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Breakpoint
Finnish Lawmaker Found Guilty of 'Insult.' Moody Students Win Right to Stay in Chicago Classrooms. Jury Finds Social Media Harmful. And the Deaths of Kermit Gosnell and Paul Ehrlich
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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 series of legal outcomes with Christian worldview implications, including from Finland and a case in the United States against social media companies. We have a lot of meaty stuff to get to this week. 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. I think we wanna start today with a bit of a legal tour. We're gonna go international as well as domestic. Well, I wanna start with a case we've talked about a bit here already. Paivi Rosinen is a legislator in Finland who was charged under their War Crimes act for posting a pamphlet on Facebook she had written calling homosexuality disordered. Unfortunately, this week she was found despite the fact that she'd been acquitted by lower courts, she was found guilty by the Finnish Supreme Court of hate speech. So she's being charged with kind of a hefty fine here. This has a lot of big implications. What was your reaction to this verdict?
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B
Well, she was acquitted of the initial charge and then she was found guilty of a charge that really looks made up.
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C
The.
- [01:19]
B
The initial charge was not based on the pamphlet she had written. It was based on a tweet criticizing her church for participating in a, in a pride event. And that was what was originally brought up against her. And of course, she was a parliamentarian as well. And so it made it a very, very public case. And it's gone on now for quite some time, as these things tend to do. And I think where it reached was the initial charge of incitement. So, you know, there you have something which is, you know, stating your personal views can be considered incitement if they're not the right personal views, if they're the views that go against the orthodoxy. This was a pamphlet she wrote in 2004 that they brought up. This was a pamphlet that, if you read it, and I did this morning, it is a short piece on, you know, whether same sex marriage should be legalized and the consequences in a cultural setting. There's nothing in here that would have been considered hate speech at the time or for the next 10 years or for the next probably 12 or 13 years. And now we are 22 years later and it's used against her. I think what happened is they ran out of legal ground to charge her on the first. And they dug up this thing that's connected, you know, to war crimes and threw it against her on the second. If you want to know more about it, ADF International, which has argued this case for Pavi Rosinan, and I've had the privilege of meeting her through ADF events. It is a dark day. I think this should drive us to be thankful for the robust protections of the First Amendment. And even in the American context, In the last 20 years, there's been an awful lot of. In fact, we'll talk about another case here in just a second of fleshing out even more in light of a culture that has moved to a place where traditional religious speech, convictions that go along with a faith that predates all the sexual revolutionaries and everything else, you know, is that going to be protected or not? Believing certain things about male and female, believing certain things about sexual morality, believing certain things about legal definitions of things that are pre political, like marriage and family and parenting and so on. Is that legit or is that hate speech? So this is, this is a chilling outcome, honestly, despite the acquittal on the initial charge, the fact that essentially there can be another charge trumped up around hate speech. And I also, I guess the second thing that I want to bring up on this is this is the sort of thing that was being called for in the United States not that long ago, right. That certain views should not be tolerated in the public square. Certain views are considered hate speech. There's no difference between the charge that Rosanen was found guilty of here and the sort of thing that was being called for a decade ago in the United States. And gratefully, that's not the direction this has gone. But if you go to the Jack Phillips case, if you go to the Barronell Stutzman case, if you go to a number of other cases, the charge was essentially these views can't be tolerated in our society. And that's where this verdict has gone in Finland.
- [04:55]
A
Well, you alluded to a similar, I guess, similar themed case that that's unfolding here in the US and this was in Chicago. So the Chicago Public School district has said a couple of years ago that university students from Moody Institute who were studying education would not be admitted into their student teaching program in the Chicago Public school district because Moody has hiring practices and a statement of faith, basically. Well, thankfully now they've settled and the public school district will allow Moody students to participate in that student teaching program. This is incredible on a whole host of levels. Obviously, the implication the worldview implications that you were just talking about in Finland, but also just the facts on the ground of, you know, the Chicago public school district is one of the worst performing in the country. They're clearly in need of more and better teachers. And for them to stand on this hill and prohibit students who want to come in and help from doing so because their institution has a statement of faith is really eye opening about the priorities of some of the people in charge here. But what do you think are the implications? Does it, you know, obviously this is the opposite outcome of the one in Finland. This seems to be trending in the right direction. Do you think this will put this issue to bed here?
- [06:15]
B
I mean, no, because of the subtext that you just brought brought up, which is, you know, the state of public education in America. And I know we catch some heat whenever we talk about this. I also want to articulate how grateful I am that God continues to call Christians to work in public schools, to teach in public schools, that there's a noble calling there. Notice I didn't say call students to public schools. I think those two things are really, really different. And I don't want to get into the nuances today because we've gotten into the nuances of that dozens and dozens of times. But this is, as you said, a completely opposite arrangement than in Finland. So even as we see dramatic restrictions on conscience in other parts of the world, the United States is expanding at least the clarity of what the First Amendment was designed to mean, about what participation in the public square means and so on. And I do think that subtext that you brought out that, you know, we're talking about one of the worst failing school systems in America. And there's a lot of them in terms of test scores, in terms of
- [07:34]
A
reading outcomes, in terms of attendance, graduation rates. All of it.
- [07:39]
B
Yeah. I mean, just one after one measure after another after another, that in terms of the investment that the state is making and the return that's being received from that investment, we're just not in the same ballpark here. It's an incredible thing to kind of sit in judgment over this. Look, there have been similar cases in the past. I mean, I remember where this was a decade or maybe 15 years ago, where it was whether churches could use public school facilities on the weekends. And that was debated, you know, whether a Christian religious group could rent out facilities from a public school system. There were a number of those cases. And now we are, you know, clarifying when it comes to student teachers. Now, Chicago's not the first one. To do it. Gordon University students in Boston had this happen in Massachusetts. So the fact that this is resolved the way that it's resolved, I think is super encouraging. But let me just say something else about this, which is we have talked before. How many Christian colleges have capitulated to progressive, non Christian ideas, to secular views, especially on areas of critical theory and on areas of LGBTQ and sexual morality? One of the areas where schools are most vulnerable, and by schools, I mean Christian colleges, is the Education Department. I saw it up close and personal. You can go Christian college to Christian college to Christian college. And if you see cracks in their commitment to orthodoxy, and what we're going to talk about later plays into this, right, which is whether moral orthodoxy and theological orthodoxy are both legitimate categories for us to kind of evaluate faithfulness on. So more on that to come in the program. We're giving all kinds of previews today. This is really cool. But if you want to see cracks, it'll be in the education department, and here's why. Two factors at the same time. Number one, many Christian colleges have thoroughly embraced that the purpose that their education department exists is to send missionaries into the public schools. There's not a widely accepted vision for Christian colleges to train future teachers for Christian schools. So what you're trying to do then is get teachers, new teachers, accredited. To do that, you have to go by the accreditation standards. So it's not just about teaching someone how to be a teacher. It's teaching someone to be the kind of teacher that can make it in a public school. That means education departments oftentimes embrace a wide array of pedagogical classes. Here's how to teach. And the amount of classes on what to teach gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And how to teach gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And the how to teach comes along with things like social and emotional learning and comes along with various visions of critical theory as a way of understanding the world and certainly the accepted views on sexual morality. So you put all that together, and this is another way that the system, the state demands conformity. Oh, Moody Bible Institute. If you don't have these views right, then you can't get your students to student teach. If you can't get students to student teach, then we won't accredit them. And if we won't accredit them, then you can't fulfill your. You see? So this is a vice grip. This becomes a pressure point. I think this should encourage a lot of Christian colleges. By the way, there are other indications that you don't have to jump through every hoop that the state throws out at you. And in order to meet this goal, I think the other goal should be to train Christian teachers for Christian schools. That is should be as noble a calling and a profession to serve parents and so on as is the previously accepted vision. And, of course, look, we're talking about Moody Bible. We're talking about a school that was built on evangelism, D.L. moody. I mean, so I understand the missional aspect of the school, and I think I appreciate them kind of standing firm on this, because what it also shows us is there are ways to fulfill that mission without jumping through every ideological hoop that the state throws out for you. And that's been an excuse used for Christian colleges to drift left. So I think this has incredible implications beyond just this decision and beyond just the city of Chicago.
- [12:19]
A
Yeah, I certainly hope so. Well, John, the last legal outcome I wanted to touch with you briefly is probably the biggest news of the week, which is two different juries, one in New Mexic and one in Los Angeles, came down against social media companies, including Meta and YouTube. In New Mexico, a jury found that these social media platforms are harmful to the mental health of kids. And in Los Angeles, the jury found that YouTube and Meta are legally liable for intentionally creating addictive technologies for kids. This seems to have wide, wide implications. Now, these cases were brought not in a theoretical way, but the one in Los Angeles at least, was on behalf of a young woman who testified about the harmful effects to her own mental health, which I think is harder to fight. But this is huge. And, you know, I assume this is gonna have implications for how, you know, people use these platforms, but also how we talk about them in wider culture. I wanted to ask you, though, specifically there, I've seen some pushback about a lot of the testimony in some of these cases were sharing the stories of young people that have been harmed by these things, which are terrible and tragic. But I think a natural reaction to some of them was where were the parents? These stories of my daughter got on Instagram at age 6 or YouTube at age 7 and then found that she was addicted and couldn't get off. And it's, I think, a reasonable question to say, shouldn't parents have stepped in at that point? That's not to say that these companies shouldn't be held liable. But how do you wrestle with that tension?
- [13:58]
B
It's a huge tension just because a social media company or a company in general is liable for bad behavior for not being completely upfront and honest with the Consumer by knowing things and intentionally feeding into some of the things. While you know, of course the famous part of the story is so many execs of these companies refuse to let their own kids use these platforms or be on, be it be on phones. That doesn't mean that others aren't liable as well. It doesn't mean that there's kind of no responsibility. Now if you go back 15 years, 10 years or whatever at the beginning of this, maybe we can be a little bit more forgiving of parents not really understanding the degree of harms, not really being aware as they maybe could have been or should have been about what the messages are. But you couldn't five years ago, you couldn't six years ago or three years ago. I mean the cat was already out of the bag. So you're right. There is a question. It's interesting. I said this past weekend or past week on a. Yeah, past weekend on a panel, you know, kind of did what I sometimes do, which is look at a room full of mainly parents and grandparents and say get your kid off social media, don't allow it. Take away the smartphone. And the other panelists I think rightly turned around and said oh, and get off it yourself. And I thought that that was a really important thing for this pastor to say because there is the level of parental responsibility. You know, it's good when these people are held accountable. These are clearly decisions in the. And the legacy of the big decisions against for example, Big Tobacco, knowing harms and downplaying them. Or maybe this is a little bit of a dramatic example, but the Sackler family and Oxy, the addictive pain medicine that they actually falsely advertised as being non addictive. And you think about the amount of money that was awarded, I think, was it la, was it 300 million, 300 and some million dollars in a decision which is a big decision, but you're talking about multibillion dollar company. But this also opens the floodgates for additional decisions and they're going to come. It's going to be hard to see where this thing ends, you know what I mean? Because now we've got state by state by state. Now we've got victim by victim by victim. And how many victims are we talking about here? Millions. This is going to be messy. It's going to be good messy and bad messy, which messy typically is. There are going to be good outcomes and bad outcomes. There's going to be good precedent and bad precedent. I'd love to hear what you think about this. I don't Know where this ends. I mean, how do you fully litigate this right now in a highly litigious culture like ours?
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A
Yeah, my hope is that. And I think the legal outcomes will play a part in this, but it just has to become culturally low status or uncool to be on these apps. And again, I think the legal decisions are part of it. I think. My hope is that bigger and other institutions start playing along. I absolutely hate the fact that every public library in America now in the kids section has all of these little kiosks of computers and there's kids on there playing video games and going on social media all day. There is zero reason for that. And there's a million reasons why it shouldn't be that way. I think there's too much tech use in schools, even schools that aren't allowing social media, our phones, there's still too much tech use. And my hope is that if more. And if this comes out more and more and we start to get this cultural idea of these companies looking to us the same way as tobacco companies do, even if it's a caricature. But like, there's these people making this product they know is harmful, they don't let their own kids use it, that it will just become less attractive for us to use it generally, and that more people will just have to choose not to use it. I mean, I don't know if you saw this news, but last week Meta announced that it is scaling back its metaverse. I mean, this was a couple of years ago, towards the end of the pandemic. Mark Zuckerberg was like, we're making a brand new world and you're gonna live most of your life virtually and everybody's gonna have VR headsets and this is where you're gonna do meetings and where you're gonna socially hang out and all this stuff. And everybody hated it. And they're scaling it back now. They're saying now by June 15th, it's gonna be completely off of VR. They're hoping to continue this kind of Horizon worlds thing, whatever they're calling it, on mobile only. But, like, this is a great sign. I think people don't want it. And the more people who opt out of it, the more we can just make it socially rejectable.
- [19:03]
B
Yeah, I'd love to have the same view on the, the, the death of the metaverse. I mean, by the way, I do. I'm glad it's dead. I think it's more of a beta VHS question that the metaverse lost to AI and people are More comfortable living halfway in a digital universe than in a, or they want to, they, they want a companion in it. Maybe that's a little bit too, too, too cynical. But I did see that, I thought that was really interesting. I think that was, it's, it's, that's like kind of a lost tech bet that, that they made. But, but there are signs of what you're saying, right? I mean, there are way, way, way, way more schools that do prohibit cell phones and social media use. I agree that they should go to the next step and that we should get upstream from the tech use as much as possible to teach kids how to think and how to relate and how to live. I was asked this week for an interview and I just said, you know, look, whenever tech replaces humans, that's red flag number one. If it replaces human thinking, if it replaces human relationships, if it replaces human capacity, you have to ask really hard questions. Is this reversing the fall or is this replacing image bearers? And that's kind of a model and a framework to begin with. And social media did that, I think in really profound ways. So we do have signs of this. I just saw just this week there was a Jonathan Haidt talked about kind of what happened when he wrote the Anxious generation and where we are now. And it's definitely good. And I watch my daughters and for the most part they have a lot of, of friends themselves included, that just said, we don't want to do this. We're not going to go and spend any time here. And I think that's really a positive thing. So I think that is such. Maybe the most important observation upon this is that legal accountability does not take the place of parental accountability, nor does it take the place of personal accountability. There needs to be legal accountability for corporations. But for this to be kind of swept into the dustbin of history to the degree that you're talking about requires kind of choosing to live differently.
- [21:19]
A
So yeah, yeah, I agree. Let's take a quick break, John. We'll be right back with more Break Point this week.
- [21:28]
C
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A
We're back on Breakpoint this week. John, I think you and I have no qualms about dancing on the grave of Metaverse's whatever they wanted to call it, Horizon Worlds or what sounds like a Marvel movie, their Metaverse that they're supposedly scaling back. But let's talk about the deaths of some notable people. Now. There was a bit of a controversy this week because Robert Mueller passed away. And as you might know, President Trump sent out a post about it saying, you know, I'm glad he's dead, which seemed really distasteful and strange. We also saw this week the death of Kermit Gosnell, the noted abortionist from Philadelphia who, you know, once we finally, investigators finally got into his so called clinic, found that he had just been wantonly killing babies after they were born. He had killed, supposedly inadvertently, but female patients had died and he was rotting in prison when he passed away. Now, I wrestle with this, John, because there is clear biblical precedent in the Old Testament, at least for praising the Lord, for the death of people who committed great evil and who were maybe unrepentant and evil. But it doesn't feel open to us to celebrate the death of an individual person who, regardless of the evil they committed, were made in the image of God. I'm certainly happy that Kermit Gosnell wasn't able to continue his work and his killing. But how do you work through a reaction to the death of someone like him?
- [23:53]
B
Yeah, I hesitate to say this because we just spent so much time talking about getting off, you know, kind of social media and digital tech and that sort of thing. But if you want a great comparison, compare what Donald Trump wrote about Robert Mueller and then compare what Robert George, the professor at Princeton, wrote about Kermit Gosnell. Two very, very different takes. But I'll just say this. The Gosnell case, we're talking about one of the perhaps most prolific serial killers in American history. If we're honest with the categories, if we're looking at what a serial killer is and what a serial killer does and why he does it and that sort of thing. One of the worst stories that we've come across, certainly in the pro life movement, and if you believe the fundamental assumption of being against abortion is that this is an act that intentionally kills an innocent human being. And what that does to someone when they participate in it, what that did to Kermit Gosnell as he participated in it, supports that assumption, if that makes sense. It validates that assumption of the life movement. And of course, part of the story is how the media ignored it. Not only investigators in Philadelphia. I mean, it was certainly. There were more. There were more legal restrictions and more scrutiny for nail salons and ice cream parlors in Philadelphia than for Gosnell's abortion clinic. And that was part of the story that they found this man guilty and continued to basically dodge their own accountability and their own responsibility within that city. And the member of the media didn't show up. Didn't show up. They weren't there. This is an incredible, salacious trial, you think, just for the, you know, the headlines, the blood and guts, you know, if it bleeds, it leads, you know, sort of motivation for journalism. They would have been in the courtroom, and they didn't until some courageous world reporters called them out on it. And at the time, Kirsten Powers, a journalist for. I don't forget who she was writing for at the time, but she called out and that. That brought people to the trial. And then finally it got a little bit of attention. It is hard. Now, I'll say this, the Old Testament, and in the Old Testament in particular, I think especially in the Psalms, you have occasions. I don't know if I'd call it celebrations. I might be missing one or two. And if you know of that, let me know. There's lots of occasion in the Old Testament for gratitude, thankfulness to God, for relief from an evil person. I don't know about celebration, although I'm guessing that's a pretty fine line between when you're saying thank you, the Lord, for alleviating, you know, this evil and celebrating the death. But there's also clear instruction of two things. And I think that plays into another story from this week that I'll just mention quickly. We didn't talk about kind of talking about it, but the Bible says that God doesn't rejoice in the death of the wicked. I mean, that's a pretty profound statement, because if anyone has the right to, it's God, whose holiness was violated. And we have clear indication that the worst people in history are still redeemable and savable, at least in terms of their eternal destiny. I don't have any context, any knowledge whatsoever about that for this horrible, horrible individual who committed these terrible, terrible things against preborn children, against women, against the state, against the community. The scope of Kermit Gosnell's evil was astonishing. And evil doesn't astonish us very much anymore, but this was astonishing. But you know what? This is how big the grace of God is. This is how big, how wide the blood of Christ is. And that's hard for us to stomach. There was a huge, silly little internal debate. I'm not sending anyone to it. I don't know enough about it. You may be no more. About a man who posted about his wife prior to being married, was promiscuous and how she had found Christ and become saved and he was a virgin when they got married and posted it. I don't quite understand why it was posted to begin with, but it created this whole thing, particularly among the Christian so called manosphere, of saying how, just saying silly things about, you know, that he shouldn't have married her and all kinds of dumb stuff, as if the grace of God does not extend in Christ Jesus to the very worst of human behavior. And the story of the redeemed is what we celebrate. We don't celebrate how good we are, we celebrate how good Christ is, but we also call out evil for being evil. And that's the balance that the Bible always carries. Perfectly right that we are responsible for our evil and God is to be praised and thanked for his grace and specifically honored in Christ Jesus as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, for his obedience and sacrifice on our behalf, the one who became no sin, so that we could become the righteousness of God. That math has to be applied in the real world. And we talk about, is the Christian worldview big enough? Is the Christian worldview big enough for the real world that we live in? We have real evil here with God's. Now, again, I don't have any context to know that he did this or didn't do this. I know that if he had appealed to Christ Jesus for forgiveness, then that's what he would have received. So that's the framing of the wicked that the Bible gives us overall. And I will say too that we saw the media go silent on this death, just like we saw the media go silent on the evil that Kermit Gosnell was guilty of.
- [29:52]
A
Yeah, I think it helps in my framework, looking at somebody like that, you know, I think of as you were talking, I was thinking of the. The prodigal Son. Because, you know, I remember reading Henri Nouwen's book about this and him saying, you know, part of the deep tragedy of the older son's reaction was that, you know, he chose to take it personally and to view the situation through what he felt he was owed, as opposed to just falling to his knees in gratitude for the fact that his father was such a merciful father, like the fact that he forgive his other son and bring him back in with open arms. And I, you know, I want to have gratitude for the Lord, that he is the kind of God who would welcome back somebody who would turn to him even in the last years of his life. And all I can do is pray that the Lord would give that heart to me. But at the same time, part of what helps me make sense of it mathematically is that some of the justice of the Lord is that if somebody like Kermit Gossinel turned to the Lord toward the end of his life and the Lord forgave him and he is welcomed into the kingdom of God, he still paid for his sin. Right? I mean, Jesus paid for his sin on the cross, but he also led an absolutely disgusting, repulsive life that I have no doubt was completely devoid of joy because you can't do what he did and have any kind of holiness or joy attend you. And there's something that feels just about that. And, you know, I don't know if that's supposed to comfort me, but I have to confess that it does somewhat.
- [31:26]
B
Yeah, well, I appreciate that. I mean, I think that's a pretty human reaction, and I don't think it comes near to covering, you know, and that's. That's the other side of this, is that even if that were the case, and I think it became pretty clear out of the trial that, you know, he was driven by greed, he was driven by this insatiable bloodlust that, you know, again, supports the assumption of those of us who oppose abortion. He could be the most miserable person alive, and it would not have.
- [31:57]
A
Yeah, And I think he probably was among the most miserable people alive. There was another death this week that made the rounds in the news, and that was the death of Paul Ehrlich. Listeners of Breakpoint definitely heard us talk about him before. This was the man and researcher who wrote the book, I believe, in the 60s or 70s called the population Bomb. This was the now almost laughable prediction that by the time we reached this age we're in now that the world would be overpopulated to the point of utter collapse. And of course, we've seen that the precise opposite is what's facing us now, which is a birth rate decline that is so precipitous and major that, you know, we're facing the collapse of some of our cultural institutions that rely on generations recreating themselves. But he kind of leaned into his prediction even to his death, and kind of just said, well, you know, maybe I was off by a few years, but we still have a big, you know, looming population crisis. And you read some of his quotes, especially later in his life, and you're. You kind of, you know, I don't know much about him, but you're kind of like, I don't think he liked people very much. I think he was not crazy about there being more people in the world. But how did he make sense of keeping up with his obviously demonstrably wrong predictions this late in the game?
- [33:17]
B
I mean, part of it is he had a lot of support from the scientific community and the media community who embraced his predictions even as they were becoming obviously exposed for being false. He wasn't kind of cast out of polite society. The book had enormous implications. And this really touches that the truth of the maxim that we often say of ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. Because if you total up the victims of Paul Ehrlich's ideas, it's way more than the victims of Kermit Gosnell's behavior. That's a hard thing to stomach. But Paul Ehrlich's ideas influence population control policies in China and India, forced sterilizations, one child policies which led to forced abortions, government policies of what was incentivized and what wasn't incentivized. It was a really, really bad idea. And you made the joke earlier that it seemed like he didn't like people very much. There is a worldview of which he was an adherent which basically treats human beings as the problems with the world. When you're consistent with that in the same way that, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche was consistent with his atheism, it takes you to places. And Ehrlich was one of those people who was willing to go to those places. He was dead wrong. Now, I did a commentary earlier this week. Really. I went back to something that Chuck Colson had said about Paul Ehrlich decades ago and the population bomb thesis, and it stood up to the test of time way better than Ehrlich's predictions did. So we just let Chuck Say it in his own words. And we got this response. I don't know where this response came from, but we'll, we'll jump ahead to a listener question. It's not really a question because I think this, this kind of answers your question. There's still this thought right here. Be careful, people. Was Ehrlich wrong? His timeline was incorrect. But is this fear unfounded? If there were 20 billion people on this planet, should we be concerned? The fact is there are regions of the world that are too populated. The local resource is insufficient to support the local population. Haiti, Somalia, parts of Brazil and India. The assumptions of this response are the assumptions of Ehrlich and are just as wrong. Do you think the problem with Haiti is overpopulation? No. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are side by side. Haiti had the start. Dominican Republic got its independence from Haiti. The problem with Haiti is worldview. It's bad policy. It's corruption. Somalia, Brazil, India. Do you realize that even as the population around the world exploded over the last couple decades, that these parts of the world that suffered from famine and starvation 20 years ago now, global starvation has been cut in more than half in that last 30 year period. So in other words, the overpopulated places got overpopulated and the starvation became less. Do you realize that right now what we're dealing with are predictions of population decline, of a demographic cliff that we're going off of where the worker support is not going to be enough to accommodate or handle the social safety net need that's in a lot of places around the world. And where did this idea come from? It came from the antinatalist view that people are bad. Look, the fundamental assumption here that has to be answered, that Paul Ehrlich got wrong was are people the problem or people the solution? Ehrlich was convinced that people were like cockroaches. And the answer is people can create a lot of problems, but people are also the solution that God put on the planet. And oh, by the way, God is overseeing his world, right? And a creation has a very different kind of framing, a very different, what's the word? Margin of error, than a accident does. And if the entire world is an accident, we should have never got here in the first place. And so one bad decision or a set of bad decisions is going to send us careening off into catastrophism. That's why so often these scientific views which are built on Darwinian assumptions, come to catastrophic conclusions. That's a very different place. No, the world is not overpopulated. The world has Never been overpopulated. Are there regions of the world where overpopulation, where the population numbers stress the local resources? Yes, and almost always, and I would say almost always to always, it's because the population is not set free. There's government policy and restrictions and restricted access to creativity and resources and rule of law that keep this creativity from happening. It's not always that there's a straight line. It's not that there's no individuals that struggle or suffer from abject poverty, that the more freedom that we have, that has led to more alleviation of this. So, no, let me say it this way. Was Ehrlich wrong? Yes. It's not a question of timeline. It's a question of assumption. Was his fear unfounded? Yes, because his assumptions were wrong and his entire theories have been proven wrong. And the consequences of his theory legally and policy were worse than the reality on the ground. It created havoc. Bad ideas have victims, and there's just no other way to look at this. This is why the image of God has been such a radical, incredible, fundamental premise upon which to build societies and to build cultures and to build worlds. Way better than Ehrlich's.
- [39:19]
A
Yeah, this is a framing issue. This questioner and Ehrlich himself are saying. He says in this question, the fact is there are regions of the world that are too populated. What does that mean, actually? What is too populated mean? So even the question, are humans the problem or the solution? Seems inadequate to me. What I want to say to that is humans are just the fact. Humans are the crown of creation. So whatever problems or benefits that come as a result of human beings being in existence in a certain place are a secondary impact of the thing that God has willed to happen, which is that individual people are alive in a certain time and place, and that's as God ordained it. The rest is up to, you know, problem solving and handling resources well. But the fact of human beings existing cannot be a problem within a Christian worldview. That's just not within a Christian worldview. And even if you look at what.
- [40:18]
B
But it is a problem in secular worldview.
- [40:21]
A
But I think even the way Ehrlich. It was very inconsistent. The way he even talked about the problem. And this was pointed out in a column I read last week, which was. He would say, you know, the reason we need to be so concerned about this overpopulation is because it's gonna stress our food supply. That was one of his main drumbeats. We're gonna run out of food, basically. So one of his solutions to Curb the population bomb was to cut off the food supply to countries and regions that were overpopulated. In his estimation. This makes zero sense and completely betrays the fact that for him at least, this had nothing to do with human well being and the flourishing of the human race. This was about control and frankly his distaste for humans, which, I don't know, some kind of self hatred involved there. I have no psychoanalysis to offer as to why he felt that way. But the concern about there being too many humans is a fundamental miscategorization of what humans are. And I think that's critical for Christians who are looking at this issue and maybe rightly so, are concerned about. You know, I don't like how long we have to wait for medical care in this country or in other countries where it's even worse. I get stressed about the food supply and medicine supply and all sorts of like, structures that we've built, but it is not in my vocabulary to then look at the fact of individual human beings as part of that problem.
- [41:43]
B
That's exactly the point. It's two things. It's what humans are and what humans have capacity to do. That's a difference of creation versus evolution at the most fundamental level. In other words, if you don't think that there is a creator and all there is is matter, then you have to put an equal sign between rocks and people and animals. There's not a preference here to save humans any more than there is a preference to save the planet. When you go to human capacity, the question is, who can save the planet? Now, almost all of these people who say that there's too many people never volunteer themselves to reduce the population. Why? Because there is a sense that they themselves have the answer. But fundamentally they think that humans don't have the capacity to solve the problem. The fact that humans are the solution is what was built into us by God, made in his image and the tasks given to us in Genesis chapter one, to steward the creation, to be fruitful and to multiply and to subdue the earth. And that word subdue is not a subdue like squash, it's a subdue like flourish. It's to make the world flourish. But the very assumption that you talk about human well being, human flourishing, that's a Christian assumption. It's not a naturalistic assumption because there's not a higher value to human beings than in that framework. And when you go down that rabbit hole, and that's my point, is that Ehrlich went down that rabbit hole, then you are brought to conclusions like the point is not to save people, which is why we cut off food supply. You see this in the same mentality of those who value a state or a collectivism over the individual. Well, if we need to kill a whole bunch of people in order to get what we actually value, which is, you know, power or the collective good, so to speak, then so be it, because they don't have value themselves. That's why the image of God was so revolutionary, but it's also why abandoning it is so dramatically bad.
- [43:51]
A
Well, John, let's take another quick break. We'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week.
- [43:58]
C
Join the Colson center from April 18th to the 25th as we participate in America Radio Reads the Bible, a seven day historic continuous public reading of the entire Bible by over 400 men and women from across the country in our nation's capital. This event is designed to commemorate America's 250th birthday, inspiring others to hear God's word during a pivotal cultural moment. You can join in person in Washington, D.C. or via livestream. To register, go to americareadsthebible.com online. That's americareadsthebible dot com online.
- [44:35]
A
We're back on Breakpoint this week. John I want to turn our attention now to a new report from the Pew Research center about what Americans consider immoral. This is a fascinating study that is looking at people based on their religious affiliation and political affiliation and some cases and then asking them things like is having an extramarital affair morally wrong? Is using IVF morally wrong? What about being extremely rich? And there were some really interesting, maybe predictable divides here among people who identify as Democrats and Republicans. But also just a snapshot of where we are on some of these issues. Like, for example, I would say maybe even 50 years ago, things like using marijuana or gambling or, you know, were were considered kind of widely considered illicit. People still certainly engaged in them, but it was like kind of hidden and it was seedy and we made mob movies about them. Now it's like most people find these things to be either morally acceptable or not a moral issue at all. For example, gambling, only 29% of people believe it's morally wrong. Everybody else thinks it's either completely acceptable or not a moral question. It's even less when it comes to using marijuana, even less when it comes to getting a divorce. These are fascinating and somewhat AKA very discouraging. Is this a good measure? Do we have our work cut out for us here?
- [46:12]
B
Oh, I thought it was fascinating.
- [46:14]
A
Don't gamble and don't use marijuana, it's just not going to help you.
- [46:18]
B
Well, early to the conclusion. Yeah. An early conclusion is that PETA has absolutely failed at its mission because 96%, 96% say that eating meat is not morally wrong, 54% say it's not a moral issue. Yeah, so PETA has failed. So that is fascinating. No, I tell you, a couple of things stood out. One is there are, you know, things that might be considered social issues like the death penalty, you know, things like that, a patient ending their life with the help of a doctor, or to say, matters of kind of public policy. You could throw in gambling, you could throw in marijuana, you could throw in a book. Because all those are kind of things that at least in the American context have become kind of policy issues, social issues. And it's fascinating, it's clear from this study how that the largest number in a lot of these issues is that category, that this is not a moral issue. How can you say, you know, using marijuana or getting a divorce is not a moral issue. Having an abortion is not a moral issue. I mean, these are big segments of the population. What that tells you is, is that if people think it is a matter of individual freedom, they don't think it's a moral issue. That's a fascinating conclusion. It's almost as if they think that it's only a moral issue if the government has to decide or something like that. But if you should have the right to do it personally, then it's not a moral issue. Is it a matter of autonomy? Is it a ma. What is it if it's not a moral issue? Right. About using IVF or choosing to use a stimulant like marijuana. You see what I mean? That, in other words, this study, I think tells us a lot about what people think morality is and the kind of the deep seated relativism of the American experience, of the American culture right now there is this kind of view of these things. Like 20 years ago, over 20 years ago, I was at a meeting that Chuck Colson hosted with a bunch of leaders of Worldview and Apologetics Ministries. And Del Tackett of the Truth Project defined relativism then. And he defined it really, really well. And I think that definition, his offered definition is reflected in this study, which is this. He said relativism is basically the social contract. You don't judge me and I won't judge you. That's where relativism lands. And man, that's where you see a lot of these things. How can you what do you make of that? I mean, how do you, how can you say getting a divorce, that's not a moral issue? 45% way more than think it's wrong. Way more than think it's right or just saying no. The right answer to whether you should get a divorce or not is it ain't a moral issue if it's about your happiness. It's not. I mean, what is that conclusion?
- [49:13]
A
I wonder if people don't even understand the word moral, you know, because I would, I would imagine I would. You know, most individual people who are answering it that way are thinking of somebody they know or they're thinking of like a world. Worst case scenario, you have an abusive spouse or someone who's cheated, well, then of course it's okay for that person to get a divorce. But I would even argue that those people might even agree it would be immoral not to get a divorce. Right. I think there's a category error, like we're not sure what we mean by the word moral. How do you think most people would define that word?
- [49:48]
B
Yeah, I think from this study, I think that's exactly, that's exactly it. I think that they think that it's, if it affects them, you know, if it's something that they have a strong
- [49:59]
A
opinion about, it's what you always say about abortion. Right. It's, it should be legal or it should be illegal, except in cases of rape, incest, in my case.
- [50:07]
B
Right. And by the way, I don't believe that I, I say that that's the
- [50:10]
A
way people think about it. Yeah, Sorry.
- [50:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to be really clear, I don't think that there are exceptions, any of those three, by the way, but especially the third one. Yeah, I, I, I, I think it's, it's, it's, it's really interesting. I, I, I, I think it also then kind of brings up the question, how, how, how do Christians think about this? So I'd love to, you know, really see this kind of fleshed out. You know, as you said, this study did talk about that Republicans are in a much different place than Democrats on a lot of these issues, and including about whether it, these are moral issues or not. White evangelicals are very, very different on this. And there's also on the Pew Research page for this, you can compare, you know, the religiously unaffiliated with evangelical Protestants and so on. And how does this kind of, you know, impact where do Christians stand? This has become, you know, really relevant. There was a, a podcast that brought up this Question about James Taurico, who, of course, is wearing the mantle of evangelical as he's promoting abortion and promoting gender fluidity and promoting homosexuality and kind of articulating a version of Christianity, which is Christianity is tolerance and inclusivity, which is really kind of where Protestant liberalism went after saying, Christianity doesn't have to believe in the supernatural. It doesn't have to believe in sin. It doesn't have to believe in salvation in the traditional sense. It doesn't have to believe in miracles like the resurrection. You know, it's being a good person. Well, as that morphed in the latter part of the 20th century, then, you know, it became kind of a positive value stamped on mainline liberal Protestantism, which is what means being kind of tolerant and inclusive of all people. And Tal Rico is kind of kind of trotting that back out in his. His political campaign. And of course, he's earned the critique, and I think the right critique, which is that his views are not Christian. And there was a podcast that argued that you can't say that as long as someone will believe the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, then it doesn't matter beyond that. They didn't say it didn't matter beyond that. They said that that's what it means to have Christian views. In other words, to be a Christian is to have Christian views about theological things. There's no such thing as moral orthodoxy. There's only theological orthodoxy as defined by the creeds in the history of the church. And it created quite a storm. And I think that that conclusion is reflected in what we're seeing here in the Pew study, that maybe our definition, at least, there's a large segment of the Christian population that gets its views about morality in the same place. Because I don't see the Bible saying that. I mean, I think the Bible really clearly in Romans talks about wrong belief and wrong behavior being almost inseparable. If you do these things, the Bible says, you cannot inherit the kingdom of God. These are all these kind of really bad things that God hates. And Paul says, and that's what you used to do, and you used to be that, but you're not anymore because of Christ, in other words. I think there seems to be an inseparability here between the moral positioning and the theological positioning, at least according to the Bible. Now we've blocked and tackled it in the creeds, and I'm a big believer of the creeds. We say the Nicene Creed in my church every week, and it articulates what we believe. But I Don't think that. That, you know, kind of at a fundamental level, but that's not the whole of the Christian worldview.
- [53:56]
A
Yeah, there's a weird play here between what you believe is true and how you act. Right. So. And I. I think that there is a danger, you know, in. In thinking like, well, if you. And I've heard this in some Christian circles, if you really believed, you know, in the Bible and you believed that all this was true, then you wouldn't do X, Y and Z. So if you find yourself doing this sort of sin, then you really need to plumb the depths of your belief and make sure you actually believe it. I don't think that that is actually true and that I point there to Paul saying that the things he wants to do, he finds himself not doing, and the things he doesn't want to do, he keeps finding himself doing. There's a part of human nature and a fundamental irrationality that attends our brokenness that we have to contend with. And I actually think that's one of the reasons it's so valuable to do what your church does and to continue reminding yourself week after week of what you believe is true. But in terms of what a moral belief is, you know, something like homosexuality being against the nature of, you know, the way God made us. That feels part and parcel of theology to me, because part of our theology and our creed is just affirming the reality of the world. God made men and women. One man and one woman coming together is the only way that children can be created. That means that what we call marriage, socially and theologically, is that relationship. Because not only is that what's required to create a child, but then that points to the reality that that's what children need after they're born is their mother and their father and all this kind of stuff in some way, because of the technology we have or cultural change, we feel like the question of how we approach sex is separate from design and creation. And that's what allows us to say, you know, nothing in the creed says anything about homosexuality. It does. It says that God created us male and female, and that he told us all those things you mentioned in the last segment, that we are the crown of creation, that it's our job to fill and subdue the earth and to cultivate it, all that kind of stuff. That is the exact same thing. You start there, and within two moves you get to the conclusion that homosexuality is against that design. The question I think then is before us is, you know, can a person who comes to Saving faith in Jesus. We were just talking about a person like Kermit Gosnell. If they had some kind of conversion late in their life and they've done all of this wrong, and they. They come to see the truth of Jesus and they fall at his feet and they ask him to save them, but they still haven't, you know, then spent the years of sanctification that you hope for a Christian to have to apply that truth to all of these other areas of their life, and they haven't come to the right conclusions about all these other ethical things. Can they still inherit the kingdom of God? And I think on its face, that answer is yes, because we see people like the thief on the cross who accepted Jesus, and Jesus says, you'll be with me in heaven. And we don't know that his stance on anything else, on thieving or whatever else, I mean, presumably, yes, but changed all that much in between there and his imminent death. But that's not to say that once you come to saving faith in Jesus, that that shouldn't bear fruit in the way you view your life. Right. So it's hard for us to say, what are the guardrails? And how can we know whether any individual person, based on the views that they hold today, are an orthodox Christian? It's hard for us to say. I don't even know that we necessarily need to have that responsibility. But there is some tension between the time of sanctification and what kind of time that requires, and the fact that fidelity to the creation story and the biblical word is critical.
- [57:45]
B
Yeah, And I want to be really clear. I'm in no way at all suggesting that you have to have all your moral dots in a row in order to get into heaven. Because the fundamental premise of the Gospel message of personal salvation is that you don't have your dots in a row, even if you think you have your dots in a row. Why am I saying dots in a row instead of ducks in a row? You know what I mean? The point is, you can't have them all in place. You don't have them all in place. Jesus has them all in place for you. But the Bible isn't just a message of personal salvation. It's a message of the creation, fall, redemption, and renewal of all things. And there's a way of thinking about reality that it suggests. So I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time talking about what was said at the podcast, but this is the summary of it. When they posted their own clip of the conversation, the label heretic gets thrown around way too easily these days. If you profess the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed, you count as a legitimate Christian, period. Now, I think there's two problems with this. Oh, and Christians will always disagree about important political and social issues. Now, to be really clear, they're talking about Taurico's positions on not political and social issues, but things that should in every category be considered moral issues of behavior. It's notable that the issues that they're talking about and the examples that you used were issues of sexual morality. Because that's where all the heat is right now. That's where all the disagreement is right now. The Bible is not ambiguous on sexual morality. The Bible's not ambiguous in how it describes how humans were created, how that creation informs how we're supposed to think about sexual behavior, the context of how we were created together, and everything else. All right, the point is, can you be considered a heretic if you embrace the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed but reject the creation story or reject clear teachings of biblical morality? Trevin Wax had, I think, a terrific response.
- [59:42]
A
But those are part of the creeds.
- [59:45]
B
Well, no, the creation story is not in terms of. Well, I mean that God created is. The implications are not. There's nothing about human anthropology and the creeds that tells us something about the role that the creeds have always played. The role that the creeds have always played was basically somebody starts teaching something wacky, the church gets together and says, wait a minute, we need to clarify whether this is legit or what is the legitimate position about the nature of Christ, about salvation, about the future, things like that. One of the reasons that there's not clear teaching on sexuality is in the creeds is because there was consensus about it. No one ever suggested, like, hey, you can be a Christian and then sleep with another man. Like that was just outside the moral imagination of the church throughout history until the last little bit of the sexual revolution. Not that there weren't Christians who did it, but that's what the Bible talks about. If you do it, then you violated, you know, kind of the clear.
- [60:45]
A
But it wasn't just Christians. People were never suggesting that this kind of relationship is the same as the relationship between a man and a woman. Oh yeah, people were certainly engaging in that behavior, but nobody pretended it was the same thing.
- [60:57]
B
No, even. And that's, that's a, that's an important point that, that, you know, we, that to be made about whether same sex marriage should be legalized. That even in pagan societies they didn't equate the two because of the outcome. But here I'm talking about just kind of within the Christian story, within the Christian consensus. The fact that there's not consensus today on these issues, it is itself an indication, because there has always been Christian consensus about sexual morality. Not consensus of behavior, but consensus of what God intended and what God expects. And I think part of this is that to reduce this down to can you get into heaven or not get into heaven, as if that sums up the Christian position that more betrays kind of how individualistic we are, and we think about Christianity on an individualistic basis, which reflects the Pew study, by the way. But that's another point. The thing is, is that Paul calls the church to orthodoxy and that orthodoxy is in belief, in behavior. There's expectations. This is what he does to Corinth. Believe this about Jesus Christ. Oh, and by the way, here's how you handle sexual sin. And his condemnation of sexual behavior in the church at Corinth is, you know, underscores that there's a clear way that this ought to happen, and there's a clear way that this ought not to happen. So I do think I want to. It's an early recommendation, but actually, way before this, there was a post by Trevin Wax. In fact, Trevin wrote a book called the Thrill of Orthodoxy, in which he talks about some of these things as well. But if you go back to 2019, and we were having some of these conversations about, can you be a Christian and believe Acts and so on, and is there a Christian view? And I think these are kind of two different things. Can you be a Christian and believe Acts? Is one question. Is there a Christian view of. That's a different question because of the implications of creation and so on. But he asks on a blog at the Gospel Coalition, is there really an orthodox view on sexuality? And he talks about the creeds. He talks about the sexual revolution, particularly the one that the church brought to a pagan society, and how that's built on kind of a framing of reality. It's a really, really terrific summary of this, and I think answers that question really well, that, yes, there is a moral orthodoxy to Christianity, just like there's a doctrinal orthodoxy to Christianity. The creeds do not sum up everything. The creeds are essential on doctrinal orthodoxy. But the church didn't get together and say, now, Church, what do you believe about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Which is what the creeds did. Now, Christians, let's restate what we believe about Sex and marriage and thieving and all the other things. There was an assumption of givens that only recently has been questioned to this degree. So there is a moral orthodoxy as well as there is a doctrinal one.
- [64:08]
A
I think a good rule of wisdom is whenever you hear people making a claim like this that, you know, this isn't covered in the creeds or whatever, pay attention to what issues they apply that to and which they don't. Because I remember back when, you know, when Donald Trump was first elected, you know, the same group talking about, you know, if you were for this man or you were for his border policies, then you were not Christian. You could not call, and you should not call yourself a Christian. And, you know, whether or not you find that in exact claim compelling, you know, you should run through the same rubric that you're talking about here. But when you're deciding whether somebody is approaching questions like this in good faith, it is worthwhile to look at where they apply it and where they go.
- [64:47]
B
That is a very, very good point.
- [64:48]
A
Well, John, let's talk about recommendations real quickly here. So you just mentioned Trevin Wax, which is a great one. I will recommend. A friend of mine, Emma Waters released her book this year, which I know has been an incredible labor or this week, sorry, I know has been an incredible laborer of love for her. It's called Lead like jl. I think it's a beautiful book about what it means to be a Christian woman and how to cultivate virtues in every role you might find yourself playing at every season of your life as a woman. You know, it's not so encumbered as some of the categories we tend to put women in. So she writes about being a young woman, being a married woman, being an unmarried woman, being an older woman who is maybe mentoring younger women. And I think it's really, really heavily researched. She put so much into this, and I can't recommend it enough. So it's called Lead Like JL by Emma Waters. That's gonna be mine. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint this week. From the Colson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet. We'll see you all back here next week. God bless.