It's Thursday, September 11, 2014. I'm Albert Mogler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Last night, speaking from the White House, President Barack Obama addressed the nation about the challenge posed by the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State. Speaking to the American people, knowing that he had an international audience, President Obama said, I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL. In the next paragraph, at the very beginning of the President's address, he stated these words. Quote, as Commander-in-Chief, my highest priority is the security of the American people. Over the last several years, we have consistently taken the fight to terrorists who threaten our country. We took out Osama bin Laden and much of al-Qaeda's leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We've targeted al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen and recently eliminated the top commander of its affiliate in Somalia. We've done so while bringing more than 140,000 American troops home from Iraq and drawing our forces down in Afghanistan, where our combat mission will end later this year. Thanks to our military and counterterrorism professionals, America is safer." The president addressed a nation that is increasingly anxious over the threat posed by the Islamic State. And in his comments, the president was trying to do his very best to state what was now his strategy, just days after admitting to the American people that he didn't have a strategy. The president sought to outline his strategy in his address last night. In the first place, the president said, the objective of the strategy is clear, quote, we will degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy, end quote. The strategy laid out by President Obama has four major components. First, he said, the United States will conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against ISIL. He also said that the United States will increase our support to forces fighting those terrorists on the ground. Third, he said, the United States will draw on what he described as our substantial counterterrorism capabilities in order to prevent future ISIL attacks. Lastly, he said, we will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians who've been displaced by the terrorist organization. This, the president says, is our strategy. The response to the President's address was almost immediate. Interestingly, much of the major opposition to the approach laid out by the President is likely to come from his own party. President Obama ran in 2008 on a very clear agenda of removing American troops from Afghanistan and, even before that, from Iraq. And almost everyone now recognizes that the absence of American troops in Iraq was at least one major contributing factor, if not the major contributing factor, to the rise of the influence and domination of ISIL throughout much of Iraq. Furthermore, just months ago, President Obama drew what he called a red line in Syria. And yet, when Syrian President Bashir Assad himself, an autocrat, acting with malevolence against his own people, including the use of chemical weapons, crossed that red line, President Obama did not respond. Those two factors are surely major components behind the rise of the group known as the Islamic State in the Levant or the Islamic State in Syria, known elsewhere in the world simply as the Islamic State, a state which is now declared a caliphate, that is, an Islamic rule. In the aftermath and the response to the president's address, much of the nation's attention was drawn to CNN, where there ensued a debate between former White House press spokesman Jay Carney and Senator John McCain of Arizona, President Obama's opponent in the 2008 presidential election. That heated exchange not only revealed the distance between the Obama White House and Senator John McCain, it also laid bare the differences now dividing much of the American people over the question not only of Iraq, not only of the Islamic State, but of the posture of the United States in the world, especially when facing an enemy such as the Islamic State. but one of the most interesting developments in the president's speech last night was his clarification of something that we had suspected for some time in recent days president obama has been referring to the group the islamic state by using the acronym ISIL that is the islamic state in the levant but by using that acronym those initials many of us suspected that president obama was doing his very best to avoid using the word islamic and last night the president effectively confirmed that suspicion In one of the early paragraphs in his speech, the president said this, and I quote, Now let's make two things clear. ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents. And the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and serious civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. The president went on to say, It is recognized by no government. nor by the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple, and it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way." End quote. Working backward through that paragraph, a couple of things are very important. In the first place, the president drew a distinction between a terrorist organization and a state. But even the history of the 20th century demonstrates that there need be no distinction between the two. There have been states, that is to say, governments recognized by the international community, who have been without doubt terrorist organizations. The president also, in avoiding the use of the word Islamic, and in this case arguing that ISIL is certainly not Islamic, was making an argument that is not only unhelpful, it is fundamentally untruthful. While it is true to say that not all Muslims are represented by the Islamic State, and while it is certainly true to say that Islam is not entirely represented by this particular organization, there is no question that the driving ambition of the Islamic State is the continuation of the expansion of Islam. When the president said, and I quote again, no religion condones the killing of innocents, end quote, that is true only in part. But in the part that it is untrue, it is absolutely dangerous for the president of the United States to make such a statement. Now, at this point, we have to recognize something else. That is this. President Obama is not the first president of the United States, even in recent years, to be trying to suggest that the American people are not at war with the religion of Islam. That is an understandable White House quandary. President Bush also confused the issue, even in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, by suggesting that our enemy is not Islam. There is truth in that, of course, but there is also a confusion of the issues that is absolutely dangerous, because there is no doubt that Islam is a major factor behind world terrorism. It is simply an indisputable fact that most of the dangerous and active terrorist groups in the world today are identified with Islam. It is also an indisputable fact that the terrorist organizations that have most targeted the West, and the United States in particular, are specifically driven by an Islamic ideology and by the unquestioned ambition to further the reach of Islam, not only throughout the Middle East, but also in the rest of the world. This is one of the animating, driving forces behind the very logic of Islamic thought and theology. There's simply no way around it. And in the eyes of many Muslims around the world, including many Muslim clerics, the President's statement that no religion condones the killing of innocents is profoundly and unquestionably untrue. President Obama's own administration, every year since he has taken office, has released national and international intelligence reports warning about the recruitment of terrorists in Islamic mosques. And furthermore, the administration and the national security apparatus under its control and direction have been making that point on the front pages of the world's newspapers just in the last several days. An armed conflict, such as that which is now taking place between the United States and its allies and these terrorist organizations, always reveals a deep worldview conflict. And there is simply no way around the fact that in this case, and for the foreseeable future, that worldview conflict is essentially linked to the worldview of Islam. We can certainly understand the President's political predicament. But when the President of the United States tells the American people and the listening world that ISIL is not Islamic, he is stating something that is not only unhelpful, it is untrue. And not only untrue, but dangerously untrue. There was, of course, profound irony in the fact that the president was making this address on the eve of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. Those attacks now took place 13 years ago. Thirteen years ago today. And 13 years ago today, America was awakened from its international slumber to the realization that we are living in a very dangerous world. It's interesting to note that children born in the last 13 years have known a world in which the crisis that has been posed by Islamic terrorism is now to be considered just a fact of life. But for Americans who grew to adulthood before the last 13 years, this is a significant shift in terms of our understanding of America's place in the world and the peril we now face in a world that reveals itself to be very dangerous. But in his address, very early in his address last night, President Obama spoke these words saying, quote, thanks to our military and counterterrorism professionals, America is safer, end quote. But America's own security apparatus, again under the direction of this president, has stated consistently and repeatedly that America is profoundly not in a safer position in the world. Not just in terms of other considerations, but specifically with reference to the threat of Islamic terrorism. Evidence of that came in yesterday's edition of USA Today, when that newspaper offered a map of the world, first in 2001 and then in 2014. Those two maps traced the geographic influence of Al-Qaeda, measuring Al-Qaeda's growth, not its retreat, from 2001 to 2014. USA Today was not trying to score political points. It was simply trying to make a very profound point about our peril in looking at the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Thirteen years is a long period of time. It might be a blip in terms of the span of world history, but it has encompassed most of the last two presidential administrations. President Obama has been in charge of America's military and foreign policy for the better part of the last six years. And in that light, when the president spoke last night, he was clearly speaking on the defensive. And the president was making statements that he hopes will be verified long-term in history. But this will require a fundamental change in the way this White House, specifically this president, engages the world, engages the threat of terrorism, and leads an international effort to do what he pledged to do in this address, and that is to defeat ISIL. And not only ISIL, but the many allied groups, now with a vast international reach, expressing the very same aims. A warning about our situation in the world came recently in the pages of The Economist, a major news magazine published in Great Britain. And in that magazine, in an article entitled, Playing Poker with the World, the president, known to be an aficionado of the game of poker, was accused by the Britons of playing poker with foreign policy. Most specifically, the magazine charged President Obama with playing poker by showing his hand rather than bluffing. The president has repeatedly, over the last six years, told the world what he would not do, what America would not do. Last night, the president appeared to attempt something of a partial pivot on the issue, turning from speaking about what we would not do to speaking about what America would do. You can count on the fact that the watching world, and groups such as the Islamic State in particular, are waiting to see if the president meant what he said. Turning now to domestic issues in the United States, last week we discussed a major report on the American family, or more appropriately, American families, that was released by the group known as the Council for Contemporary Families. That report, that gained a great many headlines across the nation, claimed that there is no such thing as the American family now. There is no model of the normal family. Instead, the group said that the diversity of family forms in the United States means that there is now no normal. Jumping on that report, Mary Sanchez, writing in a column that appeared in a recent edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, argued that government leaders must now respond to this report and to this new reality. She wrote with these words, and I quote, substantial numbers of children are living in homes with divorced mothers, never married mothers, single fathers, grandparents, cohabitating adults who may or may not both be working, and a range of other configurations, according to research done for the Council on Contemporary Families. She continued, and children migrate in and out of differing arrangements as they grow up. She was quoting Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, who was the major author of the study. She then writes, and I quote, most of us realized long ago that married parents with dad as the breadwinner and mom at home is an image only accurate in black and white television shows of the 1950s, end quote. While the study released last week did indicate that only a minority of American families now fit that model, it certainly is not the case that the report and the reality indicates that this kind of family, with the mother and father married to one another, living in the same household with their children, with the father working outside the home, and the mother primarily directed inside the home, is not limited only, as she said, to black and white television shows of the 1950s. As a matter of fact, in her very next paragraph, she indicates that at least 22% of American children are still living in that kind of family. While that means that approximately 78% are not, 22% is hardly an insignificant number. It's hardly a throwback merely to the 1950s. But in writing her article, Mary Sanchez has a very different point to make. She's not just writing about the claims made in terms of the numbers. She's suggesting, to use her words, and I quote, more security is what many American families need. To help them get it, policymakers need to understand what American families look like these days. Only then, she writes, can we set about promoting policy and supports. that help many differing families and individuals achieve, not just ones that fit an ideal of yesteryear." Let's look at that paragraph for just a moment. Mary Sanchez is arguing that the American government should respond by attempting to add security to America's families, however they may be formed. Now remember the fact that in her documentation of this diversity, she mentioned children living with divorced mothers, never married mothers, single fathers, grandparents, and cohabitating adults who may or may not both be working. And then she adds a range of other configurations. How in the world can any government grant security to such insecure arrangements? Fundamentally, no government can do this. This is a profound point that seems to be missing from the understanding of many people looking at the family situation in America today. But Christians, looking at this question from a biblical worldview, have to understand that security is an achievement. It's an achievement that comes primarily by following the pattern that God gave in Scripture concerning how the man and the woman are to come together in the covenant of marriage. how they are to be united to one another in a monogamous lasting union, and then how they are to receive children as God's gifts and to raise them in a context of stability and security that has been known throughout millennia as the human family. But then on September the 8th, an even more interesting article appeared in the pages of the Washington Post, this time by Emily Badger. She writes this, We know that children raised by two parents tend to be more successful at school, in the future labor market, in their own marriages than children raised by a single mom or dad. And from this fact, she writes, it might seem easy to conclude that marriage wields some outsized power over a child's life. that its absence creates unstable homes and chaotic families while its presence nurtures them." Well, yes, Emily Badger, that's exactly what we might think. And that's what most people would think and have thought throughout human history. How do we unthink that now? Well, Emily Badger's doing her best not only to unthink the importance of marriage, but to lead the rest of us to unthink it as well. She goes through a rather long essay, doing her very best to suggest, based upon various sources of research, that marriage really isn't the issue, that the issue is parenting skills and the time that parents would have to devote to their children and their flourishing. She acknowledges the fact that when children have two parents in the home, they get more parental attention. And she acknowledges that this surely must have some impact. But she says, she insists, that this doesn't have to have anything to do fundamentally with marriage. It really doesn't matter if the mother and the father are even married. She then goes on to a second point, saying that financial security is also a big part of the picture in terms of the flourishing of children. She acknowledges that when you have married parents, the mother and the father, you generally also have more economic security. Put fundamentally, you have greater income and greater wealth. This also factors into greater opportunity for children and, you might also add, it contributes to the fact that the family continues to thrive. Citing different avenues of research, she tries her very best to argue that the issue really isn't marriage. Pointing to the bottom line in her accumulated research, she writes, and I quote, at the end of the day, marriage itself might still have some effect on the adult outcomes of children. But, she says, it would be a small one, end quote. This article in the Washington Post is a classic example of trying to argue against reality, that reality is the importance of marriage. And try as she might, the author of this article simply can't get to make her point. She has to come back again and again to say, I know it looks like marriage is the issue, but it really isn't the issue. She also separates marriage from all other moral considerations. When she talks about parental stability, when she talks about parental investment in children, when she writes about the advantages of having two parents in the home, she comes back to say, but it really can't be about marriage. Honestly, it can't be about marriage. In her final paragraph, she writes these words, quote, making single parents get married, in other words, won't fundamentally change the other characteristics about them that really drive their children's success. The good news in this is that family income and parenting skills are more realistically addressed through public policy than marriage anyway, end quote. Well, now she's trying to take marriage not only out of the moral equation, but out of the sociological equation as well. It simply won't work. Marriage is tied to economic stability. Marriage is tied to the continuing thriving of the family. Marriage is inherently tied to the flourishing of children. There's no way to take marriage out of the equation. And you simply can't throw enough money at the problem in order to give stability to an unstable relationship. You simply can't solve the problem of parenting skills by suggesting that it doesn't matter if there are two married parents in the home. In doing her dead-level best to argue that the issue isn't marriage, it can't be marriage, please don't tell me it's marriage, Emily Badger actually ends up making the opposite point. It really is about marriage. It has always been about marriage and it will continue to be so. No matter how many researchers and how many essayists try to argue, it simply can't be about marriage. Here again, Christians, driven by a Christian worldview, have to understand that marriage is not merely a sociological invention. If it were, then marriage might be replaced by something that is even more secure, even more effective and efficient. But it isn't merely a sociological development. To the contrary, it is one of God's gifts, given to all human creatures and human societies throughout all human history in the gift of creation. To miss that point is to miss the obvious. But then again, that's the problem with this article, and in so many others like it. But for Christians, it's instructive to see that many people are doing their dead-level best to make the argument that reality simply can't be. We must be misunderstanding the equation. Marriage simply can't be this important. But Christians have to respond, oh yes it is. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com forward slash albertmohler. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to spts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I'm speaking to you from Atlanta, Georgia, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.