Wednesday, October 7, 2026

0:00It's Wednesday, October 7, 2026. I'm Albert Motler, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. We're going to start out today in France, and by now you've probably seen the headlines. The biggest, most urgent story coming from France is widespread protests, which are being undertaken basically by high school students. The fact that high school students are creating an international headline, an entire sequence of them tells you that something interesting is going on here. In the French system, you're really talking about something like the equivalent of grades 10, 11, and 12 here in the United States. The big thing these students are concerned about is that they're being short-changed, they say, in terms of their educational experience and the quality of the education. Just a little background here. Ever since the French Revolution, and of course the roots of this go back into the medieval civilization of France, but especially ever since the French Revolution with the secularization

1:01of the schools, the French government has been basically very, very proud of its schools of its academic achievement. As a matter of fact, if you go back just a matter of decades, if you look at the European context, many of the French people would say that they are the standard-setter when it comes to academic excellence in their schools, especially the advanced schools 10, 11, 12. This is one of those countries that makes a pretty clear distinction between those who are going to be headed for, say, studying the liberal arts and in the professions and those who are likely to go into other forms of work. But the big thing is that these high school students are saying that is now gone. They're being short-changed. Now here are a couple of big things playing into this. Number one, the closing or the proposed closing of so many schools, the consolidation of so many schools and the lack of teachers and what the students say are qualified teachers in many of the schools that are now existing and may still exist. Now here's where, in worldview terms, we got big things going on.

2:02Number one, why would there be the need to close these schools? And the answer is the falling birth rate. The birth rate has been falling for years and now it's showing up in school enrollments. And then why would there be a teacher shortage? Well, that has to do with economics. Okay. So, we're talking about economics. We're talking about a very big story. And right now, France is on the front pages of the financial papers precisely because France is in a financial crisis. It's in a big financial crisis. It current trends hold. Then within, we'll just say, the time between now and the middle of the century, France may have a yearly deficit that amounts to something like 200% of its budget. And so you're looking at a situation in which France is already now spending more than it takes in. By some estimations, about 125 to 135% of what's coming in, you also have changes in the bond markets and without getting into all kinds of detail, the international bond markets hold a lot of this debt. And that debt is now going to be more expensive.

3:03Now, that's not irrelevant even to the United States of America. But it's an interesting issue for the US. It's a political crisis for France. You also have interesting things happening. You have a manual Macron. The French president now approaching the end of his second five year term. He's not eligible to run again. And so France is going to have elections and get this virtually. All the candidates are promising a very significant amount of increased spending. And that includes the candidates that are identified as conservative because right now what they're trying to say is we will be able to fund even larger programs. And as you look at this, you see that even the candidate sometimes described as far right, Marine Le Pen. He's actually calling for France to lower the national retirement age to about 60. Okay. So that might trigger something in terms of your recent memory because it just a matter of a few years ago, France under the Macron government tried to raise the retirement age precisely because the retirement benefits are too expensive.

4:05There's not enough income. There's too much output. And now you have a supposedly conservative candidate or at least a candidate from the right who's arguing to make the problem worse by allowing people to retire at about age 60. And by the way, the goal here is that people would have the income when they retire, which is at least close to what they had before they retired. And so you look at this and you go, this can't work. By the way, this is a matter of math. And so the numbers just won't add up. But when it comes to politics, you add politics to math. Sometimes we'll indeed, many times, the math is what suffers. But what you're looking at now in France is a huge social response. And you're looking at teenagers. One 15 year old boy had his hand blown off because it appears he picked up a police grenade which went off and thus it caused injury. You have lots of teenagers, mostly teenage boys, young males being arrested. You also have parents who are being drawn into this. And amazingly, some parents see this is in the tradition of historic French protests.

5:06And they're actually kind of encouraging their kids to do it. Other parents are quite concerned that they're keeping their sons in particular, but their sons and their daughters home from going to these schools. Some of these schools are going to be closing, according to the current government projections. And others already have a deficit of teachers. This is a very explosive situation. And as I said, we're not just using that as a metaphor. When we look at the kinds of riots that are taking place, now you have another thing to add to the mix. And that is that you have some of the labor unions who are saying, we're going to stand with these teenagers in solidarity. Now here is something that is not absolutely unique to France, but compared to the United States. France is quite different in this respect. When you look at this kind of protest, the France see it as something that just might be an important statement that we need to understand. And thus you have a lot of popular support when there's this kind of protest. There's this kind of even riots when it comes to these young people and their schools. But the bottom line is, this is a financial problem.

6:07It's a math problem. The math problem is not going to go away, but we understand it's also a moral problem. And it's very sad right now. It's quite quite a matter of concern to see that the current French government clearly does not know how to respond to this. Now at the same time, you have the Wall Street Journal running an article of the headline, France's appetite for magic money has turned into a debt bomb. The subhead, after years of overspending, the country has emerged as one of Europe's weakest links. Investors are bracing for things to get worse. It is very, very interesting. Currently we are told the projection is that by the end of the decade, things are going to get really bad. But France is debt according to the Wall Street Journal. It's now about 120% of the gross domestic product there in France. And quote, risk putting the economy in which it's central bank chief recently called a gradual stranglehold. Okay. Now here's something from the Christian worldview we just need to keep in mind. And that is that math, we believe, corresponds to reality. Now that doesn't mean that all mathematical formulas are legitimate.

7:07It doesn't mean that all mathematical claims are true. It does mean that the numbers only count one way. That the math only works one way. When you talk about objective truth, it's interesting that even though you have many modern people who don't believe in objective truth when it comes to morality, they still believe it when it comes to math. And so you know, you look at this and you would say, we are talking about math that is simply not going to give way to your argument. But one of the things that going on here is not just about France. France is a picture of it right now. And that is that we have so many governments that have made so many promises. And politicians have learned the way to get into offices to make even bigger promises. And so many of these promises are made. And the big thing is is that getting elected is not the same thing as governing. And so the French situation is no one actually knows how to govern France. It's a legitimate crisis. And you have a far left and a far right. And that really comes into play here because it is the far left that is understood to be a major instigator of these teenage riots,

8:08which are not going to stay limited to these high school students. And so you also have a headline coming, for instance, from the telegraph, the nihilistic far left is pushing France to the brink. So this is a reference to nihilism. And this is the worldview that says there is no moral truth, period. It's nothing is some literally just in terms of its etymology. But nihilism says there's no objective truth. There's no true morality. There's no true meaning to anything. And the far left, I think it's very interesting, the telegraph, which is a major paper there in London identifies the far left in France as nihilistic. And I think it is. I think that's exactly what's going on. And this article makes it very clear. And they put it in a political context. Listen to this quote. In seven months time, the French will choose their next president and Melanchol. That's the left wing candidate is doing two things. First, he's already begun campaigning galvanized by early polls, showing he could make it through to the second round to face the far right's marine lipin. Secondly, he is preparing the insurrection.

9:08He hopes will follow if lipin is elected. He knows the country is fragile and will use every lever at his disposal to fracture it further and so chaos end quote. Okay. The fact that you have one of the most respected London newspapers reporting that about France in its current political context tells you that the stakes are very high. For Christians, it's another reminder of the fact that worldview matters. And what you see in this kind of conflict is actually a conflict of worldviews. That doesn't mean that both of these worldviews are well thought out. The worldview of these students may not be very well thought out at all. But when it comes to the big issues, you're looking at France coming apart at the seams with a national election fast on the horizon. That could be a sign of things to come. Not only but France, but for virtually all. Modern nations. We've been warned. But while we're thinking about issues of morality and the headlines, how about this? This is from the Financial Times also in London quote. Former German spy chief arrested for treason.

10:10Treason. Let that word sink in for a moment. The subhead, X intelligence head August Haening, suspected of selling state secrets to foreign power. All right. So this story broke yesterday and you also have a Deutsche Wellet, which is a major German news source saying that Haening served as the agency's chief. That's the chief of the BND foreign intelligence agency. That's the main foreign intelligence agency of Germany. Pretty much equivalent to what we would say is the CIA in the United States. And then Deutsche Wellet also tells us that he served as that agency's chief from December 1998 to November 2005. He then moved to the Federal Interior Ministry where he was state secretary until November of 2009. Okay. He's 80 years old now and he's being charged with using the years after government service to gain access to government secrets. We're talking about something like 4,000 pages of highly classified information passed to someone. Okay. That raises some immediate questions, doesn't it? Who might that someone be? What might be the nation behind this?

11:11At least one major newspaper there in Germany has said that the recipient nation was Azerbaijan. Okay. That could make it even more interesting because it is unlikely that the ultimate destination for this or the ultimate demand for this is coming from Azerbaijan. The big question from whom is it coming? It's also interesting that Deutsche Wellet describes the case as quote, Germany's biggest espionage scandal of the century. Okay. We haven't seen a headline like this in some time and we should be thankful for that. But it does take us back to remember that as you talk about the development of modern intelligence agencies and that's really only a late 19th and 20th century development. You have to put that in the context of the great conflicts of the 20th century and of course that meant two world wars but most importantly it meant the Cold War with the face off between the United States and our allies, primarily known as NATO and the Soviet Union and its allies, primarily known as the Warsaw Pack. Okay.

12:12So you look at all that and you recognize, wow, there were so many spy stories from that era. And by the way, those spy stories, let's just say that many of them are fictional. You know, they're presented in novels and yet the reality is that the real spies are sometimes if anything more interesting than the fictional ones. You often hear the expression truth is stranger than fiction. Well, in so much of these espionage accounts, it turns out the truth really is stranger than fiction. When it comes to this man, we are once again talking about something like 4,000 documents, massive damage to Western intelligence organizations. And that's because when you talk about something like the B&D there in Germany, it works very closely with allied intelligence services like the CIA and the equivalent in many other European countries. So a headline like this is not just of concern to Germany, it is of concern to all Western powers. We are told that the 80 year old was arrested, quote, he did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

13:13You also have this. And once again, this is coming from the financial times in London, very, very responsible news source, quote, the great of intelligence materials involved in the legal raise urgent questions among the B&D's close partners worldwide. As Europe's biggest intelligence service, the BND is a routine recipient of highly classified information from agencies such as the CIA, MI6 and DGSE. The sharing of such information is dependent on total confidence that it will not be leaked or shared with third parties. And yet that is exactly what this criminal allegation alleges. We're talking here about the fact that he is said to have transferred for money, these documents to quote an officer of a foreign intelligence service. End quote. So you look at this and there are a couple of things for us to keep in mind. Number one, if you look at the context of espionage, it is one of the endeavors human beings are engaged in, which brings the moral issues so routinely to the fore. In other words, if you're a spy, if you're engaged in espionage, you have to follow certain

14:17rules. But what exactly are those rules? They are not the same rules that you would have on a playground or in a classroom. They're not the same rules you would have in a family. That's one of the issues that certainly vexed the Christian conscience through much of the 20th century. And yet at the same time, it was Christians who pioneered the moral understanding of how many of these things ought rightly to be understood. So for one thing, you have a statement made by someone like the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who said that truth has to be supported by protected by a bodyguard of lies. And you know, if that is something said in your home, it's big trouble. If that's something that is said in the classroom, that's big trouble. If something said in your church, big trouble. But said by a spy, you understand that is a different moral context. So in the Christian worldview, this is referred to as moralism or ethics in extremists. It's an extreme situation. It's a situation in which as you look at espionage, you look at spy craft, you're looking

15:17at the fact that there are people who will use this information to destroy your civilization. And there are plots and there is thus the need to understand those plots and to try to prevent those plots from being successful. There is also a multiplicity of worlds. You not only have espionage, you also have, and this tells you a great deal, counter espionage. And then you basically have counter counter espionage. Because if you are dealing in a world of lies, guess what? You run out of any ability to know whom you can trust. In this kind of situation, just to bring this to a conclusion, you do have a criminal code. And the criminal code is going to say, this is wrong. You cannot sell out your own people. You cannot sell state secrets. You are putting people's lives at stake. This man, as I just said, according to news reports, is now 80 years old. It may be that he thought he was getting away with it yet another reminder that when you look at something like this, the fact is that it is usually found out.

16:19It's just a matter of time. And we also understand that timing. It's very important. All right. Now let's come back over to this side of the Atlantic. A couple of obituaries are actually the most important stories here. One of them has to do with the death of Dennis Haster, former speaker of the house. He was speaker of the House of Representatives from 1998 until 2006. Okay. So I think one of the things to think about here is that many Americans, especially younger Americans, probably do not even recognize the name. And that is because even though the speaker of the house is third in line of succession, such a high constitutional office. And even though the House of Representatives is such an incredibly powerful political body, the fact is that the memory of most Americans when it comes to former speakers of the House has to do with names on committee rooms, conference rooms and office buildings, et cetera. But when it comes to Dennis Haster, we are talking about something that demands our attention. He was a high school teacher and a high school wrestling coach who got into politics and went on some congressional staffs.

17:21And then there was an opportunity for him to run for a seat in Congress, which he won. He worked his way into a form of Republican leadership, but he wasn't seen as a likely candidate to move into a position like being speaker of the House. By the way, that's one of the interesting stories about the historic role of speakers of the House. Regardless of party, many of them were really not thought of in that role until all the sudden a political context made them quite important for that role. Okay, so Dennis Haster was only made speaker of the House after when Republican speaker resigned, that was former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. And then the Republicans chose someone else to serve in that role who then was revealed to have been involved in a scandal. And then he had to withdraw and the Republicans had to regroup and guess what, when they regrouped, Dennis Haster, who by some accounts is kind of politically boring, looked like an absolute rock of stability. And sometimes, especially when a political party has a majority in the House of Representatives, it gets into an issue of controversy.

18:21It just needs stability. And Dennis Haster was so stable as speaker of the House that he served from 1998 to 2006. That's the longest tenure of any Republican speaker of the House of Representatives in American history. He retired and then went basically into a very lucrative consulting career. And that would have been where most Americans would have lost track of him, except for one big thing. He was later brought under criminal charges for the sexual abuse of some of his teenage wrestlers when he was that high school wrestling coach. And it turned out that he played guilty to the charges and eventually served time in a federal penitentiary. Just imagine that she have a former speaker, the House of Representatives, third in succession for the US presidency, who is now serving time in a penitentiary for one of the most grievous crimes, imaginal. Okay. People at the time began to talk to one another, people who knew Dennis Haster, I had been in some meetings with him. I certainly didn't really know him, but there were people in Congress who believe they knew him very well.

19:22No one appears to have had any suspicion that anything like this could have happened. And then all the sudden some of the stories came out and then all the sudden as defendant, he played guilty and then he articulated his guilt in court. And it just absolutely blew the circuits of so many people, particularly Republicans who had worked with him. And you also have now something very, very interesting, which is a moral parable, which is when you look at the obituaries for Dennis Haster. For instance, just to take the most authoritative obituary in the United States, it's usually that offered by the New York Times. Here's the headline, Dennis Haster 84, politician disgraced by child sexual abuse dies. The subhead, the longest serving Republican speaker of the house admitted to abusing these teenage students. It's just a moral horror, but it is also a parable. And that parable is this, like so many others, including perhaps what we're talking about with this former spy, head of a spy agency in Germany, they actually thought they were getting away with it until all of a sudden, they're not getting away with it.

20:23And I want you to notice something else, even as we live in a very morally confused time, you know, Americans pretty much understand this headline and the moral horror of it. That is not debated in our society, which means there is at least some moral sanity left. The second obituary is of the late evangelist Jim Baker headline in the Washington Post, I quote, Jim Baker disgraced televangelist who went to prison dies at 86. So once again, you got former televangelist went to prison dies in disgrace at age 86. Okay. So Americans of a certain age certainly know the name Jim Baker and usually with his wife, Jim and Tammy Baker, they had worked with the 700 club. They came from a charismatic background. They met in college because they married. They couldn't continue in college because the college didn't allow married couples as students. And so they went into a ministry very much in the charismatic pinnacle of the world. When Pat Robertson began CB and the Christian broadcasting network, they began working with him, including as Jim Baker was hosting its headline 700 club.

21:28And then he also decided he would break off and he and Tammy Faye would start their own ministry. It became known as P.T.L. which was known originally as praise the Lord. It was then changed to people that love. But in the mainstream media, they referred to P.T.L. as pass the loot. And that is because it was all about prosperity theology. It was all about money. But when it comes to Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, you are talking about two of the most interesting figures in the history of American religion. He was amazingly effective. And I don't say this is a compliment. He was incredibly effective at manipulating emotions. He could cry. Pat Robertson evidently one point said he can cry just on a dime. He can just do this and he was able to raise money and telephones and things like that because he would just pour it on. Tammy Faye Baker was one of the most exaggerated characters in all of American public life. She wore so much makeup. She wore those fantastic wigs and all the rest. I can just tell you that as a seminary student, I had the opportunity to visit a taping of

22:29the P.T.L. show. And I can just tell you in person, it was, it was no less strange than on television. So when it comes to Jim Baker, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker decided to establish what became known in South Carolina, very close to Charlotte. So very close to the North Carolina border. They established Heritage USA. And it was a Christian theme park, complete with a high rise hotel, complete with a water slide, complete with amusements and all the rest. At one point at its height, it was third. Particularly behind Disney World and Disney Land in terms of the number of people who were visiting the theme park. And you could just look at this and you understand it was all about prosperity theology. And yet it was also pointing to something that's interesting just in sociological terms. Conservative Christians, families in the United States didn't have that many places they could take their children. And so this was presented as a safe place to take children. When it comes to Jim Baker himself, he said, and this is the prosperity theology in full bloom. God wants his people to go first class.

23:30We preach prosperity. We preach abundant life. Christ switched above all things that we prosper. End quote. Now Christ promises the abundant life, but that does not mean financial abundance. But this whole tradition of prosperity theology goes back in the Old Testament. You see it in the book of Acts. You see it in Simon Majes and people like this who tried to sell basically and manipulate the power of God. It continues throughout church history. It certainly came to full bloom in the 19th century in the United States. And in the 20th century, full bloom also met fully broadcast on television. And so now you could have this prosperity theology message taken into millions of American homes by some estimations. The PTO programming was in between 14 and 17 million American homes each day. Just think about that. And there was big money there. And about $172 million is what the enterprise was valued at. At the end, listen to this quote. The bakers were chauffeur and a fleet of three Cadillac limousines and had several top of

24:32the line Mercedes-Benz's, a Corvette and at least one vintage Rolls Royce. But in 1987 when everything came crashing down, the bakers TV network theme park and related businesses were ticking in at least $129 million a year. But just remember this means you got to go back about 40 years to get that figure. As a you update it for inflation, you're talking about a lot of money. But then came the accusation that Jim Baker had been paying off a woman with whom he had had a sexual affair. The woman was Jessica Hahn who at the time of the incident was a 21 year old church secretary from New York. It turns out that the PTO ministry had authorized $265,000 in basically silence payments to Jessica Hahn. It became very well known by the Charlotte observer in a very in depth investigative report. Everything blew up. Jim Baker came out and as I say, he could cry on a dime. He cried in terms of what he would have to do and he withdrew and interestingly enough,

25:32one of the strangest events in the late 20th century in terms of American evangelicalism. Jerry Falwell was asked to step in an independent, fundamentalist Baptist by tradition. He was asked to step in to run the hair, did you essay thing and PTO just in order to settle things down. That only lasted about six months. By the way, in that six months some amazing things happened. Number one, your suspicion is right. It turns out that this was a bigger scandal than people had imagined. So that scandal broke. The key year here is 1987. It was in March and 1987 that the scandal broke about the payoffs and all the rest. It was later in 1987 that Jerry Falwell basically left the ministry in terms of this temporary responsibility, but also made very clear. There is no way that Jim and Tammy Febaker are coming back. Okay. So there's a personal angle here. I want to tell you I just can't, I can't not tell this. In 1987, the midst of theological controversy at that time and the conservative resurgence

26:36in the Southern Baptist Convention. The SPC seminary sponsored a conference known as the conference on biblical inarrency at the Baptist conference center at Ridgecress, very close to Asheville, North Carolina. Okay. So the idea was there would be scholars who'd be flown in non-Southern Baptist scholars in order to present actually the case for and against the inarrency of scripture. Let's just say thankfully the case for the inarrency of scripture was very well made. But here's the thing. I was at that time working as one of the organizers of the conference. And at that time I was a doctoral student. And at that time, the Asheville airport suddenly got closed because there was a buckling of the asphalt and it wasn't safe for planes to land. So all the speakers had to fly into Charlotte, which meant we had about a two hour drive, which meant going and coming. We had about four hours. And I'll just tell you, in my life, it was the absolute providence of God because I got to spend time with people in the car for those two hours. I went to pick up J.I. Packer, one of the most famous of evangelical theologians and he became a dear friend.

27:36And part of it's because we had four hours together in the car, but I've got to tell you this. As J.I. Packer was getting ready to fly back home from this conference, the story about PTL and the whole Baker scandal was breaking. And he asked if we had time and we did, if we could drive by Heritage USA. So yes, I'm the human being who was tasked with driving J.I. Packer to heritage USA. This austere, Anglican and Puritan minister wanted to go by and see Heritage USA. Okay. So here's the thing, given the timing, the story broke in March of 1987. This was in May, the conference was May 4th, who 7 1987. This one, the story broke about the fact that there was so much more that Jim Baker had done. And here's the thing, we drove on the property and guess what we saw? There was a giant garden with the word forgiven written in flowering plants and a plow with the tractor was plowing forgiven up. In other words, forgiven no more.

28:37I can just tell you that I have never seen a parable quite so clear as a tractor plowing through the word forgiven. I also evidently am going to go down in history as the man who drove J.I. Packer to heritage USA. Yeah, that's a part of the story too. Now here's the thing, when Jim Baker was in federal prison, his wife Tammy Faye Baker divorced him. She then married Ro Messner, who had been the head of the construction firm that had built so much of heritage USA. She also shifted a great deal left and actually became kind of an icon like Dolly Parton in the gay male community in the United States. There's a lot to this story. Jim Baker himself remarried and then went back into his own form of televangelism, but in this case it wasn't about really the gospel. It was about selling stuff and his last brush with the law had to do with the context of COVID when he was going to the internet to sell colloidal silver that's silver put into a chemical emulsion as a way to prevent or to treat COVID-19.

29:41As I said in the beginning, you simply can't make this up, but it's also a reminder that if you turn your life into a public parable over scandal, it's going to be something that lives with you all the way to your obituary and beyond. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at AlbertMolar.com. You can follow me on extra Twitter by going to x.com-forward-slash-albert-molar. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to spts.edu. For information on voicecolleids, just go to voicecolleids.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.