Topics this week include:

  • Reflecting on , focusing on maintaining relationships amidst .
  • Discussion of a recent exploring the challenges and necessity of unity within the church despite diverse political beliefs.
  • Insights on balancing truth and grace in conversations, especially when discussing sensitive issues like abortion or differing political opinions.
  • Analysis of a controversial U.S. startup offering , raising ethical questions around genetic enhancement.
  • Addressing listener questions about intrauterine devices (IUDs) and their effects, as well as guidance for teaching about the Bible’s reliability to young students.



Episode Transcript

Scott: How can we live with one another post-election? This is perhaps one of the most important questions Christians can wrestle with today. How can we think biblically about our polarized, over-politicized cultural moment in which relationships are being broken by how people voted? And yes, the world goes on after elections, so we will discuss an important and disconcerting story that came out this week about a U.S. startup that screens embryos for IQ. And of course, we'll take some of your excellent questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.

Scott: I'm your co-host, Scott Rae.

Sean: This is the Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, 91ÆÞÓÑ. Scott, it has been quite the week, emotionally, intellectually, one that you and I and our listeners will probably remember for the rest of our lives. Our hope here, as always, is just to maybe give some biblical reflections to help people think through post-election how we process this.

Scott: I think you say too, we don't care that much about how you voted. That's not going to be the point of this, but we do want to talk about how we move forward in terms of faithfulness to Christ and to the gospel in our politicized particular political context.

Sean: Amen. So if you want further post-election analysis on the results, you're going to have to go elsewhere. That's not our lane. All right, will you send me this piece, which I thought was really interesting, Scott, by Bonnie Kristian, who's been on our program before. She has a fascinating book on kind of celebrity culture in the Christian world. It's called After This Election, How Do We Live With One Another? And she says, "This is a question all of us need to ask, but especially people of faith, and even those who live in a more politically homogenous area." And her point is, if you live in a politically homogenous area, you're still online and there's still people around you. You see the world differently. How do we live with one another? Now she frames it by saying that the wish for depolarization will probably go unfulfilled in the foreseeable future. Now our culture has been more polarized, America at least has been, maybe the Civil War, going back to Vietnam, but this is not going to change in any foreseeable future. But second, this shouldn't be cause for despair. Now she does say, "There are lines across which a fellow Christian's politics would lead me to question her faith and whether we ought to go to church together." She says, "There are lines where we ought to draw." But she pushes back and says, Maybe we've been too quick to draw those lines and not extend some grace to other people who vote and see these issues differently for the sake of unity within the church. That's kind of the argument she's making. She says, "For example, I understand why disagreement over an issue like abortion feels like a good reason to end a friendship. It's a matter of life and death from any standpoint. I get it." But then she talks about her beliefs, her Christian beliefs in which she is against violence of any kind being brought on by a Christian. And she says, "This is a serious issue of life and death." And if she's right, the vast majority of the church has been wrong on issues like war because she's a pacifist. So a ton is at stake for her, but she also realizes it's really important that we look at unity beyond some of these differences. She dropped one point that I thought was really helpful. I think about this a lot. Is she cites C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity where he takes up the mystery of Christian behavior and somebody says, "If Christianity is true, why are not all Christians obviously nicer than non-Christians?" And you know, it's an interesting question. He says, "Our standards shouldn't be Christians versus non-Christians, but it should be Christian A versus where Christian A was earlier in his or her life." And especially if Christianity, you have to humble yourself and recognize you're a sinner. Maybe Christianity invites more broken people that have areas where they need significant growth. So we should be careful to judge people practically and theologically where they're at when we don't know their backstory. I thought that was just helpful to bring to this. She says, "In our family and friendships, we must love each other deeply." As the apostle Peter said, "Because love covers a multitude of sins." I do appreciate she says here, she says, "This doesn't mean we never confront wrongdoing or wrong thinking," but I love this quote. She says, "It means weighing what's worth the confrontation and what can be left covered." That's a wise question. Now she doesn't draw it out in this article, Scott. Maybe you and I will. It looks very differently with family than non-family. Work with non-work, Christian with the non-Christian. Where we draw those lines and what we risk, all those factors have to be kept in play to do so wisely. But she says, "Sometimes just the way we communicate is significant." So if somebody says, "I don't like that we argue so much," that's probably going to land better than, "Here's why I think your politics are bad." Like obvious point, but it's so true that that's a better way to communicate with somebody. And then at the end, her point is she says, "Well, never let love override truth. We must prioritize truth." But she's talking about the lengths that we go to to be gracious and kind and understand people in a spirit of love. Now a lot more is in this article, some things I want to pull out, but you send this to me. Do you find it helpful? Do you push back in certain areas? Give us your thoughts.

Scott: Well, I found it really helpful. And I think for just two fairly obvious observations follow from this, we have to talk about how to live with one another because roughly half the people in the country voted differently than you did and probably out of very strong convictions. And the other thing is I think for some people, this is probably not an issue. And the reason for that is because they probably don't have friends who think differently than they do, or at least you just don't go there with people who you know you disagree with. For the sake of peace, you just don't even go down that road to begin with. Now I think both of those can be problematic. If you don't have anybody in your life who disagrees with you about hardly anything, I think you may need to be a little bit more diverse in your friendships…

Sean: Agreed.

Scott: …and seek out some people who do think a little differently because I, for myself, I don't want to go through my life living in an echo chamber because there's a big world out there that thinks differently on a lot of things. And that's, by the way, the world that we're called to reach as believers. I think the other thing I would suggest is sort of the first step in this, how to live with one another. If you're candidate one this week, there's no place for dancing in the end zone, football speaking. No place for spiking the football after you've scored a touchdown. And be aware that half the country thought differently. Be sensitive to that. I think if your candidate lost, don't despair. You may feel like there's work to do, but God is still sovereign. He has not left his throne because of the results of any particular election. So that I thought was really helpful. Lewis’s point that you raised, Sean, I think is also, let me raise a different point that she made from Lewis on this that I found particularly helpful. Lewis reflects on politics specifically. He said, what can you ever really know of other people's souls? Of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles. And as a result, we give them grace and seek for it yourself. Now, Lewis here was speaking of behavior, not so much thinking, but we have an obligation to conform our thinking to the truth just as we have an obligation to be kind and be gentle. When we believe ourselves to be correct and others in error, I think we need to remember how little we know about their souls, their temptations, their opportunities, and their struggles and how likely it is that we too might have serious mistakes that are lurking undiscovered in our own mind. That's the way she puts it, I think is particularly helpful. This I think reflects what the Bible teaches from 1 Peter 3:15 about being always ready to make a defense for the hope that's within you. I think that refers to more than just the gospel. It refers to the hope that we have some of the things that are outworkings of the gospel as well, but to do so with gentleness and respect. And it seems to me in our political discourse, those two things have gone out the window pretty quickly. And there's the way I put it too, regardless of which side of the political divide you find yourself on, that having strong convictions doesn't give you the license to be a jerk about how you express them. Because how you represent your convictions is a moral issue too. And I think what Bonnie's right about this is the moral life is not necessarily the combative life. I like the way she puts that. Now there's a place to be combative. When people bring a point to you with some horseradish on it, I think it's okay to return that with some horseradish too, to return strong convictions with strong convictions, but always doing that with respect, not with condescension, not with this thinking of you must be an idiot if you believe such and such. Because usually there's a backstory as we've talked about before behind people's strong convictions about a whole host of issues. And so exploring that backstory I think is really helpful. Tell me why you are so passionate about this. Because it seems like it's not just another political view for you. I think it's some of the questions that we want to be asking folks. So I thought she had some really, really helpful things. You know, she says, if you take these things seriously over abortion, immigration, things like that, that the moral life will be a combative life. And if you're true to your convictions, you will end friendships, ostracize family, change churches and jobs and disagree it becomes too great. There may be some places where that crosses the line. But I suspect that for most people who name the name of Jesus, that may be too strong. But I think there are some people who would leave their church before they would leave some of their political views. And I'm not so sure that would always be justified. Now, there are certain churches you want to leave over your theological views. But some of the political views, I think, may be a little bit different. Some of these places where the Bible may not speak directly or address the issue directly, where we make inferences from scripture and have really strong convictions based on that. Those may be some of the things where we want to be a bit more tentative and hold our convictions a bit more loosely with the realization that we might be wrong about this. And I think for some people, I think we would say, sometimes wrong, but never in doubt is how they would characterize themselves. And I think I probably want to take that a little bit differently. Your comments on that?

Sean: Yeah, those are great takes from this article. One thing that jumped out to me, I'd love to know what you think about this, is she does make the point that there is a time, like you said, to break relationship. There's a time to break fellowship. And then she leans in and says, "I understand why disagreements over an issue like abortion feels like a good reason to end a relationship. It's a matter of life and death from any standpoint. I get it." Now, for me, that's interesting. There's a big difference between saying a Christian and a non-Christian breaking fellowship over something like abortion, to use her example from this article, and saying a church that teaches it that abortion is fine or pro-choice, I shouldn't leave. Those are very, very different questions.

Scott: Completely different.

Sean: And sometimes we don't separate those. So Tim Muehlhoff, our friend who I wrote a whole book on cancel culture with, sent me an article this morning, and he drew it to my attention, a tweet from Christina Applegate. Now, she's a famous actress, well-known, who not long ago came down with, she announced publicly that she has multiple sclerosis. And from what I saw, which is some real anger at God that this happened to her. And she sent out a tweet and said, "Please unfollow me if you voted against female rights, disability rights. Yeah, that. Unfollow me because what you did is unreal." I saw that and thought, wow, I don't think a Christian should break fellowship or friendship with a non-Christian like her over difference on this. I think we should lean in relationally and try to be present to the hurt and pain that she's gone through. There's an article in USA Today about how she reached out to somebody else who had breast cancer and cared for her. And I thought, "Where are the Christians in Christina's life?" And they may be there, I have no idea. Where there's obviously hurt behind this, for any Christian to say, you know, to cancel her because she has another view seems ludicrous to me. Now, we can't stop if she's going to cancel somebody for voting differently. But my suspicion is, is if you know somebody personally who votes differently, and you've listened to them and you hear their backstory, you might and should have as firm of convictions as you would otherwise, rooted in scripture and thought and ethics. But you're going to talk about the issue differently. You might be less likely to cancel somebody if there's a relationship that is there. So I just want to invite our audience to make that distinction between what issues churches should die on. And again, since it's the issue she brought up, life is one of those issues. I would not go to a church that said, "This is an issue we can agree to disagree on." But a friendship with a non-Christian? I hope and pray we are intentionally doing that and not canceling them for voting differently. Now's the time to lean in more rather than to pull back.

Scott: I would say that's true also for relationships with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Because if the goal, Sean, as we've talked about repeatedly, if the goal is to win a person, not necessarily win an argument, then breaking relationships is like the equivalent of shooting ourselves in the foot. And I don't have any intention to break friendship, to break relationship with somebody who thinks differently even on really important issues. Now, whether it's a church, I agree. That's completely different. And I think I would definitely not be attending a church who believed that abortion was something we could agree to disagree about. There are a handful of other issues that I would say that crosses the line as well. So I think that's a really helpful distinction. But I think what we want to be known for is reaching beyond our disagreements and being able to maintain a relationship while at the same time being clear about the places where we disagree. That's really important. And I love what our friend Dennis Prager says about this, that clarity for him is more important than agreement. And I think that's right. And so I don't want somebody to have continued a relationship with me under a false pretense thinking that I hold to something that I actually don't. That's not doing either of us any favors. So I think there's wisdom, I think, in maintaining relationship with someone as far as it depends on us. And I think that's very clear as far as it depends on you, be at peace with your neighbors and recognizing that sometimes it doesn't depend on you. And that's something that in a fallen world we have to live with.

Sean: That's well said. I'm going to draw our attention back to, she says, "It doesn't mean it's never wrong to confront wrongdoing or wrong thinking, but it does mean weighing what's worth the confrontation and what can be left covered. Because love covers a multitude of sins." That's the right question. I don't always have the answer to that, Scott. Some of the most common questions people ask me are about how do I balance grace and truth with my kids? How do I balance it in the classroom? How do I balance it? And partly I say, I don't always know the answer to this. We're going to have to live in that tension. And if we're not living at that tension, trying to balance the value of the relationship with speaking truth, then probably we're erring on one side too far than the other. We're speaking truth too much, not weighing the cost of the relationship, or we're not willing to speak truth enough and valuing the relationship apart from the truth that sets free. We're in a moment now, we're going to live in this messiness, and her calling us to ask that and weigh specifically what's worth confrontation, what can be covered, I think that's where we need to rest. Now I've got a few other thoughts here, but one of the strengths of the Christian worldview is that there's a range of different philosophies we can take on political engagement. Throughout the history of the church, some people would say, "Why are there so many