Culture
Michael Vick, Redemption & a Fox News Gaffe
Let’s start the New Year by being fair and balanced.
Most of you know that I enjoy Fox News for its overall Judeo-Christian outlook on life and current events. Fox is a breath of fresh air in the media world where left wing ideologies and a secular view of reality usually prevail. In past columns, I have shown this is one reason that Fox has become the leading cable news station in America.
Nearly fifty percent of Americans watch Fox News.
Recently, however, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, made a huge gaffe on the Hannity Show. Let’s examine his blunder, and use the occasion to talk about about football star Michael Vick, redemption, and the truth as it applies to people and animals.
Tucker Carlson, a staunch conservative, is confused. Maybe some others are too.
Here’s what happened.
On Tuesday night, December 28, Tucker Carlson, a correspondent for the Fox News Channel, was substituting for Sean Hannity on the Hannity Show. While moderating a panel discussion, Carlson used the occasion to criticize President Obama who had recently commented on the outstanding play of NFL quarterback Michael Vick.
Here’s what Carlson said: “Now I’m a Christian, I make mistakes myself and I believe fervently in second chances. But Michael Vick killed dogs and he did it in a heartless and cruel way and I think personally he should have been executed for that. He wasn’t, but the idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs?”
“Michael Vick should have been executed.” “Murdered dogs.”
What? Talk about a jumbled worldview.
But before we get to that, here’s a little background.
Vick was a football superstar who was sentenced to 23 months in prison in 2007 for running a cruel and inhumane dogfighting ring and lying about it. He lost his fortune, spent nearly two years in federal prison, and came out saying that he was sorry for his errors, had given his life to Christ, repented of his sins, and wanted to live a changed life.
Since that time, Vick has lived what appears to be a repentant life–even speaking to over sixty animal rights groups around the nation and profusely apologizing for his past behavior.
Besides that, Tony Dungy, a committed Christian and former head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, began discipling Vick upon his release from prison, encouraging him in his faith. Vick then was picked up by the Philadelphia Eagles and given a second chance by Roger Goodell the commissioner of the National Football League.
This year Vick had a monster season–leading the Eagles into the playoffs and earning Pro Bowl honors. President Obama commented on his success because it is an amazing story of failure, heart-break, repentance and redemption.
And Tucker Carlson said he should have been executed!
I’d call that the gaffe of the year.
To his credit, a week later he came back on the Hannity Show and back-tracked a little. Here’s what he said in a second go-round: “This is what happens when you get too emotional, and I did. I’m a dog lover … I love them and I know a lot about what Michael Vick did. … I overspoke. I’m uncomfortable with the death penalty under any circumstance. Of course I don’t think he should be executed, but I do think that what he did is truly appalling.”
“I overspoke.”
That may be true–but it goes much deeper than that. I listened carefully to the second interview with Carlson. I was looking for a number of “rays of truth” that should have come our of his heart when given a second chance himself.
They did not come, and I was greatly disappointed.
Tucker Carlson, a professing Christian and visible news commentator, appears confused about some very basic and important concepts. And I have a feeling that he isn’t the only one. Let’s clarify those ideas and strengthen them in our own hearts and minds.
First, human beings are not animals. This is the lie of evolution that Mr. Carlson has at least tacitly bought into. It’s okay to love pets and enjoy them immensely. But they are not human beings and shouldn’t be treated as such. Pets do not have souls, are not morally accountable to God, and do not go to heaven or hell. That’s why killing an animal is vastly different than taking the life of a human being. Sane, biblically-based societies have always understood that difference.
In past time periods this truth was learned on the family farm. People took care of their animals for the meat, milk, eggs, or work they could provide, but when they died (or were killed for food) there were no funeral services and gravestones.
Animals are animals–a lower level of creation. It is wrong to abuse them. But it is equally wrong to elevate them to human status. Tucker Carlson has lost track of that reality.
I have a “farm boy” friend who once demonstrated this truth to me. We had two older dogs that we needed to get rid of because we were moving from the area. My friend offered to take them and simply shoot them. He had done it many times before. He told me it was quick, humane, and besides, “they were just animals.” It was just like a vet putting down a horse or dog.
He was right.
Animal lovers–don’t cast any stones! This is the truth: Only a secular society elevates animals above their God-given place in creation. On this particular point, Tucker Carlson needs to re-think.
Secondly, because animals are a lower, non-immortal order of the created world, you cannot murder them. Murder is the taking of innocent human life.
In my daily Bible reading this morning, I was reading in Genesis 9 where the Bible spells out both the difference between the human and animal worlds and the basis for capital punishment in the case of human murder. Following the global flood, God spoke these amazing words to Noah and his family:
“Multiply and fill the earth. All the wild animals large and small and all the birds and fish will be afraid of you. I have placed them in your power. I have given them to you for food, just as I have given you grain and vegetables. But you must never eat animals that still have their lifeblood in them. And murder is forbidden. Animals that kill people must die, and any person who murders must be killed. Yes, you must execute anyone who murders another person, for to kill a person is to kill a living being made in God’s image” (Genesis 9:1-6).
First notice that following the Flood, God allowed people in a fallen world to eat both animals and plants. Prior to the deluge it appears that human beings were vegans. But not after the Flood. Now human beings could eat cows, pigs, chickens, fish, and other animals.
This required killing them–not murdering them.
According to God, you can’t murder an animal. We must not mix up important concepts and words.
And God clearly tells us why. Only human beings are made “in the image of God”–which includes moral accountability and immortality of the human spirit.
The words of God also contain another important truth that Tucker Carlson needs to re-consider: capital punishment. Notice that in Genesis and many other places, the Author of justice and compassion says that murdering a human being is so bad, so unjust, that it deserves the penalty of taking the life of the aggressor.
It’s the right and humane thing to do. In fact, in Exodus 20 when God gives the Ten Commandments to Israel, twenty verses after God says “You shall not kill,” he inaugurated capital punishment for the sin of murder in the Hebrew nation (Exodus 20:13 and 21:12).
Man is a special creation. He is made in God’s form and likeness. His spirit and soul are eternal. If a human being destroys that life, he deserves to have his own life taken.
Tucker–re-think being “uncomfortable” with capital punishment.
Third and finally, the Michael Vick story is a wonderful, true-life tale of redemption. Michael Vick grossly messed up, was convicted by a human court for his cruelty to animals, and served two years in prison for his crime. It cost him millions of dollars, his career, his reputation, and two years of his life.
While in prison, he came to his senses, asked God and others to forgive him, and when he was released did everything possible to show his repentance. Looking at the evidence of a humbled and changed life, the National Football League re-instated him and gave him a second chance. So did millions of American football fans.
Michael Vick took advantage of that second chance and once again rose to greatness–this time a wiser, contrite man, aware of his failings and sins. We should forgivehim. We all need forgiveness and second chances in life. It’s true that forgiveness and trust are two different things. We are called to instantly forgive because God forgives us without reservation. Trust, however, takes time–where a person needs to prove whether they have really changed.
Right now Michael Vick deserves our forgiveness and is earning back our trust. President Obama was right to praise him. Tucker Carlson was wrong to say what he said.
And all of us need to anchor ourselves to God’s righteous and unchanging principles. Human beings are special; animals are animals; capital punishment is for human beings who commit murder; redemption is marvelous!
Let’s learn from the Fox gaffe. We all need a second chance.
Lying to a Generation: What I Learned at the Fair
Shirley and I recently enjoyed a day at the eighth largest fair in the world–The Puyallup Fair. Located in Puyallup, Washington, thirty miles south of Seattle, the “Western Washington Fair” sports a delightful twenty acres filled with carnival rides, animal shows and displays, a rodeo, stadium concerts, and numerous buildings filled with art, hobbies, flowers, and every consumer good imaginable (all at unbeatable fair prices!)
We “ate our way” through the Fair enjoying corn-on-the-cob, elephant ears, smoothies, ice cream swirls, and famous country scones. It was a memorable day filled with delicious sights and sounds and many reminders of our illustrious western history and way of life.
But I also learned something else at the Fair. I was reminded of two spectacular lies that were told to the Baby Boom Generation in the 60s and 70s that haunt us to this day:
- The lie of creation without a Creator (evolution), and
- the lie of love without God (lust).
We, as a generation, are still reeling from the impact of those untruths.
First, the lie of evolution.
This subject was on my mind because of some reading I’ve done recently on a new evolutionary book. Written by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, Grand Design is the latest atheistic attempt to explain the origins of the world through the lens of godless evolution. In the book, Hawking and Mlodinow brazenly state:
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
Really? The universe just creates itself? Like gravity?
Uh huh.
Grand Nonsense would be a more fitting title.
Back to Puyallup. How can you attend a fair of this type and not be struck by the wonder of God’s design on earth? As we walked around the hundreds of displays at the Puyallup Fair, we were amazed by both the incredible beauty of God’s creation as seen in the animal and plant worlds, and also in the unique creativity of human beings.
Watching the draft horses do their amazing stunts, seeing the hundreds of different species of foul and poultry–and gazing upon one of our favorites–a mother pig feeding her eleven little piglets–all these sights scream at the top of their lungs that a marvelous Designer made these things after their own kind. There is no other plausible explanation.
Macro-evolution says that time plus matter plus chance equals life as we know it. After seeing the glorious varieties of plants and animals at the Fair, that idea seems preposteous. Time plus matter plus chance equals dust–nothing more. It takes a very skilled Creator to shape elements and chemicals into the array of animal and plant life that our eyes feasted on.
And then there is the matter of man’s creation. Evolution also says that time plus matter plus chance equals you. A friend of mine summarizes this amazing process as “from goo to you by way of the zoo.”
No way. Human culture is amazing–from writing, to painting, to sculturing (even with chainsaws), to inventing products and tools (on sale everywhere at the Fair), to music, language, and invention–the creativness of man has no equal. No animals create tools or culture. Only man–made in God’s image–carries that unique spark.
No–if you look at the Fair with clear eyes, you must breathtakingly admire God’s glorious creation in the animal and plant worlds and also marvel at man’s unique creative abilities due to being made in the image of God.
My generation–the Baby Boom Generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) was raised on the lie of evolution. We were the first generation that accepted its erroneous conclusions in our textbooks and later, acted like animals in our individual lives.
Yet, every aspect of the Fair refuted that lie at every turn. God made the world and he made each one of us. We are responsible and accountible to him. We should worship him for what he’s made and do our part to create culture that benefits others and glorifies his name.
Then there is the lie about love.
One of the shows that Shirley and I watched at the Fair was a tribute to the Beatles by a group called Imagine. (I consented to listen to them to humor Shirley.) The “Fab Four” impersonators wore sixties suits, spoke with British accents (sounded fake to me) and really did look a lot like John, Paul, George, and Ringo. They were excellent musicians. During their ninety minute performance, they rattled off about twenty past Beatles hits.
It was very instructive to watch the crowd. Most of them were Boomers like us who were raised on this stuff. (I actually saw the Beatles in person in Seattle in 1964 when I was eleven years old. All I remember was their bright green suits.) There were also younger people in the crowd. Throughout the cascade of familiar songs, you could see the mouths of our generation singing along and enjoying the nostalgia of years gone by.
At the end of the performance, I was reflecting on the power of music. Even though I hadn’t heard most of these Beatles tunes for over forty years, I realized that I and an entire generation could remember every word to every song. Wow! Talk about power to affect the mind.
Then I started thinking about the actual words we had heard in the 60s. Most of the Beatles songs were about two themes–love ( i.e. I Wanna Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Please Please Me etc.) and a smaller group about relationship break ups (i.e. Ticket to Ride, Yesterday etc.).
The closer I listened to the lyrics, the more I realized that the words were not really about “love” as the Bible defines it–pure, self-sacrificing devotion to another person. Rather, the words described sexual attraction or lust for another person.
Love and lust are very different things. Love leads to lifetime commitment. Lust leads to break-ups.
I remembered reading a sad biography of John Lennon some years ago. It chronicled his well-known sexual promiscuity, deep involvement in drug addiction, broken marriage with Cynthia (she came home one day to find John in a drug stupor and in bed with Yoko Ono) and his generally debauched life. The book also described the quartet’s first foray to Hamburg, Germany in 1960 where they frequented prostitutes, and John, Paul, and Ringo gleefully watched as George lost his virginity with a stripper.
The Beatles sang about lust, not godly love. Our generation bought the message and dove into the “free love” scene hook, line, and sinker. Our carnal, selfish pursuit of “love” brought the same consequences of broken marriages and numerous relational break-ups.
As I looked around the aging crowd, I wondered how many had been poisoned by these lyrics that led to the ruin of their marriages or the break-up of numerous relationships. The Beatles taught us a lie and we fell for it. Its results have been staggering in the life of the American nation.
But the song that spoke most deeply to me may have been the Beatles “autobiography tune.” It was called Nowhere Man. Here are some of the words to jog your memory:
He’s a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Doesn’t have a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to,
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Man please listen,
You don’t know what you’re missing,
Nowhere Man,the world is at your command!
He’s as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all?
The words above point to the world the Beatles and many others gave us in our youth. They took us “nowhere” where we couldn’t see our own “blindness” and empty pursuit of lustful pleasure.
“Isn’t he a bit like you and me?”
The Beatles were Nowhere Men that influenced a Nowhere Generation. How sad.
The lie of evolution and the lie of human lust are very similar. One says you can have creation and culture without God–and the other says you can have love and relationships without God. The Baby Boom found out the hard way that these ideas are painfully false.
Fortunately, many of the Baby Boom generation are finding their way home. At the conclusion to our evening, Shirley and I visited a booth that displayed hundreds of hats. All were emblazened with messages like “I Love Jesus,” “God is My Co-Pilot,” and the one that I purchased, “Jesus is My Rock.” The owner told us he had sold eighteen hundred of them.
A Nowhere Generation can be transformed into a generation that loves and serves Jesus Christ.
That’s what I learned at the Fair.
The Ground Zero Mosque and Obama’s Faith
Islam seems to be much in the news these days.
Of course, there is a reason for this. Islam is on the rise in the West and is now coming into close contact with our Judeo-Christian civilization. That never happened during America’s first two hundred years, and it was not on anyone’s radar screen during my childhood either.
However, the 1970s saw a resurgence of Wahhabiism (radical Islam) that has placed Islam on a collision course with other nations and cultures. In the Western World (Europe and America), an epic worldview battle is being raged between three worldviews.
One of them is true faith, another is false faith and the third is no faith. Europe and America’s choice of “faith” will determine their fate in the next generation.
Let’s quickly examine these worldviews in tension.
True faith is trust in Christ, which is the true way to God, life, liberty, and loving relationships. Our founding fathers spoke candidly and clearly about true religion and false religion. Christianity is the truth about God and life.
No faith is secularism–faith in man–that leads to moral anarchy and ultimately Big Government (man as his own Savior). Our founders did not respect the fruits of atheism (i.e. French Revolution).
For fourteen hundred years, the West rightly labeled the Muslim faith as false religion. It is false in that it misrepresents the God of love and forgiveness, denies the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins, and creates political theocracies that are often violent and deny basic human (God-given) rights.
This is not to say that there aren’t any decent Muslim folks. There are. But the religion is false. Islam has always been based on violence (Mohammed himself led nineteen bloody raids) and deception (erroneous teachings that produced, among other things, sharia law).
Islam is essentially codified religious tyranny. And for decades, now, it has ambitiously exported that form of control into many nations in the world through terrorism.
That’s why it’s in the news every day. We’re fighting a worldview that brings tyranny.
Both America and Europe are caught in the cross hairs of the battle. Both were once Christian-based civilizations who have drifted into secularism due to spiritual apathy and the nrestrained pursuit of affluence. Europe is more advanced in abandoning its godly foundations, but the United States is not far behind. Because of declining birthrates in Europe and massive Muslim immigration, Islam is gaining the edge over secularism on the Continent, with many predicting that Europe will become Eurabia (Islamicized) by 2050.
That could happen in your lifetime.
We are not much better off in America. Our birthrate–which helps preserve a culture and its beliefs about itself–is 2.11–the bare minimum necessary for cultural continuity. This is due primarily to the high immigration rate of Hispanics. Many Hispanics are Catholic or evangelical, but their cultural worldview goes back to Spain which was under Muslim control for four hundred years. Thus Latin nations have experienced more tyrannical leadership and human injustice than the United States. Worldviews, no matter how subtle, have enormous consequences.
By the way–I didn’t learn the difference between the Latin worldview and the US worldview from white textbooks. I was taught it from Hispanic leaders in Latin America. Many of them want to cast off the past baggage of Islam and come into the freedom that Christ can bring to nations.
Which brings us back to our headline. For a few days now, the news has been loaded with the controversial mosque in New York and more recently, Barack Obama’s faith.
Let’s begin with the mosque. As has been stated by many, including my favorite analysis by Charles Krauthammer, the building of the Cordoba House mosque near Ground Zero was never a legal question. America was founded as a Christian nation where property is viewed as an extension of one’s personal rights. When I combine honest labor with intellectual capital, it often produces “property” that I possess as a God-given right to use and enjoy.
A Muslim developer in Manhattan acquired such property. He has a right to use it in any lawful way. But we have other Christian principles in our American heritage. These include honor, respect, sensitivity, humility, deference, and love for others. These responsibilities or moral principles are just as important if not more important than our rights. In fact, in our Christian-based society, moral responsibilities are more important than personal rights.
The Muslims should respect our Christian sensibilities and move the mosque elsewhere.
Of course, this stand-off is not really about a mosque. There are one hundred mosques in New York. There is already a small mosque near Ground Zero. But the Cordoba House mosque is not planned as a small or insignificant structure. The developers want to erect a thirteen story, 110 million dollar edifice–a monument–that can only symbolize Islam’s desire for triumphant dominion.
It doesn’t belong near the hallowed ground of Lower Manhatten where twenty Wahhabbists cruelly killed 3,000 of our fellow citizens. We must continue to morally fight it.
As for Barack Obama’s faith, the polls have been interesting. The TIME poll reported 24% of Americans thought Obama was a Muslim and 47% said he was a Christian. The Pew poll had it 18% Muslim (up from 11% in March). 34% Christian with 43% saying they didn’t know.
We can help them those who are confused. First of all, for the record, let’s state the facts that are known:
- Barack Obama was born into a divided household where his father was Muslim and his mother was an atheist.
- His second home and father, in Indonesia, was more decidedly Muslim. He attended a Muslim school and his “religion” during the time was listed as Muslim. That was his father’s choice.
- When he became an adult, Barack Obama says that he became a Christian under the spiritual mentorship of Jeremiah Wright, who espouses Afro-centric liberation theology.
Those are the facts. After the polls came out, the White House scrambled to let everyone know that Obama was a Christian. To be fair, we have to accept his word. Only God knows the human heart.
But there is another gauge of a person’s faith: People are known by their deeds, not what they profess to believe. Jesus Himself said “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16).
You can call yourself anything you like. However, your life choices speak more clearly than your words. To use African-American parlance you can’t just “talk the talk; you’ve got to walk the walk.”
Barack Obama doesn’t walk like either a Christian or a Muslim. He attends neither mosque or church, be often plays golf on Saturdays and Sundays. He refused involvement in the National Day of Prayer. He doesn’t use a prayer mat five times facing Mecca. He’s pro-homosexual marriage and pro-abortion. He’s a strong proponent of Big Government.
By his actions, Barack Obama’s worldview is obvious: It’s secular–with some Muslim sympathies and a Christian veneer thrown in. In some ways he represents all three of the worldviews in tension.
But in his actions and policies, Barack Obama is a secular man–a statist–a man of no practicing faith.
Let’s pray that he and many other Americans will find and demonstrate true faith during this important season of choosing.