R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 380

The Briefing 01-20-14

1) Virginia on the front lines of same-sex marriage debate

Va. Quickly Emerging as Key in Gay Marriage Fight, Associated Press (Steve Szkotak)

2) Arguments over same-sex marriage reveal a difference of authority

Gay marriage ban: The case for, Indianapolis Star (Robert King)

Gay marriage ban: The case against, Indianapolis Star (Jon Murray)

Seminary president’s testimony against HJR 3, NUVO

Seminary Announces Sustainability Plan, Inside Indiana Business

3) On disagreements over most important issues – not two variants of one faith, but two different faiths

Frank Schaefer, Phil Robertson and the Myth of Christian Unity, Religious Dispatches (Hollis Phelps)

4) Are people with kids happier? Sorry, wrong question.

Are people without kids happier? New studies offer mixed picture, CNN (Kelly Wallace)

The Briefing 01-17-14

1) Bothered by sex outside of heterosexual marriage? Cultural elites say you just need to “deal with it”

Sex Is Not Our Problem, New York Times (Charles M. Blow)

2) Next frontier in fertility treatment? Transgender men.

The Next Frontier in Fertility Treatment, New York Times (Sarah Elizabeth Richards)

3) One of the most essential acts of a loving parent: Saying “no”

The Power of Parents Who Say ‘No’ Wall Street Journal (Catherine Pearlman)

 

Welcome to Seminary—Now What? How to Be Faithful as a Seminary Student

My great privilege every semester is to welcome an incoming class of seminarians to the stewardship of theological education. This is not a privilege I take lightly. I remember what it was like to sit in the same room well over thirty years ago, being welcomed to the same campus. As I welcome you as new students now, I do my best to tell you what I wish someone had told me.

Theological education is a stewardship—a very rare stewardship. Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 13:17, “Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.” That same truth relates to your opportunity for theological education. Many godly Christians would long to have the same experience you will have: to study with this faithful faculty, to live in the midst of this Gospel community, and to enjoy all the privileges that come with being a student at Southern Seminary.

To enter this seminary is to enter into a stewardship, and I know that every one of you will want to make the most of that stewardship. Theological education is a stewardship of truth. The Apostle Paul made this clear to Timothy when he wrote these words from 2 Timothy 2:1-7 (ESV):

“You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”

You have come to be a learner in order to be teachers. The succession of faithfulness in the truth is spoken of by Paul in terms of truth to be received in order to be entrusted to others, who will be able to teach also. This is how the church is fed and sustained. Faithful teachers teach a new generation of faithful learners who will then teach so that yet more faithful teachers may come. The very word trust implies that stewardship. Your stewardship of truth preceded your arrival as a seminarian, but it is now front and center in your life. Be determined from this moment on to be a faithful steward of the truth of God’s Word and the deposit of faith that is left to us by Christ and the apostles.

Some theological institutions invite their students to revise the faith, to be creative with doctrine, to update the ancient faith for modern times. This school exists in order to achieve the opposite. Our goal is to produce graduates who believe as the apostles believed, who preach as the apostles preached, and who maintain a stewardship of the truth as the Apostle Paul here commands Timothy.

But we also find three vital metaphors for the seminary experience in this passage. Paul tells Timothy that his stewardship of truth and trust is made clearer by looking to three role models: the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer.

The soldier endures suffering and avoids “civilian pursuits.” Why? Because “his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.” Each of you has been enlisted by Christ and called into the ministry of Christ’s church. The single-minded sacrificial mindset of the soldier preparing for battle must be your aim. Why? Because you live to please Christ.

The athlete “is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” That verse takes on a whole new meaning in an age of vast scandals in contemporary sports. The one who enlisted you in ministry expects you to follow the rules. There are no shortcuts in ministry. There are no rewards for cheating. Recent scandals in sports ranging from cycling to baseball reveal the unspeakable embarrassment that comes to the athlete stripped of his medals and crowns when cheating and scandal are revealed. Even as there are rules in sports, there are rules in theological education. There are basic rules to education, and the importance of these rules is only magnified when the education concerns the revealed truths of God. Let there be no scandal in your ministry for your failure to follow the rules.

The farmer is the most unlikely of the role models Paul presents, and the one most foreign to his personal experience. Paul was metropolitan in background and focus, and his ministry was primarily to the cities. We encounter few farmers in his writings; nevertheless, the farmer looms large in this text. For the farmer from which we are to learn is the hard-working farmer, who deserves the first share of the crops. Paul knew enough to know that farming is arduous. Farming is hard work—just ask a farmer. I learned this first-hand as a boy, observing the early mornings, the long days, and the patient labor of the farmers around me. Ministry is hard work—just ask a faithful minister. And so is the work of the seminarian, for this is ministry too. Your hard work now will reap untold rewards in the future.

A few encouragements to you at this juncture in your life and ministry:

1. Do not consider your years at seminary as a prelude to ministry—this is ministry. Just as the preacher’s time in the study each week is ministry, so is your theological education. This is not what you do before ministry starts, this is your ministry right now, and in his sovereignty God knows to whom you are ministering in the future even as you prepare for that ministry in the present. You will misunderstand your seminary experience if you see it as an interruption in ministry, or even as a delay. You are like the farmer planting seeds. That is farming just as much as the harvest is farming.

2. Do not believe that you will be more faithful in ministry in the future than you are now. Just as your ministry is now, so is the call to faithfulness. The habits and practices you establish now will foretell the habits and practices of your future ministry. Be faithful in every assignment. Make the most of every test, every book, every paper, every lecture, and every conversation. Be faithful in the little things as well as the great. Be faithful as a student, as a man or woman, in singleness or in marriage. If you are married, be faithful to love your spouse with faithful and devoted love as you grow in your faithfulness and devotion in ministry.

3. Do not believe that you will love the church more in the future than you do now. Love the church. Be infatuated with the Bride of Christ. Join a local congregation as soon as possible and get deeply invested in ministry. Sit among 8 year-olds and 80 year-olds. Develop friends who are not related to the seminary. Work in the nursery, or the youth ministry. Teach a senior adult class and preach in the nursing homes. See a need and fill it. Take every opportunity to preach and teach. Let no man despise your youth.

4. Do not believe that you will be more evangelistic in the future than you are now. Share the Gospel with eagerness. Talk to your neighbors about Christ. Invite non-Christians to dinner in your home. Take a teenager with you to go talk about Jesus on Bardstown Road. Develop a heart for the nations. Pray for an unreached people group every day. One of them just might have your name written on it—and that name written on your heart.

5. Finally, be morally strong and stay humble. Knowledge does tend to puff us up, so give yourself the ministry of deflation. Make many friends while at seminary, the kind of friends you will want to serve with for the rest of your days. Read books like you mean it. Write in them and build a library, not a book collection. A well read book worthy of reading is a companion for life. Develop a friendship with a Boyce College student who needs a big brother or a big sister. Go to the art museums and attend a high school football game. Learn what it means to study in the library until you get kicked out and the lights go out. Eat in the cafeteria and sit with someone you don’t yet know.

Take every class you can and put knowledge in your ministry bank. While you are agile and mobile, take a trip to go visit a ministry you want to see up close. Tell the folks back home what you are learning, and let them see and sense your excitement. They are already excited about you.

And so am I. You have no idea just how excited we are about who you are and what God has done in your life and what He is going to do through you.

So, consider the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer. Take hold of the stewardship of your theological education, put your hand to the plow, and never look back.

This is a message preached this morning in a chapel service for new students at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. For information on how you can join us, go to sbts.edu, or call Ben Dockery, Director of Admissions, at 800-626-5525 or 502-897-4221. Email Ben at bdockery@sbts.edu—he will be glad to hear from you.

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

 

 

The Briefing 01-16-14

1. Considering recent controversies, is “brain death” truly death?

Oakland girl’s brain death divides pro-life camp, World Magazine (Daniel James Devine)

Suing to End Life Support for Woman and Fetus, New York Times (Manny Fernandez)

2. Controversy over New York woman declaring ‘combat on her cancer’

Heroic Measures, New York Times (Bill Keller)

3. New Mexico judge rules assisted suicide an “integral fundamental right”

New Mexico Judge Affirms Right to ‘Aid in Dying’, New York Times (Eric Eckholm)

4. After deciding ‘not to die,’ Madeline Arakawa Gins dies at age 72

Madeline Arakawa Gins, Visionary Architect, Is Dead at Age 72, New York Times (Margalit Fox)

The Briefing 01-15-14

1. Federal judge in Oklahoma lifts ban on same-sex marriage but puts a hold on own decision

Federal judge rules Oklahoma’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional, Washington Post (Juliet Eilperin)

2. President of Nigeria bans same-sex marriage among protests from United States

Nigerian President Signs Ban on Same-Sex Relationships, New York Times (Rick Gladstone)

3. Supreme Court turns down opportunity to hear a case from Arizona appealing abortion laws

Abortion Rights: A Good Ruling Stands, New York Times (Editorial Board)

4. Google has bought a thermostat company spurning on the ‘internet of things’

Google Doesn’t Care About Your Thermostat. It Wants to Organize the Internet of Things., Slate.com (Will Oremus)

Evolution Is Most Certainly a Matter of Belief—and so Is Christianity

One of the most misleading headlines imaginable recently appeared over an opinion column published in USA Today. Tom Krattenmaker, a member of the paper’s Board of Contributors, set out to argue that there is no essential conflict between evolution and religious belief because the two are dealing with completely separate modes of knowing. Evolution, he argued, is simply “settled science” that requires no belief. Religion, on the other hand, is a faith system that is based in a totally different way of knowing—a form of knowing that requires belief and faith.

The background to the column is the recent data released by the Pew Research Center indicating that vast millions of Americans still reject evolution. As the Pew research documents, the rejection of evolution has actually increased in certain cohorts of the population. Almost six of ten who identify as Republicans now reject evolution, but so do a third of Democrats. Among evangelical Christians, 64% indicate a rejection of evolution, especially as an explanation for human origins. Krattenmaker is among those who see this as a great national embarrassment—and as a crisis.

In response, Krattenmaker makes this statement:

In a time of great divides over religion and politics, it’s not surprising that we treat evolution the way we do political issues. But here’s the problem: As settled science, evolution is not a matter of opinion, or something one chooses to believe in or not, like a religious proposition. And by often framing the matter this way, we involved in the news media, Internet debates and everyday conversation do a disservice to science, religion and our prospects for having a scientifically literate country.

So belief in evolution is not something one simply chooses to believe or to disbelieve, “like a religious proposition.” Instead, it is “settled science” that simply compels intellectual assent.

The problems with this argument are legion. In the first place, there is no such thing as “settled science.” There is a state of scientific consensus at any given time, and science surely has its reigning orthodoxies. But to understand the enterprise of science is to know that science is never settled. The very nature of science is to test and retest hypotheses and to push toward new discoveries. No Nobel prizes are awarded for settled science. Instead, those prizes are awarded for discoveries and innovations. Many of those prizes, we should note, were awarded in past years for scientific innovations that were later rejected. Nothing in science is truly settled.

If science is to be settled, when would we declare it settled? In 1500? 1875? 1960? 2013? Mr. Krattenmaker’s own newspaper published several major news articles in just the past year trumpeting “new” discoveries that altered basic understandings of how evolution is supposed to have happened, including a major discovery that was claimed to change the way human development was traced, opening new questions about multiple lines of descent.

But the most significant problem with this argument is the outright assertion that science and religion represent two completely separate modes and bodies of knowledge. The Christian understanding of truth denies this explicitly. Truth is truth. There are not different kinds of truth that operate by different intellectual rules.

Every mode of thinking requires belief in basic presuppositions. Science, in this respect, is no different than theology. Those basic presuppositions are themselves unprovable, but they set the trajectory for every thought that follows. The dominant mode of scientific investigation within the academy is now based in purely naturalistic presuppositions. And to no surprise, the theories and structures of naturalistic science affirm naturalistic assumptions.

“Religion”—to use the word Krattenmaker prefers—also operates on the basis of presuppositions. And those presuppositions are no less determinative. These operate akin to what philosopher Alvin Plantinga calls “properly basic beliefs.”

In any event, both require “belief” in order to function intellectually; and both require something rightly defined as faith. That anyone would deny this about evolution is especially striking, given the infamous gaps in the theory and the lack of any possible experimental verification. One of the unproven and unprovable presuppositions of evolution is uniformitarianism, the belief that time and physical laws have always been constant. That is an unproven and unprovable assumption.  Nevertheless, it is an essential presupposition of evolutionary science. It is, we might well say, taken on faith by evolutionists.

Consider, in contrast, another section of Tom Krattenmaker’s article:

For starters, “belief” means something different in a religion conversation than it means when we’re talking about science. In the case of faith, it usually means accepting the moral and spiritual truth of something and giving it your trust and devotion. In talking about evolution, it is more precise to call it “scientifically valid” or “an accurate account of what we observe.” No leaps of faith or life-altering commitments required.

He really does believe that science and theology operate in completely different worlds. The late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould believed the same, arguing for science and religion as “non-overlapping magisteria.” But, as both scientists and theologians protested, science and religion overlap all the time.

Krattenmaker argues, “A scientific concept backed by an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence, evolution describes a process by which species change over time. It hazards no speculations about the origins of that process.”

But this is not even remotely accurate. Evolutionary scientists constantly argue for naturalistic theories of the origin of matter, energy, life—and the entire cosmos. The argument that the existence and form of the cosmos is purely accidental and totally without external (divine) agency is indeed central to the dominant model of evolution.

On one point, however, Krattenmaker is certainly right: he argues that it is possible to believe in God and to affirm evolution. That is certainly true, and there is no shortage of theistic evolutionists who try to affirm both. But that affirmation requires a rejection of the dominant model of evolution in favor of some argument that God intervened or directed the process. The main problem with that proposal, from the scientific side, is that the theory of evolution as now taught in our major universities explicitly denies that possibility. Theistic evolutionists simply do not present the model of evolution that is supposedly “settled science.”

On the other hand, such a blending of theology and evolution also requires major theological alignments. There can be no doubt that evolution can be squared with belief in some deity, but not the God who revealed himself in the Bible, including the first chapters of Genesis. Krattenmaker asserts that “it is more than possible to accept the validity of evolution and believe in God’s role in creation at the same time.” Well, that is true with respect to some concept of God and some concept of creation and some version of evolution, but not the dominant theory of evolution and not the God who created the entire cosmos as the theater of his glory, and who created human beings as the distinct creature alone made in his image.

I am confident that Tom Krattenmaker fully intended to clarify the matter and to point to a way through the impasse. But his arguments do not clarify, they confuse. At the same time, his essay is one of the clearest catalysts for thinking about these issues to arrive in recent times in the major media. It represents an opportunity not to be missed.

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

Tom Krattenmaker, “Evolution is Not a Matter of Belief,” USA Today, Friday, January 10, 2014. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion...

 

The Briefing 01-14-14

1. President Hollande of France caught in infidelity as France is in deep moral confusion

Hollande’s Companion is Hospitalized, New York Times (Alissa J. Rubin and Maia de la Baume)

2. USA Today columnist claims evolution is a matter of fact, not belief

Evolution is not a matter of belief: Who says we have to choose between God and science?, USA Today (Tom Krattenmaker)

3. With plummeting birth rates, South Koreans throwing lavish first birthday parties

At one year, South Korean babies get gilded parties, Reuters (Narae Kim and Michelle Kim)

Commonplaces: Teenagers, Reading, and Language

In times past, readers kept books in which they recorded favorite items from their reading. These “commonplace books” were sometimes later collected, offering a view into the mind and habits of the reader even as the thoughts of the original writers were shared. This year, I intend to start sharing some of my commonplaces with you. Why wait to share them?

The first comes from a very intriguing book of essays by Jim Flynn, who taught for almost six decades at the University of Otago, New Zealand’s oldest university. Flynn is an avid and careful reader, and in The Torchlight List, he offers what he calls a global “road map” for reading.

In his first chapter, he writes of his own reading experience and compares that experience to the reality of today’s teenagers, including the young people who arrive on the campuses of the world’s most prestigious universities. To put the matter bluntly: they are not serious readers, and this is especially true when it comes to great literature. Flynn is surely right when he argues that an individual who reads well but has no college education is better educated than one who does not read seriously and widely but holds university degrees.

“Ask students what novelist they like best and you get a blank, or some reference to the author of airport trash,” he laments.

He then makes an observation that every parent, educator, pastor, youth minister, and teenager should note carefully. He distinguishes between active and passive language. Active language is the language people use to initiate a conversation. Passive language consists of language an individual can understand, but does not (or cannot) use to initiate a conversation.

Note carefully, then, what he says next:

In sum, in 1948 teenagers could both understand and use the vocabularies of their parents. In 2006 they could understand their parents but, to a surprising degree, could not initiate a conversation using adult language.

Sound familiar? I thought so.

He also observes that teenagers of the past “wanted to become adults and enjoy the privileges of adults.” Now, however, adolescents have their own distinct subculture that “is so attractive that some young adults want to remain in it through their twenties and even their thirties.”

He does not write with scorn nor does he believe that the damage is always permanent. But he writes with a prophetic and wise voice that has to do as much with life as with books—and he warns of a life without books.

Think and consider.

Jim Flynn, The Torchlight List: Around the World in 200 Books (New York: Skyhorse Books, 2013).

To share a thought, write me at mail@albertmohler.com. I am always glad to hear from readers.

 

The Briefing 01-13-14

1. One of the lions of the 20th Century has now passed: Ariel Sharon dies at 85

Ariel Sharon, Fierce Defender of a Strong Israel, Dies at 85, New York Times (Ethan Bronner)

2. Governor Chris Christie’s senior staff cause traffic problems to ‘punish’ local mayor for not backing Christie

‘Very Sad’ Chris Christie Extends Apology in Bridge Scandal, New York Times (Marc Santora and Kate Zernike)

3. Americans lack the resolve to battle the obvious dangers of legalized marijuana

Florida should realize pot could be a windfall, Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel (Phil Latzman)

The perils of legalized pot, Washington Post (Ruth Marcus)

Let’s Not Kid Ourselves About Marijuana, Wall Street Journal (Mitchell S. Rosenthal)

4. Legalize marijuana…for theological reasons?

Marijuana: A Theology, Huffington Post (Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite)

The End of Morality Laws? Not Exactly

Does the legalization of same-sex marriage and polygamy mean the end of all morality laws? George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley thinks so, and he openly celebrates the death of all morals legislation—or, at least he says he does.

Turley was the lead counsel in the “Sister Wives” case in Utah that legalized polygamy in that state last month, a reversal of the very morals legislation that the U. S. government required of Utah for that territory to be admitted as a state in the late nineteenth century.

Here is how Professor Turley explained the case:

It’s true that the Utah ruling is one of the latest examples of a national trend away from laws that impose a moral code. There is a difference, however, between the demise of morality laws and the demise of morality. This distinction appears to escape social conservatives nostalgic for a time when the government dictated whom you could live with or sleep with. But the rejection of moral codes is no more a rejection of morality than the rejection of speech codes is a rejection of free speech. Our morality laws are falling, and we are a better nation for it.

That is an astounding if unsurprising argument. The argument isn’t new to Jonathan Turley, who came on the scene as an advocate for polygamy almost as soon as the Lawrence v. Texas decision was handed down by the Supreme Court in 2003. That case decriminalized homosexuality, and Turley soon made the case for decriminalizing polygamy.

Turley’s article is an example of a concerted, very sophisticated, libertarian argument that is fast gaining ground in American life. Just last year the state of Colorado decriminalized adultery. The president of the Independence Institute testified for the decriminalization, stating that “it is a conservative value to get rid of bills that are useless.”

The legislature followed his advice. But is a law against adultery a “useless” statute? Only in the sense that it is no longer enforced. But the original statute was hardly useless. It was a profound moral statement about the sanctity of marriage and the crime of violating the marriage vows, thus subverting marriage and the family and endangering children and weakening the larger community.

The argument for removing the laws was simple: the state has no business legislating morality. But every legislature legislates morality. Every code of laws is a codex of morality. The law is itself inherently and inescapably moral, even irreducibly moral. The law can’t be anything other than a moral statement. Every system of laws, whether primitive or sophisticated, old or new, whatever the cultural or ethnic or legal context, is a moral statement.  The removal of morals legislation and the celebration of that removal is itself a profound moral statement.

But it’s also a very inconsistent statement, as becomes very clear in Jonathan Turley’s article in The Washington Post. He celebrates the striking down of this law against polygamy, writing about it as a great moral liberation. He is also, of course, an advocate for the legalization of same-sex marriage. But Professor Turley is not going to accept every romantic or sexual relationship, even though he celebrates the end of what he calls “morality laws.”

Turley wants the law to continue to have sanctions against bestiality and incest. Why bestiality? Well, he says, there are obvious consent issues and very real harm. What about incest? He says laws against incest are not morality laws, but rather matters of health. Well let’s look at that for just a moment. That’s an argument that has been used before, but it can’t hold water. What about couples who are beyond the ages of childbearing? The medical issues related to incest have to do with a far-greater likelihood of genetic abnormalities in the offspring of closely-related couples. But if those closely-related couples—brother and sister, mother and son, father and daughter, or any kind of permutation thereabouts—if that intimate pair is beyond the age of childbearing, then what is the medical issue? It disappears. Nevertheless, Mr. Turley is not advocating the striking down of laws against incest. Why? It is because what he’s actually promoting is the progressive striking down of one set of laws and then another: first the laws against same-sex marriage; then the laws against plural marriage. Even he wants some morality laws to remain, but he claims to celebrate the end of all morals legislation.

In an amazing sentence, Mr. Turley writes:

The case [speaking about the Sister Wives case] was never about the recognition of multiple marriages or the acceptance of the religious values underlying this plural family. It was about the right of consenting adults to make decisions for themselves and their families.

Well, the only reason this was a legal case is because the decisions they were making were decisions about polygamy.

Later in the article, Turley writes: “Across the country, the era of morality codes is coming to an inglorious end.”

Well, it is and it isn’t. The law will continue to embody a morality code, just a very different code from the Christian moral system that undergirded Western law for more than a thousand years. This new secular morality is radically different, to be sure; there is just a very different morality driving the new morality laws.

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

I discussed this issue on the Thursday, January 9, 2014 edition of The Briefing. http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/01/0...

Jonathan Turley, “The ‘Sister Wives’ Lawsuit and the End of Morality Laws,” The Washington Post, Friday, December 20, 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinion...

Lynn Bartels, “Bill to Repeal Adultery, Sexual Immorality Laws to Colorado House,” The Denver Post, Thursday, February 21, 2013. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_22636378...