The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, August 31, 2026

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses the horrific flood tragedy in Nepal and its possible cause, the progressive strategy in the culture war over transgenderism, and the Log Cabin Republicans distancing themselves from transgenderism.Part I (00:01 – 00:02)A Devastating and Horrific Tragedy in Nepal: This is a Deadly Case of Natural Evil – Christians Need to Pray For All InvolvedPart II (00:03 – 00:04)Did Climate Change Cause the Flood in Nepal? The Western Media Jumped to the Conclusion That Climate Change is Behind This, But the Jury is Still OutAn Explanation Without Evidence for the Nepal Flood by The Wall Street Journal (Matthew Hennessey)Disaster Experts Say Nepal Glacier Collapse Was Difficult to Predict by The New York Times (Laura Chung)Part III (00:05 – 00:06)The Progressive Strategy on ‘T’: The Progressives in Politics and the WNBA See the Society ‘Moving Forward’ on Transgenderism Once Americans Focus on Other IssuesMost Democrats Don’t Want to Talk About Transgender Athletes. He’s Leaning In. by The New York Times (Reid J. Epstein)WNBA will become an unstoppable force when it unites, outlasts culture wars by The Athletic (Ian O’Connor)Part IV (00:07 – 00:08)Log Cabin Republicans Drop the ‘T’: Homosexual Republican Group Distances Itself From Transgenderism – But They’re Still Defying Creation OrderConservative Gay Rights Group Ends Support for Trans Causes by The New York Times (Richard Fausset)Log Cabin Republicans Renews Its National Advocacy Focus by Townhall (Ross Hemminger)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Monday, August 31, 2006. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Just about everyone in the world who has seen the footage of that incredible flooding that took place in Nepal, on actually the border of China and Nepal, will never forget the images. And the images are jarring for more than one reason. First of all, the devastation is just unprecedented, unbelievable in this kind of flash flood. We're talking about moving mountains. And when we're talking about mountains,

we're talking about the Himalayan region. We're talking about massive amounts of earth, unleashed by torrents and torrents of water, going into a very narrow valley where there had been a contained river that sometimes did overflow its banks. But what we saw was the destruction of civilization on both sides of the banks,

on the Chinese side and on the Nepalese side. It is one of those tragedies that in a previous age would not have been seen. It wouldn't have been visible. because it wouldn't have been recorded. Given the fact of the recording, given the fact that you can look at the video, it is all the more breathtaking, horrifying,

and it is just one other reminder of how small we are and how large the planet is. And just remember how small the planet is in the scale of the cosmos. But it also has a great deal to do with questions about moral evil and natural evil. We're talking about natural evil here. We're talking about the fact that this was a glist,

This year, it is believed that was melting, and it gave way in a very large piece that was turned, liquefied into water. It created a lake on the way down from higher altitudes, and eventually that was overflowed, and then it came in a torrent. I'm going to assume most of you have seen it. It's just almost impossible to describe what it looks like. You know, that parking facility with all those tourism buses, and all of a sudden they're moved around like child's toys. And here's another of the jarring factors in all of this. it wasn't raining. There were no flash floods coming from rain. There was no warning. There was no expectation. And frankly, even as there are now some accusations that someone must have known

at least some minutes before some villages were affected, the reality is this came almost out of the blue, turning into water, turning into torrents, moving what are now calculated to be millions of tons of debris along. Now, very sadly, we're talking about thousands of deaths. almost certainly thousands of deaths, something like 3,500 documented people missing. One of the most horrifying aspects of all of this in terms of just a natural disaster is that the scale was so large and the movement of dirt and mass and debris so large, it is unlikely that a lot of the bodies will ever be found. And, you know, that just adds tragedy to tragedy and heartbreak to heartbreak.

Now, when we're thinking about this, you know, immediately some very interesting questions came to mind. As I say, there's a distinction between natural evil and moral evil. It's very much key to a Christian understanding of these things. We believe that even natural evil is due to sin, but it's due to Adam and Eve's sin. It's the sin that revolted against the Creator there in the garden and led to Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden, and thus we are all born now conceived in sin. But in a fallen world in which even nature shows the effects of sin, just in terms of natural disasters, as we call them. It is difficult for a lot of people to leave it with that. And so even already you have many people who are saying there's someone to blame for this or something to blame for this. And so

almost immediately they've reached for climate change or global warming or something like that. I'll get back to that in just a moment. It is important for Christians to recognize that the problem of evil, the philosophical, the giant intellectual problem of evil is rightly massive and rightly insoluble, except for the fact that there is a good, holy, omnipotent, righteous creator who made the universe perfect and will restore things

according to his own promise at the last day. So even when we say natural evil, we don't mean something disloos in the cosmos outside the providence and sovereignty of God. No, we believe this is all under the general providence of God, but there's a distinction between natural evil in which there is no proximate blame. In other words, you're not going to blame,

someone, moral evil is gun, knife, attack. Natural evil is flood, hurricane, tornado, etc. Both of them come with deadly effects in a fallen world, but they are attributable to different forms of evil actions. When it comes to moral evil, there is a human who, who is very much involved. That's why we talk about such immoral acts in such moral terms. We can't help but do it. And then there are those who just want to treat the entire cosmos as an accident, and all of this is just the chance intersection of matter and energy, and thus there is no meaning to anything larger than that, and so natural evil becomes something that is just a part of a chaotic world. I think we as Christians understand there's got to be a lot more to it than that. It's also important for us

to think about the fact that here you have communist China on one side of this ravine, this river, which turned into such a massive disaster. And on the other side you have Nepal, that's the Nepal Federal Democratic Republic or the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Nepal borders on Tibet, just in terms of the northern border. And of course, Tibet is contested territory. China clearly claims it under its special sovereignty. That's a different issue. On the south and the east and the west, in general terms, Nepal borders on India. And of course, we're talking about the Himalayan Mountains. And we're also talking about the capital. Kathmandu. We're talking about Mount Everest being not all that far away. The religious breakdown,

as you're thinking about Nepal, was 81% Hindu. I think a lot of people would think it more Buddhist, but it is 81% Hindu, and it's about 8% Buddhist, only about 2% Christianity. And that's one of the reasons why a lot of the groups that were in this area and are now understood to be probably part of the casualties were groups of Hindus making pilgrimage, and especially, especially there to sacred sites in Nepal. Now, when you look at this, there are some very, very interesting issues. For one thing, it reminds us that in a fallen world, there are things that can bless and things that can kill that can be the same thing, just depending on the circumstance. And so when you're looking at this water, much of the water is flowing out of the

Himalayas down into the valleys, this is an opportunity for hydroelectric power. And so for Nepal, this has been something of an economic opportunity. If they could capture this, this hydraulic power by means of creating power with falling water, that would be to the nation's advantage. Much of that has just been wiped out, and it is not known fully the scale, but just listen to this. This is by Alex Trevelli, the New York Times, quote, The floods in the valleys, damage are destroyed 14 hydroelectric projects, including six under construction. After the deluge on Wednesday, 431 megawatts of generating capacity had gone dark, according to the Nepal Electricity Authority, more than 12% of the country's total capacity.

But then I continue from the paper, quote, the toll was far greater when including projects under construction, counting those plants now halted or in some cases swept away, it would roughly double the capacity lost. And it says here among them was one project where 63 Indians were rescued from a construction tunnel and more than 100 workers remained unaccounted for. It is interesting that as of late last night, there were reports that these tunnels in which some people have found refuge may have offered refuge in some, may have been deadly traps in others, but there is at least hope that there might be some persons alive who were able to get away from the water by that means. And the paper's absolutely right when it summarizes, quote, the destruction was part of a much larger human catastrophe.

More than 600 people were killed, more than 2,400 remained missing, and 93. thousand needed assistance. So this is just on a massive scale. And again, I think one of the incongruities in all of this is that there wasn't a storm. We're not talking about a typhoon. We're not talking about a hurricane. We're not talking about, at least it's assumed we're not talking about an earthquake. We're talking about something that no one really foresaw. I say that. And yet, it also turns out that geological specialists have been concerned about something like this for some time. But the problem is when you look at Tibet, there are simply so many valleys, by some count, thousands of them, and there are so many glaciers, and there's so much snow,

and there's so much ice at higher altitudes, if you were concerned about this, you wouldn't be absolutely certain where you should be most concerned. We're also talking about a place, which lacks a lot of the infrastructure that other modern nations might have. The bottom line, when it came to this particular issue, the paper has right, quote, last week's destruction exposes a more fundamental uncertainty, whether Nepal can safely build the hydropower system on which these export ambitions depend. Okay, as always, there's going to be more background than you might think. So when you look at the massive landslide, and it was more than that, but at least it included a massive landslide, you say, well, has nothing like that

happened before? It turns out that things like that on a different scale have happened rather routinely. And that's to be expected in an area that has seismic activity and all the rest, not to mention the fact that that magnificent, nearly unspeakably beautiful mountain region, also contains dangers that come with having so much water so high. And immediately, of course, there are those who, in the West, leapt to climate change as the explanation for why this happened. And it's very interesting. This happened so quickly. And I want to credit Matthew Hennessy of the Wall Street Journal for just underlining the fact that. that almost immediately you had Western sources who said, we know why this happened, when the people

on the ground didn't say they know why it happened. And why government authorities there are still not sure exactly why it happened, but it does look like it was a massive glacial melt. But these things have happened in cycles before. I am in no position to say that climate change had nothing to do with this. I wouldn't dare to say that because that is outside my expertise. But it is interesting that there were people reporting on that as basically a fact before there is any scientific analysis of whether that's a fact or not. Hennessy says this, quote, it is hard to find the right words to describe this weeks. This was last week, of course, deadly flash floods in Nepal and China's Tibet region. The footage is terrifying, cinematic,

and unbelievable. Distant, doomed figures run for their lives as a 10-story wall of water and debris bears down its nightmare material. But then he goes on to say, quote, the Western media, as usual, sees no value in waiting for the fog to clear, sitting at their computer screens in London and New York, they already knew what happened. The clear culprit is the all-purpose explanation for everything climate change. Now, again, it might be that climate change is a part of this. I am in no position to say that it isn't. It is interesting that the coverage in the Western press went that way, even as on the ground. There were far more urgent concerns. Another major New York Times news story said this. There are 2070 glacial lakes in Nepal,

all 21 of which are classified as high risk, according to a 2020 report by an intergovernmental body for mountain monitoring. There are many more glacial lakes in the surrounding Himalayan areas of China and India. So we're talking about something that could very well happen again. It will widely be debated. Our hearts go out to the people of Nepal and China, these villages that have been so horribly now distressed and destroyed. And it is a reminder to us we live in a dangerous world. It is also a reminder to us that many of the population questions that human beings face are faced by the fact that for all kinds of reasons, like living on the coastlines, because this is where you can have all kinds of fishing, you can also have all kinds of navigational businesses and shipping trade and all the rest. There's a reason why people live in places where often you can have very bad things happen that wouldn't happen in less populated places. that again is this one of the very strange moral dimensions of human life.

Next, as we come back to the United States, we think about the weekend. There were a couple of things that developed as stories are unfolding. The LGBTQ stuff is unfolding, absolutely for sure. But there's also no question that it's the T, the transgender issue that is getting so much attention these days. And now it's becoming a big political issue. So, for example, the New York Times is running a huge article on the, Senate race in Massachusetts, and it says this, most Democrats don't want to talk about transgender athletes. He's leaning in. Here's the subhead. Senator Ed Markey in Massachusetts has emerged as a

vocal defender of transgender rights as he tries to fend off a primary challenge from Representative Seth Moulton. So this is coming up quite quickly. When you talk about Ed Markey, you're talking about someone who's been in the Senate since 2013, and he has been in the Senate ever since then, before that he was in the House of Representatives in 1976 to 2013, representing the 7th district there in the state of Massachusetts. And Mark, he's a very interesting guy. And I think most people looking at his social liberalism these days on questions of abortion, just absolutely for abortion, the big thing is that he is absolutely outspoken in his defense of transgender rights, right down to children and others who are claiming transgender identity playing on sporting teams and all the

Now, this took on a special argumentative or debate dimension there in Massachusetts because the younger man, Representative Seth Moulton, who's running against the incumbent senator on the Democratic side, has been running as someone more moderate. And at least one thing that Representative Moulton did kind of demonstrating what he was presenting as his moderation is to suggest, citing his own daughters, that he does not want them facing male bodies in terms of sporting events. and he raised that as a moral issue. Now, the vast majority of Americans are in agreement with him,

but the state of Massachusetts is unusually liberal. One of the things we looked at not long ago is the fact that the other Democratic senator, who's also from the state of Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, she polls far to the left of the Democratic Party. But voters in Massachusetts have continued to elect her, and they've continued to elect Ed Markey.

Ed Markey, by the way, is someone who is going to be in his ninth, decade of life very shortly if he is reelected. And right now, the polling indicates that he's likely to be reelected. And so he will be in his ninth decade of life in this particular term. Now, by the way, all kinds of issues are coming up in this. Seth Moulton has raised this. I think his competitor there in the Democratic primary cut kind of calmly low energy. But Ed Markey is just unapologetic about running. He clearly thinks he's going to win. He says he intends to serve all six years. He would be, thus, you know, 86 by the time this term would come to an end.

But it is very interesting. Markey, the incumbent, is accusing Moulton, of throwing trans kids under the bus. And these statements go back to shortly after the 2024 election. The big news then was the election of President Donald Trump to a second term. And one of the things that Congressman Moulton gave as an explanation on the Democratic side for why President Trump had won was the fact that the vast majority of America have not bought into the transgender argument. And when you had Kamala Harris,

who was, of course, the incumbent vice president at the time and the Democratic nominee, you had someone who was just all for the transgender agenda. And it was believed by Congressman Olton and others on the Democratic side that that had hurt her. But when it comes to Senator Markey, he's not back and down at all. He is going full power behind the transgender movement.

As the time said, he has, quote, staked out his ardent pro-trans rights position at a moment when the rest of his party is grappling with the issue, which the paper says President Trump and other Republicans have used as a cultural wedge. Now, they note something else. Listen to this. Quote, ambitious younger Democrats who are likely to run for president, including Gavin Newsom of California, and Pete Buttigieg, the former Transportation Secretary, have edged away from defending the participation of transgender athletes in women's and girls' sports. Other prominent Democrats says the paper has sought to

diffuse the issue by not talking about it or punting responsibility while trying to pivot to more favorable issues like the economy. On the other hand, Senator Markey has, as many in the media have noted, he's leaning in. He's leaning in without apology. He's leaning in even as he's going to be one of the oldest persons in office. And even as, here's what's really interesting, when he was first elected to Congress, he was very pro-life. Just to give you an example.

He was very conservative on these moral issues. He was very pro-life. As a matter of fact, when he was elected to Congress, first of all, going back to 1976, He was for a constitutional amendment defending the sanctity of human life. And so there's several things going on here. There is the leftward trajectory in the culture. That's big for us to see. There's the leftward trajectory of the Democratic Party.

That's also something very clear we need to see. And there is the leftward trajectory of specific office holders, like a congressman, Ed Markey, who is now Senator Ed Markey. So all that's very interesting. It's going to be interesting to see where this goes. but it is at this point very significant that Senator Markey has decided this is an issue in which he's going to drill down. I want us to note that nationwide, the vast majority of people do not believe that biological males should be on teams for biological females, that boys should not play on girls' teams, men should not compete in women's sports. And of course, that's a big issue in the WNBA.

So there's another very interesting development that was reported at the Athletic. Okay, so here's the development. It's an analysis by Ian O'Connor of how the WNBA can, quote, overcome culture war fire. Okay, so let's just remind ourselves the WNBA is in this thick. And the league is in this thick because you have had players come out and say that they do not believe that teenage boys should be on teenage girls sporting teams. And for that matter, older children as well, that just shouldn't happen that female sports should be limited to females. And by the way, we're going to come back to that word in just a moment. But now you have Ian O'Connor writing that the way to deal with this is just to stall.

That's the basic argument. It's a half page in the paper. Just stall. Just try to buy time. He writes this, quote, In such a volatile political climate, the WNBA has been weaponized to bad faith actors who had the head of the league that will be Commissioner Kathy Engelbert has described as having the ambition as bad faith actors, quote, to sow divisiveness on race, gender, and sexuality fronts, end quote.

Now, here is the strategy we need to see. The strategy, and it shows up in that Times article about Ed Markey, the incumbent senator, who's now running very pro-T in terms of that Democratic nomination race in the state of Massachusetts. Here's the thing. You have many people who are saying the best thing for the WNBA or others to do is simply to stop talking about this. and eventually the culture is going to move in this direction and you'll get by without further damage. I'm just going to say that's exactly what they're betting on.

In some cases, I think they're probably actually betting on it. That's exactly what they're counting on. They're counting on this being a temporary aberration, and their understanding of moral change is that it can only go one way. It can only go in a progressivist direction. It can only follow what the liberals in the 19th century and even others later talked about the arc of progress. In other words, there is an arrow and it is going and what they define as a progressive direction. On the issue of transgender, they just say, you know, we have met unexpected

opposition. And of course, they see this as just the backwardness of the American people. What they're not truly coming into account of is the fact that if you talk about LGBT, there's an increasing understanding, even in the cultural left, that L and G and B are different than T. that T is a different thing it entails an entirely different kind of moral issue and that comes back to the fact that gay rights activists, LGBTQ activists

will say that it was in the last 20 years that they have decided to put L and G and B together with T for mutual political advantage just in terms of pressing their case in terms of the social issues they put it all within one construct in terms of their claims about biology,

claims about, you know, psychology, their claims about an orientation, their claim about, you know, the malleability of gender and all the rest. And I mentioned this, we'll come back to this another time in greater detail, but it is interesting that in recent days, it has been reported that the Prime Minister of Britain, until recently, Keir Starmor, actually gave an instruction inside his party that party members were allowed to use words like man and woman, but not male and female. Okay, let that sink in for a moment. In other words, male and female, apply something biological, and the claim was that if you can avoid male and female, then you can basically use man and woman interchangeably. I guess boy and girl as well.

That's very revealing. It tells us this is something new we need to listen for. So, okay, that is something very interesting. It's going to be fascinating to see if the WNBA gets away with following this kind of strategy of just, let's not talk about this for a while, let's just lay low, but it's also extremely interesting that a league that has, has women in the title doesn't appear to know what a woman is or to be willing to defend it. One last issue on this, when we're talking about LGBT and all the rest, it is fascinating that one, LGBT is now just LGBT. And there are arguments that might spread to other political parties. In this case, we're talking about the log cabin Republicans. Now, those are LGBTQ activists

within the Republican Party. So in other words, these are gay rights activists, homosexual rights, activists. But they are now officially dropping tea out of the LGBT. And so you have, for example, news articles with headlines like leading conservative gay rights group ends at support for transgender causes. You have the Wall Street Journal and others noticing it, by the way, days after online media were all over this. That tells you something mainstream media really didn't want to touch this story, but it is so big, they're going to have to deal with it. And so most of the big major secular establishment, mainstream media sources have now at least acknowledged the story. The president of the organization, remember this is a pro-LGB.

No, wait just a minute, pro-LGB group trying to press the Republican Party in that direction. Ross Himinger is the president of the group. And in his statement, he said this, quote, The transgender movement has ceased focusing on adults at all, nearly all of their efforts, and those of their line special interest groups focus on minors. They push schools to teach radical gender ideology. They want biological men and women's sports

regardless of the consequences. Maybe most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents. Knowing full well, these treatments are mostly irreversible. Okay, groups like the human rights campaign have come out condemning the log cabin Republicans for their hypocrisy and all the rest. I also believe there's some hypocrisy here

because, after all, the L, the G, and the B are absolute denials of the morality and the sexual order that is revealed in nature and in God's law. And so it's rather arbitrary all of a sudden now to say, we're going to drop the T. Simply, and by the way, it doesn't say anything really about T adults. It just says the left's insistence on making these things available for transgender teenagers. It's just a step too far. I want to be very clear. It is not only a step too far, it is an absolutely unacceptable step too far.

but the Long Cabin Republicans are also pushing in terms of their own agenda. They're one letter short now, not LGBT, just LGBT. They are still, as the Apostle Paul makes very clear in Romans chapter 1, pressing against creation order itself. By the way, that Massachusetts Democratic primary is going to come up Tuesday, so we will soon know the answer to the question as to how all that turns out. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com.

you can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moeller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to SBTS.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollis.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.