The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:14 - 15:06)A ‘Regression’ on Gender? The Recoil to the Transgender Movement is Grounded in Creation Order, Not Merely a Speed Bump in Progressive HistoryThe Transgender Tipping Point by Time (Katy Steinmetz)Our Regression on Gender Is a Tragedy, Not Just a Political Problem by The New York Times (David Wallace-Wells)Part II (16:02 - 15:24)The Triumph of the Therapeutic and the Death of Family Ties: Therapy Culture is Causing Kids to Cut Their Relationships with Their ParentsThere’s a Link Between Therapy Culture and Childlessness by The New York Times (Michal Leibowitz)Part III (16:02 - 23:04)The Therapeutic Culture and the Tragedy of Childlessness: The Tie Between Therapy Culture and Falling Birth RatesPart IV (23:04 - 26:11)The Glory of God in the Birth of a Dolphin Calf: One Dolphin Mother Helps Another With Her BirthVideo shows dolphin calf birth and first breath at Chicago zoo. Mom’s friend helped by The Associated PressSign 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 Tuesday, June 10, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. The Christian and the secular understanding of history come into a clash regularly. And as we're thinking about unfolding developments, we need to just see that on the left, the secular left, the predominant understanding of history is that it is a straight line from oppression to liberation. unfolding liberation, continuous liberation. So you have the liberation from this form of oppression, then the liberation from that form of oppression. So gender theory, the women's liberation movement, particularly second wave feminism, the sexual revolution, the LGBTQ revolution. And remember, again, at the end of LGBTQ, somewhere there is a plus sign, it's an acknowledgement of this unfolding liberation, an unfolding dynamic of personal autonomy. and thus anything that obstructs that is considered to be regressivism.

It's a backlash, and that's exactly the kind of term that has shown up even in the headlines of newspapers and in the titles of books. Backlash. Conservative backlash. Now, from the Christian perspective, we understand that morality, as all truth, exists as objective reality. It is established by God. It is revealed in nature. So when we look at categories such as, just for example, human beings and others, we understand that it's a static, ontological reality that human beings are made in the image of God. We look at human beings as male and female, and we would say that liberation from that

is impossible. It's a part of creation order. And so it's not liberation from creation order that results. It's rebellion against creation order, and as Christians understand, that can never go well. from time to time we've remarked upon the fact that the issue of gender and in particular transgender those patterns they have been an obstacle to this continuous progress that the left just sees as inevitable as a matter of fact the weird thing from a very liberal or progressivist direction when you look at the perspective of the left the weird thing is that this is a problem because

they thought of course it was a problem but then again they thought they were seeing the fact that society was moving past it. We were over that. So, for instance, you had a cover story in Time magazine in 2014 in which it was declared that the society had reached a transgender turning point. So that's 2014, 11 years ago. But arguably, right now, our society is more conservative on these issues than was true in 2014. Partly, I would argue, because a lot of Americans hadn't even figured out these issues in 2014. They pretty much much had to figure them out in the intervening decade and more. Now, from a Christian perspective, the amazing thing is the arrogance in declaring there was a

transgender tipping point. In other words, progress is now inevitable. And that plus sign is going to bring newer and newer forms of personal autonomy, sexual liberation, and all the rest. That leads me to a very interesting essay that was published just yesterday in the New York Times by David Wallace Wells. The headline in the essay is, Our Regression on gender is a tragedy. So there you notice. That means that there have been progress. Now there is regress. There's retreat, a loss of the progress that had been achieved. Wallace Wells says that in 2016, it was largely economic issues, and perhaps he insinuates even racial issues that factored into the presidential election. But in 2024, he says, we now know it was gender issues that

played the decisive role. He says this, quote, in 2025, MAGA seemed much more distinctively molded by gender politics. Gender backlash is here, and before we think through the implications for partisan politics, we need to recognize it is a phenomenon that goes beyond them, end quote. So interesting here, you have someone from the left, and let's just say from a very respectable center-left position when it comes to the elite media. This is an article in the New York Times, and thus it's an effort to try to assist the readers of the New York Times to understand where this backlash came from and why there has been retreat, or actually the word regression is even in the headline here. This writer also, to his credit, understands that this is bigger than politics.

Indeed, he says this was crucial to the Trump strategy in 2024, but if you think it's just about politics, he argues that you're missing the big point. It's a far deeper issue in the society than that. Here's what he writes, quote, it's not just in policy or party leadership where you see the shift. In 2022, fewer than 30% of Republican men believe the proposition that women should return to their traditional roles in society. According to the views of the electorate research survey, assessed by a group of political scientists writing for The Times. Again, that means the New York Times. Quote, two years later, that number was 48%. Republican women underwent a similar surge from 23% in 2022 to 37% in 2024. And over the past few years, Democrats too have been trending in the

wrong direction, though those shifts have been smaller, end quote. So here you have a writer clearly, very much for the sexual revolution, for the LGBTQ revolution, for the gender revolution, even for the transgender movement. But he's warning, you know, society is moving in the wrong direction. There has been this backlash. But then to his credit, he goes on to say, this is bigger than politics. Politics was a part of this, or it was a part of politics in 2024. But you look at the Republican side, both men and women, register more conservative now than just four years ago. And then he goes on to say, and this is really crucial, even the Democrats are more conservative on this issue than they were just four years ago. Still more liberal than the Republicans,

certainly on these issues. But what you have here is the acknowledgement that, you know, if you are all for the gender revolution and LGBTQ and all the rest, the regress, or the regression here, is bigger than you might think. That's central to this author's argument. He goes on to say, quote, if one trusts the polling, the trends are perhaps more distressing among those still too young to have even dipped their toes into the workforce. According to the data analyst David Waldron's assessment of the world-class monitoring the future survey run by the University of Michigan in 2018, 84% of 8th and 10th grade boys said they agreed either completely or mostly that women should have the same job opportunities as men. Five years later, the number had fallen to 72%. End quote.

Now, he gives similar statistics, most of them, again, related to high school and college age young men. But his point is this, and it's really a wake-up call for those on the left, guess what? Maybe even when you look at the numbers, worse is coming. It turns out that the coming young people who, as he said, really didn't factor into the political analysis until all the sudden right now, what if it turns out they're not more liberal, but in fact more conservative than the voters today? What if the backlash is a lot bigger than even the left had calculated? He also mentions 2014 when Time declared the transgender tipping point.

He then says this, quote, it was, believe it or not, a full year ahead of the Supreme Court's affirmation of gay marriage, a decision that, when it arrived in June 2015, also seemed to endorse an entire theory of social history. With the pattern of libertarian drifts so natural seeming, you might have confused it for progressive cultural autopilot, end quote. Now, I see articles like this from time to time. I haven't seen this kind of insight and this kind of candor put together in a very long time. Here you have someone on the left, writing to others on the left, suggesting that the moral challenge they face, the cultural challenge they now face, is far larger than they could have imagined.

But the bigger issue here is the acknowledgement of this theory of history. To put it in the author's words, he said they had seen a pattern, quote, of libertarian drift so natural seeming you might have confused it for progressive cultural autopilot, end quote. That's an admission that they saw just about everything going their way. They thought momentum was on their side, and almost like the Higalian dialectic, they thought that it was so powerful, no force could withstand it. They, again, in his words, saw it as something like a progressive cultural autopilot. He then says this, not only interesting, downright fascinating. Quote, we are not living anymore in that world.

When you could look back on the previous decades and probably see below the ups and downs of partisan conflict, the broad strokes of a basic cultural consensus. one that pushed towards a stronger embrace of markets and consumption in the realm of economics and toward more personal autonomy and freedom of choice in the social sphere. He then says, like the just-so story of free markets, the just-so story of reliably expanding civil rights and opportunity looked at the time, if simplistic, also not inaccurate. End quote. Once again, he just underlines and puts into his own words that progressivist understanding of history. Things are going our way. They inevitably must go our way towards unfolding personal

autonomy. And of course, that means that plus sign at the end of LGBTQ. There's another enormous acknowledgement here. When the Obergefell decision was handed down in 2015, a good many of us criticized not only the outcome, but the shape of the argument in the court's majority opinion. In that majority opinion, they made the argument, almost like you have from the progressivist left, that there's this unfolding personal liberty upon which persons have now premised their lives. As David Wallace Wells puts it, he talks about this pattern of libertarian drift that was so natural seeming. And beyond what he says, the cultural conflicts ups and downs, you had an inevitable directive here, quote, toward more personal autonomy and freedom of choice in the social sphere.

He then makes this admission, really crucial, and I quote, faith that social progress would be inevitable was always at least a bit naive, even if it also served as a basic food stuff of complacent liberalism. He says, but for about a generation here as elsewhere, else across the wealthy world, culture seemed to be trending in that direction. You could take issue with the pace of change, but when people talked about the right and wrong side of history on these matters, it was clear what future was expected. He then asked, and now? I would refer to this as very wise, very insightful, and remarkably candid. Someone from the left saying, you know, it was perhaps a bit naive that we thought progress would unfold inevitably in the direction of greater personal autonomy,

and of course that means lessened constraints upon morality, gender, and all the rest. He acknowledges if it was naive, it was also widespread, and it was so much assumed by those on the left, that they are still absolutely confused, befuddled, and thrown into consternation by the fact that they're ever unfolding utopia of personal autonomy hasn't happened. Certainly not as they expected. Certainly not on an inevitable timetable timetable. Now let me step back and say, as a cultural conservative, and more urgently as a Christian, I'm not certain that that path of inevitable unfolding personal autonomy is something that has genuinely been corrected. I think we should be very, very thankful that at least some major speed bump, we might say,

on the super highway to what they would see is absolute libertarian autonomy, that the transgender obstacle has now become something real. That is to say, an increasing number of Americans just don't believe that a boy can be a girl. They also don't believe that a boy should play on a girl's team. And they don't believe that you can actually change your gender. And so you have that inevitable progress, the left thought, now blocked by a spectacular problem. But for Christian conservatives, we also have to understand societies have a way of getting over

these kinds of problems without any genuine return to something like a Christian worldview. And so I want to point to Christians the fact that even though there is encouragement and the fact that this leftward direction has been at least checked somewhat, and you'll notice, I won't say that this author reflects panic, but a certain sobriety and a sense of loss as the liberal progress hasn't happened as expected. But I want to suggest that the biblical worldview makes very clear that it is not just that conservative Christians are to hold to an ideal, say, of male and female in creation order. We believe in the reality of creation order. Thus as Christians, we have to be somewhat dubious about any recovery that just comes with,

say the recovery of the categories of male and female. That's not tied to something even deeper, which is to say creation order, which means the design and glory of the creator, you have to wonder if this is not just a temporary speed bump, as we say, on the way to inevitable liberal progress. As this article comes to an end, it is also really interesting to see what the left fears. What do they see as the big obstacle in terms of the accomplishment of their aims? And, you know, at least one obstacle is named here, and that is 8th to 10th grade boys. And the writer is simply saying to those on the left, you know, you are looking at future voters, and you're looking at the fact that when you have young men who reach certain convictions at that age, they tend to hold

on to those convictions. Now, as Christians, we're going to look at that and say, it's simply because in this case, the subject is really about 8th and 10th grade boys, you can look at that and say, well, you know, at that point, they've pretty much figured out reality. At least we can hope they have. And this kind of study indicates, well, to some degree, apparently, they have figured out reality. And that's making them rather resistant to any argument based in unreality. But as the writer of this article, David Wallace-Wells notes, you do have a problem if you look at young people and recognize they are going to be the voters, they're going to be the decision-makers, they're going to be the consumers and the citizens of the future.

That doesn't mean that conservatives can be in any sense complacent. It does mean that we should at least understand and credit this to the glory of God. The fact that creation order cannot long be denied, eventually creation order is going to show through. The question for all of us, of course, is after how much confusion and how much disaster. Okay, now I want to turn to a very different issue, but on a similar thing, theme, just of noticing a development in our culture that ought to have our attention. In this case, this is an article by Michael Leibovitz, and she is writing an article entitled, There's a Link Between

Therapy Culture and Childlessness. Now, the problem of childlessness and the falloff in the birth rate is something that we have to return to time and time again. As a matter of fact, the mainstream media has finally caught on to the fact this is a very, very big story. Yesterday on the briefing, we discussed the decision made by the regime in Vietnam to drop the two-child-only policy because their birth rate is falling below sustainable levels. We also noted the fact that when governments make this kind of policy and try to encourage births, there is very little evidence that government can encourage births. We know that governments can discourage births. It's not clear that governments can, in any way that has traction, encourage births. But the link between therapy culture and childlessness, well, here you're talking about the

intersection of two things very important from a Christian worldview perspective. Because when you talk about childlessness, and this means deliberate childlessness, the decision not to have children, you're talking about something that is a direct rejection of creation order. The first order given to humanity is be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. But when you add therapy to it, well, here you see that the modern worldview inevitably results in a therapeutic mindset. Because the modern worldview says it's not about you, it's about what has happened. to you. The therapeutic culture is simply a way of getting out of just about all moral responsibility. And when it comes to the intersection between childlessness and therapy culture, Michael Leibovitz

has really helped us in making this point. She writes about the drop off in the fertility rate and an increased number of young adults deciding that they're just not going to have children. And she suggests that, quote, millennials will have the highest rate of childlessness of any generational cohort in American history. She goes on to say, there are plenty of. of plausible explanations for the trend. She says people aren't having kids because it's too expensive. They're not having kids because they can't find the right partner. They're not having kids because they want to prioritize their careers because of climate change, because the idea of bringing a child into this broken planet is too depressing. They're swearing off parenthood because

of the overturning of Roe v. Wade or because they're perennially commitment-phobic or because popular cultures made motherhood seems so daunting. It's burden so deeply unpleasant that you have to have a touch of masochism to even consider it. Maybe women, she says, in particular, are having fewer children simply because they can, end quote. There's a lot of admission there, and she's really conceded a lot of ground there. But you know, you can tell by the way she's framing her argument that she's about to say, I think there's more to the story. And that's exactly what she does. And she says, I think there's another major factor here, and that is the therapy culture. Now, we talked about that a lot. The triumph of the therapeutic, Philip Reef wrote about that years ago.

It's this idea that the therapeutic is so infused the culture that we've lost a sense of talking in terms of reality and of, say, objective morality. Now, everything's about therapy. And therapy inevitably revolves around the sovereign self. That's a huge problem. She writes about the millennials in particular, and she says, quote, adult children seem increasingly likely to publicly, even righteously cut off contact with a parent, sometimes citing emotional, physical, or sexual abuse they have experienced in childhood, and sometimes things like clashing values, parental toxicity, or feeling misunderstood or unsupported.

She says, quote, the cultural shift has contributed to a new nearly impossible standard for parenting. Not only must parents provide shelter, food, safety, and love, but we, their children, also expect them to get us started on successful careers and even to hold themselves accountable for our mental health and happiness well into our adult years. She says that several things have now been produced by the therapeutic culture. One is the idea that, well, she says, number one, parents mess you up. Now, the big point she makes here is that there are abusive parents, there are neglectful parents, but she says, the amazing thing is how many millennial adults look back at their

parents and blame them for just about everything, including insufficient affirmation or even a clash of moral judgments. She writes about being a 14-year-old girl taken to therapy, and she speaks of her therapist saying, quote, she was sympathetic to me. In our first session together, she suggested that my feelings, my pain, my not eating were reasonable and rational reactions to my family's religious beliefs and high expectations. She told this young woman, quote, that sounds very controlling. And this is when she talked about conflict with her father over things including what she wore. Joshua Coleman, a psychologist and expert on what's described here as familial estrangement, said,

quote, if you have problems, you assume that it has to do with your parents. And he says, and sure, it sometimes does, but it's also random good luck, random bad luck, genetics, cohort siblings, and other important relationships, end quote. In other words, he says, yeah, parents may be a part of the mix, but these days, in therapy, you just get by with blaming the parents for everything. Ashley Frawley, who's also looking at this as a sociologist, says that parents continue to be blamed for their children's hardships long into adulthood. She says, quote, a voluminous academic literature has mined the minutia of childhood experience to find the sources of personal and social problems and everything from how parents feed their children,

bottle or breast, spoon, or baby lead weaning, to how many words they say before an ever-lowering crucial age. Eva Iluz, identified as the author of the book Saving the Modern Soul, she says that the entire therapeutic narrative is the problem. Quote, what is a dysfunctional family? A family where one's needs are not met. And how does one know that one's needs were not met in childhood? Simply by looking at one's present situation. As is explained here, quote, it is as if every current difficulty, rather than being addressed in its own terms, is seen as an X on a treasure map, a clue to dig for childhood trauma that has long been buried, end quote. She describes the second problem as the relentlessness of

modern parenting. Here's how she describes it, quote, working mothers in the year 2000, spend as much time focused on child care as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s. Since the last decades of the 20th century, upper middle class mothers in particular have embraced an intensive style of child rearing, devouring parenting books and advice, loading children down with toys to stimulate their development, choosing only organic foods and enriching extracurriculars, and today P-FAS-free diaper subscriptions. End quote. Not that that's neurotic. The author then reaches this point, quote,

and yet we adult children seem increasingly likely to find fault with our parents and perhaps to manifest this fault finding by cutting them out of our lives. End quote. It turns out that when you have a generational separation, this article makes clear it is overwhelmingly a separation that is demanded by the child rather than the parent. And evidently in some elite parts of our society, this is reaching something of pandemic levels. And I'll just say as a Christian, that's just absolutely tragic. But then the author goes on to say that the end result of this is the simple assessment,

quote, don't have any kids yourself, end quote. So again, she's trying to make the connection between therapy culture and the problem of childlessness. And I think she does a marvelous job, frankly. I think she makes the point conclusively. And you're going to find this problem most emphatically where you're going to find the therapeutic culture thickest on the ground that, too, is not evenly distributed throughout the culture, although through the media and through, well, you could just say the entire medical community and so many other aspects, it does get downloaded to just about everyone, and honestly it just becomes a part of the atmosphere we all breathe. Okay, we need something happy here at the end of today's edition. How's this for a good headline?

Dolphin gets helping Finn from Friend for Calf's Birth. The Associated Press is behind the story reporting, quote, a bottlenose dolphin at a Chicago area zoo gave birth to a calf early Saturday morning with the help of a fellow mom in a successful birth recorded on video by zoo staff. The baby calf, the dolphin calf, was born at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago early Saturday morning as a team of veterinarians monitored and cheered on the mom, a 38-year-old bottle-nosed dolphin named Allie. Push, push, push, one observer can be heard, shouting in a video. It was released by the zoo on Saturday. Allie, the mom, swims around the the calf's little tail fins poking out below her own.

Quote, then the calf wiggles free and instinctively darts to the surface of the pool for its first breath. Also in the tank, we are told, was an experienced mother dolphin named Tepeko, 43 years old, quote, who stayed close to Alley

through her more than one hour of labor. In the video, she can be seen following the calf as it heads to the surface and staying with it as it takes that first breath. The next statement, it is natural for dolphins to look out for each other during a bird. end quote. Okay, that is a happy story. It's just sweet to think in nature of these two dolphin moms,

well, of the one assisting the other, she gives birth to a healthy calf, who by the way was remarkably large. But it's also a sign to the fact that there's a knowledge in those dolphins, and this is something that glorifies God. It also points to something else. The dolphins didn't develop this knowledge. This was something that was given to them. This is a reminder of the fact that even the creatures, like dolphins, highly intelligent among the non-human animals, it's important to recognize that God has given them certain knowledge in a certain proportion and his glorious scene in this. And so as we're thinking about a civilization, there's a tiny little dolphin civilization, even in a tank in a zoo, where this one experienced mom helps another mom as that mom is

giving birth and then follows the little dolphin to the surface to make certain that all is well. It's just a sweet story. And of course, they're going to be naturalists to look at this from a materialistic worldview and say, well, that's an amazing thing that somehow dolphins developed that knowledge. I think as Christians, we want to say, well, there has to be more to it than that. It has to point back to a creator. And we should see the glory of that creator in one dolphin mom, helping another dolphin mom, in the wonder of birth.

Thanks for listening to The Brief. For more information, go to my website at albertmohr.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to Twitter.com. forward slash Albert Moeller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsk.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'm speaking to you from Dallas, Texas, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.