excels at dispensing edicts on how cheese is labeled while ignoring everyday problems such as unemployment and illegal immigration. Now there are enormous practical problems in something called the European Parliament. It cost tons of money. They don’t even have one capitol; they have two. In order to meet political expectations, they keep moving from one place to the other at enormous cost, and everything that takes place, every word, whether spoken or written, has to be translated into 20 languages. It’s something that is absolutely unsustainable and, furthermore, the very secular and liberal European Parliament seems to spend most of its time doing things that drive European citizens crazy. Not surprisingly, the European Parliament turns out to be largely incompetent to deal with the big questions like immigration and unemployment, but it spends its time regulating caviar and champagne and cheese; not to mention gobbling up a great deal of tax money.

 

But a very interesting insight on this comes from Paul Krugman, the very liberal economist who writes a column at The New York Times. He writes about the “Crisis of the Eurocrats.” He writes this:

 

A century ago, Europe tore itself apart in what was, for a time, known as the Great War — four years of death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Later, of course, the conflict was renamed World War I — because a quarter-century later Europe did it all over again.

 

But that was a long time ago. It’s hard to imagine war in today’s Europe, which has coalesced around democratic values and even taken its first steps toward political union. Indeed, as I write this, elections are being held all across Europe, not to choose national governments, but to select members of the European Parliament. To be sure, the Parliament has very limited powers, but its mere existence is a triumph for the European idea.

 

 

Now there’s a typical American liberal joining in with European liberals to say, “If there’s a European Parliament, it must be a very good idea.” But, as his column continues, it turns out, it’s not quite that way. He also writes:

 

The truth is that the European project — peace guaranteed by democracy and prosperity — is in deep trouble; the Continent still has peace, but it’s falling short on prosperity and, in a subtler way, democracy. And, if Europe stumbles, it will be a very bad thing not just for Europe itself but for the world as a whole.

 

Now what I want to draw our attention to is what he said are the two fundamental issues that are supposed to establish the basis for peace and democracy in Europe. You’ll recall what he said. He said that the guarantee of the European project is supposed to be peace that is held together by democracy and prosperity. What could go wrong? Well here’s what could go wrong: governments could be unable to deliver on prosperity. And that’s exactly what Paul Krugman the economist affirms in this very column. So, in other words, if you hold together the idea of your union on prosperity, you better prosper, and if prosperity ever falls apart—or, for that matter, even declines or slows down—the entire project is in trouble.

 

I raise this point in order to affirm a very important Christian worldview observation. Governments are incompetent to deliver on something like prosperity. If a government promises prosperity and establishes prosperity as the very ground of its credibility, then beware. No government can produce prosperity. Prosperity requires an entire civilization. It requires individual units such as functioning families. It requires freedom and liberty. It also requires, if democracy is a part of the equation, a fundamentally free market. When you look at Europe today, you come to understand why prosperity isn’t happening. And when you look at this article by Paul Krugman, you come to understand why those who lead the European Parliament have no idea why some of their own voters would want to put them out of business.

 

The Isla Vista story took a great deal of our time today. Sometimes that’s just the way it is.

 

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. Remember the periodic releases of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. The season for the spring of 2014 has come to a close, but we’re still taking your questions. Call at 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. We’ll try to use your question when we start the new series later in the summer. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

Genesis 18:1-33