LARSON: Question that I've heard come up many,
many times is from the faithful chaplains who are serving our armed forces, and a question
comes from a chaplain who's here serving at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. "How do U.S. Army Chaplains stay faithful
to God in His truth and provide, not perform, the gospel (the truth), to same sex couples?" There're many other related issues that come
along with this, of course, for our chaplains. What counsel would you give to these men? How do they stay faithful amidst the persecution? MOHLER: Well, it's going to be increasingly
difficult, because the direction that is being taken by the armed forces is equivalent to
a moral U-turn within the process of about twenty-four months. From "Don't ask, don't tell," to we get to
say, and you have to accept us. And I mean, that again, is like a complete
U-turn. It—a lot of the problems that evangelical
chaplains are having come down to the freedom of ministry. For instance, evangelical chaplains; one of
the major ways in the armed forces they've been able to have a very important ministry
is through marriage retreats, but they're now being told, "You can't do a marriage retreat
if you're going to discriminate. And so, I know a good many of these chaplains
who simply can't do it because they can't in integrity and faithfulness counsel a same
sex-couple about how to have a better same-sex marriage. It's a gospel impossibility. And this gets to the whole question of how
in the world—in a situation as complex as this—you determine how you can do your job. I am not at all hopeful that this is going
to go in a happy direction. But simply because a new moral regime has
to enforce its new moral dictates, and that's going to make it very, very difficult. I've been writing a lot lately about the collision
of liberties. And what's happening is that what I call erotic
liberty is not trumping religious liberty at virtually every turn. And so, the freedom that is now being claimed
(which is a new freedom in human history), that you have to take me on the basis of my
declared sexual orientation, or gender identification, or you go out of business, your Christian
worldview concerns notwithstanding, that that's a new thing. And, those chaplains are on the front lines. But now also joining them on the front lines
are cake-bakers and photographers, and florists, and there have been others on the line in
terms of pharmacists, and doctors on the abortion issue. The difference is that almost no conscience
grounds are being accepted, so you can't bow the knee to Baal. I pray for the brothers who are in this position. I pray they'll have wisdom, but at some point,
it becomes impossible to function as a gospel representative, in such a context, if this
kind of logic isn't checked. LAWSON: Thank you. LARSON: This person writes and says that they
have a son who has entered into the gay lifestyle. "How do I handle this? How do I act? What do I say?" Anyone? Yeah? Yeah? LAWSON: Well, I think obviously you preach
the gospel to them and call them to repentance, and call them to faith in Christ, and in no
way giving your approval to such an immoral lifestyle. I think you extend Christian love to them,
and if this is a son, "You will always be my son, and I want God's best for your life,
and God's best for your life is to come out of this darkness and to come to the light
of the Lord Jesus Christ." So, I think you would have to begin there,
and I know that there would be many more complex things that would need to be addressed, but
as I said in the sermon, the cross divides. And the cross divides families, and it divides
nations, this is a part of what the cross does. So, I would call them to faith in Christ and
remind them of the great acceptance of those who repent and come, and say, "Lord have mercy
upon me, the sinner" and who come to faith in Christ. So, it really begins with a gospel issue,
and it probably ends with a gospel issue. Yeah, you are my son and I love you, but what
true love is, I want what's best for you and this is not what's best. SPROUL: I mean, you talk about a lifestyle,
and a corollary to this is the epidemic of young people of a heterosexual inclination
living together, cohabiting without marriage, and this is a crisis not only in the world,
but in the church, where we have—it's so considered normal now with the new morality,
that professing evangelical Christians don't think twice about cohabiting outside of marriage. I honestly believe—you made a kind of a
side comment, Al, during your message about the eroticism that I think is the driving
engine for this cultural revolution. It began in the sixties, with the Sexual Revolution. I think the driving force behind liberalism
is a desire to be able to be completely libertarian or libertine-Arian, I should say, with respect
to sexual conduct. Because the thing that the liberal can't stand
about God is the restrictions placed upon their sex life. And so, we're seeing it not just with a homosexual
marriage, but with the destruction of marriage across the boards, and a destruction of the
Christian ethic. Again, we're not the first generation to live
in a pagan culture. The first century Christians were—and the
Apostle Paul said, "Don't let fornication even once be named among you as befitting
saints." At least the first century church understood
they were living in a pagan world, they were living in a barbarian world. That's why the myth of cultural Christianity
has to be destroyed as Christians begin to take their marching orders for sanctification
as our Lord prayed in the High Priestly Prayer then. GODFREY: I'm reading a fascinating book right
now. A study of changing sexual ethics in the late
Roman Empire. Wouldn't be fascinating to everybody, but
it is a very careful scholarly study of sexual attitudes in the late pagan Roman Empire,
and how that was changed by the advance of the church into the late Christian Roman Empire. And one of the points this book makes is that
the great Christian message in that pagan Roman world was first of all, the purity to
which God calls us, which was applied to everybody. And I think we have to begin with the observation
that it's heterosexuals have been ruining marriage in our country first and foremost,
not homosexuals, and we better start with ourselves before we put everybody else's house
in order. But secondly, that pagan attitudes towards
sexuality were entirely deterministic. They were determined by the stars they were
born under according to Ephesus in the late Roman Empire. And that Christianity came with a message
of freedom: you are not determined by your stars in your sexuality, you have moral freedom
given you by God to live a pure life by the power of the Holy Spirit. And I think Christians need to start talking
against the increasing determinism of our time. "Well, I'm just sexually driven. I have to live with my girlfriend," or "I
have to live with my boyfriend." And Christianity needs to hold up a message
of purity, freedom and love, that is going to stand against the sad deterioration of
relationships in our time. And start to ask "What's happening to these
young women who are living for a time, and then cast over, and then picked up maybe by
someone else, and then cast over?" This new morality is not good for human beings. And somebody needs to say that. And it's particularly bad for women. SPROUL: It is exploitive, nothing more exploitive
of women than that. GODFREY: And Christianity, as it always has,
has to again stand up for the weak and the abused, and we have to try to be helpful about
that. FERGUSON: Yeah, you know, I think we read
the early chapters of Genesis and see various things, but I think one of the things that's
fairly obvious in Genesis 3 and 4 is that given the role of marriage and family in the
purposes of God in Genesis 1 and 2, it was a central object of Satan's attack. And I remember year—this must be a long
time ago they must've written it in the 1950's or 1960's—C.S. Lewis said that if the proverbial
man from Mars were to appear on Earth and then go home and be asked "What is the symbol
of the religion in this planet that you've visited?" Excuse the language, but I think it was Lewis'
language, the Martian would say, "The symbol of their religion is a phallic symbol." And what I think Lewis was underscoring was
that of course Satan would not exercise his attack on the world, on the society, and on
the church by immediately heading for what we now have in our society, but that he would
gradually work his hypnotic deceptive powers so that we wouldn't even notice to pick up
the point of exploitation. But almost every magazine we've been buying
over the last three or four decades has been exploitative of women and their bodies. And, the world and the church has been silent. And one of the reasons the world and the church
has been silent is because of the extent to which the church has been drawn into the world,
and in this area particularly been extremely frightened of the pressure of being described
as a Puritan. And every time I think about that I remember
the occasion when Rogers of Dedham, late sixteenth, early seventeenth century, Anglican Puritan
minister, fell into conversation with somebody in the neighborhood, and he said to him, "My
problem with you, Mr. Rogers, is that you are too precise." And he gave this great reply. "Sir," he said, "I serve a precise God." And one of the things the Scripture underlines
for us is that God is precise because he has our best interest in view. And the more we have allowed ourselves to
be fed into imprecise standards, ignorance of Scripture and its application, the more
frightened we have been of God's laws in the evangelical church. Inevitably we find ourselves as a community
powerless. We are—the salt has lost its savor. But the undermining—I think, as Al was really
pointing out (I think in the big picture way), in what was a magnificent address, has been
going on a long time. And you know, if you're not an American citizen,
you're kind of conscious. You've got to wait for an American citizen
to say about his own country the thing that was said this afternoon about our country
here; but it has been happening for a long, long time. And you don't need to be a visitor from Mars. You need to be a visitor from the United Kingdom
to see that precisely the same things have happened in Europe have been happening here
a long time. And our—you know, our only hope is that
we cry to God and turn to God ourselves, and that the churches we build, however hated
for what they are, are hated because what they are is so extraordinarily impressive
in the world in which we live. So, this is a huge question, I think, and
really important. LARSON: Another question related. "I have many Christian friends who are Libertarians,
and say that the state should not be involved in marriage at all. They claim this whenever conversations on
same-sex marriage come up. Is this a correct position: the state should
not be involved in marriage at all?" Dr. Sproul? SPROUL: I'd like to answer that. We are as Reformed people very interested
in covenants, and we see the first covenant in history prior—the only one before it
is the covenant of redemption—is the covenant of creation where God makes a covenant with
Adam and Eve, not as Jews or as Christians, but as man qua man, as humans, and what we
would call the creation ordinances: the laws enjoined by the creator are for all men of
all time. And God ordained government after the fall—the
flaming sword of the angel. And that's a principle biblically that there
is a division of labor between the church and the state. It's not the separation, but there's a division
of labor. And what we're involved in now is the separation
of the state and God. The secular state has declared its independence
from God. And the reason why in the old order we saw
sanctioned civil ceremonies by representatives of the state—not of the religious institutions;
they could perform marriages and the state could dissolve marriages, because part of
the responsibility was the state to govern creation ordinances. The two most important, which are the sanctity
of life and the sanctity of marriage. There's no other reason, no raise on debt
for the existence of government (civil government, basically), apart from the overarching reason
to maintain, protect, the sanctity of human life. And before we saw the total destruction of
the sanctity of marriage in this country, we saw the total destruction of the sanctity
of life with Roe V. Wade, so that the state said, "I am not going to be answerable to
God's law, for men is men." That's why I try to say to people when we
call the state to stop abortions and to stop sanctioning same-sex marriage and that sort
of thing, we are not asking the state to be the church. We're asking the state to be the state, and
are reminding them that no civil government is autonomous, and that every civil government
is under the authority of God and is accountable to the authority of God. And they've advocated that by destroying the
sanctity of life, and in the same breath the sanctity of marriage. So, in answer to that question with respect
to the libertarian perspective that the state not ought to be involved, I think is a fundamental
denial of the covenant of creation, and those Christian libertarians need to repent of that. MOHLER: Absolutely. I affirm everything Dr. Sproul said. I want to come back and ask why would young
people have this basic libertarian impulse? It's because they're looking for some way
out of this. I have an article coming out in coming days
entitled, you know, "Please Just Make It Stop." Because you have an entire generation of young
Christians who are saying "This is just too horrifying, I can't bear this. I can't—I won't have any friends. I won't be able to share the gospel. I—this is just horrifying. This issue is now just such an explosion. The collateral damage is just massive. Just make it go away." And, so we can kind of understand, as an impulse
you might think that a libertarian position will make it go away. It doesn't go away because Libertarian positions
don't work, in terms of this kind of issue. What Dr. Sproul was talking about refers to
the fact that marriage is a pre-political institution. Every society has recognized marriage as a
pre-political institution, which is to say the government doesn't create it, it respects
it. It's a very different act. And what the government respects it accepts
as an objective reality before it then comes up with laws and customs in order to protect
it. Obviously, we're undoing that entire thing. But the thing to note is that there isn't
a government on earth that doesn't regulate marriage. Every government regulates marriage, and it's
because the state is making decisions that are marriage determinative. The state has to decide in a custody issue
to whom does this child belong. There are property disputes, there's an entire
body of law that that's why those who are leading this moral revolution haven't sought
to sideline marriage as has happened in some other cultures where similar kinds of ambitions
have been seen, but rather to create the way that others can get into the same state sanctioned,
state supposedly protected relationship. And so, that's a crucial thing. In other words, you just say, "OK, the government
gets of the marriage business. It'll just have to call it something else,
because it's impossible to have an organized society, without the government doing this." Another thing that evangelicals often forget,
and I hear younger evangelicals say this, because they're looking for a way to get the
tire off the foot. You know, this is too excruciating, move it. Do anything, just make it go away. They'll say, "Well, let's just accept that
the church and the state are going to have two different understandings of marriage." Well, that may be a defensive position, but
it cannot be an intentional position. In other words, we can't take that as an intentional
strategy, because that denies, as Dr. Sproul is making clear, the fact that we operate
not only on the basis of a doctrine of redemption, but a doctrine of creation. And thus, we can't get out of that. They also forget that if you look at the Puritans,
the Puritans believed that a wedding took place as an act of the state, and not of the
church. The pilgrims who came to the United States
didn't allow church weddings because they thought they were pope-ish ceremonies, and
that that was the job of the state, not the job of the church. And so, it's really, it's something we can
understand about the libertarian impulse when it comes to something that is pre-political,
does it work, because every society is going to have to come to terms with it one way or
the other. The other issue to this is, every society—it's
a very interesting argument that every society makes an equal number of moral judgements. And, it's a very interesting argument. The Marxist came up with this back in the
early twentieth century. And if you think about it, I'll just close
with this: libertarians say, you know—or those who are making all these arguments will
say, "We shouldn't legislate on sex anymore. Instead, we're going to outlaw supersized
sodas in New York City." In other words, every society is constantly
making moral judgements, and constantly legislating morality. The question is whether it's a sane responsible
morality they're legislating. But there's no society that says, "We don't
care about any of these things." We just have a society that said, "Go ahead
and fornicate, but you can't supersize your soda." That's the irrationality we're living with
in the present. LARSON: Dr. Sproul's next book is "Everyone's
a Legislator." FERGUSON: You know, another thing that I think,
libertarians of that kind don't understand is that when you remove the basic—like the
basic tenfold structure of God's law—when you remove that, what actually happens in
a society is the best of all possible worlds for lawyers is created. Because when you remove those basic principles
and the ability of people to apply them to every kind of situation, what a society then
needs to do is to increase the number of laws that it makes. And, you know we are actually living in that
phenomenon, that when we remove the basic structures, we then have to create isolated
laws for every conceivable instance, including the amount of soda that you can drink. And, it's a self-defeating formula, and leads
to chaos rather than liberty. It's like trying to play golf without the
rules. LARSON: This person writes, "I have a relative
who is constantly trying to say that if I try to say something is false or sinful, I
am "condemning" the person or the thing and not being loving. What do I say in response?" MOHLER: How loving it is to point out that
that's a problem. And again, that is the kind of foolishness—to
quote Churchill, "That's the kind of nonsense up with which we should not put." Because even on its face it falls flat. And, back during the Clinton—you remember
those glory days? Back during the Clinton controversies, I was
constantly on television debating issues of morality on Fox and MSNBC. And I can still remember being up against
a Liberal Catholic priest who said, "You're making moral judgements, and that's wrong." And I said, "So you think it's fine to have
a child abuser, a sex molester, as a babysitter?" And he said, "No. That would be insanity." I said, "Well, you just made a moral judgment." And he said, "Well, that one's obvious." And, just in fact, we're all making moral
judgements, all the time, and it is an act actually of love in terms of understanding
the biblical conception of love, to understand that truth and love are the same thing. Because they're transcendentals, reality is
located in the very being of a perfect God. His justice and his mercy are not at odds. His—love and truth are not at odds. And we can as finite creatures sin certainly
in how we communicate the truth, but the worst sin of all would be failing to communicate
what we know is true, because the truth is what will set us free. And so, we have to be the people of the truth,
and that means we have to make moral judgements. The question is are we making the right moral
judgements. And that we have an infallible guide to at
least be the foundation to which we turn. SPROUL: One of the problems we face here is
the massive ignorance of the laws of immediate inference. People assume that if I say "I think this
behavior is not proper" that I've just made a hate statement, that I harbor some kind
of ill feeling or personal animus towards the person who's involved in that. You know, Jesus was the most loving person
ever lived, and would say "Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more." Now, he did not judge in the condemnatory
sense, but he certainly made a judgment of discernment and that's where we get confused. When the Bible tells us not to be judgmental,
it means we're not to have a spirit of condemnation towards fallen people. We're to love them, to be concerned for them,
pray for them, all of that, but we're still supposed to have discernment to be able to
distinguish between what is righteous and what is unrighteous. I had a conversation just the other day with
my doctor who said that he had made a comment about the corruption of some of these laws
that are going down now in this country. Somebody immediately turned on him and said
he was judgmental. And I said, "Well, if that person comes to
see you because they're not feeling well, and they have indigestion, and you have to
make a distinction between indigestion and stomach cancer, are you being judgmental?" Of course not, I mean, this is crazy stuff. I mean obviously we have to discern every
single day every one of these issues. We're called to be discerning people, otherwise
we're mindless. But that's the culture. That's part of the strategy that the other
side is using to silence any objection to this reversal. MOHLER: Oh, you're exactly right, that's exactly
the kind of distinction to make. People have to make judgements all the time. You know, it was Aristotle in his rhetoric
who pointed out, there's the impossibility of being in a position and making no judgements
because you're actually making a judgment by suggesting that you ought to make no judgements. If everyone lives by a set of moral imperatives,
some of them as he said are insane, but nonetheless they're still moral imperatives. You know, I do think there's a clear sense
in which we need to say to the church, what the Scripture says is that we are to judge
behavior, but we can't judge the heart. We can't get in and judge another's heart. That's the distinction at least I would see
between condemnation of the person and condemnation of behavior. And, you know, every parent understands this,
every spouse understands this. At some point you have to say, "I disagree
with that." You have to make a distinction, you have to
make a judgment, but you're not trying to judge the heart. And I think that's what Paul is getting at
in Romans 2 in the beginning, when he says, "Insofar as you render judgment you judge
yourself." But that's the Apostle Paul who comes around
and says "Don't even have anything to do with—let fornication not be mentioned among you. Don't even greet someone who is involved in
these things." In other words, you make moral judgements
but you do not make judgements that are above your pay grade, in terms of judging hearts
which we do not have access to read. LARSON: "Is personal peace—"
SPROUL: That's called a smattering of applause. LARSON: "Is personal peace and affluence the
biggest impediment to Christian witness?" Of course, hearkening back to Dr. Francis
Schaeffer's coining of that phrase. "Is personal peace and affluence the biggest
impediment to Christian witness?" MOHLER: I think that's a contextual statement. But largely true. And things have gone a lot further since Francis
Schaeffer said that. I mean, Americans now looking for salvation
in a diagnosis, and a pill, and a therapy, and a new yoga technique, and, everything
but the gospel. They're able to buy their way into a feeling
of insularity where they can hide themselves and keep themselves busy from the spiritual
hunger that is within them. The affluent buy options, and one of those
options is to try to flee the truth. But at the end of the day I think the biggest
obstacle to evangelism is Christians who don't share the gospel. LARSON: "Both of my brothers are unsaved. One believes there is no such thing as sin,
therefore there is no need for a Savior. How do I answer this question? How do I explain sin?" SPROUL: Steal his wallet. LARSON: Next? Going once. Alright, OK. Since there's one God, why is it that we have
so many different views and denominations? SPROUL: Because we have two people. Or more. GODFREY: Well, I think. SPROUL: Well, what about Bob? GODFREY: What about Bob? SPROUL: What about Bob? GODFREY: I think a beginning would be to say,
that while we have too many denominations and too many churches, part of that arises—a
great deal of that arises from people not reading the Bible. I, you know, people are forever saying, "Well,
the Bible can't be all that clear because we have all these different denominations,"
but I think an awful lot of the denominations arise from people not really reading the Bible
and listening carefully to the Bible. And in point of fact, people who have read
the Bible with great care end up agreeing about an awful lot of what's there. And, while we may be in different denominations
here on this platform, what divides us is relatively few matters. And if you all just became Dutch Reformed
everything would be perfect. MOHLER: Then again, we wouldn't be meeting
in a meeting house this large. GODFREY: A gross revelation of pragmatism. MOHLER: It works at the moment. You know, and Bob's exactly right. Sidney Mead, a very well-known American church
historian, pointed out that denominationalism is the inevitable result of theological difference
plus religious freedom. And so, in a context of religious freedom
you have the ability to constitute the church in what you believe as the true gospel basis,
and then to operate it, according to what you believe are biblical principles. And, I've written a lot about what I call
theological triage. At the first level all Christians must believe
these things in common, and you must believe these things to be recognized by a fellow
believer as a believer. And, thankfully we hold to all these things
and we stand in great, eager, happy affirmation. But when it comes to what to do with water,
there's a distinction. There's a distinction here. SPROUL: We all agree you drink it. MOHLER: And it's a distinction that matters,
well, beyond that there's a distinction here. And, it's one that matters. It matters enough to us that as much as we
love each other, right here on this platform, we disagree enough to be in separately organized
congregations and congregational networks we would call denominations, and presbyteries
and associations and conventions, because we don't believe we can be truly faithful
to all we believe if we do not constitute the church this way. We're not anathematizing one another. And so, we shouldn't exaggerate denominational
differences where we have a unity in the gospel. And that's often the question there—often
exaggerates what isn't the case. I mean after all, Whitfield and Wesley preached
the gospel together with enthusiasm, and then got on the boat and had a theological argument. And that's the way it should be. So, I would say there are ways to get over
denominationalism, and that's to eliminate religious liberty, or to try to institutionalize
some kind of coerced uniformity, or to have a lowest common denominator in which you just
simply have—you know we'll just have to get rid of everything on which we might possibly
disagree in order to stand on that small ground of our union. And let's say that would include people who
would be outside this room, if we're just going to open it up and say, "Well, let's
be called a Christian. Let's just get rid of the labels. Let's all just say we love Jesus." Well, a lot of people love Jesus who have
aberrant beliefs that we would say—or fail to believe in orthodox beliefs we believe
are necessary to the gospel. So, we're stuck with this for some time. SPROUL: And also, because we care about truth. The people who say, "Let's all get together. Doctrine doesn't matter," they don't care
about truth. But, if you care about it and we can't resolve
our differences of interpretation, you do just what you just said we do. And, so that's the good side of denominations,
don't you think? That at least there's somebody cares about
what the truth is. MOHLER: You know I think it's also important
to say the word simply comes from 'denominator,' which means you name it. And, so it wasn't that people were trying
to come up with brand names in order to be able to advertise. Baptists didn't want to call themselves Baptists. They got called Baptists because we baptize. Methodists got called Methodists because of
their methodical way of devotion. You can just follow this through. In other words, it's not like people were
trying to come up with a new market. Where these things are legitimate, they were
based in conviction. And, we need to continue the conversation,
but we need to continue also to stand in conviction. LARSON: Follow-on question to that. This couple writes, "We live in a rural area
without access to solid biblical teaching, let alone Reformed teaching. The nearest church with such teaching is two
hours' drive away. How should we choose a group to meet with
and serve when we disagree with the things taught from the pulpit?" What would you say practically to this couple? SPROUL: Drive two hours. LARSON: Drive two hours. SPROUL: Lots of people do. It's that important. If you had to go to the hospital and it was
a two hour drive you wouldn't stay home. You would go to the hospital. You wouldn't go to the dog pound because it
was convenient. Would you? Seriously. I mean it's the old thing, you—I learned
this from a former coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Chuck Noll. His phrase was "Whatever it takes." And the spiritual nurture of your soul and
of your children's soul are so important that if you have to drive two hours for worship
and for instruction in the apostolic truth, then that's an obvious decision. You drive two hours or move, but it has to
be a priority in every Christian family to be somewhere where there is true worship,
true gospel, true doctrine for the sake of eternity. LARSON: Dr. Lawson—Dr. Lawson, could you
elaborate on the Lord's concepts of salt and light in the Sermon on the Mount and how he
describes Christian character? LAWSON: Well, both of those metaphors are
the result of verses 3 to 12 in Matthew 5 of what a believer, a true disciple is to
be. He is one who is poor in spirit, who mourns
over his sin, et cetera, all the way down to is persecuted for the gospel. The result of the eight beatitudes is that
you will be light and you will be salt. To the extent that those eight beatitudes
are compromised in our lives, we diminish what the function of salt and light would
be. Salt is that which is a preservative, which
prevents corruption, when applied to meat for example. And I think that what he is saying principally
is that we are to have the effect in the world and in society of preventing the further corruption
of family values and the spread of sin. We are to be salt. It's argued in a secondary way that salt is
to enhance the flavor of something and provide zest. Christians are—certainly are to provide
great blessing to the world, in the way that we interact with the world. Then the concept of light is we're to be the
light of the world. He says you don't hide a lamp under a bushel,
but that it is to be—to shine forth into the world. And he talks about unbelievers seeing our
good works. I think that it goes back to who we are and
what we are and the way that we conduct ourselves and the way that we live our lives should
be a bright, shining example to the world of how God intended life to be carried out. It does not restrict from, in fact it would
necessitate that they would, a part of our good works would be our good words, and would
be our witness for Christ. No one will come to the knowledge of the truth
by just observing us. They must hear the gospel. And so, for us to be light there has to be—that
presupposes that we live in a very dark world, darkness emblematic of ignorance of God and
immorality. And, we are to be light, bringing the light
of truth to the world by how we live and by what we say. And it is to—we are not to keep it to ourselves
under a bushel, but we are to be out in the world. I think one of the less fortunate things is
Christians just withdrawing to themselves. And we could call it the holy huddle, and
where we're just salt in a salt shaker. We've got to get out of the salt shaker and
get out into the world and to penetrate the world. And the same with light. We cannot keep our light hidden under a bushel. We are to shine out into the world, and that
presupposes that we will be out into the world, just like fishers of men have to be out in
the sea. You can't catch fish up on a mountaintop,
you've got to be out in the world where the fish are. So, I think for us here at this conference,
what a joy it is for us to pull together to have our spiritual batteries recharged, and
for us to be encouraged, but when we leave here, we are to go penetrate the world with
the gospel of Christ. So, I think that those are the two implications
of those two metaphors. LARSON: Thank you. Dr. Mohler, another question for you. In light of your topic that you addressed
today: "Is homeschooling a retreat from the world? Can we put children in school and expect them
to engage the world?" MOHLER: Yeah, I was—you threw me a U-turn
there at the end. I thought you were going to say can you keep
children out of the school and have them engage the world, and the answer to that would be
yes. My wife and I homeschooled our children to
a considerable degree, not in every grade, but during their high school years. And, they were in a Christian school another
time. In other words, withdrawal is not to say that
you have to be in every context the world makes available to you. That, in other words, the sin of withdrawing
falsely, and quite disastrously is not seen in forfeiting the opportunity or even some
would say the responsibility to be in every societal context at every time. Parents have an un-delegatable responsibility
to educate their children. Christian parents have that responsibility. It isn't given to the state, it's given to
parents. And actually, the public schools are the aberration
not the norm, just in terms of even the history of schools. And I think they're very toxic environments. I'm not saying no Christian can be in them. I'm not saying no Christian can send their
children to them, but you just have to know exactly what you're dealing with, and it's
going to be—you know, a lot of the people that used to make arguments, because I've
been writing about this for thirty years, and a lot of people used to make arguments
about "That's withdrawal. You can't do this. It's a great mission field," now, tell me
my children and grandchildren are being homeschooled. Because, you know, it turns out that the parade
of the horribles has come a lot faster than people might imagine. That does raise an issue though. If we're withdrawing our children and teaching
them in a homeschool that acts as if they're going to be sent out into a world that doesn't
exist, that's neither good education nor good parenting. And so, what we have to do in homeschooling
is homeschool our children for maximum faithful engagement with the world, not just with each
other. And Christians parents can pull that off very
well and very naturally. The first asset is the family, in terms of
the extended family. The second great asset to Christians is the
congregation. The third is the kinds of networks that Christian
parents can put together and the kinds of experiences. In other words, if your kid is playing on
an entirely Christian, you know, Little League team, and made up of all homeschooling parents,
that might not be the best way to teach them how to engage the world. It's different if you're turning them over
and saying "Please fill his brain for me." And so, I hope that makes some sense. I just think it's in a situation in which
a sinful surrender and retreat would be to say, "We're going to protect our children
from the world. They're never going to go out into the world." A proper Christian parenting would say, "We're
going to take responsibility to educate these children. They are God's gifts to us, our stewardship
and responsibility, but we're educating them to be in the world, not out of the world." LARSON: Very broad question here, but it goes
around the idea of engagement. "What is the biblical way to think about movies
such as 'Son of God,' 'Noah,' 'God's Not Dead,' and 'Heaven is for Real'; all out in theaters
this year?" LAWSON: The last movie I saw was Chariots
of Fire, so—so, I'm probably the last one to ask this. I did see Luther four times in two days, so
maybe that was the last movie I saw. MOHLER: I don't want to just answer everything. And for whatever it's worth I'll simply say
that when you look at movies you need to recognize this is a major entertainment focus of our
culture to such an extent that people are many times more likely to quote a movie than
they are to quote a book. We have so left the culture of the book, and
I could give an entire—I think all of us on here on the platform could give you the
elegy, and the remedy for that. But talking about movies—they are the cultural
conversation in America. But you ask a complicated question, because
if you say how do we think about movies, that's a great thing for Christians to discuss. No medium is value neutral. McLuhan isn't exactly right that the medium
is the message, but in many cases it's close. There are certain things that cannot, well,
be reduced to this. That raises the second issue, not movies in
general, but movies that are supposedly serving in some sense to tell the story of the Bible,
or a story of the Bible. Well, the problem is that what makes for success
in Hollywood (that's the medium), not just in terms of the technology but the cultural
context in which the technology is made possible, doesn't make telling the story according to
the Bible very much possible. So, if you're looking at the Son of God movie,
it has massive theological problems. And those massive theological problems are
explained as what is necessary to get the story onto the big screen. So, there you have the medium problem. Evidently then that's not how you tell this
story, because we can't change the story in order to get it onto the big screen. Now, there's a part of me too that just keeps
jumping to the Ten Commandments, going, "I'm not sure this is a good idea in the first
place." In that it's extremely dangerous, I think,
to reduce some things to pictures. Now, I don't want to draw an absolute on this,
but I think it's a very clear warning from the law that if you're trying to reduce this
story to talking pictures you might actually be reducing it below the level that it is
justifiable. GODFREY: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense,
but let me be the absolutist here. Don't go to pictures where Jesus is represented. I think our—
SPROUL: Let me be a Calvinist here and say "Why not?" GODFREY: Well, in part because you plant in
the minds of yourself and others a picture of a person who is not Jesus. If I carry around a picture of a woman who's
beautiful in my wallet and haul it out and say, "This is my wife," but it's not my wife,
my wife might be upset about that. We don't know what Jesus looked like, and
the Bible offers no encouragement to his pictorial representation. Now, I know not everybody agrees about this,
but we're each supposed to give our own personal point of view here. I think the second commandment, and I'm speaking
as a good puritan here, forbids the representation pictorially of Jesus, and making a movie of
it makes it worse. So, stay home and read your Bible. SPROUL: So, you do disagree with Calvin on
that? Where Calvin allowed for the representations
(and artistically) of historical personages. We're not Monophysites, we're not to trying
to depict the divine nature, which I think would be clearly excluded by the second commandment. But does the second commandment banish all
art? It's one thing if you want to make an argument
of prudence that you may get a misunderstanding of Jesus because we don't know what he looked
like other than the sort of subtle hints we get out of the New Testament, but we still
preach Jesus and we have some mental idea of who he is. And I want to know if you really think that
the Bible forbids the pictorialization of historical human beings. GODFREY: Well I didn't say the Bible forbids
the representation of pictorial human beings. SPROUL: Is Jesus' human nature allowed to
be depicted. GODFREY: I don't think so. SPROUL: Why? GODFREY: Because he is God come in the flesh
and— SPROUL: Is the flesh God? GODFREY: No, the flesh is human. SPROUL: Really? GODFREY: But it is united in the divine person. SPROUL: You're not a Monophysite, Dr., I know
you're not a—say you're not a Monophysite. GODFREY: I am not a Monophysite. SPROUL: OK, well, we got that straight. GODFREY: But I'm not a Nestoriate either. SPROUL: Oh, neither am I.
GODFREY: I'm sure you're not. SPROUL: But I can distinguish between the
two natures without separating them. In fact, I must distinguish between them. GODFREY: Right. MOHLER: Let me just point out, this is a problem
with a lot of Bible story books, if it's a problem. In other words, we got this—we have a mental
image of certain things. My—and the argument I tried to make was
precisely the prudence argument, which, in referencing this, because I think there is
a huge prudence issue, but I can't say it's in every case wrong. And I just want to say as much as I would
never make a movie, I don't—there is no image of Christ in my home or in my library. I have all the Reformers, and many other people,
but no Christ because I'm just not comfortable with that. On the other hand, I have been in parts of
the world with missionaries and preliterate cultures, where I recognize that much as in
dealing with children we still, we pull out a Bible story book because they are pictorial. That's the first way they are going to get
a story. Still have trouble with the movie, but I've
seen where the Jesus movie, the old, old Jesus movie done by Campus Crusade has been seen
by millions and millions of people, and I've met people who are now fully, faithful Christians
who first came to understand the story that way. It is a prudence issue. If we were talking about how to tell this
story to a preliterate people in a preliterate culture we'd be having a different discussion
about how to sell tickets to a movie in Hollywood where I have major issues with it, just—and
because it—how you have to tell that story gets beneath the minimum of what I think any
of us would think would be justifiable, if we're going to tell the world this is a story
about Jesus. GODFREY: I do think we have to remember that
Europe was a preliterate culture largely before the coming of the Reformation. And the solution of the Reformers to the problem
of communicating Jesus to a preliterate culture was not to make pictures, but to make books
and to make preachers. And I think that's the need of the hour today
as well. MOHLER: I agree with it in terms of the main,
but that is not quite that easy. All you have to do is look at the Lutheran
Reformation and go to early Lutheran churches, and it's not quite that simple. But I agree with you in principle. GODFREY: If you went to a Calvinist church
it was that simple. SPROUL: Temporarily. Calvin's view was to wean the people away
from the idolatrous use of images and icons in Rome, but it was not an absolute principal
objection. He thought it was a temporary prudential need
to change the worship culture of the church from the idolatry that was rampant in Rome
and the Roman use images, Bob. You know that. I mean that's why I'm saying if we're going
to be Calvinistic, if you're going to follow Calvin on this point, Calvin theoretically
allowed for the use of images prudentially after a moratorium to liberate a generation
of people from that stuff. But I mean, that debate goes on and on and
on, and it'll go on after this afternoon. Tonight, we'll talk about it. LARSON: In closing, a word of encouragement
with this last question: "What words of advice or encouragement would you have for me as
I teach three and four-year-olds? How do I prepare them for a world who will
be against them if they follow Jesus?" We could briefly, just everyone take a quick
run at that. FERGUSON: Teach them the redemptive story
of the Bible. Bring them to a clear knowledge of Christ. Be sure to pour as much Christian theology
into them as possible and introduce them to as much church history as you possibly can. And, go about it a gospel way. If you can't teach your children in this way,
the problem is you haven't yet understood how the gospel works. And I think this is a huge test of where families,
and especially fathers are. Actually, it's a huge test of where ministers
are. One of the things that struck me throughout
the whole of my life, because I've lived in a world where ministers give children sermons,
is how many evangelical ministers turn into legalists when they give children's sermons. And it's there when they're speaking to the
children that it becomes clear how little of the redemptive story they understand, how
little they understand how the gospel works, and how little they understand who Christ
is. So, this is not a—what I want is three simple
things I can do for my children. What I need to do is to become the best expositor
of Scripture in my family, with the best knowledge of how the gospel works, the most knowledge
of Christian theology, and as much church history as I can pour into the children. And there are mountains of material out there
to help parents to do that. Take, since he is our host, R.C.'s books for
children. Every single one of them is profoundly theological
and doctrinal. So, there is a way to communicate the profoundest
theology to children. And I think we need to become more and more
passionate about that in our lives. GODFREY: On the off chance that there's someone
here I haven't yet offended, —let me say in answer to that question, while agreeing
absolutely with everything—what was your name? Dr. Ferguson—
FERGUSON: Calvin. GODFREY: Dr. Ferguson had to say. Let me also say take your three and four-year-olds
to church. SPROUL: Yes. GODFREY: Don't send them to children's church. SPROUL: Nice. GODFREY: Take them to church so there's never
a time that they can remember that they were not active worshipers with all the people
of God. And I think you'll do them great good. SPROUL: Amen. FERGUSON: Can I add to that? I think this is the most daring thing one
could say in an American context. Take them to evening church. GODFREY: Yes, yes, yes. FERGUSON: Because that's where the—God help
us if we've abandoned evening church, because that is where the children will see the church
as a whole where older people will sit down with them, delighted that they're there, and
invest themselves in them. It is the single best instrument for the ordinary
Christian family to fold their family into the church and into the gospel. And I, you know, I think if somebody said
to me, "By what means did you rear your children?" The answer would be "Through thick and thin,
dark and daylight, we took them to evening to worship and the church loved them, and
they saw the grace of the gospel at eighty different stages of the Christian life." And one cannot thank God enough for the church
when that's what happens in your children's lives. MOHLER: I appreciate everything that's been
said. I just have to tell you my wife and I are
empty nesters and there are no little voices in our house, and we feel empty. So, I'm all the sudden really envious of someone
who says, "How do I pour myself and pour truth into little three and four and five year-olds." I would just say teach them to love Jesus,
to trust Jesus and follow Jesus. And as life gets more complicated and they
get older, teach them to love Jesus, to trust Jesus and to follow Jesus. And when you send them off to college, teach
them to love Jesus and trust Jesus and follow Jesus. It gets more complex, but it never gets more
profound. LAWSON: You know the only thing I would add,
the way to prepare three and four-year-olds for going out into the world, and the persecution
that would—or the resistance that would come—is that the question? —I would say is the same way you prepare
an adult to go out into the world and to find resistance there. I mean, every answer that was given is the
same for an adult. It's not unique to a three or four year-old. Go to church. Read your Bible. Be well taught in the heroes of the faith
and church history. It's not different for a three or four year-old. It's the ordinary means of grace being poured
into the life of someone. So, I think it's just the same, it's just
at a different level. So. SPROUL: I—day before yesterday, our three-year-old
great-granddaughter said to her seven-year-old sister, "I'm going to pretend to be God." Which is a pretense she carries on in a regular
basis. But, the seven-year-old said to her, "No,
Caroline, there's only one true God and we must worship him." Now, how did she know that? Because she's been catechized. And catechizing the children is another important
mission that we have. LARSON: Would you thank our panelists today? Thank you, gentleman, so much.
