Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Part I

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The Conservative Vision Does Not Stand on Stilts: Conservatives are Restrained by Reality

We are living in a time of clashing worldviews. I think most Americans understand that. Most Christians understand that most people around the world understand that. The clash of worldviews itself is not new. What is new is the urgency with which this clash is now arriving on the cultural landscape. This used to be something that was background noise for most people in society. Now it is frontline news and it’s unavoidable. I want us to look back last week to several illustrations of how unavoidable this worldview conflict is.

I had the opportunity last week to deliver a plenary address to the National Conservatism Conference, and I did so by speaking on the theme of Restrained by Reality, the Central Truth of the Conservative vision. And what I wanted to point to is that conservatism and, in this sense, I also very clearly mean Christian worldview, the Christian worldview, the conservative Christian worldview, I’ll just say it’s the Christian worldview held increasingly alone by conservatives. It is the worldview that is grounded in a restraint. That restraint is the restraint of reality, which means we are constrained by what is.

Now, I want to point to this clash of worldviews by citing an economist, Thomas Sowell. Years ago, about 1987, he wrote a book entitled The Conflict of Visions, I think it’s one of the most important books of the 20th century, frankly. And in that book, he argues about a conflict of visions. He means a conflict of worldviews. His word “vision” is a stand-in for what we would refer to as a worldview. And he, trying to explain his own times, said very wisely that the clash or the conflict of visions, he described it as being a clash between a constrained vision and an unconstrained vision.

Now this has a lot to do with the human’s place in the cosmos. Are human beings constrained or unconstrained? This is truly one of the great differences between Christian conservatives and secular liberals. Secular liberals by definition believe that we are just cosmic accidents. They have nothing better than evolution, and their debates are inside evolution. And according to that worldview, there’s no necessary constraint on us at all. That’s why you have so many people in Silicon Valley and beyond looking at transhumanism, human longevity, redefining things, and of course this redefinition goes up and down. It means down when it comes to say, talking about the inherent dignity, and the worth of a life in the womb. It is up when it comes to debates. Now on the Left, as to whether or not a mountain range or a river should be considered a person.

So when you lose any kind of coherent reality, if you’re not now constrained by reality, then you’re unconstrained and you can just declare that the revolution is upon us and it’s never going to end. That’s exactly where the Left is right now. The revolution is upon us. Everything that is must go. And where is this headed? Well, time will tell an unfolding revolution of the Left. The constrained vision, in contrast to the unconstrained vision, means that human nature just to take one ontological factor, that is one factor in basic reality, it constrains us. There are constraints upon the human being.

Now there’s a glory to being human. And as Christians, we understand this is the Imago Dei, this is the very image of God. There is a distinctiveness that belongs to human beings, not given to any other creatures because we are made in God’s image. We’re the only creature made in God’s image. Thomas Sowell was also writing from a secular background, but he could see that the distinction between the constrained and the unconstrained division had everything to do with the basic disposition to reality.

And this is where Christians have to come in and say, let me introduce you to reality, the most fundamental reality that is the one true and living God. And let me point to the cosmos and explain in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This is the very foundation of all that is the entire cosmos as we know it. It explains ourselves the only creature made in God’s image. That is not just poetic language about humanity. That is an ontological statement. That is to mean it’s a statement of basic reality, being. If you’re unconstrained by reality, then you can just make things up as you go along, including your definition of human nature or even something as basic as say, well, male and female. If you’re constrained by reality, guess what, male is male and female is female. Those are fixed categories, they’re ontological categories.

That may sound like a big word, but let me just tell you, you’re up to it. It means that they are real in the realest sense of real. Now, there’s so much more that we should consider here, but I want to get to the issue of rights, human rights, natural rights. Where do our rights come from? Well, you only have really a couple of options. One option is they come from God, the Creator. The other option is we came up with these ourselves. Now let me just state the obvious. If we came up with them ourselves, we can come not up with them. We can undo coming up with them. The government giveth and the government taketh away. On the other hand, if the Creator has given us these rights by virtue of making us, creating us in his image, then those rights are pre-political. They exist before the government. A0\nd you say, that sounds pretty esoteric.

Part II

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Our Rights Do Come From God: Sen. Kaine Picks an Argument With Thomas Jefferson

Well, let me tell you, last week in a Senate committee room, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a confirmation hearing. And in the course of that hearing, Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine went on the attack against one of the nominees and the assertion that was in the statement included from the Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, that “our rights come from God, our Creator, not from our laws, not from our governments.”

Senator Kaine responded to that by saying, “I find that very, very troubling. I’m a devout person. I was a missionary in Honduras. We’ve got other devout folks in this room, Christian, Jewish, Muslim American. The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from government, but come from the creator, that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Baha’is, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities. And they do it because they believe they understand what natural rights are from their creator.”

Let me just stop for a minute and say, here you have a sitting senator, a United States senator, a Democrat from the state of Virginia, who in 2016 was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Vice President of the United States, who is apparently completely unfamiliar with the Declaration of Independence and in an even greater and more troubling level, seems to have no idea where human rights come from. Or even worse, he thinks that governments and laws actually create these rights. Now, this is not a misquotation, it is not something taken out of context. This was a premeditated address from a sitting US senator who made the point over and over again. In concluding this section of his remarks, Senator Kaine went on to say, “The notion that our rights do not come from our laws or our government should make people very, very nervous because people of any religious tradition or none are entitled to the equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment.”

Now that is what is simply defined by its very structure as a non-sequitur. That’s Latin for the sequence is wrong. This thing does not follow the other thing. But nonetheless, the most troubling thing in all of this is that a sitting senator, that’s right, a member of the United States Senate denies three times in one statement, in just a matter of moments that our rights come from the Creator. And instead he says, it’s very troubling that anyone would deny that the rights come from laws and government. Now the simple fact, let’s just remind ourselves of this, is that if government can give the rights, if the rights come from laws and government, they don’t pre-exist the government and the laws, then the government that gave them can take them away. And who can say that’s right or wrong? Because after all, there were no rights until the government or the laws created those rights.

This is in stark contrast, of course, to the very language of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson, another Virginian, when the Declaration says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” that’s how clear they are, they’re self-evident truths, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The next line, “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Now notice the language here. It’s also something that just comes back around in emphasis in order that we can’t miss it. These rights are given to human beings because they are endowed by our Creator. These are unalienable rights, which means individual human persons cannot be separated from these rights. They are inherent. They’re unalienable. And then we are told very clearly here that government exists to secure these rights, not to create these rights, but rather to secure these rights.

All right. So the point here, and it was made very clear in the course of the hearing and further that he is openly rejecting, even contradicting the founding principles of the government he serves and the Constitution, by the way, that he has sworn to uphold. That is by the way, a very interesting question in the history of American Constitutional law. What is the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? It is an important historic argument to recognize that the Constitution and the Declaration are two different documents adopted by two different groups of men at two different points in early American history. But it is also true that it is impossible to have a correct understanding of the Constitution apart from the Declaration of Independence, which was the very declaration that gave birth to the nation, later served by the Constitution we know as the United States Constitution or the Constitution of the United States of America.

The more basic issue here is where in the world the rights come from. If they come from ourselves, again, if we made them up, we can take them away. Government that makes them up can take them away. If these rights are simply the product of law, then someone can pass different laws. It is actually the opposite. It’s not just that Senator Kaine was off the mark, it’s that what he denies is what is central and essential to understanding the Declaration of Independence, the American experiment, our vision of ordered liberty, and the Constitution of the United States of America–that’s all.

Now there’s a lot in the background to this and a part of it can be confused by the language. So for instance, you have the language of natural rights. What does that mean? It means that they are held by all human beings simply by the fact that they are essential to human nature. They are revealed in nature and thus they are natural rights. The most important part of that is that they are held by all persons naturally and also they can be known by natural reason. Now as we know, the most important aspect for a Christian in understanding these things isn’t just natural, it’s supernatural. It’s our understanding of God’s creation of the world, his role in world affairs, what it means for human beings to be made in his image.

But the important part about natural rights is that they can’t be alienated by anyone who is made as a human being, and thus possesses human nature. They’re also natural in the sense that they may be known. That’s the assertion behind the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it’s at the forefront. They’re saying these rights are granted by the Creator. They are bestowed by the Creator and they are unalienable. You can’t alienate a human being from these rights. The rights are pre-political. They existed before.

So you take the notion then of natural rights. What would be the alternative? Well, in the law the alternative is between natural law and the positive law. The positive law means that human beings came up with it. And similarly, in terms of rights, you have natural rights. The alternative is positive rights. Positive means someone had to take a positive act to create them. All right, here’s where things get really, really important, not just when we’re thinking about 1776 and 1789, but when we are thinking about 2025. And we’re thinking about whether or not a woman supposedly has the right to destroy the unborn life within her, or whether you talk about two people who say a man has a right to marry a man.

Now by the notion of natural rights, where does marriage come from? It comes from the very structure of creation. It is inherent. Societies are accountable to it. It is pre-political. It existed before human community existed. Human community has the obligation to conform to the reality of marriage. It does not have the power to redefine marriage. But what you have now is an understanding. And just notice this pattern, when you have natural rights denied, you have artificial positive or plastic rights that are inserted in their place.

And so right now, for instance, when you look at the American experiment, the American declaration is that freedom of worship, freedom of religion, religious liberty is one of those unalienable rights. But when it comes to the LGBTQ revolution, you’re going to have a clash between religious liberty rights and this new synthetic right of marriage declared for same-sex couples. And here’s what you need to note. Increasingly, the Left is honest that the natural rights have to give so that the positive rights, the plastic rights can gain supremacy. And you see that very openly.

At least one of the major distinctions right now in the worldview clash of our age comes right down to this, which rights are pre-political, which ones are ontological, they’re real, I think it’s essential to the conservative vision. It’s essential to Christian understanding that we make clear that rights are real because they come from God and he is the ultimately real. And if there is no God, then these rights are actually nothing other than positive law. They’re just nothing other than plastic rights. And if government can grant them, government not only can, but will take them away when convenient.

So again, the great conflict of visions, the great conflict of worldviews we face is increasingly clear, I think, especially to Christians. It’s been always true, but it should be increasingly clear, is between one that is constrained by reality, one that is unconstrained, but that also means constrained by reality as understood as Christians, as being defined by our Creator and not by ourselves. And that also means that we believe that these natural rights are intrinsic to every single human being. They’re pre-political, they’re endowed by our Creator. It’s up to government to understand them, to perceive them, to acknowledge them, and indeed, as the Declaration says, to secure them.

I also just want to underline again that if you’re going to create new artificial rights, they’re going to crowd out the actual real ontologically grounded rights. And that is one of the great tragedies of our age and confronting that, opposing that is one of the great challenges of our age. Sometimes we are reminded of that fact by a comment that seems so outrageous you can hardly believe that it was made seriously. But the serious fact is that comment was made very seriously, repeated, three times asserted in the senator’s statement that tells you what we are up against. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

By the way, if you’d be interested in streaming or in viewing the text of my address at NatCon 25, both are available at my website. I have the opportunity in that setting to go into greater detail.

Part III

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An LGBTQ Blessing During Jubilee by the Roman Catholic Church? Pope Leo Offers Blessing to LGBTQ Catholics

Also making headline news over the weekend, the New York Times ran an article September 6th, 2025 of the headline, “LGBTQ Catholics haveJubilee with Pope’s Blessing, if Not his Presence.” The subhead, “Leo,” that means Pope Leo XIV “Did not Meet with Pilgrims,” but he has indicated he’s supportive of an open welcoming church.

Okay, so what’s going on here? Well, that conflict of visions is playing out in so many different arenas. One of the major arenas of great significance worldwide is the Roman Catholic Church. And at the center of this, of course, is by the structure of the Roman Catholic Church, the papacy, the magisterium of the church, but especially the papacy. And in this case, what you’re talking about is this jubilee year declared by the Roman Catholic Church. And thus, you have different groups, going to Rome, in this jubilee year for a special dispensation of grace according to Roman Catholic theology. And it’s supposed to be based on repentance and forgiveness and blessing.

But the big news here is that an official group, a large sizable group of LGBTQ-identified Catholics, they answered the call to the Jubilee, they went to the Jubilee, they went to Rome, and they processed through the holy door in St. Peter’s Basilica as it is defined. And they participated officially in this quarter-centennial festival “of renewal and forgiveness.” And you’ll notice the New York Times editorialized in that opening statement, “a marked sign of acceptance in a church in which many felt shunned or excluded until recently.” The article cites a man by the name of Tyrone Grima. He said, “It was a very special moment for such Catholics.” We are told that another woman whose son is gay said that for too long, LGBTQ Catholics had “to hide, living in shame and guilt.”

Okay, with those kinds of statements, has the Roman Catholic Church changed its official dogmatic teaching on the nature of homosexuality in terms of the basic understanding of the inclination of homosexuality, but also in particular homosexual acts? The catechism of the Roman Catholic Church makes very clear that homosexual acts are, and this is the language, “objectively disordered.” Now, when you talk about disordered, objectively disordered is a very firm statement that inherently, intrinsically, under any and all circumstances, they are disordered. And disordered in Christian theology, not just in Catholic theology, but in Christian theology, disordered is a profoundly meaningful term. Disorder means the undoing of creation. It’s the contrast between order and disorder.

Disorder, when you say something as objectively disordered, you mean that in no circumstance can it ever be good, but in every circumstance it is profound sin. That has been the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, and dogmatically, it continues as the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. But over the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has made a distinction, at least argued by some between dogmatic statement and what’s often referred to as pastoral ministry or a pastoral understanding. And there was no one who made that distinction more profound and clear than the late Pope Francis. And it was Pope Francis who seemed to give on the one hand and take what the other.

And so he would make all kinds of statements that seemed to be quite accepting of homosexuality, including early in his pontificate when he asked the question, “who am I to judge?” And the obvious answer to that according to Roman Catholic theology is, sir, you are, you are the pope. But it was Pope Francis who really leaned into that distinction between pastoral ministry and dogmatic theology. But the point is he actually never made any effort, whatsoever, towards redefining that basic doctrinal statement.

So insofar as right now, the Roman Catholic Church has official doctrine on homosexuality, homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. But Pope Francis really did sow confusion, a tremendous amount of confusion. And the greatest confusion on this issue is not just the “who am I to judge,” but when he even came up with sort of approved ceremonies for a sort of blessing for same-sex couples, later clarified as saying it’s not the fact that there are a couple that receives the blessing, but rather that is the opportunity for the blessing of the two as individuals.

Well, you understand the point here. The LGBTQ revolutionaries are winning on style even if they haven’t yet won on substance. They are winning when it comes to this kind of pastoral accommodation, even if they’re not yet winning in the Roman Catholic Church in the definition of doctrine. And I want evangelical Christians to understand, worldwide the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has taught and still at least officially teaches that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. That is a profound statement. It is an anchor statement in the world of public opinion, in the world of public perception about Christianity.

Let me put it another way. If the Roman Catholic Church someday were to change that doctrinal understanding, that official dogmatic understanding of homosexuality, and you could just expand to that, LGBTQ plus, whatever, if that were to change, it would have a great deal to do with the context in which all of us minister and try to define these issues. It would be a devastating public blow. And the most evangelical and reformation committed Protestants have to understand it would be a huge public loss and it would sow enormous confusion in the larger culture.

We already have liberal Protestants who are abandoning scriptural authority, abandoning biblical orthodoxy, and abandoning the clear teachings of scripture. And clearly, the Catholic church includes even in some of its highest ranks, those who either willingly confuse the issue or try to separate, again, pastoral practice from doctrine. That’s what evangelical Protestants said. We can’t do that. They have to be one and the same. There has to be an internal consistency.

And there are clearly those, including even the councils of bishops or the conferences of bishops in some countries, such as Germany, that are really pretty avidly pressing towards the liberalization on these issues.

Part IV

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Compassion Without Truth Will Not Equal Faithfulness – Faithful Christian Compassion Will Always Match Compassion with the Truth of God’s Word

I just want to remind Evangelical Protestants, we’re not immune from these same pressures. I also want to suggest, even though we don’t have things like this in a jubilee year where people show up to go through a door for a blessing, we have people in our churches who want to go squishy on this issue, who want to abandon the clear teachings of Scripture and they want to claim that it’s an act of compassion.

Here’s what Christians have to understand. We have no right to call anything compassionate that is contrary to the Word of God. And that goes back to where we began. Who tells us who we are? Who tells us what rights we possess by virtue of being made in God’s image? There is only one who has the authority to make that declaration, and that is God himself. And he has done so, he’s done so in Scripture, but he’s also done so compellingly in nature in such a way that, as Paul says in Romans 1, “There is no one who has an excuse.”

One final thought along these lines, you’ll notice that the word compassion comes up again and again and again. And here’s another thing we need to think about very carefully as Christians, and that is how we use and how we hear the word compassion. Of course, it means to feel with. It means to feel for. It is often used as a synonym for love. Compassion is sometimes said to be love put into practice. It is feeling with someone and that compassion should lead to acts of compassion. But that should be based in reality.

So even as we have compassion for persons who are struggling with any sin, we cannot have compassion towards the acceptance of this, and we can’t have compassion towards the ambition of those who would wish to normalize this sin. We can have no compassion for a teaching that is directly contrary to scripture. We can have no compassion with those who, by the way, want to declare that what God would say is intrinsically disordered, is anything other than that.

And let me just say another way of saying intrinsically disordered, and I’m going to cite biblical authority here, is in Romans 1 where Paul makes the statement “against nature,” that’s making the same point. And doesn’t that tie all that we’ve been talking about together when we talk about natural rights and when we talk about, even, well, what is right and wrong, intrinsically disordered against nature. It is interesting. It reminds us that if we abandon biblical theism one way or another, we are going to get very quickly into total disaster as a civilization.

So, brothers and sisters, lean in to the truth, teach and preach the word of God, and yes, have compassion, but understand what compassion means in biblical terms. It’s never at the expense of truth.