Friday, January 31, 2025

Part I

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Liberal Parents, Conservative Sons: Young Men Want a Cause and Convictions Worth Fighting For – And They are not Buying into Liberal Ideology

How exactly do liberal parents understand their conservative sons? That’s a perplexing question to many on the cultural Left, and it has come with an increased emphasis and urgency after last November’s election, when many more liberal parents found out that their sons were far more conservative than they knew them to be.

A headline in a major report in the New York Times comes down to this, quote, “When your son goes MAGA.” The subhead in the article, “Some liberal parents face an unexpected challenge. How to talk to their children who voted for President Trump?”

Callie Holtermann is the reporter on the story. But that subhead is not really accurate because the story really isn’t about liberal parents with conservative children. It’s about liberal parents with conservative sons. A full page article, that means a full print page of article on this issue appeared over the weekend in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. The headline on the interior portion is this: “The Generation Gap opens up again.” Subhead on the inside is this: “As more young men support President Trump, some of their parents are feeling flummoxed.”

Okay, as you might expect, this is an interesting, interesting story. As the Times reports, “Mr. Trump has for nearly a decade been a source of political divides within families cleaving new fault lines along the way. In 2016, as younger voters lean towards Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump, it was easy to find left leaning children loudly bemoaning the politics of their Trump supporting parents online and in the news.”

The story though continues, “This time around there’s a fresh wrinkle. Although young voters as a whole preferred Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump secured a second term in office with the help of an improved performance among young men.” The Times concludes “that has in some families exposed a different dynamic. Liberal parents contending with their conservative sons.”

This pattern emerged even before election day. It was very clear in the press coverage if you just looked at the crowd at a Trump rally. It was very clear when you looked at the excitement of many young men about the candidacy of Donald Trump and their very open identification. It was also clear and the mainstream media were on this, that it is not just young White men, but it was young Hispanic men, it was young Black men who, if not with the same percentages, were often there with the same ardor and excitement.

And as you look at the results from election day, it is clear that Donald Trump made inroads not just, with say young men, but in particular with Hispanic men, with African American men, it was a very significant shift. It was a shift toward male voters and that’s not entirely new.

Over the course of the last several decades, even as we have had an ideological divide appear in the American political spectrum, there has also been a gender divide. Now, the gender divide isn’t at all perfect. That is to say you can’t just generalize and say all women are liberal or all men are conservative. There are liberal men and there are conservative women. But when you talk about women, it’s a very interesting divide that doesn’t appear among men. That is to say, women are divided between liberal women and conservative women in a way that men are not divided between conservative men and liberal men.

What’s the distinction? Marriage. You add marriage to the equation when it comes to women voters, married women tend to vote in a far more conservative way than unmarried women. But there is another issue. You add children to the mix after marriage and a married mother with children in the home is far more likely to vote in a conservative pattern than a liberal pattern.

Christians do instantly understand that that tells us something about the natural order and about the fact that the closer you get to a display of the natural order, the more your inclination is to protect and to conserve that natural order. Which is to say, a mom wants to defend marriage and a mom wants to defend her children, period. Watch it happen.

The same divide does not appear in the same way among men and boys. What does appear very clearly is that there is a political shift among male voters in a more conservative direction. But I want to separate this from just voters because it is not just those who are, say 18 and older young men and boys who are older. It is also younger men. You could say boys in their teenage years. And you could also look at some who are in that period, say college age.

And the reality is, even though some of them are not yet voting, they are already political. They are already invested. They’re sometimes showing up with the MAGA hat, they’re showing up with the bumper sticker, they’re showing up with the t-shirt, they’re showing up with other young men because they want to make a statement. So in this case, we are talking about slicing the demographic, not just male and female, but younger and older. The New York Times article is about liberal parents coming to terms with their conservative sons.

Now I want to tell you what I think is going on here. So I want to be careful. I want to think biblically. And thinking biblically, it appears to me that one of the most important things about young men is that they want to know that the future is going to be a predictable pattern that, for example, links labor and reward.

They want to know that if they act right and they behave right and they work hard, they’re going to come out ahead. They want to believe that their work is important and they want to believe that work is respected. Increasingly young men have come to the conclusion that male work is not respected. And that there is no adequate predictability, that doing the right thing is going to lead to advancement and for their ability to say, get married and support a family and all the rest.

Now, I am not saying that young men, and for that matter, some older men as well, but young men in particular who are not getting married on time, they’re not growing up on time, they are not getting jobs on time, they’re not sometimes graduating from high school on time, but the reality is that even though young men bear some responsibility, they’re also understanding themselves to be in a context of a world that is now largely out of their control, that has lost the predictable structures, that rewarded good behavior, that rewarded good jobs, that rewarded hard labor.

And instead they’re looking at a feminized culture and they’re looking at a culture driven by so many progressivist ideas that, quite frankly, have the agenda of sidelining men in favor of others when it comes to social advancement. They’re getting the message and they’re responding to the message. 

A paragraph in the New York Times article puts it this way, “conservative young men are quick to object to the idea that their ideology is some neat reversal of their parent’s beliefs or a byproduct of indoctrination by right-wing podcasts and influencers. In interviews they describe feeling undervalued in a society with rapidly changing gender roles and concerned about a lack of economic opportunity.”

Well, here’s a big thing that the Democrats are going to have to confront. They were once seen as the party of the blue-collar working man and the family structure that that job represented and supported. But now the Democratic Party is the party of the technocratic elites, the party of the progressive ideologues, and they bear responsibility for the fact that the working class blue-collar vote, the male vote that used to be a predictable democratic vote, is increasingly a predictable conservative vote.

And it’s not just a partisan issue, it’s not just an issue of Republican or Democrat. It is that, but it’s more than that. As the New York Times concedes, this is a conservative pattern, not just a partisan pattern. Furthermore, there seems to be the acknowledgement that it’s not just a MAGA pattern, which is to say Donald Trump certainly benefited from this young male vote and the young male vote was clearly attracted to Donald Trump. No question about that. But I think it’s very telling that the article really begins from the standpoint of looking at liberal parents and conservative sons.

Okay, I want to deliver even harder news to the readers of the New York Times. And I want to say this as the President of a seminary and the President of a college, and someone who for decades has been observing what has gone on among young men. For a matter of years, the assumption was that young men are marked by rebellion. I’m not sure that was ever exactly the right word. I will tell you this, young men want a cause. And they want a cause that demands something radical of them.

They want to make a radical commitment. They want models and mentors they can admire. And here’s what I think the New York Times doesn’t get. They’re desperately hungry for convictions they can hold, and convictions that will fuel them. And so I want to translate this from the political sphere into the theological sphere. You want to find liberal young men in seminaries, where you’re going to have to go to liberal seminaries, and guess what? There aren’t very many men there, predictably so.

You want to find where the young men are committed to ministry, who are studying in theological seminaries? Don’t go to the liberal seminaries, go to the conservative seminaries. You want to know where the young men are when it comes to higher education, including Christian higher education? Go to the more conservative schools. That’s where the young men are. And for one thing, those schools are unashamed based on Christian biblical convictions to identify young men as young men.

I’m going to say something that isn’t really present in this New York Times article, it’s hinted at. But the New York Times can’t go there, and that is, that when you have the ideologues of the gender binary or non-binary and you have the LGBTQ revolution and you have the transgender revolution, I think there is a natural pushback coming from young men who say, “if the rest of the world doesn’t know who a boy is and the Boy Scouts have abandoned even a definition of what it means to be a boy, I haven’t forgotten. The world may say that being a male is simply a state of mind. Well, young men know better.”

And furthermore, when it comes to the stakes in biblical conviction, when you are living right now in the context of such an antagonistic secular age of confusion and accommodation, let me just tell you, young men don’t want confusion and accommodation. And I think that’s one of the greatest things I can say about young men. The challenge, of course, for an entire society is channeling the energies and commitments of young men to those things that are most productive.

And here’s where we have to point all young men towards the urgency of the now countercultural commitment to go get a job, get a wife, and start a family and do so with dignity and do so with integrity. But as Christians, we know it’s even greater than that. It is the call of young men to a service that has eternal consequences, and to a life of commitment and obedience that is even more radical than the secular understanding can ever come to terms with.

You look at the images even published in this New York Times article of the young men present at say, a Trump rally. And you understand they are wearing something of a uniform. They’re wearing something of a uniform right down to the t-shirt and the caps, that comes right down to saying, the entire world may say that they don’t know the difference or you can’t know the difference between a man and a woman, but we know the difference.

And we are sending by the clearest code we know in a positive context that’s accessible to us that we do know the difference. Christian leaders have better come to understand that if you want the attention and respect of young men, you had better speak to them as young men, unapologetically so. Young men, Christian Young men are looking for congregations for local churches that demonstrate that insight and that commitment.

And it turns out that in the secular sphere when it comes to knowing the difference between male and female, young men want a president who knows the right answer to that question as well. If that comes as a surprise to you, shame on you.

Part II

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Why Hasn’t God Defeated Satan Yet? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a 7-Year-Old Listener to The Briefing

All right, let’s turn to questions. I am so interested in and thrilled by the questions that come in from listeners to The Briefing.

I want to start today with a question from a seven-year-old boy. It’s a good question. “I was wondering why God hasn’t defeated Satan yet.” Well, let me say to this young boy asking such a good question. It’s not because he can’t, it’s because the defeat of Satan is going to take place on God’s timetable. It’s going to take place at the end of human history. It’s going to take place at the great battle in which God’s going to defeat Satan. Indeed it will be Christ leading the armies of God, leading the legions of God against Satan for his total defeat.

It will be to the glory of Christ, it will be to the glory of God and it will be at a time and at a place of God’s own choosing. You ask “Why then and not now?” It is because God who knows all things perfectly, knows that defeating Satan as he does when he does will bring him greater glory. It will also bring us greater joy. I’m thankful for a seven-year-old who asked this question. By the way, just linking this to what we were talking about before, isn’t it interesting that you have a seven-year-old boy who wants the answer to the question, “Why has God not defeated Satan yet?” He longs for it. He wants to see it. He wants to know that it’s going to happen.

Part III

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How Would You Explain the Lyric ‘the Wrath of God was Satisfied’ from In Christ Alone to a 4-Year-Old? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a Mom and Listener to The Briefing

Okay, talking about making me happy. I want to get to a question asked by a young mom in Iowa. And she says she listens to The Briefing while her kids are napping. God bless you, mom. And then she says, “I was singing to my girls before bed the other night. We were singing In Christ Alone and my four-year-old asked about the line, the wrath of God was satisfied.” She asked what that meant, that it was satisfied.

Well, what a great thing. This mom’s asking, how do I explain that to a four-year-old girl? It is unusual language, isn’t it? The wrath of God was satisfied. But it is language directly drawn from scripture about the atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. God poured out his wrath upon Christ and the wrath of God was satisfied in terms of the wrath of God against sinners covered by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I think a part of our problem is the modern usage of the word satisfied in the English language. We tend to discuss it or to use it more in terms of how we enjoyed a meal, “That was a very satisfying meal.” But when it comes to a legal context, the word satisfaction means the absolute fulfillment of a righteous demand or the absolutely right penalty for an injustice. The law demands to be satisfied. Satisfied either by obedience or by a satisfactory penalty for disobedience.

The law is satisfied, the law is honored, the law is respected. And in case of the righteousness of God, this is an infinitely greater issue. The righteousness of God demands the punishment for sin. God’s wrath poured out on sin. Christians exalt in the biblical promise that on the cross the wrath of God was poured out on Christ as our substitute in our place and the accomplishment of the atonement by the Lord Jesus Christ, fully satisfied the righteous demands of the law, and the righteous demands of God’s character, his justice and his righteousness. That’s why we want to sing it.

Now, there’s an interesting story behind this, and by the way, I do remember you’ve asked, how in the world would you explain this to a sweet four-year-old? And the answer there is to say, that when we say the wrath of God was satisfied, we mean that the Father completely perfectly accepted the complete perfect atonement accomplished by his son and did so for the complete and total salvation of sinners.

The righteous law is satisfied, paid in full. Okay, now I need to have a little bit of fun here telling you something beyond the question of your four-year-old. And that has to do with that line in the hymn In Christ Alone. That hymn is by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend. And it has become incredibly, incredibly popular. Christians love to sing it and it has been included in many collections of hymns and even some formal hymnals.

Okay, so here’s the thing. I’m not going to name the denomination, but a liberal Protestant denomination wanted to put In Christ Alone in their hymnal, but they wanted to take out that line. They didn’t want the reference to the wrath of God being satisfied in their hymnal. They wanted to replace it with something far more innocuous because this denomination, well, let’s just say they don’t affirm the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, either in terms of need or provision.

And this just reminds us that those words are not neutral. You love those words or you hate those words. And I’m glad to say that Getty and Townend did not allow the substitution of the words. Why? Because they wrote this hymn in order to exult in the glory of God revealed in the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. Wrath stays in, or the hymn doesn’t go in the hymnal.

Part IV

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Why Did You Refer to Taxes as Being Confiscated? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters Listeners to The Briefing

Okay, another listener to The Briefing on the matter of language asked why I often speak of taxes as being confiscated.

He goes on to say that Romans 13, “seems to indicate that the state can collect taxes.” Well, it’s true. I think you’re absolutely right about Romans chapter 13. I think I mentioned that recently on The Briefing. The word confiscated in this sense is a legal term, which is to say taxes aren’t given voluntarily. The government doesn’t say, if you’d like to contribute to our coffers, send in your tax monies here. Instead, the IRS will come to you and tell you, you owe this money, you’re going to pay it or we’re going to confiscate your house. So I want to say that at some level of taxation, I’m not arguing that the state, the government doesn’t have the right to tax its citizens. I’m simply saying that a tax by the very nature of being a tax is not voluntary.

Therefore, that tax income is by the state confiscated. That’s not to say that in every case the state is wrong. It is to say that the state is not asking “please”.

Part V

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Did Jesus Address the Issue of Homosexuality? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters Listeners to The Briefing

Okay, another good question comes from a listener. Here’s the question. Why do you think that Jesus did not directly address the issue of homosexuality? The listener says, when I’m asked this question, whether by Christians or by unbelievers, I don’t know how to respond.

Well, first of all, I don’t think it’s true that Jesus doesn’t refer to the moral question. I think that he answers it conclusively in Matthew chapter 19. This is when Jesus is asked about divorce. And Jesus responded beginning in verse four, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So they’re no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let not man separate.”

Now in the Bible you have both positive and negative statements. This is God’s plan. That is contrary to God’s plan. This is a righteous act. This is sin. That’s the Old Testament pattern. It doesn’t begin with reference to homosexuality. It begins with reference to God making us male and female and directing us into the institution of marriage. And by the way, the fruitfulness of marriage be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

The negative does come, it’s in the law. Thou shalt not, you shall not do this. And homosexuality is, of course, in that list. The same thing’s true in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul deals with both the positive and the negative judgment. But it is interesting that in this sense, Jesus answers the question comprehensively, by giving such an absolute affirmation of Genesis one, God making human beings, male and female, calling us into the institution of marriage with the result even of fruitfulness be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

And remember, it’s also true that Jesus said of the Old Testament that none of it, not a jot or a tittle would pass until all was fulfilled. Jesus doesn’t have to repeat the entirety of the Old Testament law. He affirmed the binding nature of the law, and so should his church. When it comes to all these moral issues, the moral law still pertains and it is comprehensive and it is clear in both the old and the New Testaments.

In terms of sexual matters, thou shalt and thou shalt not abundantly clear, positively and negatively.

Part VI

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Is It Ever Appropriate for Christians to Take One Another to Court? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters Listeners to The Briefing

Okay, sometimes questions come in and they’re rather complicated. And the challenge is to reduce it to something manageable. And so a listener sends in the question, and I appreciate it about a complicated situation after a brother has died, and it’s a dispute over the estate left by the brother. And so this brother of the man who’s now deceased asked the question, “Is it wrong to go to the courts to seek relief and rescue here? Is it wrong to take this cause before the court?”

I just want to step back and say I do not believe that anything in scripture enjoins Christians from going to the court for a righteous cause, to defend in particular a righteous cause. It’s one thing if you’re taking some petty debate, some petty dispute among family members to the court, that’s exactly what we know should not happen. But when it comes to something like this, I don’t think there is any biblical admonition that would prevent someone going to the courts for the prevention of a gross injustice.

People often refer to biblical texts such as Exhortations Christians not to sue one another, and of course that’s a binding text. But I do want to remind you that Christians are basically undivided on the question, as to when someone who may be a church member and is a professing Christian who robs another church member or holds up a bank, you don’t say, “I’m not going to call the police.” But in a matter like this, I just want to say, I do not feel that I’m in any way competent to speak into a specific family situation.

I think this is where it’s so important that as Christians, we go to the elders of our local congregation and seek counsel as to how a Christian should respond to this in a way that is faithful to Christ and faithful to Scripture. I always appreciate your questions and you can send in your own questions simply by writing me at mail@albertmohler.com.

Part VII

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Tragedy in Washington: Collision and Crash Raise Huge Questions With Sorrow and Urgency

As I conclude today, I just want to remind us that we are praying for the loved ones and families involved in the midair collision of American Airlines fight 5342 and the US Army’s Black Hawk helicopter.

Since tragically, it now appears that there were no survivors of the crash. The investigation is going to turn to answering the hard questions as to how in the world this could have happened. As Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said bluntly, “you don’t have an accident like this without something going wrong.” That’s a profoundly irrefutable statement. It’s absolutely true, but it’s going to take time even when things may appear first to be obvious.

It’s going to take time to explain exactly how this happened and for human beings, as we do, to learn from a tragedy and from very hard and horrifying experience, how to attempt to make travel safer. Or how to make certain, or at least to the best of our ability, that something like this does not happen again. 

In the meantime, we face the reality, as Christians understand, a profound heartbreak. A profound unspeakable sense of loss.These were human lives on that plane. And as Christians, and Christians alone can truly understand, this means individuals made in the image of God. The video, of course, is absolutely horrifying. We see these flashing lights and then we see them converge. There’s a flash, and then everything falls apart. As moral creatures, we have an impulse to demand an explanation. And indeed that is not wrong, and eventually we have to hope a full explanation will be forthcoming.

But for now, this is a human story far more than a technological story, and we need to remember that.