It’s Friday, June 6, 2025.
I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
Part I
SCOTUS Unanimously Says Straight Woman Can Prevail in Reverse Discrimination Suit – This is a Victory for Common Sense Interpretation of the Law and the Constitution
Well, the court got right to the point. In a unanimous ruling handed down yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that employers cannot discriminate against a straight white woman, and instead give jobs twice to LGBTQ employees who were less qualified and that this woman could have brought and did bring an action claiming discrimination. And even though lower courts, including a US Circuit Court of Appeals had turned her down, saying that a straight white employee needed to meet a higher standard when it came to charging discrimination, basically one that would be very hard for any plaintiff to meet, it was a unanimous decision. It was the right decision.
In writing for the majority, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the application of the law, which is in this case one of the most important civil rights laws, “does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.” The text of the law, which is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as Adam Liptak of The New York Times tells us, “does not draw distinctions based on whether the person claiming discrimination is a member of a majority group.” But as he explained, “some courts have required plaintiffs from majority groups to prove an additional element if they lack direct evidence of discrimination, so-called background circumstances that support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”
Now, one of the things we need to just look at squarely here is the fact that this is a political minefield. In some sense, it’s a moral minefield. It really isn’t a legal or constitutional minefield, and that’s why this was a unanimous decision of the entire court. All nine justices agreed that discrimination in this case against this woman, a straight woman, for employment when the jobs were given two different times to gay employees. The situation was also very much amplified by the fact that those employees were less qualified than she was. And so the court, looking at this, said it’s not really a hard constitutional or legal question. The text of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 indeed does not draw distinctions based upon the race or classification, majority or minority, of the person making the claim.
Courts had added an additional barrier, an additional burden that, say, a white straight employee would have to meet if charging discrimination. That’s what was struck down, and that makes this case very, very important. Now, as I said, this issue can get complicated in discussing it just in a moral sense. The important thing is to recognize that it is not complicated in a legal or constitutional sense. The court unanimously said that the Civil Rights Act, including Title VII, does not draw distinctions based upon the classification of the plaintiff, the person bringing the charge.
When a decision like this comes down from the court, one of the things you need to watch is, number one, it was a unanimous decision. So that means that just in the legal and constitutional issues, the facts, the constitutional principles, the text of the Constitution was so clear that not even one justice dissented from the majority opinion. This wasn’t just a majority opinion, it was a unanimous opinion. The second thing to recognize when you look at a case like this is to ask yourself the question, what would the reality look like if the decision had gone the other way?
And so we need to understand that lower courts had gone the other way. Lower courts claiming to interpret the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act, they had gone the other way. The Supreme Court remedied the situation. That’s why there is a Supreme Court, which is the ultimate appeals court in the land, because at the end of the day, it bears the final responsibility to adjudicate and to interpret and to apply the Constitution of the United States. This is a victory, not just in terms of clarifying the Civil Rights Act, this is a victory for common sense interpretation of the Constitution. Had this gone the other way, then you would have some persons who had a greater right and other persons who had a lesser right to make a charge of discrimination and basically to prove it in court. And in this case, this plaintiff was able clearly to prove it in court.
Now, also before we leave this, we need to recognize that it is very significant, and I would say lamentable, that what wasn’t addressed in this case, and I’m not suggesting that it was addressed, I’m saying it is in the background. In the background is the fact that sexual orientation and now sexual identity or gender identity can be claimed as coming under the protections of the Civil Rights Act. And I believe that is improper. There’s no sense in which Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was intended to address those issues at all. But when it comes to a recognition of sanity, and to the plain text of the Constitution, wherever sanity and clear, plain, honest interpretation of the Constitution come together, that’s something to be celebrated. And so we need to note this case handed down yesterday. You might define it as sense after a good deal of nonsense.
Part II
The Providence of God and the Eventual Defeat of Nazi Germany – Today Marks the 81st Anniversary of D-Day
But next I want to shift to a very sobering and important anniversary. Today marks the anniversary of D-Day, marking the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, in terms of the European continent, specifically the invasion of Nazi-occupied France. If this had not happened, and if it had not happened successfully, Adolf Hitler would have been in a much stronger position, not so much to win the war, but to negotiate some kind of settlement that would have allowed for the continued existence of some kind of Nazi regime in Germany. But it is important that Christians understand the difference between history as it is, and history which is speculation by counterfactuals. In this case, it’s the factuals that have our attention.
D-Day was one of the largest military events in history, period. One of the largest military events in history. It was one of the largest seaborne invasion forces in terms of this kind of military action of all time. It was an extremely complicated affair. We’re talking about moving 156,000 soldiers and almost 200,000 naval personnel into position for the land invasion of France. And in order to get to the land, there had to be a seaborne invasion. This involved, for one thing, the development of invasion craft that had never existed before; flat-bottomed boats that were necessary to carry the troops and the tanks and get them on shore. It also required the provisioning of untold millions of items, including such things as temporary bridges, not to mention provisioning for all of these troops, tens of thousands of troops.
But of course, when we think about D-Day, we’re now looking at it from eight decades thereafter, and we now know that this was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany, but it was an extremely courageous and an extremely deadly beginning of the end. D-Day was huge in terms of the numbers of uniformed service persons involved. It involved, of course, untold numbers of aircraft. It involved paratroopers. It involved seaborne troops in the invasion; as I say, 156,000 Army soldiers, 195,700 Naval personnel. And at that point, remember, the Air Force was not a separate branch. It was the Army Air Corps. And so the Army figures include what would now be described as the Air Force; pilots, planes, and flying personnel.
The invasion itself is one of the logistical marvels of any age. Just think of getting all of those ships in place. Think of having all the equipment ready. Think of being able to move something between 350 and 400,000 personnel very quickly in a seaborne invasion. Understand that the Nazis knew it was coming. They knew it had to come. There is no way that the Nazi regime would have been defeated but for a land invasion, and it was going to have to come mostly by sea. And that meant it was going to have to come across what we know as the English Channel, and that meant that it was going to have to happen there on the northern shore of France. And here’s where things get very interesting, because the most obvious place for that kind of landing would be the Pas-de-Calais, and it is in that place where you have a shortest distance between Britain, where the Allies were provisioning and getting ready and mobilizing, and Nazi-occupied France.
But of course, the genius of D-Day is that the Allies did not do the obvious in terms of the invasion of the Pas-de-Calais, but rather invaded at strategic beaches in Normandy. There were five of these beaches that we remember best for the invasion. They were identified in code names Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. The casualties were horrifying. 10,000 casualties in the first day of battle. That is 81 years ago today. 4,414 Allied troops dead 81 years ago today. On the German side, you had Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, charged by Adolf Hitler to create what was called the Atlantic Wall, to prevent a successful invasion of Nazi-occupied France. But the Nazis were unable to prevent the successful launching of the operation and the successful conclusion in terms of pressing the case all the way to victory and the total defeat of the Nazi Empire.
Boys playing with toy soldiers and toy boats can create something like an invasion, but they have no idea of the logistics involved in the actual invasion 81 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of personnel, thousands upon thousands of boats and planes. How you could get all of these forces mobilized, the logistics to get them where they needed to be at the right time to make sure that the planes did not run into each other, and the ships did not capsize on the way to the shore, understanding that there would be a wall of fire directed at them from the German installations. You can still see so many of the pill boxes and the different kinds of bunkers that the Nazis had in place there along the coast. They’re visible today.
The experience of Allied troops landing at D-Day was horrifying, but it was successful, and without it the war could not have been won and certainly could not have been won on the schedule that came with the Allied victory in 1945. In moral terms, the defeat of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany was absolutely necessary. At this point, the entire world seemed to recognize that the only hope of displacing Adolf Hitler and of eliminating the Nazi threat was this land invasion that would have to take place on the European mainland and would have to come from the north. Without it, the Nazi regime would survive in one form or another.
When we think about this kind of historical event, we think about the providence of God. And the providence of God came down to the fact that the logistics meant that the invasion would only be possible within a matter of just a few hours. The tides had to be right and the weather had to be right. Now remember, in 1941, those who were predicting the weather, meteorologists, they’re in a developing time. They did not have the assets that we have today in terms of weather planning. The opening for the invasion was only about three or four days. If the invasion did not take place during those days, it was unlikely that it would be possible for a matter of months, and that meant the continued survival of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
The New York Times had a very interesting article in the anticipation of the anniversary of D-Day, pointing to Group Captain James Stagg and the role he played. He had the responsibility of giving the weather report to the Supreme Commander there of Allied Forces, US General Dwight David Eisenhower. It was going to come down to either go or no-go, and there were specific conditions that were absolutely necessary for a successful seaborne invasion. For example, the weather needed to be calm for 48 hours before the landings. It was also true that for the following three days the wind needed to stay below what The New York Times identifies as Beaufort Force 4. That’s equivalent to a moderate breeze.
So the weather needed to be calm for 48 hours before the invasion. It needed to stay calm for three days after the invasion. Parachutists and other air support, we are told, needed less than 30% cloud cover below 8,000 feet, with a cloud base no lower than 2,500 feet and visibility over three miles. As The Times explains, the low tide at dawn was needed to expose German defenses and the entire invasion had to occur one day before or four days after a full moon because of the necessity of nighttime operations. So consider the limitations, consider the specificity. Consider that this biggest of all invasions to this time had to take place only under very specific circumstances.
At the end of the day, it came down to the decision of the Supreme Commander there on the site, Dwight David Eisenhower. History records that he did exactly the right thing. He understood at the time that it was going to be either one of the best or one of the worst decisions made by any senior military commander in all of the annals of war. It turns out that he made the right decision.
It’s hard to imagine the enormity of the sacrifice paid by so many troops on that day and the courage demonstrated by virtually all. It’s hard to imagine, looking at the peaceful waters today, what it would have looked like to see the sky almost completely filled with fighters and bombers, with the sea so filled with ships that one German defender said it was as if one could step out in the water and walk across it without ever getting your feet wet. Both sides recognized how much was at stake, and Nazi Germany did not go down without a horrifying fight. But in one sense, you look back to 81 years ago today, to June 6, 1944, and the end of Nazi Germany was written in the future, and yet there were months and months of arduous fighting and thousands of more casualties to come.
You look at Omaha Beach today, you look at the water and you see the waves coming up on the shore and you just imagine the tranquil site, until your mind goes back to 81 years ago today and one of the biggest military events in all of human history with so much at stake, with liberty and freedom on the one side, human dignity on that side, and with the evils of Nazi Germany on the other side, and you understand the courage and the bravery of all those men on all those ships and in all those boats landing on those beaches. And it’s a very sobering thought, and I can assure you that’s what I was thinking just a matter of days ago this week when my wife and I were standing there on Omaha Beach, understanding that this anniversary was coming and looking at that water in our own minds, imagining what it must have looked like on that day.
And one very sobering reminder of what it looked like on that day is the American cemetery there in Normandy with thousands and thousands of graves. They speak. They speak a very eloquent message about the sacrifice that was paid. It’s also interesting, by the way, that when it comes to France, France is a very patriotic nation. Its own tricolor, the same colors as the United States, red, white and blue, flying all over the nation. But the closer you get to the beaches there, the closer you get to Omaha, to Utah, to Sword, to Juno, the closer you get to the big action on D-Day, the closer you get to seeing American Flags flying proudly and gratefully there in liberated France.
One last word about D-Day. The obituaries are still coming. Just in recent weeks, an obituary for US Army Private James Lee Harrington, killed in action at age 21 on D-Day 81 years ago. He was on one of those landing craft coming across preparing for the land invasion. Nazi fire struck the ship, it caught fire, it exploded. All within it were killed. Their remains went with the boat, down under the water. Eventually the remains were recovered, but they were not identified specifically until just recently. And he has to be buried today, 81 years later. He is to be buried on June 6, 2025, today, at the Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Cincinnati, Iowa next to his mother and grandparents. The last letter that was sent from James to his family was written on the morning of D-Day, stating that he had gotten up at 2:30 in the morning to call fellow soldiers out of their barracks. It was on that day he gave his own life in the service of his country.
Just out of a sense of the moral moment, I want to share with you a statement from the obituary related to services. Listen to this. “Graveside services for James will be held at 11:00 AM, Friday, June 6, 2025 at Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Cincinnati, Iowa. Full military rights will be conducted at this time. For anyone who would like to honor Mr. Harrington and cannot attend the service, please stand along the sidewalks of Highway 5, beginning at 10:30 AM on Friday as we process to the cemetery, led by Thomas Funeral Home, the Patriot Guard Riders, American Legion Riders, active military, and the Centerville American Legion. Condolences may be shared online.”
The Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 13:7, to give honor to whom honor is due. That’s important on this anniversary of D-Day. It’s also important every day.
Part III
How Do We Reconcile the Desire to Leave a Powerful Legacy and the Biblical Command to Humility? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing
Now, let’s turn to questions. I always appreciate questions from listeners, and you can send your own simply by writing me at mail@albertmohler.com. We get to as many questions as we can.
A very fascinating question came in. A young pastor in Chicago wrote me and he said he read my book, The Conviction to Lead. He says, “I was very blessed by the book. One of the things you mentioned is the need to know what you want your legacy to be.” He writes, “I intuitively understand that to be true, but don’t know how to reconcile it with all the biblical commands to humility. Could you help me, as a young pastor, reconcile the intrinsic desire to leave a powerful legacy with the biblical commands for humility?”
Well, I’m going to do my very best in answering this. And I would say that I don’t think, in a biblical perspective, these two things are at odds at all. And I think you see this even in the book of Acts when you consider some of those who stood out as exemplars for the gospel, and they did leave a legacy. But you know what? I think moms and dads leave a legacy. A legacy in this sense is not something that necessarily gets written into the history books. I’m not saying that everyone should aspire to that kind of legacy, but I do think leaders need to understand that people are going to remember our leadership when we’re gone, and there is going to be a memory which is either one of faithfulness or, lamentably, of unfaithfulness.
I think the Scripture warns us that we should not leave any kind of memory of unfaithfulness, but rather seek to leave, in every way, a legacy of faithfulness; the glory not to ourselves, but the glory to God. And I think you see this even in the Scripture where there are persons who are valorized and who are singled out. They’re held up as illustrations for us in Scripture. That is not ultimately to their glory, but to God’s glory.
But God does draw glory from the examples in human history, in human ministry, in Israel and in the church. I think the Lord draws glory unto himself through the legacies left by those whom he has called and entrusted with particular leadership. It is not that we see Moses as standing, so to speak, on his own two feet, nor Abraham, nor Paul, nor David, nor, you just go down the list. You look at a text like Hebrews 11, those leaders left a legacy. Thankfully, a legacy of faithfulness. My encouragement is to understand we’re going to leave some kind of legacy. Let’s pray that it is one of faithfulness and not one of unfaithfulness.
Part IV
Does God Love People Who are in Hell? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a 6-Year-Old Listener of The Briefing
All right, a question comes in, a six-year-old little girl asked her parents, “does God love the people who are in hell?” And a sweet mom writing in about this, she says that she and her husband, they disagreed a little bit about how to answer that question. She said yes, because God is all loving. And the reason they’re not in Heaven is because they didn’t trust in Jesus. The little girl’s dad said that God doesn’t love them anymore because they chose not to accept Him and He will cast them into the lake of fire.
I think the best thing to do here is just to cling to the biblical simplicity, and that is that God pours out his wrath upon sin. And the Scripture says that he pours out his wrath upon sinners. So at the end of the day, on the other side of God’s judgment, you have all of humanity divided between those on which he has lavished his mercy and love and those on which he pours out his wrath and judgment.
Now, I just think it’s important for us to say that God is love. That’s what the Scripture says. But it also tells us that God is just and that God is righteous, God is merciful. But he is also absolutely just, and so whatever he does is right, and what he does is in absolute harmony with everything that he is. And that means the infinite reality of all of his attributes. And so God is love, but that does not prevent him from pouring out his wrath upon sinners.
It’s a sweet question from a six-year-old little girl. And frankly, it’s one I think the Scripture answers pretty clearly. It’s one of those tough things that is hard for us to discuss, not only with a six-year-old, but a 60-year-old. But I do think it’s important we get it right.
Part V
Is a Man Who Has an Unbelieving Wife Disqualified from Pastoral Ministry? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing
All right, next I received a tough question, and you can see a tough situation here in a local church. The question was sent in. “My question regards the qualifications for an elder. Specifically, whether or not a man whose wife has abandoned the faith can be considered managing his household well or not.” It turns out that this man is on a search committee for a pastor and one of the candidates, we are told, is in this situation. He is otherwise a good candidate. His children are well-behaved, he’s a gifted preacher and teacher. To my knowledge, his wife is no longer attending church, but is not doing anything else to disrupt his ministry.
Well, there’s more in terms of what was sent, but I do want to say I would not believe that this man is well-qualified to be a pastor, in a biblical sense. And in particular, you think of a text like 1 Timothy 3, where we’re given the qualifications for ministry, the qualification for overseers. And remember, that it is not just the husband of one wife, but we’re also told in Verse 4, he must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. And then in Verse 5 we’re told, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?
So I will simply say that the man who’s described in this situation may be a very righteous man, and in terms of his faithfulness to his wife, even in such an extreme situation, this may be in one sense a picture of the gospel. But I do think it is a difficult position for a pastor to be in, for an elder to be in; a very difficult position when one’s wife is publicly and visibly not supportive of the ministry. And in this case, it appears, not identifying as a Christian. That would make the situation, I think, very, very difficult.
And it also affirms something else we need to understand. There are biblical qualifications for leadership in the church, for the eldership, and for someone serving as pastor. And that means that there are some men who are good and faithful men who do not meet these qualifications simply because of the unique circumstances of ministry. And this means that there will be some men in the congregation who are admirable in terms of how they are trying faithfully to deal with situations, but just being admirable in that sense, and with Christian love backing us up in full measure, I don’t think that adds up to meeting some of the qualifications for ministry that are set out in passages such as 1 Timothy 3. And I think it’s a vulnerability that a church would have to take very much into account.
Part VI
What Does the Bible Say About Fishing? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing
All right, next I received a tough question, and you can see a tough situation here in a local church. The question was sent in. “My question regards the qualifications for an elder. Specifically, whether or not a man whose wife has abandoned the faith can be considered managing his household well or not.” It turns out that this man is on a search committee for a pastor and one of the candidates, we are told, is in this situation. He is otherwise a good candidate. His children are well-behaved, he’s a gifted preacher and teacher. To my knowledge, his wife is no longer attending church, but is not doing anything else to disrupt his ministry.
Well, there’s more in terms of what was sent, but I do want to say I would not believe that this man is well-qualified to be a pastor, in a biblical sense. And in particular, you think of a text like 1 Timothy 3, where we’re given the qualifications for ministry, the qualification for overseers. And remember, that it is not just the husband of one wife, but we’re also told in Verse 4, he must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. And then in Verse 5 we’re told, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?
So I will simply say that the man who’s described in this situation may be a very righteous man, and in terms of his faithfulness to his wife, even in such an extreme situation, this may be in one sense a picture of the gospel. But I do think it is a difficult position for a pastor to be in, for an elder to be in; a very difficult position when one’s wife is publicly and visibly not supportive of the ministry. And in this case, it appears, not identifying as a Christian. That would make the situation, I think, very, very difficult.
And it also affirms something else we need to understand. There are biblical qualifications for leadership in the church, for the eldership, and for someone serving as pastor. And that means that there are some men who are good and faithful men who do not meet these qualifications simply because of the unique circumstances of ministry. And this means that there will be some men in the congregation who are admirable in terms of how they are trying faithfully to deal with situations, but just being admirable in that sense, and with Christian love backing us up in full measure, I don’t think that adds up to meeting some of the qualifications for ministry that are set out in passages such as 1 Timothy 3. And I think it’s a vulnerability that a church would have to take very much into account.
Thanks for listening to The Briefing.
For more information, go to my website at albertmoller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing
