The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, February 24, 2025

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 - 12:38)A Classic Case of Theological Collapse: How A Pastor-Father’s Acceptance of His Son’s Homosexual Lifestyle Led to the Eventual Abandonment of Biblical ChristianityHow My Dad Reconciled His God and His Gay Son by The New York Times (Timothy White)Part II (12:39 - 18:50)The Bible is a Major Problem for the LGBTQ Revolution – And the Left Knows ItLosing My Religion, Finding Jesus (Does that sound like heresy to you?) by City Church Long Beach (Bill White)Part III (18:50 - 00:06)Hamas Offers Most Depraved Spectacle Thus Far: The Horrifying and Tragic Return of the Bibas FamilyPonder How the Bibas Boys Died by The Wall Street Journal (Bernard-Henri Lévy)Hamas’s latest stunt is its most despicable yet by The Telegraph (Jake Wallis Simons)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, February 24, 2025. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. How's this for a headline story in the opinion page of the New York Times? My father is an evangelical pastor who struggled mightily when I came out to him. This is how he changed his mind. Well, here you have the New York Times, one of the most influential media sources on the planet, perhaps the most influential single newspaper in the United States. States. And just days ago, it ran this on the front page of a Sunday edition. It is declaring how an evangelical pastor changed his mind on the issue of sexuality and gender, the entire LGBTQ array, when his son came out to him. Now, let me just give you a word of prophecy here. This is not going to be an evangelical pastor who turned to a more biblical position. This is going to be an evangelical pastor by identification who has abdicated biblical fidelity. I know that because otherwise,

the New York Times would not be giving us the story. The substance of the article is based, at least largely on a series of diary entries offered by the father. The father is a pastor of a church in Long Beach, California named Bill White. And beginning when his son was a newborn baby, he began praying for him. His diary reflects some of those prayers. And one of the earliest prayers that is published here in this New York Times article is a prayer for his son's prospective wife. Of course, the irony there is thick. The son is not going to have a wife. In this case, the son will instead openly come out as gay. This is going to require a reevaluation we are told of the father's theology. In the New York Times article setting this up, the son declared,

quote, my dad was a self-proclaimed Jesus freak of the 1990s, who became an evangelical pastor at a church on the modest end of Mega. He believed homosexuality to be a grave sin and had no idea what to do when his brother came out. And then I came out to him and my mother, Katie, it upended their lives and the life of our neighborhood church in Southern California. It sent my father on a winding high stakes, spiritual, emotional, and interpersonal journey that lasted years. now he's still a pastor, but also the most impressive advocate for LGBTQ inclusion in the church I've ever met. The son goes on to say, quote, but the process of transformation that my father had been through was a mystery to me, what had allowed him to change his mind so thoroughly about something

he once had such strong feelings about, a process that seems to happen so rarely on any subject, let alone one that's so personal. How had he reconciled his father and his son without coming to compromise either relationship. As he says, it turns out, my father is a prolific journal keeper. So he turned to the journal, and it's excerpts from the journal that are published, one of them about the father praying for the prospective wife of his son. But then there is also the account in the diary entries of how the parents were confronted with the son who took them out and had a conversation in which he came proverbially out of the closet. Afterwards, the father's diary entries begin to

change. He, in early entries, indicates his very settled convictions on the sinfulness of homosexuality in the LGBT lifestyles. He sees this as something that he says he hates, and yet once he's confronted with his son, he enters into a re-evaluation of all of this. This is reflected in a journal or a diary entry, which is dated September 5, 2015. The father, Bill White, writes, quote, my theology is changing, Father. It's been a deep undercurrent for a couple of years now, but it's surfacing in new ways, and with real potency these days, I think there are two main things that are unnerving for me. This is the father, the pastor writing. Quote, the first is that I no longer know how to read the scriptures. There's a tinge of doubt of wariness of skepticism when I read. How do I know

what's there is from you? How do I sift out the human contribution? I'm reading scripture differently with an edge. Hold that thought. Quote, the second area that's unnerving for me is in regard to morality. If I can get to the point where homosexuality is moral, how much does that change the rest of my morality? Sure, I had the conversation with Timothy that I value purity and that I'd like to see him save sex for marriage. It was a bit of an odd conversation because how do I get to land at the point of no sexual intercourse before marriage, but then redefine marriage? At what point do my sexual mores change? How about the morality of cussing, of generosity of lying? How situational do things become? How open are the scriptures to reinterpretation on these things?

And how about universalism, heaven and hell? Quote, Jesus, I want to do some real thinking about what it looks like for me to cling to you, to know you, to love you, and to build my theology on you, and not on the scriptures, end quote. Now, I just want to state that rarely do you see argument made this clearly, this transparently, and this badly. Rarely do you see someone come out honestly and say, I'm going to have to choose between the scriptures and some other understanding, and I'm going to go with the other understanding at the expense of the scriptures. And then you have this incredible statement, and this is something that has emerged in the modern age, where you have someone with seriousness make the argument, I want to build my theology on you speaking to Christ and not on

the Scriptures. Now, back when the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 was updating, and that is to say correcting its statement of faith, to be more clear on the doctrine of scripture, we made very clear in that confession of faith that this is not a subjective appropriation of the Word of God. The Bible doesn't just contain the Word of God. The Bible is the Word of God written, inerrant and infallible. Well, at one point in the adoption of that confession of faith, I who was on the steering committee, on the writing committee, I was asked to answer a question. And the question came from a very young man, and he said, I don't want more or less to follow an inerrant scripture. I have Jesus. I have access to Jesus. And I just got up before the messieurs,

and I said, this is what it all comes down to. What access to Jesus do we have but by the scriptures? This is an invented, projected Jesus separated from the scriptures. This is exactly what we are to avoid. This is a dangerous mysticism that falls over into theological liberalism. Faithful Christians can't say that we have any access to Jesus apart from Scripture. What do we know about Scripture? Jesus is the one who pointed to the Scriptures and said, these are they that testify of me. authentic Christianity is biblical Christianity. And the scripture's authority is absolutely beyond negotiation. And that's exactly what's called for here.

Here you have a pastor dated in an entry in 2015, and it's clear he's already made a massive jump. He has jumped from whatever position he had to a position now in which the Bible is just a book. The scriptures are a mixture of God's word and some other word. He speaks here of seeking to find the word. of God inside Scripture. That is classically tied to a theological movement known as Neo-Orthodoxy in the 20th century. It's not orthodoxy. It was what was claimed to be a new orthodoxy. Well, by definition, a new orthodoxy is not going to be orthodoxy. It was an effort to try to reconcile modern thought with the claim of some kind of authority of the scripture. And so the argument was

that the scripture contains the Word of God, not that it is the Word of God, but God's Word is in there, and the argument classically in Neo-Orthodoxy was that the word of God comes alive in the preaching of the word. But we believe that the word itself is alive, all of it, and we believe not only that God's word is inspired, we believe that the words are inspired, and every single one of the words is inspired. This is the verbal plenary understanding of the Bible's inspiration. And here's a classic example of the fact that once you forfeit the high ground of that view of scripture, then you can simply say, I like that verse, I don't like this verse. I find this to be revealing of Christ, not that. You can set Christ against scripture, which is exactly what Christ did not allow

to take place. But, of course, this is an evolving situation in terms of this father and his theology, and that becomes clear in subsequent entries. It's very clear at this point that he's already made the big shift. He is already saying, I want to build my theology on you and not on the scriptures. He's already asking what parts of the scriptures are binding on us. He's already asking, how do I sift out the human contribution? He already admits I'm reading scripture differently with an edge. Well, yes, he is. He has already basically denied the scripture principle, which is at the heart of evangelical Christianity. Just three days later, in another journal entry, the father writes, quote, some of the stuff I've read.

has talked about biblicalism or foundationalism, which both seem to describe what I'm coming out of. Life and morality and God and religion were a lot clearer than it is now. And yet the strange thing is that I've never felt closer to Jesus, more intimate, more interested, more willing to sacrifice for him, and more free to be a Christian. He goes on and says, quote, it's actually pretty scary because people are going to judge me. Christians are going to proclaim that I've lost my faith, and I will lose certain privileges that I've had in the community. won't be asked to do some weddings or speak at certain churches or events, especially as I come out more

and more into who I see you leading me to be. The LGBT issue will continue to be a lightning rod, but it's the understanding of scripture and the second half of life issues that are really at work. And that's a candid admission. He's admitting that the scriptural issue is more basic, more important than even the LGBTQ issues that were kind of the wedge that created this movement in him. but as you might expect, the journal entries continue. At one point, he writes, quote, I feel frustrated with you, Father. The scriptures just don't seem all that clear anymore,

and this is a big issue with huge stakes, end quote. Well, it certainly is a big issue, and it certainly is an issue with big stakes, indeed the biggest of stakes. As he continued writing his entries, he went on to say this, quote, three times this week I was asked where I am at on the LGBT stuff.

The rub is that people know I'm the pastor, and even though I'm just a participant in the study group, they know I have far more influence than that. So they want to know how I see things. So this is what I said. Quote, I believe sexual attraction can shift and that God is in the business of shifting it. I believe that healthy Christian ministry can and does play a part in shifting orientation. I am currently working with at least one person on the journey of moving away from her attraction to women towards attraction to men because I'm convinced this is what God is doing in her life,

and I want to be part of it. He then goes on later, quote, I can't get away from how radically inclusive Jesus was of all people, and how freely he extended welcome into the kingdom of God. He consistently affirms and blesses the outsider, the minority, and the marginalized. He extended unconditional love to all, and he said that all of the commands in the scriptures find their fulfillment in love. Okay, here's where the sun writes something very interesting.

quote. The entry makes clear, though, how much my dad was going through the difficult process of really figuring out what he believed, not just flipping a theological switch, end quote. Well, you know, it's not so easy as flipping a theological switch. It's a matter of thinking these things through. That's what makes this pastor, I think, all the more responsible, because he has been thinking these things through. He's not just responding in an emotional response to his son. Instead, this has led to a thorough, comprehensive, re-evaluation of all of Christianity. And I'm going to leave the New York Times piece and the journal entries and just say that a matter of record is what this pastor said. It's in a podcast. The title of

it is losing my religion, finding Jesus. And then the question, does that sound like heresy to you? Put a pause there. The answer is yes. In this podcast, he says, quote, and there's this word that some of you know and some of you don't. And it comes with a lot of baggage. It's this word inerrancy. idea that the Bible has no errors, and it's kind of a key aspect to a lot of white evangelical theology, and it's a cultural artifact. He goes on and on just to dismiss the inerrancy of scripture. He's talked about how distant he has moved from the position he had before. He writes this, or says this in the podcast, quote, one of the things that I feel like I'm losing has been my very tight grip on the Bible. And this is going to be, so this piece, there are folks here

on this call where this might be unnerving for you, and I don't know what. to do besides process it loud, out loud. But when Jesus says, you've heard it said, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, love your enemies, turn the other cheek. Quote, he's messing with the Bible, end quote. Oh, all the things are just here on the table. Everything's here. And by the way, all of Christianity is now separated from scripture, independent of scripture, we can make of Christianity anything we want it to be. We can take any modern template and claim that as the authority for remaking Christianity in whatever image we want it to be. You can take the clear teachings of Scripture, and by the way, the scripture is incredibly clear

on the issue of gender, sex, marriage, and indeed the entire array LGBTQ. But what we see here is indeed the flipping of a switch in one sense. And so everything falls together. Here's another Christian understanding. We tend, even against our own will sometimes, to become increasingly consistent over time. This is one of the gifts of the Christian life. We become more consistent over time. It is one of the issues of apostasy and heresy as well. You begin with a little apostasy, you begin with a little heresy, and the next thing you know, you have completely rejected biblical Christianity. Because how in the world do you hold to something like, say, substitutionary atonement if you don't believe in the inerency of Scripture? How do you hold to something like limited atonement and the perseverance of the saints and the distinction between lost and saved if you don't even believe in the scriptural authority?

If you're going to invent a new Christianity, you're going to pretty much invent it comprehensively, and that's exactly what we see here. Well, many worldview lessons in this particular news account and in the publication of this, again, multiple pages in the print edition of the New York Times. That tells us something. The New York Times is holding up this pastor as an example of what should happen. It's almost as if explicitly the New York Times is telling readers, look, what we need is more evangelicals to follow this pattern. and this is the way you get the applause of the world. This is the way you get the applause of the world and the applause of the New York Times.

Again, I'll just state the case, if the switch were made the other way, the New York Times will not be telling us about it. Now, also, as we understand how these moral issues work throughout the culture, this tells us something else that's really interesting, and that is this. Evidently, the secular left is well aware of the fact that on this issue, the great obstacle is the scriptures. It's an amazing testimony coming in an angular argument from the New York Times. The New York Times is dealing with this because they know that evangelical Christian convictions

based in scripture are a major stumbling block when it comes to advancing the LGBTQ revolution. One final thought here just before leaving this story. You see here a father's love for his son. Is that right or wrong? The father's love for his son is right. but the father's love for his son in his son's sin is not right. And that's where biblically minded Christians have to be continually aware of the fact that we must love all of our loves in accordance with Scripture. We must order all of our loves in accordance with Scripture. We're commanded

to love our children, but we are also commanded to hate sin. And if we truly love our children and understand the authority of Scripture pointing to the very character of God, then we cannot love them into sin. We must love them as we pray for them to come out of sin. Nonetheless, this is what gets the applause of the world and nearly unlimited press space in the New York Times. It tells us what the New York Times and so many people in this culture want to see happen. But it also is a warning inside evangelical Christianity. This is how quickly it can happen. You look at these journal entries. It's just a short amount of time. Okay, I said I was leaving it just a couple of other things. I just had to do a little investigation on this pastor. One in the world is the

denomination. One in the world is the church. It turns out that the church is predictably absolutely tiny. This does not draw a crowd. The preaching and teaching of the Word of God builds a church. If you're going to take this kind of worldview, let me just make the obvious point. You don't need Christianity if Christianity is simply going to affirm your LGBTQ worldview. you. The secular world will give you all the applause you need. This just points again to the contradiction in terms. Liberal Christianity keeps saying it is moving in a liberal direction, making peace with liberal ideas in order to save Christianity, but you'll notice their churches are empty. Because once you accept that liberal theology, guess what? You wake up one morning and think,

I don't need church anymore. I can have my Sunday mornings back. I don't need to give money to this anymore. If it's not true, why does it matter? And that's where we must hear this as a word of warning. We understand that everything is at stake, every sermon we preach, every conversation we have, every temptation that comes our way to deviate from the word of God in its authority and in its teachings. So here's a word to us from the New York Times. It's not the lesson they intend for us to get, but it's the lesson we had better take to heart right now. Okay, now we have to shift to a very sad story, but it's one we need to see face to face.

We need to understand this in all of its shock and in all of its horror. Right now, as we have had to discuss so many times, the war that Israel is fighting against Tamas, making very clear we're talking about a legitimate nation fighting a nihilistic terrorist force. From time to time, things will happen. We just have to see for what they are. the return of three bodies, and it was convoluted, but eventually all three bodies, confirmed are now in Israel, of a mother and of two tiny boys slain by Hamas, lays all the issues out plainly for anyone who has eyes to see. When you're talking about the evil of Hamas,

what could speak more graphically than the bodies of a mother and her two tiny sons, one of them nine months old during the hostage taking that took place on October the 7th, The Hamas terrorists deliberately killed not only over 1,000 people in Israel, they took about 250 hostages. And among those hostages was a mother and her two boys, and it appears that they were slaughtered very quickly after they were taken as hostages. Bernard Henri LeVay, a very prominent French philosopher, wrote a piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal. He spot on. He asked us, ponder how the Bebus boys died. He then writes, imagine the life of a baby trapped in dark, damp tunnels of a toddler.

ripped from his family. And he asked the question, who could do this and who could justify it? Meanwhile, you have published at the Telegraph, a major newspaper in London, an article by Jake Wallace Simons entitled Hamas' latest stunt is its most despicable yet. He writes this, quote, yet this depraved spectacle, that's the return of the bodies, was presented with such relish and glee by Hamas that it was, tells you everything you need to know about the group. Of course, we knew everything we needed to know already. We knew it from the murder, rate, mutilation, and kidnapping of October the 7th. Quote, many of us knew it long before, yet this morning, as we watch these macabre scenes with our hearts in our mouths, I could not help but marvel at the hordes of young

Britons who continue to support the group. Okay, so there's something really big here. This is an article written from London in a London newspaper about this man who sees the issues clearly and says he can't understand why there are apologists for Hamas within his own nation. He writes this. On October the 7th itself, the left-wing activist Rivka Brown posted on X or Twitter, quote, today should be a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide. As Gaza's break out of their open-air prison and Hamas fighters cross into the colonizers' territory, the struggle for freedom is rarely bloodless and we shouldn't apologize for it, end quote. He then writes, quote, she later apologized, but that post has haunted me since, it encapsulates with such

concision and eloquence the moral void of the Western left, which happily expends its every intellectual resource in the service of the worst evil on earth that preens with pride at doing so. End quote. Well, from time to time, we just need to be reminded, and these days we're reminded so often, it seems almost daily, of the conflict between good and evil in the world around us. We're not just talking about attitudes that we call good and evil. We're not talking about moral relativism that says this is just a label you're putting on something. We're talking about undeluted, undeniable evil, insane people have to call it what it is. But it's also important in worldview analysis that we as Christians understand that we're surrounded by people who seem to

lack the ability to call good, good, and evil, evil. And thus, we have to look at our own children, and how many right now just want to hug our own little children, your own little children, and thank God for them, and thank God that they were not taken as hostages by Hamas to be slaughtered. And let's be reminded of the fact that there is evil set loose in this world that is so murderous, so horrifying, we actually lack a moral vocabulary to handle it adequately. On the other hand, as tempting as it would be not to look squarely at these things, that's exactly what we must to do. Biblical Christianity doesn't say look away from evil. It doesn't say call it something other than what it is. It says, see it for what it is and understand the evil that

is in the human heart. The only answer for this evil, by the way, is something that can't come through politics, no matter how the political expertise and how much political process is devoted, this is where Christians come to understand that the final solution of this kind of evil, the final defeat of this kind of evil, is not going to come by an army. not by a human army as necessary as fighting a group like Kamas is right now. It's only going to come with the return of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory. It's only going to come when the king of kings and Lord of Lords establishes true peace and true righteousness.

And on that day, when every act and every thought is revealed, we're going to understand exactly what was good and what was evil. The biblical worldview reminds us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Evil runs through the human heart, every single human heart. But the scripture also says there are those who give themselves to evil. And that's exactly what we see here. That's exactly what we see in some circles celebrated here. So we call for moral sanity, but we understand that comprehensive moral sanity is only going to come when all things are revealed.

And the glory of Christ comes in his reign. In this age, we have to say to Israel, fight this evil. you must. And yet we look at it and we recognize something deeper and larger than any army is what we confront here. And that's when we have to say, looking at this kind of event squarely in the face, even so, Lord, come quickly. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on Twitter or X by going to Twitter.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsbtsbts.org. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com.

I'm speaking to you from a live audience in Kingsburg, California, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.