Top 4 Most Contested Truths in America (Part 2)

Welcome to family policy matters in engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Ralston, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will fall better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation to the park to transform NC families rally dinner featuring Dr. Ryan T. Anderson, president of the thanks and Public policy Center. We hope you enjoy the third truth not only retreated male and female male and female created for each other in marriage. This hasn't changed just because it's "got another case from the Ottomans are wrong. They caliber it felt wrong. That doesn't change the truth about marriage, nor does it change the importance of marriage. The reason the any of us who are active in the so-called gay marriage to be involved at all because we cared about the larger marriage to be right and the emphasis wasn't on the gay part was on the marriage part marriage is about uniting men and women as husbands and wives to them.

The mothers and fathers to the children that that union creates. It's based not on an ecclesial law, but on a natural law is that we don't want the government and the baptism business. We do have the state in the marriage business because marriage is both a natural institution and a supernatural institution of marriage, please both the civic function function in producing the next generation of citizens and then raising the next generation of citizens to adulthood. Please a secret function name Jesus elevates marriage.

We can have Protestant, Catholic to be sub sacramental theology or covenantal doubt, but he takes a natural institution that's their creation and he elevates it into the supernatural domain.

So marriage needs to do dual service. When marriages fail to form in the first place when marriages fall apart prematurely after you get the social scientists just give you reams of evidence about the poor outcomes outcomes for the adults. Men who never get married or prickly women after divorce. Not good for adults in those situations. Children who are conceived either outside of marriage or children with her parents separate without good reason.

This is racy, lower rates of graduation higher rates of poverty, lower rates of employment, higher rates of incarceration etc. etc. marriage is like the original Department of Health education and welfare.

It's the best way of producing that next generation. The legal redefinition of marriage doesn't do anything to advance average only makes it harder to say something I heard Pope Francis say about seven years ago I was in the room where he said this a child has a right to a mother and a father and today how many either of our religious leaders are civic leaders are just kind of ordinary Americans are willing to assert that that a child deserves and pumps France's language. The child has a right to a mother and a father which is to say that even though temporarily we've experienced a setback with the burger fell with the Supreme Court's ruling on marriage. That doesn't mean that we should stop advocating either for the truth about what marriage is simultaneously just trying to promote family and marriage last truth that I want to mention sober made an image and likeness of God were treated male and female male and female are created for each other in marriage. The fourth truth. All of us are created for God's corollary of being made in the image and likeness of God were all made for God.

He's made us for himself. Our hearts are restless until they rest in him and Augustine's famous phrase from confessions.

This means that it's our own folly to try to think that we can organize our public life, as if God doesn't exist range of two things I want to get here one is going to be the role of religion in the public square and the second the importance the centrality of religious liberty to save the role of religion pumps where none of the founders thought that what they were doing was creating what father Richard John Neuhaus referred to as the naked public square.

None of them thought the First Amendment to our Constitution, which protects the free exercise of religion and prohibits Congress from establishing religion. None of them thought that meant that they were separating religion from politics and morality from law what they were doing.

They were prohibiting the federal government from establishing a church and that was it was an institutional separation. The institution of the church and the institution of the state were two different institutions, but of course religious believers need to be active in the public square. Religious believers need to be advocating for justice advocating for the least among us. The founders knew that actually it does this this experiment in democratic self-government wouldn't be possible unless the people themselves were self governed and left labor based upon a sound understanding of morality and religion in our Constitution was made only with our conclusion is intended only for moral and religious people was unsuitable to any other. And yet we tried to do now for two generations is to conduct our public life, as if God doesn't exists as if religion and morality have nothing to say about law and justice and look where it's got us setting. One thing that can be important is for religious believers to be able to speak into these debates and to do it in a way that's not confrontational offputting derogatory to do it and when some charitable but forceful and persuasive way.

We need someone bringing that FA perspective to bear in our laws. We needed a moral foundation to our laws something to say we cannot allow the government to course people when it comes to their conscientious beliefs. We can't allow the government to force Roman Catholic nuns to pay for abortion causing contraceptives.

We can allow the government to force evangelical bakers to bake cakes celebrating same-sex weddings. We can allow the government to force to Catholic hospitals into performing sex reassignment procedures.

We can all the government to force Christian adoption agencies to placing children with two moms or two dads rather than both a mother and a father in all the examples I just gave you all of those are kind of real life cases that we need to be engaged in and one reason why is because the duties that we have to God are the most important duties that we have.

This is something that both George Washington and James Madison. If you read some of their writings on religious liberty. They fully understood that because we have certain duties to the creator that then creates rights amongst men in the right to religious liberty, the right to the free exercise of religion, not just the freedom of worship. One of the most annoying things during the Obama presidency was when Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chapter redefining free exercise of religion is freedom of worship is what that implies that OSHA, the Little sisters of the poor there free to do what they want to do when they're in their chapel.

I didn't go to mass the compare rosary, whatever. But as soon as they step outside of the four walls of their chapel and they start taking care of the elderly, the sick and dying. Then they have to play by the government's rules with the founders intended with the free actually religion was something not just a one hour Sunday morning.

Maybe an hour Wednesday night for a Bible study, a men's group 24 hours a day seven days a week. You should be free to live according to your deepest convictions about God provided the peaceful rate provided they don't harm other people, provided they don't undermine justice or the common good. The Little sisters of the poor, the adoption agencies. The Baker the forest photographer. The medical doctors weren't harming anyone. All they wanted to do was to be free to do good to people in need and if you think about everything I've said tonight in terms of the abortion debate in terms of the marriage debate in terms of the gender identity debate. It's good to be vitally important that faith-based institutions maintain the freedom to exercise in accordance with the truth on those issues vitally important that Christian adoption agencies can keep the doors open to assist children in need to assist young women who want to place a child with a faith-based agency right so imagine what your experience is like at the DMV. Every couple of years after go to renew your driver's license and imagine what it would be like working with like the government DMV version of an adoption agency but there might be a reason why the faith-based agencies do a better job at this because adopting a child isn't just your perfunctory paperwork issued something that touches all aspects of the human person. There's in an economic component.

There's also a deep emotional spiritual component. Faith-based agencies can minister to the entire person to the entire family can minister both to the mother placing the child for adoption and the family seeking to adopt that child. We want them to maintain the freedom to do so we need them to go to do so we need a faith-based hospitals to practice good medicine for people with gender dysphoria.

We need there to be places where families can turn to right now mean this is this is this is something that we need a generation of Christian medical school students to go and specializes in good medicine for people. Gender dysphoria is a very small list of physicians who practice medicine correctly and it's confidential is because they're afraid of being targeted and losing their jobs because they're there they don't know what their religious liberty rights will look like right we need to protect the religious liberty on these rights, whether it's for the adoption agencies. Whether it's for the medical professionals and I think even most important for the school's why do so many families sacrifice to pay tuition to send their kids to a church school rather than going to the government run school for free because so many jurisdictions you can't trust the public schools. I am one of those jurisdictions. Unfortunately, my wife and I have the luxury were in homeschool our kids.

Many families don't have that luxury. We live less than a mile away from a trailer park and right across the street from the trailer park is the public school the lockets elementary school.

Those families are trapped in that school.

That's their only option so simultaneously we were going to have to work for school reform to give them better options and work for religious liberty so that people want to opt out. In the meantime have the freedom to do some parental rights. All these things need to go together because were need to protect the freedom for people who momentarily might be in the minority momentarily on some of these issues, we might be in the minority. We need the freedom to continue living out the truth, bearing witness to the truth evangelizing converting winning hearts and minds so that more people come to believe the truth come to know the truth, because ultimately the truth is a person insolently wrap up there I'll just say I made.

I now run which is something I never thought I would have to say now run a think tank which means I have the deal with all sorts of administrative and financial issues, but my main location historically was I was a scholar and I like reading I like writing my kind of bread and butter is snow spending eight hours a day alone in a room with books and I enjoyed and as important as that is an end in here I will quote someone who's even better at that than I am probably one of the greatest intellectuals of all of our lifetime school. He still think God living next Pope emeritus Benedict and before he became Pope Cardinal Ratzinger.

She was one of the leading European intellectuals and he debated all the leading secularist philosophers and all the like anti-God theologians etc. etc. in Europe and one of his quotes that's always kind of stuck with me as Ray said it's not the arguments of the philosophers and theologians that win converts the beauty of the artists in the holiness of the saints, and what he meant by that is as important as it is the people like John and me make good arguments, it's even more important that all of us live out the truth with beauty and holiness that are best witnessed long-term intergenerational. Your best witness to our own families to our neighbors to her coworkers isn't going to be the email that we send them the tweet that we send that might not even be the book that you give them it's going to be your own life. The beauty of your life. The family life that you build holiness that's evident in your life and on that no matter what happens. Later this month or next month at the Supreme Court. No matter what happens in the wall for the culture. All of us cooperating with God's grace I have it within our power to be those witnesses beautiful holy witnesses to the truth. Thank you.

This is been part shall featuring Dr. Ryan Anderson speaker dinner on May 10, 20, 22 to hear part one of Dr. Anderson's address for more information about the family visit our website family.org that's in the family. RG thanks so much for listening and may God bless you and your family