Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Paul Anderson
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000313B
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00:05 Welcome back to the "Liberty Insider."
00:07 Before the break with Paul Anderson, 00:09 we were getting into some heavy weeds 00:13 on fundamentalism and religious liberty. 00:16 And I even quoted, 00:20 in its own right infamous speech of Pope Benedict, 00:23 but I took it to another direction. 00:26 You know, we're playing 00:27 with some serious stuff here, aren't we? 00:29 When we talk about religious faith 00:30 and, and compulsion or lack of... 00:34 True. 00:36 Willingness to die or willingness to kill. 00:39 Which are very different constructs. 00:41 To die for one's faith is heroic, 00:46 to kill because someone doesn't believe like you believe. 00:49 It's the most pugnacious expression of religion 00:50 possible in my view. 00:52 I think so. 00:53 And I often tell people on religious liberty. 00:57 You know, there's a lot to know in the U.S. about 01:01 precedent or legislative actions 01:04 and so on in the constitution. 01:06 But at simple litmus test, if you're ever compelled 01:09 to do something against your conscience, 01:11 it's wrong. 01:13 Even like as a Seventh-day Adventist, 01:15 if there were ever to be a law requiring 01:19 or even encouraging people to worship 01:22 on the seventh-day Sabbath, 01:23 it would be wrong in this construct. 01:26 In a theocracy, you know, as there was 01:29 in the Old Testament. 01:30 Yes, there would be an expression of God's will, 01:32 but we don't know God's will. 01:33 And human agents always perverted. 01:35 So our safety is of keeping the civil law away 01:40 from our religious requirements. 01:41 And any civil law that requires you to, 01:44 to worship or to be have religiously in a certain way 01:47 by definition is against religious liberty. 01:50 I think it's important to stand like the apostles 01:53 and say, we ought to obey God rather than man. 01:57 But that requires the individual 02:00 to know the revealed will of God. 02:02 Well, now you're getting at the real truth. 02:04 We can't automatically tell about 02:07 the nature of the laws 02:08 and the dynamic unless we ourselves 02:10 have a sort of an inbuilt religious compass 02:12 that comes from knowing God. 02:14 Right. 02:15 When we're oriented to true north, 02:17 then you can know where east, west and south are, 02:20 otherwise you drift. 02:21 And I'm more and more reminded 02:23 of any number of statements in the Bible 02:25 that say that the times 02:26 that we clearly are living in... 02:28 It's not unique to Adventists or even to Christians. 02:30 There's a grand general awareness, 02:32 these are sort of the final days. 02:34 And in these days, these are times 02:36 that will deceive even the very elective. 02:38 They're by nature deceptive times. 02:42 So it's not like computer. The computer world at least... 02:45 The Apple world started off with WYSIWYG. 02:47 What you see is what you get. 02:48 It really isn't true anymore, is it? 02:50 Yeah, that's true. 02:51 There's lots of deceptives, 02:53 but then I learned some years ago 02:55 that bank tellers don't study counterfeit to know 03:00 what's authentic and what it is inauthentic. 03:04 They study the authentic 03:06 and the more they know the authenticity, 03:09 the more likely they are to detect 03:11 the counterfeit. 03:12 We've got to focus on what's authentic 03:15 and then we'll be able to disarm more clearly. 03:17 I remember... 03:19 You know, I was traveling recently in another country 03:22 and for some reason they gave me 03:25 American money exchange 03:27 and they gave me two, three dollar bills. 03:32 That would be unique. Do you still have them? 03:34 No, I got rid of them. 03:36 I did a double take on them. 03:37 Three dollar bills. 03:40 So yeah, you got to know to recognize it. 03:43 But tell me a little again just sort of taking a diversion 03:48 back to your specialty in chaplaincy or in pastoring. 03:54 You had a long career in pastoring. 03:56 You know, how do you see 03:58 the dynamic of religious liberty 04:00 working out in our day? 04:01 Do you... 04:02 Have you seen signs of people... 04:04 As a favorite author of mine says, 04:06 that it's true as a compass to the pole. 04:12 I mean, that's what we need in nowadays, isn't it? 04:14 Yeah. 04:15 The best resistance against the temptations 04:18 and the compulsions to disobedient. 04:23 True. 04:24 That's true to duty as the needle to the pole 04:26 is a restatement of a principle of integrity, 04:32 but to have a spiritual and moral integrity, 04:38 you've got to know what is, what is truth. 04:44 And live according to that truth. 04:46 There will be people who perceive different truths. 04:49 But that does not obviate the one that you've chosen. 04:55 And then I think that when we look toward 05:03 an appreciation of humanity 05:07 and human dignity and human liberty, 05:11 we will be less likely to want to violently impose 05:16 our will on other people. 05:20 They may be wrong and sincerely wrong, 05:25 but they have that right. 05:27 And as we have the right to practice our faith 05:30 which we believe is ultimate ground truth. 05:34 Let me ask you a personal question back 05:37 when you were a military chaplain. 05:41 I'm sure you were 05:43 in a number of tense situations, 05:44 not necessarily battled, 05:47 but you know it's a different dynamic, 05:48 it's not sort of laidback civilian life. 05:51 I'm sure there's always and you're dealing with, 05:55 with people of many other faiths, 05:57 and the commanders, 06:00 I hope they wouldn't oppose your faith, 06:02 but they wouldn't necessarily be 06:03 in favor of your faith view. 06:06 How did you maintain that? 06:09 Did you have to keep reminding yourself 06:11 of the very particular aspects of your faith 06:16 that put you there, even though 06:17 you're often administering 06:19 to other people of other faith in a secular environment? 06:23 What keeps things straight for you? 06:28 That's a good question. 06:30 For me my fundamental paradigm was, 06:36 I know who I am. 06:38 It helps me to help others know who I am, 06:42 if I understand who they are. 06:44 And if I can find points of commonality 06:47 and built up on them and share specificities 06:53 while understanding theirs. 06:56 It built bridges and I think the key toward living 07:00 in a pluralistic society is finding something to value 07:06 about those who are different from us. 07:09 And when we demonstrate appreciation, 07:12 care and concern for them, 07:14 they might be more likely to reciprocate. 07:17 Yeah. And I think you're getting close to the key. 07:19 You got to respect other people 07:21 to really administer religious liberty correctly. 07:24 And fundamentalists in the worst sense 07:27 because I don't really buy the term generally, 07:29 but as we're seeing it work that negatively. 07:32 I have to believe that at the end of the day, 07:34 they are not overly respectful of the people 07:37 they are opposing. 07:38 I think you are right. 07:39 I just read a very interesting article on the woman 07:43 that belonged to the Vesper Baptist Church. 07:45 And I bring it up purposely because remember, 07:47 they were insulting to the military. 07:48 Right. 07:49 Demonstrated the military funerals 07:51 because they were bothered about attitudes toward gays 07:54 in the military. 07:55 So regardless of who was being buried, you know, 07:59 young guys being killed in the military, 08:00 the family are grieving there and here this church coming, 08:03 rant and rave about gays in the military, 08:05 must have been horrible. 08:07 But I read the story about this young woman 08:10 and how she grew up in this closed atmosphere 08:12 where everything was hateful. 08:13 They were against all of the sinners in that 08:16 but, so negative that they wouldn't... 08:18 As they were growing up, 08:19 they wouldn't fellowship with them, 08:21 nothing, nothing to do with anyone else. 08:23 But online she struck up some relationships 08:26 and in the end she actually moved away from them. 08:29 But it was an interesting story and the takeaway for me was, 08:33 they were thoroughly impersonal 08:35 in their relations to these people 08:38 that were condemning. 08:39 They had never seen the others as real human beings. 08:41 Yeah. 08:42 And when we can depersonalized and other, 08:46 we diminish in our own minds their humanity. 08:50 And that I think begins to fly in the face of God, 08:55 the Creator who created humanity. 08:58 So, and when we can create an inequality, 09:05 then we can justify mistreatment. 09:08 I'm gonna throw you a really well question 09:10 and I don't know that you've had this before. 09:14 It's worth asking. Your point is very good. 09:17 It's right on the money. 09:19 But I know from not just by reading. 09:22 Friends of mine that went into the military in Vietnam 09:25 and this is sort of component of fitting a soldier 09:29 to go out and do an unnatural act, 09:31 kill another human being 09:33 a process of depersonalizing the enemy. 09:36 That's true. 09:37 Treating them as the absolute evil. 09:39 How can that coexist... 09:40 Is that easy coexistence with the soldiers 09:43 that you have to deal with as a chaplain 09:45 and yet you're communicating in this way, 09:47 we just discussed... 09:50 with them personalizing and creating a personal goal? 09:56 The dilemma of warfare. 09:57 Good answer. 09:59 But there is a contradiction, is there? 10:01 There is very, very much so. 10:03 And a lot of the early training 10:07 for instance in the combat arm specialties, 10:12 the emphasize is on hitting a target. 10:14 Yeah. 10:16 And the target isn't necessarily human 10:18 in the beginning. 10:19 That's the value of the computer age 10:21 and just the little, the mass 10:23 and then the graphic of destroying the target, 10:27 not a human being. 10:28 And then later it will become a, 10:32 a personalized kind of thing. 10:34 I had a conversation 10:35 with a Special Forces person once 10:38 who, we were doing a debriefing from an event 10:42 that they were involved in. 10:44 And this... 10:47 There was some hand to hand combat that 10:50 and one of these guys had been out on many missions 10:54 and probably killed a lot of people 10:57 from a distance. 10:59 But he had never up close in personal killed anyone. 11:04 And in the briefing or debriefing he said, 11:09 I never killed anybody. 11:10 And I said wait a minute. You've... 11:12 Certainly you have and he said, oh, you're right, 11:16 but I always saw them as a target. 11:18 And he had depersonalized the people 11:22 to whom he was militarily interacting 11:27 such that he didn't see them as a human, 11:28 he saw them as targets and we bring them back 11:32 in these kinds of debriefings. 11:36 I think this is fundamental that any faith worth 11:40 adhering to is worth not any living for, 11:44 but dying for. 11:46 The confusion that we're facing in this age of terrorism 11:49 is that some people say that 11:52 they have a faith that demands 11:54 that they kill for it. 11:57 Certainly Christian faith should have 11:59 no part to such a thing. 12:01 I don't believe that can be true faith. 12:03 When I think of the life of Christ, 12:07 there's nothing more personable 12:10 that I can imagine than the scene 12:12 where Jesus speaking to His friends said that, 12:15 greater love has no man 12:17 than this than a man lay down His life for his friends. 12:23 True religion I believe is selfless. 12:26 True religious liberty is devoid of compulsion. 12:30 And when we talk about fundamentalism, 12:33 we're perverting the word 12:35 and turning into something pejorative, 12:38 even though it should be fundamental 12:42 that religious commitment is central and nonnegotiable, 12:49 that is important, central to human existence. 12:53 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2016-01-01