“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
Ephesians 5:15-17 ESV
For all of the wailing and caterwauling going on about Harrison Butker’s speech the other day, you’d think that he advocated for the arrest, torture, and execution of all the world’s puppies.
If you don’t already know, the good Mr. Butker is a place kicker for the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and he, being Catholic, gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College, which is, importantly, a Catholic college. Normally, a Catholic speaking about Catholic things to other Catholics wouldn’t raise much interest. But this was no small issue because Harrison touched on the one religious issue that the so-called non-religious hold absolutely sacred.
Sexual ethics.
You see, he called Pride Month an example of deadly sin.
Is this shocking? Has this just come to everyone’s attention? Hardly. It’s been a rather obvious Christian doctrine for the past few thousand years.
And he also said that one of the highest titles a woman can hold is that of homemaker.
Gasp!
There. That’s it.
The NFL, that great bastion of moral rectitude, was sufficiently in a huff so as to issue a statement decrying Butker’s statement. So did, for crying out loud, the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica. Yes, that’s right. The Catholic nuns said that “instead of promoting unity in our church, our nation, and the world, his comments seem to have fostered division.”
One wonders if the good nuns have read Luke 12:51 where Jesus says, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other…”.
The thing to understand is that Harrison Butker simply stated a basic doctrinal position that the church has held for centuries. And it’s exactly the Christian doctrines that have lifted the poor, the downcast, the weak, and, yes, the women into high places. Just as the howling has reached the heavens in protest against Butker’s audacity, the same people who despise him and Christianity, are protesting for Hamas. What rights do women have under the rule of Hamas? Were Israeli women systematically raped, tortured, and killed on October 7 of last year? Oh, never mind.
The thing about rejecting God is that to do so is a package-deal. Because this is His world, and He’s a righteous God (that is, moral perfection itself), we live in a world of morality. It’s inescapable. Thus, the irony is that those who so ardently reject Biblical morality, and moral absolutism altogether, end up being the most moralistic. Indeed, it’s atheists who are most vocal about issues of right and wrong these days even while proclaiming that they don’t believe in absolutes.
Butker’s critics reject the Lord Jesus Christ and the moral order of His word and then, rather vacuously, declare that they’re neutral…that there’s no such thing as moral absolutism. The problem is that their reaction here shows this is both logically impossible and that they’re liars. No one is neutral.
The very act of rejecting Christianity proves that right and wrong exist. If right and wrong exist, that means we live in a moral world. If we live in a moral world this rules out all forms of pantheism, atheism, and polytheism. Why? Because if truth exists in moral terms that means there must necessarily be a moral Person who’s absolute. If a “thing” is ultimate (as in philosophical materialism), no moral order would proceed from it. This is the most basic way to understand that all of us are “without excuse” for unbelief (Romans 1:18-21; 2:14-15). The minute we say “this is true” or “that’s not true,” we’ve admitted that ultimate morality exists.
It’s no small issue. It’s the very issue upon which unbelievers will be judged by their own words on that great Day and, therefore, the easiest avenue to approach evangelism. Why argue over the speech when we can instead bring the critic to the heart of the issue – and to the cross of Christ?
An example of the moral absolutism is seen in the angry reactions coming from the atheistic left.
The Daily Beast quotes Amy Allen, an Atlanta (Butker’s hometown) real estate agent whose daughter overlapped with Butker at Westminster Schools (a private school he attended). She said, “I was sick. I was disgusted. It just felt so dystopian and just so backward…if someone were to sit there and say that to my daughter, I would just lose it.”
We must note that Butker said to the female graduates specifically, “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world…I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say her life started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
He didn’t say that all women must be homemakers. He simply expressed what’s obvious to people not intellectually damaged by sin’s lies. In a Gallup poll from 2019, 50% of women said after they had kids that they’d prefer to stay home and raise them. There were some who were undecided and a little over 40% said they’d prefer a career outside the home. This means that by any objective reckoning – not only Catholics to whom Butker was speaking – the majority of American women agreed with him!
But the backlash has been swift and brutal for the very reason that those who claim to be neutral are certainly not…in fact, they’re hostile to God and His moral order. This is seen in their antipathy to the God-given nature of the family.
Ms. Allen was “sick” and “disgusted.” Why? Because she claims that Butker said things that weren’t just erroneous, but immoral. In so doing, she exposes the moral absolutism she believes in. The rational question is, then, what’s absolute for her? The nuns can be asked the same question. The NFL too. All of us are asked the basic question of life: whom do you serve? This is another way of asking by what ultimate standard do you live?
It’s never a question of whether we’ll submit to an absolute standard, but which one. A great privilege of being ambassadors of Christ is teaching this to unbelievers. They aren’t neutral. They’re actually quite religious and their religion is secular humanism. But secular humanism can’t account for its positions as we see. A world created by chance is an immoral world (even if one could exist), so moral outrage is inconsistent with the premises of humanism. We should endeavor in Christ to patiently and confidently explain this to unbelievers every chance we get (and here’s a great one) rather than simply get angry at the foolishness and nonsense. We should be trained up in Christ and not politics. This isn’t a left-right issue but a heaven and hell one! Are we advocating for Trump or Jesus Christ?
This is the rub of living in God’s world. We can’t escape moral evaluations and absolutes. God isn’t mocked, and this is exactly how the Bible speaks of unbelievers ending up in utter foolishness even while claiming to be wise. This is the great lie of unbelief. It’s the foolish gambit that men and women can ever be neutral. On this point, we see that atheists are hemophiliacs – scratch them, as Robert Reymond once said, and they bleed to death. If God doesn’t exist then moral absolutes don’t either because morality applies to people, not things. If things are ultimate, then to worry about moral issues is ludicrous. But to care so much as to be “sick” and “disgusted” proves that morality exists and you are indeed an absolutist, not neutral.
All in all, Christians shouldn’t be reading this news and getting angry. We should use it to “sharpen our sword” of evangelism and see how ripe is the harvest. It should encourage us to reach out and present the gospel in this way as men and women fulminate over this alleged immorality that their worldview can’t account for on its own premises.
And most of all, we must not fall prey to the myth of neutrality and, therefore, become cowards who are afraid of conflict. The gospel of Jesus Christ calls sin what it is and demands that men and women repent. This is always the flashpoint. There’s a philosophical and ethical antithesis between Christ and the world. They (unbelievers) aren’t neutral and we shouldn’t try and be either. In cases like this we can calmly and lovingly expose the irrationality of the atheist claiming moral absolutes while denying them. And then we can show them how they are indeed aware of morality and sin and that they’ve rejected the true God with their foolish reckonings. In doing this we call them to the cross. We call them to repentance.
This is what it means to be “sharpening our sword.” All of our disputations with unbelievers should end at the cross of Christ and the offer of salvation through the repentance of sin. Both the myth of neutrality and the false gospel of “nice” that calls the acceptance of sin “unity and tolerance” must be rejected.
Oh, and pray for Harrison Butker too. We should always pray for those who are taking the flaming arrows of the enemy for having spoken the truth. Stand with those who stand for Christ and don’t shrink back because this is the true fight…the fight for truth. Don’t be like the hypocrites who think they can have peace with darkness. And remember never to try and fight the darkness with anything but the great and true light of Jesus Christ and His life-giving gospel.
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