Morality By the Numbers

A fellow named Phil Robertson, from the popular cable television show Duck Dynasty, made some comments about homosexuality based on his religious beliefs, and an uproar has ensued.   The television network, Arts and Entertainment, suspended him from the program.  A lot of people on opposite sides of this issue have reacted strongly.  In the midst of all this furor, it behooves the thinking Christian to know where the real problem lies.

First of all, this is not a free speech issue in any sense.  The First Amendment guarantees that congress will make no law abridging the freedom of speech.  That certainly did not occur in this case, and no law prevented Mr. Robertson from speaking his mind.  He does not face any legal repercussions from doing so.  However, assuming the contractual language is correct, the A&E network is within its rights to stop doing business with him if they so desire.  Believe it or not, your employer can fire you in most cases if you speak out in ways they do not like.  Your freedom to speak is guaranteed, but not your job security.  Your boss can fire you if you publicly endorse the KKK platform or teachings of the Nazi party.

And in this great land of ours, with its free markets, we can refuse to buy products at any time we wish, for whatever reason.  A boycott is not in any way illegal.  You could boycott A&E for allowing Mr. Robertson to make his statements or you could boycott them for suspending him. 

What we are seeing here is morality by math.  A&E knows that the Duck Dynasty program is a huge money-maker with a wide audience.  But they also know that speaking out against homosexuality is going to offend a larger number of viewers.  So they calculate which is going to do more harm, supporting or suspending, and act accordingly.  I have found the Cracker Barrel weather vane more like a windmill.  Here is a company that had employment policies in the 1990's that dismissed employees that did not display "normal heterosexual values"; they actively opposed gays and their lifestyle. In this latest brouhaha, they did the math, reversed course, and decided that they would offend paying customers by continuing to carry merchandise with Mr. Robertson's image.  So they decided to discontinue those products, hoping to keep their customers as well as burnish their image as tolerant.  They were the first corporation after A&E to take such an action.  However, when toting up the numbers they discovered that their math added up the wrong way, and after their clientele bombarded them with messages supporting Mr. Robertson they reinstated those image-bearing products.  It seems that few things are as effective at determining the correct moral stance as money.

GLAAD, which used to stand for "Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation", but now just stands for "GLAAD", decided that its Biblical expertise and interpretation of the Scriptures enabled it to make the following declaration: "Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil's lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe." And: "By taking quick action and removing Robertson from future filming, A&E has sent a strong message that discrimination is neither a Christian nor an American value."

To look at that first statement, a Christian must ask one question: "Is homosexuality a sin?"  It is a simple yes or no question.  And the Bible is not silent on that issue.  In both Old and New Testaments, God tells us generally and specifically that the answer is yes.  I could list numerous passages wherein the Bible specifically addresses homosexuality.  However, if you decided to discard those, there is the issue of sexual immorality in general.  Looking at the Westminster Catechism, we learn in questions 137-9 that the Seventh Commandment, which forbids adultery, also forbids "fornication, rape, incest, sodomy, and all unnatural lusts."  The Heidelberg Catechism similarly tells us in questions 108-9, "That all unchastity is cursed by God... he forbids all unchaste acts."  In general, if I need to know what God's opinion is on a topic, and what true Christians believe, I would look to the Scriptures before a GLAAD press release.

As far as the second statement, it is important to understand what is meant by discrimination.  In one sense of the word, it means simply to recognize and understand the difference between one thing and another.  As Christians, we are in all cases to discriminate between good and bad, between things that are sin and not sin, between the things of God and the things of this world. We cannot look to popular culture or even our laws to do this.  Although murder and theft are illegal, adultery and dishonoring our parents is not; indeed, our government, its system of transfers, and political electability is now largely based on encouraging one group of people to covet another.  The Christian uses his Bible, not popular opinion or statutes, to aid him in discriminating between right and wrong.

In the other sense of the word, discriminate means to take unfavorable action against those with whom we do not favor.  The Christian is enjoined not to do so.  James tells us in 2:1-13, "My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.  For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, 'You sit in here in a good place,' while you say to the poor man, 'You stand over there,' or, 'Sit down at my feet,' have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?"  Phil Robertson did not discriminate against anyone by treating them unfavorably; he was discriminated against.  All he did was speak the truth from the Bible as he knew it. 

As Christians, we are not to treat poorly those who hold beliefs differently than our own.  However, we are not to passively let the world and popular culture dictate what we believe, either.  That same world and culture will oppose us vigorously.  The Word of God is no longer popular currency among those whose morality is not shaped by it but who seek to shape it in a form that suits them; rather, the currency that shapes their morality is often of the green paper kind.  We are never right to deny what the Word of God instructs us, and we are never wrong to proclaim it. 

The Serpents of Today

I grew up in a medium size town in North Carolina called Wilson, with a population of around thirty thousand back in the early 1960's.  My family and I went to church there, and there were the usual church activities for children available for us, such as Cub Scouts and youth choir. Outside of church, there were the sporting leagues for football and baseball, sponsored by the city recreation center.  All-in-all, as children we were around adults much of the time from Scout leaders to choir directors to coaches to Sunday School teachers and so on. 

Looking back, we uniformly respected our elder adults, and this was certainly a part of the culture at the time.  We respected their knowledge, experience, and appreciated their concern for our well-being and development. One thing in particular is noteworthy, as I recall growing up in this environment.  We never had any reason to doubt that these grown-ups were ever less than completely honest.  As children, we experienced the fibs and falsehoods of other children, but I cannot remember an adult telling me a lie.  (The only exceptions were Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.)

As I grew older and went to college, my experience was similar, with professors and coaches being honest people.  Then came medical school and residency for my career, which was another twelve years.  Those years were spent basically living in the hospital, with not much exposure to the real world of buying houses and cars and dealing with businesses.  And in those years you pretty much believed another's word; deception was not part of the culture in those institutions, either.  In many ways we were sheltered from the harshness of everyday reality. 

It really wasn't until I got out into the real world, in my thirties, that I found out that people will lie to you.  At first, it was dealing with an unscrupulous homebuilder here or car dealer there, but it was quite surprising given my previous experience.  I later worked along side people who had little integrity, and it was always a sad thing to discover.  I have often wondered why these things seemed to appear in my later life, and I guess things like this were always going on around me as a young man, but I simply didn't see them.  Lying wasn't just invented yesterday-- the serpent started in Genesis chapter three.

As Christians, we try to be humble, and Paul advises us in Philippians 2:3, "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself."  We try to esteem others as better, and this often leads us to be very trusting and giving others the benefit of the doubt.  In fact, I wrote earlier on this in an article, "Doubting the Benefit."  The problem arises when those others in fact are dishonest, because nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to be gullible. 

As children, we are taught to respect our government and its leaders, and that same Bible does command us to pray for them.  I Timothy 2 tells us, "Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority..."  This is easy to do when our leaders are trustworthy men of integrity.  But God, who appoints all authorities (Romans 13:1) sometimes sees fit to appoint leaders who are dishonest and lack integrity.  His sovereign will, for reasons that are not clear to us, decrees that we who are Christians will at times live in a country governed by those who would lie to us. 

Our current president is not the first in his office to be dishonest, but a precedent of dishonesty by others does not offer one an excuse for his own behavior.  The sheer magnitude of deceit we have seen in the last few years from this administration, and its supporters in congress,  far exceeds anything I have seen in my fifty-plus years.  I may not be an expert on foreign policy or national defense or agricultural affairs, but I am an expert on our health care system and I believe I have probably delivered more health care than any of the individuals who have devised the newest attempt at government run health care delivery.  And the things that were promised to the American people by this administration were false and known to be false.  I have been asked on several occasions to speak to different groups on health care economics over the last several years, and all of the problems we are now seeing with the Affordable Care Act were known and the consequences foreseen since it was enacted.  The promises that people would be able to keep their insurance, keep their doctor, and that it would all cost them less have always been untrue. The only people who are shocked by what is going on now are the people who believed the lies. 

There are several lessons here for the Christian.  The first is to realize that people really will be dishonest with you in order to advance their own agenda.  God knew that just as sin entered the world through the first lie told by the serpent that lies would be a part of human existence ever since.  The second lesson is that God despises lying.  Proverbs 6:16-19 tells us that God hates a lying tongue.  Leviticus 19:11 commands us not to lie to one another.  And make no mistake about it, making false promises is lying.  Some have said, "Well, all politicians do it.  It is just a political lie."  That is absurd.  It is a lie no matter how many others may do it, and a "political" lie can be just as damaging and harmful as any other.  It teaches us that our government and leaders are not to be trusted, and damages the integrity of these institutions.

Why do people believe lies in the first place?  For one thing, it is easy to swallow a lie if it is telling you something you want to hear.  Eve thought it would be wonderful to be as knowledgeable as God.  And many people who wanted to see our health care system changed wanted to believe that this new program would do what they said it would do.  Secondly, believing a lie is often the easy thing to do, the lazy thing.  When presented with a proposition, it takes actual work to go out and research whether or not the facts are true and the arguments are supported.  It is easier to just say, "Well, that sounds good to me."  The fact of the matter is that not only are people who tell lies not supposed to do that, the people on the receiving end have a responsibility to educate themselves and study what is being proposed before deciding to accept it.  The Bereans in Acts 17 were commended because they "searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so."  Christ Himself warned his disciples to not be gullible, to be "wise as serpents" (Matthew 10:16).  So a third lesson is that we are not to take these things at face value, we are to study them, that we may not be easily deceived.

Asclepius was the Greek god associated with healing.  He had a symbol called the "Rod of Asclepius", which had a rod surrounded by a single serpent:

 

 

 



This symbol has long been associated with the healing arts and medicine.  Unfortunately, because people did not study the origins of this symbol, another symbol became accepted into medicine instead, called the "Caduceus":

 

 

 



This symbol is that of the Greek god Hermes, and it associated with "commerce, eloquence, trickery, and negotiation" (Wikipedia).  It is definitely not the symbol of medicine.  Hermes was the patron of thieves and liars. It was a lack of study and diligence that led to the mistaken use of the caduceus to represent many medical institutions. 

The final lesson is that we are to recognize the dishonest for what they are.  When one successfully lies, he is emboldened to continue in this practice.  It becomes easier each time.  Such a person will continue as long as they are able.  We can do what we can to expose their falsehoods, but it is up to God to deal with them, their sin, and lack of repentance.  Psalms 102:6 states, " He who works deceit shall not dwell within my house; he who tells lies shall not continue in my presence."  A person with a pattern of dishonesty is not to be trusted and is to be avoided.  As I was a child and young adult, these warnings would have seemed so unnecessary; as an older and wiser adult, I am saddened that they are.  Just as the serpent deceived with the first lie, the twin serpents of dishonesty and false promises are entwined today around the caduceus of government run healthcare.