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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 reflect on the July 4th celebrations at the nation's capital. And then we're going to talk about two very different case studies in religious freedom in education, one out of Maine and one out of Texas. We are so glad you're with us this week. Please stick around. Welcome to breakpoint this week from the Colson center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center. John, despite the heat dome, as it was referred to, the record breaking heat across much of the Midwest and the east coast last week, the celebrations for the Fourth of July went ahead as planned in our nation's capital. Did you watch any of those festivities? Apparently it was the best fireworks display ever seen by mankind.
- [00:54]
B
It did not go on as planned. The National Mall was evacuated because of thunderstorms. And then it started several hours later. There was nothing that went on because there was nothing planned in Colorado because our state's on fire. So yes, we did watch it because we had nothing else to do. So we sat there and watched Washington D.C. and it was the most crazy display of fireworks ever. The finale, which I thought had happened four times, you know, already when it actually happened, it looked like as someone put on X, they just nuked Washington, D.C. which is what it looked like with 850,000 fireworks that were fired off is what was said. What was interesting is, you know, again, it's how boring it is to watch this on tv. But it wasn't, it was like crazy. It looked like they were blowing up Washington, D.C. even the CNN anchors had to actually admit that it was the most amazing fireworks display. I talked to someone who actually saw it in person. They said it wasn't amazing, it was overwhelming. It was too much, felt like they were under attack for 40 minutes. But I was also interested in the speech that was given by the president, which was really at times incredibly moving to see the speech held together by appealing to the flags. They had different flags displayed on stage and brought in veterans, including three that were over 100 years old, one that was 107 years old, one that was in World War II and I think was just under 100. And you think, oh, he must have lied about his age to enlist like a lot of people did back then. And there's something really remarkable there. And I think it really betrayed something, though, in the speech where the use of the Word exceptionalism, which I'm comfortable with in terms of America as a country built on ideas, sometimes bled over into describing Americans as exceptional. And I don't think that's the right read. The human condition is the human condition. Human behavior is morally different and can be differentiated. There are some cultures that are morally reprehensible, while others are morally exceptional. But as individuals, we're all made in the image of God. And there's nothing special about being an American in terms of because we're born here. What's special about it is the ideas and the ideas that we subscribe to that shape the way that we see the world, if we do, by the way. And I think that that is obviously the question coming out of this celebration of the 250th, to quote our friend Os Guinness, the question is, what made America great to begin with? And it wasn't because somehow we're special people, that we're somehow different individuals, that we are of a moral value of other different or higher than others. It's that there's a framing of reality that is true, that describes more accurately human dignity and human value and the potential and the opportunity in front of us. And the question is, do we subscribe to that? Are we educated in that? We talked about civic education last week. What vision of our nation are we embracing? And I didn't think that was always clear in the speech, but it was certainly exemplified when these hundred year old veterans stood up and saluted. That was really moving.
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I think you could take it that way, where those veterans themselves as individuals made extraordinary choices and are an exceptional representation of what some people will do for the ideals that the nation was founded on. Right. So I guess not, not out of a spirit of saying, by nature of being born here we are, you know, have more human value than someone who wasn't born here. But that a culture built on the ideas that we chose or that our founders chose and that we've chosen, at least until now, to maintain produces people who tend to make and can make extraordinary choices on behalf of their fellow man.
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B
And are we still that culture? Are we still that culture that produces that kind of citizen? Do we still have the ingredients in place? And I think that's what's at question and is not obviously true.
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A
You know, I heard a story this morning on World about a couple from South Africa, a white couple who came to the US under the refugee program. And obviously that's been a controversial thing because as of right now, those are the only refugees we're allowing into the country. But they were talking about their home country and what's going on there. You know, all the land that's been seized and there was, you know, there's the violence and the danger that they were under. They were describing their home in South Africa. You know, they had an eight foot fence around their house, and still they were broken into the first night they moved in. And that there you just got a sense of just chaos and no law and order there. And at the end of the interview, they were talking about applying for a green card and hoping to stay here permanently. And the husband said, I don't ever wanna go back to South Africa. I don't want to be connected to it at all. Like, I want no relation to it at all. And it was heartbreaking to hear, understandable, you know, given his situation. But I thought that makes sense to me. When you have a system that's set up the way that they are and that has gone the direction it has, and that has allowed such corruption to fester in places of power in South Africa, then you get kind of a, you know, the mighty against the weak kind of situation in a lot of different contexts. And I just think that, that when you have that kind of culture, it tends to breed more of that same way of living, if that makes sense. Because people don't always know what else is possible when you grow up in a place like that. And so I think it is possible maybe to, maybe I'm trying to thread a needle too much, but to say that there are many exceptional Americans and it's a gift that we were born here and that we got to be formed in a nation that had those virtues at the forefront.
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B
Yeah, well, and then we have to answer, are they still at the forefront? Right. Because the scenario that you described of this man's home in South Africa could describe life in a lot of neighborhoods in the United States as well. Right. So again, it's not by somehow I
- [07:32]
A
think it was holding not to that level because it doesn't have the government buy in.
- [07:39]
B
But yeah, look, you know, when I was in seminary 20 years ago, in certain parts of Chicago. Yes, that's the way it was. You know, I don't know how we can compare him directly. My guess is it probably does compare to certain parts of South Africa in a way that it doesn't in certain developing parts of the world. Just because what is valued, what is prized, and these are the things, when you orient a society, you orient them around particular virtues, and societies are oriented around those virtues. If Individuals are oriented around those virtues. It's just not an inevitable thing. There were times in which the president was speaking as if the future of America was inevitably great. And that is completely dependent on the kind of people that we are, whether these values and virtues are sustainable. We've seen how fragile they can be. And at some level I think that we have retreated to a response which says we have the challenges that we do because those people have come in. Now, there certainly are lots of issues that come in when you have an open borders and you policy and you don't have an expectation of immigrants conforming to a particular way of life. But I'm not sure we are very clear on what that way of life is, the way of life that has and the values around it that made America what it was. And when you hear the stories that were articulated in this speech so beautifully, they had to do with something more than just pursuing wealth. They had to do with something more than just doing whatever you wanted, living out of kind of a greed or something like that. There was a vision of virtue and family and community and care that was built into the system. And listen, our future depends on how much we continue to align with those things. You can't cut off the roots and then expect the same fruit. And I think we have seen that across the board. So it's easy to blame those that are coming in. And there is blame to be had to those who had no expectations, no policies, no walls, no borders, essentially, in how the immigration policy was carried out. But there's an awful lot of question to be had. What kind of people are we going to be? Who are we going to be? And I thought that it was just such a stark contrast, so much to celebrate about America's story. But the future's not inevitable if we somehow try to build this thing on some other foundations.
- [10:28]
A
Well, and as we've talked about, this has a lot to do with education and how we teach our young people. So there are two education Related Stories I want to compare and contrast with you right now, and I'm going to just describe briefly each of them and then let you take it from there. The first is out of Maine, where the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that in order to qualify for state tuition programs, so essentially state money that is supplementing tuition at a private school, a Christian school, must abide by that state's LGBT policies. I'm assuming this is in relation to curriculum. So they have something in Maine called the Human Rights act, which has to do with sexuality and sexual Education, among other things. And if Christian schools want to qualify for tuition programs, for which other schools in Maine do qualify, they must follow the rules, which would be a violation of their faith statements. And then on the other hand, you have Texas, where a controversial new law is requiring passages from the Bible to be taught in all classrooms, including public schools. My understanding from this story is that these are not taught in a public school in any sort of religious instruction kind of way, but in a. This is incredibly relevant to your study of history, especially your civics education. If you want to understand the minds of the founders and lots of references and all of the Enlightenment poetry and everything from Shakespeare to the Declaration of Independence, you'll probably want to have at least a passing knowledge of the Christian scripture. But that, of course, has been very controversial. NPR did a big story about it, and that this is, you know, yet again, just more religion pushing its way into public schools. So two very different stories. But the battle of how we educate our kids is ongoing.
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B
Yeah, it is. I mean, it's interesting. We've been having a lot of conversations this week, actually have been with a group and a lot of conversations around education, because there's such an incredible moment for education right now. And there's such a difference between how red states and blue states are approaching this, and whether they're asserting more control over schools or they're coming up with more and more creative ways to allow different viewpoints to be introduced, to protect especially female students from males interfering in those spaces and especially in privacy concerns and so on. And then also these curricular questions. The main conversation is really interesting because of a number of things. Number one is the Supreme Court has ruled over and over and over and over and over and over that if the state has a program to which people can participate, then religious belief and conviction alone is not enough to basically kick them out of that. And of course, the question is, is whether the religious belief is on the same parring as what we think in terms of safety and well being of students, which, of course, has been largely defined in recent years by LGBTQ activists enforcing that. And so it becomes a priority here. The other interesting thing about this, and we wrote about this years ago, is that Maine is in an interesting situation because the state of Maine has long outsourced some of its educational responsibility to private entities. Is there's just not a public school everywhere. And if there's not a public school everywhere, then the Christian secondary schools can participate and basically play that proxy for these areas. And so now you have a real conversation. They have basically relied on Christian schools to do what the state's going to do, and now they're telling them you have to do it this way. So I think this is really interesting. Look, the jurisprudence here, the legal precedent here, you know, we're going back to the playground case where Trinity Lutheran school or church could. Could. Could participate in a state program and have their, you know, playgrounds resurfaced with, you know, safer material. That's. That's part of this. There's been, I don't know, half a dozen, maybe cases in a row in which the right of religious institutions, including churches and Christian schools, to be Christian and to not set those Christian convictions aside in order to participate in something that's widely available, that's been upheld, I can't imagine this isn't going to get overturned. I think you are going to continue to have states that are just stubborn. I think at some point, the citizens of those states, and I've been thinking about this for Colorado, need to step up and go stop wasting all our taxpayer money defending these policies that, you know you're gonna lose. I mean, Colorado's, like, lost four straight at the Supreme Court and not just been. Not just lost, but have been lectured by Supreme Court justices, like, stop being idiots, essentially. And yet here we go, we're still back at it again. So I think it's. There's a lot here. I mean, you accurately described the Texas situation. The Texas situation is just, look, we've basically built a wall around any biblical knowledge and said, that can't belong here. And then you think, well, how can you actually be educated if you don't know at least some biblical allusions? How do you know what the founding documents say? How do you know what Shakespeare meant if you don't know the allusions that he's making to certain things? And that's what we hear over and over and over. There's been pieces written in major publications from university professors at Ivy League schools saying, I've got to start from scratch because they don't even know the basics that underscore the biblical story. And how, even if you don't think they're true, even if you don't think that they're actually, you know, legitimately connected with the ideas that we find, for example, in the Declaration or any of our founding documents. It's just the illusions. You have to have a basic knowledge to even know. You know, am I my brother's keeper? Like, you know, statements like that. It doesn't even make any sense. If you do not know at least a basic level. And I think that's what they're suggesting here. I don't think this is gonna be challenged in any meaningful way. I think it's gonna stand. Texas has a right to do that. We've also seen the Supreme Court uphold that. So it's an interesting moment certainly for education, as you say.
- [16:53]
A
I feel like there's obviously a spiritual component to this too, because you just wanna like, why do people feel so threatened by the Bible being taught in this way? Now obviously a lot of the media is characterizing it as like, you're gonna be prosel if you're a fourth grade public school kid now in Texas. And that's its own dumb thing. That will quickly be proven wrong. And I'm sure already has. But, you know, we always, we learn because of all the reasons you're talking about, like just having literary fluency. Just having literary fluency. You've got to understand, like, who are the. What's the Greek system of mythology? Who are the Greek gods? Who are the Roman gods? What are they talking about when they refer to this? I remember a big unit in my social studies in high school learning about the different beliefs of the Native Americans and how that related to their behavior and how we can better understand them because we understand what they believed in terms of spirituality and nature and all. And I never felt threatened, my faith never felt threatened by any of that. I don't ever remember any arguments from anybody suggesting that was a threat or that was somehow some kind of religious proselytization to me or whatever. It was just an obvious part of my education. And so it makes it feel spiritual. It's like the Bible is this hot potato, like it will burn you if you touch it. We don't wanna look at it. Don't force me to open it. Don't force me to read it. And that in some ways I'm just praying that the Lord brings fruit from that. Put it in the schools, teach it as a historical document as it is. Teach it as relevant to everything else that you're learning. Because all the people you're reading and all of you know our nation and all this is invoking so much of it. And then the word doesn't return to the Lord empty. He can work through that as well. So I'm just waiting to see that happen. But it's just interesting to me how allergic to it people are.
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B
Maybe they have reason for two causes. One is what you just said, like, let's pray that the word never Returns void. So let God do his work. And we can sneakily be behind the scenes saying the Bible does what the Bible does. But look, if you go back to the initial mandates for public education in America, they were for the point of proselytizing. In other words, we need these schools so that we raise a moral and virtuous citizenry. And the way to do that is to raise them and acknowledge the Bible and the history of the nation and Christianity and civics and so on. Now, of course, that original vision has been long lost, but it was the original vision. It wasn't necessarily let's get them all saved. It was, though, let's get them all to be good citizens. And you can't be good citizens without this moral instruction. And they thought that the source for moral instruction was the Bible. So, you know, maybe the critics have have a point in their concern in terms of what it was originally founded for. But of course, that underscores something we talked about.
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A
The Bible is a dangerous document. You open it, you just can't control what might happen.
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B
What might happen. It might actually make you virtuous. That goes to what we were talking about earlier, which is, are we going to be the kind of people that we need to be in order to maintain this remarkable place and this remarkable system and this remarkable nation? And it's not going to happen by accident. And it's certainly not going to happen if we stop talking to each other, stop getting married, stop being sexually whole and pure, and all trade in our spouses for AI Chatbots. So there is a direction of life that we should follow if we want to head in a particular direction.
- [20:28]
A
All right, John, let's take break. We'll be right back in just a moment with more Break Point this week.
- [20:35]
B
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A
We're back on Breakpoint this week. John, I want to talk to you now about a new study, kind of a meta analysis of the data on suicide. And this is kind of poking some holes in some conventional wisdom about this and about deaths of despair that I think we all sense have been increasing in recent years. And certainly Covid made this a lot worse. But this new study from the University of Utah found that suicide tends to move in cycles, unlike most other causes of death, they said, and that the suicide epidemic among young people in particular has been getting worse for much longer than we thought. The study authors said that this pattern has now persisted for more than 60 years. I think some people imagine it kind of starting in the 90s, but it really started before that. And then they also found in the data some what they called unexpected changes in risk patterns. So, for example, suicide is lower in metropolitan areas and tends to be higher in rural areas, particularly among women, which also kind of subverts some narratives that this is a largely male problem, or at least primarily a male problem. They said we need to rethink suicide as a social phenomenon. I think this gets to, you know, I know Malcolm Gladwell has talked about just like the social contagion, we've talked about it with transgenderism. But I think there's very clear evidence that suicide and self harm follows some of those patterns as well. I appreciate this study, but it's also just difficult to read. I mean, it's hard to think about, but I do think that we generally misunderst. I'm making a generalization, but I don't think we fully understand what's going on with suicide. And I think there's a big social contagion part of it.
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B
Well, I think a couple interesting aspects here that should be instructive for us. One is how long the trend line has been going. And this corresponds, for example, with this shift towards what Carl Truman has called expressive individualism. It also went through the phase of the self esteem movement where we taught everyone to love themselves and that sort of stuff. And it kind of just points to this idea of this self referential idea of who we are and what gives us value and what makes us important. You be you, you be happy. You follow, your heart has poisonous fruit. It does not actually lead to people feeling better about themselves. And even targeting specifically this issue, which has happened at various times in various specific ways, has led to not the results we wanted. You know, it's almost like by staring at the problem we made it worse. You know, you tell people that whatever you want to do is right for you, but don't do this. And people understand that that's inconsistent and it's not something actually that can answer the deep questions that they have. We've also talked about the tail end of modernity into post modernity, or what some call hyper modernity. And how that produces such an identity crisis and such an untethering from ultimate sources of truth and meaning and identity, that the ultimate crisis of meaning is going to be reflected in tangible ways. So this should be actually expected. And so you tell people that the world is meaningless, that their life ultimately is meaningless, but find meaning then, as if that's going to make you feel better. And it's just the folly of someone we wrote about a couple weeks ago on Breakpoint, Jean Paul Sartre, who says it's meaningless that we're born, it's meaningless that we die. And so what you got to do is go make meaning. Well, if it's all meaningless, why make meaning? These are all trend lines. The social aspect of it is really interesting on two fronts. The first is the rise and expansion of so called medical assistance in dying or MAID or doctor assisted suicide or whatever. I remember when Colorado embraced doctor assisted suicide voted in, I think 2016. This was on the tail end of a couple years where there was really high rates of suicide among high school students. There was one school in Colorado springs that had 11 suicides that year. And it was tragic. And people were alarmed at the crisis that it was. And why is this happening and how do we prevent it and how do we stop it? And oh, by the way, people should be able to kill themselves as long as they have the help of a physician if they are under certain conditions that they feel are hopeless. And you think to yourself, well, wait a minute, what are we telling these kids? This is a social message, right? This is moving the Overton window. This is making this act more plausible. Why? Because we're saying, well, suicide's not the answer unless it is. You think kids can't kind of parse their way through that confusing messaging? Of course they are going to land somewhere. And then the other kind of social condition here. And you kind of read through this study and one of our editors read this and just said, this screams why the church is needed, why the church is needed, why the church is irreplaceable. And I remember in 2019, my sister, who is a mental health professional, attended a conference in Denver. And this is a year where again, we had the national alarm about what people called deaths of despair, including suicide, self harm, addiction and so on. But they were highlighting some good news. And guess where that good news was? It was in Colorado Springs. What was the good news is that the high rates of suicide among high school students had now been turned around like they had found some preventative measures that were actually working. And they highlighted these programs at this secular conference on mental health. And guess what the program was? It was grown ups going into lunchtimes at these schools just looking for people who were struggling. It was kind of like a first responder sort of model. Like, these people weren't counselors. These people weren't able to, you know, walk someone all the way back to health or, you know, they weren't there to administer Narcan if they overdose, nothing like that. They were literally just there to have conversations. And guess where they found people willing to go. Because, listen, I believe, you know, high school students are cool. You couldn't pay me enough money to go sit in a high school lunchroom. You know, like, who would want to do that? You know where they found these volunteers to go in and just sit at the lunch table with these high school kids? The church. Of course, they found them at church. They went to local churches and say, hey, we have a problem. Would you like to be part of the solution? And what do Christians do? They raised their hand and said, yeah, I'll do it. And they were actually reporting on the incredible success of this. Now, that underscores again what you're talking about this study highlights, which is this is not just a personal, individualistic set of crises. And if that's how we think about it, because we think about everything individualistically, someone not being able to reach their true selves or whatever else, we're completely missing the point. There's a social phenomenon to this. And because there's a social phenomenon behind this, there's also a social component to the things that can actually make a difference and move the needle. Once again, we find that the church has a role to play and it would be malpractice. Then if I didn't mention something that David justice wrote about on his blog about global Anglicanism, that the Church of Canada and we've all complained about our neighbors to the north and their push to medical assistance in dying. This week announced, guess what? A liturgy for medical assistance in dying. This is about as demonic and antichrist as you can possibly imagine where they're taking liturgy around Jesus being the resurrection and the life and the historic liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer and from Holy Scripture, these remembrances of how Jesus conquering death and using them to contextualize the intentional taking of someone's life. And you think here you had an example in 2019 of the church being an answer. And now to our neighbors to the north, the church gate, which of course can't be called a Christian church in any meaningful way any more anyway. But here you have them actually celebrating and participating in death, and you just kind of look at it and you go, look, Tom Holland has articulated so well the impact that the church has made in the world. And whoever the next Tom Holland is, when they write about our generation, are they going to write about this? Are they going to write about the Church of Canada actually participating in death instead of being someone who runs to life. To me, it's just an incredible loss if the church can't get this down, if Christians can't actually seize what it means to be people who follow the one who is the way, the truth and the life. It's an incredibly disturbing reality and juxtaposition here to see that this study is telling us this is what we need and people under the name of Christ, let's put it that way, doing something as completely maddening as this.
- [30:51]
A
Well, and it was interesting that they, like I said in the study, they mentioned that it tends to flare in cycles. And so they talked about a flare during the Depression era, the post war era. This would certainly see. I mean, we're on the brink of such a seismic shift in our approach to human work, you know, with the onset of artificial intelligence. And you have to imagine this is another such shift. It doesn't mean it's inevitable that we're gonna see a spike, but, I mean, I feel like we're already seeing it. But that the confluence of that, along with the progressive, largely Western cultural embrace of suicide as just another reasonable choice among many seems like a recipe for utter dystopian disaster. I mean, the presence of something like maid, just the fact of its existence is, you know, Sartre's saying, you know, go make your own meaning. MAID just says, well, were you unsuccessful? Like, you didn't find it? Okay, well, then this is your option. And this is what we think is reasonable. And this is. Have you considered this? You should consider this. But this is also why I really hate, like, I just, like, I just bitterly hate all of these. It's largely government programs that we have here that are quote, unquote towards mental health. This is a big thing we do in Ohio where they have all these. They'll have billboards and slogan stuff that says, you matter and we, we want you here and whatever. And to me, that's just. That's almost as dystopian as maid, because this is a nameless, faceless person saying that to you who has no interest and is not using any energy to actually reach out to you as a person. I think the single biggest weapon there are two against suicide is community and meaning. And those are the two specialties of the Church of Jesus Christ, which is why we're so well positioned to do this. But to pretend that a faceless bureaucrat or program or a sign can say you matter and then you've accomplished it and you've helped someone who's feeling the way that a suicidal person ostensibly is feeling is so ugly to me and gross. And it's like if we have resources and the will to combat this, then what we should be doing is building community. And unfortunately, I don't know that resources, especially not government resources, really lend themselves to that. That has to be a people led project and it has to be led by families and churches. And that's why I think you're right that this is an incredible opportunity for the church. But it's just a dark moment.
- [33:36]
B
But the church has to do it in a church way, in a Christian way. We've talked before about the rise of people celebrating cultural Christianity, even endorsing the fact that we don't want to lose Christmas carols and hymns and human rights and things like that, and recognizing that they come from the church. We talked about the atheist who now are kind of on board with this and calling for cultural Christianity, even the Elon Musk's of the world, at least acknowledging these things have been important. And we've made the case before, is you don't get cultural Christianity without actual Christians. And I think the same thing is true here. In other words, it's not just that a bunch of Christians decide to care about this or some churches decide to say things about this. If the church's messaging, which a lot of these mainline denominations have embraced, including for example, the Church of Canada, is this isolated, radical, individualism, self affirmation, follow your own heart version of Christianity, which sometimes you also get out of mainstream. Not just the mainstream, but also out of megachurch. Evangelicalism is basically like this is all about you and how much you're the center of reality. This is exactly what this study is pointing to. The solutions that we've seen work are community ones. It's that you have responsibility to others. It's literally an outward turn. The consequences of postmodernism in its various forms has been to turn people inward and to isolate them from others. And we're seeing that when that happens, you have these spikes when there are complicating circumstances like pandemics and wars. And in our every time work's been Disrupted. To your point, every time in history work's been disrupted, you've seen this spike, and we're about to disrupt work like the world has never seen. So, in other words, is the message that the Christians are giving the actual truth. I mean, we also have to deal with that, right? There's got to be a different message coming out of the church, a different way of engaging. And you're right, it's got to be community and it has to be meaning, and it can't be self referential. And I feel like so much of the message is self referential around discipleship, around morality, around evangelism. The gospel's gotta be the gospel. The message that we have has to be grounded in that stuff.
- [36:16]
A
I think the other extenuating factor here is like a changing cultural approach towards pain, both emotional and physical. And that's what you hear as the reference for a lot of support of medical suicide and killing, which is that there's a level of pain that's just untenable and we shouldn't subject anyone to it, least of all ourselves, which has rippling effects for the way that we prepare ourselves for the resilience that life in this world requires. Right. Because now we all have to be newly afraid somewhat of, you know, that there is such a pain that's so unbearable and so long lasting that we have to have this option on the table and that kind of change that necessarily changes our relationship to our own self confidence and resilience and all of that. But I wanted to put this question to you because we got a question from a listener a while ago and we've had it on the docket for a while and just haven't had a chance to get to it. But they asked, is there ever a moment when someone is dying so painfully and they're elderly, they kind of set up the best case scenario, which, as we've talked about before, is almost never the case. The numbers are so high that this is not what medical assistance in dying is relegated to. But let's set that aside for a moment. Pretend it was. Can you build us a case for why there can be no Christian defense of such an act?
- [37:41]
B
Yeah, well, I think we can, I think, in a couple different ways. Number one, I think there is a difference, a fundamental difference between hastening death and allowing death. Because we are in this weird spot right now where we can and we have hastened death in some situations under legal means, like medical assistance and dying and medical means. But then also we can prolong life just by keeping People attached to machines. And so I do think there is a time to die. Ecclesiastes says that to the best of our ability, having a limited understanding of what exactly life is and what exactly death is, to allow death to happen when it's time is a different act than hastening death and causing death. A lot of that has to do with our amazing ability to increase care and provide palliative services and to do pain management. Now there's always a trade off here that has to be acknowledged. And I just saw earlier today actually a clip from an interview with Ben Sasse about this that I think speaks to this. It's not out yet, it'll be released from some of our ministry friends before too long. But the question that was asked to the former senator was about how he is dealing with his teenage son. And one of the things that has emerged is that Sass is actually trying some experimental medication and some really crazy stuff. If you've seen some of his interviews, he's bleeding from the skin because of this. It's really crazy. Why is he doing it? He's not doing it because he thinks it's going to work. He's not doing it because he thinks it's magically going to save him. He's doing it because as he said, if it gives me two more weeks with my teenage son, it's worth it. And it is a. And he said on this video, he said, you know, my wife is incredible. I trust that God's using this in her life for good. My daughters are amazing, you know, adjusted, strong worldviews. It's like I have a 15 year old son. Teenage boys need a dad, they need guidance. And he just talked about how he is sacrificing his own comfort. He is sacrificing the quote unquote, right. He has to be pain free in order to fulfill this responsibility that he has as a dad until the day he dies. Now you see how that frames it completely differently.
- [40:27]
A
I mean that's everybody's responsibility. That's the Christian's responsibility.
- [40:31]
B
But see that's the inward turn to the outward turn. This is the I'm only responsible for my own self authenticity. True to myself to say no. I am in relationship with others and those relationship, particularly family ones, are ones that I am responsible for. I've mentioned before that I know a pastor who has walked more people to death than anyone else that I've ever seen. And I've learned so much just watching this. I'm amazed by this man's ability to do this and because he challenges the individuals who are watching a loved one die, but he's also willing to, to challenge those who are dying. He says, look, this is the most important time for your children and grandchildren to see your faith. What are they going to see? Are they going to see you drugging yourself into stupor to remain pain free or are you going to fulfill this responsibility? Does the world need people willing to ask that question? Yeah. Do Christians need, in a culture that's just going to usher them into kind of a morphine laden pain free existence to say, you're going to have to make a choice here? And you know what? We've had to make moral choices our whole lives. We've somehow taken this out of the category of a moral choice. Now, I'm not saying we should load everybody up with pain. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to keep people comfortable. Of course we can, and we have an amazing ability to do that. But we should never do it in a way that undermines the God given responsibilities that we have to one another within the context of our families. And we should never do it in a way that hastens death. And by the way, as both Farr Kurland said at our conference two years ago, talking about this very issue of palliative care and also this pastor that I know who's led so many people to death, look, pain management is often used to hasten death, which is why we need Christians doing what Christians have done from the very beginning, which is running into this particular stage of life, leading in this area, some of the most amazing Christian witness, I think a Christian witness in the coming age right now even will look like understanding death, speaking to death as if it's not the victor, proclaiming the life of Christ in a million different ways and doing this. So I think that's why the world right now is so fascinated with Ben Sasse, because he's doing it, he's doing it live and he's sharing it with us.
- [43:18]
A
It happens a lot. I think when people are facing an imminent death, we tend to look at them with fascination and understandably so. But it does make me think of Dostoyevsky a little bit. I just finished reading the Idiot and that's kind of the moral fable of that story is a young man who has consumption and knows that he's about to die. And it's like, how do you face life? There's kind of two avenues. There's two people who are facing death. Obviously it's a very Dostoevskian story very long and drawn out. But you can face your death with joy and hope for what's on the other side of it, as well as, like a relish of the time that you have left. Or you can face it with bitterness. And you know, this. This young man ends up attempting his own suicide because he's like, well, if I die in two weeks, and I might as well die right now. And it's just a really stark picture of that. But I. This morning I read Proverbs 30, which says, I'm going to paraphrase it. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Give me only the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and say, who is the Lord? And lest I be poor and steal and profane the Lord. And that principle, I think, guides a Christian view of the end of life, which is that, no, there is no Christian case ever to be made for hastening death, our own or anyone else's. Because in order to believe in life having meaning, which is to say that God made us for a reason, you've got to believe that every second he made for you and counted out and gave you is for a reason. The productive moments and the unproductive ones, the happy ones and the sad ones and the difficult ones and the ones in which you're caring for others and the ones in which you are dependent upon others, have a meaning. And the meaning is not just for you, but it's for his glory, ultimately, but it's also for those around you. So there just cannot. Every second you are here is a second you were meant to be here. And the strength that we need to endure that sometimes comes from knowing that it has meaning and knowing that death is not the victor, like you said. So, John, to that end, I sent you a story this week that I read in the Free Press, I thought was really interesting about this growing industry of what they're calling death doulas. So palliative care, like most sections of the medical industry, but I think particularly this one, is suffering a dearth of practitioners. So typically these are nurses and doctors that help manage the end of life for people. And as the boomer generation in particular ages, and there are more of them than there are of Gen X and the generations that come after it, there's not as many palliative care providers. And so there's a kind of cottage industry of these people who don't have medical training, but who are offering their services as people who can offer basically companionship to people who are dying. And this reporter with the Free Press did a series of interviews. I don't think maybe one of these practitioners was Christian. It was kind of veiled, I'm making that assumption, but they weren't necessarily Christian. What I found fascinating about this was I've kind of developed a fascination with palliative care recently because I think as we make this switch to a largely AI driven economy, we're gonna see a premium on jobs and relationships that simply cannot be automated. And one of those is the stubborn human desire to not be alone when we are facing the end of our life. I think that's such a powerful testament to human nature and the way God made us.
- [46:59]
B
I think it speaks to how we were made, that we want community. I think it speaks to how we were made, that these individuals who are going into this field of work, why do they care? You know, what's behind that? What's driving them to want to do this? You know, part of it is death comes for us all. Part of it is seeing the beauty in life and the mystery of life and death and why it matters so much. And none of that makes sense if we're just meat computers, you know, as one person once put it, or just animals, you know, with a conscience, you know, it doesn't make any sense to care that much about someone else. I think part of this too is arising out of the reality of COVID life where the number of people who died all alone. And we were told that that had to be the way that it was. And we realize that the forced isolation now in the hospitals, like young people, ended up being a really negative thing and actually might have caused more harm than the virus itself. I think it's pretty interesting. I wonder how much of this too is an example of what folks like Rodrier have been writing about. Kind of this return to wonder, this re enchantment, which of course can take the form of Christian stuff or seeing the unseen. That is true, but also could take the form of introducing some really bad stuff back into your life. Knocking on the door that you don't want to knock on, and then being surprised of what's behind it. I think all of that's probably going to be part of the reality here of this. But I think it's also a call for Christians to be front and center. I think it's a call for Christians to be engaged and to be involved. And how we do it should be different. And I think there's going to be an incredible opportunity here. So I think it's not just in the fact that people don't want to die alone. I think it's that people have any interest in being a part of this work anyway. Obviously I don't think they're doing it for financial gain. I mean, maybe some are, but there's a wonder here that speaks to the human condition too, I think. Has AI made humans replaceable? Do the promises of AI outweigh the perils? What does it mean to be human in an AI age? These are just some of the questions we'll be exploring during a free livestream
- [49:32]
A
event on August 6th.
- [49:33]
B
We'll be joined by John Stonestreet Abdoumuri, Gretchen Huizenga and John Lennox, leading thinkers on faith and AI who will help us understand how to navigate this new technological landscape, considering our role as image bearers of God. This event is free, but registration is required. Register today@colsoncenter.org Mirror livestream. That's colsoncenter.org livestream
- [50:03]
A
well, John, let's move to some questions now. We got a question this week about a breakpoint about Darwin, and I'm just going to read it here. The argument that if the mind evolved, it can't be trusted, but if God poofed it into existence, creation ex nihilio and a magic garden, then it can be trusted is a dumb argument from apologists. First of all, our brains are just specialized cells in a meaty neural network. Oh, meat machines like you just said, engaged in biochemical function. So we get what we get from them. If someone becomes a believer or stops being a believer, there's no change in how the brain works. There's no improvement or loss in the efficiency or reliability of the brain pan. Oh, I don't think that's true at all. But I'm going to let you take this one, John.
- [50:55]
B
This is a classic example of the difference between an assertion and an argument. So the argument that was made by apologists and by the commentary in question was the argument that is basically goes like this. If everything is a gigantic accident, if there was no cause, purpose or design behind it, it just happened, then it's meaningless. And even more than that, if the brain is the result of such a process, then you can't really trust it. I mean, how do we know that it's giving us the truth? How do we know it's giving us anything reliable, particularly when it comes to something like survival instinct? And if the brain is like that and somebody says like this individual did, we're just specialized. Our brains are just specialized cells in a meaty neural network engaged in a biochemical function. How can we trust that the brains are media neural network engaged in a biochemical. You see what I mean? The argument that that is made is an argument similar to what C.S. lewis said, which he said, look, if the universe had no meaning, we should have never figured out that it had no meaning. We shouldn't be thinking in those categories. If our brains are just the result of this accidental process, we shouldn't have that level of self reflection. And we can't trust what it actually comes up. This paragraph or this argument that came in from. Or this question that came in, or response, I guess is a better word that came in from. This questioner is just basically a way of saying, because he's not really making an argument, he's not dealing with the argument that was actually made. So let me put it in a different context. If you took a box of Scrabble letters and you shook it up and then you opened the box and looked at it and it spelled move to California, you would think, well, that's weird, but you wouldn't move to California, right? In other words, unless you thought that there was some meaning behind it, there was some design behind it, there was some intent. Or get this, someone was trying to tell you something. The problem with this meat computer form of the human brain or view of the human brain is that there's no one trying to tell you anything. There's just something doing stuff. That's the difference between communicating meaning and not. It's a very different sort of understanding. And that's the fundamental argument. I think this person probably actually understands the argument that's being made. I think he's probably being. Or she is. I don't know if it was a he or she is probably being disingenuous to say this is just a dumb argument and then mischaracterizing the whole thing. Or maybe this person just doesn't get it, what the argument actually is. The argument actually is, if there is nothing behind the brain just functioning, if the brain's just a meat computer, then we can't actually trust what it turns out. The very fact that this person thinks the computer or the brain is a meat computer and thinks that what it produces are specialized itself betrays a category that the worldview that they hold doesn't actually grant. Specialized in what way? Why should it be privileged? Why should we think one thing is better than another and be able to trust what we think of? Now the only argument you can come to is to say we have no other option. We just have to trust what We've been given. But you're still making a judgment, you're still valuing. You're still deciding to trust something, and that actually says something about the kind of creatures we are.
- [54:44]
A
I have to throw a small wrench in here, and I'm doing this on behalf of the. I would say maybe once a month. I hear from a listener to Breakpoint this week who, like me, is often plagued by obsessive compulsive disorder. Not every thought that comes into your mind is meaningful. This is a big part of therapy. Okay, so we have to test our thoughts. Gosh, I can't do the whole OCD thing here, so please take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But it's not a binary here where it's like our brains are meaningless because they were an accident and everything that comes out of them is therefore meaningless. Or we were created with a purpose and meaning and with intelligence because God wants us to know Him. Therefore, our thoughts are trustworthy and good all the time. That's. I know that's not the assertion you were making, but I'm just reminding you.
- [55:39]
B
Well, all the time is carrying all the weight there. No, I never said all the time. You don't have to have it all the time. You just have to have one.
- [55:45]
A
And we have external and other avenues of proof, texting. What's go. Part of wisdom, and this is scriptural as well, is just knowing how to interact with the thoughts that enter your mind and knowing that you're human, you have human nature, and you're in a fallen world. So thoughts are going to come to you that do not need to be engaged and that do not carry meaning about you as a person, and that do not tell you the truth simply because God made you with knowledge and meaning. What it does mean is that our intelligence and ability to learn and to know and our desire to sacrifice for others, these are all distinct parts of being human that God gave us and that he made. And part of that is. Yeah, our ability to know and our ability to do abstract thinking. And all of that is beautiful and wonderful. And the idea that it's an accident is just kind of silly. And, yeah, I think the argument just falls apart on its own. The last thing I'll say, too, is that just a point of clarification. It's really fascinating to dive into some of the studies on this, but there is a demonstrable physical impact on the brain when a person has religious belief. And it's a dramatically positive impact on the brain when a person has a deep religious belief and spiritual practice in their life. That is not the reason we should come to faith. We should believe in Jesus because he died and rose again. But this has been studied a lot, and there is definitely a physical reaction to a brain, like brains atrophy, when they're not engaged in that way. So I would just encourage this person to maybe look into that. It's really fascinating. Okay, John, that. That is all the time we have for our program this week. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint this week. From the Colson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet. Wishing you all a great week, and we'll see you all back here next time. God bless.