R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 383

On Them Light Has Shined: The Christian Minister as Torchbearer

The Briefing 12-13-13

1) Sandy Hook one year later – The answer to “Why?” may not be answered in this life

Newtown Far From a Catalyst for Gun Control, Boston Globe (Brian MacQuarrie)

Newtown: Striving for ‘New Normal’ a Year Later, USA Today (Gary Stoller)

The State’s Findings on Newtown, New York Times (Editorial)

Sandy Hook report offers chilling details about school shooter, Los Angeles Times (Tina Susman)

2) Center of Christianity has moved from Europe to North America, but may not stay here long

Global Christianity – A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population, Pew Research

3) Same-sex marriages in Australia declared invalid

Australian Court Strikes Down Gay Marriage, Al Jazeera (Staff)

High Court Strikes Down ACT Gay Marriage Law, The Australian (Lauren Wilson)

4) Michigan restricts private insurance plans from covering abortion

Michigan Puts Restrictions on Abortion Insurance, ABC News (Associated Press)

5) 16 year old guilty of drunk driving avoids jail time due to “affluenza” 

Texas teen Ethan Couch gets 10 years’ probation for driving drunk, killing 4, CNN (Dana Ford)

On Them Has Light Shined—The Christian Minister as Torchbearer

Christmas feels like the perfect time for a seminary commencement ceremony. What could be more fitting than to send out a new band of Gospel preachers just as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and declare the great announcement of the incarnation?

Commencements also remind us that we have done this all before. Quite regularly, faculty, friends, and graduates assemble to celebrate the completion of academic programs and the fulfillment of educational ambitions. This seems especially meaningful when the programs of study and degrees are those earned by Christian ministers, ready for deployment into the world.

I want to take you back to July 15, 1838, and a very different commencement ceremony, but a ceremony also intended to launch new ministers into the world and into the pulpit. The school was the Harvard Divinity School, the graduating class numbered seven, and only six were present. The commencement speaker was Ralph Waldo Emerson, America’s most famous intellect of that era.

Emerson had, until fairly recently, been a Unitarian minister. But he left the Unitarian ministry in order to fulfill larger intellectual opportunities. It is virtually impossible to imagine a church more broad-minded than the Unitarians, who were explicitly founded upon the heresy of denying the Trinity. But Emerson, the great prophet of intellectual independence, found even the Unitarian ministry too constraining.

Nevertheless, he was invited to deliver the graduation address for the divinity students at Harvard in 1838, and not without controversy. Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” is now remembered as one of the most influential commencement addresses ever delivered to an American audience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson knew the graduates personally, and he addressed them in very personal terms. He pointed to the glory of the ministry: “To this holy office, you propose to devote yourself. I wish you may feel your call in throbs of desire and hope. The office is the first in the world.”

But the most famous passage in Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” includes this striking passage:

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, “I also am a man.” Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man’s.

Then, he addressed the graduates with these words:

Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money, are nothing to you, are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind.

With those words, Emerson was declaring theological independence from every authority and model, including the Bible, the prophets, and the apostles. Do not be imitators, he charged the students, go alone, in your own light, and with their own “immeasurable mind.”

He declared each of the graduates, ready to assume the pulpit, as “a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost.”

I now ask you to look with me at the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 9. Hear now the prophecy:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult  and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this (Isa 9:2-7, ESV).

We can scarcely hear these words now without hearing them as set to the majestic music of Handel’s Messiah: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  We declare that of the increase of his government there will indeed be no end and that he sits on the throne of David forever.

This is the great promise of Christmas, as is made clear by both Matthew and Luke as they cite this passage as fulfilled in Christ and in his birth. Unto us a child is born, and we know that the child is God in human flesh, the infant Christ, who has come to save us from our sins.

These graduates assembled before us today stand in and for this Gospel. Their greatest desire is that every person they may meet, beginning with those loved ones in this room, would come to see themselves as sinners and turn to Christ for salvation, knowing that the baby in Bethlehem’s manger is the very Son of God, who came to die on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, and was raised on the third day by the power of God. Their fervent hope is that you will experience the forgiveness of sins that comes through faith in Christ, knowing that if you will repent of your sins and believe, you will be saved and given the gift of everlasting life.

How do we know these things? Because they have been revealed by God to us. As Jesus said to Simon Peter, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matt 16:17).

Look carefully at Isaiah 9, verse 2: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.”

The light shined on them: they did not seek the light, find the light, or devise the light. The light shined on them.

The picture revealed in this passage is stunningly easy to understand. The people were walking in darkness, but have now seen a great light. They were dwelling in deep darkness, but the light has now shone on them.

This is a picture of God’s revelation: the truth is revealed to us as light breaking through the darkness. But it is also a portrait of grace, the sheer unmerited favor of God. We do not deserve the light, but it has shone on us, and we have seen the great light of Christ.

Light is such a powerful metaphor for revelation, understanding, and salvation. It is central to the Bible’s own presentation of the Gospel in both promise and fulfillment. It is also a powerful metaphor for the Gospel ministry. Christian ministers are light-bearers, declaring the light, taking the light, sending the light, letting the light shine.

The minister is rightly depicted as a torch-bearer, taking the light where it is so desperately needed and letting it shine in all its glory. The light is not our own, but it is the gift of God for our salvation. Our task is not to devise the light, but to send it out, take it boldly, and let it shine.

To the graduates arrayed before us, my charge is straightforward: be a torchbearer. Take the light; send the light; defend the light; declare the light; teach the light; preach the light. And let the light of Christ shine, confident that, even as he is our light, he will draw sinners unto himself.

In other words, “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim 4:2).

Every religious system can be categorized in one of two ways: those that look for the light within and those that depend upon a light from without. The logic of the Bible could not be more clear: We are not to look within ourselves, but to preach the revealed word of God, the Holy Scriptures. We are to preach Christ, and not ourselves.

Ralph Waldo Emerson had it wrong. The new minister of Christ’s church is not “a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost.” The minister is not to look within himself, but to look to Christ and preach the word, the very word that the Holy Ghost inspired.

Emerson’s way leads to theological disaster and the abandonment of the Gospel ministry, to a doctrinal collapse into what the Apostle Paul called “another gospel.” Those who go that way lead many to destruction.

The minister of Christ is a torchbearer, not a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost; but this is a greater calling, not lesser. By God’s sheer grace, the light has shone on us. Now we share that light with others.

One of the lesser-known Christmas hymns now is “As With Gladness, Men of Old.” It is sung to the tune shared by the more familiar hymn, “For the Beauty of the Earth.” Pondering light as central to the story of the incarnation of Christ and the visitation of the magi, William Dix was moved in 1858, one year before the establishment of this school, to write these words:

As with gladness men of old

Did the guiding star behold;

As with joy they hailed its light,

Leading onward, beaming bright;

So, most gracious Lord, may we

Evermore be led by Thee.

As with joyful steps they sped,

Savior, to Thy lowly bed,

There to bend the knee before

Thee, whom heav’n and earth adore;

So may we with willing feet

Ever seek Thy mercy seat.

As they offered gifts most rare

At Thy cradle, rude and bare,

So may we with holy joy,

Pure and free from sin’s alloy,

All our costliest treasures bring,

Christ, to Thee, our heav’nly King.

Holy Jesus, ev’ry day

Keep us in the narrow way;

And when earthly things are past,

Bring our ransomed souls at last

Where they need no star to guide,

Where no clouds Thy glory hide.

In the heav’nly country bright

Need they no created light;

Thou its light, its joy, its crown,

Thou its sun which goes not down;

There forever may we sing

Alleluias to our King.

That last stanza is the anthem of the minister as torchbearer for Christ. For the graduates of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, our prayer is urgent. May God use you as torchbearers for the King, and may many come to Christ, trust in Christ, and be taught in Christ through your ministry. Take the torch passed to you now, and run your race with endurance, sharing the light and letting it shine. A world in deep darkness is dying for that light. Take the torch of ministry and carry it boldly and faithfully until your race is done and you pass that torch to yet another. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

This is an address delivered at the Commencement Ceremony for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, held December 13, 2013 at 10:00 A.M., EST. The entire ceremony will be live-streamed at www.sbts.edu/live.

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 12-12-13

1) The ascendance of hard-line liberal left against moderate Democrats

With Filibuster Threat Gone, Senate Confirms Two Presidential Nominees, New York Times (Jeremy W. Peters)

Coalition of Liberals Strikes Back at Criticism From Centrist Democrats, New York Times (Jonathan Martin)

2) 5th Anniversary of Madoff Scandal

Madoff fraud scandal: 5 years later, USA Today (Kevin McCoy)

3) Catholic school teacher fired for filing for same-sex marriage license

Catholic school teacher fired for gay wedding, USA Today (Associated Press)

4) Dominant theory of evolution is not as dominant as some would like us to think

Baffling 400,000-Year-Old Clue to Human Origins, New York Times (Carl Zimmer)

America and the Culture of Vulgarity—No End in Sight

The collapse of the barrier between popular culture and decadence has released a toxic mudslide of vulgarity into the nation’s family rooms—and just about everywhere else. There is almost no remote corner of this culture that is not marked by the toleration of vulgarity, or the outright celebration of depravity.

Lee Siegel has seen this reality, and he doesn’t like it. “When did the culture become so coarse?,” he asks, adding: “It’s a question that quickly gets you branded as either an unsophisticated rube or some angry culture warrior.”

Siegel wants us all to know that he is neither unsophisticated nor a culture warrior. In his recent feature essay in The Wall Street Journal, “America the Vulgar,” Siegel recites his cultural bona fides. As he relates, “I miss a time when there were powerful imprecations instead of mere obscenity—or at least when sexual innuendo, because it was innuendo, served as a delicious release of tension between our private and public lives.”

In other words, Siegel doesn’t mind graphic sexuality and innuendo, but he wants the public culture kept safe for children, and his children in particular. He opens his essay by telling us that his 7-year-old son recently asked, “What’s celebrity sex?” Shortly thereafter, his 3-year-old daughter was found with a less than appropriate photographic image on mom’s smart phone. “And so it went on this typical weekend,” Siegel remembers, even as he adds that the television in the next room was blaring inappropriate language.

At least he understands we have a problem. Our culture is indeed becoming so vulgar that would-be moral outlaws find it increasingly difficult to transgress. How do you shock people in a culture that has seen and heard everything already?

Siegel is right to point to the new technologies of social media as part of the problem:

These days, with every new ripple in the culture transmitted, commented-on, analyzed, mocked, mashed-up and forgotten on countless universal devices every few minutes, everything is available to everyone instantly, every second, no matter how coarse or abrasive. You used to have to find your way to Lou Reed. Now as soon as some pointlessly vulgar song gets recorded, you hear it in a clothing store.

That is one of the key insights of his essay. We have now reached the point that obscene language (or innuendo) is playing in department stores and public venues. The living room has become a locker room.

Siegel’s insights on technology and the vulgarization of the culture are worth careful attention:

Today, our cultural norms are driven in large part by technology, which in turn is often shaped by the lowest impulses in the culture. Behind the Internet’s success in making obscene images commonplace is the dirty little fact that it was the pornography industry that revolutionized the technology of the Internet. Streaming video, technology like Flash, sites that confirm the validity of credit cards were all innovations of the porn business. The Internet and pornography go together like, well, love and marriage. No wonder so much culture seems to aspire to porn’s depersonalization, absolute transparency and intolerance of secrets.

His diagnosis of the problem is almost prophetic; but Siegel’s essay also reveals the deeper dimensions of our cultural crisis. As he concludes his analysis, Siegel disavows any effort to answer vulgarity with either censorship or repression. His reference to repression reveals a great deal.

The idea of sexual repression was given its classic definition by none other than Sigmund Freud. Freud blamed the repression of sexual urges for a host of problems in society and in individual lives. At the same time, he admitted that a certain level of repression was necessary in order to sustain civilization.

Freud’s theories were understood to be an explicit rejection of the Christian understanding of the human person and human sexuality. And, even as he argued for a certain necessary level of sexual repression, the very idea of repression has unleashed a tidal wave of sexual energies into the society. By its very nature, the term repression seems to call for liberation; but even Freud would be scandalized by our vulgar culture, though he contributed in a powerful way to its momentum.

A culture afraid to repress sexuality in any way is a culture headed for destruction.

On one final point, Siegel is unquestionably right. He argues that “when the culture of vulgarity is produced by so many different factors—commercial, economic, social, aesthetic—there is no end in sight.”

That is the sad truth. The culture of vulgarity is now driven by so many sectors of our society that it seems virtually impossible to reverse. Furthermore, it is profitable beyond the wildest dreams of those who peddled vulgarity before the invention of the Internet.

A society that increasingly sees all sexual restraint as repression hardly intends to turn back. Lee Siegel has it right, “there is no end in sight.”

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

Lee Siegel, “America the Vulgar,” The Wall Street Journal, Saturday/Sunday, December 7-8, 2013. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/S...

The Briefing 12-11-13

1) The power of gesture: What we can and cannot conclude from handshake between Raúl Castro and Obama

The Great and the Humble Pay Tribute to Mandela, New York Times (Lydia Polgreen, Nicholas Kulish, and Alan Cowell)

2) Legalize marijuana or harm the environment and suffer global warming

California Lawmakers Worry About Pollution Caused By Illegal Marijuana Grows, Huffington Post (Robin Wilkey)

3) No joke – Denver’s new marijuana editor desperately wants to be taken seriously. 

Quips Follow Denver Post’s Naming of Marijuana Editor, but Its Intent Is Serious, New York Times (Christine Haughney)

4) Women ordination among liberal Catholic groups and Seventh-day Adventists

Group disavowed by Catholic church names women priest, deacons, Courier-Journal (Charlie White)

Some Seventh-day Adventists forge ahead on women clergy, Washington Post (Adelle Banks)

A Moral Revolution at Warp Speed—Now, It’s Wedding Cakes

Six months. That’s how long it took to get from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act to the decision of a Colorado judge ordering a Christian baker to make a cake for a same-sex ceremony. Just six months.

Back in June, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Windsor case, ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act, passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, was unconstitutional. Six months later, judge Robert N. Spencer, an administrative law judge in Colorado, ruled that Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver must serve same-sex couples by making wedding cakes, or face fines.

Last Friday, Judge Spencer ruled that Phillips must “cease and desist from discriminating” against same-sex couples in his cake business. The case emerged after Phillips refused to make a cake to celebrate the civil union of David Mullins and Charlie Craig. Colorado has a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages, but it recognizes legal civil unions for same-sex couples. The two men had married in Massachusetts, but planned a reception in Colorado.

Phillips told the couple that it was the same-sex marriage that he could not celebrate by making the cake. According to Judge Spencer’s decision, Phillips told the court that making same-sex wedding cakes would be “displeasing God and acting contrary to the teachings of the Bible.” He told the men: “I’ll make you birthday cakes, shower cakes, sell you cookies and brownies, I just don’t make cakes for same-sex weddings.”

Mullins and Craig went to the American Civil Liberties Union, which took their case to court. ACLU attorney Amanda Goad told the court that Phillips’s faith, “whatever it may have to say about marriage for same-sex couples or the expressive power of a wedding cake, does not give the respondents a license to discriminate.”

Phillips told the court that making a wedding cake was an artistic endeavor that was expressive in nature, communicating approval and celebration of the same-sex union. He also told the court that he has been a Christian for thirty-five years and that making the cake would violate his Christian convictions and responsibility, requiring him to encourage what he believes to be sin.

Judge Spencer ruled that Phillips must make wedding cakes for same-sex couples, regardless of his moral or biblical convictions. Make the cakes or face legal penalties, he was told.

The editorial board of The Denver Post was enthusiastic about the judge’s decision: “If you’re going to sell wedding cakes in Colorado, you have to sell them to everyone who comes into your shop. You can’t pick and choose among customers based upon your belief that some weddings are immoral.”

So this baker in Colorado joins a photographer in New Mexico, a florist in Washington State, and another baker in Oregon in facing such a challenge or legal order. These four will not be the last, and of that you can be certain.

The moral revolution represented by same-sex marriage is vast in its scope and unprecedented in its velocity. The Windsor decision in June requires the United States government to recognize same-sex marriages. As predicted by Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissenting opinion, all that remains after Windsor is for “the other shoe to drop.”

Last week, that shoe dropped on Jack Phillips.

The Windsor decision was not directly cited in Judge Spencer’s decision. It did not have to be. It was standing in the background, representing the massive momentum of the movement to legalize same-sex marriage. Reversing the federal government’s legal position on recognizing same-sex marriage was a giant victory for the advocates of same-sex marriage, and it now looms over every legislative action and judicial decision in the nation.

Six months. That’s all the time it took for the news to shift from a landmark Supreme Court decision in Washington to a Colorado court ordering a baker to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The momentum of this revolution is breathtaking, and its threat to religious liberty is plain for all to see.

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

Editorial, “No Right to Refuse Gay Couple’s Wedding Cake,” The Denver Post, Monday, December 9, 2013. http://www.denverpost.com/editorials/...

 

The Briefing 12-10-13

1) Same-Sex Marriage legal in Australia – but legal challenges remain

Australia Holds First Same-Sex Marriages, but Legal Challenge Remains, Wall Street Journal (Rob Taylor)

An ACT of love as gay couple begin their ‘great journey’ in marriage, The Sydney Morning Herald (Tony Wright)

Uniting Church minister Roger Munson only religious celebrant able to perform same-sex marriages in ACT, ABC (Adrienne Francis)

2) Latest Obamacare controversy as massive wealth re-distribution comes to light

High Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock, Wall Street Journal (Leslie Scism and Timothy W. Martin)

Political Scene: The Politics of Income Inequality, The New Yorker (Matthew McKnight)

3) American education not measuring up. The major solution often not considered: Parents

Can’t We Do Better?, New York Times (Thomas Friedman)

Who Says Math Has to be Boring? New York Times (Editorial)

How do smart students get that way? – A Conversation with Amanda Ripley,  Thinking in Public

4) In North Korea, it’s dangerous to be a Christian, a tourist, or the uncle of the leader

A Gamble for North Korea’s Young Leader, New York Times (Choe Sang-Hun)

American Veteran Seized by North Korea During a Tour Returns Home, New York Times (Norimitsu Onishi)

The Briefing 12-09-13

1) Speed of the moral revolution: Judge orders Colorado baker to make cake for same-sex couple

Judge Rules Colorado Bakery Discriminated Against Gay Couple, Wall Street Journal (Ashby Jones)

Colorado baker’s faith an issue in gay wedding cake case, Denver Post (Associated Press)

Judge Orders Colorado Bakery to Cater for Same-Sex Weddings, ABC News (Liz Fields)

2) The vulgarization of American culture not a pendulum – it’s a rocket

America the Vulgar, Wall Street Journal (Lee Siegel)

3) Impossible to separate religion from public life: Humans are both secular and sacred

The Bible as Bludgeon, New York Times (Frank Bruni)

Nelson Mandela and the Ironies of History

On Thursday, South African President Jacob Zuma announced the death of Nelson Mandela at age 95. One of the most significant and vital figures of the 20th century, Nelson Mandela became known not only as the father of his nation, but as the father of an entire people.

All this goes back to 1918 when Mandela, then known by the name Rolihlaha, was born into the royal line of the Xhosa tribe in South Africa. Later, his name was changed to Nelson when he was baptized by Methodists. When he died he was known by Africans merely as Madiba, representing his traditional clan.  By then, he had become one of the most respected figures on the world stage.

Nelson Mandela came to adulthood as the minority white government of South Africa was instituting apartheid, the radical system of total racial segregation and discrimination that forced the native African majority in the nation into a state of humiliating oppression. Apartheid required the social, economic, and political separation of whites and blacks in South Africa, and it was enforced with brutality and murderous force.

Apartheid was a multidimensional structure of repression, humiliation, and prejudice. Americans would be hard-pressed to imagine how such a system could exist until they realize that a similar system of racial apartheid had existed throughout most of the 20th century in the United States, especially in the South.

Under apartheid, many of the African tribes were put onto tribal lands and territories where they had no access to modernity, to modern goods, or to the modern economy. Black South Africans were denied access to the political process, blocked by an entire system of laws that treated them as second-class citizens in the nation of their birth.

Apartheid flies in the face of the Christian understanding of the equality of every single human being. Our true human equality is not based in a political promise, it is biblically and theologically grounded—unquestionably grounded in the fact that the Bible clearly reveals that every single human being is equally made in God’s image. We are separate and distinct from other creatures precisely because we alone as a species—as human beings, as Homo sapiens—we alone bear God’s image. And we bear God’s image equally, male and female, regardless of any racial or ethnic consideration; and for that matter—as in these days we must argue over and over again—regardless of any other kind of consideration, including age or process of development.

The death of Nelson Mandela represents a landmark in terms of history. But it is also, in terms of the Christian worldview, a cause for our deepest thinking about the intersection of history and destiny, of human rights and human dignity, and of character and leadership. Nelson Mandela, long before World War II, came into contact with what became known as the African National Congress. The sole effort of the African National Congress (better known as the ANC) was to overthrow the apartheid regime by any means necessary.

As a young man, Mandela joined the ANC when it was, to use the only word that would fit, a terrorist organization. And yet, he also became a major figure in world politics and statesmanship. He spent many years in prison after several treason trials for acts against the government of South Africa. He found himself on the infamous Robben Island as a prisoner for almost twenty years; and then he spent almost another decade in a separate prison. By the time he emerged from his prison cell at age 72, he was understood to be the only man who could save his nation from total chaos and violence. Less than four years after his release from prison, Mandela took the oath of office as the democratically-elected President of South Africa.

What changed? Well, you might say everything changed.

In the 1990′s, Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with F. W. de Klerk, the last of the white Afrikaner presidents of South Africa. De Klerk shared that Nobel Prize with Nelson Mandela precisely because it took a cooperative effort by the last white president of South Africa and the first black president of South Africa to put together a system that would not lead to national collapse, but would create a national future.

South Africa remains a deeply troubled nation in many ways, but it is an economic powerhouse. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in its obituary on Nelson Mandela, South Africa is the economic powerhouse of Africa: it stands out economically from every other African nation. And much of that is due to the transition that took place in the 1990′s away from apartheid and toward a new future for South Africa, that very process that was negotiated by F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela lived a very long life. His life encompassed most of the 20th century and at least the first decade and more of the 21st century. He retired twice from national life. He served only one term as president, offering a rare model of political modesty. His nation has never again achieved the political stability he gave it.

When you think of Nelson Mandela and reflect on his life, and now on his death, there are many worldview issues that are immediately implicated. One of them has to do with the fact that Nelson Mandela was, by any honest analysis, a terrorist. That immediately raises a deep moral issue. How can someone be so honored who had at any point resorted to terrorism in order to achieve a political objective?

Well, while we’re thinking about that question, let’s reflect upon some less convenient facts of history. For instance, we should look at Menachem Begin, who became one of the most powerful prime ministers of Israel, and who signed the Camp David peace agreement with then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat during the American presidency of Jimmy Carter. Like Nelson Mandela, Menachem Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize, but he was also a terrorist as a young man—a Zionist terrorist. He was directly implicated in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 that led to the deaths of at least 91 people. He was known as a terrorist; he was wanted as a terrorist. And yet, he later became the Prime Minister of Israel and also shared the Nobel Peace Prize. Likewise, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Menachem Begin, also began his political career as a terrorist against the British.

While we’re thinking about terrorism, we probably also ought to think about someone from our own nation’s history, like George Washington. Had the American Revolution turned out differently, George Washington would in all likelihood have been hung as a traitor. He would also have been accused of being what we now call a terrorist.

All this is not to give moral absolution to terrorists, so long as they win and eventually have political victory. It is, however, to remind ourselves that in the process of politics in a fallen world, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

In the United States, we speak about the efforts that led to the overthrow of the British colonization as our national revolution, the birth of a nation. The British called it treason.

Similarly, Nelson Mandela is seen as a great hero by the people of South Africa, as was Menachem Begin by the people of Israel. This pattern certainly does not absolve the use of force. It does not absolve terrorists of their tactics, it just raises the point that when we talk about terrorism, character, and historical change, we must think honestly.

That honest assessment recognizes that when you look at the process of political change, the kind of change on a scale necessary to overthrow something as powerful as apartheid, it looks in a fallen world as if force, more often than not, becomes necessary. That is lamentable; but we ought to note it honestly. This is a crucial moral factor in our consideration of the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela.

So is the issue of character and conviction. In my book on convictional leadership, The Conviction to Lead, I mention both Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. They raise many of the same
 issues. Martin Luther King, Jr. was known as an ordained minister. He was also known as a serial philanderer. Nelson Mandela became known as the father of his nation, but he was also known as a serial adulterer. He was a man who was deeply, morally conflicted and inherently complex. His early political philosophy was a variant of Marxism and, unlike King, Mandela renounced nonviolence as a political strategy. Much of this is deeply troubling to the Christian conscience.

And yet, when we look at his legacy in terms of the overthrow of apartheid, we recall the fact that Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the most influential theologians in America at the middle of the 20th century, argued that there are times in which certain men, certain historical figures, appear to be historically necessary, even if they are far from historically perfect. That seems so often to be the case in a fallen world. In a sinful world, a world in which every dimension is marked by sin, the most effective political leaders are those who have the strongest convictions; but often those strong convictions and ambitions are met by a somewhat less than stellar character.

Nelson Mandela’s character, however, is not limited to, but certainly includes his sexual behavior. It also includes his personal courage. His moral character includes the deep conviction he had about the future of his people. He was a man committed to democracy: he did not overthrow apartheid in order to put in place an African National Congress dictatorship.

When it comes to human rights and human dignity, Nelson Mandela has to be put on the side of the heroes, not only of the 20th century, but of any recent century. He is, as an ironic view of history would remind us, one of those necessary men. A necessary man who nonetheless is a man whose feet were made of clay, as his biography reveals very clearly.

Hollywood is now releasing a major film about Nelson Mandela that tells both sides of this story. And as Americans perhaps see that story, it’s likely that they will be confronted with many of these worldview issues. It is unlikely that anyone is going to try to help them think about these questions and to think about them as Christians.

American Christians looking at Nelson Mandela must eagerly affirm that we are thankful that he was used in order to achieve freedom and human dignity for his people. But perhaps we should also be thankful that we know a little bit more of the story so that he is not merely held up as a hero to be emulated in every respect, but is known as one who was a morally complicated man. And when it comes to figures on the world scene, every single one of them is morally complicated, each in his or her own way.

That’s why a look at the span of human history causes us to recognize that our Christian responsibility is to look at this morally complicated picture with courageous honesty, to take it all as evidence, not only of why human history is important, but why our ultimate redemption can come only from Christ.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s great theological contribution was to remind us that history reveals the inescapable irony of the human condition. Everything we do is tainted by human sin, and the huge characters who change world events often demonstrate grave moral faults, even as they achieve great moral change. Nelson Mandela was one of those men. He was essential—even indispensable—to his nation and to the eradication of apartheid. But no man’s life is heroic in every respect, and no human hero can save.

God alone can save us from ourselves, and he saves us through the atonement accomplished by the Son, Jesus Christ. There is salvation in no other name, no matter how honored on earth.

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

This commentary is an extended version of my discussion of the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela in the December 6, 2013 edition of The Briefing. http://www.albertmohler.com/2013/12/0...