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It's Thursday, May 28, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Today we need to look at several direct threats to human dignity and in particular to the future of humanity. Let's just look at one big story. We look across America's northern border and we see in Canada the slide of a euthanasia culture, of an assisted suicide culture. We see the expanding logic, we see the deadly reach. And we also see, in the case of Canada, a velocity that quite frankly, has seldom been seen. Now, perhaps that makes sense because the velocity began to speed up in other nations in Europe. And so by the time the nation of Canada really began to move in this direction, and remember, it was largely by a federal court decision, the fact is that a lot of the barriers had already been broken down. A lot of the resistance had already been worn down. It. And we see that in Canada the speed bumps have basically been entirely removed. But then we also see that you have to question whether or not people in Canada can now be shocked by the reality that has been brought on their nation. The National Post, that's a major newspaper in Canada, has run a recent headline, quote, ontario man dies of maid M A I D. That's medical assistance in dying after being assessed outside town Tim Hortons. Now, many Americans immediately perk up at the hearing of Tim Hortons, a major Canadian donut shop. Canada is known for its donut culture and Tim Hortons is very much a part of that culture. The shocking thing here is that a man sought assisted suicide and was assessed by a medical practitioner and judged ready to move ahead with assisted suicide. The analysis was not taking place in any medical context at all. It was not even taking place in the context of a home. It was outside a Tim Hortons doughnut shop. Reporter Sharon Kirkey, reporting for the National Post, tells us the story. Quote, a London, Ontario doctor who assessed a patient with inflammatory bowel disease and a history of mental health issues for medical assistance in dying outside a Tim Hortons location and later personally drove the man to the place his life has ended, has agreed to a minimum six months supervision. Now, let's just pause for a moment. Take that in. It's just a few words. A doctor in London, Ontario, assessed a patient. What was the medical need? Inflammatory bowel disease. That is not a terminal disease. But this man also had a history of mental health issues. You would think that in a sane society that would mean he's disqualified from any consideration for this kind of assisted suicide, but instead, this doctor not only assessed that he was ready for assisted suicide, and remember, we're just talking about IBS and mental health issues, that the doctor personally drove the man to the place his life was ended. And now all you have in response is, quote, a minimum six months supervision. Let's just think about this for a moment. And you have the headline here because the headline is intended to be shocking. And let's face the fact that it is. This Ontario man has died of assisted suicide after he was assessed as a proper candidate with the timing right for the application of what amounts to medical suicide. And the assessment took place outside a donut shop. And furthermore, it was the assessor that eventually drove the man to the place where he ended his life. You look at this in terms of any other context and it's complicity in murder, let's just point out we're talking about facilitating the end of a human life. We're talking about facilitating intentional death, and we're also talking about doing this, taking advantage of a man who was already diagnosed with mental conditions, indeed, quote, mental health issues. Now, it's not just that, and we're not just talking about, quote, a minimum six months supervision, whatever in the world that means. Listen to this quote. In another case, Dr. James McLean failed to administer one of the three drugs used in assisted deaths, one that paralyzes the body's muscles, including the muscles involved in breathing. The patient resumed spontaneously breathing again after initially being pronounced dead after this doctor had already left the home. And now you have a very serious situation that just turns out to be even more serious. We're talking about, let's be clear, the same medical doctor in both of these situations. We have Dr. Ramona Coelho identifies a family physician and former member of the office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario's Maid Death Review Committee, who said, quote, unquote, what is striking is not only the seriousness of the concerns identified in these cases, but the limited regulatory response. Let me just say that every word there is true, but it is so severe in moral understatement that it's hard to imagine that you had a medical doctor speaking of another medical doctor's actions in this case and saying that this is really outside the norm, it's insufficient in terms of regulatory response. The National Post then goes on to say, quote, as part of an investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, an investigation into two public complaints made against this doctor, independent assessor appointed to review a number of the doctor's charts concluded he did not meet the standard of practice of the profession, displayed a lack of judgment, and that his conduct exposes or is likely to expose patients to harm or injury. In five out of 20 charts reviewed, the National Post goes on to say, this is according to a summary decision of the colleges. That's the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario committee and its inquiries, Complaints and reports Committee, quote. It then tells us that the doctor, quote, was called before the committee to be verbally cautioned with respect to the maid complaints. Now, there are several other similar reports. We're talking about the same incident, the same physician. There are several other media reports coming outside of Canada. But we just need to pause for a moment and recognize that there is a logic to this. The logic is this, if we are putting ourselves in the position where we're deciding that there are certain human lives not worth living, then quite honestly, it's just a matter of who assembles the list, the list of issues that will go on that category of things that would justify ending a person's life.
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And you'll notice how quickly things that
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are put up as barriers, issues, principles that are put up as barriers simply disappear.
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Well, this should be done only in
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light of a terminal illness with a likely death within three to six months. That was one criterion that was widely advertised.
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But, no, that's completely out.
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It doesn't even have to be a terminal condition at all.
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It actually, in many cases, doesn't even have to be a medical condition. Although at this point, the Canadians have
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not yet worked out exactly how to handle issues that come up in terms of psychiatric or psychological needs. Although, again, the courts are saying that that must now be taken into consideration.
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You also see the inevitable side.
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No, this has to be an adult
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competent to make the decision.
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No, in this case, it's an adult
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that already is diagnosed with mental health issues. You wouldn't allow this person with those conditions to do many other lesser things in terms of moral significance. But when it comes to assisted suicide, medical assistance and dying. No, put them right, right there at the top of the list. And as a matter of fact, let's just desecrate this entire thing. Let's just make it look ludicrous by this physician conducting what was considered a clearance for assisted suicide or medical assistance in dying outside a donut shop. And then let's make it worse so that the doctor actually drives the person to the place where the death is brought about. You look at this and you just remember, for instance, that even in ancient Greece, the Hippocratic oath, which began with the words do no harm made very clear that a physician ethically can't have anything to do with bringing about death, only with trying to prevent death, to heal illnesses, not to bring about the death of the patient. But now we are redefining medicine. We're redefining medicine. At the very same time, our society is buying into an absolutely idolatrous understanding of personal autonomy, such that anyone evidently can demand, on the basis of personal autonomy, that medical personnel facilitate them bringing about their own death. Now, once again, let's just look at the slide here. Let's consider the momentum, and we can say, well, that's across the northern border.
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That's Canada.
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Canada has shown other very interesting signs, including a rather rapid secularization in recent decades and liberalization of the larger culture. That's true, but it's also true that all of this is very close to the United States. It's also clear that there are some in the United States who have already bought into the very same logic. And you just have to wonder how they are going to deal with many of these issues when they arise, because the very people who are telling us that these things won't happen are now just living, in some cases, a few miles from where they are undeniably happening.
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When I read something like this, I think of two Southern writers, Flannery o' Connor and Walker Percy. Both of them were extremely gifted in pointing to the insidious assaults upon human life that were already evident in the second half of the 20th century. The they were writing what amounted to futuristic fiction about what would happen when, for instance, what Walker Percy called the Thanatos Syndrome took hold. But now we're not looking at a very colorful, morally insightful way of describing what would happen with the Thanatos syndrome. Now we're looking it square in the face. And it is not always just across our northern border. It is not just limited to much of Europe. It is also found in some circles in the United States of America. Now, I mentioned Flannery o' Connor and Walker Percy because they also had an incredible literary gift in using some little fact, some little setting, some little incident, to show how ludicrous the whole thing is. And I just can't imagine that a Flannery o' Connor or a Walker Percy could do any better in describing the sheer insanity of all of this than having a medical practitioner assess an assisted suicide patient outside a donut shop and then drive him to death. Thanatos is a Latin word for death. And thus, when Walker Percy referred to our society as the Thanatos culture. In his warning, he knew what he was talking about. Now we can see what he was talking about. Now, while we're talking about threats to civilization, let's face it, one of the most basic threats to civilization in our time is the falling birth rate. And we're talking about something that is now falling catastrophically. And it's falling in such a way that no one can basically deny it. And so, for instance, you have media authorities and social scientists looking into this. You also have governments, of course, very concerned about this, because the future of civilization depends upon a sufficient number of babies. And right now, we're not talking about anything close to sufficiency. One of the big developments in this is how you have major media sources taking the big picture. Look at what's going on. Very interestingly, in recent days, John Byrne Murdoch at the Financial Times, remember that is one of the most respected news sources there in the United Kingdom. He wrote a piece in the category the Financial Times calls the Big Read. The theme, demographics and Population. The headline, why Birth Rates are Falling Everywhere all at Once. Okay, that should have our attention. And it is a big article in my printed edition. It's 23 pages long. And by the way, we do need major news sources to present this kind of massive investigative report. It's an important part of how our culture thinks through these issues, or at least we can hope so. John Byrne Murdoch begins the article this way. The demographic landslide defining our era is gaining speed and terrain in more than two thirds of the world's 195 countries. The average age of children born to each woman has fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1. That keeps population stable without immigration. In 66 countries, the average is now closer to 1 than to 2. In sum, the most common number for children born to each woman is zero. End quote. Okay, this is so astounding. This is not coming. However, just as some kind of post on social media. This is not coming just in someone's speech. This is coming in a massive research report published by the Financial Times in London. And we are told here that in some nations, I repeat again, the most common number of children born to each woman is zero. Now, let me just take the obvious. That is the end of humanity. Not immediately, but eventually. And by the way, one of the things we know is that there is a cascading series of events that is set into motion. Once a birth rate declines to a certain point, you have an inability to catch up fast. Let me just put it this way. In the 2026 spring graduation ceremonies across high schools in America, the decline that was expected didn't quite yet show up. A part of that is because of the delay caused by the pandemic, that is the delay in academic progression. But the fact is that just about everyone looking at current school numbers understands that the number of graduates in the spring of 2026 in American high schools is not likely to be achieved for many, many years. And by the way, we know that that is at the least about, well, say 17 or 18 years. How do we know that it is? Because you can't produce high school seniors. They have to be born, and then they are born and the clock starts. And at that point, we're Talking about needing 18 years to produce a class of high school graduates. And right now we have those numbers. And you can look behind the current list of graduates here in 2026, and you can understand that every year going backwards, there is, in terms of the general pattern, a decrease. So much so that that when you go back 18 years, you understand even if there was some kind of miraculous recovery in terms of the birth rate, and by the way, that doesn't just mean, say, over 2026 to 2027, it's going to have to mean something like over 2010 all the way to the present. Unless there were that, no one expects that, then the numbers are going to go down even further. We also have to understand that this is a cascading situation, because when you have a lowering birth rate, eventually you don't even have enough people to work in the jobs. Eventually you have a failure in the economy. Eventually you have another problem, and that is that there are more people who are being cared for, necessarily cared for, because they're extremely young, or for that matter, they're older and infirm, then there are people to take care of them. At some point, it's like a pincer maneuver. You have a crossing of two lines. At that point, you have a cultural catastrophe. And we're not talking about something here that's hypothetical. You can look right now at a nation like Japan and realize, yeah, you know, this is coming very, very fast. So fast that indeed, the Japanese government is trying to figure out not so much at this point, how to incentivize further births. They're interested in that too, but they haven't found any formula. But rather how in the world to create, say, robots or the use of artificial intelligence to take care of people when there are no other human beings to do the same. You look at the threats that come in terms of artificial Intelligence and say automation when it comes to taking jobs. Well, at this point, in a country like Japan, they sort of have to hope so. The Financial Times article defines this catastrophic collapse in birth rates, quote, the defining problem of our time. The report goes on to state this, quote, population aging shrinks the workforce and exerts a drag on growth and productivity and living standards. Japan's stagnation since the 1990s is almost entirely explained by low birth rates that has shrunk its working age population. Fiscal pressure from ballooning spending on pensions and care also crowds out investment in infrastructure, helping create a sense of decline that fuels anti system politics. That's a sly, very understated way of saying there are going to be political consequences to what is an impending catastrophe. Jesus Fernandez Villaverde, identified as economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He's also identified as a leading researcher and the consequences of demographic change. He said, quote, fertility decline is the big question of our time, as the Financial Times says. He argues that almost every pressing problem flows from the collapse in birth rates. As the professor said bluntly, quote, everything else is downstream, end quote. The paper goes on to say that declining birth rates represent the biggest risk to civilization. And of course, you can look at this and recognize, yes, it is. But as Christians, we understand this kind of decision doesn't come independent of other things. So what other things are involved here? Well, for one thing, the Financial Times says that our contemporary culture is turning into singles night forever. This is something that we have to note very carefully. The decline in marriage. It began as a discussion about the delay of marriage. Now we just have to say it's not only a delay of marriage, it is a decline of marriage. This is an extremely significant, very tragic kind of development. You have a lot of people also in this age group of young adults who are just basically putting themselves in the position where they are never going to marry. They're also never going to have children. And thus you have collapsing marital rates and you have collapsing birth rates. And there is no fast way to recover from either of these. All right, here's something else. And this gets to the social analysis that's been very influential in the United States, particularly for a long time. That analysis has been that when you talk about this kind of decline in the birth rates, this kind of thinning out of the population, you're basically talking about behavior among the elites. You're basically talking about people who are very well educated and they have a lot of money and they just decide to do other things with their time. And Money. Okay, that was true at one time. It is no longer true. It is actually true right now that people who are identified among the elites are, in the main, having more children than many people who are in the bottom half, say, of the earnings potential. You're talking about an inversion of what everybody thought would be the norm, that it would be lifestyle liberalism that would lead to the decrease and the collapse in birth rates, but that you would have a very strong worker economy, worker families, a strong commitment to marriage, and a pattern of a significant number of births within those marriages that is simply falling apart. And when you say that, you have to look, well, not just to Japan and other nations around the world. You have to look at the United States of America, and you have to look at the sociology of what's happening here. The fact is that we have a vast working class, as it's often been defined in the United States, that is simply backing out of both marriage and children. And the only result that can come from that is social and moral catastrophe. You will not be surprised that the Financial Times gives a great deal of attention to economic factors. And so you would expect the Financial Times to say there are economic trends at work here. And as a matter of fact, they do point to some of those. And they point out that when you have rich nations and poorer nations, it was the richer nations that had the falling birth rates that caught the attention, first of all. But that's not what's happening now. It's not limited to those rich nations. Now, do you know that birth rates have been collapsing now for a number of years in the nation of Iran? So there you say, well, you have a very strong religious impulse towards having children and being married. You have very strong social restrictions indeed on any sex outside of marriage or anything else. You have a strong cultural imperative towards having children. But the birth rate nonetheless is plummeting. Now, as Christians, one of the things we have to keep in mind is that even as these are big social trends, many of these decisions are rather personal decisions. The decision to get married or not to get married, the decision to have children or not to have children, the decision to have another child or not, those are very personal questions. They add up to huge cumulative numbers. But we as Christians understand this is an issue that reaches right down into the individual human heart. That makes it quite a bit different than just coming to this with a matter of economic analysis. The economic analysis is not irrelevant, but the economic analysis isn't enough to explain this situation, because it's now happening in rich countries and in poorer countries. It is now happening in more advanced economies and in less advanced economies. And it is now happening more in the United States among those who are in some of the lower cohorts in terms of the rapidity of this fall in the birth rate than it is among some in the elites. And so you can say, well, that means it's just economic. People in the top half can afford to have children. But the fact is, that can't explain what's going on here because the trend lines just don't match. Okay, when looking at this kind of research, there are two different issues. Let's just remind ourselves that there is the issue of correlation and then there is the factor of causation. And they're not necessarily the same thing. So let's just be clear. Correlation means these things happened at the same time. They show up on the same chart. They tend to have happened in a parallel sequence. Causation says this, caused that. Now, when you look at correlation, you can come up with some kind of, say, causal link that might be or might not be the case. As a matter of fact, it's hard to imagine some of these things without understanding the causality. But the point is that on this situation, the reality is that the correlation and the causation aren't linked the way people would think they're linked. So, for example, there are people who say, well, look at the contemporary economic stresses. Yeah, but the problem is the birth rate really had to start falling decades ago to result in the figures that we have now. And then the people who say, well, what about all kinds of situations that have been faced by humanity? Well, you know, that's true, but the fact is that humanity had far worse situations, far more significant plagues and famines and other problems. The ancient world didn't have antibiotics and didn't have all kinds of things that we have now. They manage nonetheless to have babies. And then there are some people would say, oh, well, then this is all about contraception and birth control. Well, to some extent it certainly is, but to another extent, it just doesn't add up because the numbers started falling in many, especially European countries long before the development of the birth control pill. That can't be the causation. It didn't exist yet. John Byrne Murdoch has gotten a lot of attention for this article in the Financial Times because he suggests perhaps a bit of causality when it comes to the development of the smartphone. Now, by the way, this isn't so much about, say, men carrying smartphones in their pockets, leading to biological problems. No, it is rather the fact that men and women are spending too much time on their phones. And this is leading to a vast distraction, not only from having children, but from, say, dating, marriage, pairing, relationships, all the rest. That probably does have something to do with it. But as others have already said, the problem is the trend lines began a lot earlier than anyone was talking about a smartphone. The smartphone may have accelerated some of these things. And when it comes to many young people right now, it might lead to an even greater catastrophe. As we look into the future, let's just say smartphones and social media and of course, what's now, AI and all the rest, these things didn't exist 18 years ago when the high school seniors we know now were really born. And even though we knew something about what was coming, the reality of what is now called the social media challenge is far greater than existed, just a matter of, say, a decade ago. In other words, we're in big trouble. And here's where Christians looking at this through a biblical lens have to say it's a much bigger problem than the demographers understand. It's a much bigger problem than the social scientists understand, because this is a spiritual problem. The very first command given to the man and the woman in the garden was be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And that very first command is now being routinely subverted, not only by massive social structures and trends that we certainly need to understand, but by individual decisions and the impact of those decisions. All of them add up to a massive demographic catastrophe. But we as Christians understand a demographic catastrophe isn't the main thing. A theological catastrophe is what is even larger, looming in the background to all the rest. This is indeed a demographic crisis. And now it is fascinating and very important we recognize that you have unexpected sources and authorities beginning to declare this really is a crisis. It is a sociological crisis, it's a demographic crisis, it's an economic crisis. But we as Christians understand and we have to remind ourselves, and we have to say this to the world out loud. Even more fundamentally, it is a biblical crisis, a theological crisis. Or as we as Christians have to remind ourselves, it's a gospel crisis. And when it comes to Christian witness, it's getting a lot more complicated and a lot more urgently necessary. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmuller.com youm can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu for information on Boyce College. Just go to boycecollege.com I'm speaking to you from Washington, D.C. and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.