Friday, September 6, 2024

Part I

---

New York’s Bus System as a Modern Parable: What One Million People Per Day Stealing Bus Fares Teaches about Sin and the Fragility of Civilization

Sometimes we have to deal with these gigantic moral issues that are instantly recognized as gigantic moral issues. War and peace, right and wrong, life and death, abortion. You just go down the list and you think about it. The definition of the family. Understanding of marriage. We’re talking about massive issues. But sometimes there’s an issue that appears to be a little issue, and then we recognize the fabric of the cosmos is kind of torn by even these little issues. You see this even in Christian conversation. That’s a big sin. This is a little sin. Well, there are sins with greater obvious effect, but it’s really hard to define biblically, things as little sins or big sins. But then again, we do recognize when it comes to moral importance, even in terms of the law of God given to Israel, we talk about the 10 Commandments.

So in other words, these 10 words in the Hebrew that tell us you pay particular attention to these 10 words. But then again, in the Old Testament, we’re given the comprehensive law, which includes hundreds of commandments. And all that, just to remind us that we better be really careful when we talk about something just being, say, a small revolt against the authority of God, or a small tear in the fabric of civilization. Okay, so an illustration will help us, right? So how about this? Front page of the New York Times. Here’s the headline, “One Million Cheat Bus Fare Daily Foiling MTA.” That is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. And we’re told that New York City’s MTA, here’s the big surprise is under financial pressure. The financial pressure is more acute after COVID than it was before the COVID Pandemic.

And even as the problem of say, stealing a ride on the bus by not paying fare, even as that’s not a new thing, well, there was a time during the pandemic when the MTA said, “We’re going to run the buses for free.” And some people decided, “Well, that means forever for me.” And so we’re talking about a million people every day. So you think about a problem and you say, “Well, not paying bus fare in New York that can’t amount to much, right?” Well, actually it can be a little bit more than you think. But if a million people do it every day, again, do the math, a million people do it every day, you’re losing complete control in moral terms of your civilization. Now, I point out this made the front page of the New York Times. So you’re looking at war and peace. You’re looking at calls for a ceasefire in the Mid East. You’re looking at headline like “Russian Air Raid Reminds Ukraine of Enemy’s Might.” You’re looking at things like that.

And then on the same page above the fold, “One Million Cheat Bus Fare Daily Foiling MTA.” Okay, I’m going to say that article really does kind of belong there. And it belongs there because it’s not about one new Yorker cheating the fare on a bus. It’s about one new Yorkers doing it every day. And repeatedly, by the way, and we’re talking about a financial crisis for New York. It threatens the future of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is not going to be able to transport people if it can’t meet its own bills, pay its own personnel. Fascinating moral insights in this article. We’re told that roughly one out of every two passengers now boards without paying. Okay, one million? That means one million out of two million. That means half of the people aren’t paying. Imagine being on an airplane and you’re taking a flight from city A to city B and finding out that half the people on the plane refuse to pay anything.

Well, you can figure that out pretty quickly. That airline is in other words, broke. And the system doesn’t work. The system also doesn’t work with a far smaller fare because the principle is the same. Dishonesty, whether it’s in hundreds or thousands or millions of dollars, or for that matter, just a matter of some sense, every day, a million times adds up to a crisis. The Christian worldview just affirms that and says, yes, sin’s never a small thing. Now again, I don’t think you’re going to have the FBI going after someone in New York who one time sneaks on the bus and doesn’t pay the fare. I don’t think that’s going to be a federal priority. But when it comes to actually running a city, it turns out that’s very important. You can’t have a city transportation authority. You can’t have an MTA, you can’t have the buses running if half the people aren’t paying the fare all the time, indeed stealing it.

The Times tells us, “During the first three months of this year, 48% of bus riders did not pay.” Tells us also that, “14% of subway riders evaded fares mechanically and physically.” That’s a little more difficult to do, but 14% still a very significant number, but that does pale against 48%, which is again, roughly half the people aren’t paying the fares. A bus operator or a bus driver in New York is quoted as saying that he knows the riders are stealing the fare. They are not paying the fare. They’re sneaking on the bus. But he avoids confrontation. “First and foremost, I avoid all confrontation. Me, I just concentrate on driving and I don’t say nothing.” That’s a direct quote. “I don’t say nothing.” And you can understand he doesn’t want a confrontation. He doesn’t want to get into a fight. And it’s a reminder to us as well that this is how civilization fails.

I’m not putting it all in this bus operator as he’s called, and simply going to say, this is the way civilization fails. It fails because people see wrong being done and civilization being subverted, and they say, “I’m not going to do anything about it.” I want to be honest. If I’m on a bus in New York, I probably not going to make an issue as I see it either. I’ll make myself part of the problem here. I’ll say, “That’s not my job. I don’t even live in New York. I’m not even sure why I’m on this bus.” But in a Christian worldview perspective, I just want to telescope out for a moment and talk about three words, order and disorder and anarchy, because those are the enemies of civilization. The gift of civilization, the gift of the rule of law, the gift of government in the right sense.

And yes, government in the original sense is one of God’s gifts to us. It’s a good. Without that, you have lawlessness, you don’t have courts, you don’t have police, and you have anarchy. And so the two words that are really said in juxtaposition here are order and disorder. Now, let’s point out, the biblical worldview is all about order, and I’m going to tell you where it starts. It doesn’t start with crime and punishment. It starts with creation. Because what you have in the successive days of creation is God showing His glory, the sovereign creator God of the universe, showing glory by increased order, more detailed order, from lower order to higher order, which is why it’s on the last day of God’s creation, the human beings, the pinnacle of God’s creative act, the image bearer that God has created again to bear his own image.

That is why you have order out of disorder. You have the separation of the water from the firmament. It is separating disorder into order. That is God’s character. That is God’s work, and we’re to learn from it. We’re also shown in Scripture that it is our task to bring order out of disorder. That’s one of the reasons why we have to start our conversation about order with the order of creation, which tells us that after the creation of human beings, male and female created He them, you have the organization, order out of disorder of marriage. The union of a man and a woman. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they should become one flesh. It’s just a reminder of what marriage is: “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” And that’s bringing order out of disorder.

And this is why when you confuse marriage and you confuse the family coming out of marriage, you really set a virus of disorder in the society. You intentionally bring in disorder rather than order. And there are people who say, “Well, order is oppressive. Well, you know what? Disorder is just deadly.” And by the way, order can be overdone. And that’s one of the reasons why we have to return to biblical principles to make sure we’re not overdoing the order. We don’t want the Congress showing up in our home telling parents how to raise their children, which by the way, the parents raising children is another consummate example of order out of disorder. You get a bunch of kids together who are not parented, they’re not disciplined, they’re not taught, you have disorder. It takes parental authority, love, investment and time to bring order out of disorder. And you want to know what disorder looks like? Just imagine a situation in which toddlers are running the universe. Cute for a moment, but deadly in effect. 

The other kind of depressing thing about this article on the front page of the New York Times is that no solution is in sight. So it’s just a declaration in the headline of the fact that a million cheat bus fare daily, and that turns out to be about, well half of all the riders in the bus system in the MTA, but it’s also not at all clear how you bring order out of disorder once you embrace disorder to this scale. And so order and disorder are two words very crucial to the Christian worldview. 

Anarchy is that third word, which means an absolute embrace of disorder. And in Scripture that is demonstrated as the way that leads to death, not the way that leads to life. It is evidence of sin. It is not evidence of righteousness. And so where you find Christians beginning with marriage and the Christian home and the Christian Church. And where Christians are involved, you should find order being brought out of disorder and not find disorder replacing order. A good thing for all of us to think about.

Part II

---

What is the Difference Between Democracy and a Constitutional Republic? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

But next, we’re going to turn to questions. And once again, I’m always encouraged by the seriousness and the depth of questions sent in by listeners to the briefing. And sometimes the questions come in and they just remind me that repeatedly sometimes we just have to come back and define terms. And so I want to thank readers for asking questions that point us in that direction.

And so we have a woman who wrote in very kindly to ask, “What then is the difference between democracy and constitutional republic?” That’s a distinction I make over and over again. The distinction between say, a pure democracy and a constitutional republic or a constitutional order such as the American constitutional order. And we sometimes confuse that by the way we speak and sometimes that’s inevitable. And so you say, well over here you have tyranny over here you have democracy. And the word democracy, particularly in the 20th century has become more and more associated comfortably with the way many Americans describe our government.

But you’d have the ancient Greeks show up and say, “This is not a democracy because democracy means the rule of the people. And that means majoritarian rule, direct majoritarian rule in every case.” And so the only laws that would be in place are laws that are adopted by the majority of the citizens through a democratic process. That’s pure democracy. There really is no legislature. There really is no constitution. You don’t need a constitution. All you need is a mass meeting of people. Now, obviously that only works if you’re a very small, to use the Greek word, polis. A very small society, a very small politic.

The moment you get to a larger politic, guess what? You have to have some kind of representation. If you have representation, you have some kind of order. But the bigger problem with democracy is you really don’t want to put all these questions to a democratic vote. You really don’t want to have Americans have to vote on the speed limit in every case, in every jurisdiction, mile by mile. You really do not want to have to take all the big questions to the people. Do you want to have to go to the people to ask whether or not American citizens would vote to go to war if we are invaded as we were with Pearl Harbor in 1941?

You look at this and you recognize, no, that just doesn’t work. And it’s not just a question of scale. This is what’s really important from the Christian worldview. It’s not just a question of scale, it’s also the fact that even though we want a government that is truly representative and that requires the vote, so I want to be very clear in a constitutional republic, there is a voting system that recognizes that citizens have a right and/or responsibility to be involved in making these decisions, but they rarely do so directly on a question.

They more commonly do so through a constitutional order, which sets up in the case of the United States, very thankfully, a constitutional republic in which you have voters voting most importantly to elect representatives, to elect leaders who are to meet together, to legislate in the case of the legislative branch, to execute in the case of the executive branch headed by the president, and to decide cases through the judicial branch that is through the courts. This is why a constitutional republic is actually light years to be preferred over a democracy.

Or to take the matter another way, pure democracy would be first of all just impossible in the United States. You couldn’t have a functioning government. But we do use the word democracy in order to contrast say most of the governments in Western Europe, and Australia, and New Zealand, and when you look at North America, Canada, and the United States and actually many other nations around the world, it’s interesting how many of them, even if they aren’t really democratic, they at least claim to be democratic.

And in a sense, democratic as a modifier, as an adjective, now means more democratic than tyrannical. It means that voters have the opportunity to participate in the process by voting. And citizenship comes with what’s called the franchise, which means the power to vote. 

But going all the way back, let’s just say to the founding of the United States, let’s go back not only to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, let’s go to the end of the war and let’s recognize that in the period before the adoption of the US Constitution under what was then known as the federal government under the Articles of Confederation, the reality is it wasn’t very workable. It’s because it didn’t have a sophisticated and representative constitutional system in place with the credibility to offer national leadership and federal governmental authority.

And so the United States, as we know, it really only came into constitutional reality, I didn’t say national reality, but constitutional reality, with the ratification of the Constitution at the end of the 18th century. And without that, I don’t think the American order would even be discussed as an American order except as a footnote in world history. But thankfully, America is not a footnote in world history. The United States operates as a constitutional republic. Now, I think there are dangers to this constitutional system of government, and there are threats to the continued vitality of the United States as a constitutional republic. But the difference is that democracy is the direct rule of the people, which sounds really good until you try to figure out exactly how that’s going to work, and then you recognize you don’t want to have to answer all those questions. Now, we may be facing a crisis in our constitutional system and the people on the left are calling for the abandonment of it or the radical modification of it. And there are people who are conservatives who are also quite concerned about threats to our democratic order. 

But the very fact that you have the definitional issue here being the constitutional republic, points out that the vast majority of Americans have figured out we don’t want a direct democracy. We really do want a constitutional republic. The question is, are we going to continue to honor the constitution that has served us so well for so long? That’s the very interesting public debate.

Part III

---

Should Church Choirs Perform Without Congregational Participation? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Well, I just had a question sent in, and in order to make the point, this particular listener gave his name, Anonymous Anonymous, okay, we’ll just say we’ll keep it anonymous. And yet the question here is very interesting, two separate questions about worship. “Should a church choir sing music on Sunday morning that does not include the congregation?” Okay, here’s what’s really interesting. I’m going to say the way you ask the question, the answer is no, but I want to step back and say that I don’t think that means that the choir should never sing music on Sunday morning on behalf of the congregation.

I hope that distinction in language is helpful and clear. The way the question was asked, and I know what’s meant here. I’m just taking advantage of the way it’s written to make a point. Should a church choir sing music on Sunday morning that does not include the congregation? No. Because the congregation, if it is right, I believe in terms of church order, the congregation should be worshiping in terms of the choir-singing as well. So if it’s just a performance, and sometimes that’s the real danger is that the congregation is not singing, it just looks so much like a performance as we see out in the world, that people assume that’s what it is. But I don’t think that’s always what it is. And I just want to tell you, I’m a veteran of this of a long time, and so you can just hear my experience and say, well, that’s giving too much credit to your experience.

But I was in the children’s choir, I was in the junior high choir, I was in the middle school choir. I was in the senior high choir. I’ve been in choirs a long time in my life. And I do recognize that there are dangers, there are temptations when it comes to a choir in worship, but I am not steadfastly against it. I guess I made that point pretty clear. I just think it needs to be very clear that this is not a performance, but I believe there is certain music that can be sung by a choir on behalf of the congregation that can be teaching and edifying in terms of Christian worship. I’m just not going to be absolutely dogmatic about this, because quite frankly, I’ve been a part of churches in which you had choir, and I’m a part of a church that doesn’t have a choir, at least in terms of the traditional choir role in Protestant worship.

And I understand the arguments for both, and I’m going to say I think the biblical argument is the congregation should always, always be involved as the people of God gathered for worship. Whether they’re the ones singing at a specific moment I think is a different question. So I couldn’t get to both questions in that list there, but at least wanted to take that question. I think it’s a really good question that could help others to think through this issue as well.

Part IV

---

Is It Sinful to Hope the Lord Does Not Return Until After I Get to Experience Joys of Life, Like My Children Growing Up and Getting Married? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay, really sweet letter from a mom and by really sweet, I mean really sweet and really honest. And this requires us to think a little. All right, so here’s a mom who loves her children so much. “After many, many years of struggling with infertility, two years ago, God graciously allowed me to become the mother of twins.” Congratulations. We share your joy. She then writes, “My children are an unbelievable blessing and I’ve loved every minute of watching them grow. I know that the Bible says we are supposed to eagerly anticipate the Lord’s return, but the thought of his possible return before I get to see my children grow up makes me want to cry. Is it sinful of me to hope the Lord holds off on his return for a little while longer?” Oh, what an honest question from an honest mom, and I appreciate this listener asking this question with such candor.

I just want to say I can immediately reflect upon this, and now not only as a father, but also as a grandfather. And I look at all the earthly joys that the Lord has given me through family, and children, and now extended family and grandchildren, and I can just say this is biblical in terms of God’s blessing. At the same time, I just want to kind of restructure the way we’re thinking about this, by going back to say that when the Lord returns and establishes his kingdom, it is going to be so infinitely and absolutely good and so glorious that we’re not going to look back at any earthly experience and say, “I want to go back to that.” And just the sweetness of the coming kingdom of Christ needs to be affirmed by saying that as sweet as this mother’s love for her twins is reflected in this question, you’re not going to look back and say, “I want to go back to that.”.

And so I look at this and I say, as you’re raising these twins to the glory of God, as you’re loving and cherishing them, just understand that God’s promises to us in the gospel are greater than anything we can know on this earth. And your sweet question reminds us that we can know so many unspeakably sweet things on this earth. There’re evil things. Yes, there’re sinful things, yes. They’re grievous things, but they’re also glorious things. And a mother and a father’s love for each other and for their children is one of the glorious things we get to see. And yes, I don’t think it’s wrong for you to anticipate and hope for the opportunity to see your twins raised to the glory of God. And I want to say for you, dear mom, writing this letter, I will hope for you the opportunity if the Lord tarries for you to be a grandmother as well. I can just tell you it just gets sweeter. 

But I want to assure you above all things, that when the Lord returns and calls his own, when the trumpet sounds and when we have a new heaven and a new earth in the unmitigated and mediated glorious reign of Christ, we’re not going to look back to planet earth and say, “I want anything back there.” It’s going to be beyond our imagination, which by definition means we can’t imagine it. We just know it’s true. And we yearn for it. God bless you for the question. By the way, it’s amazing in the Christian worldview how children make us happy. The listener who wrote in with the question said that I am known by his two-year-old as Momo. I guess they’re listening to the briefing. I just want to tell you, what a privilege is it that at my stage of life, a two-year-old anywhere knows you regardless of what the two-year-old calls you. I take this as a real encouragement. Thank you.

Part V

---

Can Dreams Be Sinful? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay, precious question sent in by a 15-year-old young woman and from another country. I’m just going to leave it that way. She writes in about dreams and she asks, “Since dreams are made up by our brains, can one sin through what one dreams about? If so, what can one do about it if one can only seem to control what oneself does in the dream and not everything else that happens?”

I’m impressed by many things in this question, but for one thing, I’m impressed by the absolutely perfect English usage and you don’t see that very often. So I appreciate it. But I also want to say to this 15-year-old that this is a very honest question, and I think just about every Christian, and I think you can take just about every Christian has to at some point struggle with this question. And sometimes it comes with particular intensity. And sometimes it just comes as kind of a regular question.

And I want to say, first of all, the way to deal with any sin is to confess it and give it to the Lord knowing that the grace and mercy of Christ is sufficient for all our sin. But I also want to step back and say we have control over our brains to some extent, to a considerable extent. We certainly have responsibility for our thinking at all times. But when we’re conscious, we have the ability to think more directionally in terms of just requiring ourselves consciously to think this thing. When we are asleep and dreaming, we do not have the same level of control, but instead we have the obvious question, what is it that I’ve been thinking about when I’m awake that makes me think about this, or think these thoughts when I’m asleep? But then we have to understand we’re surrounded by all kinds of things or all kinds of inputs in terms of what we see and hear.

There are things that emerge in our dreams. I think any honest Christian would say, “I wouldn’t want to think those things. I wouldn’t want to think about those things.” But I just want to speak to a young believer here and say, I just want you to know that this predicament is shared by all Christians and all Christians who are honest. And I think this is one of the reasons why we need to fill our minds as much as possible with holy things. We need to fill our minds as much as possible with Scripture. And I will tell you that something I learned a long time ago in my Christian life, and I’m very thankful for this, is that when I am in a situation where I’m thinking something I don’t want to think about, I do one of two things. I read the Scripture, or I mentally in I must say the truest sense, sing a hymn.

I kind of play a soundtrack of a hymn in my mind. And sometimes just turn on a hymn and play it and let that sound of a biblical scriptural hymn just kind of fill your mind. I don’t believe we can put our minds in neutral. I don’t believe we can at any point just tell ourselves to think about nothing. We have to say, I’m not going to think about that thing. I’m going to think about something else. And I don’t trust myself to be able to come up with something else to think about. I’m going to trust God’s provision, first of all, in Scripture. But also through songs, hymns and spiritual songs to reorient my thinking. And so I just want to tell you–and what a sweet question, I can’t thank you enough for asking the question in this candor–when you struggle with this, just give it to the Lord.

We have to confess our sins anyway, and they are known and unknown to us. We even need to ask God’s forgiveness for sins we don’t even know we have committed. And so, it’s just always right to turn to the Lord with a prayer of repentance and faith. But it’s also true that, we understand that our primary responsibility to fill our minds when we are conscious and awake with the things that are righteous, the things that are true, the things that are pure, whatsoever things, as the Scripture says, think on these things. That’s good advice.

And that doesn’t mean that we will ever escape the problem of thinking about things in our dreams we don’t want to think about. But you know what? It does put it in a completely different context. What an honor to receive questions like these, and my prayer is that we handle them biblically and helpfully. You can send in your question by just writing me at mail@albertmohler.com.