Friday, August 2, 2024

Part I

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Sex Education, A Major Conflict of Our Cultural Debate: Abstinence Based Approaches and Their Enemies

As you’re thinking about worldview significance and where the water hits the wheel, so to speak, in worldview terms, it’s hard to come up with an issue of public policy in which these issues are clearer than when it comes to arguments and debates over sex education. And so when you see headlines about sex education, understand that in worldview terms, this represents something of a nexus. And so you have not only questions about marriage and family and sex, and of course the entire LGBTQ revolution and babies and reproduction and contraception, birth control, just go down the whole list. You have the entire debate over morality, and in particular sexual morality. And that intersects with children, teenagers, young adults, sex education. It’s hard to imagine an issue when it comes to say, the schools that would be more explosive. And of course it is explosive.

All that becomes clear when you consider that just this week, National Public Radio, NPR, granted more liberal than even many others in the mainstream media. NPR ran a report on Morning Edition of the 30th anniversary of the abstinence movement in terms of sex education for teenagers. Now, that 30 year anniversary, somewhat arbitrary, but it has to do with an event there in the nation’s capitol for the True Love Waits campaign that 30 years ago and ongoingly, by the way, it was a major project undertaken by some leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, although it spread to many other evangelical groups as well. Magnolia McKay reporting for NPR’s Morning Edition tells us, “On July 29, 1994, thousands of teenagers gathered in Washington D.C. to tell the nation about their pledge to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. That covered the lawn of the National Mall with an estimated 200,000 signed purity pledge cards, and they attended a rally with speakers and Christian rock bands.”

She goes on and I quote, “Teenagers across the U.S had signed the cards produced and collected by the Southern Baptist Organization, True Love Waits, over the previous year. It was a breakout moment,” says McKay in what she describes as the Evangelical purity movement saying, “a movement that impacts sex education in the United States to this day.” Okay, let me tell you what’s going on here. This NPR report is basically reporting on the 30th anniversary of the True Love Waits rally there in Washington D.C. about the birth of the abstinence movement and the movement for abstinence-only sex education. And she’s writing about it because she sees it clearly as the 30th anniversary of a big problem. So this is very clearly a negative report, but it does concede the fact that the abstinence movement when it really did all of a sudden explode on the scene, she dates it to 30 years ago this week that when the issue did explode on the scene, it came with an awful lot of support from an awful lot of teenagers.

And of course, beyond that, an awful lot of parents, an awful lot of pastors, an awful lot of churches. And what really bothers the people on the left and the sex education question, an awful lot of state legislators as well, because even right now you have a situation in which abstinence only sex education is the policy of sex education in the public schools in some states, and that infuriates the left. That’s an understatement. It infuriates the left beyond the language that I have available to me. It is really a situation in which the left is driven insane because of their commitment to what they call comprehensive sex education. Now here’s the thing, if you look into comprehensive sex education, what it comes down to is education in how to have sex. And by the way, in the largest possible explosion of boundaries when it comes to morality and anything else.

Now, here’s what’s interesting when I reflect on this. 30 years after 1994, I don’t think most American parents are unaware of this, or if they are unaware of it, they’re criminally unaware because this issue is so big in terms of media coverage, it is so central to the efforts of the cultural left. It is opposed so loudly even as you see in some figures cited in this article. We’re really looking at the fact that if you don’t know this is a big debate, then you’ve been missing on this important issue for about 30 years. Maybe that 30-year anniversary is something of a wake-up call. Now looking at this report at National Public Radio, a couple of things come immediately to mind. Number one, the very idea of sexual abstinence appears to be an exotic idea. And so as you’re looking at something like the True Love Waits movement, that really does upset the apple cart on the progressive side because they don’t think this way and it’s very hard for them to imagine that anyone thinks this way.

The second thing that comes to me when I start looking at this kind of report is they’re dating this the 30 years ago as if Christians changed our policy on extramarital sex or sex before marriage 30 years ago, as if Christians all of a sudden came up with what’s described as sexual abstinence as an idea. What’s really interesting is that if you look at church history, this is one of the issues that even ancient peoples recognize, and this is coming to us with unquestioned historical documentation. You even had people who were figures in the Roman Empire during the early centuries of the Christian Church who said basically they live by a different set of sexual rules. Yes, we do. And by the way, let’s be clear about something else. Throughout the history of the Christian Church, and we’re talking here about, let’s just say roughly 2000 years, until very recent times, there is no one who with a straight face would’ve said that either in the Old Testament or the New, there is any biblical legitimacy to any sex outside marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

And so you look at that and you recognize this isn’t just a Christian affirmation, this is a biblical affirmation that is deeply grounded as old as the Bible, as old as the Book of Genesis. And so yes, we’re looking at the fact that nonetheless, in the year 2024, 30 years after 1994, sexual abstinence appears to be even more radical or even more weird when it comes to so many on the cultural left. And it’s not just that they hold a different position, it is increasingly that they see a position that would use words like abstinence or purity or holiness. They see that as a bizarre position that must be reflected by some kind of weird subculture in the United States. Maybe we better send anthropologists to try to figure these people out. Now remember, there were about 200,000 of these commitment cards that were put there on the National Mall.

It’s quite an impressive photograph. It’s overwhelming in terms of the physicality of all those cards, all those young people and their True Love Waits T-shirts. But then NPR reports that the cards said, “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, my future mate and my future children to be sexually pure from today until the day I enter a covenant marriage relationship.” Now again, this is not a pledge so far as I know was ever written in exactly these terms at any point in church history from the earliest church until say, well, 1994. But the point I want to make is that is the moral consensus, that is the moral understanding. Those are the moral principles that shaped Christianity from the beginning. And before they shaped Christianity, they shaped biblical Israel. But here’s something else to notice.

When you look at this, well, the report is going to act as if this is a very odd idea, and there’s another agenda going on in this NPR report, and that is to say that gladly on the left there are those who are trying to get rid of abstinence-only sex education in states. One of the groups cited here is SIECUS, which is a very liberal organization that defines sex education in very progressive ways. And of course they rate the states, they give a report card to states based upon what kind of sex education they have in the public schools. And again, that’s presented as a completely sane approach, unlike the weird Southern Baptists and their True Love Waits program. Now, again, I want to be clear, I’m not saying NPR is a conspiracy that’s plotting against conservative Christians. I’m just saying it comes from a far more liberal position. And when you operate out of their worldview, the very idea of sexual abstinence is, well, intellectually questionable, and of course largely morally objectionable.

It’s also that when you look at this report, a woman is cited who’s identified as having as a teenager been involved in True Love Weights. She has rethought the equation when it comes to where she stands now and with her own children. I’m not going to mention her name, but I’m going to read this from the report. “She wants her two kids to have better relationships with their bodies, to talk about the feelings they’re having without shame.” This is the woman speaking. “If you can access that inner wisdom, then as far as I’m concerned, you can live a really beautiful free life. And that’s what I want for them with sexuality and with everything.” I just want to state that there’s some very, well, maybe even accidental honesty that becomes revealed there. And that’s the contrast between, well, the very idea of sexual purity based in Scripture and what she refers to as, “accessing inner wisdom that leads to a beautiful free life.” So the class of worldviews continues and sex education is one of the places where it continues.

Part II

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How Just One Woman Became a Major Engine of the Sexual Revolution: The Legacy of ‘Dr. Ruth’

But before turning to questions, I want to say that sex education happens in various ways. And it’s not only an issue when it comes to the curriculum in the public schools, it’s also about the preoccupations of our culture. And that’s where it’s very important to say that when we think about how sex education has changed in the United States over the course of say the last several decades, it’s not just True Love Waits, it is also Dr. Ruth. Dr. Ruth Westheimer died on July the 12th at age 96, and she was one of the most influential people in the United States when it comes to the revolution in sexual morality over the course of the last several decades. I didn’t know until reading obituary reflections on Dr. Ruth that she as a child, as a ten-year-old, was actually a part of the kinder transport.

And that was a process of saving the lives of some Jewish children from the European continent against the Nazi threat, taking them first to Great Britain, but also eventually, as Dr. Ruth came, to the United States. It’s also very interesting that Ruth, who by the way, was only four foot seven and always had perfect hair, she was presented, had a very interesting German accent. She sounded something like a female version of Henry Kissinger who was famous as U.S Secretary of State for a very similar German accent. It came with a certain sense of very heavy culture and cultural authority, but Dr. Ruth became something of a sexologist. Now, something most Americans didn’t know is that as a younger woman, she had worked for Planned Parenthood. So again, that tells you a great deal about the world view of Dr. Ruth Westheimer. But in the 1970s and especially in the 1980s, she became a major figure in the United States first on radio in Manhattan where it was decided they would hire someone to take questions sent in through the mail about sexuality.

And it was supposed to be at a 15-minute program, but Dr. Ruth was so sexually explicit. Well, she actually came to be a major figure on radio, and then in television, especially in the 1980s on cable television, Dr. Ruth and her German accent showed up to talk about, let’s just say the most graphic, intimate context of sexuality in terms of anatomy, yes, but also in terms of morality. And she was holding to a very, very, if anything, that’s an understatement, liberal understanding of these issues. And here’s the thing, at a very opportune moment, someone like Dr. Ruth shows up and she had done a doctorate in pedagogy at the teacher’s college at Columbia University. And so she had a background where she was able to have the authority of Dr. Ruth. And all of a sudden with her ability to discuss these things and frankly, her willingness to be so graphic in that interesting package with her conventional hair and her German accent, she became a major engine of a vast transformation and sexual morality in the United States.

And it just reminds us sometimes that the left is not wrong when it comes to their theory of transgression. So let’s just think about it for a moment before we turn to questions. Transgression is the left’s effort to say, if you talk about things, they become morally possible in the minds of people. You transgress, but you know what? You take say five steps forward and then, uh-oh, you get caught. You take two steps back, you’re still three steps forward. You wait a short amount of time, take another five steps. Next thing, you only have to take one step backward. You just keep moving forward. That is the strategy of the left. That is the strategy of using transgression. Dr. Ruth who died, again, July the 12th at age 96, she was a package, a powerful package that came at just the opportune moment in American culture to become a major figure in the liberalization of sexual morality in the United States. So there it is. Sometimes this comes packaged as sex education, sometimes it comes packaged as even entertainment in the form of Dr. Ruth.

Part III

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Is There a Chasm Between Christians and the Political Left? If So, How Will It Affect Our Religious Freedom? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

All right, let’s turn to questions. Some really interesting questions sent in. Matt wrote in to ask, do you think the political influence of the religious right over the past 30 to 40 years has caused a chasm between Christians and the political left? He says, I’m concerned that the association with conservatism and Christianity is going to influence the left to remove our religious freedoms. Should this be a concern for the church moving forward? Well, Matt, it should be a concern because I think you’re onto something real here. I think the chasm that separates the majority of Christians in the United States and the goals of the cultural progressivists, I think that chasm is now big enough that most people on both sides understand where we stand.

And yeah, we already have people who would seek to shut down religious liberty when it comes to the efforts. And this is how the left captures this, tries to explain this, packages it, frames it. They will say that conservatives are trying to limit the freedoms of those who, for instance, in the LGBTQ movement, have the right to, you could say, anything that’s on the leftist catalog. Marry, adopt children, you just got on the list, or for that matter, just present their lifestyles, demanding that there be moral equivalence with marriage as a union of a man and a woman. And for that matter just overthrow all sexual morality because yeah, sexual morality is oppressive. It’s intended to be. It’s intended to oppress the things that are wrong and to honor that which is right. And so yeah, I think we already see challenges to religious liberty here. And Matt, I think that chasm is real.

I also don’t think that the only way for say conservative Christians to get around this problem is just to stop being conservative Christians in terms of any operational threat when it comes to public policy. But don’t get by with the idea that if we just say retreat from public policy, we can’t do that by the way, faithfully, but don’t think for a moment that if we retreat from public policy, they’re going to leave us safe in our private lives. They want to determine how we raise our children. They want to set the criteria for who is and is not an acceptable parent. You look at the trans issue right now when it comes to teenagers, look at the fact that very real living Christian parents have had their parental rights and authority assaulted by and in some cases violated by state and government authority.

Part IV

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How Can Pro-Life Christians Support the Republican Party After the Shift in Its Platform at the RNC This Year? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

All right, next, Stephen wrote in to ask, how can pro-life Christians continue to justify supporting President Trump in light of the recent revisions to the Republican platform? He goes on, little commentary here, and he says, “At best, this platform demonstrates cowardice and complacency. At worst, it is a pro-choice platform.” Well, I want to say Stephen, I’m very disappointed in the platform. I indicated that to platform authorities before it was adopted. I’ve made that just as an argument about as publicly as I know to make it and I’m not going to stop making it. On the other hand, and especially after the shift from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, it’s really clear that there still is a chasm between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party when it comes to say it’s just one dimension. So let’s just say this, the Republican platform is a step back. It is not as specific. It has taken out some pro-life principles and the statements that I think should be there, and I’m going to work very hard to get back in a Republican platform, but I am looking at the fact that the Republican platform still cites the 14th amendment, something very important in terms of human rights. And it’s a very clear opening for the pro-life movement to use that argument against abortion.

But most importantly, and this is what’s so vast and it’s overwhelmingly important, the Republican platform still acknowledges the rights of states to restrict abortion. And that’s absolutely vital. That’s what we worked for, for a half century in terms of the reversal of Roe. Before Roe, the issue was in the states, it’s now back to the states, and that means that at least more than half of the states have some meaningful restrictions on abortion. And in some states such as my own, it’s very difficult and not impossible for legal abortion to exist. The Democratic Party is calling for the reimposition at the very least, to Roe, like I’m saying, they actually won’t be satisfied even with Roe. But that would make it impossible for any state to have meaningful restrictions against abortion as is possible now.

So you’re still looking at a chasm between these two parties. And by the way, you’re also looking at a chasm when it comes to issues like taxpayer support for abortion or the future of the Hyde Amendment. So it’d be very interesting if the Republican ticket is elected, it’s going to be very interesting. I can at least hope substantially that there’ll be continued support for and demand for the Hyde amendment that prevents taxpayers from being forced to pay for abortion. And I think when you look at the record of Donald Trump, and especially with three Supreme Court justices, and you look at the record of JD Vance on the issue of abortion, very strong pro-life position. And I can only hope that that’s going to make a difference if they are elected and are in the White House. I do know exactly what Kamala Harris will do because she has told us what she would do, and the Democratic Party is only going to move even more energetically in a pro-abortion position. And I think that’s going to become very clear.

So again, let me be honest, I am furious about the changes made to the Republican platform. Extremely disappointed is an understatement. I am going to work as hard as I can to have that corrected within the next four years and to make those issues clear. I can tell you I’m encouraged by many Republicans who share that concern, but it also underlines the political reality when President Trump says, but you have to get elected. I understand what he means. I just think this is fundamentally the wrong way to do it. But the fact is that the issue of abortion is not going to go away. And if the Republican Party intends to have any continuing hold on the pro-life movement in the United States, it’s going to have to say so out loud.

Part V

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What Are Your Thoughts on Affirming Political Candidates? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

All right, continuing on a theme, Adolfo writes in a very smart question, and I appreciate that. This is an honest question. He says, as a leader with influence, but also as a pastor and theologian, what are your thoughts on officially endorsing political candidates? He says it’s one thing to vote for a candidate, but another to endorse him and what it means in connecting yourself to them. He says specifically, this is about Trump, of course, and his character. He says, trying to think about how I communicate myself in my spheres of influence. And yeah, Adolfo, thanks for the question. Let me say this, and at my stage in life, I’ve lived through an awful lot of politics as a Christian. And I think the best course to be honest is when you do have an issue and you do have a very clear choice, I’m not reluctant to say I’m going to vote for X or Y.

But that’s very different than making an endorsement in a political sense. But I don’t want to be disingenuous. If you say I’m voting for someone, then someone’s going to say, well, you are supporting him. Well, when it comes to someone like Donald Trump, that’s a very complicated picture. And even when it comes to say 2016, 2020, 2024, we’re talking about a different calculation in all of those years. But one of the points I make is that you look at the platform, you look at the issues, you look at the two parties, I think most conservative Christians have voted Republican because of those convictions on the moral issues at least since say 1980. I don’t think that’s going to change. I think that is an ongoing pattern, and quite frankly, I think Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket’s going to make that particular case without intending to, I think her very positions will make that case.

As a Christian and even as a Christian leader, I don’t want to minimize the complexities in all of this, and frankly, day by day it can be like riding a roller coaster. But you know what? As you look at the parties and you look at these big issues of concern, there’s a lot of stability. There’s a trajectory, and for the most part, the Democratic Party just keeps moving left on all of these issues into an even less acceptable position. The Republican Party is not where I want it to be on many of these issues, nor is the Republican candidate for President where I want them to be on many of these issues. And that includes character issues, behavior issues, style issues, and yes, some convectional issues certainly and policy issues, but there’s still a vast chasm between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on these issues. I think endorsement is a very loaded word these days, and quite frankly, we’re talking about a moving situation and honesty compels us to say a lot of things can change between now and, well, the close of the business day today.

So what shouldn’t change are our principles. What shouldn’t surely change are our convictions. And even when the political terrain gets a bit bumpy, we need to recognize that for the most part, for my entire adult timeline, it’s been true that the two parties basically hold contrasting positions on many of the most important moral issues of concern, and there is still a vast chasm that separates them. And so I’m not saying that the person at the top of the ticket doesn’t matter, but I’m just saying over time the greater consistency is in the political argument and the party rather than the person. But we are in very difficult terrain, and as Christians, we’re going to have to operate by conviction and prayer and with fear and trembling.

Part VI

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How Did Satan Manifest Himself When He Tempted Jesus in the Wilderness? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a 13-Year-Old Listener of The Briefing

Well, all right. For today, the closing question comes from a 13-year-old named Samuel. His dad, Charles, wrote in saying that Samuel asked, “How did Satan manifest himself when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness?” The dad says here, rightly, “I told him I didn’t think it was in the form of a talking snake, but that I didn’t know.” Well, I want to say dad, I want to say Samuel. We don’t know exactly the form that the devil took in terms of the temptation of Christ. You think of a text such as in the Gospel of Luke, chapter four verse one. “Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted by the devil.” Now, in terms of Christian history, sometimes it’s been suggested, and this is based on some Old Testament texts as well, that the devil is a fallen angel and so might have the appearance of a fallen angel. The fact is that in the New Testament, we’re not told what the devil looked like, but the devil is personified and the devil is speaking.

And so just in the terms of our sanctified knowledge here, just based on scripture, it would appear that the devil appeared to Jesus in the flesh as someone, at least in the flesh, to the extent that the devil was able to use these words in order to tempt Christ. I think I want to say something here. I think there’s a principle here, and that is we’re not to speculate too much about Satan. We’re not to speculate too much about the devil because that’s just giving him more than is due. So Samuel, I want to say you ask a good question. That’s the kind of question that comes from reading the Bible, but the Scripture doesn’t answer all of our questions in that way because I guess the most important thing I can say is this, regardless of how the devil appeared, the devil tempted Christ and Christ responded with absolute obedience to the Father. He did not sin even when he was facing directly the tempter.

That’s to be the encouragement and instruction to us. I want to say Samuel, you’re not wrong in asking the question, but that’s one of the questions the Scripture just doesn’t answer for us in the way we might be curious to ask. That tells us something too, and I really appreciate you and your dad sending in the question.