Comments on Brit Hume's Cultural Heresy

Tiger Woods, Buddhism, and the Christian Message of Forgiveness

Recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think is a very open question and it's a tragic situation with him. I think he's lost his family. It's not clear to me that he'll be able to have a relationship with his children.

But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extent to which he can recover it seems to me depends on his faith. He's said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.

So my message to Tiger would be, Tiger, turn to your faith. Turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

I'm a bit concerned about Tiger's soul, which is admirable. I just made a more straightforward sports prediction, which is that he'll come back and win the Masters. Because, you know, he's still an awfully good golfer despite the chaos and bad news about his personal.

Life.

The Backlash Against Speaking Publicly About Christianity

Now, what kind of reaction did you get when you said that? Did you get a lot of letters and emails and things?

I got some letters and emails from people who were like me or were believers who said, great, wait on, right on, way to go. I've heard a lot of unfavorable comments from people who claim that I was a pompous jerk who had no business mouthing off on the subject and that I shouldn't have belittled the Buddhist faith and so on.

I really wasn't trying to deliver many...

No, I don't think so either. What drives...

Many, many...

What do you think drives the negative comments about, you know, Buddhism aside, I don't think you were trying to denigrate Buddhism, but what do you think drives the negative comments about Christianity?

It has always been a puzzling thing to me. The Bible even speaks of it, that, you know, you speak the name Jesus Christ and I don't mean to make a pun here, but all hell breaks loose and it has always been thus.

It is explosive. I didn't even say the name in that way. I simply spoke of the Christian faith, but that was enough to trigger this reaction. It triggers a very powerful reaction in people who do not share the faith and who do not believe.

In it.

Secularism as a Worldview and Public Orthodoxy

All right. Thank you, everybody. Thanks very much. We appreciate it.

Obviously, that wasn't me. Someone on this channel going, wow, James sounds like Brigham all of a sudden. You've probably heard the first clip, which I guess was from Fox News Sunday and Brigham in the sports predictions, in essence saying, Tiger Woods, Buddhism doesn't offer you forgiveness, but Christianity does.

And even on NBC this morning, the Today Show, in covering, you know, the daily segment of the Tiger Woods saga, which I almost never have on. I just happened to this morning, especially because I was wondering if they might do this.

They present it, you know, and just as secular media people do, it's just like, ah, crazy Brigham. You know, he's nuts. He's lost it. He's out there in the crazy zone. You have to realize the primary nature of Brigham's heresy, because that's why there has been such, you know, totally expected backlash in the media.

I was told, I saw, I think someone tweeted this morning, that over at RichardDawkins .net, they were going insane, which you'd expect the atheist to go insane. As soon as you say the name of Jesus, they will go insane.

They are, they are to secularistic materialism what Torquemada was to the Inquisition. I mean, those folks are so far out there, they want us to be charged with child abuse for introducing our children to any type of religious thought.

They are, they are the best example I could think of, of where secularism really wants to go. But you need to understand Brigham's primary heresy. Yes, there is heresy in what he said, because it assumes that there is truth in religion, that there is, that one religious opinion is better than another religious opinion, which, of course, is heretical from our society's perspective.

But that wasn't the primary heresy. It's there. But the primary heresy you need to understand is the fact that he uttered these words in the inner holy sanctum of secularism called the media. It was where he said it.

The very fact that he would say it in that context with cameras rolling, knowing that there wasn't anything that anybody could do about it. They couldn't cut to a commercial. They couldn't bail out on him.

He said what he said. It was a 54-second clip, less than a minute. But you just need to understand, for secularists, for the naturalists and materialists of the world, that was a heretical act. It was a clear violation of what is acceptable from their perspective.

They are offended that someone would dare to speak a word about Christianity in that context. Now, I don't really think about Brigham's theology. I don't know where he goes to church. But he didn't say anything outside of the basic statement that is a true statement, and that is, Buddhism does not offer redemption.

And classical, historical, Buddhist theology doesn't. It may offer a way out of sexual addiction in the sense of teaching you, or at least instructing you as to how to allegedly rid yourself of these desires.

I would argue that it accomplishes nothing along those lines. But the idea of redemption is really only accomplished through many lives of reincarnation. The idea of redemption, as Brigham was using the word, is not there.

So it was a factual statement in regards to the contrast that he drew. And the main thing that angers people would be that anyone would dare to think that Tiger Woods should repent and believe, which of course is a Christian message, which you all have your religious broadcasting, you all have your church.

Keep it out of the public sphere. We, the secularists, reign here and we will rule with an iron fist. And once again, parents, as you talk with your children, believers, as you talk together in the church, you must keep reminding one another.

Secularism is just as much a worldview, it is just as much the maker of priorities in thought and action as any theistic religion. It is a religion, it's just a non-theistic religion. And yet, it is demanding that the governmental structures of secularism and of western societies promulgate its fundamental tenets with our tax money.

And that we are to be silent about these things. That is, here's just another example, I mean you can come up with these on a regular basis, not quite as high profile as this, but you can come up with this kind of example over and over and over again.

The scuttlebutt I heard this morning was there was two trains of thought flying around the liberal bloggers today, and the number one one was apparently repeated on MSNBC, and that was, you know, didn't your mother always tell you that you're not to speak about religion in public?

And that this was the great sin because Brigham spoke of his religion in public. On a politics show, and that's the next thing they went with, and that was by speaking about his religion on a show about politics, did he not degrade his religion that should have been sanctified in the pulpit instead?

And it's like, oh my gosh!

Pure absurdity again, just based upon the idea that look, this is only stuff that you can talk about. Within the confines of your church building, it is not allowed. Out here where the rest of us are, we will be offended.

Well excuse me, Mr. Secularist, I am offended at your secularism. I am offended at your discussion of the world that my Lord created where you deny him. You offend me every single day. Now, we are equally offended.

Can we grow up enough to get past that and discuss the truth, please? It is a fundamental immaturity on the part of the thinking of the secularist to behave in this fashion. And all you gotta do is look at the wild-eyed leftist blogs today, and you will see the childlike nature of so much of this kind of behavior.

It is an amazing thing to observe. But it's something we must think about. We must, we must over and over and over again, with our children, with each other, point out the times when people who are absolutely fundamentalist secularists demand that their worldview be given the priority.

Their worldview be given support out of the public coffers and be made the religion of the nation. But then we are to just shut up. We have to point these things out. We have to recognize these things and think about these things and be able to talk with others about them.

Because as irrational as the postmodern mindset is, the person you're talking to is still creating the image of God. There is still that conscience in there. There is still that imago dei that we can appeal to.

So just a thought as I was considering this this morning, it was the first thing that popped up, a clip from both the original statement and then O 'Reilly talking to Hume about it, I guess, last evening, something like that.

I'm not sure when it was. Probably last night. I had not caught that, but it is interesting to look at.