Thursday, January 9, 2025

Today in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the nation will observe a formal state funeral. It’s the funeral of the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. It’s going to be at 10:00 A.M., although the events will begin far earlier, the former president’s body is expected to leave the rotunda of the Capitol about nine o’clock on the way to the National Cathedral. And then after a service, which is expected to end by 11:15, the body of the former president will be carried to Andrews Air Force base or Joint Base Andrews, as it is known now, and then it will be flown to Georgia eventually. By 5:20 this afternoon, the internment ceremony in Plains is expected to begin. We will talk on tomorrow’s edition of The Briefing about what happens today in these observances, the meaning of the state funeral.

But just keep in mind that what defines a state funeral as a state funeral is that this funeral though it will follow a traditional Christian pattern and will take place in a building clearly designated for Christianity, more on that tomorrow as well, it is a state funeral because it is being conducted by the state. It is a government act. And in the United States, that is reserved for a very few individuals. And as I say, former presidents certainly rank as those whose families can choose a state funeral. It is not automatic even for a former president, but it was the choice of former President Carter and his family in arrangements that began as far back as 1986. Just consider how long he lived dying just days ago at age 100. In anticipation of that funeral, it’s a wonderful thing for all Americans to watch, for American evangelical families to watch and understand the meaning of this service, the meaning of the historic passage, the recognition of a former president.

This is the time when the formality points to the dramatic meaning of the event and of such events to our national life. We’ll be talking about it tomorrow, but remember the state funeral begins about ten o’clock this morning.

The big news of course around the nation right now, and frankly it’s making headlines around the world, is the outbreak of fire in the area in Southern California, particularly in Los Angeles County. At ground zero, so to speak, of this fire is the conflagration that has begun in Pacific Palisades. The fires together as of last night had killed about five persons and there have been thousands of structures that have been destroyed. And by the way, these are structures that include in at least some of these communities from Malibu to Pacific Palisades and beyond some of the most expensive private residences in the United States. And as we look at this, there are vast issues of worldview concern.

First of all, of course, we are looking at the devastating power of fire. And when you look at the fires right now in the Los Angeles area, we’re also looking at something that most Americans don’t have to think about. In Los Angeles, they talk regularly about fire weather. And in the case of what has come together over the last several days, they talk about extreme fire weather. What would that mean? It means very high winds. The winds as of yesterday were reaching even the velocity of about 100 miles per hour and that is added to very dry conditions. In Los Angeles, what is known as the winter wet season is beginning late. And so even as these winds have kicked up, the wetness that comes by the rain has not yet arrived, and that means extremely dry conditions and the velocity of the winds and the sustained nature of the winds, especially whipping around so many of the mountains and canyons in the Los Angeles area, it has created this extreme fire weather.

And as we now know, it is devastating. So our first concern is of course, for human life, five persons already have died and the death toll is almost surely to rise. Some of the casualties probably will not known until some days from now. And frankly right now there is no assurance that these fires can be easily halted. And that’s for a couple of reasons. Number one, because of the extreme fire weather and recall that when you are looking at weather of this velocity, you can’t put up the aircraft that are very strategically used in these fires to help limit the fire spread and then to put out the fires themselves. You may have noticed that the news networks were showing mostly rather close up glimpses of the blazes. And that’s because even the news helicopters could not get into the air until late yesterday afternoon.

Once those images did come in, they showed the devastating enlargement of the fire. And by some estimations, this is already the largest and most devastating fire in the history of Los Angeles County. So number one, again, our concern is first of all, for human life, for saving human life. Secondly, the concern is for just look around you, the reality of human civilization. That is to say houses and supermarkets and roadways and schools and hospitals and all the things that human beings build as a part of our civilization, they add to human flourishing. They are a part of the dominion mandate given us in scripture. And thus, as we’re looking at the devastation that comes in this fire, you recognize it is as if you are setting civilization back in those areas. It is first of all an issue of danger to human lives. It’s secondly a danger to human civilization.

And as is so often the case in a big tragedy like this, we have to separate the moral question into two different categories. And this is simply absolutely essential. The first category is natural evil. The second category is moral evil. Now, natural evil means earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, vast natural events. And by the way, Genesis 3 says that those are deadly precisely because of the effects of sin even throughout the universe, all over the planet. But the fact is that we are looking at natural events. Human beings don’t create earthquakes, we don’t orchestrate hurricanes. And so the category of natural evil plays a very big part in this because the fires themselves are not being assigned to human agency. It’s not as if someone set the fire deliberately or even at this point by accident.

It is something that was simply probably at least it is believed now the combination of factors, the extreme fire weather, and all you need is a spark or two, and this kind of fire is underway. So we’re not looking to point fingers of responsibility at nature, but moral evil is a different category and this means that there’s human responsibility and that responsibility comes with moral accountability as well. And so you ask how does that play into this? Well, one of the complicating factors in terms of this fire are widespread reports that fire hydrants had run dry. Now who’s responsible for that? We may find out the answer to that question soon or it may not ever particularly be known right down to the level of an individual. But this much is known. California has had a water problem for a long time and California’s leadership has been woefully inadequate over a period of decades in responding to that water crisis.

Just look at the fact that over the course of the last three to four years, California has received an unusually heavy rainfall and we’re talking about what is estimated as trillions of gallons of water. Where’s all that water gone? Right into the Pacific Ocean. And you say where else could it go? And the answer is into reservoirs and into holding facilities. And California has known for decades that these were necessary. And even as California continued to build and its population continued to grow, the vulnerabilities just increased. And politically, one of the big problems here is that you’re looking at a big government that is extremely slow, obscenely slow at doing just about anything like creating a reservoir. And even as the media have poked at the president-elect, President Donald J. Trump for having during his first term in office said that California makes itself vulnerable by actions such as not removing ground cover.

The reality is he was right then and he is right now. It is of course impossible given the topography and the vegetation in California, much of it very beautiful, it is impossible to suggest removing all of that or even trimming all of that. But the reality is that there has been a reluctance, driven at least in some part by ecological concerns. There’s been a reluctance to clear the ground in such a way that it might limit the spread of this kind of fire. Now, once again, we’re talking about some level of human moral responsibilities. Not clear how much of this could have been prevented by any action, but certainly when we’re looking at the threat to the water supply, we are looking at very important moral responsibility. And in order to understand that, consider the fact that California has known it has needed to build reservoirs to hold water and a lot of water and a lot of reservoirs that would require a lot of dams.

And there have been strategic plans to do this and even specific plans such as is the case with the site’s reservoir. That is a $4.4 billion project and it is to take place in the Western Sacramento Valley. It’s been talked about for 40 years. It has been at least contemplated a formal project. Voters in California authorized the action with a special funding mechanism years ago. But guess how much work has been done on it? How much construction has been done on that? Well, you can answer your own question. Basically none. A report offered by CalMatters there in California reports it this way, “The site’s reservoir a $4.4 billion project to add dams and store more water that’ll be sent south is still years away from completion. The final environmental report is expected this year before construction of two large dams and other structures can begin.” We are told that the project “has been gaining steam in support since 2014 when voters approved Proposition 1, a water bond that authorized $2.7 billion for new storage projects.”

Still, they say this project remains “almost a decade away.” Now the interesting thing is that this article was published in 2023 in the hopes that the project would be formally underway the next year in 2024. We’re speaking in the early days of 2025. Guess what has happened? You can answer the question. Now, Christians operating out of a biblical worldview, understand there is a proper ecological concern. There’s a proper concern for ecology, a proper concern for wanting to be good stewards of the planet, good stewards of nature, good stewards of a river, good stewards of a valley. We want to be good stewards. But that biblical theme of stewardship goes with the theme of dominion, and that means that we are to use what God has given us and the use of a dam in this case would literally save lives, not just save houses, but the absence of that water is a deadly factor.

And by the way, this goes into feeding California. It goes into just well, as is now very much a concern in some places, flushing the toilets in the state, you’ve got to have water and you have to have water going to fire hydrants or you face disaster upon disaster. But thinking in those terms, and at this point California is an unusual case at the state level of bloated administrative state of vast government spending that is simply out of control and projects that never seem to get built. But this is also a problem across the country. And on the ecological side, it is interesting and ironic even as we are considering these things today that we can go back to the late 1970s when a major dam project in the state of Tennessee was put on hold and that was the Tellico Dam. It was put on hold in the late 1970s precisely because a fish had been discovered in the region that would be displaced.

The argument was that it would be endangered and could go extinct. It was a specific fish species that was identified as the snail darter. But on January the 3rd of 2025, experts at Yale University put out a major study based upon genetic evidence saying that there is actually no species known as the snail darter. It is actually another species. It is simply a variant of a species that isn’t endangered or as the Yale University release said, “The tiny fish discovered at a lower stretch of the little Tennessee River in 1973 is not a distinct species at all.” You got to love the next words in the sentence, “meaning it was never endangered.” In other words, if it doesn’t exist, it can’t be endangered. The Tellico Dam was eventually built. And here’s another irony in terms of how we’re discussing these issues on The Briefing today.

Once it was claimed that the fish was there and this became a major issue in terms of national politics with the Endangered Species Act, but nevertheless, the dam was built, construction was resumed once accommodations to protect the endangered species that we now know wasn’t even a species, once that was in place, the project was able to go forward because of a waiver signed by the president of the United States, who was then Jimmy Carter. Now one of the challenges to Christian faithfulness is putting these things into proper proportion, but the Christian worldview does tell us that we begin with human beings and with human flourishing. We have concern for other species. We have concern for all the flora and fauna you might say around us. We have concern for human impacts, but we have a prior concern, the most fundamental concern is for human beings and human flourishing.

That’s what’s missing when you look at the conditions there in California, and I’m not talking about the weather conditions, I’m talking about the political conditions, and those are based upon worldview considerations and therein lies the problem. We will pray for the folks there in California and watch that story closely.

We need to turn to big news, and in this case it comes from Meta. That is the parent company to Facebook and specifically it comes from Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of the social media platform and the larger company. The announcement that came in a video he released on Tuesday says that Facebook is going to make a very abrupt and very major change in terms of its policies. It is no longer going to cooperate with outside agencies in so-called fact-checking. Zuckerberg said, “We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”

In a rather remarkable speech, Zuckerberg went on to say that he admitted that the fact-checking process had led to what was effectively a system of censorship and that free speech had been constricted by the use of this fact-checking apparatus. Now, it was conducted by outside groups, but Facebook really did allow those outside groups to have a lot of influence and that led to complaints by conservatives in particular that they were being fact-check to the point of being canceled on platforms such as Facebook. Now, something similar was done for a time. It was less specific in terms of the regimen, but nonetheless, something like this was done on Twitter before Elon Musk bought it, changed it to X, and basically reversed the fact-checking policies.

But even then there was the accusation that Twitter had also been restricting speech, particularly from conservatives. And just to point out how this works, you just look at the fact that when you talk about, say a transgender question, the fact-checking process that is undertaken that Facebook was using and it was linked to these outside groups, you would have statements that would lead the fact-checkers to say that’s not true.

And so if you say for example, anything contrary in some context to something like the LGBTQ revolution and you make a claim concerning, say, transgender identity, then the fact-checkers could, it was not true that they could remove your post. They would simply demote it in terms of algorithms so that fewer people, if any, would ever see it. The Los Angeles Times reports the story this way, “Meta will dismantle its extensive fact-checking program in the United States. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday ending a practice that has sought to limit the spread of falsehoods on its platforms but has been assailed as censorship in conservative circles. The company said it would allow its users to add content or debunk claims in notes that appear next to specific posts, a process pioneered by Elon Musk’s X. Meta will also lift restrictions on hot-button topics such as immigration and gender identity to focus on illegal or high-severity violations.”

So once again, Facebook is not saying there will be absolutely no restriction. And in particular, it points to the misuse of materials related to children and illegal activities. And I think all of us understand that. The problem is that the fact-checking regimen that was put in place and was conducted by official groups designated as fact-checkers, it was not neutral in terms of its application. It was not neutral because say on issues related to COVID-19, any number of other controversies, there was an official line that was just established as a fact. Any deviation for that was treated as being unfactual and thus it was reduced in terms of its exposure. And sometimes in some of these situations on some of these platforms, there was an absolute, or at least a virtually absolute impossibility, anyone’s going to see such a post. As recently as 2019, Zuckerberg had said that he was committed to free speech.

“Increasingly today across the spectrum it seems like there are more people who prioritize getting the political outcomes that they want over making sure that everyone can be heard.” He said then, “I believe we must continue to stand for free expression.” But in the period between 2019 and the end of 2014, Zuckerberg took a very different tack, as did Meta and Facebook, and that was towards the use of these fact-checking groups. And quite frankly, it led to the silencing effectively of many conservative arguments. Now, I want to be clear, the Christian worldview is established upon a clear understanding of truth, and that means we understand that the opposite of truth is not another truth. The opposite of truth is a lie, and we understand that a biblical understanding of truth makes very clear that a lie is a very serious sin. But we also understand that when it comes to the political exchange, you have arguments that are made and if one side can say that’s factual and they can say, “We will demote your message because it will be declared non-factual that honestly you don’t have any public debate.”

And as I say, “It’s one thing to argue about COVID-19, you could have medical doctors here and others making the arguments, but I will point to the issues related to LGBTQ revolution and there is just extremely clear there was an ideological bias and whether or not that completely disappears, that remains to be seen. But it is interesting that in this statement released on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg was very clear about the fact that he felt that the fact-checking process was not serving his customers, those who have registered and are members of Facebook, has not served that community well, thus has not served the purpose well or the public purpose well. And understand, Facebook Meta, it’s a big company, its purpose is to make a lot of money. And so in one sense, one of the big problems for Zuckerberg is that there hasn’t been a big win, a big commercial win or a big new product in terms of the metaverse in quite a long time.

He cannot afford for Facebook to become a big problem, and especially with the incoming Trump administration, clearly the political terrain has changed and is changing. There are many on the political left who of course are not happy about this at all. You have The New York Times making the statement, “Mr. Zuckerberg has long been a pragmatist who has gone where the political winds have blown. He has flip-flopped on how much political content should be shown to Facebook and Instagram users previously saying social networks should be about fun, relatable content from family and friends. But then on Tuesday saying Meta would show more personalized political content.” The New York Times also says that Zuckerberg has told his leadership team, which by the way now includes a major conservative figure on the board, that was not true, and at least in terms of the executive team, there was a clear shift.

Nick Clegg, who had been a very high executive, is out. He was a former politician and party leader in Britain. He’s been replaced by Joel Kaplan, who is a pretty well-known conservative. So there you see, or at least with ties to conservatives, ties to the Republican Party. All of this is at this point a very, very small concession you might say to conservatives in this country. But nonetheless, it is an important policy move and it’s really interesting to see that the fact-checkers are not happy. Their fact-checking tells them that canceling their services is factually not a good idea. Kate Gibson of CBS News reports in the MoneyWatch column with an article. Here’s the headline, “Mark Zuckerberg says ending fact-checks will curb censorship. Fact-checkers say he’s wrong.” You got to love that fact-Checkers say he’s wrong. You have a man, Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

He said, “Facts are not censorship. Fact-checkers never censored anything.” Well, that is a complete misrepresentation. If you say fact-checkers never censored anything, then you imply that they had no purpose other than simply noting what they would accept as factual and noting what they thought was non-factual. That’s not the case. The whole point was that you had messages, postings that were demoted and were made far less visible because of their content. One of the leaders of these fact-checking organizations pointed out that it was Meta that made the ultimate decisions based on policy, but nonetheless, the advisories were given by these outside groups. Now, I just want to return to the fundamental fact, and I lean into fact, that Christianity is predicated upon not only the existence of truth and the knowability of truth, but the revelation of truth in Holy Scripture and also ultimately in the Lord Jesus Christ.

When we talk about truth, we’re talking about what the late Francis Schaeffer referred to as true truth. We’re not talking about truth as a claim, we’re not talking about truth as an opinion. We’re not talking about truth as a power play. We’re talking about truth as true. But we also understand that in the free exchange of ideas, in the public square, there are going to be arguments, there are going to be conflicts, there are going to be contradictions, there are going to be rival claims made. And the point is that when you have an elite privileging one argument over other arguments, even when it is done in the name supposedly of fact-checking, the big problem is you have to define what is a fact. And behind that kind of definition is ideology. And when the fact-checkers deny that they’re operating with any ideology, well, here’s another fact, that’s just not honest.

By the way, one of the words used in this conversation in the press and in policy is counter disinformation. It sounds like something out of a James Bond movie to counter what is described as disinformation. Well, once again, there are important issues there, but the important thing right now is that Meta or Facebook or Instagram is not going to be, at least according to Mark Zuckerberg, using these outside firms to basically decide what is and is not a fact. Well, just a moment ago, we were talking about a fish species that turns out not to exist and therefore not to be at risk of going extinct.

But I want to conclude today by pointing to how expensive one fish can be. The Washington Post has reported that one Japanese tuna has now sold for $1.3 million. That is one fish selling for $1.3 million at the Tokyo fish market. Now that reminds me that with my wife, our family was able at one point to tour a fish market for Asia and the fish market was in Honolulu and most of the customers were from Japan.

And we were dressed like surgeons by the time we were able to enter the facility, a very chilled facility in which there were hundreds of giant tuna and sushi buyers were walking around and they were sampling the fish and they were paying unbelievable amounts of money for some of those fish. They would be put on a plane flown to Tokyo or to other cities in Asia where they will be sold, not intact, but sliced into countless slices. Now you’re talking about one fish in the Tokyo fish market that has sold for $1.3 million. It was a bluefin tuna, 608 pounds, which by the way, The Washington Post tells us is “Equivalent in weight to a typical male grizzly bear.” But no one’s paying a lot of money to eat grizzly bear. They are paying a lot of money to eat bluefin tuna. And just in case you did not know, the taste of this Oma tuna, a Pacific bluefin tuna, is prized by sushi eaters precisely because it is a rather rare fish.

It has a very rare taste and its taste has a good deal to do with a diet of squid and a particular fatty fish. That according to The Post, combined with its colder water habitat, “Gives the tuna a unique balance of fat that makes it a favored sashimi ingredient.” Well, now, you know, $1.3 million. I don’t know about you, but I feel the urge to go fishing.