Culture Friday - Courage on the field

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Friday, June 10th, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. It’s Culture Friday.

John Stonestreet is away this week and so we’ll bring in Andrew Walker.

He’s a professor of Christian ethics and apologetics at Southern Seminary and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. Hey there, Andrew, good morning!

ANDREW WALKER, GUEST: Nick and Myrna, good morning to you both.

BROWN: Andrew, I'm sure you're aware that June is so-called National Pride Month. In observance, the Tampa Bay Rays' logo got a rainbow makeover for Pride Night at one of their recent games.

Nearly every Tampa Bay player who took the field against the White Sox did so with that rainbow-colored sunburst logo patch on his right arm and on his cap.

But five Rays pitchers said no, peeled off the logo, and wore the team's standard uniform.

One of those courageous pitchers, Jason Adam put it this way, "We all want them to know they are welcome and loved here, but we don't want to encourage this lifestyle if we believe in Jesus, who's encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior, just like Jesus encourages me as a heterosexual male to abstain from sex outside of the confines of marriage."

Of course, his bold statement got fans stirred up, calling his remarks disappointing and marginalizing.

If the players had been students of yours, would you have been pleased with (a) their actions and (b) how they explained their actions?

WALKER: Yeah, Myrna, Thanks. That's a great question. And obviously, I mean, this issue of Pride Month, it's ubiquitous in the culture. And everywhere you go, there is some type of LGBT corporate presentation being thrown at you at every possible angle. And so we shouldn't be shocked and surprised that this is now made its way on the uniforms and Major League Baseball, as regrettable as that is. And I think what this particular instance demonstrates is that it's now actually revolutionary, to be a counter revolutionary. And that to be a dissenter in our age, is to be someone who actually goes against what was once considered radical, but is now quite routine. And so this is a sad testament to the age in which we live, where individuals are being pressured, and shamed into signing on to messages and ideologies and viewpoints that they don't agree with. And I think this is fundamentally a denial of, kind of the freedom of conscience and freedom of conviction. You know, we live in a country that has been premised on the idea of speak your convictions, speak those convictions proudly. And we're really showing with the fruit of these types of conversations, how that's increasingly more difficult, and you're going to face a consequence, for bucking an idea or a viewpoint that up until, you know, 20 and 30 years ago, was considered radical and kind of a revolutionary worldview. So I think we want to commend those baseball players for having the bravery and courage to stand firm on their faith.

Now at the same time, and this isn't really to criticize those baseball players. At the same time, I would want to say that this isn't just a faith issue. It's never less than a faith issue. It's also an issue of just kind of sound, moral reasoning and sound moral principles. Because when a Christian says what they believe about the nature of gender and sexuality, what we're saying is not just true for Christians, it's actually true, we think, for every living human person, because what Christians believe around matters of gender and sexuality are oriented to the common good to human flourishing. And so if we couch this only in a well, “my faith teaches me…” that can send the signal that what you believe is just really kind of this sectarian truth that you can believe over here in the corner and your corner of the sandbox, but don't bring that into this larger public square domain. And so I would simply say, as Christians, we need to have confidence that the answers that we have around conflicts, around gender and sexuality, again, they're never less than matters of faith, but we actually have, I think, more coherent, better answers to explain In what human nature is what were ordered to as far as the relationship between male and female, and the reality that male and female are static categories, we can't change from male into female, and vice versa. You know, I go back to the New Testament where we're told to be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within us. That applies to ethics as well. That's not just the hope of resurrection and the hope of sanctification. It's the fact that all of life is lived under the umbrella of Christ's lordship, including our ethics, which means we should be ready to give clear, compelling reasonable answers that what we believe around gender and sexuality are not just Christian truths. They're true truth that is binding on all people because all people are made in God's image.

EICHER: I want to change subjects to a very frightening story. What’s so upsetting here is the specter of political violence. I’m old enough to remember political assassinations … not of JFK, but of his brother Robert Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Jr. The attempt on President Reagan was in a different category, as was the attempt on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Then we had the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise that was politically motivated.

But with the arrest of a man for plotting to kill a sitting justice on the Supreme Court, Justice Bret Kavanaugh, I want to talk about the distinction between political speech, even aggressive speech, and unacceptable actions. It seems like whenever there’s a violent actor on the left, the right tends to lay things at the feet of their ideological opponents, and vice versa. Like Jan. 6th, all conservatives are responsible for Jan. 6th. But talk about the difference between speech and actions, ethically.

WALKER: Sure, I mean, let's just begin this conversation by stating like, how sad it is that we're seeing an escalation in political violence. And I think that that is a species of a broader trend that's impacting kind of just the overall discourse of our current day, everything is getting escalated. And when things get escalated, such as our rhetoric, it tends to spill over into political violence and political action. And I think the distinction we want to draw here is, you know, we have broad freedoms, to have very aggressive speech to use the phrase that you used. We should be willing to state our convictions, state them clearly and passionately, and then be willing to back those up. And one of the brilliant contours of the American experiment is the reality that the whole project of American democracy is premised on the idea that we settle our differences through constitutional mechanisms and procedures, not through defining ourselves down by our most basest instincts that bleeds over into violence.

And you're right, I don't think that this is necessarily an issue that we can pin on either the right or the left, I think a biblical anthropology that understands all of human nature has fallen, means we're all equally fallen. And any individual, if they're not having their worldview and their passions, properly constrained and taught and informed in the right direction, um, can be given over to these types of temptations, especially if they don't have a larger horizon in front of them. If you go to the individual in question, who was plotting the assassination of Brett Kavanaugh, the quotes that he's given, indicate a young man in despair. And so what I read in this is this is a man whose whole world has been dominated by politics. And that speaks to the reality that in all of us is this God shaped hole in this God shaped void. And unless we put God and Christ and and the permanent things in that place in our heart, something is going to fill that vacuum. And the big question is, what is going to fill that vacuum and what's going to happen when that thing that should be a second order or third order or fourth order thing that we love and care about is then turned into a first order love. And, again, that can spill over into political violence with you think that politics is the full horizon of your existence, then you're going to pursue whatever action it is consistent with those principles. And that's really, really dangerous territory to be living in.

EICHER: All right, Andrew Walker. He’s a professor of Christian ethics and apologetics at Southern Seminary and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. Thanks, Andrew!

WALKER: Thanks, Nick and Myrna.

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