R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 359

The Briefing 05-20-14

Podcast Transcript

1) Japan forced to reconsider pacifism in a hostile world

Japan Moves to Scale Back Postwar Restrictions on the Use of Military Power, New York Times (Martin Fackler)

Japan’s Pacifist Constitution, New York Times (Editorial Board)

More flexiblility for Japan’s military?, Washington Post (Editorial Board)

U.S. Charges Chinese Army Personnel With Cyberspying, New York Times (Michael S. Schmidt)

2) Profit motive in international relations heightens moral complexity and danger on planet

France’s Sale of 2 Ships to Russians Is Ill-Advised, U.S. Warns, New York Times (Michael R. Brown)

Satellite pinpoints US’s Russian space dependence, Financial Times (Robert Wright)

3) New Godzilla reflects old fears of judgment for new issues in new generation 

A Big ‘Godzilla’ Has a Big Weekend, New York Times (Brooks Barnes)

Still Radioactive and Spoiling for a Fight, New York Times (A.O. Scott)

Godzilla, Into the Storm and More Summer Cli-Fi Thrillers, TIME (Lily Rothman)

4) Vast majority of sporting bets placed illegally – the futility of regulating sin

Report finds 4 out of 5 sporting bets are placed illegally, Financial Times (Roger Blitz)

Transcript: The Briefing 05-19-14

The Briefing

 

 May 19, 2014

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

 

It’s Monday, May 19, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

As usual, many newsworthy events happened over the weekend, but the most important news release surely came in Saturday’s edition of The New York Times. It’s an article by Alan Schwarz. The headline is “Thousands of Toddlers are Medicated for ADHD, Report Finds, Raising Worries.” Well worries, indeed, and worries that ago beyond what the report indicated on Friday when it was released. As Schwarz relates:

 

More than 10,000 American toddlers 2 or 3 years old are being medicated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder outside established pediatric guidelines

 

This was, on Friday, released in data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report found that toddlers covered by Medicaid are particularly prone to be put on medications such as Ritalin and Adderall. This is the first report of its kind having to do with pediatric patients this young. After all, we’re talking about, again, toddlers; in the case of this study, age two or three. Schwarz gets to the heart of the medical concern when he writes:

 

The American Academy of Pediatrics standard practice guidelines for A.D.H.D. do not even address the diagnosis in children 3 and younger — let alone the use of such stimulant medications, because their safety and effectiveness have barely been explored in that age group. “It’s absolutely shocking, and it shouldn’t be happening,” said Anita Zervigon-Hakes, a children’s mental health consultant to the Carter Center. “People are just feeling around in the dark. We obviously don’t have our act together for little children.”

 

A similar statement was made by Dr. Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician in California. He said in a telephone interview with The New York Times:

 

People prescribing to 2-year-olds are just winging it. It is outside the standard of care, and they should be subject to malpractice if something goes wrong with a kid.

 

Schwarz gets to the heart of the political issue when he says that the report is likely to raise concerns about ADHD diagnoses and medications for American children beyond what many experts consider medically justified.

 

But even in that sentence, there’s a great deal that’s implied and taken for granted. For instance, what in the world is normal? What would a normal percentage of American children diagnosed with ADHD and given these behavioral drugs, psychotropic drugs, what would that percentage look like? Well certainly not what the current diagnosis reveals. Last year, a nationwide report from the CDC indicated that 11% of all American children aged four to seventeen have received at some point, in that age range between four and seventeen, a diagnosis of ADHD, and about one in five boys in America will be diagnosed with ADHD in childhood.

 

The next sentence indicates some of the complications at least medically for this. The vast majority of these boys—indeed, these American children, but boys especially—are put on medications, including Ritalin or amphetamines like Adderall, and as Schwarz explains, these often calm a child’s hyperactivity and impulsivity, but they also carry risk for growth suppression, insomnia, and hallucinations. Not incidental side effects, we would note.

 

But from a Christian worldview perspective, the key issue in this report is the findings summarized by Schwarz in this paragraph:

 

Children below age 4 are not covered in those guidelines because hyperactivity and impulsivity are developmentally appropriate for toddlers [that according to several experts; not to mention almost all parents], and more time is needed to see if a disorder is truly present.

 

Now that’s a stunning paragraph. It’s an incredible statement. Now from a Christian worldview perspective, this is incredibly revealing because it reveals the fact that many American parents, an incredible number, perhaps even of millions, of American parents are basically thinking that something is wrong with their children for being children, and especially think that something is wrong with their boys for being boys. When you have thousands and thousands of American toddlers diagnosed with ADHD, as even the secular New York Times indicates, this is insanity because, after all, the kind of hyperactivity we’re talking about here is exactly what would be out of place in an 18-year-old, but is absolutely normal for a toddler. And furthermore, impulsivity and toddlerhood go absolutely together.

 

Now there are so many things from a biblical perspective to keep in mind here. Number one: we understand that human beings do develop. Even, we are told in the gospel of Luke, Jesus Himself, as a human being, fully incarnate in human flesh, developed. He increased in stature and in wisdom and in favor with God and man. In other words, one of the things that is normal about human beings is the fact that we develop. We do not expect a toddler to sit down and take the SAT. On the other hand, we do expect that a 17-year-old can sit down and do well taking such a test, can focus on the task at hand, and give attention to it, adequate attention. But when you’re talking about toddlers, after all, they are toddlers. They are to be treated as toddlers, respected as toddlers, honored as toddlers, and even we should see the glory of God in them because God is glorified in the fact that He has made us as those who amongst all His creatures need the most maternal and paternal care, certainly from the earliest years of life. The human infant is the most helpless of all the infants in the entire biological world, and the reason for that has something to do with the fact that God intended for us to be parents, to raise our children, to nurture them and discipline and teach them, to invest ourselves and to see God’s glory in them. We laugh at our toddlers because they’re toddlers. We love to see them take their first steps and then grow and encounter with the world. We love to see them learn new things. We even revel and find enjoyment in their misunderstandings, in their stumbles, in their attempts to grow and to learn. This is what we expect out of toddlers, and when it comes to impulsivity and hyperactivity, that’s exactly what we should expect from toddlers. As a matter of fact, they are generally hyperactive from the moment they wake up until they fall exhausted into their cribs or into their beds, with their parents feeling like they want to follow them in that exhaustion.

 

Like so many things, this particular report indicates that we are a deeply troubled society, and we are now forcing that trouble on our own children as young as two and three. And when you have 10,000 American toddlers reported as now not only diagnosed with ADHD, but generally receiving these kinds of psychotropic drugs, it’s not the children who have the problem. It’s not even just their parents who have the problem. It’s the entire society that has a problem. And at least, we should take heart that the Centers for Disease Control think something is wrong here, and leading pediatricians say there’s something broken here, and even The New York Times says there’s something newsworthy here. Oh, it’s newsworthy, of course, but it tells us something deeply troubling about our society and something that no drug and no psychiatric diagnosis can contain.

 

From a political perspective, two very important articles in The Wall Street Journal in the weekend edition. Carol Lee wrote an article on the fact that discord is now growing between President Obama and his own party, the Democratic Party. She writes:

 

President Barack Obama is encountering an increasingly resistant Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers in his party break with him on a series of issues in the run-up to the November elections.

 

Something to watch very carefully is the fact that when there are these midterm elections, and especially when there is a second term president of a party in the White House, that same party tends to move even further away from the president in the direction of its own internal logic. In other words, the Democratic Party is turning further left even with President Obama in the White House, and they’re moving even to the left of President Obama. This is something to watch especially in this primary season in the spring as the general election for the midterms comes in the fall. Carol Lee reports:

It is a common election-year posture for lawmakers from the same party as the sitting president, especially one whose popularity has waned, as Mr. Obama’s has. But Democrats’ recent moves to demonstrate their independence are forcing Mr. Obama to compromise on an agenda already largely opposed by Republicans. And it comes at a point in his presidency when time is running short to accomplish his goals.

 

Now at several points, even going back to President Obama’s reelection in 2012, we pointed out that the second term of an American president is almost always laden with trouble and it’s embedded with frustration because the actual political term for a president in his second term is actually something close to 13 to 18 months. He is reelected and by the time he’s inaugurated for a second term, his own party is already thinking of who will succeed him, and, furthermore, of how they will save their own skins when it comes to the midterm election, when in the general cycle, the party of a sitting president in the second term loses a sizable number of seats. But now the Democrats are splitting from the president. And President Obama is perhaps the most liberal president in American history, in terms of social positions and political positions, and now his own party is breaking with him to the left. Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist and former Chief of Staff to Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said, “This is part of the Catch-22 about second terms: Members want to get re-elected, and the president wants to have his agenda. These don’t always sync.” That’s an understatement, of course, and that’s made clear in the other article that appeared earlier (that’s just a few days ago) in The Wall Street Journal by Michael Crittenden and Kristina Peterson. As they write, “The White House is struggling to win Senate confirmation of a U.S. District Court nominee due to skepticism from Democrats.” In other words, the president is facing opposition about a judicial nominee, but it’s not coming from the Republicans. It’s coming from the Democrats. As the reporters tell us:

 

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee expressed sharp criticism [last week] of Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Michael Boggs over his past support as a Democratic legislator for antiabortion measures [and also his] opposition to same-sex marriage.

 

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a liberal standard-bearer Democratic senator from California, said she was concerned that Mr. Boggs may let his personal views on issues such as abortion distort or affect his decisions if he is confirmed to the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. She said, “For my vote, I have to have certainty. I don’t know quite how to get it in view of this record.” Well, Senator Feinstein, you’re never going to have certainty. Just ask President Reagan or President George H.W. Bush. Those presidents, like most presidents before them, discovered that when you make a judicial appointment, you just have no certainty about how a judge or Supreme Court justice will eventually rule. And when it comes to this particular judge, here you have a Democratic president who has appointed someone with Democratic experience with the support of Democratic officeholders in Georgia to a federal judicial post only to have his own party on the left say, “Now wait just a minute. We’re not going to approve this candidate. Not until we’re absolutely certain that when he previously took stands for the sanctity of human life and for the natural definition of marriage, until we have certainty that he will repudiate those in his judicial actions, we will not confirm him.”

 

And in a sign of stellar political courage, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he’ll wait to decide how he’s going to weigh in on the matter. In other words, an incumbent president of the United States, the standard bearer for his own party, is left hanging in the wind by his own party in the United States Senate. That’s not shocking news, but it is something we should take into consideration as we think about the future of America and the importance of the midterm elections. It’s important for us all to know that as those midterm elections approach, the Democratic Party is breaking with its own president and shifting significantly to the left.

 

Last week, we talked about a controversy here in Louisville, Kentucky, where at Atherton High School parents were concerned about the fact that a freshman who was born a boy was being recognized as a girl and that the school’s principal was allowing the student, now identifying as a girl rather than a boy, to use the girl’s restroom. And that controversy spilled over into a public meeting of the school and its parents on Thursday afternoon when the principal of the school made very clear he intends to continue the policy. At the meeting, Principle Thomas Aberli said he would continue to discuss the policy, but he said the school’s current policy gives him the authority for assigning space and he said for now he plans to continue his current procedure.

 

Chris Kenning, reporting for the Louisville Courier-Journal, said that students will continue to be allowed to use the facilities of their gender identity, according to the principal, adding that even though he knows some aren’t happy, “that decision isn’t going to change, not unless I’m told to do otherwise.” Well it’s not likely he’s going to be told to do otherwise. It’s not that it’s unlikely he’ll hear that from parents, but rather from the school board because the school board is indicating that it might consider a similar policy be enforced at all of the district’s 155 schools.

 

David Kelty has a ninth grade daughter. He’s outraged by the situation. He says:

 

The concerns of one student are being given more weight and legitimacy than the concerns of many other members of Atherton. Clearly, many parents think that the privacy rights of their own children, especially girls born as girls in this case, are being violated by having someone with the physical and biological identity of a boy in the restroom with their own daughters.

 

Other parents thought otherwise. According to the report, others, including a mother of a transgender student at another school, said that gender-neutral bathrooms create their own problems. That was one of the suggestions: instead of allowing this particular student to use the girl’s restroom, that student should be allowed to use a gender-neutral restroom. But one transgender-student parent said that’s not acceptable. She went on to say, forcing transgender students to use a separate bathroom means forcing them to out themselves in a way that violates their own privacy rights. “Don’t deny my child’s right to be who they are.”

 

So here you have an absolute collision of worldviews. You have parents lining up on one side and parents on the other side. Some parents, even as the media have reflected, a majority of parents, think that boys should use the boys room and girls should use the girls room and that should be assigned by biological sex. But others feel otherwise and they are currently the ones pleased with the principal’s decision. The principal’s decision he says will stand until he is told to do otherwise and that is a day that is unlikely to come.

 

One girl on the school council said, at the Thursday meeting, she didn’t mind sharing the bathroom. Another speaker said, “Just because someone has a male body doesn’t mean that person is male.” Now that shows you just how much this particular worldview has now infected especially young people. Where you have students coming and, saying the statement again, “Just because someone has a male body doesn’t mean that person is male.” Now let’s just consider the fact that if you think about the entire span of human history and you just consider universal human history and human experience up until very recent times—and I mean very recent times—that would’ve been an insane proposition. The fact that it is not now universally recognized as such tells us, well, it tells us something very similar to what that ADHD story tells us: our society is losing all rationality and sanity on an issue as basic as gender.

 

But as I said when discussing this last week, one of the problems here is that you have a clash of moral absolutes even on the side of those who are pushing for this transgender revolution. How in the world do you handle the kind of incommensurate claims that are being made here? For instance, you have people who are saying it’s absolutely unjust for someone to be required to use the bathroom and the locker room of the biologically assigned sex at birth, and you have others who are saying that it’s unjust to require some student in transition or someone who has undergone a transgender change to use even a gender-neutral bathroom. And that’s reflected even in The Courier-Journal where, in an article that appeared on its website, but not in the printed paper, a spokesperson for the transgender community—that’s Holly Knight, the president of Siena, known as the Louisville Transgender Organization—took a position different than that of the principal of the school. Holly Knight said that given the young age of the student, it might be appropriate to use a unisex bathroom, like Manual High School here in Louisville has. That could be a reasonable decision for the school. Directly quoting, “I get that at a high school, there probably needs to be some provisions in that way for people that are uncomfortable on both ends. I think that is a good thing.” At the same time, this spokesperson said that the particular position advocated might not be pleasing even to the transgender community.

 

In conclusion, this spokesperson said, “I think it would be a mistake for the transgender community and for everyone else to say we’re going to be okay if you just present as a female and you get to go to the bathroom for the girls.” Now why would that transgender spokesperson say that? It’s because it makes common sense even to this person who is the leader of a transgender advocacy group. Why? Because we’re talking about adolescents, and now this principal and this school are saying to adolescents you can simply claim, immediately claim, to identify with the opposite sex and get to use the bathroom and potentially even the locker room of that opposite sex. That is, as even this transgender activist recognizes, nonsensical. It’s not fair. And furthermore, there you have the evidence of the fact that even in that community you have conflicting absolutist arguments about what is right.

 

Keep that in mind when you remember that just days ago, the Defense Secretary of the United States Chuck Hagel said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” program, “Every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have an opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it.” That was with explicit reference to barriers that currently exist in the Armed Forces and in combat situations for transgendered individuals. The New York Times, in a lead editorial that appeared on Thursday, May 15th, on discrimination in the military, according to its own headline, said:

 

Three years after the demise of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” an estimated 15,000 members of the military still must lie about themselves in order to go on risking their lives for their country. When Congress eliminated the law against gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, the Pentagon left in place an equally unfounded prohibition on transgender people.

 

The New York Times editors actually go even further, arguing not only for the full inclusion of transgender individuals in the American military, but for the military to take on the responsibility for hormone treatment and other medical care. As they write:

 

As for gender-changing surgery, [a recent] panel noted that some elective cosmetic surgeries allowed at military medical facilities require similar leave time and risk more serious postoperative complications.

 

In other words, get with the program. The editors conclude:

 

Addressing issues like privacy and housing is not rocket science. It happens in civilian workplaces all the time. With the right leadership, outbreaks of intolerance can be minimized.

 

So in other words, any opposition to this is just an outbreak of intolerance. There’s that argument all over again. But notice the previous story having to do with Atherton High School. Notice the similar controversies going on American college and university campuses and in many American workplaces. The fact is that the editors have it wrong. This is not a settled issue. Nowhere in America is it a fully-settled issue. It’s not even a settled issue in the transgender community. Just imagine what is now being demanded of the American military and that tells us something of a final analysis. And that is when you put these two stories together, having to do with the public schools and America’s military, you come to understand that those who are trying to push a radical moral agenda, a radical social agenda, know that if they can change those two basic institutions in America and make them the engines for that kind of moral revolution, they can’t but succeed. That’s why there is so much attention to the public schools and to the military. And that’s why it’s no coincidence that these two stories arrive just hours in separation from one another. That, as common sense recognizes, is not a coincidence.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember the release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. 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. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

Genesis 17:1-27

The Briefing 05-19-14

Podcast Transcript

1) High rate of toddler ADHD medication exposes something wrong with society, not children

Thousands of Toddlers Are Medicated for A.D.H.D., Report Finds, Raising Worries, New York Times (Alan Schwarz)

2) Democrats breaking left of President Obama in preparation for mid-term elections

Democrats Drifting From Obama, Wall Street Journal (Carol Lee)

Democrats Criticize Court Pick, Wall Street Journal (Michael Crittenden and Kristina Peterson)

3) Public schools and military targeted as potential engines of change for transgender agenda

Atherton OKs transgender non-discrimination policy, Louisville Courier-Journal (Chris Kenning)

Transwoman gives opinion, advice on Atherton controversy, WHAS (Michelle Arnold)

Discrimination in the Military, New York Times (Editorial Board)

Ask Anything: Weekend Edition 05-17-14

1) What are the noetic effects of sin?

2) Why does God not save everyone?

3) Should evangelicals view Catholics as fellow believers?

So Peter Opened His Mouth: The Command to Preach and the Universal Promise of the Gospel

SBTS Spring Commencement Address

So Peter Opened His Mouth: The Command to Preach and the Universal Promise of the Gospel

2014 Spring Commencement Address

Transcript: The Briefing 05-16-14

The Briefing

 

 May 16, 2014

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

 

It’s Friday, May 16, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

A few weeks ago we discussed a development in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the local Catholic archdiocese is requiring all the teachers in Catholic schools to sign a contract that states a very clear understanding of the moral expectations of anyone who would teach in the Catholic schools. Why would this be controversial? Well because they hadn’t done it before. Why are they doing it now? Well that’s an interesting story in itself. It turns out that across the nation an increasing number of teachers being fired for violating Catholic teaching are suing that they did not know the Catholic teaching or they did not know that they had to abide by, and they seem to be shocked, absolutely shocked, that a Catholic school would expect his teachers to be Catholic or at least to teach in accordance with Catholic teaching or to live lives in terms of their own personal morality that would be very much in line with Catholic morality or would at least not flaunt divergence from Catholic moral teaching. If that seems like common sense to you, then you’ll understand why many of us are scratching our heads over why this is such a controversial issue in Cincinnati, Ohio. Because, after all, the teachers there in Cincinnati in the Catholic schools said that they had no list of the things they were to keep in mind. They had no list of the individual requirements. They didn’t know which teachings they were not allowed to violate. They didn’t know which moral principles they had to abide by, so the archdiocese released a list and that’s where the controversy ensued because the teachers, after demanding a list, didn’t like the list they got.

 

And the kickback is interesting in itself, but the controversy took an interesting turn in recent days when one veteran Catholic teacher there in Cincinnati said she wouldn’t sign the contract. The teacher is Molly Shumate, and according to The Courier Journal here in Louisville, when she stared at the Cincinnati archdiocese contract, she thought of her son. Her son, a teenager, is openly gay, and for that reason, she did not sign the contract. And she states that it’s a violation of her conscience to be forced to choose between her employment and the support of her son. But as Michael D. Clark, reporter for The Cincinnati Inquirer, says, that even though this teacher was “a lifelong Catholic and devoted teacher,” she was stunned by the lengthy contracts, starkly-detailed restrictions on her personal life, and the freedom to publicly support her now 22-year-old son. She said, “In my eyes, there’s nothing wrong with my son. This is what God gave me and what God created and someone I should never be asked not to support.” She went on to say:

 

If my son were say to me, “Will you go somewhere with me that is supported or run by gays and lesbians?” I would have to tell him no according to that contract. And if my picture was taken, what would happen?

 

Well this is a very interesting development and it’s very revealing as well. It reveals a great deal about the teachers who now must make the choice as to whether or not they will sign the contract, but it’s also very revealing about the schools and the archdiocese of Cincinnati. It tells us, for one thing, that this new clarity follows along obscurity. In other words, the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati bears a good deal of responsibility for evidently having been quite lax in recent years such that its own Catholic teachers didn’t know what Catholic teaching required. But the teachers also are very revealing in their response to this contract; acting as if it is somehow an imposition upon their constitutional rights as Americans to be required to uphold Catholic teaching if they’re going to get paid to teach in Catholic school.

 

Now if that story would be located in Cincinnati alone, it would be interesting, but it’s not. As a matter fact, recent headlines indicate that the same pattern now prevails in Catholic schools across the nation from Oakland, California, to Cleveland, Ohio. Datelined Cleveland, Ohio, on May 13th: Cleveland Catholic Diocese is now asking teachers at 104 elementary schools to sign a more detailed morality clause. And according to Patrick O’Donnell, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, this has sparked a strong reaction from readers and several questions. Now, again, since we’re trying to get to the bottom of this controversy, what would this contract require in terms of moral issues? Well The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

 

The contract, which prohibits teachers from engaging in any listed behavior…such as public support of positions contrary to Roman Catholic teaching, including but not limited to, publicly supporting abortions, euthanasia, assisted suicide, embryonic stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, surrogate parenthood, direct sterilization, or so-called homosexual are same-sex marriage or unions.”

 

Now let’s be honest. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Catholic moral teaching would know that there’s nothing controversial here, at least in terms of the fact that these are things the Catholic Church has taught and required and expected for decades. Nothing new here; nothing new at all. What’s really revealing is the fact that Catholic teachers are now saying it’s an imposition on our conscience, maybe even an imposition on our constitutional rights, to have this kind of moral requirement or, for that matter, a didactic requirement (you might call it a creedal requirement) to act and to teach only in accordance with Catholic teaching.

 

Well this is very revealing when you think about that what’s revealed here is the fact that these Catholic archdiocese have failed to hold forth Catholic teaching in the past even as they’re trying to catch up now. It’s very revealing that the teachers are upset, but in several of these cities it’s even more revealing that the parents are upset. Oakland, California, is a clear example of this. As the teachers there in Oakland, California’s Catholic schools are being required to sign this kind of contract, its many parents who’ve gone to the local media, saying that this is tyrannical. This is, as one parent said, tantamount to the Spanish Inquisition. This is an imposition of the church’s authority where it has no business. Let’s just ask the obvious question: If the Catholic Church has no business exercising authority over Catholic schools, in one sense are Catholic schools Catholic? By the way, the simple clause in the Oakland Catholic teacher contract is this:

 

In both the employee’s personal and professional life, the employee is expected to model and to promote behavior in conformity with the teaching of the Roman Catholic faith in matters of faith and morals, and to do nothing that tends to bring discredit to the school or to the diocese of Oakland.

 

Now, again, you would think that any fair-minded person would see that as what would be expected of anyone who would teach in a Catholic school.

 

But the big issue here is not just for Roman Catholics. My concern has far more to do with evangelical Christians. What do we do with this? We this tells us that if we really do expect confessional integrity, if we really do expect evangelical teachers, evangelicals teaching in our schools to teach in a way that is legitimately evangelical, we’re going to have to be very clear about what is expected. That’s why, for instance, the only education that will continue, in terms of any Christian integrity, in terms of any biblical fidelity, is one that is clearly creedal, that is to say, confessional in nature. The founders of the institution that I have the privilege of leading, organized around this principle that every professor must sign to teach in accordance with and not contrary to all that is contained therein. Where did that language come from? That was the historic confessional language of Protestantism. That was the language that was used at Princeton Theological Seminary up until the early decades of the 20th century. That’s what Protestant confessionalism looks like, and even though it’s shocking, extremely revealing that evidently there are many Roman Catholics who don’t know that the Roman Catholic Church actually teaches something it expects its teachers to teach, it would be an even greater embarrassment to know that there’re evangelical Christians who might be stuck in the same confusion and it would be even more revealing that Christian institutions or Christian churches or denominations would allow that confusion. If so, what it reveals is theological irresponsibility, and where it heads is towards the loss of the faith in a single generation, and if you wonder if that can happen, just consider where it already has.

 

Shifting the scene to Europe, but also to the World Wide Web, the European Court of Justice, on Tuesday of this week, ruled that individuals in Europe have a right to disappear on the Internet. It’s actually a partial disappearance order that was issued by this European Court of Justice. It was a ruling that was directed to Internet search engine such as Google, charging that those corporations, those corporations that sponsor these massive search engines, must, if they’re going to relate to anyone in Europe, offer a way for individuals to demand that they disappear from the search engine.

 

Now the reason why it’s not stated very clearly that they’re disappearing from the Internet is because this ruling applies only to the search engines, not to the originating webpages. So, just to be very clear, if there’s a newspaper article that lists your name, if you’re a European citizen, you cannot demand that the newspaper article disappear. You can demand that Google not link to the newspaper article or at least not link it to your name. If that sounds like a partial victory, it’s also partial insanity. In other words, this isn’t going to work. As a matter of fact, it’s the kind of thing that is often handed down by judges who have no knowledge of evidently what their ruling. As several observers on both sides of the Atlantic have pointed out, this makes sense to anyone who doesn’t use the Internet. The moment you begin to use the Internet, you realize how ridiculous this is. But as Craig Timberg and Sarah Halzack of The Washington Post point out, we can understand why people might want to disappear. As they write, tens of millions of people have had the painful experience of cruising the Internet and discovering something mortifying about themselves. And many have immediately been seized with some variation of falling question: How do I make that go away before my parents, spouse, boss can see it? They went on to write:

 

For Europeans, the answer became clearer this week when the continent’s highest court ruled that individuals have a right to demand that Google-search links to unflattering material be deleted, a step toward what privacy advocates there have christened “the right to be forgotten.”

 

Well, as I’ve said, this is offering more than is actually going to be delivered because even as the court has ordered Google to do this, no one actually has much confidence that Google could do this if they wanted to do it. And furthermore, even if Google did it, knowing how the World Wide Web works, these materials wouldn’t be lost. These links wouldn’t simply go away. If they didn’t appear on Google, they’ll appear somewhere else. The lesson for all of us is this: if it’s on the World Wide Web, it’s there until Jesus comes. At least in terms of your expectation, my expectation, if it’s on the web, it isn’t going to disappear. If it’s put up on the web as information, as content, as image, it’s going to stay. And this is a false promise by this European Court, the kind of things that sometimes courts do, but the interesting thing from a Christian worldview perspective is this: we can understand the desire to disappear, the desire to be forgotten, but it isn’t going to happen.

 

Now, again, the biblical worldview comes back to say the least thing we should be concerned about is being found rather permanently on the World Wide Web. It’s almost as if we wonder if the World Wide Web knows our every action and our every thought and is keeping a record of it and we will be judged by it and for it, but the reality is we don’t believe the World Wide Web has that power. But we do believe that a holy and omniscient God does and we do believe that we’re going to be accountable not only for every word, for every image, for every deed, but for every idle thought.

 

What you have here is a secular society that wants to disappear, that wants to have a right to be forgotten, and you can understand just how pressing that might be. You can understand how a guilty conscience over something on the Internet could lead you to want to be forgotten and to want to disappear, but there is no actual way to disappear and no court can deliver on this promise.

 

This relates to a story that appeared last week in USA Today. The headline is “States Move to Ban Revenge Porn.” Trevor Hughes reports that the big issue in revenge porn is this: states are beginning to crack down on the fact that people are embarrassing former romantic partners who had shared intimate photographs, and by putting them up on the web to embarrass, they are then causing harm to the one who originally took the compromising photograph. Now let’s be very clear. From a Christian perspective, everything about this is wrong. Everything. The pornography’s wrong. The sexually explicit image is wrong. The lack of a marital context is wrong. The posting of such material is wrong. All of it is wrong! The whole ambition of revenge is absolutely wrong. The Bible would condemn every single aspect of this, but it is one of the most revealing new stories to come around in a very long time because what you have here are courts trying to put an end to revenge porn, trying to make it a crime, trying to make it a criminalized offense so that people can be arrested for this, and if they misuse—notice the key word here is misuse—a sexually explicit photograph that was sent from one romantic partner to another, there can be criminal consequences. But I have ransacked news media to find any acknowledgment of the underlying moral issue here, and, thus far, I have found not one major American media source that acknowledges that if you don’t have this photograph taken in the first place, it can’t be used against you by someone who wishes either to bless you or to curse you. In other words, no one’s talking about the individual responsibility of not participating in a pornographic act in the first place. So, again, this is very revealing. From a Christian worldview perspective, it reveals the insanity of a human creature so confused that we will try to re-create a morality on the other side of an immorality. We will create an immoral image and then we will try to come up with moral consequences for misusing an immoral image. And you wonder what kind of sinful creature could come up with something so devious and insane, well the Christian worldview answers that too. Where you look? The first place is in the mirror.

 

Finally, as the week comes to an end, three stories having to do with modern parenting, and from a Christian worldview perspective, what this tells us is that modern parents are seized with all kinds of strange anxieties. And furthermore, we’re often misparenting when we want to parent even at the highest level.

 

The first is a story that appears in The Wall Street Journal by Yuliya Chernova, and she writes about a woman soon to be a mother. This is Aleks Swerdlow, who is expecting her first baby in July. She owns several wearable devices, including a fetal heartbeat monitor. She wants her newborn to eventually where devices too. “I love gadgets, wearable specifically,” said Ms.Swerdlow (she’s 29), “so it seemed a natural extension to have that available for my child, especially if it allows me not to worry about how the baby is sleeping and breathing.” So what kind of gadgets we talking about here? Well wearable gadgets for infants now include the Mimo Baby, a set of three baby bodysuits that cost $200 that includes a device used to measure restoration, skin temperature, and body position, broadcasting these constantly by Bluetooth technology to mom, who evidently is watching every single moment for skin temperature, body position, respiration rate, and other meaningful medical data that mothers have had to track every second throughout human history.

 

But if that’s not enough, for $250, moms can by the Owlet Baby Care sock. That’s a smart sock made by the company that senses a baby’s oxygen saturation and heart rate, and constantly broadcasts this to mom via Bluetooth. With the acknowledgement that there might be some children with particular risks for whom this might be important, the obvious question is what kind of parent thinks they need this kind of technology attached to a baby? As one observer said, “Evidently human parents have found a way to parent children and raise them safely for 6,000 years without recourse to this kind of technology.” What this technology reveals is just how paranoid, just how scared, just how frenetic so many American parents are. We tend to forget that parenting is a natural endeavor; that pregnancy is a natural gift; that the gift of children is something that human beings have celebrated as one of God’s greatest gifts to us from the very beginning of the human race, going back to Adam and Eve. And in Eden, there would’ve been no need for this kind of a monitor, and, frankly, in this fallen world, there still is very little need for this kind of monitoring gadgetry. What is really needed is just common-sense parenting. So, parents, here’s good news: Chill. What your children need is your attention and you’re going to care for them. You don’t need all these monitors, and woe unto the child who in the crib is wearing a smart sock.

 

But evidence number two that American parents are going insane, The Wall Street Journal has a major article on the problem for sports parents. It features a 12-year-old boy who is a student of Taekwondo. The article is by Kevin Helliker and he writes that this 12-year-old boy’s mom and stepfather are paying $6,000 a year for a 12-year-old boy to have Taekwondo lessons and participate in Taekwondo competition. Now, undoubtedly, this is having some good affect upon the boy, who appears to be learning and is doing so well after a year of practice that he’s in a national championship. If he is successful in years coming, then they’ll have to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars more, including just a thousand dollars in travel expenses to get to the national competitions; and then, of course, the outfits and the clothing, estimated at about $750; registration for the term, that’s $500; and personal class instruction, $2,100—in total about $6,000 a year. The obvious point is this: most parents can’t afford anything like this and it probably isn’t rational to spend anything like this. And furthermore, the most interesting part of this story in The Wall Street Journal is that, as it turns out, if you look at Olympic athletes, it is the parents who spend less and force the issue less and push their children less who tend to produce Olympic medalists. You look at Olympic medalists; most of them don’t get there because their parents are paying $6,000 a year for them to take Taekwondo lessons nor were they paying all that money or pushing them so hard to succeed. Rather, they had an inner drive, they had God-given ability, and they had the opportunity to develop those abilities.

 

Well this is obviously not yet a norm, but the fact that it’s becoming so popular that The Wall Street Journal gives a front-page personal journal section to it tells you something. It tells us, once again, that America’s parents are losing touch with rationality. What our children need is our time. It’s great for them to be involved in sports, but if these sports begin to cost $6,000 a year, this explains a great deal about why we’re treating our children as we do. It also explains why so many of our children are missing teenagers as well from church activities. It’s because if we’re making such a priority out of sports, if they’re involved to such a degree in sporting activities, if the investment is so great in the field of sport, something’s going to come up short, and all too often, as virtually every pastor and youth minister can tell you, what’s coming up short is church.

 

Finally, staying on the theme of parenthood, yesterday’s edition of The New York Times, in the personal tech column, included an article by Molly Wood with the headline: “How Young is Too Young for a Digital Presence.” Well most of the article is imminently un-useful, having to do with advice to parents about what to do. For instance, the relative morality of cheating that put your child as an infant on Facebook even though they’re supposed to be 13. There are all kinds of issues in this, but the most revealing thing is the final paragraph in this article by Molly Wood. She concludes:

 

If anything, a child today who grows up and discovers he has no photos on Facebook or Instagram might think of himself as an unloved anomaly. In an age of obsessive digital detailing, if a child grows up unrecorded, what is his identity at all?

 

Well if you’re looking for ample evidence of cultural insanities as we go into the weekend, there it is. Asking the question if our children really have an identity, if they look back at adolescence and find out that they’re every move wasn’t tracked and traced and recorded and documented on the Internet, do they have any identity at all?

 

Perhaps more than anything else that shows the collision between the biblical worldview and the modern secular worldview. The biblical worldview says that your identity isn’t something you earn or document; it’s something given to you by your Creator, something determined by the God who made you for His glory. The secular worldview says you better come up with some way to identify yourself and create an identity. And in this digital age, evidently, the digital world is where some people are trying to do that. What a pathetic question. If your child doesn’t have a digital identity, does he have any identity at all?

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember tomorrow’s release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Remember also to call with your question in your voice. Call 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. Remember the free e-book you can get by going to my website. That e-book is God and the Gay Christian: A Response to Matthew Vines. It’s available free at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again Monday for The Briefing.

The Briefing 05-16-14

1) Confusion over Catholic school moral contracts reveals need for confessional integrity

Catholic school teacher backs gay son, shuns contract,  Louisville Courier-Journal (Michael D. Clark)

Oakland Diocese requiring educators to conform to church teachings, San Francisco Gate (Joe Garofoli)

Catholic School Teachers At Diocese Of Oakland Required To Sign Morality Pledge Covering Personal Life, CBS

Catholic schools’ new “morality clause”: The Cincinnati dispute, a key Supreme Court case, and what schools are affected, Cleveland.com (Patrick O’Donnell)

2) “Right to be forgotten” affirmed by European court a false promise

In Google case, E.U. court says people are entitled to control their own online histories, Washington Post (Craig Timberg and Michael Birnbaum)

3) Banning revenge porn attempt to recreate morality on the other side of immorality

Aim, shoot, regret: States move to ban ‘revenge porn’, USA Today (Trevor Hughes)

4) Technology and sports insufficient replacements for a parent’s attention

Oh, Baby: Wearables Track Infants’ Vital Signs, Wall Street Journal (Yuliya Chernova)

The Problem for Sports Parents: Overspending, Wall Street Journal (Kevin Helliker)

5) Digital presence not basis of a child’s identity

How Young Is Too Young for a Digital Presence?, New York Times (Molly Wood)

 

“So Peter Opened His Mouth” — The Preacher’s Calling Reduced to Five Powerful Words

The Bible presents an astonishingly simple method of preaching. In Nehemiah 8:8 we read that Ezra and his fellow preachers “read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”

There is no calling as majestic as the Christian ministry, and yet the central task of ministry is breathtakingly uncomplicated. We read the Bible aloud, we read it clearly, and then we explain what we have read, so that hearers understand the meaning. Of course, no one said it was easy. This is an arduous calling, but it is incredibly simple in design.

The most amazing thing about preaching is the fact that God chose to use human mouths for his message. It is astounding that God has willed that the earth shall hear his voice my means of the human voice.

Martin Luther put it this way:

“Thus when you hear a sermon by St. Paul or by me, you hear God the Father Himself. And yet you do not become my pupil but the Father’s, for it is not I who is speaking; it is the Father. Nor am I your schoolmaster; but we both, you and I, have one Schoolmaster and Teacher, the Father, who instructs us. We both, pastor and listener, are only pupils; there is only this difference, that God is speaking to you through me. That is the glorious power of the divine Word, through which God Himself deals with us and speaks to us, and in which we hear God Himself.” [1]

In this light, perhaps the most clarifying way to understand the preacher’s task is to consider its most quintessential act — the opening of the mouth.

Look with me to the Book of Acts, 10:30-43:

And Cornelius said, “Four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said, ‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner, by the sea.’ So I sent for you at once, and you have been kind enough to come. Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.” So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” [Acts 10:34-43]

The context is one of the most significant turning-points in the Book of Acts. This text explains not only how Cornelius came to be saved, but how we — the Gentiles — can be saved. This came after Peter had received his vision and heard the voice from heaven declare: “What God has made clean, do not call common.” [Acts 10:15]

Peter was commanded to follow three men, who took him to the house of a Roman centurion, Cornelius:  ”And they said, ‘Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say.’” [Acts 10:22]

Notice carefully that Peter is told that Cornelius was directed by an angel to hear what Peter has to say. When Peter arrives, Cornelius declares to his entire household: “Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.” [Acts 10:33]

This is one of the most powerful teachings in Scripture about the proper disposition of a congregation. This congregation may have been relatively small, but it was ready to hear a word from the Lord, delivered through God’s preacher.

Just imagine if every congregation awaited every sermon with such an announcement: ”Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.”

Imagine the expectation that statement reflects; the faithful eagerness that statement projects. They were gathered to hear and to receive and to believe all that God would command his preacher to say.

So Peter opened his mouth. That is the very next verse — “So Peter opened his mouth and said: ‘Truly I understand that God shows no partiality.’” [Acts 10:34]  So Peter opened his mouth. That is the essential act of preaching reduced to five earth-shaking words. So Peter opened his mouth.

In his commentary on Ephesians 6:19-20, Peter O’Brien notes: “The expression ‘to open the mouth’ appears in contexts of solemnity where a grave or important utterance from God is about to be made.”

We can imagine no more important utterance than this — salvation is for the Gentiles, too.

This phrase is used in the Old Testament as well, with reference to prophetic utterance. In Ezekiel 3:2, the prophet says, “So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat.” He was to eat the Word, then preach the Word. In Ezekiel 33:22, Ezekiel explains that he was ready to preach when God opened his mouth, and “so my mouth was opened.”

So Peter opened his mouth. He obeyed the call. He fulfilled his calling. He did not remain silent or hide, he opened his mouth and declared all that God had commanded him to say. Paul once asked the Ephesian Christians to pray “that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly.” [Ephesians 6:19]

And what did God command him to speak?

That everyone who believes in him receives the forgiveness of sins through his name. Everyone. Jews who believe in him receive the forgiveness of sins through his name. Gentiles who believe in him receive the forgiveness of sins through his name.

Peter had declared the story of Jesus, who went about doing good and healing, but was put to death by hanging him on a tree. God raised him up on the third day, and after appearing to many witnesses he commanded the apostles to preach the gospel to all people, to all nations.

The Christian ministry requires courage, and we can see even more courage required in the near future. There may well be a higher price exacted for opening our mouths. But God has called us to open our mouths so that others can hear his voice, believe, and be saved — so that his church will be fed and taught, and be matured. Can you imagine any higher calling than that?

So, dear preacher, go ye into all the world, and open your mouth.

This is the main body of my commencement address delivered today for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Hundreds of students will receive their degrees and diplomas today in a ceremony filled with both tradition and hope. Please join us at 10:00am by watching at www.sbts.edu/live

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

[1] Martin Luther, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, trans. Jaroslav Pelikan, “Luther’s Works,” (Concordia/Fortress Press, 1968), vol. 23, 97-98.

All Scripture references are from the English Standard Version [ESV].