91This week's topics:
- A tragic story about a 14-year-old's suicide raises questions about the role of AI in human relationships.
- Exploring the possibility of a religious comeback: Are we seeing signs of renewed interest in faith?
- Political word games and the language used by both sides to shape public perception.
- Listener questions on bridging ideological divides with family and engaging with differing religious views.
Episode Transcript
Sean: A 14 year old commits suicide after becoming obsessed with a chat bot. Can we blame AI? Is religion making a comeback? And the political word games both political parties make that Christians need to be aware of. These are the stories I'm going to discuss today. And I'm also going to address some of your questions. Why is it just me? Well, Scott is out today and our other guest was not able to join us, our guest co-host. So it's me, flying solo at the Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update brought to you by Talbot School of Theology. All right. We got three stories and some questions we're going to work through.
This first story was actually sent to me by a professor at Biola, an Old Testament professor. It's from the New York Times. And I think it's a trend of some significant things that are now here and are coming soon. The title is Can AI Be Blamed for a Teen's Suicide? A heartbreaking story. Prepare yourself. The mother of a 14 year old Florida boy says he became obsessed with a chat bot on character.ai before his death. On the last day of his life, this young man named Sewell took out his phone, texted his closest friend, which is a lifelike AI chat bot named Danny after a character from Game of Thrones. He says, "I miss you, baby sister," he wrote. "I miss you too, sweet brother," the chat bot replied. The 14 year old ninth grader from Florida knew that Danny is the nickname somewhat, was just a chat bot, not a real person. But he developed, according to the story, an emotional attachment anyways, texted the bot constantly, updating it dozens of times a day, engaged in role playing dialogue. Some got romantic and sexual. His parents and friends had no idea he had fallen for a chat bot. They saw him get stuck deeper and deeper into his phone, saw him pull away from the rest of the real world, isolate himself. His grades were suffering. He'd go to his room right away after school. He wrote in his journal one day, he said, "I like staying in my room so much because I start to detach from this reality." And also feel more at peace, more connected with Danny, and much more in love with her and just happier. Now side note, in a sense, this chat bot has become an escape from reality. In a sense, suicide can become an ultimate escape from reality. Now the article describes how there's some underlying issues at play as well, which we often find in a range of other issues that young people struggle with. So there's mild Asperger's syndrome that this 14-year-old had. There's anxiety, disruptive mood disorder taking place. Now just hear this conversation that the article discusses. So Danny says, the boy says, “I think about killing myself sometimes." And the bot says, "My eyes narrow, my face hardens, my voice is a dangerous whisper, and why the hell would you do something like that?" "So I can be free," he says. "Free from what?" "From myself." "Don't talk like that. I won't let you hurt yourself or leave me. I would die if I lost you," again writes the chat bot. It says, "I smile." "Then maybe we can die together and be free together." Now the conversation goes on, but basically it points towards the very end. This chat bot seems to say, "Please do so, my sweet king," in a sense of taking his own life and joining this chat bot. Puts down the phone, picked up his stepfather's .45 caliber handgun, and pulls the trigger and ends his life. That's the last part of the conversation that this article highlights. Now the article goes on and says this, "As parents are fretting about the last wave of tech-fueled harms from social media, depression, schools, banning smartphones, those conversations, a new one is forming under their noses." What do they mean by that? It's this booming industry of AI companionship, which we've talked about here on the Think Biblically cultural update in other areas. I guess for about $10 a month, users of different apps can create AI companions. They can pick from a menu of pre-built personas, chat with them in a variety of ways, including text messages and voice chats. Many of these apps are designed to simulate girlfriends, boyfriends, and other intimate relationships. Now Noam Shazir, who's one of the founders of this, says “It's going to be super, super helpful to a lot of people who are lonely or depressed.” Now pause before I go on with the article. Maybe, maybe not. Do I really think that this is motivated to help people who are depressed and lonely? At best, I think as a side motivation here, but nonetheless, the creators of it, that's what they're claiming and that's what they apparently believe. Sewell's mother has filed a lawsuit this week against Character AI, accusing the company of being responsible for Sewell's death. Now before we go on, just to comment here, is it's important to realize, like if you put yourself in this mother's shoes, of course she wants an explanation. It's human nature when something tragic happens like this, to want an explanation for it. Of course we do. In a sense, this is like a subcategory of the problem of evil and suffering in the world. Why God, why? We want accountability. We want responsibility. It's part of being human beings in a broken, fallen world.
I teach a class at Biola, a grad class in our apologetics program on the problem of evil, and I start by saying this is the big issue. It's not just academic out there, it's personal. We felt it and it's all over the place. Debates about gun control, immigration, you name it, are discussions about the problem of evil and how we solve it. Now this article goes on and says “Millions of people already talk regularly to AI companions and popular social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat are building life-like AI persona into their products. This is already here and it's going to keep continuing to be embedded into the world as we know it.” They pointed out this, they said, "Today's AI companions can remember past conversations, adapt to users' communication styles, role play as celebrities or historical figures," people like Elon Musk or George Washington, "chat fluently about nearly any subject." This one blew me away. Some can even send AI-generated selfies to users and talk with them in life-like synthetic voices. Character.ai is just one example of this. More than 20 million people use its services. Let that sink in. Now, in the article, they point out that Gen Z and younger millennials make up a significant portion of the community. The average user spends more than an hour a day on the platform. Now according to Character.ai's terms of service, all you have to do is be 13 years old to use this. You only got to be 13 years old in the US and 16 in Europe. So once again, we see a case where in Europe they're actually more conservative than the US, interestingly enough. Now the co-founder said his ultimate vision is to build artificial general intelligence, a computer program capable of doing anything the human brain can. And he said in a conference interview that he viewed life-like AI companions as a "cool first-use case for artificial general intelligence." What does that mean? That means this is being built to be as human as possible.
So the article says that they're moving quickly towards putting in certain kind of safeguards, like reminders that this is just chat AI, et cetera. But the whole thing is built on becoming as close and simulating human life and relationships as possible. Shazir, the co-founder, also said, "There's billions of lonely people out there who could be helped by having an AI companion." Now honestly, my take on this, is this strikes me as very early on when we had things like Facebook and other social media emerging. People said things like, "This will bring the world together. This will help build relationships." Had this rosy positive view of it. Now we look and it's things that nobody anticipated. Even the like button itself created division and brought out some of the worst of us. So any technology, I think, as Christians, we should be able to say what is good and be able to say what is bad because technology can be corrupted by sin. But his claim that there's billions of lonely people out there, I doubt this is motivated by saying, "Let's help those billions of lonely people." I think they're seeing these billions of lonely people saying, "Wait a minute, they're lonely. Let's tap into that as a product to get viewers to make money and how it affects them is likely downstream." That'd be my sense. Now there's somebody who pushes back in this article and says, "It feels like a big experiment." I think this was one of the moms, the mom of the boy who took his life, “And my kid was just collateral damage.” The theme of our work, she writes, is that social media now Character AI pose a clear and present danger to young people because they are vulnerable to persuasive algorithms that capitalize on their immaturity. Last part of the article and then I'll just have a few comments and we'll move on is this. The article says, at the very end, the mom, and this is just harrowing. She says, "It's like a nightmare. You want to get up and scream and say, 'I miss my child. I want my baby.'" As a parent, I can't imagine that hurt and that pain. Just reading that as a dad of three just gives me pause and I can't imagine that. So first off, I hope that there's Christians in her life who won't be quick to judge and say, "Didn't you see the signs? Why do you let your kids watch Game of Thrones?" Whatever it is, not lead with that certainly and just cry with her and listen to her and spend time and comfort. I hope there's Christians in her life that will do that.
Now, as I try to reflect on this biblically, just a few ideas come out about this. One is that clearly there's a draw to these things because of relational brokenness. The article brings it out. There's lonely people. Now, to me, if a chatbot can be used as one way of getting somebody to open up, to share, moving towards holistic relationships rather than replacing them, so be it. I have no problem with that. Maybe that's a tool that could be used. But a chatbot cannot replace the deepest need of the human heart for embodied relationships. That's what the Bible says we are made for. Relationships with God vertically and relationships with others horizontally. A couple of other points. Chatbots, they're a product. To one degree, they have to tell people what they want to hear. They have to tell people what they want to hear. Otherwise, people are going to check out and no longer use them. Keep that in mind. Finally, big question here. Legally, this is being worked out in front of us. Can the chatbot creators be held accountable for this? Now, I'm in process of thinking this through myself. I tend to be skeptical of holding them accountable for it. I think primarily the responsibility rests upon the parents. I do think there were some signs there that should have been paid attention to at least legally speaking. I think in some cases, we've talked here in the podcast about how when it comes to parents who give their kids certain guns with awareness and clear signs that they're going to use it for violence, can maybe be held accountable in certain circumstances. I think that's very different here, but we'll see how this plays out.
Alright, we've got another story coming up here. Let's pull this one up here. This is a very different story. This also was in the New York Times, but this is from Rod Dreher, a Catholic, and he wrote a book, he said, I'm sorry, an article, an op-ed, "Is the World Ready for a Religious Comeback?" The reason I picked this is because we haven't talked about it a ton here in the podcast, but I've seen this question emerging all over the place. Just this week, philosopher William Lane Craig had an interview for 30 minutes talking about it’s God making a comeback. I saw a big conversation with Jordan Peterson and with Richard Dawkins, kind of talking about this very topic. A friend of Biola's, Justin Briarley, has a book on the surprising rebirth of belief in God. There's more and more talk about is God making a comeback? We've seen conversion stories of people like Hassan Hershey Ali, who we had on this podcast, like maybe three years ago, talking about a book on immigration, Islamic immigration in Europe, but she went from a very strict Muslim to an atheist, now is a Christian. So are we seeing a religious comeback? In this article, I'm sorry, it's from Douthat, not Dreher, my fault, Ross Douthat. He says, "In the heyday of what was called the new atheism," and this is people like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, about 20 years ago came on the scene, maybe a year or two after 9/11. They said, "Here's why it arrived, because specific events and focus made the time ripe." So the early internet enabled people to communicate differently, social media. September 11th brought concern about religious fundamentalism. The Catholic Church's sex abuse crisis certainly brought it. So this new atheist movement explodes on the scene in the early 2000s and became a national conversation. Now the point that Douthat makes, he said, "The new atheist idea that the weakening of organized religion would make the world more rational and less tribal feels much more absurd in 2024 than it did in 2006."
I think he's right. I wrote a whole book on the new atheist, and one of the things that I try to wrestle with is what made the new atheist new. And in a sense, one of the ideas was we could just get rid of religion, get rid of God, and the world will be objectively better because of it. We can get rid of God and not only continue life as before, but make life better. That's a part of the heart of the new atheist. I think Douthat is right to say, "Time out? I'm not sure that's the case.” given some of the tribalism we feel today tied to the weakening of organized religion. So the question he asks is whether the religious can reclaim real cultural ground. In other words, are we at a point, at least in the West, where religion as a whole, and probably more specifically Christianity, is culture poised for a religious comeback? Have people started to realize the vacuity, so to speak, of life without God? And he points towards things like people looking for meaning in psychedelics, astrology, UFOs, but have we reached a point where people are starting to recognize that this is vacuous? Now he points to three books that have come out. I won't go into detail about these, but one is briefly from a philosopher, theologian, David Bentley Hart, called All Things Are Full of Gods. And he kind of talks about, makes an argument that atheism cannot explain human consciousness. Now this is interesting to me because I had a chance to talk with Coleman Hughes, who's a young libertarian African-American atheist. And I asked him, I said, "Is there anything about the world that gives you pause and makes you think there might be a God?" And he actually said, "Consciousness does." So that's a really interesting phenomena that you see this book emerging. A second book is by Spencer Klavan called Light of the Mind, Light of the World. And he makes a case, I won't go into it, but just from essentially quantum fluctuations in what we've learned that mind is necessary for measuring and understanding the world. Won't go there, have not read that book. And then Rod Dreher has a new book coming out called Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. So here's what he writes at the end in the article. He says, "So the test for all their arguments is whether a world that's unhappy in its belief can be pushed all the way to this conclusion, or whether contemporary disillusionment with secularism is enough to draw people to the threshold of religion, but something more than argument is required to pull them through."
I honestly, I don't know if we're right at the point where religion is making a comeback. I think there's enough signs to give us pause, and some of those signs are the failure of secular ways of finding meaning in life. It's interesting, the Bible doesn't start with an argument for the existence of God. It assumes that we worship something. And if we don't find our meaning ultimately in God and others, we're going to find it somewhere else. So are we seeing that emptiness of people trying to find meaning away from God? I think there may be some signs that that's the case. The conversation has certainly shifted from the time of the new atheists, where more and more people, even Dawkins himself is describing himself as a cultural Christian. And he doesn't mean he believes in the virgin birth or the resurrection, but that that's his heritage. And he would say he prefers it over things like Islam, given the growth of Islam in Europe where he lives. So I don't know. I think it's enough to put on radar. It's enough to pray about that there be a kind of revival today. I think there's an opening for Christians to weigh into this and to speak into this and to be ready with an answer.
Now the last part of this article, I wish Doubt that expanded, because he said there's something more than argument required to pull people through. I think he's right about that. It could be an experience that people need to have, whether a near death experience, it could be some kind of supernatural experience that gets people attention. But I think it's also relationship with a Christian. We Christians need to be in relationships, loving, caring for people, not just arguing that Christianity is true, but hopefully people can see a difference in the way we live our lives. That is a kind of apologetic that is as powerful, if not more powerful than our words themselves. As our culture gets vacuous and empty because it replaces God, our Christian is going to stand out by the way they live, the way we use just our lives, the way we love people, our families. I think if our culture gets darker as some people are projecting, then the light can shine that much brighter. But if we see more signs about a religious comeback, we'll keep you updated on that one.
All right, the final one is from a Biola professor, Thaddeus Williams sent me this. He wrote this in World Magazine last month, but I think it's timely and just helpful for us entering into the political season. Now, one thing you know we're not going to do here on this podcast, we're just not going to tell you how to vote. Some of you want us to, to the left and to the right, that's not our lane. But what we want to do is think biblically about ideas that intersect with politics and talk about how are some Christian ways to approach politics. Well, in this article, it's called Political Word Games, again by Dr. Thaddeus Williams, a Biola theology professor, a friend of mine. Here's the point he's bringing out. He says, exposing, quote, "its toasted appeal made of terms, made up terms like reproductive freedom.” Now, what does that mean? This was news to me, but the term "its toasted" is a simple phrase that has become one of the most successful marketing campaigns, I guess, in history and fictional television. It was coined to help sell cigarettes in the early 20th century, but was kind of got a dramatic retelling in AMC's hit show, Mad Men. Well, “rather than attempt to engage at the level of facts”, says Thaddeus, “the tagline ‘its toasted’ deliberately bypasses uncomfortable questions about death and it replaces serious life or death realities with a warm, lighthearted, sentimental buzzword phrase.” So instead of talking about death and as uncomfortable as that is, there's just the phrase “it's toasted.” Now, Williams points out that there's a famous line that says in advertising, the science advertising is the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. Williams says, similarly, politics in the US in 2024 may be defined as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get a vote from it. Now, hang on here with me, he criticizes both sides for kind of taking an "its toasted" approach to very important political issues, warning Christians not to be taken in by this. So he says, for example, we're going to look at both sides, he said the Harris-Waltz 2024 film markets itself on joy and good vibes, kind of a happy, clappy optimism with smiles and positivity, which of course he says raises the question, what is the joy about? And when substantive answers are replaced with good vibes, says Williams, we're basically doing the same thing that "its toasted" does when referring to death. That's his argument. Now, he also flips it around. He says he mentions President Donald Trump, former President Donald Trump, posted to the chagrin of much of his pro-life base that, quote, "the administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights." The reproductive rights. And I love it. Williams says, let's be crystal clear. Reproductive rights, I'm sorry, reproductive freedom and rights are Orwellian doublespeak for the right to abortion. So just like joy and positivity doesn't give you any substance, and it's a kind of doublespeak, he would argue, saying something like reproductive freedom and rights is just a less offensive, milk toasty way of referring to abortion. And he writes this, he says, "the political playbook has become predictable. Take command of a culture by commandeering its words and their meanings." This is a huge point that I think Williams draws out. He says, "Thomas Sowell,” who's a professor at Stanford for years, just brilliant writer, “he traces how words like diversity, privilege, violence, and change have been hijacked by an ideology” by which, quote, "the hardest facts can be made to vanish into thin air by a clever catchword or soaring rhetoric." And so Williams points to things like gender-affirming care, which does anything of the sort. Anti-racism, nobody wants to say they're in favor of racism, but there's a very certain, let's just say, approach to fighting racism in what's called anti-racism. I won't go into the details here, but Williams takes issues with that. He says, "these admin, sloganeers, and public opinion strategists choose such terms because most people won't think beneath the bumper sticker thin appeal to what they actually convey." I think he's probably right about that. So he says again, let's be crystal clear, reproductive freedom and rights are Orwellian double speak for the right to abortion. And abortion is the termination, the ending, and intentional destruction of the natural flow of the reproductive process.
Friends, this is a wake-up call for anybody. I don't believe his point is partisan here. He says, "pay attention to the words and language everybody uses, and particular in our political moment and our words used to frame something differently than the truth that's actually behind it. It's a kind of marketing slogan that we can be persuaded by.”
Now how do we think biblically about a point like this? I read this article and thought, what's a biblical perspective on this? And I've been reading John 1:1 with my 12-year-old son, not just John 1:1, the Gospel John. Each morning I make breakfast for him, read it sometimes, five, 10 minutes we talk about it. And I just thought of how the Gospel John starts. It says, "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Now that's reminiscent of Genesis 1, where God speaks the world into existence. He doesn't use existing matter and reform it like these other gods did in these other stories of creation, these different cosmogonies. We have ex-nihilo creation of God who speaks reality into existence with His Word. And when Jesus described His Word, of course it means the logos and the rationality. It's not just words like we use, but God communicates largely through words. Words matter. Words shape how we understand ourselves. They shape how we see the world. This is in part what separates us from animals. Animals use sounds, but they don't use words to convey ideas. Now I would argue that part of postmodernism is that we're, amongst other things, we're trapped behind language. We can't get outside of our language and see the world as it really is. There's a barrier, in a sense, between language and reality, if there is such a thing as objective reality. Well, I think postmodernists err by claiming that we're totally trapped behind language, but they rightly note the power of language to describe how we see the world. So let's be very careful in all political dialogue. Why is that bill framed that way? Why are they using terms like reproductive rights or gender-affirming care? What's the truth behind it? And choose our words carefully, which shows up all over the scriptures. We'll link to this article if that's helpful, but let's move and take some questions.
As always, we get a lot of questions, far more than we can answer, but I'll do my best with these and give it a shot. So here's the first one. This came in and this fellow says, "I have three adult daughters. In our state…” he doesn't mention the state, so I'll leave it out. “A pro-abortion "right to reproductive freedom initiative is a hot topic for the coming election. I'm opposed to it. He even placed a vote no on this bill signed in his yard. My daughters are questioning me about it.” Again, they're adult daughters. “Once this voting no on this amendment shows her that I do not care about her well-being, that of her sisters or anyone else who could get pregnant. This is heart-wrenching for me. I tried to be a good husband and father, but somehow failed to pass on a Christian worldview. How do I respond in a way that shows them I care for them and that my love for them is strong regardless of my position?” Thanks for your article. I felt your heart-wrenching email. The heart-wrenching nature behind that. My first encouragement is to give yourself some grace. At the root of Christianity is that God gives us grace and all of us fall short in some fashion. Now, it's easy for me to just say this. This might be getting in a group and having other people pouring to you so you feel it might be memorizing some scripture and just repeating it to yourself about God's grace. But please, at the root of Christianity is that we all fall short in different ways. God has grace for us. Second, since they commented on this, I would consider inviting your daughters to have a conversation probably individually. Now, before I go any further for me, I love having conversations with people who see the world differently. Abortion is probably the hardest one to talk to people about because so much is at stake even with family members who differ with me on this. It's really difficult. So, if it's helpful, Tim Muehlhoff and I, we wrote a book called End the Stailmate and there's an entire section of a chapter on how to prep for difficult conversations. Prep emotionally, prep spiritually. You don't want to jump into a conversation like this without being in the right place and the right time and just the right attitude going into it. That might be helpful. But I would just invite them one by one, maybe start with the one that's easy and say, "Hey, you made a comment about me not…” you know, how did you word it here? One says, “‘I do not care about your well-being.' Would you be willing to tell me about this? Tell me how you see this issue. Tell me how you came to those conclusions." If they identify as Christians, "Help me understand how you square this with scripture. Why do you think I hold the position that I hold? And is it possible for me to be pro-life and actually be pro-life because I care about you more?” I would invite a cool-headed, calm conversation. Now the goal is not to win an argument. The goal is to listen. The goal is to understand. The goal is to find some common ground and hopefully at the very end she can at least minimally see why you believe what you believe and why being pro-life and supporting this is in fact because you love the unborn and you love women. That would be my suggestion. But thank you for sharing. That's really, that's a heartfelt and a great question.
All right, here's another one here. And I'm only going to be able to give you so much on this one. I'll tell you ahead of time, but I'm going to do my best. It says, "I'm a Biola grad.” We love that our Biola grads listen. “And I love Biola and the podcast.” Awesome. "I'm about to graduate from law school and during registration I discovered a class that offers a viewpoint on law that I've never considered before. There seems to be some major moral and slippery slope issues that I know I will have to contend with as I progress in the legal field. Since this view may be prevalent among my colleagues, I'd love to hear your thoughts from a biblical perspective. Here's the course description and name." And by the way, this is not the kind of course you will ever hear taught at Biola or Talbot School of Theology for sure. Although we might use texts in a course like this and talk about it and interact with it. Listen to this. This is really interesting. It's called "Biological Foundations of Law." That title should give a lot away. It says this, "Jurisprudence has long been mired in subjective belief systems propounded by long dead philosophers and thinkers that have no foundation in the natural sciences." So right away there's a contrast between the old thinking and natural sciences. So it raises the question, can the natural sciences ground how we should think about law? “This course pursues a relatively novel approach to jurisprudence. The idea that law is a characteristic of human social behavior and that like other such behaviors, has its roots in evolution by natural selection.” I'm not going to read the rest of it, but one more section. It says, "This course thus departs from all other major theories of law and that the approach to jurisprudence it considers challenges the foundation of belief that at bottom there's a meaningful difference between empirical biological fact and normative fact."
Now a couple things that might help here. This sounds like it's a course that's basically saying instead of pulling from Aristotle and Plato and these great thinkers about law, let's create a course rooted in the natural sciences. Now one reason somebody would do that is because naturalism has a stronghold in many ways over our culture still. And so this is an attempt to say, how do we make sense of law and our duties if there is no God, and we came through this evolutionary process? Daniel Dennett, one of the new atheists we mentioned earlier in our second article today, Daniel Dennett said “Evolution is like a universal acid. It dissolves everything in its way.” So if he's right, if there's no God and there's no design by which we've been here and there's a naturalistic evolutionary process, everything we do needs to be seen from within an evolutionary perspective. When I give a talk on this, I actually talk about it. I don't have the list of books here, but I give how people talk about how do we do business from an evolutionary perspective? How do we understand religion from an evolutionary perspective? How do we understand English and literature from an evolutionary perspective? In fact, I highlight a book called Evolutionary Jurisprudence that talks about how you do law from an evolutionary perspective. So in a sense, this class is starting with a naturalistic evolutionary worldview and says let's see law in light of it. So in some ways, a Christian should be willing to say, okay, this is a thought experiment. There's no God and we can explain everything by the natural sciences. What would be the role of law? That's what's going on here.
Now where I would take issue with this is that it says this jurisprudence considers challenges the foundational belief that at bottom, there's a meaningful difference between empirical biological fact and normative fact. It challenges that. So I just had a two hour debate. This might be helpful to you not on law, but Michael Shermer is one of the leading skeptics in the world today. He's an atheist, he's a naturalist, and he spent about two hours of that. So I guess he talked for about an hour trying to explain how morality comes from evolution alone, an evolutionary roots of morality. And I challenge that. And one of the big challenges was at best evolution can explain why we have certain feelings that we ought to do what's good, but it can't tell us that those feelings are grounded in reality and we have obligations to follow them. So maybe in principle, evolution could explain why we have feelings about just objective facts about biology we've discovered and differences in normative thought, meaning how we should behave, but it can't tell us how in fact we should behave. These are just feelings that have bubbled up through the blind evolutionary process. So if I'm understanding the course correctly, they're trying to ground the practice of law through an evolutionary lens, but when it's all said and done, law is about how we should behave and how we should rightly organize a society. I don't think we can get there without larger norms and a larger design and objective moral truths about what good and bad behavior is. I will leave it at that. That might be helpful. There are some Christians, people like Frank Beckwith at Baylor who've done some excellent writing on issues of law. I would pull up and read some of Frank Beckwith's work on this. I'm guessing he's addressed it to a degree.
Last question, we'll take this one and we'll wrap up. This person says, "I'm having my kitchen remodeled and while talking with a contractor, I learned he's a Buddhist. Once we started talking, he spent an hour explaining ideas of karma, reincarnation, the path to enlightenment. I told him I am a Christian. He said he believes in the Bible and Jesus too. I know the Bible and Buddhism are contradictory, but I'm wondering the best way to go about engaging him in deeper conversation. What passages would you use?"
Now, I would say a couple of things. If somebody starts off and gives you an hour about what they believe and why, this person loves what they believe. They're enthusiastic about it. They're evangelistic to a degree about it. That's very different than when I engage somebody and they're asking questions and they're wanting to learn versus wanting to talk for an hour. I want to gauge how open is this person for starters. I might just say stuff like this. I might say, "Hey, really enjoyed you sharing last time. I learned a lot about what we believe about reincarnation and karma and Buddhism I didn't know before. I'd love to share with you what I believe about Jesus similarly. Are you open to hearing that?" And see what the person says. Now, there's something called kind of the rule of reciprocity that when you give someone a gift, they feel obligated to give you a gift back. And that's true in communication. When somebody just talks for a while, sometimes they realize, "Oh, I got to listen. I just talked for this entire time." So I would start there, but I would just say this. On the surface, the teachings of Jesus and Buddha and other religious figures can sound similar. You want to get to like the core, so to speak. Not one of the layers of the onions on the outside, but the root, so to speak, the core in the middle. And so I would say things like, "What does it mean to be human in Buddhism?" And in most forms of Buddhism, I understand that you're a no-soul. It's called a natta. That's very different than a biblical view that we are body and soul. And say, "Okay, so we can see we have differences. What do you think is the root of the problem in the world?" Well, in Buddhism, we suffer because we have desires. That's not the root of the problem in the world according to Christianity. The root of the problem in the world according to Christianity is sin. It's sin that we have. And so I would ask and I would make a distinction between that root. I would also make a distinction between where we go when we die and how we fix it. So just ask questions about who is Jesus? What's wrong with the world? How do we fix it? What happens when we die? These big issues are the ones you want to keep the focus on. And when you do that, you can kind of make the distinction that clearly Jesus and Buddha had stuff in common on the surface, but not necessarily when you really probe down more deeply. I love that you have this heart to share with your Buddhist neighbor. That's fantastic. I would say go for it. Keep it up. Be super encouraged. That's awesome. I hope the rest of our listeners have similar interests.
All right, friends. We appreciate you listening. This has been a fun episode. Next time, Scott will be back with us, so it won't just be me, but please keep your questions coming. We want to know what you think or comments from this episode, whether it's, "Sean, you did a decent job." Now and then, just do it yourself or, "Sean, don't ever do it again yourself. Make sure you have a guest.” Either one is fine with me, but this has been an episode of the podcast, Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture. Brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at 91. We've got courses on marriage. We've got programs on theology, Bible apologetics, spiritual formation on campus and distance. We would love to have you join us. Please submit your comments or questions through thinkbiblically@biola.edu. Please consider giving us a rating on your podcast app. Consider sharing it with a friend. We really appreciate you listening. We hope you'll come back Tuesday as Scott and I continue our discussion about IVF. Let me tell you, the first part, we just kind of clarified what's at stake. In this one, you see us differ a lot more about really where we land on IVF. I think you'll find it helpful. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.
