By John D. Ferrer

Marriage is under fire… again.

The red wave in November might have helped put out the fire, but not when the wave is just a trickle. Unless something wild happens in Arizona and Georgia, the Democrats will retain the Senate majority. Republicans will gain a slight majority in the House of Representatives, but that doesn’t start till January. That leaves a one-month window for a democrat-majority House and Senate to cram everything they can into law before New Year’s. One of those cram jobs is the “Respect for Marriage Act.”[i]

Following Senate majority leader Chuck Shumer, Democrats are expected to pass the “Respect for Marriage Act.” The bill briefly mentions interracial marriages, which no one is disputing. that’s been legal in every state for decades now. That’s not the contentious part. This bill is written in direct opposition to the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act[ii] (1996), and intended to build on the momentum of the Obergfell decision (2015) which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Broadly speaking, the Respect for Marriage act would guarantee that any type of marriage recognized in one state must be recognized in every state. If you stop and think about that, it can get pretty absurd pretty quickly. Here’s the official summary of the bill.

Respect for Marriage Act
This bill provides statutory authority for same-sex and interracial marriages. Specifically, the bill repeals and replaces provisions that define, for purposes of federal law, marriage as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex with provisions that recognize any marriage that is valid under state law. (The Supreme Court held that the current provisions were unconstitutional in United States v. Windsor in 2013.) The bill also repeals and replaces provisions that do not require states to recognize same-sex marriages from other states with provisions that prohibit the denial of full faith and credit or any right or claim relating to out-of-state marriages on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin. (The Supreme Court held that state laws barring same-sex marriages were unconstitutional in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015; the Court held that state laws barring interracial marriages were unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia in 1967.) The bill allows the Department of Justice to bring a civil action and establishes a private right of action for violations.

117th Congress, H.R. 8404, 7/19/2022, Summary[iii]

Democrats seem to have a winning issue here though. The “marriage equality” rhetoric plays well to progressives, the LGBT lobby, and many libertarians. That means more publicity, votes, and money. As legislation, the bill already passed the House, and it has the votes to pass in the senate. It should have stalled out in the senate, for missing the 60 votes needed for cloture (ending debate/filibuster). But the 50 democrat votes are now joined by 12 Republicans supporting the bill.

  • Roy Blunt of Missouri
  • Richard Burr of North Carolina
  • Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia
  • Susan Collins of Maine
  • Joni Ernst of Iowa
  • Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming
  • Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
  • Rob Portman of Ohio
  • Mitt Romney of Utah
  • Dan Sullivan of Alaska
  • Thom Tillis of North Carolina
  • Todd Young of Indiana

This means, the Respect for Marriage Act can be put to a final vote, passing with a simple majority (51 votes). It will become the law of the land unless something drastic happens like senate democrats changing their vote, or a state election being overturned.

WHAT ABOUT RELIGIOUS FREEDOM?

Those 12 republican votes are a little surprising, because republicans have mostly opposed redefining marriage. Plus, an earlier version of the bill raised concerns about religious freedom. The bill looked like it would force people to violate their conscience or their religion. Even the most liberal republicans and RINOs would have to reject that. Remember the cake-baker case[iv]? What about the flower-shop case[v]? Or the wedding-planner case[vi]? Without a doubt, there are left-wing legal teams determined to force Christians to violate their conscience and their religion (not to mention sacrifice free enterprise and freedom of speech). So, no matter what lobbyists may say, religious freedom is a live issue facing active threats.

That, however, was the old version of the bill. A new version[vii] was amended to protect religious freedom, at least for individuals and communities. With that revision in place, those 12 republicans were free to dissent from Republican ranks.

But does it protect religious freedom? A little, but not nearly as much as it may seem. It protects religious freedom at an individual and community level (like churches), but only generally, and only when it doesn’t include the state. It says:

“In General – Nothing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection otherwise available to an individual or organization under the [US] Constitution.”

117th Congress H.R. 8404, 7/19/2022, Sec., 6, line 22[viii].

“GENERALLY TRUE” MEANS “OFTEN FALSE.”

One big problem with this amendment is the squishy phrase: “In General.” It refers to a general principle, and since the principle applies only generally, that means many times it doesn’t apply. Simply put, “generally true” means “often false.” In legal terms, squishy words like that tend to become escape clauses. They’re loopholes, so litigious activists can get around basic rights.

Plus, you can’t build much on squishy words. They aren’t absolute, universal, or even easy to clarify. So, it’s not a strong foundation for legal protections. Anyone who’s life and livelihood is on the line (cake-bakers and wedding planners included), they have only a cold reassurance that “maybe federal law will respect your religious freedom.”

Another liability with squishy legal terms is they can squishify and dissolve whatever they touch. Whatever follows from “In General” is only generally true, so there can be exceptions. Would your case be an exception? Who knows? Instead of clear, firm, and absolute statements protecting people’s religious freedoms, this amendment offers only a generality, a great big “Maybe?!” That’s little reassurance for the next small-business owner facing a class-action lawsuit with the full-force of the LGBT-lobby against them. A squishy fortress is no fortress at all.

IT VIOLATES LARGE-SCALE FREEDOMS

Another big problem with the amendment is that there’s not a single word protecting people’s freedom of speech and freedom of conscience in the form of state laws and elections. Voting is free speech. You can’t be legally forced to vote against your conscience. If the people across the state were to vote in favor of a state constitutional amendment or a particular law, that’s an expression of free speech. The Respect for Marriage Act threatens to strike down any competing state-level constitutions or laws, never minding the voice and conscience of the people who voted that legislation into existence.

Suppose for example, Iowans were to pass a law, across the state of Iowa, reflecting their deeply held beliefs about adoption practices and gay couples. If that law ran head-on into the Respect for Marriage Act, then the federal law would have right of way in the collision. The federal law would be violating people’s freedom of speech (in voting) and freedom of religion (in voting their conscience).

IT DISRESPECTS MARRIAGE

Setting aside the shaky amendment, there’s a deeper problem with the Respect for Marriage Act. It’s a glaring misnomer. It’s not respecting marriage at all, not unless we abandon the standing institution of marriage from the start of human history till about five minutes ago. Al Mohler calls it “Orwellian” because it hides a profound disrespect for marriage behind a sneaky politispeak title: “Respect for Marriage Act” (see, Al Mohler, The Briefing[ix], Nov. 17, 2022 – 23:42)

This Act treats marriage as merely a social construct that people can define and redefine at will. It’s as if states can create a new category of marriage, at will. But that framing runs contrary to human history, natural law, not to mention Scripture. Marriage isn’t a social construct, it’s more like a natural law, or even a force-of-nature. It’s built-in. It’s something we discover as a facet of God’s creation. We didn’t create marriage. God did (Genesis 2:19-25; Matthew 19:4-6). It’s also a gracious gift from God. We’re in no place to take God’s gift of marriage and say, “God, you didn’t design it right; here let me fix it up for you.”

Ethically speaking, we’re playing God if we think we have the authority to redefine marriage according to trending fashions. It’s pretty disrespectful towards God and towards marriage, to invent other partnerships that history, nature, and God never called “marriage” and think we have somehow expanded the institution of marriage to include them. We can play around with words all we want, but the institution of marriage precedes us. It’s bigger than us. And it comes from God. So, it isn’t subject to our language games. We can’t redefine marriage any more than we can replace the wings of a plane mid-flight.

IT’S OPEN-ENDED

It’s been said that people should be careful they’re not so open minded that their brains fall out. The same applies to an open definition of marriage. The Respect for Marriage Act fortifies an open view of marriage to where any state can change their definition and all other states would have to accept it, no matter how ridiculous that redefinition may be. Imagine if Utah reinstated polygamy. Or, if Texas lowered the age of marital consent to 12 (no offense Texas). Or, if California approved bigamy (2+ marriages at once). Or New York granted marriage status to any two roommates seeking tax benefits. Or if Florida granted dolphins “person” status so people can marry them. Or if Oregon allowed twelve different people to “identify” as just two people in marriage – every other state would be forced to accept any or all of these arrangements.

Bear in mind, marriage is what it is, regardless of terminology. Every state would have to affirm a lie, accepting as “marriage” what, in reality, is not a marriage. Every state in the union would have to adjust their health codes, family laws, child-protective services, domestic abuse laws, employment ethics, tax codes, health insurance, medical standards, adoption laws, housing and real-estate categories, and everything else impacted by these alternative “marriages”. All that because a federal law is demanding that everyone in every state: “Obey, or else.” Even if we set aside the religious, and ethical problems with this legislation, it’s so monstrously impractical it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

WE ALREADY HAD MARRIAGE EQUALITY

To be clear here, I don’t think society should prevent two mentally-fit unmarried adults from marrying each other. Even if they’re gay, bi-, or trans, they have the same natural right to marry someone of the opposite sex if they want. No one is stopping gay people from participating in their equal right to marry; and marriage is with someone of the opposite sex. That’s what marriage has meant for thousands of years, across all cultures, and all established world religions, to where it’s been a cultural universal and a common-sense admission by everyone everywhere till about 5 minutes ago. It’s redundant to even call it “traditional marriage.” It’s just called marriage. We’ve had to clarify in recent years that we (Christian conservatives) mean the same thing by “marriage” that almost everyone across history has meant by “marriage.” We mean it in the traditional sense. We don’t mean it in the recently revised socially-constructed sense. We’re talking about the long-tested and well-proven institutional bedrock for societies across every remotely successful civilization in history. We’re talking about the sacred social institution whereby women are protected, men are disciplined, and children are raised more effectively than any other family model. Even polygamous cultures treated marriage as one-man plus one woman; they just allowed the wealthier citizens to have more than one marriage at a time.

We already had marriage equality before worldly forces began playing language games with the term “marriage,” and before subversives began launching an open assault on the nuclear family. Not only did we have marriage equality, we had civil protections and privileges for marriage, we had respect for marriage, we even had healthier marriages and stronger families before all this.

If we Christian conservatives were willing to do the hard-work to protect and preserve the better parts of family-friendly faith-based culture, we might not be in this predicament. But there’s no sense in bemoaning past mistakes. we can’t change them. We can however learn from our mistakes, so we don’t have to repeat them.

At this point, the Respect for Marriage act is Exhibit Z in a long line of evidence proving how worldly forces are dead-set on subverting institution marriage and with it the nuclear family. Fellow believers and social conservatives have an upward hill to climb here. But God is still sovereign. And there’s still time for your state representative to take courage and do the right thing. Pray hard folks. Get the word out. And maybe write your local representative and tell them to vote against this Disrespecting Marriage Act.

What follows is the text of the Respect for Marriage Act (HR 8404). Accessed 20 Nov 2022 at: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404/text?r=947&s=6

H. R. 8404

TO REPEAL THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT AND ENSURE RESPECT FOR STATE REGULATION OF MARRIAGE, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATE

July 20, 2022

Received; read the first time

July 21, 2022

Read the second time and placed on the calendar

AN ACT

To repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “Respect for Marriage Act”.

SEC. 2. REPEAL OF SECTION ADDED TO TITLE 28, UNITED STATES CODE, BY SECTION 2 OF THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT.

Section 1738C of title 28, United States Code, is repealed.

SEC. 3. FULL FAITH AND CREDIT GIVEN TO MARRIAGE EQUALITY.

Chapter 115[x] of title 28, United States Code, as amended by this Act, is further amended by inserting after section 1738B the following:

“§ 1738C. Certain acts, records, and proceedings and the effect thereof

“(a) In General.—No person acting under color of State law may deny—

“(1) full faith and credit to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State pertaining to a marriage between 2 individuals, on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals; or

“(2) a right or claim arising from such a marriage on the basis that such marriage would not be recognized under the law of that State on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals.

“(b) Enforcement By Attorney General.—The Attorney General may bring a civil action in the appropriate United States district court against any person who violates subsection (a) for declaratory and injunctive relief.

“(c) Private Right Of Action.—Any person who is harmed by a violation of subsection (a) may bring a civil action in the appropriate United States district court against the person who violated such subsection for declaratory and injunctive relief.

“(d) State Defined.—In this section, the term ‘State’ has the meaning given such term under section 7 of title 1.”.

SEC. 4. MARRIAGE RECOGNITION.

Section 7 of title 1, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:

“§ 7. Marriage

“(a) For the purposes of any Federal law, rule, or regulation in which marital status is a factor, an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into or, in the case of a marriage entered into outside any State, if the marriage is valid in the place where entered into and the marriage could have been entered into in a State.

“(b) In this section, the term ‘State’ means a State, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or any other territory or possession of the United States.

“(c) For purposes of subsection (a), in determining whether a marriage is valid in a State or the place where entered into, if outside of any State, only the law of the jurisdiction applicable at the time the marriage was entered into may be considered.”.

SEC. 5. SEVERABILITY.

If any provision of this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, or the application of such provision to any person, entity, government, or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of this Act, or any amendment made thereby, or the application of such provision to all other persons, entities, governments, or circumstances, shall not be affected thereby.

Passed the House of Representatives July 19, 2022.Attest:

Footnotes

[i] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404/text

[ii] https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/3396/text

[iii] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404?r=947&s=6

[iv] https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-111

[v] https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/2019/91615-2-0.html

[vi] https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-10/303-Creative-cert-stage.pdf

[vii] https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/KIN22420_1114.pdf

[viii] https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/KIN22420_1114.pdf

[ix] https://open.spotify.com/episode/08Prpo2UN4zXtOTROWJBZY

[x] http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title28-chapter115-front&num=0&edition=prelim

Recommended resources related to the topic:

4 P’s & 4 Q’s: Quick Case FOR Natural Marriage & AGAINST Same-Sex Marriage (DVD) by Dr. Frank Turek 

Correct, NOT Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone (Updated/Expanded) downloadable pdf, PowerPoint by Dr. Frank Turek

Does Love and Tolerance Equal Affirmation? (DVD) (Mp4)  by Dr. Frank Turek

 

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Dr. John D. Ferrer is an educator, writer, and graduate of CrossExamined Instructors Academy. Having earned degrees from Southern Evangelical Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, he’s now active in the pro-life community and in his home church in Pella Iowa. When he’s not helping his wife Hillary Ferrer with her ministry Mama Bear Apologetics, you can usually find John writing, researching, and teaching cultural apologetics.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3EYkP9O 

By Josh Klein

The Church of Satan was started by Anton Lavey in 1966[i] as an atheistic religious organization focused on hedonism and lawful citizenry. Adherents to the Church of Satan claim not to believe in Satan or worship him but to strive for what they call “ethical egoism.”  Ironically, Satan’s most effective tool against humanity is not convincing people to worship him, but to worship themselves in leu of the Almighty God.

Whether Lavey knew it or not, in effect, he did establish a church of Satan that worships the very thing Satan wishes it would.  It matters not to Satan what people think of him, but if he can get people to believe in themselves and scoff at the idea of God then his mission is accomplished.

In the garden, Satan never asks Eve to worship him, he simply seeks to destroy Eve’s relationship with her creator.

It is not this obvious satanic movement that threatens the church of America, but a different, more insidious and pernicious Church of Satan that has snuck into the mainstream religious institutions of the day. The true Church of Satan hides in plain sight. Satan’s real strategy against the Bride of Christ is the same as his strategy in the garden and we must call it out for what it is lest we stand idly by as Adam did and watch people be deceived.  You might think this overdramatic, but history and scripture indicate that it is not.  The gates of Hell will not prevail against the church (Matthew 16:18[ii]), but Satan is building a bride for himself within what people consider to be the church in the West and, save for a few, it is rarely challenged with courage.

The church in America is quickly falling into apostacy.  According to a recent study, 60% of self-described American Christians under the age of 40 believe that Jesus is not the only way of salvation.[iii]  Which, one would think, would disqualify them from calling themselves Christians, at least that’s what Jesus would seem to indicate when he said no one can come to the Father except through him (John 14:6[iv]).

In many cases these mainline Christian denominations are not merely getting sin wrong, they are perverting the gospel by glorifying sin, reveling in it, and using scripture to double down on a gospel of affirmation rather than repentance and belief in Christ.

In the 2000s the Episcopalian church in America ordained the first transgender Priest and in 2021 the ELCA ordained their first transgender bishop[v].

In May of 2022 a United Methodist Church in Madison, Wisconsin held a Pride celebration event.[vi]

In December of 2021 a Lutheran church in Chicago had a pastor deliver a message to children dressed in Drag.[vii]

In August of 2022 the First Christian Church in Austin, Texas hosted a “family friendly” Drag Show for the community.[viii]

Most recently though, a United Methodist Church in Florida hosted an Atheist Drag Queen Pastor[ix] (yes, you read that right)[x] for their service, and, particularly, to share his story with the children in the church.

To the Christian the most alarming part of this video should not be the drag queen standing in the church but the “Pastor’s” use of scripture to justify Ms. Penny Cost’s lifestyle as godly:

“Well one of the things that I think is great about miss Penny Cost is that she reminds us that we follow a god who calls us to not conform to the things of this world. That we’re supposed to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, and that means that what I think today may have to change tomorrow if I continue to renew my mind. And it’s so cool that we serve a god that calls us to continue to grow and to continue to change into something new and to not be bound by the ways that the world confines us sometimes. That we are supposed to live differently.”

If one merely read the words spoken by this “Pastor” one might not see anything wrong with this simple directive towards children.  He quotes scripture, directs them to live contrary to the world, and encourages them to live differently. That seems to be in line with historic Christian belief.  This is, however, the oldest trick in the Satanic book. That is not hyperbole.

To use scripture in a way that justifies the pride of life and licentious behavior is the very tactic Satan used with Eve in the garden, and the very tactic he used again in the temptation of Jesus. Satan is not afraid to use scripture to get what he most desires.  He prowls the sidelines waiting for an opportune moment to devour the weak, and he does just that with the misinterpretation and application of scripture (1 Peter 5:8[xi]). If the Devil can get people to believe they are saved through heretical use of scripture, only to embrace the wrong gospel, his digestion is complete and they are doomed.

Jesus hints at this reality himself when he says that not everyone who says to him, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21[xii]).  There are many that will engage in mercy missions, philanthropy, clothing and feeding the poor, that will have embraced a false gospel that does not save.  This false gospel is Satan’s go to weapon against the church.  Satan does not need Anton Lavey to establish his church. He simply needs to get those that call themselves the church to buy into a gospel of lies and self-fulfillment.

A tail as old as time.

In the garden, the serpent misquotes God to challenge Eve to think only of herself and find fulfillment and hope in creation rather than the Creator (Genesis 3[xiii], Romans 1[xiv]).  In Matthew 4:6[xv] we find Satan again using scripture to try to tempt Jesus in the wilderness.  Satan quotes Psalm 91:11-12[xvi] seemingly to get Jesus to misapply scripture to inflate his own ego above the Father’s plan. Jesus, of course, does not fall for it.

John Piper puts it this way:

“Note well! Satan does not always try to ruin faith by saying, ‘The Bible isn’t true.’ He often tries to destroy our faith by affirming some passage and using it to lead us into disobedience.”[xvii]

If Satan used scripture to entice Eve, and again to seek to derail the redemptive work of God through Jesus, would he not use scripture to create for himself a church of ineffectual sin laden imposters? This is the spirit of antichrist, and it is taking the American church by storm.

The spirit of the antichrist affirms sin, encourages debasement, and blasphemes the name of Jesus (1 John 1:7, 2:18-22, 4:3). The video above accomplishes all these things in the space of fifty seconds. The Devil’s plans to subvert the church are obvious, but his appeal to the nature and pride of mankind blinds many to it.  The misapplication and interpretation of Romans 12:1-2 gives away the Satanic game. We read in 1 John 2:15-24 just the opposite of what this pastor is speaking:

“15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

18 Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”

This is a sobering reminder that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the dark forces of this world (Ephesians 6:12). It is no longer tenable to call this progressive movement in churches Christian.  These are not progressive Christians, they are progressive antichristians. They hold on to a form of godliness yet deny its power (2 Timothy 3:1-5), they are swayed by and leading people astray into empty, deceitful philosophies according to human traditions and the elemental spirits of the world (Colossians 2:8), and they love what is evil and hate what is good (Romans 12:9).

The Satanic church is all around us and claiming Christ as their own in order to obfuscate the gospel.  We must not acquiesce or give quarter to such blatant apostacy.  Paul says we should have nothing to do with them (2 Timothy 3:5) and Jesus indicates that such men, claiming to be agents of the Lord, will experience an even harsher judgment than others (Luke 17:2).

I want to be clear, my quibble is not against those attracted by this false gospel.  My heart breaks for them.  The reason the Christian church’s response to such heresy ought to be swift and decisive is for them. Filled with mercy, patience, and grace (Jude 1:22-24).  The question they are asking is a legitimate one: “How can I be happy, fulfilled, full of purpose?” The answer is there to be had and confused individuals must be met with love, understanding, encouragement, and most importantly, truth.

We must call these people to repentance; we must not allow them to glory in their sin and pervert the gospel.  Winsomeness is not a tool to tolerate blasphemy but to attract those seeking answers. It is winsome to call out error and preach repentance in Christ (Romans 2:4).

The true Church is to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16).  Salt preserves the godliness of the generations and light exposes the deeds of darkness (1 John 1).

We can give no quarter to those that would pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is a time for boldness in the faith, and that time is now, and if we are ridiculed, persecuted, or derided for our faithfulness to the true gospel then we are in good company (Hebrews 11, Acts 5:42, 2 Timothy 3:11-12, Matthew 5:10-12).

We must start calling these types of progressive churches what they are, and we must not apologize, because it is true kindness to shed light on the deeds of darkness to beseech them to repent and return to the love they have lost (1 Corinthians 5:5, Revelation 2).

I think Kevin DeYoung put it well:

Stay strong. Fight the good fight, finish the course, and keep the faith.

(2 Timothy 4:7-8)

Footnotes

[i] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anton-LaVey

[ii] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+16%3A18&version=NET

[iii] https://www.christianpost.com/news/60-of-young-adults-say-jesus-isnt-the-only-way-to-salvation.html

[iv] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+14%3A6&version=NET

[v] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Partridge#:~:text=Cameron%20Partridge%20(born%201973)%20is,National%20Cathedral%20in%20Washington%2C%20D.C. –

 https://www.npr.org/2021/09/11/1036371531/evangelical-lutheran-church-first-transgender-bishop-megan-rohrer

[vi] https://madison365.com/sherman-church-to-celebrate-pride-month-with-pride-month-flag-raising-ceremony/

[vii] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/lutheran-church-offers-drag-queen-prayer-time-to-children

[viii] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/katy/article/church-lgbtq-drag-shows-17395546.php

[ix] https://www.mspennycost.com/

[x] https://www.theblaze.com/news/drag-queen-pastor-god-is-nothing

[xi] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Peter+5%3A8&version=NET

[xii] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7%3A21&version=NET

[xiii] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+3&version=NET

[xiv] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1&version=NET

[xv] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+4%3A6&version=NET

[xvi] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+91%3A11-12&version=NET

[xvii] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/satans-bible-knowledge

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Is Morality Absolute or Relative? by Dr. Frank Turek DVD, Mp3 and Mp4

Another Gospel? by Alisa Childers (book)

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Josh Klein is a Pastor from Omaha, Nebraska with over a decade of ministry experience. He graduated with an MDiv from Sioux Falls Seminary and spends his spare time reading and engaging with current and past theological and cultural issues. He has been married for 12 years to Sharalee Klein and they have three young children.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3X2WW7X 

 

By Natasha Crain

In case you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a $100 million advertising campaign that launched this year across the United States and is aimed at helping rescue Jesus’s reputation from the “damage” done by His followers. It features a website, billboards in major cities, and ads that have been viewed 300 million times. “He Gets Us[i],” as the campaign is known, is funded by anonymous donors. If you haven’t seen the ads yet, you likely will soon.

Many Christians immediately have a problem with the idea that Jesus would in some way be “marketed.” As a former marketing executive and adjunct market research professor, I don’t necessarily think such a marketing campaign is inherently problematic. Marketing is simply the discipline of effectively getting a given message to a given audience. If your church has a website, you’re “marketing.” If you have a board in front of your church that announces the weekly sermon subject, you’re “marketing.” If you pass out tracts about Jesus, you’re “marketing.”

In other words, if donors are paying to tell the world about Jesus on a grand scale so that more people may come to a saving knowledge of Him, praise God.

But the message shared better be an accurate message about Jesus, lest you’re actually leading people away from Him in some way.

And therein lies the problem with He Gets Us. The Jesus of this campaign is nothing more than an inspiring human who relates to our problems and cares a whole lot about a culturally palatable version of social justice.

Since many people will be discussing the campaign in coming months, I want to highlight seven significant problems to watch out for and to share with friends who may be misled by what they see.

1. The fact that Jesus “gets us,” stripped from the context of His identity, is meaningless.

The name of the campaign alone should raise at least a preliminary red flag for Christians. Generally speaking, when people or churches focus on the humanity of Jesus—an emphasis on the idea that “He was just like us!”—it’s to the exclusion of His divinity. But Jesus matters not primarily because He understands what it’s like to be human, but because of who He is. In other words, it’s only His identity as God Himself that makes the fact that He “gets us” even relevant.

Why?

If Jesus wasn’t God, it doesn’t matter that He understands what it’s like to be human. Literally every other human has experienced humanity as well! Who cares that this Jesus fellow “gets” humanity like everyone else? But if Jesus was God, the incarnation becomes an amazing truth, because the God of the universe also experienced the nature of humanity.

Of course, if the campaign simply had a title which lacked clarity but its execution was something very different, there wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Read on.

2. Jesus is presented as an example, not a Savior.

There’s nothing I’ve seen or read in the campaign that presents Jesus as God Himself or a Savior for humanity. The questions asked and answered on the site include things like: Was Jesus ever lonely? Was Jesus ever stressed? Did Jesus have fun? Did Jesus face criticism?

But again, if Jesus was nothing more than a human, why are we even asking these questions? We could just as well be asking, Was George Washington ever lonely? Was George Washington ever stressed? Did George Washington have fun? Did George Washington face criticism?

The campaign wants you to care about Jesus because He’s a great moral example. They say, for instance, “No matter what we think of Christianity, most people can agree on one thing. During his lifetime, Jesus set a pretty good example of peace and love.”

But if that’s all Jesus is—a good example—don’t spend millions on a campaign to tell people about Him. We can find good human examples all over the place. Jesus is a good example—the ultimate example—but most importantly, He’s the Son of God. That’s why His example matters.

3. The campaign reinforces the problematic idea that Jesus’s followers have Jesus all wrong.

Jon Lee, one of the chief architects of the campaign, says the team wanted to start a movement of people who want to tell a better story about Jesus[ii] and act like him. Lee states, “Our goal is to give voice to the pent-up energy of like-minded Jesus followers, those who are in the pews and the ones that aren’t, who are ready to reclaim the name of Jesus from those who abuse it to judge, harm and divide people.”

For 2,000 years, people have done terrible things in the name of Christ—things that Jesus Himself would never have approved of. There’s no question in that sense that people have “abused” the name of Jesus for their own evil purposes.

But in today’s culture, there’s a popular notion that Jesus was the embodiment of love and all things warm and fuzzy, whereas His followers who talk about judgment, sin, objective morality, the authority of Scripture, and so on, are hopelessly at odds with what He taught. The He Gets Us campaign plays straight into that misconceived dichotomy.

Christians who adhere to clear biblical teachings on hot topics like the sanctity of life, gender identity, and sexuality, for example, are consistently accused of “harming” others by even holding those beliefs. Those who speak the truth about what God has already judged to be right and wrong are accused of being “judgmental” themselves. Those who understand Jesus to be the Son of God—the embodiment of truth, not warm fuzzies—are accused of being divisive when rightly seeking to divide truth from error as the Bible teaches (1 John 4:6).

So the question is, when Lee says that he wants to rescue the name of Jesus from those who “abuse it to judge, harm and divide people,” does he mean that he wants to give people a more biblical understanding of Jesus, or does he want to rescue an unbiblical, culturally palatable version of Jesus from followers who proclaim truth that people don’t want to hear?

I think the answer is clear from my next point.

4. The campaign reinforces what culture wants to believe about Jesus while leaving out what culture doesn’t want to believe.

Whereas the campaign is seeking to give people a fresh picture of Jesus, all it really does is reinforce the feel-good image culture already has. A representative web page[iii], for example, talks about how Jesus “invited everyone to sit at his table.” The text talks about how “inclusive” Jesus was, how the “religious do-gooders began to whisper behind his back,” and how “the name of Jesus has been used to harm and divide, but if you look at how he lived, you see how backward that really is. Jesus was not exclusive. He was radically inclusive.”

Of course Jesus welcomed everyone around His table. And surely people need to hear that. But He welcomed everyone because everyone needs to hear His message about people’s need for repentance and salvation! Meanwhile, He Gets Us presents Jesus’s actions as though they merely represented an example of how to get along well with others: “Strangers eating together and becoming friends. What a simple concept, and yet, we’re pretty sure it would turn our own modern world upside down the same way Jesus turned his around 2,000 years ago.”

Of course, if you’re nothing more than a human (see point 1), there’s not much more to take from Jesus’s actions than a social example of playing well with others.

5. The campaign characterizes the so-called culture war in terms of secular social justice rather than underlying worldview differences.

On a page titled, “Jesus was fed up with politics, too,” it says, “Jesus lived in the middle of a culture war…And though the political systems were different (not exactly a representative democracy), the greed, hypocrisy, and oppression different groups used to get their way were very similar.” The page, like many others on the site, has hashtags “#Activist#Justice#RealLife.”

For those familiar with Critical Theory and how it roots secular social justice ideas, this a pretty clear statement of the mindset from which He Gets Us is coming.

If you’re not familiar with how secular social justice ideas and manifestations differ from those of biblical justice, please see chapter 10 in my book, Faithfully Different: Regaining Biblical Clarity in a Secular Culture;[iv] I don’t have the space here to fully reiterate how opposed they are. But the bottom line is that secular social justice is rooted in the idea that the world should be viewed through the lens of placing people in “oppressor” and “oppressed” groups based on social power dynamics. The problems we have in society, according to this view, are that societal structures have produced norms that oppress certain groups, and those groups must be liberated. For example, in such a framework, those who feel oppressed by the gender binary need to be freed from society’s norms of “male and female.” Women whose access to abortion is limited need to be freed from constraints on “reproductive justice.”

The fact that He Gets Us believes culture wars are about the “oppression” different groups use to get their way presupposes a (secular) Critical Theory understanding of the world. In reality, it’s the opposing worldviews in culture that lead to such fundamental disagreement. As I explain throughout Faithfully Different, cultural “wars” over things like the sanctity of life and sexuality are ultimately rooted in disagreements between those who believe in the moral authority of the individual (the secular view) and those who believe in the moral authority of God and His Word (the biblical view).

6. The campaign’s stated goal is about inspiration, not a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The president of the marketing agency behind He Gets Us has explicitly said[v], “Ultimately, the goal is inspiration, not recruitment or conversion.”

Now, as someone with a professional marketing background myself, I very much understand the fact that not every campaign has the goal of getting someone to “purchase” (or, in this case, “convert”). Marketers know that people generally go through preliminary phases of awareness, then interest, and then desire before committing to action. So if this campaign were only working at generating more and deeper awareness of or interest in a biblically faithful Jesus, that would be no problem. But if your goal is inspiration, you’re going to generate an awareness of and interest in a Jesus completely detached from the one a person should be giving their life to.

If it’s not immediately clear why, you can see the outcome of such a problematic goal on the page that asks, “Is this a campaign to get me to go to church?” Their answer is, “No. He Gets Us simply invites all to consider the story of a man who created a radical love movement that continues to impact the world thousands of years later. Many churches focus on Jesus’ experiences, but you don’t have to go to church or even believe in Christianity to find value in them. Whether you consider yourself a Christian, a believer in another faith, a spiritual explorer, or not religious or spiritual in any way, we invite you to hear about Jesus and be inspired by his example.”

Jesus is God of the universe and the exclusive path to salvation (John 14:6). He’s not just a nice guy relevant for “inspiring” people regardless of whatever errant worldview they happen to hold.

Some people reading this may try to be charitable in suggesting that if the campaign were more explicitly about Jesus’s divinity and the need for salvation up front, not as many would get interested in learning more. In other words, maybe the campaign funnels people to places that can deepen and clarify their understanding of Jesus. If that were the case, it would be a horrible, misleading approach. Every marketer knows that the goal is to generate accurate awareness. He Gets Us presents not just an incomplete Jesus, but the wrong one.

Even so, let’s look at where the campaign eventually takes people.

7. The next steps offered by He Gets Us could lead someone far away from truth rather than toward it.

When people become interested in learning more about Jesus, they’re directed to a “Connect” page.

Hundreds of churches have signed up to respond to people who fill out that connect form. Clearly, an important question is where those people are directed. However, there is no theological criteria or statement of faith that churches must adhere to in order to take part. The president of the marketing agency says, [vi]“We hope that all churches that are aligned with the He Gets Us campaign will participate…This includes multiple denominational and nondenominational church affiliations, Catholic and Protestant, churches of various sizes, ethnicities, languages, and geography.”

As I explain in Faithfully Different (and discuss with Dr. George Barna in my recent podcast[vii]), 65% of Americans identify as Christian while only about 6% have a worldview consistent with what the Bible teaches. Dr. Barna’s research has also shown that a dismal percent of pastors have a biblical worldview. If you have no theological criteria for where you’re sending people, you’re actually more likely than not—based on statistics—to be sending them to a church whose teachings don’t line up with those of the Bible.

In other words, you’re sending unsuspecting truth seekers to places where they won’t hear truth.

Yes, Jesus was fully human, but He was also fully God. When you remove half the picture of His identity (as this campaign does), you give people the understanding they want but not the fuller understanding they need. Because of this, He Gets Us has the potential to actually harm the public understanding of Jesus. People need to know that Jesus is our Savior, not a compassionate buddy.

Footnotes

[i] https://hegetsus.com/en

[ii] https://churchleaders.com/news/435958-he-gets-us-campaign-jon-lee-rns.html

[iii] https://hegetsus.com/en/jesus-invited-everyone-to-sit-at-his-table

[iv] https://www.amazon.com/Faithfully-Different-Regaining-Biblical-Clarity/dp/0736984291

[v] https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/march/he-gets-us-ad-campaign-branding-jesus-church-marketing.html

[vi] https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/march/he-gets-us-ad-campaign-branding-jesus-church-marketing.html

[vii] https://natashacrain.com/what-is-a-biblical-worldview-with-george-barna/

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Legislating Morality (DVD Set), (PowerPoint download), (PowerPoint CD), (MP3 Set) and (DVD mp4 Download Set

Does Jesus Trump Your Politics by Dr. Frank Turek (mp4 download and DVD)

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Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3EeLC16 

By Melissa Dougherty​

Some churches and people make Jesus a mascot.

I’m sure a few people reading this might be scratching their heads, wondering what I mean by this. Others know exactly what I mean. Here in America, sometimes I think we take for granted that we don’t have to “hurt” to follow Jesus. What I mean by that is that we avoid any sort of struggle to obtain most of our Christian virtues.

In other words, we’re too comfortable.

We own a Bible and go to church and don’t get tortured for it. We praise God in our cars, listening to worship music with the windows down without fear of being imprisoned. Yes, I think we take this for granted. We make Jesus a symbol of our good decisions and a “good luck” charm. I remember a long time ago having lunch with a friend. She said that she had to make sure she went to church that week because she knew she was going to need to do good on an upcoming test. She reasoned that if she wore her cross, went to church and read a few Bible passages, then God would grant her grace. Like a give-and-take. 

From time to time, we need perspective on this.

The definition of a mascot is “a person or thing that is supposed to bring good luck or that is used to symbolize a particular event or organization.” I submit that many people make Jesus out to be their mascot, not their God.

Once a week, it’s almost as if Jesus is brought out as a cheerleader to give advice on life’s struggles. Perhaps there’s a sermon about how to manage stress or how to deal with a particular sin. Some will depict Jesus as telling everyone how great they are, that He wants them prosperous and victorious. His main goal? Is to rebuild their confidence. He’ll fix all their problems. Just follow Me, and life will be great! People will then allow Mascot Jesus to reinforce in them what they think God should have us feel like: good and comfortable. He’s a motivational speaker. He tells people everything is just fine, and people are proud to be Christians and followers of this always happy, all-loving, all-tolerant, ‘Cheerleader’ Jesus.

Mascot Jesus is all about cheering us up as if life were like a football game.

But really, He’s put on the sidelines. It’s really about us. He’s just there in case we need Him. Then we get to call the shots and say it’s “God’s will” because this is the form of God that we’ve been taught. Even if there are some who claim to carry His Name, and call themselves Christian, they actually have very little reliance on him as Lord and God. Even then, I wonder if they know what it means to pick up their cross and follow Jesus as He says in the Gospels:

Matthew 16: 24-26: Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

He’s saying to “count the cost” of following Him, which means it will cost you something to follow Him. This doesn’t mean we live lives that are not happy and comfortable like some extremists. This means we know what we’re signing up for when we become a disciple of Jesus and understand the assignment.

For some, there’s not much evidence that they would have that kind of faith in the way they live. Then there are the Christians who say they do love Jesus, and do live for Him…

As long as He’s doing what they want.

As long as “Mascot Jesus” tells them about the “Goliaths” in their life and how to be the “David” overcoming them, they’re on board. Mascot Jesus makes the Bible about you. Mascot Jesus just wants you to be happy. Submission to this Jesus isn’t even hard. It just means following your feelings and making sure you only read the bits and pieces of Scripture that fit your mosaic of who you want Jesus to be. It seems like a contradiction, but many have redefined Jesus as someone they can both admire and ignore at the same time.

He’s Mascot Jesus. He’s convenient. He’s your cheerleader. He’ll make you feel good.

Praiseworthy? Sure! As long as He is in line with what we’re comfortable with and can be used when it’s convenient. As long as He’s a “Jesus” that’s culturally acceptable. Is He the God of your life, or are you? Do you follow the Jesus of the Holy Bible? Or do you follow Jesus that you’ve made in your own image?

Is Jesus your mascot? Or is He your Sovereign Savior?

Count the cost.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Letters to a Young Progressive by Mike Adams (Book)

Another Gospel? by Alisa Childers (book)

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Melissa Dougherty is a Christian Apologist best known for her YouTube channel as an ex-new ager. She has two associate’s degrees, one in Early Childhood Multicultural Education, and the other in Liberal Arts. She is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies at Southern Evangelical Seminary.

 

By Ryan Leasure 

Do objective morals exist? That is to say, are certain actions right or wrong irrespective of what people think? Philosphers and moral scientists have wrestled over the question of objective morality for centuries. Prior to the Enlightenment, objective morality was a given. The foundation for which was the nature of God himself.

Since the Enlightenment, however, brilliant minds have sought to find other explanations for objective morals using only the natural world, and this pursuit has proven to be quite difficult. As a result, naturalism — the belief which denies any supernatural or spiritual realities — has bred scores of moral nihilists. Contemporary atheist Richard Dawkins sums up this view nicely when he writes, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”[i]

Many skeptics, on the other hand, wish to avoid such a depressing outlook. After all, human experience seems to suggest that some actions are objectively good or evil. Therefore, instead of adopting moral nihilism, other naturalists adopt the view known as moral realism seeking to maintain objective moral values and duties.[ii] But can this view hold up to scrutiny? Have philosophers and scientists been able to ground morality in some place other than God?

In this article, I will demonstrate that theism provides the only basis for objective morality. I will support this thesis in two ways. First, I will evaluate the different explanations naturalists have used to ground morality and show them to be wanting. Second, I will substantiate the claim that theism accounts for objective morals despite skeptics’ objections.

Naturalism and Morality

In Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris remarks, “Questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering… To the degree that our actions can affect the experience of other creatures positively or negatively, questions of morality apply.”[iii] A self-described atheist, Harris adopts a totalitarian approach which argues that we can ground morality in the pleasure or misery of individuals.

In his more critiqued book, The Moral Landscape, he defines the “good” as that which supports the well-being of “conscious creatures.”[iv] But why, given atheism, should we think that the flourishing of human beings is objectively good? Where, exactly, in the natural world do we learn this objective truth? Harris fails to provide an explanation for this assertion. He simply equates “good” with “human flourishing” without any justification in what amounts to equivocation and circular reasoning.

Is/Ought Fallacy

Harris’s attempt to ground morality in human flourishing fails on at least two additional fronts. First, Harris is guilty of committing the is/ought fallacy. Generally speaking, someone commits the is/ought fallacy when they attempt to make value judgments using science.[v] Science, after all, only explains what “is,” not how things “ought” to be. For example, science tells us how us how to make an atomic bomb. It cannot, however, tell us whether we ought to use it. Harris believes he can prove his point by demonstrating that science tells us how to make life more conducive. But what exactly does this prove?

Of course advancements in science have aided in human flourishing. Science also tells us how to make life more conducive for corn and rabbits. But that does not mean it is morally evil to prohibit the flourishing of corn. Because Harris cannot ground objective morality as the term is philosophically understood, his only recourse is a semantic sleight of hand in which he redifines the word “good” to mean human flourishing. Even still, though science tells us how to promote human flourishing, it does not tell us that we “ought” to promote human flourishing.

Naturalistic Determinism

The second fatal error to Harris’s argument is his commitment to naturalistic determinism. As someone who affirms objective morality, Harris affirms that we “ought” to act a certain way. Yet he rejects the notion of free will at the same time.[vi] He goes so far as to state that free will is merely an “illusion.”[vii] As a naturalistic determinist, Harris holds to the view that every event is the result of a chain reaction which has been causally determined by the laws of physics and chemistry. In essense, humans act in robotic fashion and possess no volitional control over of their actions.

This position is paramount to agreeing with Richard Dawkins when he states, “DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”[viii]  We expect Dawkins to make a statement like this since he denies objective morality. We would not, however, expect Harris to affirm determinism since it undercuts his moral argument. After all, he notoriously condemns religious people for their agregious actions. But given Harris’s determinism, can he really blame them? Does he not believe that their actions were spring loaded at the Big Bang and carried out by the inflexible laws of physics and chemistry?

Naturalistic Reasoning?

The problem for Harris’s determinism runs even deeper. For if naturalism is correct, and human beings are mere matter and nothing else, then rational thought becomes impossible. Rationality is, after all, the ability to adjudicate between arguments and evidence. But how do atoms, molecules, and physical laws make concious decisions? Years ago, C. S. Lewis recoginzed this fatal flaw. He remarks, “A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid, that theory would, of course, be itself demolished.”[ix] In other words, if Harris is right on naturalistic determinism, it follows that we have no grounds for even knowing if naturalism is true.[x]

In the end, while Harris’s desire to affirm objective morality is commendable, he simply has no rational basis for his claims. He not only commits the is/out fallacy, he also undercuts his position by categorically denying free will of any kind. For these reasons, Harris’s view has failed to attract many suitors. Naturalists, though, have not bailed on the enterprise altogether. Most naturalists aim to ground morality another way — through evolutionary biology.

Morality from Evolution?

Standard Darwinian evolution asserts descent with modification. This process of natural selection acting on random mutations has been the standard view among naturalists for quite some time. And on the surface, this model seems to contradict our modern understanding of morality. For if Darwin was right, then for millions of years, creatures scratched and clawed their way to the top, sometimes killing and eating each other. We can understand, then, how natural selection explains features such as sexual drive, hunger, and fear since these qualities aided in preservation. But how does natural selection explain the phenomenon of altruism? How does sacrificing one’s self for the good of others aid in survival?

Naturalists typically offer two explanations — kin selection and reciprocal altruism. Kin selection theory suggests that species behave altruistically in ways that benefit the rest of their families at their own expense. For example, a monkey might cry out a warning to her relatives if she sees a leapord coming. This cry results in the leapord focusing its attention on her, decreasing her survivability. This sacrifice, however, ensures that the family genes — the same genes shared by the altruistic monkey — will survive and pass on to the next generation.[xi]

Naturalists also argue that altruism arose through reciprical relationships. In what amounts to “you scratch my back and I will scratch yours,” reciprical altruism is similar to bartering where assymetrical species help each other out by providing services that the other cannot provide for themselves. Bees need nectar and flowers need polinating. Or in some cases, animals need bugs and dirt removed from their fur, so another animal will do it for them when they could be out searching for food or a mate. Natural selection, therefore, favors the species that provide services for other species.

Evolution’s Failure

Even if we granted that evolution explains the rise of altruism, that does not solve the naturalist’s problem for a few reasons. First, as one considers the evolutionary rise of altruism, it becomes clear that altruism — especially on the reciprical model — is performed for selfish reasons. In other words, the theory suggests that species do “nice” things for other creatures only because it benefits them in the long run. But now we are talking about self-centeredness — the exact opposite of altruism.

A second critique of the evolutionary model is that it makes morality arbitrary. That is to say, it reaches ad hoc conclusions about the value of human beings. For if Darwin’s theory is correct, all living species descended from a single-celled organism and now form the different branches on Darwin’s tree of life. With this model in mind, who is to say that humans should be treated differently than crickets, rats, or cows? William Lane Craig refers to this inconsistency as “specie-ism,” in that people are showing unjustified bias towards their own species.[xii]  Craig is right on this. Given naturalism and the Darwinian model, humans are just one branch of many. Nothing about Darwinism tells us that we ought to act differently from the other species in the animal kindgom.

Take the black widow, for example, who often eats her male counterpart during the mating process. Or consider male sharks who forcibly copulate with female sharks. Do either of these creatures commit moral evils? If not, why would these same actions be wrong for humans since we all belong to the same tree of life? We can certainly appreciate the secular humanists who wish to maintain that humans are intrinsically valuable, but they have no way of grounding this position given their naturalism. Atheist philosopher Michael Ruse admits as much when he writes, “I appreciate that when somebody says, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves… Nevertheless… such reference is truly without foundation.”[xiii]

Evolutionary morality is on even shakier ground when we consider that evolution is, by definition, the unguided process of natural selection. Meaning, if we were to rewind back the time to the very beginning and start over, morality could have evolved quite differently. Human morality could have evolved like black widows and sharks and we would not know any difference.

A third and most damning critique of the evolutiony model is that it cannot even begin to explain why anything is objectively right or wrong. Even if we granted that evolution adaquately explains how species began to act morally, it does not begin to explain why acting in those ways is objectively good. Similarly, naturalists also think that because they can discern morality means that they have solved the problem. Again, William Lane Craig points out this fatal flaw when he exclaims, “I have been astonished at the confusion of moral ontology with moral epistemology on the part of prominent moral philosophers.”[xiv]

In the end, naturalists who attempt to ground objective morals in the natural world fail in their attempt. They might be able to explain the origins of altruism. And they might even know objective morals. But they cannot account for the existence of the moral standard itself and why humans ought to follow it.

Based on the above observations, naturalism cannot ground objective morality. At the same time, however, humans experience a certain “oughtness.” They feel like they ought to love rather than hate, and that they ought to show courage rather than cowardice. These “oughts” are epistemically surprising given naturalism. Yet, they correspond nicely with another worldview.

Theism and Morality

The “oughtness” humans experience fits nicely with a theistic worldview. And while the argument does not hinge on which theistic worldview one embraces, this section will approach the argument from a Christian worldview.

Christians maintain that objective morality is grounded in God himself. Seeing the failings of naturalists to ground morality in the natural world further substantiates the Christian’s claim that the moral law must derive from a different source — namely, a supernatural one.

Dealing with Euthyphro

One popular objection to the Christian position is commonly referred to as the Euthyphro Dilemma. This dilemma was first raised in Plato’s dialogue and goes like this: either something is good because God willed it or else God wills something because it is good.

Notice the dilemma these alternatives raise for the theistic view. For if something is good because God willed it, then it follows that the whatever is good is arbitrary. On the other hand, if God wills something because it is good, then the moral standard exists independent of God.

The problem with this objection, however, is that the skeptic presents the theist with a false dilemma. Meaning, a third option exists which asserts that God wills because he is good. This view argues that far from God’s commands being arbitrary, they are rooted in his perfectly good nature. Or to put it another way, God’s commands are “necessary expressions of his just and loving nature.”[xv] C. S. Lewis was also insightful in this regard. He declared, “God’s will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good.”[xvi] In the end, the Euthyphro Dilemma is not much of a dilemma after all.

Relativism

Another popular objection to the theist view is that moral truths are relative. Relativists agree that naturalism cannot ground objective morality, but they go one step farther by suggesting that objective morality does not exist at all. To support this claim, relativists point to what they perceive as different moral standards in different cultures. Yet the relativist position fails on multiple fronts.

First, relativists often confuse objective morality with changing behavior. For example, they argue that since Western culture used to think slavery was acceptable, but now it does not, morality then must have changed. This argument, though, is not too different from the is/out fallacy Sam Harris committed. Merely describing the change in human behavior in no way demonstrates that objective morality changed. This view is tantamount to suggesting that the laws of physics changed after Newton because we now have a more enlightened view.

A second objection revolves around moral disagreements. As the argument goes, if there is such a thing as a moral law, why is there so much disagreement on moral issues? Again, the relativists objection is weak here.

Consider the modern debate over abortion. One view believes it is a moral crime since it believes aborition is the murder of an innocent child. On the other hand, those who are pro-choice think abortion is acceptable if that is what the mother chooses. The pro-choice tactic, however, is to redefine what exists in the mother’s womb. They use euphemistic phrases such as “clump of cells” rather than “baby” to justify killing it. What this change in terminology suggests is that both sides agree on the basic moral principle that murder is wrong. One position, though, has changed terminology to justify their view.

This change in terminology is not so different from how the Nazis justified the Holocaust or how Colonial Americans justified slavery. In both cases, they convinced themselves that they were not dealing with human beings of equal value in an attempt to assuage their consciences. So, while on the surface it appears that wide moral disagreements exist among people and cultures, a closer examination shows that root moral issues are pretty similar. Lewis remarks, “If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own.”[xvii] This common understood morality explains why legal codes and religious codes share much in common across all times and cultures.

Image Bearers and Free Will

Given the Christian position, how does one explain this common sense of morality? The answer is rooted in God’s creation of human beings. In the first chapter of the Bible, we read that God made human beings in his image as the peak of his creation (Gen 1:26-27). As image-bearers of God, humans share certain characteristics in common with the Divine. Since Classical Theism asserts that God is a maximally great being, and part of his maximal greatness is his perfect goodness, we are not surprised that humans desire to do good.

Additionally, the perpetual wrestling over ethical issues also coincides with theism. For example, if naturalism is true, humans would simply act upon their strongest impulse brought about by the laws of chemistry in their brain. But humans do not do act this way — or at least they know they should not. Even naturalists recognize we should not act on our strongest impulses when those impulses would lead us to murder, rape, or steal. Yet, this ability to refrain from acting on one’s strongest impulses would be impossible given naturalism. But if God made people as both material and immaterial, it follows that they could adjudicate between competing desires.

While contemplating this very issue, C. S. Lewis suggested, “If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature’s mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same.”[xviii]

Lewis recognized that there is more to people than mere physical chemistry. People possess the ability to make volitional decisions contrary to their strongest impulses. And as Lewis suggests, people do so because they are inherantly aware of the moral law. For him, the feeling that we ought to behave a certain way along with the guilt that follows when we fail to meet that moral standard suggests that both a moral law exists, and we were hardwired to live in light of that law.[xix]

Moral Law

These feelings are shared by all people, because all people are made in the image of God, irrespective of their faith. The apostle Paul recognizes as much when he wrote, “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Rom 2:14-15).

According to Paul, Gentiles — those without the written law — are still accountable for their sin for two distinct reasons. First, God has implanted his moral law within them. And second, he has given everyone a conscience by which they can discern if they are living in accordance with that moral law. It is crucial to distinguish between the two. With respect to the moral law, New Testament scholar Douglas Moo contends, “Paul is almost certainly pressing into service a widespread Greek tradition to the effect that all human beings possess an ‘unwritten’ or ‘natural’ law — an innate moral sense of ‘right and wrong.’”[xx] In other words, the moral law is not a Christian invention, but a concept that was easily discernable by Greek philosophers.

Moo goes on to argue that the conscience is the “a reflective mechanism by which people can measure their conformity to a norm.”[xxi] Thomas Schreiner agrees with this assessment. He argues that to “identify the conscience and law, so that both are understood as the source of moral norms, is mistaken. The conscience is not the origin of moral norms but passes judgement on whether one has abided by those norms.”[xxii] Therefore, the reason people experience “oughtness” is twofold. First, God has implanted his moral law within all people. And second, he has instilled in everyone a conscience which either accuses or excuses their actions.

Therefore, theism gives us a sound foundation for objective moral values. It explains the objective moral standard which exists in our universe — rape is evil — and it explains why people feel as if they ought to act a certain way.

Conclusion

As this article demonstrates, theism provides the only basis for objective morality. Since naturalism fails to provide an objective foundation for morality, the only options remaining are moral nihilism or belief that God grounds morality. Atheists who wish to deny God’s existence, therefore, must resort to radical nihilistic positions, even denying the objective evil of events such as the Holocaust.

Experience tells us, though, that this perspective is unliveable. For if those same relativists had been forced into those gas chambers, they would quickly embrace objective morality. In fact, people can usually discern objective morals based on how others treat them. If someone rapes their daughter or burns down their house, they will say things like, “that’s not right” or “that’s not fair” without thinking through the worldview implications of those statements. While many skeptics assert that our perception of reality is merely an illusion, the best recourse is to adopt the worldview that best explains our experiences.

Footnotes

[i] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Boosk, 1995), 133.

[ii] J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2003), 492.

[iii] Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 8.

[iv] Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (New York: Free Press, 2010), 12.

[v] James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedelisky, Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 18.

[vi] Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape, 104.

[vii] Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape, 112.

[viii] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, 133

[ix] C. S. Lewis, Miracles (), 21-22.

[x] See a more recent development of this argument in Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 227-240.

[xi] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Mariner Books, 2008), 247.

[xii] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 175.

[xiii] Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwin Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), 268-269.

[xiv] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 176.

[xv] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 182.

[xvi] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 100.

[xvii] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 5-6.

[xviii] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper One, 1952), 10.

[xix] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 8.

[xx] Moo, Douglas, The Epistle to the Romans: The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 150.

[xxi] Moo, Douglas, The Epistle to the Romans, 152-153.

[xxii] Schreiner, Thomas R. Romans: Baker Exegetical Guide on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 123.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Is Morality Absolute or Relative? by Frank Turek (DVD/ Mp3/ Mp4)

Was Jesus Intolerant? (DVD) and (Mp4 Download) by Dr. Frank Turek 

Jesus vs. The Culture by Dr. Frank Turek DVD, Mp4 Download, and Mp3

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Ryan Leasure holds a Master of Arts from Furman University and a Masters of Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Currently, he’s a Doctor of Ministry candidate at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as a pastor at Grace Bible Church in Moore, SC.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3f7ToQE 

 

by Natasha Crain

I had a revelation last week that, in retrospect, was many years overdue. So overdue that it borders on embarrassing to admit this was a revelation in 2022. Here it is:

Mainstream media doesn’t try to be objective.

Now, before you laugh too hard, let me make a clear distinction: I’ve long known mainstream media is not objective. But I had strangely held onto the assumption that they thought they were being objective and just woefully lacked enough self-awareness to see how crazily biased they were.

What I realized last week is that of course they know how biased they are…whether they’ve ever stopped to acknowledge the changed nature of so-called “news” or not. We’ve simply drifted over time into a land where the unstated new normal is that virtually all news is essentially op-ed.

Perhaps the reason I naively held onto the idea that news is inherently supposed to be objective is that I started out as a broadcast journalism major in college. Way back in the ancient days of 1994, I was taking classes that presupposed every good journalist sought to be objective. Our news story homework assignments would come back to us with the finest of edits, designed to carefully root out any trace of bias. After all, if we ever wanted a shot at working for places as heralded as CNN was at the time, we had to learn how to be…unbiased.

What a crazy thought today.

Not only is mainstream media not trying to be objective, but they’re also openly advocating for specific viewpoints. And not only are they openly advocating for specific viewpoints, but they’re also strategically manipulating public thought.

Psychological manipulation over time in the search for control over people’s thinking is called gaslighting. It’s the process of making someone believe they’re crazy and question their entire view of reality.

Maybe that sounds dramatic, but I don’t think it is. There is a coordinated effort amongst mainstream media sources to achieve a specific type of public influence today—an influence directed toward achieving a uniformity of thought that’s nearly always at odds with a Christian worldview.

While Christians realize this to varying degrees, I don’t believe we’re collectively thinking enough through the implications of just how much this media sea change has affected, is affecting, and will affect both our own worldview and the worldview of those around us.

Consider the significance of the following five implicit messages that mainstream media constantly trumpets in a variety of ways.

1. “Pretty much everyone agrees with how to view issues of cultural importance. If you’re one of the ones who disagree, you’re on the extreme fringe of society. That should tell you something about the accuracy and reasonableness of your views.”

In the early 1980s, there were fifty independent companies that owned the majority of media in the US. But by 2011, just six conglomerates controlled 90 percent of media. The fact that a handful of companies control nearly all media outlets makes it possible to present a unified viewpoint on any issue. It looks to media consumers as though the “authoritative” news voices around them are all aligned with certain viewpoints, but it’s really all coming from the same handful of companies.

Make no mistake: The appearance of unified thought coming from sources people perceive to be representative of culture at large is very powerful—especially when you’re in a worldview minority. As I discuss at length in Faithfully Different, it’s estimated that only 6 percent of Americans have a biblical worldview (accepting core teachings of the Bible). Yes, 65 percent of Americans identify themselves with the label “Christian,” but the vast majority of self-identified Christians hold beliefs in conflict with basic biblical teachings about things such as the existence of objective morality, the reality of heaven and hell, the nature of God, and much more.

If you’re in the 6 percent whose worldview is based on what the Bible teaches, you’re going to feel the pressure of seeing that nearly everyone in culture—including those who identify as a Christian—thinks differently. And media wants to capitalize on that aspect of our humanity that makes us question our beliefs just because they differ from the norm. But remember: There’s no such thing as democracy when it comes to what’s true about reality; numbers will never determine truth.

2. “Here’s the language that’s acceptable to use if you’re going to be an acceptable member of society.”

Beyond the uniformity of viewpoint achievable due to the structure of media ownership, there’s uniformity even at the detailed level of language. That’s because there’s a language guide that has long functioned as the default style manual for mainstream news organizations. It’s called the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook.

The AP Stylebook goes far beyond what words everyone should capitalize in a headline or when to hyphenate; they give viewpoint guidance as well. They recently issued, for example, a guide for coverage on transgender issues.

Ironically, the guide begins, “Journalists on all beats must be able to write about and interview transgender people using accurate, sensitive, unbiased language.” But what follows is anything but unbiased. As a small sampling of the guide, media is told to:

  • adopt the language “sex assigned at birth” rather than something like “birth gender” or “born a girl,” presumably to emphasize how arbitrary the sex “assignment” decision is;
  • describe a transgender person using phrasing such as “is a woman” rather than “identifies as a woman,” presumably to emphasize the certainty of a person’s new identity;
  • avoid terms like “biological male,” which they say are used by “opponents of transgender rights” to “oversimplify sex and gender”; and
  • not use phrasing that “misgenders people or implies doubt, such as former men’s swimmer or currently competes as a woman.”

And that’s just a small fraction of the content. It’s very clear that journalistic expectations now include using language in a way that accepts and promotes the mainstream secular narrative. The more the public hears carefully curated phrasing designed to subconsciously transform how we view issues, the more those who refuse to use such language will be viewed with resentment. Once again, the idea is that this is where society at large is, and if you’re not there with your words, there’s something wrong with you.

(If you’ve marveled at how mainstream media can euphemistically refer to the intentional killing of preborn babies as “abortion care,” this is the same strategy at work. Transform the language, and you’ll transform how people think.)

3. “These are the subjects that are most important to know about and discuss.”

Every day, thousands and thousands of editorial decisions are made as to what makes the news. In other words, before we even get to the bias in how stories are told, we have the bias of what subjects are even selected to tell.

One study, for example, showed that the major broadcast networks gave three times more airtime to the pro-choice Women’s March than to the pro-life March for Life, despite comparable participant numbers and location. If you had been watching these networks, it would have been easy to assume that the pro-choice Women’s March was far more culturally significant, even if that wasn’t necessarily the case.

I regularly visit the Facebook news tab to track this phenomenon and see what they’re pushing users to consider important. From the looks of it, they really want me to be aware when a celebrity changes pronouns (Demi Lovato this week), when new state abortion restrictions have (allegedly) jeopardized a woman’s health, and that Christian nationalism is a terrifying threat.

Story selection strongly shapes our view of what the “world” is talking about, and that can significantly influence what we believe is most important if we’re not careful. But there are plenty of issues important for Christians that you’ll rarely see discussed in mainstream media. Wins for religious freedom, for example, will likely not see the light of day, or if they do, they’ll be covered negatively. Christians need to take it upon ourselves to stay informed about issues mainstream media won’t discuss.

(For religious freedom issues in particular, I highly recommend following the Alliance Defending Freedom.)

4. “These are the things you need to be very afraid of…and the solutions that will make you safe again.”

Whether it’s Covid, monkeypox, climate change, the loss of supposed “abortion rights,” or the idea that the world is one step from nuclear annihilation, continually perpetuating fear drives ratings and clicks. Frankly, that’s just business. It’s how they make money. But fear is also undoubtedly used strategically to push people to favor desired solutions.

This is a tactic that works with just about anyone—Christian or not—because it speaks to our human nature. We just have to be self-aware enough to recognize it.

When people are scared for themselves, they’re more likely to hand over freedoms to the government to ensure some measure of safety. But the bigger the government control in the name of safety for all, the lesser the tolerance and rights for any who won’t fall in line.

And when people are scared for others, they’re more likely to accept positions that might otherwise be at odds with their own moral knowledge. I’ve read countless comments from Christians, for example, who are afraid to take a stand against so-called gender affirmation surgeries for teens because they’ve been told teens will commit suicide if they aren’t affirmed in a chosen gender. Media sees what fear can drive and continually perpetuates those statistics to sway views. (Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters is a must-read on this subject.)

Similarly, many Christians claim to be pro-life personally but don’t support banning abortion because media has made them fear that abortion bans will be responsible for women dying from situations like ectopic pregnancies (this is completely false.)

When people are scared, whether for themselves or others, it gives media a reason to take the presumed moral high ground and demonize anyone who doesn’t support safety. That’s effective because now you’re not someone who simply disagrees—you’re someone who is putting others in either mental or physical jeopardy. Christians on the receiving end of that characterization need to be deeply convicted of the biblical justification for their positions in order to not feel the psychological weight of thinking their views actually hurt others.

(And for the record, I’m not saying that there aren’t things to be legitimately concerned about. I’m specifically talking about how the media elevates appropriate levels of concern to a point where they can leverage crisis-level fear to their benefit and agenda.)

5. “It’s not just us saying these things…look at all these Christian leaders who agree. Trust them even if you don’t trust us.”

Someone not following the news closely might think that Christians are actually well represented in the media. After all, mainstream outlets somewhat regularly feature interviews with or articles about various Christian leaders. CNN, for example, recently featured a lengthy interview with high profile pastor Andy Stanley titled “The evangelical church faces a ‘state of emergency’ over the pandemic and politics, Andy Stanley says.”

But of course CNN was pleased to publish an interview with a well-known pastor criticizing the evangelical church and scolding Christians for taking sides in politics. That’s what they’d like to do themselves, but it’s more effective to have one of our own say it in the hope we’ll question any differing understanding we may have. (The interview was based on Stanley’s new best-selling book, Not In It To Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines the Church, which I discussed the problems with in my last podcast— “Why Christians Must Care about Politics.”)

Similarly, The Washington Post is happy this week to feature the headline, “Clerics sue over Florida abortion law, saying it violates religious freedom.” Of course, they’re going for the shock value of suggesting religious leaders are for abortion as much as anyone else and that it’s actually a matter of religious freedom.

Any Christian writer/speaker/pastor whom mainstream media is happy to feature should take deep stock of why they’re receiving an invitation to the party. It’s not because media wants to genuinely share a Christian view that differs from the norm. It’s almost certainly because your view doesn’t differ from the norm that they want to promote your voice as an example to all those “other” Christians. And if your view doesn’t differ from the norm, it’s probably a good time to consider if the media has already done a really good job of convincing you to think like them.

The other day, my son and I drove by a used bookstore in town, and he noted the sign posted in the front: “Browse books and exchange ideas.” He jokingly said, “That might be the last place for the free sharing of ideas in America.” We laughed at the thought that the final outpost for the welcome exchange of differing views might be this tiny bookstore in our town. But the way mainstream media functions today, it’s not far from the truth that the open exchange of ideas will have to happen in places people very intentionally seek out.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

Counter Culture Christian: Is the Bible True? by Frank Turek (Mp3), (Mp4), and (DVD)        

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Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3TIdZuj

 

By Josh Klein

What is a Woman?

Seems like an easy enough question to answer, but these days, apparently, it’s a stumper! Conservative commentator, author, and part-time Virginian, Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire seeks to answer this seemingly innocuous question in a documentary released on June 1st.

It is no coincidence that the release coincided with the first day of “Pride Month.” Unfortunately, one needs to be a paying member of The Daily Wire to access the film, but, in my humble opinion, it is quite worth it.

You can access the film here: LINK

If you are teetering on the edge, deciding whether it is worth your time and money, hopefully this review will help you in your decision. Much can be written about this documentary, but the written word does not have the same effect as watching the film itself. Regardless of your position on the topic, I believe it is a film worth viewing.

In a nutshell, Matt Walsh and The Daily Wire have carefully crafted a thoughtful and humorous documentary that seeks to take the subject matter of transgenderism seriously but does not shy away from the absurdity of the worldview either.

What is a Woman – Film Review

What is a Woman? is a 90 minute documentary about the transgender movement, and its ideological framework and targeting of children.

What the Film Does Well – THE INTERVIEWS

Somehow, Matt Walsh, a well-known conservative[1] talk show host and author[2][3] was able to convince members of the far left in academia, the medical field, and the mental health sphere to sit down in an interview for a movie. This is a feat in and of itself.  One wonders, did these individuals really not know who Matt Walsh was and did he enter the interviews under false pretense?  The answer to the latter is likely yes, but then again, perhaps those he interviewed genuinely thought the logic and knowledge was on their side.

Regardless of how the interviews were accomplished the product was stunning.  The production was high quality, although, the first 5-10 minutes leave something to be desired (more on that later).

Walsh interviews a bevy of so-called “experts” in the field of gender sciences.  The film’s opening interview is with a woman named Gert Comfrey[4], a non-binary gender affirming therapist with a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt university.  Gert, obviously a woman, claims during the interview that she cannot answer the question, “what is woman” because she’s, “not a woman.”

Gert’s interview was one of the least shocking in the film, however, one could say that it is shocking that someone can graduate from two “Christian universities” and come out with an aversion to God’s created order.

Walsh does a great job of letting those on the side of the LGBTQ+ agenda explain their own ideology and he presses them on the absurdities when the opportunity presents itself, but he does so calmly and with an apparent will to listen, though his frustration bubbles to the surface on occasion.

Interspersed between “expert” interviews are also “man on the street” interviews with normal, everyday people.  In one of the more eyebrow raising and hilarious moments of the film Walsh is interviewing a woman on the street that claims, rather vehemently, that gay men (especially) have no right to answer the question “what is a woman” because they are not women.  She insists that only those that identify as women can tell a person what a woman is.  Walsh presses the issue by asking her if she is a cat, she says no, and then he asks her if she can explain what a cat is even though she is not one.  Caught in her absurdity, rather than admit the flaws in her logic, she states that agreeing to the interview was a mistake and goes on her way. And then, almost as if Walsh could hear the retorts coming from the opposition, later in the film, he interviews a woman that believes she is a wolf.  It seems gender is now inter-species, so the question he asked initially was warranted. A brilliant move by director Justin Folk.

In three other interviews, with Dr. Marci Bowers[5], Dr. Michelle Forcier[6] and Dr. Patrick Grzanka[7] Walsh exposes the dangerous beliefs espoused in gender ideology with simple questions.  Two of these interviewees, Forcier and Grzanka, threaten to end interviews after questions become direct and difficult to respond to.  Grzanka, in particular, becomes flustered and quickly offended by the word truth. When Walsh presses the issue of “getting to the truth” Grzanka replies with:

“Yeah… well I’m really uncomfortable with that language of, like, getting to the truth.”

Walsh then asks why that makes him uncomfortable and he responds with this:

“It sounds, actually, deeply transphobic to me and if you keep probing, we’re going to stop the interview… You keep invoking the word truth which is condescending and rude.”

Using the word “invoking” gives away the game.  This is a religion, and you must not invoke the wrong incantations lest you undo decades of his work.  I am only kidding… sort of.

Grzanka also says that “when someone tells you who they are you should believe them” early in the interview before admitting later in the interview that it is “well established that human beings can lie” and when Walsh says, “well not even lie, just be mistaken,” he agrees.  Which would logically cast doubt into whether or not one should actually believe a person when he/she tells you “who they are.”

Forcier, on the other hand, threatens to end the interview after Walsh asks about her prescribing Lupron as a puberty blocker (which she readily admits to) which is used to chemically castrate sex offenders.[8] She, like Grzanka, accuses Walsh of using disturbing language in his statements.  However, she never contradicts his claims. She too, seems offended by the “invoking” of truth.  One of the more odd exchanges of the movie highlights the lengths to which gender ideologues will go for supposed intellectual consistency.

Dr. Bowers is dealt similar blows, though she remains composed and aloof when she is brought face to face with the reality that gender-affirming surgery is similar to trans-abled affirming surgery.  However, she fails to see the similarity and dismisses the comparison outright.  Even calling those that deal with BIID[9] “kooky” while she simultaneously admits to cutting off the healthy breasts and mutilating the healthy genitals of a healthy 16-year-old girl under the guise of “Gender affirming surgery.”

In stark contrast to the gender ideologues, Walsh interviews quite a few on the other side of the debate. He does not change demeanor when interviewing the other side even though his position reflects their own. The two stars of those interviews are Dr. Miriam Grossman[10] a psychologist who provides a much-needed foundational discussion on the work of Alfred Kinsey[11] and John Money[12] in relation to gender ideology, and Scott Nugent[13], a biological woman that presents as a man, whose passion for the topic and knowledgeable understanding of the processes are eye opening. Visit TReVoices[14] website for a veritable goldmine of information and talking points against gender ideology arguments. Scott’s interviews in particular were a stunning repudiation of the gender-identity movement.  One could say that Scott alone tore down the house of cards that Money and Kinsey built.

 

The addition of Jordan Peterson and Carl Trueman[15] to the documentary is the cherry on top of the interview section.  Watch for yourself and then explore more deeply what both of these men have had to say on the topic.  Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is an academic treatment of similar issues and the exploration of where they come from.

PRODUCTION

The production and direction of What is a Woman? is top notch.  The Daily Wire’s team was able to string together questions and generate an overall story arc from beginning to end that is coherent, gets to the point, and leaves one asking, “what can I do to fight this?” The film jumps between interviews, each segment used to set up the next.

They also do a great job at keeping the story moving and not allowing the gravitas of the subject matter to get too heavy for the audience.  There is enough humor to relieve some tension but enough harrowing details to create consternation. This had the quality of a high budget documentary and is, in my opinion, better than anything Michael Moore has ever done. And infinitely more honest.

A very underrated piece of the film, in my view, was the conversation around transgenders in athletics.  The audacity of one transgender activist to say that there is no real evidence of transgender women dominating women’s sports was palpable, and made more powerfully so with the juxtaposition of a film reel that featured transgender athletes easily defeating biological women in various events.  Almost as if to say, “Who are you going to believe?  This activist or your lying eyes?” Dr. Debra Soh, author of “The End of Gender” contradicts the activist’s point as well when she says, “in a few years there won’t be female sports anymore, there will be male and transgender sports.”

Anton Seim knocked the cinematography out of the park and made the movie visually stunning.

Finally, in a fitting conclusion, Matt Walsh’s seeming frustration with the inability to coherently answer his question leads into a final segment in which he goes on the offensive. No spoilers here.

CRITIQUES

The film opens with Walsh narrating as an introduction. At one point, Walsh stands at the edge of a lake and casts a fishing line into the water where he says:

“The truth is, I’m not very good at fishing.  But, what is truth?  Is there a truth?  Is this what progress looks like? Can my boys really become girls?”

This was supposedly the impetus to asking the question of a gender identity affirming therapist but seemed a bit over the top and cheesy.  Maybe that was the point but ultimately it did not seem to fit with where the rest of the film was taking the viewer.

Many will point to the traveling to Africa to “own the libs” as a positive, and the ploy definitely has merits in pointing out the logical and unscientific absurdities of the other side. It was also a way to “own the libs” in their own intersectional traps.  However, Walsh also chose a tribe known for their own mutilation of women in contravention of Kenyan law.  This form of Female Genital Mutilation is a rite of passage for girls to become women.  And while there has been a recent movement to eliminate the tribal tradition[16], it remains in practice still today.  This opens up a fair critique of Walsh’s film from the left, however, it could be a critique that he turns around for his own use.  If genital mutilation is abhorrent across cultures perhaps top and bottom surgery to “affirm” gender identity in the U.S. is equally abhorrent?

There is also a critique coming from the left concerning what some call “Child Pornography” in the film.  During a portion in which Walsh is addressing the societal and social media trendiness of gender identity the film shows multiple videos of topless young women having revealed their “top surgeries” for the world to see on Instagram and TikTok.  However, the very fact that Instagram and TikTok allow these videos to even exist at all is the point of the section.  If anyone should be on the hook for child pornography because of these videos it is them. I would say, in fairness, that blurring out certain aspects might have held off this critique, but maybe not.  Walsh has, before, on his podcast blurred out faces and body parts of children so as not to subject them to public scrutiny.  Perhaps the same could have been done here?

One small area that is lacking as well, is a foray into how gender ideology has started to seep even into the Church. Perhaps it would have been too much for one film but I would have liked to see a theological component to the movie as well, as there are deep spiritual undertones to the ideology that is being foisted upon our culture.  In fact, demon and demonself  were used as preferred pronouns in one clip shown in the film. Walsh is an unabashed Catholic, and I feel like he maybe missed an opportunity here to shed light on the demonic forces among us and in our churches.[17]

Finally, the fact that this movie lies behind a paywall is somewhat of an inconvenience.  The lack of ability to individually purchase the film apart from becoming a Daily Wire member feels like an interesting and myopic choice.  I do not regret paying for a membership and seeing the film but many who might need to see it but are on the center left might not see it due to needing to become a member of The Daily Wire to obtain viewing permissions.  I do not believe The Daily Wire should ever release this sort of content for free but opening up viewing options from multiple angles would have increased the credibility of the film itself in my opinion.

Final Assessment

What is a Woman? is necessary viewing across the political spectrum.  It is thought provoking, logical and bent towards the truth (even if truth can feel condescending and rude to some).  Matt Walsh plays his part impeccably and the visuals are on par with any other big budget documentary. Maybe better.

My wife even commented once, “how does he keep a straight face” after Walsh told a congressman men that “There are people that kind of, have really bought into the rumor that only men have penises. How do we account for that and how do you respond to that?” With complete sincerity.

Those on the gender ideological side of the aisle seem to rest in tautologies to define the word woman (A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman – a circular definition) without the ability to define the term woman itself. I will not spoil the ending of the film, but, suffice it to say that the way the word woman is finally defined at the end is both logical and humorous.

A month long subscription to The Daily Wire is more than worth the watch in my view.

I give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Footnotes

[1] https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-matt-walsh-show

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Johnny-Walrus-Matt-Walsh/dp/1956007059/ref=sr_1_1?

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Church-Cowards-Wake-Up-Complacent-Christians/dp/B081VPW7PM/ref=sr_1_1?

[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/gert-comfrey-nashville-tn/443327

[5] https://marcibowers.com/

[6] https://vivo.brown.edu/display/mforcier#

[7] https://psychology.utk.edu/faculty/grzanka.php

[8] https://askdrbrown.org/library/how-dare-we-support-chemical-castration-children

[9] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19132621/ (Body Integrity Identity Disorder)

[10] https://www.miriamgrossmanmd.com/

[11] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Charles-Kinsey

[12] https://kinseyinstitute.org/about/profiles/john-money.php

[13] https://twitter.com/trevoices?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

[14] https://www.trevoices.org/

[15] Trueman, Carl R., and Rod Dreher. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Crossway, 2020.

[16] https://plan-international.org/kenya/case-studies/the-maasai-elder-advocating-to-end-female-genital-mutilation/

[17] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/11/1036371531/evangelical-lutheran-church-first-transgender-bishop-megan-rohrer

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Woman to Woman: Preparing Yourself to Mentor (Book) by Edna Ellison & Tricia Scribner

Five Questions No One Ever Asks About Gay Rights (DVD Set), (Mp4 Download), and (Mp3 Set) by Dr. Frank Turek

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Josh Klein is a Pastor from Omaha, Nebraska with over a decade of ministry experience. He graduated with an MDiv from Sioux Falls Seminary and spends his spare time reading and engaging with current and past theological and cultural issues. He has been married for 12 years to Sharalee Klein and they have three young children.

Original blog post: https://bit.ly/3R9plW9

 

By Bob Perry

Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, is a demographic expert. He has identified some sobering trends that are cause for concern for the future of America. In his article, “Can America Cope with Demographic Decline?”, Eberstadt points out that the traditional attempts to address those worries through government policy and financial incentives “vastly underestimate the challenge they wish to address.”

Going Lower

The birth rate required to support a society’s population stability is 2.1 births per woman. Eberstadt’s research found that in 2019, the birth rate in the U.S. was 1.71, the lowest rate ever recorded up to that point. Then, COVID-19 hit. In 2020, the rate fell to 1.64. Projected estimates for the as-yet-unreported first quarter of 2021 point toward another 5% decrease. These trends portend some challenging socioeconomic times ahead.

Some post-pandemic rebound may be expected, of course. But fertility forecasts are notoriously unreliable … there are reasons to suspect that U.S. fertility could actually decline even further in the years ahead … Decades of accumulating social and political dysfunction have left America less favorably poised for, and perhaps also less capable of seizing, the advantages of the new demographic era ahead of us.

Fertility rates below 1.3 will halve a population in less than 45 years. And there is no documented case of a society surviving a rate that low at any time in history prior to 1990. Depopulation trends have already started in Russia and Japan. Projections for the European Union show that theirs will begin in 2027. China could commence even sooner.

Financing Fertility

Typically, governments attempt to boost birth rates using financial incentives. But this has proven to be a faulty solution. Russia, China, Singapore, and Japan’s efforts to stimulate fertility using financial carrots paid small dividends in the short term. In each case, financial inducements had some impact on the timing of their citizenry’s birth decisions – they are most attractive to those at the lowest income and education levels. But, ultimately, they didn’t have much impact on the total number of births, which usually return to at or below their pre-stimulus levels once the incentive runs its course.

Cultural Headwinds

The prognosis for reversing these trends is not good. Several factors lead to that conclusion. As John Stonestreet has pointed out, radical feminism demanded that women be “liberated from their own creative potential” and can be directly connected to the inclination to postpone or forgo childbirth altogether.

Since 1980, the median age of first marriage has gone from 24.7 for men and 22 for women to 30 and 28 respectively. The additional six years for women puts them almost exactly at their peak fertility.

But the Millennials who occupy that age category …

are of a markedly different mindset from that of their Boomer parents. Their lived experience is in a very different America. People under 40 do not have much memory of America with a vibrant, private-sector-driven economy. They came of age during a strange historical run of unusually poor political leadership … Theirs is an America where public confidence in the nation’s basic institutions has undergone a gruesome and wholesale slide.

Religiosity, which has historically encouraged the pursuit of the traditional family, has also been a casualty of the cultural milieu. A Gallup poll earlier this year revealed that just 36 percent of Millennials report any religious affiliation. They likewise express pessimism about the country’s future, they lack pride in it, and they are increasingly unwilling to defend it. As Eberstadt puts it, young Americans have become “demoralized and de-moralized.”

Resurrecting Marriage

There is a way out of this. And it depends on the same thing it always has – God’s design for marriage and the command to “go forth and multiply.” Mark Regnerus addresses these issues in his book, The Future of Marriage, wherein he acknowledges all of the above. His research points out that “young Christians are significantly influenced by the culture around them … [and] have a sense of swimming upstream in their efforts to marry and form families.” But, despite all this, he argues that:

Marriage as an institution has changed very little … On these points, young Christians are substantially similar to their parents and grandparents. They have not lost sight of the value of lasting love. Fundamentally, they know what it means to wed … If marriage is so deeply written into our nature, it probably won’t disappear … the young will go on looking for love, and the world will still be peopled. Civilization will continue.

These kinds of motivations don’t come from the government. That’s Nicholas Eberstadt’s point. He is cautiously optimistic that a “spontaneous, intellectually and spiritually disruptive ferment from within civil society might offer a homegrown American answer” to our demographic decline.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Does Love and Tolerance Equal Affirmation? (DVD) (Mp4)  by Dr. Frank Turek

Sex and Your Commanding Officer (DVD) (Mp4 Download) by Dr. Frank Turek

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bob Perry is a Christian apologetics writer, teacher, and speaker who blogs about Christianity and the culture at truehorizon.org. He is a Contributing Writer for the Christian Research Journal and has also been published in Touchstone, and Salvo. Bob is a professional aviator with 37 years of military and commercial flying experience. He has a B.S., Aerospace Engineering from the U. S. Naval Academy, and an M.A., Christian Apologetics from Biola University. He has been married to his high school sweetheart since 1985. They have five grown sons.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3T5KBhA

 

By Bob Perry

Back in the good ‘ole days of 2015, the fight over allowing transgender women to use the women’s bathroom in Charlotte, North Carolina, took center stage in the national political debate. At the time, only a Chicken Little would suggest that mixing gender preference and sexual identity could lead to harmful outcomes. In an article titled, “‘Transgender’ Needs A Legal Definition Right Now or Women Will Get Hurt,” David Marcus pointed out that trans advocates:

… insisted that the idea anyone would use the law to dress as a woman and invade women’s private spaces [was] a myth. [But that November] Richard Rodriguez was arrested for dressing as a woman and peeking in stalls in the women’s room at Virginia’s Potomac Mills Mall … [Further, they claimed that] Charlotte’s law was never intended to allow someone like Rodriguez to put on a dress and enter women’s facilities.[1]

David Marcus’s fear that women would get hurt was far more than a myth. It was an understatement. Today, transgender women are invading more than women’s restrooms.

Beyond the Bathroom

The move from spying on girls in the ladies’ room to the cases of sexual assault in schools we saw highlighted in last November’s Virginia Governor’s race is, by definition, an escalating threat to women.[2] But the ramifications of transgender ideology are even more far-reaching than that.

  • Last summer, New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard made history as the first transgender woman to compete in Olympic weightlifting.[3]
  • In Australia, 6’2”, 220-pound Hannah Mouncey overpowered other women in both Australian rules football and on the national handball team.[4]
  • Caitlyn Jenner not only graced the cover of Vanity Fair magazine in seductive lingerie but was also named Glamour magazine’s “Woman of the Year” in 2015.
  • In October 2021, Rachel Levine became the first woman ever promoted to the rank of four-star admiral in the U. S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.[5]

And what about women’s collegiate swimming? Traditionally, swimmers give us electrifying moments where they break records by tenths or even hundredths of a second. But recently, the University of Pennsylvania’s transgender swimmer, Lia Thomas, won the 200-meter freestyle by nearly 8 seconds, the 500-meter by over 12 seconds, and the 1,650-meter freestyle by 38 seconds. Two of those were the best times in the nation.[6]

But the reaction to Lia’s victories hasn’t been electrifying at all. Her teammates have noted that:

The crowd is unusually silent when Thomas crosses the finish line, cheering for the second-place finisher instead … the team feels obligated to pretend they are happy for Thomas when they really feel demoralized and frustrated.[7]

Women Strike Back

For all their successes, these “women” don’t seem to be getting much love from their fellow females. In fact, there has been a backlash against every one of them. And the backlash has been led by women. Take Rose McGowan, for instance, who:

launched a blistering attack on the world’s most famous trans woman – former Olympic athlete Caitlyn Jenner … “You’re a woman now? Well, [expletive deleted] learn that we have had a VERY different experience than your life of male privilege,” McGowan said in a Facebook post she later deleted after facing accusations of transphobia. “Being a woman comes with a lot of baggage. The weight of unequal history. You’d do well to learn it. You’d do well to wake up. Woman of the year? Not by a long [expletive deleted] shot.”[8]

Suddenly, feminism and transgenderism – both darlings of Leftist ideology – have created a new aphorism as it applies to the Patriarchy: “The enemy of my enemy … is my enemy.”

The snake, it seems, is eating its own tail.

Reality Bites

Behind Rose McGowan’s tirade is the tacit admission that transgender women are actually men. It’s the same reality that drove Cynthia Millen, a three-decade USA Swimming official, to resign her position in the wake of Lia Thomas’s record-setting achievements:

Everything fair about swimming is being destroyed … The fact is that swimming is a sport in which bodies compete against bodies. Identities do not compete against identities … Men are different from women, men swimmers are different from women, and they will always be faster than women … While Lia Thomas is a child of God, he is a biological male who is competing against women and no matter how much testosterone suppression drugs he takes, he will always be a biological male and have the advantage [of having a] larger lung capacity, larger heart, greater circulation, a bigger skeleton, and less fat … I can no longer participate in a sport that allows biological men to compete against women.[9]

Don’t miss Cynthia Millen’s words: “Lia Thomas is a child of God.” Therein lies the transcendent reality in which the solution to all this mayhem must be grounded. Lia is a human being made in the image of God. For that, she deserves our love and respect. But that doesn’t oblige us to patronize her delusion. The stakes are too high for that.

The ascendancy of transgender ideology is harming women in more ways than even its critics could have imagined. But it is doing more than that. It’s a torpedo aimed at the foundations of a stable, healthy society. Whether it’s in the pool, on the playing field, in the boardroom, or in the sanctuary, denying reality is always destructive to those who practice it.

Footnotes

[1] David Marcus, “‘Transgender’ Needs a Legal Definition Right Now or Women Will Get Hurt,” The Federalist,

[2] Kaylee McGhee White, “Loudoun County Schools Covered Up Rape, Prosecuted a Concerned Father to Protect Transgender Agenda,” Washington Examiner,

[3] James Ellingworth & Sally Ho, “Transgender Weightlifter Hubbard Makes History at Olympics,” AP News

[4] Warner Todd Huston, “Aussie Trans Athlete Hannah Mouncey Towers Above Opponents,” Breitbart News

[5] Matt Lavietes, “Rachel Levine Becomes Nation’s First Transgender Four-Star Admiral,” NBC News

[6] Charmaine Patterson, “Swimmer Lia Thomas, Who is Transgender, Continues to Shatter Women’s Records,” People

[7] “The Week,” National Review, December 27, 2021, p. 10.

[8] Jill Stark, “Call Yourself a Woman? Feminists Take on Trans Community in Bitter Debate,” The Sydney Morning Herald

[9] Yaron Steinbuch, “Transgender Swimmer Lia Thomas is ‘Destroying’ Sport, Official Says,” New York Post

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Five Questions No One Ever Asks About Gay Rights (DVD Set), (Mp4 Download), and (Mp3 Set) by Dr. Frank Turek

Defending the Faith on Campus by Frank Turek (DVD Set, mp4 Download set, and Complete Package)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bob Perry is a Christian apologetics writer, teacher, and speaker who blogs about Christianity and the culture at truehorizon.org. He is a Contributing Writer for the Christian Research Journal and has also been published in Touchstone, and Salvo. Bob is a professional aviator with 37 years of military and commercial flying experience. He has a B.S., Aerospace Engineering from the U. S. Naval Academy, and an M.A., Christian Apologetics from Biola University. He has been married to his high school sweetheart since 1985. They have five grown sons.

By Adam Tucker

As I sit at my computer thinking about the incomprehensible evil of yet another mass shooting, this time in Uvalde, Texas, the floods of outrage, sadness, fear, and uncertainty grip me as I’m sure they do many of you. Ironically, news of the tragedy broke just minutes before attending the end-of-year ceremonies at my kids’ school. Tears filled my eyes as I watched the boys and girls sing and receive their awards knowing that so many parents will not get to experience such joys after this latest tragedy. I truly cannot imagine.

Yet, while the news coming out of Texas is very disturbing, there is something else I can’t get out of my mind. Just over a week ago, my family and I had the opportunity to take in some of the landmarks in our nation’s capital. As we navigated busy crosswalks and a drizzly day around the National Mall, we began hearing loud music and very angry people shouting over a PA system. Once we reached the front of the White House (the obligatory photo op), we could see the area just below the Washington Monument covered with thousands of people pouring into the streets holding signs and banging drums. Little did we know, this was one of nearly 400 “Bans Off Our Bodies” rallies organized across the country to protest the recently leaked documents from the Supreme Court that point to a possible overturn of Roe v. Wade.

The sadness I feel about the Uvalde school-shooting was equaled by the anger and heartbreak I felt seeing the narcissism, hedonism, and utter foolhardy reasoning occurring at that pro-choice rally.

What is wrong with this scenario? How can we (rightly) mourn the loss of “our most vulnerable” one day and cheer for the death of the unborn (those who are truly our most vulnerable) the next? More to the point, how can we pretend that these utterly contradictory attitudes are sane?

To be frank, we can’t, and we shouldn’t, because such attitudes demonstrate the literal insanity that has taken over modern moral sensibilities and outrage. We can demonstrate this insanity by asking three important questions.

What is a ‘Right’?

No doubt, in the days to come there will be vicious calls for more gun laws, and more debates will occur over the right to bear arms. Likewise, those from the “Bans Off Our Bodies” rally will continue to argue that they have a right to an abortion, and those opposing them will argue the unborn have their own right to life. We constantly hear about gay rights, trans rights, equal rights, etc. This language of “rights” gets thrown around all the time, but what exactly is a right? It will be most helpful to first determine what a right is not.

Rights can’t be merely subjective preferences. If that were the case, then no mass shooter, abortionist, protester, Supreme Court Justice, etc. could, in principle, do anything objectively wrong. At most, we could say their behavior is not our preferred behavior, but why should anyone care about your preferred behavior? In this case, we could not say that anything is actually wrong (or right for that matter). That certainly doesn’t seem correct.

Nor can we conclude that rights are the types of things that apply universally to everything. After all, we don’t put lions on trial for killing a gazelle or even another lion. Hence, there seems to be something specific to human beings regarding rights.

Similarly, rights can’t just be a matter of legislation from some government body. Things like slavery used to be perfectly legal, but we rightly concluded that such behavior is objectively wrong regardless of its legality. Governments are tasked with protecting rights, not granting them. This understanding was foundational to the formulation of America’s founding documents (even if it was inconsistently lived out). It was also understood when even governments themselves, like Nazi Germany for example, were charged with crimes against “humanity” despite the legal grounds in Nazi Germany for killing Jews.

So rights are the kinds of things that aren’t merely opinions. They are not simply based on what is legal, and they seem to apply specifically to human beings. We’re getting closer to understanding what a right is, but what exactly does it mean to be human, and why do humans have these things we call rights?

Why Do Humans Have Rights?

Classically understood, a thing is what it is according to its nature. In other words, all humans are humans because we instantiate a common human nature (in a moderate-realist sense) that makes us a human rather than, say, a dog or a cat. This seems rather obvious, but it is in fact something that has been abandoned in our modern rationale where anyone can “be” anything they want to “be.” In reality, however, we all know this simple fact about natures. No one intentionally goes to the veterinarian rather than a medical doctor when he’s sick. Why? Because he knows the difference between humans and dogs!

Because we can know the natures of things, we can know what constitutes a thing’s good. Correctly understood, “good” is that which fulfills the end or purpose of some thing according to that thing’s nature. To quote Thomas Aquinas, “Good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary.” For example, an eye that doesn’t hear well provides no useful information regarding whether the eye is good or not. An eye that doesn’t see well, however, is an objectively bad eye because it does not fulfill its purpose according to its nature as an eye. Such an understanding turns to moral goodness because humans have a rational nature. We are able both to know what is good for us and choose whether to pursue that good or not. Because the good of our intellects is knowing truth, and the good of our wills is pursuing what the intellect perceives as good, acting contrary to reason just is to act immorally. What does this have to do with rights? We’re getting there.

Notice that this is a completely objective standard of goodness. For example, no matter how much someone wants his eyes to hear, they are simply not the kinds of things meant for hearing. We discover such truths about reality because of our ability to know the natures of things. We do not invent these truths. This understanding of morality is called natural law (based on the good according to our nature as human beings), and it is broadly the basis for our Declaration of Independence and the civil rights movement. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ … To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.”

This knowledge of natural law gives us the foundation to discover the objective and unchanging human rights to which we’re all entitled based on our shared objective and unchanging human nature. To see why, consider this. Because we are by nature social creatures, we rely on each other for our well-being in various ways (both positively and negatively). As Christian philosopher Dr. Edward Feser observes,

“… we are all obliged to refrain from interfering with others’ attempts to fulfill the various moral obligations placed on them by the natural law; the most basic natural right is the right to do what is good and not to be coerced into doing evil.”

From this understanding we can extrapolate, among other things, the basic rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Of course, this does not mean that we are free to pursue our personal idea of “happiness” without limits. Quite the opposite. We are, after all, naturally directed to pursuing what is actually true and what is actually good. Much like my children having fun on the playground, they are free to play anywhere within the bounds of the playground (their “good” if you will), but they are not free to play in the street. As Feser goes on to say,

“While the very concept of a right entails a certain measure of liberty, that liberty cannot be absolute; for since the point of natural rights is to enable us to realize the ends set for us by nature [our actual good], there cannot, even in principle, be a natural right to do what is contrary to the realization of those ends. In short, there cannot be a natural right to do wrong.”

What are the Implications for Modern Moral Outrage?

Given the knowledge that human rights are based on the natural law thinking outlined above, we can ask our final question: what are the implications of this understanding for the modern moral outrage we see all around us?

While not all of our social ills can be blamed on any one thing, there is one issue that has contributed to societal downfall more than perhaps any other. That issue is sex. Let’s briefly examine this issue in light of our natural law reasoning. We can see that human sexual faculties are directed towards the dual purposes of procreation and emotional bonding with the opposite sex. Intercourse naturally results in children who require the long-term care of a mother and father. Adultery, pornography, promiscuity, homosexual behavior, and many other misdirected sexual behaviors are directly contrary to the good of our sexual faculties. Therefore, such behaviors are necessarily bad for us regardless of someone’s particular feelings or desires (after all, we all have desires on which we ought not act).

Recall the Aquinas quote above, “Good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary.” Since human rights are based in natural law, and natural law shows the necessarily evil nature of the modern sexual revolution, we can see that someone cannot rationally argue for sexual vice by claiming her “rights” are being violated. Why? Because no such rights exist (that is not to say that there needs to be government-enforced laws against every vice). Moreover, if someone wants to simply jettison this natural law reasoning all together, then she is also eliminating the very possibility of objective human rights, in which case, there is no rational argument to be made for keeping “bans off [your] bodies.” You can’t have it both ways.

Feser summarizes the situation well,

“Similarly, in a person or society dominated by sexual vice, it isn’t just moral understanding in matters of sex that would be undermined, but moral understanding in general. For the general idea of human faculties having natural purposes is unlikely to survive when the natural purposes of our sexual faculties, specifically (which are about as obvious as natural purposes can be), are obscured. … The infection is bound to leap from the individual, to the culture at large, to the political sphere. In the Republic, Plato suggests that egalitarian societies tend to become dominated by lust, and have a tendency to degenerate into tyrannies. For souls dominated by lust are least able to restrain their appetites or to tolerate disapproval of them, which leads to general moral breakdown and an increase in the number of individuals with especially disordered and ruthless temperaments.”

We are left with a culture whose moral reasoning is truly insane, having largely been blinded by decades of sexual vice masquerading as sexual freedom. This is how such a culture can in one breath rightly mourn the tragic loss of young lives, and use the next breath to hysterically shout about a “woman’s right to choose” to murder her unborn baby. It truly is a psychosis that must be countered with a generation of well-trained and sober-minded individuals who are prepared to tackle the insanity head-on.

In short, there can be no legitimate moral outrage apart from human rights. And there can be no actual human rights apart from natural law. But natural law shows that things like abortion, homosexual behavior, adultery, pornography, etc. are necessarily bad for us (i.e., evil). Thus, we have no “rights” to such things. These ideas stand or fall together.
The simple fact is, without moral sanity there can be no real social justice. To once more quote Feser’s summation of the issue,

“In reality, there cannot possibly be true social justice without sound sexual morals, because the family is the foundation of social order and the family cannot be healthy without sound sexual morals. The sexual revolution is the cause of millions of children being left fatherless, with the intergenerational poverty and social disorder that that entails. Nor is there any greater manifestation of the deep selfishness that makes social justice impossible than the callous willingness of millions to murder their own children in the womb. Talk about social injustice that ignores the fundamental role of the sexual revolution in fostering such injustice is mere chatter – unserious, sentimental, and prone to make modern people comfortable in their sins rather than telling them what they really need to hear.”

One Last Thought

The astute reader may notice that no Bible verses have been quoted thus far. That may seem like a slap in the face to some, but it is indicative of the common grace and general revelation God has given all of us. A strong case can be made for objective morality apart from any appeal to God or the Bible. On the flip side, the reality of objective morality, based on natural law, can serve as the basis for a strong argument for the existence of God. In turn, such an argument can then lead to a demonstration of the truthfulness of Christianity as a whole.

May wise Christ-followers use the reality of modern moral outrage as a springboard for pointing others to the truth of the Gospel. Ultimate healing of broken homes, broken lives, and evil hearts can only come through the hope and salvation found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we live out the Christian life amidst the insanity around us, let us do so with 2 Tim. 2:24-26 in our minds,

“The Lord’s servant must not quarrel, but must be gentle to everyone, able to teach, and patient, instructing his opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God will grant them repentance leading them to the knowledge of the truth. Then they may come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”

Recommended resources related to the topic:

You Can’t NOT Legislate Morality mp3 by Frank Turek

Legislating Morality (DVD Set), (PowerPoint download), (PowerPoint CD), (MP3 Set) and (DVD mp4 Download Set

Correct, NOT Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone (Updated/Expanded) downloadable pdf, Book, DVD Set, Mp4 Download by Frank Turek

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Adam Tucker is the Director of Recruiting & Admissions at Southern Evangelical Seminary. Ranked one of the Best Apologetics Graduate Programs by TheBestSchools.org, since 1992 Southern Evangelical Seminary has provided an integrated approach to theology, philosophy, and apologetics in order to equip Christians to persuasively proclaim the Gospel, engage the culture, and defend the Faith in a secular world.

Original Blog Source: https://bit.ly/3OxIJe9