Worth a Look (Friday Favorites)

A few links worth your time:

Two amazing talks given last week; the first from Elder Dallin H. Oaks at BYU-Idaho:

Witnesses of God transcript

The whole address is excellent, but his final point, about the need to defend religious liberty, stood out to me:
"We should be alert to oppose the potential significance of the fact that some government officials and public policy advocates are describing the First Amendment guarantee of the “free exercise” of religion as merely “freedom of worship.” But the guarantee of “free exercise” protects the right to come out of our private settings, including churches, synagogues and mosques, to act upon our beliefs, subject only to the legitimate government powers necessary to protect public health, safety and welfare. Free exercise surely protects religious citizens in acting upon their beliefs in public policy debates and in votes cast as citizens or as lawmakers.
We should also use our political influence to resist current moves to banish from legislative and judicial lawmaking all actions based on religious convictions and motivations. A dangerous recent example of this was the opinion of the single federal district judge who invalidated the California Proposition 8 constitutional amendment.[12] The precedent of his decision on the inappropriateness of presumed religious or moral motivations as a basis for lawmaking was used by the lawyers who persuaded another federal district judge to invalidate the Utah constitutional provision and laws affirming the traditional limitation on marriages to one man and one woman.[13] Then, when an eminent lawyer was hired to take the appeal, he was criticized by the Human Rights Campaign for having religious motivations for his decision to defend traditional marriage.[14] Where will this illogical attack on religious motivations end?

As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said in his powerful address to a nationwide audience of Christian leaders, we Mormons are “eager to join hands . . . to guarantee the freedom of religion that will allow all of us to speak out [and I would add to act out] on matters of Christian conscience regarding the social issues of our time.”[15] We should all agree with the Christian writer he quoted:
“All of our nation’s religious citizens need to develop a respect for other religious people and their beliefs. We need not accept their beliefs, but we can respect the people and realize that we have more in common with each other than we ever will with the secularizers of this country.”[16]

We need to support the coalitions of religious leaders and God-fearing people who are coming together to defend our nation’s traditional culture of belief in God and the acknowledgement of His blessings. As Clayton Christensen’s impressive essay reminds us, religion is essential to our nation’s democracy and prosperity.[17]
Also last Tuesday, Albert Mohler, a prominent Southern Baptist, gave an address at BYU, the second in six months.  Both are very worth the read.

"Strengthen the Things that Remain:  Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Human Flourishing in a Dangerous Age" (address from last week)
 

Of note is this passage:
Human dignity can survive only if we commonly believe and commonly affirm that every single human being, at every stage of development, is a person made in God’s image and bearing the dignity that is the mark of God’s personal possession. The only adequate conception of human dignity rests upon the biblical teaching that such dignity is not a human achievement, but a gift. Human beings do not achieve the status of dignity by their abilities or performance or development. Human dignity and the worth of the human individual is predicated only upon the fact that every human being is made in the image of God, and therefore is to be respected, protected, and cherished as a member of the human community.

We are now attempting to create a new vision of human dignity that is based in a secular vision of humanity. But what is that vision? If we are not made in God’s image, and if this is not the defining fact of our human existence, then who are we? The secular answer is not reassuring. We are, this vision holds, the highly developed primate that has invented the use of language and learned to cook food. If we are not created, then we are accidents. And if we are accidents, there is no essential dignity due us.

Back in 2005 the London Zoo featured an exhibit of humans. “Warning: Humans in Their Natural Environment” read the sign over an exhibit of scantily clad human beings, placed on display among the animals in the more familiar cages and enclosures. Polly Wills, a  spokesperson for the zoo, told the press: “Seeing people in a different environment, among other animals … teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate.”

Well, if we are “just another primate,” there is no essential dignity due us. Perhaps that helps to explain the twentieth century, with the horrors of the Holocaust and the specter of eugenics, the intention to enhance human breeding. The eugenic temptation, we should note, was not something far off across the sea, but something supported and endorsed by many American intellectuals.

Perhaps this reduced and secular vision of human dignity explains the killing fields of Cambodia, the forced starvation of millions in China’s Cultural Revolution, and the horrors of the Soviet gulags.

Perhaps it also explains the over 50 million American babies aborted in American wombs since the legalization of abortion on demand by Roe v. Wade in 1973. Perhaps it explains the virtual disappearance of babies now born with Down syndrome, aborted after genetic testing, and the demand for designer babies. Perhaps it explains the cult of abortion in this country and the refusal of so many in the elites to oppose even partial birth abortion. Perhaps it explains how one vocal advocate of abortion could recently declare that abortion is indeed a killing, but the killing of “a life worth sacrificing.”

Perhaps this new secular vision of human dignity explains the rise of sex-selection abortions in both the United States and Britain. Perhaps it explains the demand for euthanasia and the so-called “good death” that the government of Belgium in recent days has extended even to young children.
If we are not — if every one of us is not — made in God’s image and created for God’s glory, then why is a human infant of greater worth than a pig? Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has gone so far as to argue that the pig might well have more substantial claim to a right to live. He has also stated that infanticide, the killing of young children after their birth, might well be justified under some circumstances.

If every one of us is not made in God’s image, how are we to reject his argument? I fear that our culture is losing the ability to answer such arguments with a candid and urgent and convincing counter-argument. The new secular vision of human dignity holds only that we are more developed than other animals, but some humans are surely more developed than others. Participation in the medal events at the recent Winter Olympic Games was not open to all, nor is admission to the universities where this new secular vision of human dignity is promulgated and promoted.
The other address given by Albert Mohler was from last October and can be found here:


A Clear and Present Danger:  Religious Liberty, Marriage and the Family in the Late Modern Age

One part:
Similarly, Pitirim Sorokin, the founder of sociology at Harvard University, pointed to the regulation of sexuality as the essential first mark of civilization. According to Sorokin, civilization is possible only when marriage is normative and sexual conduct is censured outside of the marital relationship. Furthermore, Sorokin traced the rise and fall of civilizations and concluded that the weakening of marriage was a first sign of civilizational collapse.

We should note carefully that Sorokin made these arguments long before anything like homosexual marriage had been openly discussed, much less legislated. Sorokin’s insight was the realization that civilization requires men to take responsibility for their offspring. This was possible, he was convinced, only when marriage was held to be the unconditional expectation for sexual activity and procreation. Once individuals—especially males—are freed for sexual behavior outside of marriage, civilizational collapse becomes an inevitability. The weakening of marriage—even on heterosexual terms—has already brought a harvest of disaster to mothers and children abandoned in the name of sexual liberation.

We must note with honesty and candor that this moral revolution and the disestablishment of marriage did not begin with the demand of same-sex couples to marry. The subversion of marriage began within the context of the great intellectual shift of modernity. Marriage was redefined in terms of personal fulfillment rather than covenant obligation. Duty disappeared in the fog of demands for authenticity and the romanticized ideal of personal fulfillment. Marriage became merely a choice and then a personal expression. Companionate marriage was secularized and redefined solely in terms of erotic and romantic appeal—for so long as these might last.
* * *

This article details the amazing resilience and faith of a young mother victimized by adultery and murder:



Idaho Woman Learns to Stand again after Betrayal, Adultery, and Murder

After reading the article, I started to read Ashlee's blog.  Her story is sad, difficult, tragic, unthinkable, but her faith is strong and her words are touching.

* * *
This video is excellent and is one we'll be sharing and talking about at our next Family Home Evening:


Comments