License

Speaking to The Times, Richard Dawkins said he fears the removal of religion would be a bad idea for society because it would give people “license to do really bad things.” He likened the importance of a higher power informing our morality to the presence of surveillance cameras to prevent shoplifting, warning people would feel free to commit crimes if the need to obey the “divine spy camera in the sky, reading their every thought” was removed. He said, “People may feel free to do bad things because they feel God is no longer watching them.”

The Oxford University fellow recalled an experiment that had been set up in a University coffee shop by his former pupil, Melissa Bateson, at the University of Newcastle which allowed students to pay for their hot drinks via an “honesty box.” The price list was displayed on the wall and was decorated with either floral imagery or a pair of staring eyes depending on the week. Bateson published her findings in a paper, saying: “people paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed.”

Dawkins concluded that “whether irrational or not, it does, unfortunately, seem plausible that if somebody sincerely believes God is watching his every move, he might be more likely to be good. I must say I hate that idea. I want to believe that humans are better than that. I'd like to believe I'm honest whether anyone is watching or not.”

Born in 1949, singer Bruce Springsteen was the eldest of three children, and the only son, in a working-class family in Freehold, New Jersey. The house in which Springsteen spent his early childhood was literally a ruin, the walls slowly collapsing. A subsequent house lacked running hot water, so the family filled the single tub with pots heated downstairs on the gas stove; the kids took turns bathing in the same water. Family relationships lacked stability. Bruce's grandmother was devoted to him, and his mother was loyal to her brooding and unstable husband, but rules were nonexistent. At five and six, Bruce was staying up until three in the morning and sleeping until three in the afternoon. He ate when and whatever he wanted. In his memoir Springsteen writes, "It was a place where I felt an ultimate security, full license and a horrible unforgettable boundary-less love. It ruined me and it made me."

Later in his life, Springsteen writes that he started therapy, probing the "mess that he was," to borrow the phrase he uses for his father. As he describes his habit of cutting off romantic relationships after a couple of years, he's clearly still wrestling with that "horrible unforgettable boundary-less love" from the past:

I wanted to kill what loved me because I couldn't stand being loved. It infuriated and outraged me, someone having the temerity to love me—nobody does that … and I'll show you why. It was ugly and a red flag for the poison I had running through my veins, my genes. Part of me was rebelliously proud of my emotionally violent behavior, always cowardly and aimed at the women in my life.

Possible Preaching Angles: God's Love; Christmas; Incarnation—In the Incarnation God came close to us so he could say and show "I love you'—even when we can't stand being love by him.

In the last days of the Civil War, the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia, fell to the Union army. Abraham Lincoln insisted on visiting the city. Even though no one knew he was coming, slaves recognized him immediately and thronged around him. He had liberated them by the Emancipation Proclamation, and now Lincoln's army had set them free. According to Admiral David Porter, an eyewitness, Lincoln spoke to the throng around him:

"My poor friends, you are free—free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it …. Liberty is your birthright."

But Lincoln also warned them not to abuse their freedom. "Let the world see that you merit [your freedom]," Lincoln said, "Don't let your joy carry you into excesses. Learn the laws and obey them."

That is very much like the message Jesus gives to those whom he has liberated by his death and resurrection. Jesus gives us our true birthright—spiritual freedom. But that freedom isn't an excuse for disobedience; it forms the basis for learning and obeying God's laws.

"If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy."

—Peter James Lee, one of 60 Episcopal bishops who voted to approve the appointment of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire

Ali is a young man with little money and no wife. This is all the incentive he needs to take the ninety-minute bus ride from his village to Baghdad. As soon as he arrives, the 21-year-old Iraqi heads straight to Abu Abdullah's. There it costs him only $1.50 for 15 minutes alone with a woman.

The room is a cell with a curtain for a door, and Ali complains that Abu Abdullah's women should bathe more often. But Ali sees the easy and inexpensive access to sexual favors as a big improvement over the days when Saddam Hussein was in power. The dictator strictly controlled vices such as prostitution, alcohol, and drugs. The fall of the regime gave rise to every kind of depravity. In addition to brothels, Iraqis have their choice of adult cinemas, where 70 cents buys an all-day ticket, and the audience hoots in protest if a nonpornographic trailer interrupts the action.

Referring to all the newly available immoral activities, Ali grins and says, "Now we have freedom."

Philip Yancey wrote of a friend of his named Susan, a Christian who told Yancey "that her husband did not measure up and she was actively looking for other men to meet her needs for intimacy":

When Susan mentioned that she rose early each day to "spend an hour with the Father," I asked, "In your meetings with the Father, do any moral issues come up that might influence this pending decision about leaving your husband?"

Susan bristled: "That sounds like the response of a white Anglo-Saxon male. The Father and I are into relationship, not morality. Relationship means being wholly supportive and standing alongside me, not judging."

D. A. Carson, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, used to meet with a young man from French West Africa for the purpose of practicing their German. He writes:

Once a week or so, we had had enough, so we went out for a meal together and retreated to French, a language we both knew well. In the course of those meals we got to know each other. I learned that his wife was in London, training to be a medical doctor. He was an engineer who needed fluency in German in order to pursue doctoral studies in engineering in Germany.

I soon discovered that once or twice a week he disappeared into the red-light district of town. Obviously he went to pay his money and have his woman.

Eventually I got to know him well enough that I asked him what he would do if he discovered that his wife was doing something similar in London.

"Oh," he said, "I'd kill her."

"That's a bit of a double standard, isn't it?" I asked.

"You don't understand. Where I come from in Africa, the husband has the right to sleep with many women, but if a wife is unfaithful to her husband she must be killed."

"But you told me you were raised in a mission school. You know that the God of the Bible does not have double standards like that."

He gave me a bright smile and replied, "Ah, le bon Dieu, il doit nous pardonner; c'est son metier [Ah, God is good. He's bound to forgive us; that's his job].

Today, "freedom" seems to mean the right to abort one's child or to censor certain lofty ideas from the public schools while tolerating the filthiest of pornography as First Amendment-protected speech and press. Conviction in political leaders is seen as "extremism." It is thought better to consult the polls to arrive at a bottom-line consensus than to posit firm standards of right and wrong and challenge the nation to follow.