Evangelical Al Mohler speaks to Mormons at Brigham Young University

A few weeks ago Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville spoke at Brigham Young University. 

 I deeply appreciate your invitation to speak at Brigham Young University and to address the faculty at this greatly respected center of learning. I am so glad to be on this campus, filled with so many gracious people, such admirable students, and so many committed scholars on the faculty.  To many people, shaped in their worldview by the modern age and its constant mandate to accommodate, it will seem very odd that a Baptist theologian and seminary president would be invited to speak at the central institution of intellectual life among the Latter-Day Saints.

But here I am, and I am thankful for the invitation. The wonderfully prophetic Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor rightly warned that we must “push back against the age as hard as it is pressing you.” I have come to Brigham Young University because I intend with you to push back against the modernist notion that only the accommodated can converse. There are those who sincerely believe that meaningful and respectful conversation can take place only among those who believe the least—that only those who believe the least and thus may disagree the least can engage one another in the kind of conversation that matters. I reject that notion, and I reject it forcefully. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, that is the kind of idea that must not be cast aside lightly, but thrown with full force.

Then he concludes with

The conflict of liberties we are now experiencing is unprecedented and ominous. Forced to choose between erotic liberty and religious liberty, many Americans would clearly sacrifice freedom of religion. How long will it be until many becomes most?

This is what brings me to Brigham Young University today. I am not here because I believe we are going to heaven together. I do not believe that. I believe that salvation comes only to those who believe and trust only in Christ and in his substitutionary atonement for salvation. I believe in justification by faith alone, in Christ alone. I love and respect you as friends, and as friends we would speak only what we believe to be true, especially on matters of eternal significance. We inhabit separate and irreconcilable theological worlds, made clear with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity. And yet here I am, and gladly so. We will speak to one another of what we most sincerely believe to be true, precisely because we love and respect one another.

I do not believe that we are going to heaven together, but I do believe we may go to jail together. I do not mean to exaggerate, but we are living in the shadow of a great moral revolution that we commonly believe will have grave and devastating human consequences. Your faith has held high the importance of marriage and family. Your theology requires such an affirmation, and it is lovingly lived out by millions of Mormon families. That is why I and my evangelical brothers and sisters are so glad to have Mormon neighbors. We stand together for the natural family, for natural marriage, for the integrity of sexuality within marriage alone, and for the hope of human flourishing.

Driving America secular - our universities and colleges.

Albert Mohler notes in a post a few weeks ago that the universities and colleges of our nation are driving us secular.  How so?  They educate the leaders of tomorrow and since the 1960s they've been moving to the left.  What happens in the university doesn't stay in the university as he mentions regarding Yale.

Several years ago, sociologist Peter Berger argued that secularization has been most pervasive in two social locations — Western Europe and the American college and university campus. The campuses of elite educational institutions are among the most thoroughly secularized places on our planet. This should concern anyone with an interest in higher education, of course. But it really matters to every American — or at least it should.

A wonderful and concise explanation of why this is so was provided in the pages of The Weekly Standard this week by David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University. In the course of making a proposal for the “reclamation” of higher education, Professor Gelernter wrote this very important paragraph:
 
Since the cultural revolution culminating in the 1970s, the left has run nearly all of the nation’s most influential, prestigious universities. Their alumni, in turn, run American culture — the broadcast networks, newspapers, the legal and many other professions, Hollywood, book publishing, and, most important, the massive, insensate, crush-everything-in-your-path mega-glacier known as the U.S. federal bureaucracy — and even more important than that, the education establishment charged with indoctrinating our children from kindergarten up.

That’s why it matters to you. And that’s how the future direction of the culture is set by the current culture of the elite colleges and universities. Many parents are unaware of how this happens. Their children may or may not attend one of the most prestigious colleges in the nation. But in almost any other institution they will study under professors who want to be associated with (or eventually hired by) one of those elite institutions. Exceptions to this pattern are rare, and the influence of these elite schools extends throughout the culture at large.

David Gelernter is in a position to know. After all, he is a professor at Yale. As he makes clear, what happens at Yale doesn’t stay at Yale.

Is there a Christian position on gambling?

Some wonder if gambling is a sin. There's not a command in the Bible saying, thou shalt not gamble, but some point to its violation of principles found in the Bible. Here's the take of Albert Mohler, prominent evangelical and scholar.

First, it's a huge and growing industry.

The nationwide explosion of legal gambling may well be the most underrated dimension of America's moral crisis. With the expansion of state lotteries, casino gambling, and new technologies, the gambling industry is poised to grow even further in the next decade.

According to some estimates, as much as one-third of the nation's money supply now moves through the gambling industry each year. Looking at a recent annual economic report, management consultant Eugene M. Christiansen determined that "Americans spent more on gambling than they did on health insurance, dentists, shoes, foreign travel, or household appliances."

He believes it's a clear violation of the biblical worldview. He sees it rooted in greed.

The Bible is clear on this issue. The entire enterprise of gambling is opposed to the moral worldview revealed in God's Word. The basic impulse behind gambling is greed-a basic sin that is the father of many other evils. Greed, covetousness, and avarice are repeatedly addressed by Scripture-always presented as a sin against God, and often accompanied by a graphic warning of the destruction which is greed's result. The burning desire for earthly riches leads to frustration and spiritual death.

As the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, "the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil." [1 Timothy 6:10] Greed was involved in Judas' decision to betray Christ, in the deceit of Ananias and Sapphira, and was the root moral issue in the Rich Young Ruler's refusal to follow Christ's command.

In the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, greed is presented as foolishness, and Jesus amplifies this teaching in His parable of the rich man [Luke 12:16-21]. Trusting in his economic prosperity, and planning to build even bigger barns to hoard his wealth, the man is called to account by God, who said to him, "You fool! This very night your soul is required of you." This is not likely to be found as a popular inspirational text at the local casino.

It violates the principle of stewardship of one's possessions.

The Bible presents the stewardship of material possessions as a crucial issue of discipleship. The Christian understands that his possessions and money are not his own, but God's. We are trustees who will be judged for the quality of our stewardship. Those lottery tickets and trips to Atlantic City are going to be hard to explain when God calls stewards to account.

It undermines the work ethic.

Furthermore, gambling is a direct attack on the work ethic presented in Scripture. One of the constant threads through the Old and New Testaments is the dignity of honorable work, and the proper reward for labor and industriousness. The worker worthy of hire is rewarded. Lazy, slothful, and unproductive persons are undeserving of financial rewards, and were a scandal to the early Church. Gambling severs the dignity of work from the hope of financial gain, offering the hope of riches without labor, and reward without dignity.

It takes advantage of the poor; those Christians are called to defend.

Finally, one of the most significant sins of the gambling industry is its treatment of the poor. Rather than offering genuine hope and a way out of poverty, gambling operators prey on those who are most desperate. The Old Testament prophets proclaimed God's devastating judgment against those who "devour" the poor, and yet gambling proponents entice those at the bottom of the economic ladder to risk everything, though they end up with nothing. The concentration of lottery ticket outlets in lower-income neighborhoods is no accident.

Christians haven't thought much about it.

Why are Christians so silent on this issue? Though some denominations have adopted strongly worded resolutions opposed to gambling, the issue is virtually off the moral map of most churches. There is little evidence of any sustained theological consideration of the issue. A review of major textbooks on Christian ethics used in evangelical seminaries reveals not a single chapter on gambling. The issue does not even make the tables of contents!

It's now a growing problem.

In all likelihood, most Christians have no conception of the problem's scope. Once confined to Nevada (and later, New Jersey), casinos now operate in states ranging from heartland Missouri to deep-south Louisiana. In many states slot machines and electronic games are found in gas stations and grocery stores, and lottery tickets are sold in a myriad of outlets. The tentacles of the gambling industry reach deeply into the nation's economy-and the national psyche.

Government is now promoting it.

The most insidious dimension of the problem is the role of government in legitimizing and promoting the gambling enterprise. Though outlawed until 1964, state lotteries now represent the most popular form of legal gambling. Turning vice into an economic virtue, these states take advantage of their most gullible citizens, while touting benefits the gambling revenues supposedly make possible.

Gambling is a vice which corrupts whatever it touches - the culture, etc.

Gambling corrupts the culture, polluting everything it touches. Recent scandals in college basketball are proof positive that gambling is not a problem limited to casinos and horse tracks. Ominously, industry executives see great promise in the development of on-line gambling over the Internet, bringing gambling to every computer terminal and overcoming state regulation.