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Breakpoint
A Proposed Mifepristone Ban, The Bible According to James Talarico, Purity Culture and Art and the Christian
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to breakpoint this week where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian Worldview. Today we're going to talk about a new legal effort to prohibit the abortion pill regimen. We're also going to talk about purity, culture and the church. What did we get right? What did we get wrong? We're so glad you're with us. Stick around. Welcome to breakpoint this week from the Colson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet, president of the Coulson Center. John, let's start the show. This week, two thumbs up for Senator Josh Hawley. I'm always grateful for Senator Hawley. He's been an incredible advocate for the pro life movement and for women. And this week was no exception. He has introduced a bill and there will be a companion bill in the House as well that will strip the chemical abortion pill regimen of its FDA approval. And we've talked about this issue for a long time and this is obviously long overdue. We know that the chemical abortion pill is much less safe than it has been advertised for women. We of course, know it's lethally dangerous for children. And because of several steps taken under the Biden presidency and during the COVID pandemic, there's it's virtually you you going to a candy store to get it. At this point, there's almost no restrictions. You can get it over telehealth. You don't have to see a doctor. And we of course know all the risks to that. If you take the abortion pill regimen and you have an ectopic pregnancy, it be deadly. It can cause hemorrhage. The incidence rates of women who take it ending up in the emergency room with some kind of medical emergency related to it is like 11% or something where the FDA says it's below 3. As we've been talking about this issue for the last several months, you know, there have been pushes for the FDA to reconsider its approval or to change the class scheduling or whatever it is. And I appreciate those efforts. But I was really happy to see this announcement from Senator Hawley this week because this feels like a pretty straightforward, you know what, this shouldn't be on the shelf. And this also opens the gates for women who have been harmed by this to pursue legal action against the medication. So I view this as a really positive step. Do you think this has any reasonable expectation of success?
- [02:24]
B
Well, what I appreciate about it is I think it puts the cookies on the low shelf for people who clearly aren't always willing to act on issues of life. We have been plagued by politicians now for generations, really decades, really, who are willing to run on pro life commitments, but they're not willing to follow through with pro life commitments when they get to D.C. or when they get to the state House. And what we're dealing with here is something that is the new front on the issue of life. We're not talking anymore about abortion clinics. We're talking about mail order abortions. We're talking about the FDA advancing mifepristone, removing any sort of common sense restrictions and regulations that we would not allow for really anything else. And Covid was kind of used as an excuse to remove the FDA restriction of even seeing a medical professional this past week. The timing was quite rich. Christina Francis of what's called aplog, the American association of Pro Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists did a pretty lengthy video where she just walked through how easy it is in her midwestern state of Indiana to get mifepristone and to get it sent through the mail. And to get it even if you are clicking on boxes in the process of showing that you have medical conditions that are going to potentially increase your risk of harm without ever seeing a medical professional face to face, oftentimes it goes, as she said in the video, it goes under the guise of telehealth. But you're not, you're not doing what you and I are doing this morning, looking at someone, talking to someone, and I forget all the medical conditions that she put in as she was kind of showing how easy it is to acquire these things. And there were no safe checks. There were no safe checks. For example, if you clicked, for example, that you're a cisgender man, then they wouldn't give you one of these. But if you went back and then just lied and said you're actually a girl, you could. So now you have a supply source for boyfriends or for men who actually want to be abusive to women. So there's just a lot of aspects to this that make it very, very easy even to go back to pre Covid levels. You know, this is what I mean when I say that there's some cookies on the low shelf here. So I do think that whether it has a chance or not is a different kind of conversation. And I would say that the two videos. I know it's early for recommendations in the program, but the press conference video that Josh Hawley did featured some people who had these stories, had Stories of being at risk because of mifepristone, finding themselves all alone with no support, having been ushered through, not being given the adequate medical care that we wouldn't allow when it comes to any other situation. And then also the video from a blog this week was, I thought, a very eye opening. I mean it's again a matter of minutes. Someone who absolutely was at risk to get to take mifepristone was able to acquire it. And that's without medical attention. And that's just something that should be an easy, easy thing for everybody to agree on. This is not what we want.
- [06:03]
A
I agree, I agree that this is kind of the next frontier in the pro life movement. Just because we know the incidence of women taking the abortion pill. I mean that's the vast majority of all abortions happening in the US right now. And we also know of the cases that we talked about a couple months ago and like you alluded to just now of men procuring the abortion pill. Remember the kid, I think it was in Indiana, who just bought it from a classmate. There's like a clearly a black market happening for this now because of how easy it is to get and then you know, put it in his wife's drink or his girlfriend's drink without her knowing. So we know that that's happening too. But I, I feel strongly that this does not have to be a pro life, a purely pro life issue. And I've heard some people hesitating to get on board with Senator Hawley's proposal or just other efforts to curb this or to improve safety measures around it because they feel like, well, that's a pro life thing and I don't do social issues or I'm not involved with. That is completely, that's a category mistake. If there were any other medication that held the risks that this one does, was causing the harm that it is and was also being treated as if It's M&MS. We should rightly be up in arms about this culturally, regardless of what the medication accomplishes or how it's being sold. And if anything, opposing more guardrails on this medication is more political than supporting the guardrails. Because then you're saying I don't wanna get involved. Cause I'm scared of getting involved in abortion issues or whatever. You could feel very strongly about what we're saying without having pro life convictions, right?
- [07:42]
B
No, exactly. I think that's. But you know, it's impossible to disconnect from that, that issue. I think probably most the in history you kind of look back at the convergence of different things. So the convergence of the end of row with the convergence of the this medication, plus the convergence of the COVID pandemic, which was a what did the one politician said? Never let a good crisis go to waste. There were three things here that converged at the same time, right, that made this now the dominant way that people procure abortion at a time when there is very, very little political appetite for anybody to push back, which is a real tragedy. And we've also been able to see the difference between being pro life and being personally, which is, oh, I'm pro life, but I wouldn't want to change it for anyone else. I wouldn't want to remove that right for anyone else. And that sort of kind of cultural relativism is probably a fourth factor that's in the water and you mix it all together. But, you know, again, we'll see. It should be something that people have the appetite to do, but I don't know that it will be.
- [08:59]
A
Well, John, let's stay on the somewhat political beat for just a second here and follow up a little bit on the James Talarico, who is running for Senate in Texas and has obviously gained national attention, he sells himself as a Christian and uses his Christian theology or uses Christian language at least, to talk about what informs his views, which are very progressive. So he, you know, he's he believes in there are six biological genders. He used that phrase, six biological genders, six. He, of course, is very supportive of abortion. He's made some really silly comments about, you know, the fact that the angel talked to Mary before Jesus was conceived means that he asked for her consent. Just some kind of weird stuff. But, you know, there was another column this week in the New York Times from David French talking about James Talarico and saying, you know, he's but he's the kind of he's very meek and mild and he speaks very kindly and he seems very civil, which is a very positive thing to Mr. French, because that's how Christianity should be represented in the public square. So, you know, this kind of thing, I feel like has been litigated and relitigated for a long time, especially since Donald Trump kind of hit the scene. And we understand all the controversies that's happened around that and his behavior and the way he speaks and whether or not Christians can and should support him and how they should support him. And I don't necessarily want to litigate all of that, but but we did get some feedback. You know, I think Specifically one from a pastor in Texas asking, how do I talk to my people about whether or not to support this person, taking all these things into consideration? He's very buttoned up, kind of Sunday school looking guy who speaks really nicely. Does that not count for anything?
- [10:52]
B
Well, this is why I think theology has to get out of just theology and get into worldview. And of course, we definitely have to go further than where it seems that we've landed. And a lot of kind of pop level Christianity, which is as many people wrote about this week, I really appreciated a piece that was entitled A nice Heretic is Still a Heretic and the reduction of what it means to be Christian down to being nice, which is what the French piece really sounded like that. Because he is not even nice.
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A
It's polite. It's not even as far as nice. It's just he seems polite.
- [11:35]
B
Maybe I'm using those words in the same way, but there is a thing that the Bible talks about as being at the core of what it means to follow Christ and it's being someone who's on the side of the truth. And Jesus talked a lot about that. Now listen, that's something that can be leveled at politicians like Donald Trump who can use language and use words that twist the understanding and cover up the popular view and have a loose relationship with the truth. There's nothing Christian about that. But there's also nothing Christian at all about being nice, being polite, and then advocating for positions that include harming children and the murder of the preborn and various other things that are part of James Talarico and then just saying things that aren't true theologically. So there is, I think, also a school of thought that has emerged out of Protestant liberalism, of which James Tallarico is a part, where you kind of make theological claims and you do it in a theological way, because there's a presumption that theology is the human construction, is a project of human construction. It's been amazing to me to watch, for example, this happened in the pro gay theology movement of a decade or 15 years ago with Matthew Vines and others just kind of are saying things, just saying things that are against the observable kind of common sense, straightforward reading of the Scripture, taking small little parts, highlighting them. And of course, Christians have been guilty of doing that for a long time. Christians and non Christians have been guilty of doing that kind of thing, but just kind of saying it with absolute confidence as if this is, you know, oh, this is what we now know, you know, to read, for example, modern Day sexual, post sexual revolution, notions of consent back into the annunciation story. It is a little weird. It's not something that you can really get from the text. We actually talked about this a little bit on a breakpoint commentary that's either out or will be out soon. Because the only people asking questions in that story is Mary asking the angel for details. The angel doesn't ask Mary. The angel just says, this is this and this and this and this. So.
- [14:22]
A
And also what Mary says is whatever God pleases, he may do. Right?
- [14:28]
B
Yeah. It's not a. It doesn't fit the narrative, certainly. So it's a weird. It is a weird practice, but it is a practice that emerges when you presume that the text itself is not fixed, that the meaning of the text is not plain, that God is someone who is to be remade in our image and so on. So I guess when we received these questions about what we had talked about, I had done a segment on James Talarico and the world and everything in it a few weeks ago. You kind of look at this and you're like, that's just not true. Like, it's easy to say it's not true what this man is saying that the Bible says, and it's a misuse of Scripture. And that's true no matter if we're talking about politicians on the right or politicians on the left that are trying to kind of leverage or use or define Christianity. But I guess the larger picture for me was how to be a Christian in the public square has been dumbed down, has been kind of watered down, has been written down to this kind of category of niceness, as if the Gospel doesn't say hard truths about who we are. As if the Bible doesn't come face to face with the human condition and do it in a blunt, obvious and true sort of way. And as if the teachings of the scripture are themselves social constructs that need to be kind of reimagined so that we keep up to date with whatever it means to be nice. You know, in today's culture, it was just, I don't know, it was just a discouraging kind of couple weeks. And I don't think, to answer the pastor's question, there's not a shortcut. The shortcut is you have to teach theology. Theology is not an elective of Christians, like, you know, for the nerdy Sunday school class, you know, down the corner. You shouldn't water down the message, you know, from the pulpit. You shouldn't the seeker friendly attempt to get a Whole bunch of people in ended up not making a whole lot of disciples, as one church famously found out. And we have to get deeper this stuff. When I see something like this, and you see something like this actually deceiving people, whether from the right or from the left, the convenient use of biblical terms or, or Christian language or something like that, when you see that, then it says way more about us than it does about the one doing the talking.
- [17:12]
A
Yeah. And I think as well as teaching theology, part of that would be putting politics in the right place. When you're electing a person, you're choosing whether you want them. You're choosing people based on what you think that they can do and what they will do within their purview. Politicians don't have the ability to change metaphysical realities, but they do have. You know, you can't elect a politician who will then institute that there are six genders. You can elect a politician who can either help or hurt the cause of girls who deserve to have privacy and safety in their own spaces and to play in their own sports, and families who deserve to, you know, get real medical help when they take their kids to the doctor. So when you're choosing who to elect, you can choose it based on. You should choose it based on what you reasonably think they will do, not necessarily how well you think they'll represent in an aesthetic way, Christianity or whatever other worldview they're claiming to espouse. And those two things can go together sometimes. But the primary goal of choosing who to vote for, or politics generally, is there's a lane that politicians work in. And you're evaluating people based on how you think they'd perform in that lane. And it's not always easy and straightforward, but that's how I'd try and think through it. All right, well, let's take a quick break. John right back with more Breakpoint this week in just a moment.
- [18:42]
C
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- [19:38]
A
Welcome back to Breakpoint this Week, John. There was a fascinating piece in first things this week from Samuel James, who's a really gifted writer and thinker about purity culture. So we've talked about this a few times over the past couple of years because the more distance we get from the sort of purity culture of the late 90s, early 2000s, the more we're thinking through its positives and negatives. And I'm defining purity culture here. If people aren't as initiated as this kind of movement towards, you know, we were seeing some of the sexual gratuitousness in culture in that time, and there was a big movement in the church, particularly the evangelical church, towards encouraging kids to remain abstinent, to save sex for marriage. And there was a lot to that. Some programs went further than others, but that was kind of the nut of it. And now as we have some distance from it, there's kind of a cottage industry of writing, particularly online, about the pitfalls of that. You know, there's some really heavy criticism that it, you know, it put the main responsibility for remaining pure on women. It kind of characterized women as being the main kind of source of temptation and that they have a responsibility to help their fellow young men not enter into sexual sin. And, you know, a lot has been written about that. This was, I thought, a really helpful piece from Samuel James looking, trying to look at the purity cultural movement and as a whole and kind of get from it both its positives and negatives. Do you think he teased those out fairly well?
- [21:21]
B
I think it was a welcome piece in a conversation that's gotten really kind of bizarre. Purity culture now has become an easy way to blame the 90s churches for things, a lot of times things they didn't do because basically if they spent any time whatsoever talking about the importance of sexual purity and the cultural moment in which things were going south fast. I mean, just remember the movies and television programs. We went from Family Matters and the Cosby show in the 80s to Seinfeld and Friends and then Will and Grace and then Glee. I mean, it all escalated kind of quickly where the sexuality that was kind of forced in pop culture, especially among teenagers, became much more aggressive. And churches dealt with it now? Did they always deal with it? Well, no. Did they say things that they should not have said? I'm sure I have. Haven't you? I mean, but I just think that there's. It's become an easy scapegoat to justify a lot of sexual brokenness. It's interesting how often the critics of purity culture end up promoting, and this is something that James points out in the piece. The loudest critics of purity culture oftentimes end up promoting LGBTQ and justifying that as a legitimate kind of expression of identity or kind of getting on the side of a sexual promiscuity of singles, downplaying what the Bible clearly talks about in terms of sexual morality. And I think that's kind of the first reckoning piece, is that it's become an easy scapegoat for all the things that we didn't like about our evangelical experience. And again, I don't want to say that there wasn't at any point a lot of abuse. Of course there was. I mean, there was a lot of bad things that were things that were said that demeaned young people who especially were either the victims of sexual aggression or violence or themselves had made mistakes. And the gospel was not to put everything in the category of whether or not you remain sexually pure. That's not where the gospel goes. The gospel goes to no one's pure in heart, no one's pure in actions, no one has clean hands and a pure heart, as the scriptures say. And so we need a savior. That's what the gospel is. And that extends to people who are sexually broken as well as anything else. But it is important to remember just kind of how quickly the culture was promoting a sexual brokenness. And it's become obvious. It's become obvious when you look around us, and we have kids who are not only confused about what's right and what's wrong and what behavior is good for them and what behavior is bad for them, but who they fundamentally are. And I do think that kind of the evolution of biblical teaching on sexuality has gone through a few stages, and we've reached a better part now. But I appreciated this piece from James simply because he kind of pushed back on us. And if your youth pastor told you to kiss dating goodbye, it was because dating in the 90s was terrible. It's not, you know, it wasn't a. Not like it was the best book ever, but it also wasn't the worst book ever. It's not the source of your problems. The source of our problems is Inside us. Not, you know, something that happened outside of us most often, not always the case, obviously. So it's just interesting how we talk about purity culture as kind of the thing that explains anything bad that's happened to us. And I think that that's not making us very honest with our own brokenness.
- [25:26]
A
I think what the other part that was really helpful about his piece was reminding us of what the cultural waters were at the time, at the kind of the height of purity culture, late 90s, early 2000s. We forget, I think, because, you know, we've talked about this welcome, these welcome statistics. We see now that young people are just not having sex anymore. And that is both a good and a bad thing because it reflects some deeper problems that they're not socializing at all. But of course it's a positive thing that there's less actual sexual brokenness in practice right now. But in the late 90s, early 2000s, it was our culture was, I would argue, aside from, it was certainly less openly lgbtq, you know, going down that road. But in terms of just sexuality and promiscuity, public expressions of sex and promotion of promiscuity, it was arguably worse or louder than it is today. Let me read. He quotes Samuel James quotes in this piece, an essay by Joe Carter that says by the early years of the 90s, AIDS was the number one cause of death for US men ages 25 to 44. Teen pregnancy had reached an all time high. The number of premarital sex partners had also increased substantially since the 70s. You know, the biggest movies, American Pie, There's Something About Mary, all the sort of teen high school party movies were all incredibly sexual, even by today's standards. We tend to think that like every, every generation gets less prudish than the generation before it. I would argue the. The promiscuity in pop culture kind of peaked in this era. And churches, we can, we should forgive them for looking around and saying this is a runaway train. Like, what do we do with this and how do we counter this? It was somewhat of a backlash to. A backlash. Right. And I've been researching for a different project I'm working on right now, kind of the legal history of obscenity laws and the pornography industry. It was really the late 70s that it absolutely exploded in this country. And it was partly because this ridiculous presidential commission in 1970 that had been commissioned under Lyndon Johnson to like, study obscenity and pornography. Social impact. This commission came out and said there is no detectable impact on social or moral behavior in the public square from pornography, basically, it's not a health risk at all. It's just fine. And therefore, you know, unless you can demonstrate, you know, physical harm from one, you know, aspect of whatever piece of culture you're talking about, the US Government should not be involved at all in curtailing obscenity. And that was a starting point of some really horrible. I mean, the child pornography that was masquerading as art in that time of culture, it was really a different time than it is now.
- [28:28]
B
Yeah, I'm thankful for the. Under the Reagan administration, they kind of resurrected that panel and came up with a whole bunch of different conclusions. But the problem is that so much had been kind of let out of the bag at that point, and they had to try to put so much back in. And it just doesn't work that way. It was kind of a pinnacle of it. I'll say, though, that what we're seeing now is a backlash to the violence and things that were let out of that kind of were the products of the hyper sexualized and hyperviolent thing stuff we allowed from the 80s and 90s and so on. But it's not more positive. We're not in a more positive place right now, as far as I can tell, because the sexual confusion has gone from a confusion about behavior to a confusion about identity. And that's a deeper brokenness, if you ask me. The reason young people aren't having sex is today. I mean, there are ways to look at that as a positive in terms of, well, we'll have less problems to deal with or less of these problems to deal with in society. But a society in which kids aren't getting married and aren't having babies is one facing a bigger calamity, an even bigger calamity. And it has to do with digitized porn. It has to do with the dehumanization that has affected how we kind of think about ourselves and think about other people. I think it's the next phase of the evolution. And I also think there's incredible irony, right, where the promise was sexual freedom, and the result now is people don't have sex, you know, with real people. Yeah. And it's not because we're more healthy. It's because we're far less healthy. I think as a society, especially young people, I do give the church a little bit of a break as well. I mean, I've talked about this for a long time. I think that there were kind of distinct phases of how the church was trying to think about and push back against a Culture that was becoming more and more sexualized coming out of the 60s. I think that there was at one point kind of a fear based approach where it was tempting to really try to use fear. Don't have sex before you're married. We told kids, because you'll get a disease or you'll get pregnant. And you know, this was at the heyday of the female no one will
- [31:04]
A
ever want you later. Which was. This is one of the big criticisms. You know, if you do, you're going to be a less desirable marriage partner later.
- [31:13]
B
Yeah, that was, I think, kind of the part and partial of the next evolution or the next phase. I have a whole evolutionary story of this, of the church movement. You know, there were things said and I think particularly young women kind of felt as if they were being dehumanized if they had made sexual mistakes. But the answer to that is not to say that these weren't sexual mistakes. Right. The answer is not to turn around and say that there should be no stigma, that there should be no guilt, that there should be no shame. Guilt and shame without the gospel is brutal, but it's still realistic because it deals with the real fact of who God kind of made us to be. I think the fear based approach was really kind of popular when I was a kid. I remember where I was standing literally when I heard Magic Johnson had contracted hiv. I mean, it shocked us, it scared us straight probably for eight or nine weeks at least. And it was just a. But there was a big fear. But one of the problems with a fear based approach is that it's a consequentialist way of arguing. Right? In other words, don't do these things because of the bad things that will happen. The obvious answer is, well, let's get rid of the bad things. Well, how do we do that? Well, through birth control, younger and younger and younger, through abortion on demand now through chemical abortion and also through the mitigation of disease. Like, look, Magic Johnson didn't die of aids. He's still alive and he's really rich. So how do you argue the consequentialist based ethics if you want to maintain a level of sexual freedom? I think that the church then largely moved on. There were some really popular movements about talking about the happily ever after. Like if you do things God's way, then you'll have a happily ever after promise to you. And the problem with that is that the Bible just doesn't promise happily ever after in this lifetime. There's not a promise that you can do everything right and you can get a bad result. You can follow God's moral law and maybe you won't have a great sex life when you're married, or maybe you won't have as many children as you want, or maybe you won't have this or that or the other. Although it's important to state, and thanks to Shout out another shout out to the Institute for Family Studies and others who keep reminding us of if you do things God's way, you actually are more fulfilled. Like on average, you know, the averages
- [33:51]
A
are there, the stats are there.
- [33:52]
B
The stats are pretty compelling. It's pretty awesome. But there's not a one to one promise. For example, there was a sense in which I deserve a prince Charming because I did my part. And that puts a lot of pressure on your spouse because there is no spouse who's a Prince Charming every day. Right? Or a Princess Charming or whatever else. The Bible's not a fairy tale. It's not a love fulfillment story. That's just not what the gospel is all about. It's something about something a lot bigger than that. So there's no question we've kind of had truncated and wrongly nuanced ways of talking about sex and sexuality. I guess what needs to be addressed is the answer to getting some things wrong about sexuality and purity culture times is not to say that there's no sexual boundaries. It's not to say that there are no limits on our sexual identities or that we even should be reducing ourselves to these ideas that human identity is sexuality.
- [35:05]
A
Well, and more often I feel like we see this backlash to the backlash saying women bear no responsibility then for sexual brokenness. They feel like it's an either or. It's couched as purity culture put all of the responsibility on women, therefore there's no responsibility on women. And I reject that as well. I have a little bit of a. Probably an unpopular take, but I had a fairly large group of female friends and youth group that I think were in the same place as me. I felt sort of tangentially protected by whatever version of purity culture I was a part of. I joined an evangelical church's youth group when I was 16. So it was kind of the height of that era. We were in it. I did not have any. I was afraid of sexual activity. I didn't understand what was happening. I saw what my school and classmates were doing. I didn't understand it. Neither did I when I first entered youth group. Understand a biblical sexual ethic necessarily. I couldn't have told you why has God set it up this way and put these guardrails against it. And why is it just for marriage and that kind of thing. But however you want to call purity, culture, whatever the iteration was that I was subjected to, felt like a safety for me because it was something I could appeal to. I didn't want to have to say, I'm scared of this. So, no, I was able to say, I don't know, I've been told, like, this is wrong. So no, does that make sense? And that's utilitarian. And it got, obviously my education on this got a lot deeper. And I'm grateful to the pastors and frankly, the pastor's wives in my life who continued that education for me. But I truly believe it offered some safety for, for girls, because I saw plenty of girls in my school and in my larger social circles who were going through with engaging in sexual activity because of the social pressure to do it, not because they wanted to or because they were excited or because they were sexually advanced or progressive or whatever. And this gave others of us an out. And, you know, that can't be the whole reason for it. That doesn't make it itself healthy. However, it was done everywhere. But that was one positive part of it for me, certainly.
- [37:21]
B
Well, that's the role that culture plays, right? Culture, it catechizes people into a way of thinking and a way of living. And that's why culture is so powerful. That's why we talk so much about culture. And that's why when the cultural, when the culture shifts, it really has real consequences for real people. And you can't just kind of go down the line and say, well, the X result was less pregnancies, so therefore we're more sexually healthy. That's not the one to one kind of translation. Chesterton famously said that there's a lot of ways to fall down. There's only one way to stand up straight. And sexuality is a wonderful example of that. We, I remember somewhere in the late 90s, early 2000s, starting to hear more and more, and this was when I was just kind of beginning to work at a small college, that young women who had kind of grown up in the church, in the youth group, and they had so gotten the message that sex is bad, sex is bad, sex is bad, sex is bad. That their brokenness in marriage went a different direction. It was very, very difficult to go from sex is bad to sex is good in a matter of moments. So there's just so many different ways to do it. And I think the missing component here or the component Often missing that should not be missing is the wonderful story about what sex is for. And I think there was a level at which you could assume certain things would just be kind of embraced because we lived in a particular culture that talked about the body this way and talked about identity this way and talked about procreation this way, and just this is where it fits. And you just assume a lot of things. And when those assumptions change, when the purpose of sex fundamentally changed, then on a cultural level, then I think at that point, the thing that cannot be missing in any form of this is a clear articulation of the good. In other words, when you teach sexual morality, it can't just be, here are all the things that are bad. Here's why they're bad. They're bad because this is good. This is what God made. This is why God made it. And the creation, the teaching of creation has to begin, I think, at the very beginning. And so I've always appreciated the insight from a mentor of mine that if you're thinking about having the talk, it's one talk that happens over and over and over and over and over for years and years and years and years. And it begins about, I think, the goodness of God and the goodness of how he made us, and then that culminates and what that looks like for us to fulfill his design in marriage and so on. But that was the ground that was stolen in the sexual revolution. That sex was divorced from its purpose, that sex was divorced from its function. Sex was divorced from its fundamental design. And then we saw all the chaos around us, and it was easy to, I think, to find scapegoats to blame instead of what was actually going on.
- [40:42]
A
Don't you think one of the biggest hurdles here, though, is that the sex does not feel to us like an intellectual exercise. It's really hard to bring it from, like, into theory when you're talking to kids about it or whatever. Do you see what I'm saying? So, like, it is important that we teach kids how to think about it, but it doesn't feel like a thinking activity. And that's why this is. I don't know how to get over that hurdle, you know, like, especially when you're talking to young, young kids about it or even starting to talk about it, they have no idea what you're referring to. And that, I think, leaves a lot of parents like me. Like, I don't even know how to. How to broach this.
- [41:29]
B
I don't think that's where to start. I think it's the that maybe was a place to start 30, 40 years ago is starting with the behavior part of it. But the fundamental confusion now is who are we? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be an image bearer? And there's only two. You know, image bearers come in two types, male and female. And I think that there needs to be an awful lot of catechizing around what it means to be human and what it means to be human, male or female, from the very beginning, an acknowledgment, a repetition, talking about it, things like that. And I think there's a lot of opportunities to do that, culturally speaking. And you think about a culture that so tries to blur the categories of men and women, either in roles or in appearance or in clothes or in characteristics, and try to blur those distinctions. And helping young people kind of develop a sense of who they are, I think has to come first. And those are some of the things that I meant that you could take for granted at another time, in another place where these things weren't up in the air. In a time when those things are up in the air, then that gives you a different place to start. I think
- [42:46]
C
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- [43:47]
A
Well, let's shift gears now, John. This weekend we're recording this on Friday morning. This weekend is the Oscars. Have you watched any of the movies that are up for awards this year? I've watched don't out yourself by saying
- [44:00]
B
which ones, but no, no, I actually haven't this year. I often do catch them, but I think I've seen just a part of F1, the race car movie, which Got a lot of Brad Pitt kind of good hype. And so anyway, just for the action and so on. But I have not. I'm always just kind of interested about what movies say, because I think we have hit a point long ago where art, you know, art can both create culture, but art mostly reflects culture and the films that we kind of pat ourselves on the back for. And part of this whole conversation about the Oscars is this launches the awards season, which is so annoying, you know, which is a bunch of people gathering in the room at an age where clearly creativity is not where it used to be and patting themselves on the back for all the great work that they're doing and, you know, great. It's. It's a little much. I mean, that's not even considering kind of how politicized it's gotten and how, you know, everything kind of orients around some of those political issues. But I. But I think it. Gosh, What I want to say. We're struggling with creativity in the film world right now, and there's nothing that's not even getting to. Is what is being celebrated a virtue or a vice? Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What are we seeing? So there's a lack of creativity, and then there's also the question of what are we celebrating? Are we celebrating what's good? Are we celebrating what's bad? And from what I've read, at least some of the Oscar nominations this year are celebrations of things that are good and aren't certainly anything that we would recommend here. But I think it's interesting. The Oscars seem to be a lot more important 15, 20 years ago, and it just doesn't seem to have the cultural punch that it once had. Maybe within the industry. Right. But outside the industry. I just. Maybe it's because of everything else that's going on with international conflict, with political delusions. I don't know.
- [46:21]
A
I don't think we have communal, like, art consumption experiences anymore. Like, in the 20 years ago, everyone had seen all of the Best Picture nominations because we went to the movies, you know, and people don't. I think that's largely the Internet. Like, we just don't have experiences like that anymore where we're all watching the same things or seeing the same things. I'm bringing this up. So I have seen a couple of the nominees. I'm not gonna say which ones because I don't want to get in trouble. One of them was incredibly creative. And I guess by creative I just mean weird. Like, very, very unexpected. It didn't feel like there was any political message to it. Maybe there was that I missed, but it was also, though, extremely disturbing. And I much would have preferred reading it in a book than watching it. This goes back to our conversation we had last week about how important it is what you see with your eyes. But I brought up the Oscars. Obviously they're happening this weekend. But also because there was another piece in First Things that caught my eye. And the headline provocatively says, why can't conservatives create art? I don't entirely buy that premise, but he was talking about the kind of. The impulse towards safety when you have conservatives or Christians creating, whether it's movies or books or TV or whatever else. And that he was kind of bemoaning that and saying, we need to get past that. And that resonated with me a lot because, you know, I've shared media that I've seen or read on this show before, and I've been discouraged, honestly, by a lot of the feedback I get, which is, I love. I need to nuance this. Like, I had a woman come up to me a couple weeks ago and said, I read this book that you recommended and I really didn't like it. And I got very excited because I love a strong reaction, let's get into it. Like, let's talk about it. But I get discouraged when I get feedback that is, I can't believe you would have read something like that or said something like that. And then usually the reasons for why people can't believe it is that there was profanity, there were situations that were scary, or there was a character that said something politically that we wouldn't agree with. That feels really discouraging to me and feels a little bit in line with this piece in First Things, which is there's this impulse that even to talk about things that we don't like or to reflect the world as it currently culturally is, even if we're commenting on it from a biblical worldview, is somehow dangerous. And I don't know how to thread the needle because I don't want to depict evil or talk about evil or things that are just morally disgusting for the sake of, you know, being authentic and real. But I also don't want to avoid those things for the sake of pretending they're not real. And I'm not sure how to thread that needle. But I don't think we do it very well on the Christian and conservative side. There are exceptions, but I just don't.
- [49:22]
B
Well, I don't think we do it well, in either direction. And what I mean by that is the teachings of scripture are way more kind of clear about, avoid this stuff, keep your eyes pure. Proverbs doesn't nuance that in the name of art. And yet it's writing to a group of people who would have seen, just because of the cultural realities of war and the cultural realities of conflict and the cultural realities of living prior to the vast changes that the idea of the image of God brought, you know, in terms of protecting women and children and things like that, they would have seen a lot more in real life than probably we do. And so it's almost like our encounters with these things tend to be artistic, where their encounters with many of these things would have been realistic. And they were very. It was very clear in scripture, don't depict this stuff, because they depict this stuff as actually crossing the line. And it also is the reality of what James talks about, where we all have our temptations. It's kind of a fishing analogy where the enemy knows how to lure us. And what may not tempt some of us would absolutely tempt others. And our responsibility then, at some level is to be sensitive and to be caring and to love each other. I don't think any of this implies, though, that we should somehow whitewash reality. And I think that's the thing, maybe, that we often miss, is that when the depictions of this stuff were condemned in a lot of ways, because the reality of these sins were so they weren't pushed behind the scenes, they weren't sanitized, they weren't whitewashed. Of course, we have been so shocked in our culture to see things that were considered unthinkable 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago become unquestioned today. We talked about Drag Queen Story Hour a number of times. This is stuff that would have just been perverse and would have been things that would only be considered kind of artistic, showy with a particular rating. And now here we have it kind of front and center on TV commercials. TV commercials are another thing of what is violating our eyes. So I think that we need each other to kind of hold each other in accountability. I also think that another part of this is, look, like it or not, conservatives have not captured the institutions, particularly when it comes to the artistic. We don't own these things. We play by somebody else's rules. And when you do that, whether it's in education or in politics or in art, you either have to decide, okay, can I infiltrate? Can I subtly change the rules? Can I influence people from within the system? And of course, I think that there are some times and some places where that becomes easier than others, or should we start alternatives and should we not seek the applause of men? And I think that that is a place that we've been in for a long time where the kind of accepted wisdom of engaging the culture was to infiltrate from within. So, you know, you hear people talk about wanting their kids to be missionaries in public schools and then you have these say, wait a minute, you don't send an 8 year old to be a missionary. Let's start something new that's better, that offers something better to the world. All of that is forms of cultural engagement. How do we engage the culture that's there? How do we make the culture that's not there? How do we eliminate the culture that's there and shouldn't be there? I mean, all these are, are the questions that I think we have to ask. And it applies to art. But I also think when you're coming to pick things, I've always appreciated a framework from Bill Brown that I always thought was really helpful in thinking about art as a way of judging it as a way of discerning. And it flows out of the clear teaching of Paul. Finally, brothers, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are noble. You know, that whole passage which is always like, okay, if I take that teaching seriously, can I justify what I'm watching? Can I justify? And what I appreciate about the categories that Paul brings is that it's not only what you watch, it's why, it's how so. It's the what, the why and the how so. You kind of think about, you know, three things. Number one is when you look at something that's artistic is the form, how well is it done? And the biblical quality of the form is excellence. And this is, I think, where legitimately Christians and Christian conservatives are often critiqued, I think sometimes they're critiqued by rules that are set up by others that we shouldn't care about. And just because we can't yet reach that state of excellence doesn't mean we shouldn't try, because there should be, you know, it's going to take practice to get there. So I think there's the form, I think that there's. Secondly, there's the message. And that's the thing that we most often notice, we should most often notice, which is, is it true? And what does it mean by true isn't just is it sanitized? I think that's the mistake that a lot of people make is that it has to be Sanitized in order to be true. If it truly describes the human condition, it can have value. If it doesn't hide the human condition. Whitewashing the difficulties of real life after the fall can be a problem as well as depicting something that's evil. Depicting evil as evil is different than depicting evil as good. For example, depicting evil as horrific is different than. What am I trying to say? Reveling in the horrific, you know, in the kind of that. That sense of transgression and naughtiness kind of thing. The third thing is that purpose, and that's where I think that comes in, is the purpose of something. Why did the artist do it? Did the artist do it to deceive? Did the artist do it to complain? Did the artist do it to be narcissistic? There's a million reasons an artist can do something. And so now you're talking about three characteristics. You know, is it well done? Is it true? And is it noble? Does it have a noble purpose? Is it for the good of others? Is it for the good of the world? And by looking at these things, you can say, well, hey, you know, this film's really well done, but its message is flat out untrue. Or this book is really true, but it's just not done very well. Or this book, it meant well, but, man, it fell way short because the guy just can't spell. I mean, there's a lot of ways to get at judging a piece of art, so we're not helpless. And I think even teaching that methodology, we're not always going to control what does come before our eyes. Scripture says we should control it as much as possible. But having that framework there, I think, is a helpful place to start.
- [56:51]
A
I agree. I think the most important thing that art can do functionally is serve as a metaphor. And metaphors are so biblically and incredibly important. Jesus taught almost the entire time about the kingdom of God using metaphor. And he used metaphors that some people could argue violated the. You shouldn't think about such things. Remember when he said the kingdom of God is like a man who hires servants, and then every time they come, they're beaten up by, you know, whoever's currently the tenants running the. I'm butchering the thing, but you remember the story I'm talking about? And they beat him up, and then so finally the man says, I'll send my son, and they kill him. I can hear people saying in my ear, you ought not tell such a story, sir, because I don't want to think about such things as People being beaten and killed. But what he was doing was expressing truth about the world and human nature through a metaphor. That can help. When you get some distance from yourself and the metaphor offers you that distance, you can see it more clearly, or it can lead you to ask questions. Am I the kind of person who would beat up this guy's son? Have I been that kind of person? What am I looking for? Am I looking for the Messiah? Am I looking for the kingdom of God? And good art, even if it's depicting something that is painful to look at or think about, can accomplish that sometimes. And sometimes good messages that have the opportunity to do that sell themselves short by refusing to depict things that people could object to on that ground of well, I didn't want to think about for two minutes. I didn't want to think about a woman who got an abortion. I didn't want to think about a woman who left her husband. And therefore you shouldn't have written about it just misses what a gift metaphor can be to us. That was clarified and confirmed by Jesus himself. I completely agree that not everybody can and should read or consume the same kinds of things. That's another part of this, that is just a personal wisdom and knowing of yourself and what's available to you. But that's another through line I've seen sometimes in the Christian response to either art we make or that other people make is that we don't believe that we think there is a level of art that is okay for all Christians and a level that is definitely not okay. And of course, there are things that are going to be categorically, you know, morally repugnant and should not be depicted. But there's a lot more gray area than I think we give credit for. And we pass judgment on each other, I guess, for reading or consuming some art. And that has, I think, definitely led to a dearth of good art from Christians because of that fear, if that makes sense. If we can overcome that, I think that would be great. But I don't know how to do it. Well, John, before we call it, let's hit a question really quickly here. You had a provocative breakpoint this week called Jesus Would have Baked the Cake, and Tim from Lancaster did not like this headline. He felt that it promoted a sinful relationship. I don't think he read the subhead, which was and other nonsense, because you were talking about the situation with Jack Phillips in Colorado. Do you want to clarify that breakpoint and that headline?
- [60:25]
B
Well, the article did clarify it, but he's right. The title should have had quotes around it and it didn't when it went out. So I actually wanted to address it just because of how that commentary went out. And not everyone encounters the articles that we have with the subheadings. And so that subheading is on the website. It wouldn't have been on a social media post or in an email subject headline. I'm not sure where Tim encountered this, but it was a editorial mistake that it did not have the quotes around it, which was designed to add additional context. But it is always important to know that sometimes the process of coming up with headlines and putting out headlines doesn't always happen as smoothly as it should. And we should always read the article to make sure we get the main point, which if you read the article and also what we've said about Jack for years and years and years and years and years, the clarity here is people told him this, that Jesus would have baked the cake. And yes, it's a nonsensical position and I'm really glad Jack didn't believe it 14 years ago. And headlines are hard.
- [61:36]
A
There's another quick one I want to hit. This person writes, you quoted Lord Acton. This was in your and I conversation last week about the authority to wage war and the actions in Iran. He says you quoted Lord Acton and you said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And this person objects to that on theological grounds. Very creatively saying that's not true because God is all powerful and power has not corrupted God. He argues, this commenter, that the phrase should be changed to power reveals character rather than corrupts. What do you think?
- [62:14]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, I appreciate the observation. I think it's a. Lord Acton said this a long time ago and it's been pointed to as a grounding, kind of an ideological grounding to think through a political philosophy that power needs to be curbed because no one should have absolute power. Obviously, we're not talking about God, we're talking about man. Lord Acton would agree. I mean, God has absolute power and it does not corrupt him. I don't think it's accurate to say that when it comes to human beings that all power does is reveal. No, I think in the hands of the wrong person, you should keep. Sorry, let me say it this way. If somebody has fumbly hands, you shouldn't give them heavy objects. And humans have corrupt hands and incorrupt hands. Power then corrupts. Does power reveal our corruption? Sure. Does power also further our corruption? Yes, that's the observation and that's why we need the checks and balances. I mean, listen, how many people do we know in history or in our own lives who, at a certain level of authority did really great, give them more authority, they can't handle it. There's all kinds of examples of that, both in the political space and outside the political space. So I'm not ready to change the quote. I think Lord Acton's still right. You're right. It's not a quote as applies to man. You're right. It's not a quote as it applies to God, but as it applies to man. But I'm still good with power corrupts.
- [63:51]
A
I've been reading a lot about King Henry VIII since being in London, and that, I would think, would put this conversation to bed. So if you're not familiar with King Henry VIII and what he did and what happened to him as a result of the power that he thought he had by being of noble blood, I highly recommend reading about his history. Although there are gonna be a lot of things depicted that may trouble your soul. So Cautionary tale. Well, that is gonna do it for the program this week. Thank you so much for listening to breakpoint this week. From the Coulson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet. If you'd like to send in your question or feedback, just go to Breakpoint.org and click Contact Us. We'd love to hear from you and are grateful for those of you who've sent those in up to now. Have a wonderful week. We'll see you all back here next time. God bless.