Friday, October 3, 2025

Part I

The Dumbification of Politics – And, Well, Everything Else: The Functional Illiteracy of Our Society and Its Impact

We’ll get to questions here pretty quickly. A couple of things I wanted to talk about just as we begin the program today. One of them is a question asked by The Economist of London, and the question is, “Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?” Okay, I will simply say it’s pretty dumb to ask the question. Asking the question makes you dumber. Certainly, it is true that the decline of reading is making politics dumber. It is also making every other dimension of life dumber. So most articles in The Economist are not attributed by a reporter, columnist, or author. There’s no name, it is simply a report in The Economist. And we are being told that it is becoming more and more a matter of observation that politicians are reading less and their sentence structure is getting, well, it’s becoming more minimal. And the same thing is true, by the way, for authors.

It turns out that, just to give you one example when it comes to numbers, the book Modern Painters by John Ruskin from the Victorian era, the first sentence is 153 words long. More recently, you take the Mel Robbins book, The Let Them Theory, and the first sentence is 19 words long. So again, we’ve gone from 153 words to 19 words. The bigger problem is people have gone from reading to not reading. And this is pretty well documented and it certainly is showing up in terms of, say, the political speeches that a candidate gives. Almost no reference at all to anything that would be called literature from any era whatsoever. We’re now in a post-literature age when it comes to America’s civic discourse.

There are also those who are pointing out however, that reading is a skill that has trackable benefits. So, to put it another way, if you want to move higher up the socioeconomic ladder, if you want to move higher up the job ladder, you want to move higher up the income ladder, the higher you go, the more you read, and the more having read and reading is a part of your background. And that really hasn’t changed all that much. The fact is however, that even at the elite levels, people in the elite circles are reading at least less than they had before. But when it comes to comparisons with other groups in society, I mean, quite frankly, there are millions and millions of Americans who do not read a single book a year. And there are some who’ve never read a book at all. And it’s not because they are classically illiterate, it is just because they’re functionally illiterate, they don’t read.

But it is very interesting, I’m speaking here to Christian families and Christian friends, Christian pastors, I think you’d really want to know that The Economist is saying a lot of the problem, when it comes to reading is the fact that many children are not being read to. And I think we all know that’s a huge problem. We know the romance of being read to and you also know the magic of being read to. All you have to do is see a parent or a grandparent sit down and pick up a book, a children’s book in particular, and just watch the kids come and get as close as possible to look at the page and see and hear, to be read to. It is absolute magic.

Even in a different context, you just think about an elementary school class, a kindergarten class, and you see someone come in and they sit down to read aloud, and look at the children, they just immediately sit in circles. And, by the way, they often respond to the reading of a book the way they respond to seeing an act of wonder, and that’s because that’s really what it is.

I can still remember when I was in elementary school, not only, by the way, was I read to by my parents and my grandparents, especially my father’s mother, who was an elementary school teacher. By the way, little footnote there, elementary school teachers have enormous power. I am sometimes in Florida and it’s people who are my age or older who will come up to me and say, “I just figured out I had your grandmother in the 3rd grade.” Now that’s just a sweet thing. But you look at an elementary school teacher and you’ll see these kids sitting there, I can still remember in the 4th grade when, if the class was particularly well-behaved, we got to hear two or three chapters of a Hardy Boys book read to us in the 4th grade. And by then I could read for myself, but there was still the absolute astounding attraction of being read to. And we really wanted to make sure the classes behaved so we can find out what Frank and Joe were up to the next day.

Christian parents not only know this, but faithful Christian parents lean into this, using it as an opportunity to introduce our own children and grandchildren to the characters of Scripture, to Bible stories. And that should be just a part of every child’s experience in a Christian home, being raised with those stories, David and Goliath, Jonah and the great fish, Jesus and the loaves and the fishes. Just the stories that children ought to know just as a part of the architecture of their thinking before they’re able to connect any kind of theological dots, this is just so important.

I think it’s important to know that God made us this way. He made us hungry and thirsty for stories. He made us narrative characters, narrative beings. And so for instance, there are different ways to describe the human species in scientific terms. Some use the term homo sapiens, that’s the official term, the sapiential or the thinking being, but we’re also homo narratus, we’re the creature who tells stories. And that’s a part of what distinguishes us from the other creatures. Mother bears love their cubs. Moral man in just a moment. Mother bears love their cubs, mother skunks love their little skunks, but they don’t tell them stories. Where you find human beings, you find stories, and especially in books.

The Economist asked the question, “Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?” And the answer has to be an emphatic yes, but it’s making everything dumber. And here’s where Christian parents and Christian pastors and Christian schools and classical educators need to just be very alert and understand, we have to create an alternative culture of deep reading, of the love for reading. And I just want to warn people, it’s harder to get this later in life. It costs a lot more in terms of time and attention, and in every other way later in life.

Now, I am thrilled to see adults who’ve never read a book, who come to faith in Christ and they get involved in the church, and the next thing you know, they demonstrate a hunger to grow in the faith. And one of the ways they do that is by reading books. I just love being around Christians and they ask for a list of books, they ask for favorite books. That’s one of the favorite things I get to do. It’s excruciating sometimes, because I have too many favorite books. Too many books have made a massive impact on my life.

I can also tell you something else, and I mean this just as clearly as I’m going to say it, I can listen to a preacher preach and I can know if he is a reader or not. And too many of them just are not, and it shows in the preaching. They just don’t know enough to preach that message. They haven’t read enough, they haven’t studied enough, they haven’t stored up resources deep enough to do what they should have done with that text. And you know what else? When I find a really healthy church raising up Godly leaders, I find young men reading books and I find young women reading books. And the difference is when it comes to young men, it’s not so much that they change the books they’re reading, it’s that they learn to read and they learn to love to read. With young women, it sometimes is different. And that is that they read, they just need what they read to change. And put the romance novel down and pick up this book and read it.

So anyway, it’s just interesting that The Economist asked this question, “Is the decline of reading making politics dumber?” I mean, we all know that it’s so. The article goes on to give some pretty specific illustrations. It also ranks politicians, at least some historically by their reading quotient.

The bottom line is that today’s politics rarely gets higher than the average high school conceptualization and reading level. And you know what? Let me just point out, we really count on a lot of people reading a lot more than that. Let’s just say if someone is going to practice medicine for me, I want them to have read a whole lot more than that and I want them to keep reading after medical school, okay? If I need a lawyer, I want one who didn’t just read some law back there in the past, but I mean is a reader, and is growing always in the practice of the law. I don’t know how in the world we’re going to have people who are going to be the technological and cultural and political leaders of the future if we do not raise up a generation of readers.

I’m going to tell you what I think is going to happen. I’m not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I can tell you what I think is going to happen. I think we’re going to have a new reading elite emerge in comparison with the masses. And that’s exactly the opposite of what happened, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. The 19th and 20th centuries, when democratic movements were at their strength, a part of the strength of democratic nations is the fact that literacy spread from the elites to the masses, but now we have the reverse happening. And it’s not just socioeconomic, it is partly socioeconomic, it’s more just about, I think, models and learning. And one of the great inequalities of our time is an inequality that’s very difficult for anyone to fix, and that is the inequality between children who have spent their entire lives being read to, and those who have very little experience with having anyone read a book to them. Well, all right, we’ll keep thinking about reading. And to this magazine, you ask a stupid question, well, we’ll still give you an answer.

Part II

The Metaphysical Importance of Fat Bear Week: Chunk is the Champion of Fat Bear Week 2025 – And Points to God’s Glory in All Creation

All right. Now, before leaving this week, I want us to consider the metaphysical moral worldview importance of Fat Bear Week, because we just experienced Fat Bear Week 2025, and in case you don’t know, the winner is 32 Chunk, who is one chunk of a grizzly bear. Now, I first became aware of this when in Alaska. And I found out that people wanted to see these grizzlies feasting on salmon, which of course they had to catch out of the rivers, feasting on it in order to fatten themselves up for hibernation for the winter. And let me just say that when you look at the before and after, you look at these big grizzlies coming out of their dens in the spring and you see them going into their dens for winter, let me just tell you, they’re skinny when they come out and they are fat when they go in. And the fatter, the better.

32 Chunk, by his very name, kind of started out big. And the competition was pretty fierce this year. Grazer, who was the winner of the last two Fat Bear Week contests, was knocked out, we are told, by 856, “The bear who would ultimately play second behind the behemoth 32 Chunk, known by fans simply as Chunk.” So it is interesting that these bears come back again and again, and they are known by their markings and also by their behavior. They have names. And I mentioned this on The Briefing some years back, and a lot of people hadn’t heard of it. And now you’ve got among listeners to The Briefing I hear from families and classical Christian schools and others, where Fat Bear Week has become a major, major thing. And the kids, they have their own favorite bears and they pull for them. And of course it is just wondrous to look at it, isn’t it?

And the world looks at this and says, wow, what a very interesting feature of evolutionary progression. We look at this and go, what an amazing testimony to the glory of creation as created by the artistry in the sovereignty of the divine creator. God made grizzly bears, and he made grizzly bears to need to hibernate in the winter and he made grizzly bears to be skinny when they come out and really fat when they go back in.

And there’s something else here, and that is of course, you look at this and you look at the names that are given and all the rest, there’s a certain amount of what’s called anthropomorphization going on here. And that is that you can’t look at these bears without seeing at least a glimmer of personality, maybe even a little bit of character. This one’s spicier than that one. This one’s a little more aggressive than that one. And we look at them and we’re the people who know there’s a crucial distinction between human beings and all the other creatures. But we also understand that even as human beings are the only creature made in God’s image, God made all the creatures for his glory.

And the amazing thing is watching these grizzlies eat themselves fat on these glorious salmon. And to see them doing so to great personal satisfaction, sometimes a little competition and aggression, but they know they’ve got to get fat before the winter. How do they know that? Who told them that? Who put that knowledge in them? Like everything else, believers watching Fat Bear Week are watching a far bigger story than unbelievers watching the very same video stream. Oh, and by the way, even as we turn to questions Chunk did that, even as he began with a broken jaw. I mean, what a competitor.

Part III

Does the Execution of Justice in Capital Punishment Force the Executioner to Violate Thinking About What is Good, True, and Beautiful? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a 14-Year-Old Listener of The Briefing

Okay, next, let’s turn to questions. And I’m continually astounded by the questions sent in by young people. A 14-year-old boy sent in a question from South Carolina, and he had already asked about whether the Bible supports the death penalty. And then he comes back to say, “What about the minds of people involved in sentencing someone to death and those in charge of actually administering death? This clearly would be mentally taxing. And several studies explained that people administering the death penalty suffer extreme psychological distress. God tells us to fill our minds and dwell on things that are good and beautiful,” and he cites Philippians 4:8.

Wow. Okay. God bless you for sending in this question. Incredibly thoughtful, incredibly well asked. And you know what? This is also an important issue. You ask about the death penalty and I pointed out the biblical and theological basis for the death penalty. It is not merely something human beings came up with. It’s right there in Genesis 9 in the Noahic Covenant to make very clear the consequences of intentionally, by premeditation, taking the life of a fellow image-bearer of God. And God tells us that that is exactly what is at stake there in Genesis 9.

But this young man comes back to say, “Well, what about being morally involved in sentencing someone to death or in actually having to carry out the execution and being a part of that? What about the psychological distress?” And then of course he goes to Philippians 4, reminding us that we’re to fill our minds and dwell on things that are good and beautiful. Okay, so I’m going to go to that last part first. I’m going to come back and say, justice and righteousness are good and beautiful. And so the right application of the Law of God is beautiful. It’s not beautiful because every part of it is pretty. And this is a theological distinction, there’s a difference between pretty and beautiful. And so I’m not going to call an execution beautiful. I’m going to call righteousness and justice beautiful. And sometimes righteousness and justice demand something that’s downright ugly because of the ugliness of sin and the ugliness of murder in this kind of case. And the fact that, frankly, an awful lot of things in criminal justice are very ugly in themselves, but justice itself is beautiful and it is to be sought after.

And the mental distress, I understand that. That’s one of the reasons why most societies have done everything to try to reduce that. It’s interesting this boy asked about, “What about a jury? What about being on a jury?” Well, that’s where citizens bear the very clear responsibility on the basis of the evidence to make a moral judgment on behalf of the entire community, to uphold not only the law, but what is even more fundamental than the law, and that is the dignity and sanctity of human life. And unless we have Christians willing to be a part of that process, guess what? You can pretty much discount the application of justice. And we can hardly complain if we’re not a part of that.

No one should deny how difficult this is, but it is a good reminder, I want to say to this 14-year-old young man, sometimes the demands of the gospel require us to go into situations that are not pretty, but we have to do so to uphold what is good and beautiful and true. And again, in a fallen world, no one said that was going to be easy. And I think your question also helps us to remember to pray for people who are having to deal with these things and bear this responsibility all the time on behalf of us all.

Part IV

What is the Difference Between Complementarianism and Patriarchalism? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

A listener wrote in, she asked, “Can you explain complementarianism versus patriarchalism?” And she says, “We’re very confused. Do the lines blur at certain points? Do you mind telling me where you stand? If a church does not want to camp on one side or the other, is that something to be cautious about?” Well, let me just say first of all, in terms of complementarianism, which is the right biblically-mandated ordering of the relationships between men and women, different roles for men and women, and in particular in the church and in the home, also with relevance to society. But most critically, where Scripture is emphatic and clear, for instance, the fact that men are to take leadership in the home and men are to take leadership in the church. That the preaching of the word, for example, and those who serve as elders of the church, that that is assigned to men. That’s not because of a human invention, it’s not because of the early church made this decision, it is because this was God’s mandate as is now made clear in Scripture.

But the question here is not between egalitarianism, which is the more liberal position, and complementarianism, it’s between complementarianism and a patriarchal approach. And she asked, “What’s the difference? Is there a difference?” Well, there might be and there might not be. There could be in tone. There could be just in terms of terminology, there could be a difference. And here’s something to watch. There can be a sense in which men assume a domineering role rather than a stewardship, leadership, faithfulness role. And so what Scripture calls for and demands is not domineering, but rather men fulfilling their responsibility, loving their wives, loving their children, and leading the church in love and in faithfulness. And I think that could be the distinction.

However, I’m not saying everyone who uses the term patriarchy, it holds to a harsh, domineering tone. But you ask, “What’s the difference?” If you’re going to make a difference here, I have to assume that that might be something that is baked into this cake. But it just also points to the fact we want to be obedient to Scripture, and that means doing everything Scripture commands us to do. It also means not claiming something as a mandate that’s not found in Scripture, related to what Scripture addresses. I hope that makes sense. I hear maybe an attitude difference here, which could turn into a moral difference. In some context, it could be no difference. And so I can just say I’m thankful for conservative Christians who want to uphold Scripture, and actually can ask and think through even such questions as this.

Part V

Was It Wrong for Erika Kirk to Extend Forgiveness to Charlie Kirk’s Shooter When He Has Not Repented (Yet)? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay, very interesting question comes in from a listener in Ohio, and she points to the incredibly moving statement made by Erica Kirk at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, her assassinated husband, when she spoke of the man who killed her husband and spoke to him directly saying that she forgave him. And she did so because of her Christian faith, the grace and mercy extended to her in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the listener writes in and says, “Well, that doesn’t achieve reconciliation.” She says, “I’m still struggling to understand why Christians would take such a firm stance to label this action as being different from forgiveness.” She says that in Erica, she saw the beauty of the gospel on display.

Okay, so reconciliation is different, because reconciliation requires actually both parties to be involved. And so what Erica Kirk did was unilateral. Without any reference to how the young man might respond to her forgiveness, she unilaterally took the act of forgiving him. Now, by the way, she didn’t say that she doesn’t believe there should be a legal prosecution, that there shouldn’t be a court trial, and that justice should not be satisfied as well. But in terms of her own Christian character, because of Christ’s mandate, she so sweetly, kindly, and I think just really with a wonderful tone, spoke to this young man extending her forgiveness. And here’s just a reality, we can’t bring about reconciliation unilaterally. And that’s true when it comes to, say, a disagreement we may have in any context. The Christian may want reconciliation and may forgive, but that doesn’t mean it’s always received.

I can’t talk about this without going to the gospel itself, and just making very clear that God accomplishes reconciliation. He brings about reconciliation in a way that we can’t, and that’s because God is sovereign. And so God sent his son to die on the cross. The Father raised him on the third day as the vindication of his perfect atonement. And we can speak of Christ achieving reconciliation as he died for those the Lord would give to him. And so even as we respond to the gospel, we understand that we do so only because the Holy Spirit has enlivened us and we are drawn to the gospel by the power of God and his sovereign power.

It’s a reminder of the fact that that is our most important understanding of what reconciliation means. It’s the reconciliation that we didn’t just agree to, it’s not even the reconciliation that we just thought was so sweet, we’d accept it, it is the reconciliation that a sovereign God affected. And here’s the difference, we’re not sovereign. We are called in obedience to God to forgive those who have wronged us. We can’t achieve reconciliation, but we are to seek by God’s grace to do so. And I think this is what Erica Kirk was doing. Reconciliation is more than she can unilaterally accomplish as a human being, but she did what by grace she did in faithfulness.

Part VI

How Should Christians Think About Vasectomy? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay, I have to be careful because when I say send in any question about anything, people do just that. And I understand it, and sometimes I look at a question and I go, “All right, I need to talk about that.” So I’m doing so because the question was asked. A young man, a young father who will soon be the father of four, he’s asking about a vasectomy, and whether or not that is theologically and biblically justified. And he adds a very crucial truth in this because his wife is facing medical difficulties with pregnancies.

Here’s the thing, I believe that God gave us marriage as a whole. We are to receive it as a whole. That is as a composite of all the goods that God has created or put into marriage. And included in there is the conjugal relationship of the husband and the wife, and central to this is the purpose of having children. And thus I would have to warn gravely to a Christian couple who are seeking to avoid having children. I think that’s just really, really clear. Biblical theology is clear from the beginning as it is, then all you need is Genesis 1 and you’re there, all right? But it does not say that every Christian couple is theologically and morally obligated to have as many children as they might physically, even at the risk of the mother’s health.

So, that being the case, I will simply say that I think ,by the way, this is just a truth experienced by every Christian couple who are faithful to one another and who reach a certain age, the question of pregnancies are removed from the equation. And so before that, is it possible ethically for Christian husband to have a vasectomy? I would say, with fear and trembling, it may very well be, to the strengthening of your marriage, given the fact that you have been fully open to the gift of children, you’ve received those children with joy, and there’s a medical indication why your wife should not be pregnant. I don’t believe you’re obligated to do so. I also believe your conscience should not be bound by others not to do so.

Honestly, I’m writing a book that will help to deal with this right now. And from what I can tell from the pattern of questions coming into The Briefing, it’s a rather urgent question for some. And I will simply say, God bless you. And, by the way, this is something a Christian man should discuss, not only with his wife, but perhaps very profitably with some Christian brothers, including older brothers within the context of the church and perhaps even the elders, just in order to help think these things through faithfully. And as for that new baby coming, God bless you both, and congratulations in advance.