R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 379

Genesis 9:2-28

Special Announcement: Ask Anything Weekend Edition

Do you have questions about theology, worldview, current events, or the Bible? Good news! The popular “Ask Anything” segment from the Albert Mohler Program returns with “Ask Anything Weekend Edition.” Call any time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to leave your message to be played on the air and answered by Dr. Mohler. Call now: 1-877-505-2058

Special Announcement: Ask Anything Weekend

Do you have questions about theology, worldview, current events, or the Bible? Good news! The popular “Ask Anything” segment from the Albert Mohler Program returns with “Ask Anything Weekend.” Call any time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to leave your message to be played on the air and answered by Dr. Mohler. Call now: 1-877-505-2058

The Briefing 01-24-14

1) Elections have consequences: Virginia Attorney General won’t defend same-sex marriage ban

Even in Death, Abortion Politics Never Goes Away, New Yorker (Jeffrey Toobin and Ben Margot)

Virginia won’t defend its same-sex marriage ban, USA Today

Gay Marriage Ban Unconstitutional, Says Virginia Attorney General, Wall Street Journal (Associated Press)

New Virginia Attorney General Drops Defense of Gay Marriage Ban, New York Times (Timothy Williams)

2) Former Governor Bob McDonnell under federal indictment for illegal gifts

Former Va. Gov. McDonnell and wife charged in gifts case, Washington Post (Rosalind S. Helderman, Carol D. Leonnig and Sari Horwitz)

3) Court admits right for male inmate to have taxpayer funded sex change

Court upholds inmate’s right to sex change, Boston Globe (Milton J. Valencia)

Intellectual Discipleship? Faithful Thinking for Faithful Living

The biblical master narrative serves as a framework for the cognitive principles that allow the formation of an authentically Christian worldview. Many Christians rush to develop what they will call a “Christian worldview” by arranging isolated Christian truths, doctrines, and convictions in order to create formulas for Christian thinking. No doubt, this is a better approach than is found among so many believers who have very little concern for Christian thinking at all; but it is not enough.

A robust and rich model of Christian thinking—the quality of thinking that culminates in a God-centered worldview—requires that we see all truth as interconnected. Ultimately, the systematic wholeness of truth can be traced to the fact that God is himself the author of all truth. Christianity is not a set of doctrines in the sense that a mechanic operates with a set of tools. Instead, Christianity is a comprehensive worldview and way of life that grows out of Christian reflection on the Bible and the unfolding plan of God revealed in the unity of the Scriptures.

A God-centered worldview brings every issue, question, and cultural concern into submission to all that the Bible reveals, and it frames all understanding within the ultimate purpose of bringing greater glory to God. This task of bringing every thought captive to Christ requires more than episodic Christian thinking and is to be understood as the task of the church, and not merely the concern of individual believers. The recovery of the Christian mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to face all questions without fear.

Christianity brings the world a distinctive understanding of time, history, and the meaning of life. The Christian worldview contributes an understanding of the universe and all it contains that points us far beyond mere materialism and frees us from the intellectual imprisonment of naturalism. Christians understand that the world—including the material world—is dignified by the very fact that God has created it. At the same time, we understand that we are to be stewards of this creation and are not to worship what God has made. We understand that every single human being is made in the image of God and that God is the Lord of life at every stage of human development. We honor the sanctity of human life because we worship the Creator. From the Bible, we draw the essential insight that God takes delight in the ethnic and racial diversity of his human creatures, and so must we.

The Christian worldview contributes a distinctive understanding of beauty, truth, and goodness, understanding these to be transcendentals that, in the final analysis, are one and the same. Thus, the Christian worldview disallows the fragmentation that would sever the beautiful from the true or the good. Christians consider the stewardship of cultural gifts—ranging from music and visual art to drama and architecture—as a matter of spiritual responsibility.

The Christian worldview supplies authoritative resources for understanding our need for law and our proper respect for order. Informed by the Bible, Christians understand that God has invested government with an urgent and important responsibility. At the same time, Christians come to understand that idolatry and self-aggrandizement are temptations that come to every regime. Drawing from the Bible’s rich teachings concerning money, greed, the dignity of labor, and the importance of work, Christians have much to contribute to a proper understanding of economics. Those who operate from an intentionally biblical worldview cannot reduce human beings to mere economic units, but must understand that our economic lives reflect the fact that we are made in God’s image and are thus invested with responsibility to be stewards of all the Creator has given us.

Christian faithfulness requires a deep commitment to serious moral reflection on matters of war and peace, justice and equity, and the proper operation of a system of laws. Our intentional effort to develop a Christian worldview requires us to return to first principles again and again in a constant and vigilant effort to ensure that the patterns of our thoughts are consistent with the Bible and its master narrative.

In the context of cultural conflict, the development of an authentic Christian worldview should enable the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to maintain a responsible and courageous footing in any culture at any period of time. The stewardship of this responsibility is not merely an intellectual challenge; it determines, to a considerable degree, whether or not Christians live and act before the world in a way that brings glory to God and credibility to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Failure at this task represents an abdication of Christian responsibility that dishonors Christ, weakens the church, and compromises Christian witness.

A failure of Christian thinking is a failure of discipleship, for we are called to love God with our minds. We cannot follow Christ faithfully without first thinking as Christians. Furthermore, believers are not to be isolated thinkers who bear this responsibility alone. We are called to be faithful together as we learn intellectual discipleship within the believing community, the church.

By God’s grace, we are allowed to love God with our minds in order that we may serve him with our lives. Christian faithfulness requires the conscious development of a worldview that begins and ends with God at its center. We are only able to think as Christians because we belong to Christ; and the Christian worldview is, in the end, nothing more than seeking to think as Christ would have us to think, in order to be who Christ would call us to be.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

For background reading, see:

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Glory of God and the Life of the Mind,” Friday, November 12, 2010.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God: Starting Point for the Christian Worldview,” Friday, December 3, 2010.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Christian Worldview as Master Narrative: Creation,” Wednesday, December 15, 2010.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Christian Worldview as Master Narrative: Sin and its Consequences,” Friday, January 7, 2011.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Christian Worldview as Master Narrative: Redemption Accomplished,” Monday, January 10, 2011.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Christian Worldview as Master Narrative: The End that Is a Beginning,” Wednesday, January 12, 2011.

 

The Briefing 01-23-14

1) True Income Inequality: Married family poverty level 7.5%. Those with single mother: 33.9%

How to Fight Income Inequality: Get Married, Wall Street Journal (Ari Fleischer)

Commentary: Mother of four is a mess? So, where are the fathers? Palm Beach Post (Randy Schultz)

2) Condemning homosexuality, we cannot simultaneously turn a blind eye to divorce and co-habitation

Head of Seattle Catholic school resigns after dismissal of gay vice-principal, The Guardian (Kristen Millares Young)

3) The controversy over Japan’s “Dolphin Hunt.” Why do we eat some animals and not others?

Japanese dolphin hunt spurs social media outrage, USA Today (Katharine Lackey)

 

 

The Briefing 01-22-14

1) 41 years after Roe v. Wade, America more, not less divided over abortion

Abortion and the American Conscience, AlbertMohler.com

Even in Death, Abortion Politics Never Goes Away, New Yorker (Jeffrey Toobin and Ben Margot)

2) Abortion more than a political agenda and deeper than a religious conviction

Trending Toward Life: Roe v. Wade at 41, National Review (Chuck Donovan)

Parties Seize On Abortion Issues in Midterm Race, New York Times (Jeremy Peters)

Religion ghosts in the politics of abortion? Obviously… Get Religion (Terry Mattingly)

3) Evangelicals take growth seriously. Why? They take the gospel seriously.

When it comes to church growth, it’s not the theology, stupid, The Guardian (Andrew Brown)

 

Abortion and the American Conscience

Tomorrow, January 22, 2014, is the 41st anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history — the day that the United States Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand. Since that date, almost 55 million unborn babies have been aborted in American wombs.

America has been at war over abortion for the last four decades and more. When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, the court’s majority attempted to put an end to the abortion question. To the contrary, that decision both enlarged and revealed the great moral divide that runs through the center of our culture.

Most Americans seem completely unaware of the actual contours of the abortion debate as it emerged in the early 1970s. In 1973, the primary opposition to abortion on demand came from the Roman Catholic Church. Evangelicals — representative of the larger American culture — were largely out of the debate. At that time, a majority of evangelicals seemed to see abortion as a largely Catholic issue. It took the shock of Roe v. Wade and the reality of abortion on demand to awaken the Evangelical conscience.

Roe v. Wade was championed as one of the great victories achieved by the feminist movement. The leaders of that movement claimed — and continue to claim — that the availability of abortion on demand is necessary in order for women to be equal with men with respect to the absence of pregnancy as an obstacle to career advancement. Furthermore, the moral logic of Roe v. Wade was a thunderous affirmation of the ideal of personal autonomy that had already taken hold of the American mind. As the decision made all too clear, rights talk had displaced what had been seen as the higher concern of right versus wrong.

Also missing from our contemporary cultural memory is the fact that many Republicans, as well as Democrats, welcomed Roe v. Wade as the next step in a necessary process of liberating human beings from prior constraints. Yet, we now know that even more was at stake.

Tapes recently released by the Nixon Presidential Library reveal that President Richard M. Nixon, who had been considered generally opposed to abortion, told aides on January 23, 1973 (the day after the decision was handed down) that abortion was justified in certain cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” said Nixon. President Nixon’s words, chilling as they are, are also a general reflection of the moral logic shared by millions of Americans in that day.

As a matter of fact, one of the dirty secrets of the abortion rights movement is that its earliest momentum was driven by a concern that was deeply racial. Leaders such as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, argued quite openly that abortion and other means of birth control were necessary in order to limit the number of undesirable children. As she made clear, the least desirable children were those born to certain ethnically and racially defined families. Sanger, along with so many other “progressive” figures of the day, promoted the agenda of the eugenics movement — more children from the “fit” and less from the “unfit.”

President Nixon, speaking off-the-cuff about the Roe v. Wade decision handed down just the day before, did register his concern that the open availability of abortion would lead to sexual permissiveness and a further breakdown of the family. Nevertheless, he carefully carved out an exception for interracial pregnancies.

Nixon’s comment, made almost 40 years ago, was strangely and creepily echoed in comments made by Supreme Court associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In an interview published in The New York Times Magazine, Justice Ginsburg made her absolute support of abortion on demand unconditionally clear. She tied her support for abortion to the larger feminist agenda and lamented the passage of the Hyde Amendment which excludes the use of Medicaid for abortions. The Supreme Court upheld the Hyde amendment in 1980, surprising Ginsburg, who commented:

“Frankly I had thought at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.”

Justice Ginsburg’s comments were made in the context of comments about her hopes for feminism and her anticipation of being joined at the court by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then about to begin confirmation hearings. The larger context of Justice Ginsburg’s comments do not provide much assistance in understanding whether she was speaking of her own personal convictions or describing what was being thought by others at the time.

Of greatest importance is the fact that Justice Ginsburg’s comments reveal the racial, economic, and ethnic discrimination that was at the very heart of the push for abortion on demand throughout much of the 20th century. Also revealed is Justice Ginsburg’s virtually unrestricted support for a woman’s right to an abortion. In the interview, she goes so far as to lament the fact that the language of Roe v. Wade mentioned abortion is a decision made by the woman and her physician. As Justice Ginsburg told The New York Times, “So the view you get is the tall doctor and the little woman who needs him.”

The American conscience remains deeply divided over the question of abortion. Tragically, we have never experienced a sustained, reasonable, and honest discussion about abortion in the society at large. One step toward the recovery of an ethic of life would be an honest discussion about the actual agenda behind the push for abortion on demand. Proponents of abortion rights do everything they can to hide the ugliness of the agenda behind the comments made by President Nixon and Justice Ginsburg.  Nevertheless, the truth has a way of working itself into view.

Just take a good look at the comments made by the late President and the current Justice. Furthermore, ask yourself why there is such racial disparity in abortion. Those comments turn more chilling by the day.

I am always glad to hear from readers.  Write me at mail@albertmohler.com.  Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Originally published on October 8, 2009.

The Briefing 01-21-14

1) Our eyes refuse to lie – The ultrasound carries a message

Judge strikes down North Carolina ultrasound abortion law, CNN (Lateef Mungin and Joe Sutton)

Proposed Abortion Restrictions in Spain Face Backlash, New York Times (Raphael Minder)

2) Obama’s marijuana comments miss the most important issues

Going the Distance, The New Yorker (David Remnick)

Obama: Pot no more dangerous than alcohol, USA Today (William M. Welch)

3) World Economic Forum’s “most significant threats of 2014″ looks like last years list, and next years

10 greatest threats facing the world in 2014, USA Today (Kim Hjelmgaard)

4) World War II soldier survives 29 years in the jungle, returns to a different world

Hiroo Onoda, Soldier Who Hid in Jungle for Decades, Dies at 91, New York Times (Robert D. McFadden)

Faith and Freedom in the Public Square: An Evening I Will Share with Dennis Prager and Ross Douthat

A respectful conversation on the most controversial issues of our day is a rare gift. And I am looking forward to just that kind of opportunity when I will join Dennis Prager and Ross Douthat for such a conversation. It will take place next Tuesday in Alumni Chapel at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The event is presented by World Magazine and #Hashtag Productions, and the public is invited—and that pleases me.

I cannot remember when I first read material from Dennis Prager, but he is one of the most significant Jewish thinkers in America today. He has a keen mind and a generous spirit. I have enjoyed every conversation with him. He is also a nationally syndicated radio host, whose influence is massive. Similarly, Ross Douthat is one of the most influential newspaper columnists and writers in the nation today. His column in The New York Times is required reading for anyone who wants to think about the leading issues of the day. His latest book, Bad Religion, was a best-seller for all the right reasons.

Our conversation is entitled, “Faith and Freedom in the Public Square.” Warren Smith of World Magazine will emcee the evening. I want to make sure that you know about it, and that you know you are invited to join us for the evening.

For tickets and information, go to https://hashtagpros.webconnex.com/Louisville

Here is the information from that site:

An Evening with Albert Mohler, Dennis Prager and Ross Douthat

Presented by World Magazine and Hashtag Productions! 

On Tuesday, January 28th at 7:00 pm, in Alumni Chapel on the campus of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, nationally syndicated radio show host Dennis Prager, Christian author Dr. Albert Mohler and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat will appear together on stage for a conversation about about “Faith and Freedom in the Public Square.”

Our emcee for the evening will be Warren Smith of World Magazine.

We live in trying times. Those of us who take belief in the God of the Bible seriously feel burdened by the problems that arise in our increasingly secular, pluralistic society. People are abandoning truth, Western culture is dying, and the lines between right and wrong are becoming irrevocably blurred.

The goal of this event is to allow three prominent voices in the public square—one Jewish (Prager), one evangelical Christian (Mohler), and one Catholic (Douthat)—to engage in an open, honest and entertaining dialogue about these challenges we face as a nation and civilization. This is about asking and answering tough questions in a God-honoring and purposeful way.

Tickets are $19.95 for General Admission seating, and a limited number of $64.95 VIP reserved seating (which includes admittance to a catered pre-show VIP reception with the speakers at 6:00 pm).

Alumni Chapel

2825 Lexington Road

Louisville, KY 40280

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This event is brought to you by Hashtag Productions LLC (www.hashtagpros.com) and World Magazine (www.worldmag.com).