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

Transcript: The Briefing 03-13-14

The Briefing

 

 March 13, 2014

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

 

It’s Thursday, March 13, 2014. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

 

One of the great dramatic political stories of our age is unfolding on the Crimean Peninsula and in the nation of Ukraine. But the major actor is Russia, and the Russian Bear continues to hold the nation of Ukraine in its teeth as he puts it in a vice grip in order to snatch the Crimean Peninsula away from the Ukrainian nation. The world is watching, and there’s very little that the world can do. The European Union and associated Allied Powers have been indicating their displeasure, their outrage, their indignation at the actions of Russia, but Russian President Vladimir Putin is absolutely unmoved and unintimidated.

 

Bret Stephens, writing the Global View Column of The Wall Street Journal, explains why. He suggests that what is revealed in the current Crimean crisis is not only the aggressiveness of Russia, but the naïveté of the West, in particular Western leaders such as US President Barack Obama. Last week, speaking as Russian troops were even then grabbing the Crimean Peninsula, President Obama said, “I actually think that this is not been a sign of strength.” Well what in the world did the president mean? And if this isn’t strength, what is it? As Bret Stephens says, “Is not been a sign of strength? Is not been a sign of grammar.” Stevens then went back to harken to one of George W. Bush’s neologisms, that is, one of the words the former president was characteristically fond of creating. That word was “misunderestimating,” and that’s exactly what President Obama has done with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has, to quote President Bush, “misunderestimated” President Putin, and the inevitable result of this is that the president’s foreign policy is directed at nothing that will now matter.

 

Writing from London, the editors of The Economist quoted President Obama as describing his foreign policy in the situation as “restrained and I think thoughtful.” What thoughts are behind that thoughtfulness, the president did not make abundantly clear. Then the editors of the economist wrote this:

 

Alas, Team Obama is surprisingly bad at alliances. In Ukraine, America largely outsourced policy to Europe for many months before deciding too late that it was going wrong. Forget criticism in Washington about how a stronger, Reaganesque president might intimidate foes. A larger problem is the White House’s resentful attitude towards America’s friends.

 

The editors agree with the critics of the White House who say the president’s foreign policy “dismays allies and emboldens foes.” The history of international foreign policy demonstrates the grave danger of naïveté. Just think of the threshold of World War II with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declaring that he had achieved peace in our time (those were his words) when he returned from meeting in Munich with Adolf Hitler. Neville Chamberlain then became known as the symbol of appeasement and, as Winston Churchill said, an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile believing and hoping that he will be eaten last. But eaten last means one is still eaten and that’s one of the sad lessons of international politics in a foreign world. Appeasement simply does not work.

 

It isn’t fair to accuse President Obama of appeasing Vladimir Putin, but what certainly is fair is suggesting that the American president, and many other Western leaders along with him, simply did not develop a comprehensive foreign policy that would’ve made it far more difficult for Vladimir Putin to have pulled this off or even to have planned to do so.

 

One of the most important insights of the Christian worldview is the recognition that human beings simply do not think alike. Human beings think according to their worldview, and when worldviews are different, inevitably patterns of thinking are different too. That means that goals and aspirations and definitions of success can be very different. That’s where Bret Stephens gets right to the point when he writes about Vladimir Putin, Russia, and compares it with the United States and Europe, and writes this:

 

Not all countries are blessed with oceans for borders. Not all leaders get to live in magic kingdoms where Nobel Peace Prizes are bestowed before they are earned. And not all leaders want to live in those magic kingdoms, either.

 

In other words, what Bret Stephens is arguing is that the Russian president really isn’t concerned about the things that the American president seems to be obsessed with. President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize soon after he went into office, before he had actually accomplished anything. Just by being elected to office, he was considered to be an ambassador of peace. But that is a haunting reflection, a haunting parallel, back to the opening of World War II, and it also is a sign of Western hope against reality, especially the Western hope that other peoples of the world will think as we think. In other words, there are many people around the world who simply can’t understand the way Vladimir Putin is acting. Doesn’t he want the Nobel Peace Prize? Clearly not; that’s not on his screen. That’s not what he wants. He might be glad to receive it, if indeed the world decided to give it to him, but on the other hand, his goals and aspirations, his definitions of success are very, very different.

 

In its editorial on Vladimir Putin, The Economist wrote this:

 

In the past week, Vladimir Putin has trampled over norms that buttress the international order and he has established dangerous precedents that go far beyond Ukraine. Giving into kidnappers is always dangerous. Those who failed to take a stand to start with often face graver trials later on.

 

Perhaps you remember the very argument that Vladimir Putin made when his troops—and make no mistake they are his troops—entered the Crimean Peninsula. He said that Russian military advisers and military forces were simply moving into place to be ready to protect ethnic Russians and, of course, he also extended that to say not only ethnic Russians, but those whose language, first language, is Russian, perhaps even second language is Russian. As many have pointed out, that would be a rationale for Vladimir Putin invading New York City. It’s not only a specious argument; it’s an obscene argument. But if you want to understand that argument, perhaps nothing encapsulates it so well as a cartoon that appeared within the pages of The Economist. It pictures a room in which talks on Crimea are taking place among world leaders. Vladimir Putin is sitting at the table in the shape of a bear and sticking out of his mouth is the fin of a fish. The aquarium in the room is empty, and when one of the other leaders asked what happened to the fish, Vladimir Putin responds, “They were under threat and needed my protection.” That’s the kind of cartoon that is hardly funny. It is, however, tremendously revealing.

 

One last thought in terms of foreign policy. We often do not recognize just how providentially situated the United States of America is. As Henry Adams said back at the dawn of the 20th century, America was gifted by God with oceans to the left and the right, and Canadians to the north and Mexicans to the south (rather friendly neighbors), and, of course, the great physical barrier of those two great oceans to any kind of invading force. Compare that to China. Writing in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, Andrew Browne, writing in the China’s World Column, points out that China is now beset by an enormous array of challenges. “They cover everything,” he says, “from domestic terrorism, ethnic and social unrest, to troublesome neighbors along the world’s longest land border.” He explains, these challenges “constitute an immensely complex set of security challenges that when added up suggest that China’s destiny is far less assured the its surface confidence might indicate.” At the end of the article, it is pointed out that China—that does have the world’s longest land border—shares that border with about twenty other nations; most of them either hostile or unsettled or failed states. My point here is not so much to consider China, but to consider the United States of America in contrast and to remember just how privileged we are as a nation that foreign policy for us can be something that is not so much close at hand, right on our border, but somewhere else in the world, as in the case of the Crimean Peninsula, very far away. Other nations of the world do not have that luxury, and every day they are reminded of it.

 

In an interesting parallel, yesterday, in an unrelated set of stories, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had major articles on the increased diagnosis of ADHD and the associated medical prescriptions that are going along with it. ADHD, of course, refers to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. As Stephen Hinshaw and Richard Scheffler point out—both of them, by the way, are professors at the University of California at Berkeley—there has been a 41% increase in the number of ADHD diagnoses in the United States just over the last decade. As they write:

 

Over two-thirds of kids with an ADHD diagnosis receive prescriptions for stimulants like Adderall or Ritalin. The data sparked a much-needed debate about whether American children were being overdiagnosed and overmedicated for ADHD.

 

Now they suggest that debate should go global. They write, “Consider what’s been going on in Israel. In 2010 alone the use of two medications, Ritalin and Concerta, skyrocketed by 76%.” Now, again, that was just in one year. The researchers go on to indicate that last year Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services “found that as many as one in five Israeli children were prescribed stimulants without at a proper ADHD diagnosis.” Now in Israel, let’s recall the number, that’s one out of 5 (20%). They go on to write, Israel and the United States are not alone. There is a growing awareness of ADHD, and that awareness is now combined with what they describe as “increasing pressure on children to achieve academically.”

 

This is a very interesting article. Not only do we now face the national phenomenon of many children, especially boys, being diagnosed with ADHD because they are not functioning well in institutional settings, especially such as school; you also have the fact that nations, the United States among them but especially nations in Asia, are panicking over academic performance and they’re putting pressure on children. And ADHD diagnoses and the associated prescription drugs that go with them—and remember those are drugs that affect the central nervous system—they’re all skyrocketing. The professors write:

 

The pressure to treat ADHD is growing particularly fast in countries like China and South Korea that are making a strong push to improve academic performance. Many elementary and secondary schools in China force children to sit for hours at length, attending lectures and cramming for tests. It is only natural that children in these circumstances need help to remain focused. More and more, that help is coming in a pill.

 

Now, once again, that article appeared in yesterday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, but in yesterday’s edition of The New York Times, an article by Alan Schwarz reports:

 

The number of young American adults taking medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder nearly doubled from 2008 to 2012, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the nation’s largest prescription drug manager.

 

That drug manager, known as Express Scripts, processes prescriptions for about 90 million Americans—that’s almost one out of three Americans. They also found that one in ten adolescent boys was taking medications for the disorder, usually Adderall or Concerta. Now, again, just so we don’t miss that statistic: that’s one out of ten of all American adolescent boys. Dr. Brooke Molina, an associate professor of psychiatry at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, identified in the papers as one of the nation’s leading researchers into ADHD, said, “It’s hard to dismiss the data in this report. There are limitations with every study, but it’s hard to do anything here but conclude that we have a continually forward-marching increase.” Now that’s a very troubling statement: “a continually forward marching increase.” Forward-marching from one out of every ten American adolescent boys being diagnosed with ADHD and then medicated? What’s after one out of ten? One out of five? Well, come to think of it, that’s exactly where the children in Israel are right now according to the report in the same day’s Wall Street Journal. Where’s the forward march from there? One out of three? One out of four? One out of two? Though the issue is not addressed in this way, the bigger question behind all these reports and all of these concerns is whether or not we are medicating normality; taking normal behavior, especially behavior of young boys and adolescents and young men and instead medicating them in order that they will behave otherwise. Clearly, some of these young people have a real problem; it’s not just a misdiagnosis. But when you’re looking at the numbers that are at stake here, something is horribly amiss and the something that’s amiss is with the culture and not with these children and young people.

 

Furthermore, the other issue that is behind this is the question of enhancing human performance. That goes back to the references in The Wall Street Journal story to what’s going on in schools in China and Korea and elsewhere. But before we throw stones at China and Korea, we also need to recognize that the same kind of thing is taking place here in the United States. I was recently on one of the most prestigious state university campuses in this country. By any measure, this is one of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the United States, but even as I was on the campus, openly discussed among students was the fact that many of the best and brightest students were using these very same drugs in order to increase their academic performance.

 

They weren’t even suggesting that they had anything like ADHD or any other kind of diagnosis, merely that they did better with the drugs, and since this is a competitive environment and, furthermore, the competition with oneself is a very important part of the academic pressure as well, they want to give themselves the edge and are taking the drugs; sometimes buying them from classmates down the hall, sometimes buying them openly on the street. Oh, there’s something amiss alright; there’s something wrong, but the major diagnosis we need to understand is this: we want to find a problem in a diagnosis and we want to find salvation in a pill. These two major articles, appearing from two different sources in two the world’s leading newspapers on the very same day, indicate something of the scale of this problem and the fact that even the secular world is aware that something is horribly wrong.

 

Finally, speaking of something being horribly wrong, Hiriko Tabuchi, reporting for The New York Times, writes of the man who was considered to be the pride and joy of Japanese classical music. Writing from Tokyo, he reports:

 

A man once hailed as Japan’s deaf musical genius and likened to Beethoven faced the wrath of his nation, appearing in public for the first time since he was exposed as a fake.

 

With brows furrowed and lips clenched, the man, Mamoru Samuragochi described how his childhood love for music came to fuel an elaborate deception that ended when it was learned that someone else had written his celebrated compositions and that he was not deaf. “I thought the truth would come out some day. It all grew beyond my control, and filled me with terror. To everyone who was kind enough to buy my CDs, I have no words.”

 

He was credited with his Number 1 Symphony entitled “Hiroshima.” That symphony, based on the 1945 bombing of the city of that name, sold over 200,000 copies in terms of the recording. His musical compositions and his public appearances were some of the most popular points of culture in Japan, and one of Japan’s leading figure skaters even skated to one of his supposed compositions in the recent winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. But as Tabuchi reports:

 

That fairy tale came crashing down last month when an obscure part-time lecturer at a Tokyo music college revealed that he had been the ghostwriter for this man since the 1990s. Even more shocking, he claimed that Mr. Samuragochi was not really deaf. They had normal conversations together, spoke on the telephone, and even listened to music together, Mr. Niigaki said.

 

In other words, the man he who was the pride and joy in Japan for being a deaf composer of classical music turns out not to have been the composer and not to have been deaf. This is the kind of story that reminds us of the old adage that truth really is stranger than fiction. You couldn’t make this up, and yet it has led to a sense of national humiliation and outrage in Japan. But it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t because this is a basic human problem. There is a propensity to believe something that is unbelievable. We allow ourselves to be fooled even as we’re looking at something that is dubious on its face—a deaf composer of classical music, for example. We want to believe that a story is true and so we overcome our natural incredulity and suspicion to convince ourselves that it is true. Somehow, in our fallen state, human beings have the possibility—indeed the ability—to conform our intelligence and our reason to what we hope will be true, rather than to what is actually true and demonstrably true right before our eyes.

 

There’s another very interesting point in this article as well. It turns out that if you are claiming to be a deaf composer and you’re claiming that massively important and popular pieces of music are yours, it just might be that human pride will also enter in the other side of the equation, with the man who actually did write the music showing up and claiming credit and demonstrating that, after all, Japan’s deaf composer was neither a composer nor deaf. Therein, we might say, lies a parable.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. Ask Anything: Weekend Edition is released every Saturday morning. 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’m speaking to you from Orlando, Florida, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

 

The Briefing 03-13-14

Podcast Transcript

1. Obama, Putin, and the naivety of the West’s “hope against reality”

Misunderestimating Vladimir, Wall Street Journal (Bret Stephens)

The Ukraine Blame-Game, The Economist (Editorial board)

2. China faces security challenges with world’s longest land border

China Expands Into a World of Peril, Wall Street Journal (Andrew Browne)

3. Increased diagnoses of ADHD, and the medication that comes with it, goes global

How Attention-Deficit Disorder went Global, Wall Street Journal (Stephen P. Hinshaw and Richard M. Scheffler)

Report Says Medication Use is Rising for Adults with Attention Disorder, New York Times (Alan Schwarz)

4. Celebrated and successful Japanese composer is revealed as a fake

Disgraced Musician Faces an Angry Japan, New York Times (Hiriko Tabuchi)

Strengthen the Things That Remain: Defending Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Human Flourishing in a Dangerous Age

An address delivered as a Forum Lecture in the Marriott Center Arena at Brigham Young University by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on Tuesday, February 25, 2014.

The full transcript is posted here on AlbertMohler.com

Moral Man and Immoral Foreign Policy: The Ironies of International Politics

“Moral Man and Immoral Foreign Policy: The Ironies of International Politics” was presented February 10, 2014 at The University of Texas Austin, sponsored by the Clements Center for History, Strategy, and Statecraft. For more information, please visit clementscenter.org

The Briefing 03-12-14

1. The limits of technology and humanity: How could  massive Boeing-777 just disappear?

The Malaysia Airlines Disappearance Shows Technology’s Limits, Wall Street Journal (Daniel Michaels and Jon Ostrower

Use of Stolen Passports on Missing Jets Highlights Security Flaw, New York Times (Eric Schmitt)

2. Why did it take General Motors a decade and 13 deaths to recall dangerous ignition switches?

Congress to Ivestigate GM Recall, Wall Street Journal (Jeff Bennett and Joseph B. White)

3. The new sibling rivalry: Kids forced to compete with mobile devices for parents’ attention

Patterns of Mobile Device Use by Caregivers and Children During Meals in Fast Food Restaurants, Pediatrics

Cell Phones Are Distracting Too Many Parents; Disrupting Communication With Kids, Medical Daily (Anthony Rivas)

Parents, Wired to Distraction, New York Times (Perri Klass)

4. From Father to Son — J.R.R. Tolkien on Sex

From Father to Son–J.R.R. Tolkien on Sex, Albertmohler.com (Albert Mohler)

Monotheism Is Not Enough

Originally preached at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Chapel February 13, 2014 for Great Commission Week

The Briefing 03-11-14

1) Millennials in Adulthood report: Only 26% married as they reach adulthood

Millennial in Adulthood: Detached from Institutions, Networked with Friends, Pew Research Center

Half of millennials more likely to lean Democratic, Associated Press (Jesse J Holland)

Millennial generation less religious, more liberal than older ones, Los Angeles Times (David Lauter)

2) Christian leaders have no place in life of Bowdoin College

BCF advisors refuse to sign policy, vacate role at College, Bowdoin Orient (Meg Robbins and Marisa McGarry)

God and Sexuality at Bowdoin, The American Spectator (Owen Strachan)

3) United Methodist Church will not revoke credentials of reverend who performed gay marriage ceremony

United Methodist Church won’t defrock former Yale Divinity School dean who performed gay wedding, New Haven Register (Jim Shelton)

 

 

From Father to Son — J.R.R. Tolkien on Sex

The astounding popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien and his writings–magnified many times over by the success of the “Lord of the Rings” films–has ensured that Tolkien’s fantasy world of moral meaning stands as one of the great literary achievements of our times.

In some sense, Tolkien was a man born out of time. A philologist at heart, Tolkien was most at home in the world of ancient ages, even as he witnessed the barbarism and horrors of the 20th century. Celebrated as a popular author, he was an eloquent witness to permanent truths. His popularity on university campuses, extending from his own day right up to the present, is a powerful indication of the fact that Tolkien’s writings reach the hearts of the young, and those looking for answers.

Even as Tolkien is celebrated as an author and literary figure, some of his most important messages were communicated by means of letters, and some of the most important letters were written to his sons.

Tolkien married his wife Edith in 1916, and the marriage was blessed with four children. Of the four, three were boys. John was born in 1917, Michael in 1920, and Christopher in 1924. Priscilla, the Tolkiens’ only daughter, was born in 1929.

Tolkien dearly loved his children, and he left a literary legacy in the form of letters. Many of these letters were written to his sons, and these letters represent, not only a hallmark of literary quality, but a treasure of Christian teaching on matters of manhood, marriage, and sex. Taken together, these letters constitute a priceless legacy, not only to the Tolkien boys, but to all those with whom the letters have been shared.

In 1941, Tolkien wrote a masterful letter to his son Michael, dealing with marriage and the realities of human sexuality. The letter reflects Tolkien’s Christian worldview and his deep love for his sons, and at the same time, also acknowledges the powerful dangers inherent in unbridled sexuality.

“This is a fallen world,” Tolkien chided. “The dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been ‘going to the bad’ all down the ages. The various social forms shift, and each new mode has its special dangers: but the ‘hard spirit of concupiscence’ has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house, since Adam fell.” This acknowledgement of human sin and the inevitable results of the Fall stands in stark contrast to the humanistic optimism that was shared by so many throughout the 20th century. Even when the horrors of two world wars, the Holocaust, and various other evils chastened the century’s dawning optimism of human progress, the 20th century gave evidence of an unshakable faith in sex and its liberating power. Tolkien would have none of this.

“The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favorite subject,” Tolkien insisted. “He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones.” Thus, Tolkien advised his young son, then 21, that the sexual fantasies of the 20th century were demonic lies, intended to ensnare human beings. Sex was a trap, Tolkien warned, because human beings are capable of almost infinite rationalization in terms of sexual motives. Romantic love is not sufficient as a justification for sex, Tolkien understood.

Taking the point further, Tolkien warned his son that “friendship” between a young man and a young woman, supposedly free from sexual desire, would not remain untroubled by sexual attraction for long. At least one of the partners is almost certain to be inflamed with sexual passion, Tolkien advised. This is especially true among the young, for Tolkien believed that such friendships might be possible later in life, “when sex cools down.”

As any reader of Tolkien’s works understands, Tolkien was a romantic at heart. He celebrated the fact that “in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition [is] still strong,” though he recognized that “the times are inimical to it.” Even so, as a concerned father, Tolkien warned Michael to avoid allowing his romantic instinct to lead him astray, fooled by “the flattery of sympathy nicely seasoned with a titillation of sex.”

Beyond this, Tolkien demonstrated a profound understanding of male sexuality and the need for boundaries and restraint. Even as he was often criticized for having an overly negative understanding of male sexuality, Tolkien presented an honest assessment of the sex drive in a fallen world. He argued that men are not naturally monogamous. “Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for us men a piece of ‘revealed’ ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh.” In his own times, Tolkien had seen the binding power of cultural custom and moral tradition recede into the historical memory. With the “sexual revolution” already visible on the horizon, Tolkien believed that Christianity’s revealed sex ethic would be the only force adequate to restrain the unbridled sexuality of fallen man. “Each of us could healthfully beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few hundred children, and enjoy the process,” Tolkien admonished his son. Nevertheless, the joys and satisfactions of monogamous marriage provide the only true context for sexuality without shame. Furthermore, Tolkien was confident that Christianity’s understanding of sex and marriage pointed to eternal, as well as temporal pleasures.

Even as he celebrated the integrity of Christian marriage, Tolkien advised Michael that true faithfulness in marriage would require a continual exercise of the will. Even in marriage, there remains a demand for denial, he insisted. “Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify and direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him–as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial.”

Tolkien traced unhappiness in marriage, especially on the part of the husband, to the Church’s failure to teach these truths and to speak of marriage honestly. Those who see marriage as nothing more than the arena of ecstatic and romantic love will be disappointed, Tolkien understood. “When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along.”

With these words, Tolkien advised his middle son that marriage is an objective reality that is honorable in the eyes of God. Thus, marriage defines its own satisfactions. The integrity of Christian marriage requires a man to exercise his will even in the arena of love and to commit all of his sexual energy and passion to the honorable estate of marriage, refusing himself even the imagination of violating his marital vows.

In a letter to his friend C.S. Lewis, Tolkien advised: “Christian marriage is not a prohibition of sexual intercourse, but the correct way of sexual temperance–in fact probably the best way of getting the most satisfying sexual pleasure . . . .” In the face of a world increasingly committed to sexual anarchy, Tolkien understood that sex must be respected as a volatile and complex gift, bearing potential for great pleasure and even greater pain.

With deep moral insight, Tolkien understood that those who give themselves most unreservedly to sexual pleasure will derive the least pleasure and fulfillment in the end. As author Joseph Pearce, one of Tolkien’s most insightful interpreters explains, sexual temperance is necessary “because man does not live on sex alone.” Temperance and restraint represent “the moderate path between prudishness and prurience, the two extremes of sexual obsession,” Pearce expands.

Explicit references to sexuality are virtually missing from Tolkien’s published works, allegories, fables, and stories. Nevertheless, sex is always in the background as part of the moral landscape. Joseph Pearce understands this clearly, arguing that Tolkien’s literary characters “are certainly not sexless in the sense of being asexual but, on the contrary, are archetypically and stereotypically sexual.” Pearce makes this claim, notwithstanding the fact that there is no sexual activity or overt sexual enticement found in Tolkien’s tales.

How is this possible? In a profound employment of the moral spirit, Tolkien presented his characters in terms of honor and virtue, with heroic men demonstrating classical masculine virtues and the heroines appearing as women of honor, valor, and purity.

Nevertheless, we would be hard pressed to understand Tolkien’s understanding of sex, marriage, and family if we did not have considerable access into the realities of Tolkien’s family and his role as both husband and father. Tolkien’s letters, especially those written to his three sons, show the loving concern of a devoted father, as well as the rare literary gift Tolkien both possessed and employed with such power.

The letter Tolkien wrote Michael in the year 1941–with the world exploding in war and civilization coming apart at its seams–is a model of fatherly concern, counsel, and instruction. We should be grateful that this letter is now accessible to the larger world, and to the rest of us.

From the vantage point of the 21st century, Tolkien will appear to many to be both out of step and out of tune with the sexual mores of our times. Tolkien would no doubt take this as a sincere, if unintended, compliment. He knew he was out of step, and he steadfastly refused to update his morality in order to pass the muster of the moderns.

Writing to Christopher, his youngest son, Tolkien explained this well. “We were born in a dark age out of due time (for us). But there is this comfort: otherwise we should not know, or so much love, what we do love. I imagine the fish out of water is the only fish to have an inkling of water.” Thanks to these letters, we have more than an inkling of what Tolkien meant.

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

This essay appeared in my book Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of the New Sexual Tolerance. Reprinted here by request.

Shepherds’ Conference 2014: “Suppressing the Truth in Unrighteousness: The Gospel of Christ Confronts the Conspiracy of the Ages” – Romans 1:16-32

“Suppressing the Truth in Unrighteousness: The Gospel of Christ Confronts the Conspiracy of the Ages” – Romans 1:16-32

Delivered at the 2014 Shepherds’ Conference. For more information, please visit ShepherdsConference.org

Mud Huts and Mass Transit: Urbanization and the Future of Missions

Mud Huts and Mass Transit: Urbanization and the Future of Missions

Within a single human lifespan, humanity has reordered itself. A majority of humans now live in cities, something completely new in human experience. Within another single lifespan, at least 3/4 of human beings will live in cities — and some of these mega-cities will defy our imagination. If this is where the people are, this is where the Gospel must go. Our task is to understand the urban reality and make the city central to our missions strategy.

From CrossCon 2013. For more information about CrossCon, please visit crosscon.com