Phil Robertson is the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty family on the A&E network. If you don’t know about them you should, they are a cultural phenomenon and Christians. Check out their testimony on I Am Second.
If you weren’t before by now you are probably at least aware of the Robertson’s and the show, Duck Dynasty. Phil did an interview with GQ in which he used correct medical terminology to pull the mask off euphemisms like gay describing what homosexuality is really about. He quoted Scripture showing it to be an abomination to God and that those who practice these things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
The homosexual lobby reacted as expected pressuring A&E to fire Phil Robertson. A&E suspended Phil. The family Robertson responded in kind and quit the show. At least this is as much as I have read so far. Some other perspectives here, How to bust A&E for sacking Phil Robertson, here Duck Dynasty vs. A&E: Money vs. Principle and here Duck Dynasty: A&E Commits an Act of Symbolic Bestiality.
That it sparked a firestorm is an understatement. Apparently it has caused the most vocal reaction against homosexual bullying in 40 years. It appears they overplayed their hand and are scrambling to figure out what to do next. We learned about it from our news sources all the way down here in Mexico. The other night in a stupor of exhaustion from finishing the semester in the Learning Center we were veg’ing in front of the TV flipping the channels and happened across the Bill O’Reilly show. We decided to watch it because he was going to discuss the Phil Robertson controversy.
What a microcosm of what is wrong with our country it turned out to be! The show was loaded with irony and hypocrisy. Like Caiaphas’ statement, “It is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish” that was a prophesy he didn’t know he was making (John 11:49, 50), I’m quite sure the talking heads did not realize the irony of what they were saying. In the war between God and his enemies there is no neutral ground.
I don’t know all the details of the controversy but I do know what I watched on O’Reilly. The debate was about whether Phil Robertson has the right to be a fool in public or not. Not one of the talking heads agreed with Phil Robertson’s biblical assessment of homosexuality. Bill O’Reilly went so far as to give an exegesis of Jesus’ teaching from Luke 6:37 and John 8, the woman caught in adultery, scolding anyone who would call homosexuality a sin. He said it would give license to do physical violence to homosexuals.
Really? So we shouldn’t call corruption in public office sin because someone might be motivated to do violence to a politician? Well, the thought may occur to them I suppose. According to the polls, there are few kind words for politicians these days. How about a thief who breaks into O’Reilly’s house or a plagiarist who steals his copyrighted words? An embezzler? A rapist? A child molester? What if it’s a man molesting a boy?
The great irony is that later in the show O’Reilly interviewed a husband and wife, parents of a child who had been homosexually molested by a teacher for three years from the time the boy was 12 years old. The teacher did to a 12-year-old boy what Phil Robertson described in graphic medical detail and Bill O’Reilly was irate that such horrible violence could be done to a child by a teacher. He should be but he has no basis for condemning the teacher based on his flawed analysis of Jesus’ teaching.
According to the talking heads Phil Robertson’s great sin was condemning another human being. Their response was to soundly condemn him. What’s wrong with this picture? You can’t have it both ways. Either it is sin to condemn another human being or it isn’t. It isn’t consistent to condemn Phil Robertson for condemning. But then, since when are fools consistent? Without God, nothing makes sense. Psalm 14:1, “The fool says in his heart there is no God” is not an evaluation of one’s IQ but a moral judgment.
This had to be one of the most irrational discussions I have ever heard by a bunch of men dressed in $5,000 suits. The makeup crew gives them an air of gravitas but a lie is a lie no matter how you dress it.
Bernie Goldberg went off on anyone who believes in the moral standards in the Bible. He used a flawed analogy to make his point saying he receives emails from people who believe the earth is only 6000 years old because Bible says so. He responded saying he didn’t care what the Bible said or even what God said, the earth is 4 ½ billion years old. He doesn’t care about what God says? Isn’t that revealing? It is the clearest admission of what is wrong with us that I have ever heard.
First of all, bullying, intimidation and ridicule do not an argument make. Nothing Goldberg said proves anything. Secondly, if it is science it has to be subject to disproof. He said it like it’s a known confirmed fact beyond disproving. It isn’t. It’s an axiom that is needed to support the theory of evolution which in turn supports the contention that man is god which in turn eliminates the moral demands of the God of the Bible. Any evidence to the contrary is overlooked with studious duplicity and there is evidence to the contrary. Third, the age of the earth is a factual question, homosexuality is a moral question. Goldberg is saying that he doesn’t care what God says about anything, especially not morality. Morality is what he says it is and according to him homosexuals are moral and Phil Robertson is immoral for condemning them. We are calling good evil and evil good.
In an ironic slip of the tongue either Bill O’Reilly or one of his guests commented that slander is in the list of sins in the passage Phil Robertson cited and that all the slanderers were in the news media and in Hollywood these days. I agree. Phil Robertson was slandered. If the Robertson patriarch was quoting 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 10, and I think he was, the word is reviler from an older English which means verbally abusive, somewhat stronger than slander. I’d say guilty as charged.
So, who is the fool, Bill O’Reilly and gang or Phil Robertson? You be the judge, God forbid I should fall under the condescending wrath of Bill O’Reilly!
This absurd insanity is God’s judgment on the nation. He has turned us over to suffer the consequences of our own perverse desires (Romans 1:24). The controversy has revealed the depth of the conflict and that there is no compromising with evil. It also should give us great hope that the future is ours. This will not go on forever or even until the Lord returns. He is governing history for his own purposes and glory right now. Count on it. “Vengeance is mine says the Lord, I will repay” (Romans 12:19 quoting Deuteronomy 32:35)…and He is.
