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Think Christianly with Jonathan Morrow
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Do Social Issues Matter Anymore in Politics?
Jay Richards and James Robison argue yes, they do.
“We’re told that the 2012 election is all about jobs and the economy. So-called social issues such as marriage, abortion, and religious freedom have been moved to the back burner.
Don’t count on it. Social issues will also figure prominently in the coming months. President Obama has made sure of that.
The most obvious example involves the recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rule mandating that religious organizations provide health insurance that covers sterilization, contraception and drugs that induce abortion. Only the most zealous pro-choicers think people should be forced to fund abortions, even when they have moral objections to them. Not surprisingly, the mandate has sparked uproar.
In response, the president has now offered a “compromise.” Instead of employers paying directly for services to which they are morally opposed, HHS will mandate that their insurance carriers provide them “free of charge.”
Birth control pills, IUDS, and abortion-inducing drugs aren’t free, however, so the insurance companies will offset these costs with higher premiums (even though the mandate will supposedly prohibit this). This accounting gimmick does nothing to resolve the moral problem. The New York Times admitted as much in its headline, “Rule Shift is Concession to Obama Allies,” not, in other words, to opponents.
The President may have provided cover for a few allies on the religious left, such as Sister Carol Keehan,
but the US Bishops aren’t buying it. In fact, rather than divide Christians over contraception, Mr. Obama has helped unify orthodox Catholics, evangelicals, and even many civil libertarians. They rightly see the HHS mandate as an attack on religious freedom. ObamaCare was already an affront to freedom itself. Now it has a sharp anti-religious edge to boot.
Forced coverage for abortion drugs? Check. Attack on religious freedom? Check. For the culture war trifecta, all we need is an attack on marriage.
In 1996, President Clinton signed the bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). It protects states from being forced to recognize same sex “marriages” performed in other states. President Obama claimed before he was elected that, as a Christian, he believed marriage was between a man and a woman. As soon as he took office, though, we learned that his view is “constantly evolving.” It evolved fast, since the Justice Department…” (read the rest of this article)
Think Christianly with Jonathan Morrow
Has the Earliest Manuscript of the New Testament Discovered?
New Testament scholar Dan Wallace weighs in on this:
“On 1 February 2012, I debated Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill on whether we have the wording of the original New Testament today. This was our third such debate, and it was before a crowd of more than 1000 people. I mentioned that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered—six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first. These fragments will be published in about a year.
These manuscripts now increase our holdings as follows: we have as many as eighteen New Testament manuscripts (all fragmentary, more or less) from the second century and one from the first. Altogether, more than 40% of all New Testament verses are found in these manuscripts. But the most interesting thing is the first-century fragment.
It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934. Not only this, but…” (read the rest)
Think Christianly with Jonathan Morrow
This Week’s Controversial Question: Are Homosexuals Going to Hell? (The Answer May Surprise You)
Alan Shlemon continues his weekly guest series: “The answer to this question is easy. Yes, they’re going to hell. Homosexual behavior is offensive to God. But guess what? Liars are going to hell too. So are gluttons, drunkards, and adulterers. Do you see a pattern here? Everyone is going to hell.
There’s nothing special about people who engage in same-sex intercourse. Whether you go to heaven or hell has nothing to do with the kind of sin you’ve committed. It’s about moral culpability. Guilty people deserve to be punished and innocent people go free. That’s a basic principle of justice.
The problem with this question is its unspoken assumption: homosexuality is the worst sin. Or, at least it’s really, really bad. Some people think it’s so bad that it’s almost unforgivable. Violators go directly to hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
Of course, homosexuality is not the worst sin as I’ve mentioned in a previous post. There’s no special rules that govern how to levy punishment on homosexuals.
Perhaps rephrasing the question would help: Can people with same-sex attractions (SSA) go to heaven? Yes, they can. Even if they’ve engaged in homosexual behavior, it’s still possible to be pardoned for their actions. This is no different than people who are selfish, steal, or commit adultery. All these crimes can be forgiven. People who commit them can be pardoned from the punishment they deserve.
Even though that’s good news, believers are still berated for their moral stance: “You think homosexuality is a sin? How can you say that? You are so mean and intolerant!” Ya, I get that…I don’t like it either. But Christians didn’t make up that rule. God did. It’s like yelling at the DMV employee for failing your driving test. He’s just telling you the rules of the road. He didn’t make them up. Blame someone else.
Besides, it’s not like God is pointing the finger just at homosexuals. God’s an equal opportunity judger. Some people who went to church last Sunday will be in hell. Some people who study the Bible will be there too. Why? Those people have also committed crimes that render them guilty. And going to church or reading the Bible doesn’t earn them a pardon.
We don’t get to make the rules for reconciliation. God does. So being a “good person” doesn’t matter. Seeking to be “sincere” is irrelevant. Trying to be “true to yourself” won’t help. It’s God’s kingdom: He’s the King and it’s His domain. He decides the terms for acquittal.
He also shows no partiality towards whom He pardons. A churchgoer has no advantage to a homosexual. Each has an equal chance at forgiveness no matter what they’ve done.
As I wrote in a previous post, God is willing to grant us “a pardon for our bad behavior….We can accept the pardon and go free or pay the penalty ourselves. It’s our choice. That means a man or woman can live a lifetime of homosexual behavior and still be acquitted.”
Although it sounds too good to be true, people who are exonerated know it’s anything but easy. The process involves an important trade: we give God a lifetime of allegiance in return for a pardon. That means we’re no longer the absolute arbiter of our life. Rather, we hand over that privilege to the judge who negotiated our freedom.
Fortunately, the judge is good and looks after us. He knows that even though we’re absolved from our crimes and freed from our punishment, justice has not been completed. Our guilt has been lifted, but needs to be placed on another. So, the judge makes arrangements with a willing substitute to bear the blame: His next of kin.
The substitute is agreeable to trade his innocence for our guilt even though a transaction like that isn’t normally allowed. In this instance, however, the substitute is able to make the trade because the judge sanctioned the deal. It’s also fair because He’s willing and He’s willing because He’s family. It’s a family affair.
Who wouldn’t take a judge up on that offer? Who wouldn’t be grateful to his next of kin for His trade? God has done everything possible to keep people out of hell. Some people just aren’t willing to accept the terms.
I’m not here to tell you who is going to hell or not. That’s not the point of this post, nor is it for me to decide. That’s God’s job.
But one thing we know, everyone is guilty, including me. There’s no special sin that damns some people to judgment while others get off easier. Therefore, everyone deserves to be punished. That includes homosexuals and heterosexuals (even metrosexuals). They might not be responsible for the same crime, but they’ll all get jail time because they’re guilty. That’s the bad news.
(Part 8) Answering the Toughest Questions About Homosexuality with Alan Shlemon
Alan answers this week’s question…If homosexuality is observed among animals, doesn’t that mean it’s natural for the human population?
The first “museum dedicated to gay animals” opened in 2006 at the University of Oslo (Norway). It was called Against Nature? An Exhibition on Animal Homosexuality and claimed to prove that animals develop “long-lasting [gay] partnerships.” The creators hope to “de-mystify homosexuality among people” and debunk the belief that gay sex is a “crime against nature.”[i]
Lesbian star, Rosie O’Donnell, makes a similar claim that “In every animal kingdom and every species, 10 percent of the population is homosexual,” and that’s “a fact of nature.”[ii](You can see my response to the claim that 10% of the human population is gay here).
The argument is that since animals engage in homosexual behavior that is instinctual, it must be natural for them and, consequently, natural and moral for humans since they are animals too.
There’s something wrong with this line of reasoning. In fact, a simple question composed of a two-letter word gets right to the heart of the problem: So? Even if animals exhibit homosexual behavior, so? What does that prove? It proves nothing. Do advocates of this view really want to say: Because animals engage in X behavior, therefore X is natural/moral for humans? This claim is literally absurd. Here’s why.
There’s a Latin term in logic called reductio ad absurdum that means “reduction to the absurd.” At Stand to Reason we call it “Taking the Roof Off.” It’s a simple way to disprove a claim by showing that it leads to an absurd conclusion. In fact, I’m confident you’re already know this tactic.
Imagine a father asks his daughter, “Why did you start smoking?” She answers, “Because all my friends were doing it.” The father’s response is obvious: “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do that too?” Notice the father’s reasoning. He accepts his daughter’s rational, for the sake of argument, and then asks himself a question: If I apply my daughter’s rationale to jumping off a cliff, that would mean she’d jump of a cliff too. But that’s absurd! That means her rationale is also absurd. And then he asks a question that exposes the absurdity of her thinking. That’s reductio ad absurdum.
Imagine a father asks his daughter, “Why did you start smoking?” She answers, “Because all my friends were doing it.” The father’s response is obvious: “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do that too?” Notice the father’s reasoning. He accepts his daughter’s rational, for the sake of argument, and then asks himself a question: If I apply my daughter’s rationale to jumping off a cliff, that would mean she’d jump of a cliff too. But that’s absurd! That means her rationale is also absurd. And then he asks a question that exposes the absurdity of her thinking. That’s reductio ad absurdum.
With the claim about animal homosexuality, this tactic works equally well. The rationale for the argument is that if animals engage in a behavior, it must be natural and moral for humans do it too. Let’s apply that logic to some other animal behavior: cannibalism. Animals eating their own kind has been observed in over a thousand animal species. Following the logic of the view would mean that cannibalism is natural and moral for humans. But that’s absurd! And so is the rationale that led to that absurd conclusion.
Indeed, animals engage in all sorts of selfish, violent, and primitive behaviors that humans would almost universally categorize as immoral. That’s why taking moral cues from the animal kingdom is absurd. Yes, humans are an animal of sorts, but we’re more than that. We are rational beings with a capacity for free will and a rich intellectual life. To reduce our behavior and relationships to instincts, stimuli, and urges ignores a major component of human nature. I like how Richard Umbers puts it:
“Homo sapiens is an animal, but not merely an animal. We have a lot in common with parasitic worms, but there are some differences, too. Our bodily nature is subject to intellectual direction. A human being unites the intellectual and the corporeal, what is rational and what is animal. We get a distorted picture of man when we focus on one aspect to the exclusion of the other. They can never be separated.”[iii]
When humans have conflicting instinctive reactions, our intellect can reason between them and determine the most expedient or moral course of action. Animals, however, behave according to their strongest instinct given what they see, smell, hear, taste, and perceive. These natural impulses aid in their protection, survival, and reproduction.
But internal or external stimuli can cause their instincts to clash or get confused, leading to unusual behavior. Sometimes a cat will kill his kittens. Unlike females whose strong maternal instinct protects her babies, the predatory instinct of a tom cat can confuse his offspring for prey. Are his hunting impulses natural? Yes. Can they be misdirected? Sure. Should we declare filicide or cannibalism as natural or moral for humans? No.
The same is true for allegedly homosexual acts among animals. Their sexual drive and instinct to mate is extremely strong and can be confused. When animals are in heat, they release pheromones that trigger an instinctual behavior by males. According to an expert in the field, this inborn impulse is so strong, that it can “instigate a frenzy of mounting behaviors. Even other females who aren’t in heat will mount those who are. Males will mount males who have just been with females [in heat] if they still bear their scent…And males who catch wind of the estrus odor may mount the first thing (or unlucky person) they come in contact with.”[iv]I’ve even seen a dog mount a couch. One might have good taste in sofas, but I doubt it’s so good that your dog is sexually attracted to it. The poor pooch is confused.
Plus, sexual activity among animals is known to be used for purposes other than reproduction. Although humans can express themselves by speaking, writing, gesturing, and a multitude of other ways, animals are limited. Consequently, they are known to use sexual behavior to express a range of sentiments: social dominance, aggression, avoiding conflict, and many other emotions. That’s why many researchers think it’s naive to impose a human understanding of homosexuality onto animal behavior.
“Properly speaking, homosexuality does not exist among animals…. For reasons of survival, the reproductive instinct among animals is always directed towards an individual of the opposite sex. Therefore, an animal can never be homosexual as such. Nevertheless, the interaction of other instincts (particularly dominance) can result in behavior that appears to be homosexual. Such behavior cannot be equated with an animal homosexuality. All it means is that animal sexual behavior encompasses aspects beyond that of reproduction.”[v]
But we can’t infer homosexuality when a male chimpanzee mounts another male any more than we can infer sofaphilia when a dog mounts your couch. Yes, I made up the word “sofaphilia.”
Animals behave according to their instincts. That’s appropriate. When humans do the same, we don’t applaud them. Instead, we often put them in jail. That’s because humans have the capacity, and therefore the responsibility, to use principled self-restraint when their instinctual response is to act like an animal.
[i] http://www.nhm.uio.no/besok-oss/utstillinger/skiftende/againstnature/index-eng.html
[ii] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48821,00.html
[iii] http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/a_gay_old_time_in_the_animal_kingdom/
[iv] Jacque Lynn Schultz, C.P.D.T. at http://www.petfinder.com/pet-training/stopping-dog-humping.html?page-index=3&. A short bio on Jacque Lynn Schultz can be found here: http://www.avianwelfare.org/aboutus/schultz_jacque.html
[v] Antonio Pardo, “Aspectos médicos de la homosexualidad,” Nuestro Tiempo,Jul.-Aug. 1995, pp. 82-89; as quoted in Luiz Sérgio Solimeo, “The Animal Homosexuality Myth,” at http://narth.com/2010/09/the-animal-homosexuality-myth/
Think Christianly with Jonathan Morrow