91This week, Sean and Scott discuss:
- A murdered teenager was , raising ethical and theological concerns about AI misuse.
- A Harvard study that race matters less than it used to for achieving the American dream, with economic mobility improving for Black Americans.
- Young men in America are in education, employment, and mental health, facing a crisis of purpose and increasing isolation.
- Listener question: ethical dilemmas around IVF, including the moral treatment of frozen embryos.
- Listener question: How Christians can uphold Sunday worship in light of the Sabbath command being fulfilled in Christ.
The short film Scott mentions .
Episode Transcript
Sean: A teenager murdered 20 years ago is resurrected as a chatbot through character.ai. Does race matter less in terms of who can achieve the American dream? A Harvard study seems to suggest so. Men are falling radically behind women in mental health, education, life purpose, and so much more. These are the stories we will discuss today, and we will address some of your excellent questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.
Scott: And I'm your co-host, Scott Rae.
Sean: This is the Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, 91. Scott, this week it took us more work than ever to find non-political stories and felt like others are weighing in on that. And since life is going on and there are some important stories, we would cover that. But next week, given that the elections are next week, we might weigh in on that. So that's the plan. How does that sound to you?
Scott: Well, I think, yeah. I mean, we scoured our news feeds for stories that didn't have anything to do with the election. I think we found some good ones. But it took a lot more work. And I think we will, even though chances are, by the time we post this next week, the election may not actually be decided. But we will have some reflections on the election for next time.
Sean: Well, this story came from a friend of ours who's been on the program, Christopher Lind. He sent this to me. It was just so jarring and illustrative. I thought we'd try to think biblically about it. This is from futurism.com. And the title is that a father's disgusted to find his murdered daughter was brought back as an AI. Now, a user went to the billion dollar AI platform, character.ai, which I discussed last week, to make a chat bot version of a murdered teen nearly two decades after her death. Jennifer Crecente of Austin, Texas, was just 18 years old when she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2006. Her father has found and continues to run a nonprofit dedicated to teen dating violence in her memory. He told the Washington Post, he said, "It takes quite a bit for me to be shocked, because I really have been through quite a bit." He said, "But this was a new low." He explained that he was notified somehow of the bot's existence by a Google alert, which took him to character.ai profile outfitted with Jennifer's name and her yearbook picture. He said, "My pulse was racing. I was just looking for a big flashing red stop button that I could slap and make this thing stop." Now, according to this article, this is one of the darkest applications of generative AI we've seen. And what's worse, it's unclear-- and I think this is right-- how the company, which recently struck a major deal to license its technology to Google, can functionally stop this kind of thing from happening. And you can get on character.ai and create certain kind of chat bots. Why couldn't somebody else do this? That's a fair question. I don't know how they stopped that. At the end of the article, they raised the interest point. They said, "If Drew Crecente didn't have a Google alert set up for his daughter's name, would the profile have gone undetected, racking up conversations with users for the benefit of character.ai and making millions of dollars and him not even being aware of it?" What are your thoughts and/or biblical reflections on this one, Scott?
Scott: Well, Sean, I admit this was a hard one to choke down. But I think to take a step back from how we would respond emotionally to this and to put it in a theological framework, I think would be helpful. So just to remind our listeners, a theology of technology, in general, we view technology as God's good gift to human beings via the concepts of general revelation and common grace. God has poured out his grace in some forms upon everyone, regardless of their faith commitment. That's why we refer to the term as common grace. But it's designed to cause human beings to flourish and to help alleviate the effects of the general interest of sin in the world. Now, that latter part, I think, is a helpful guardrail on this because the interest of sin into the world suggests that everything potentially can be tainted by sin, which means that technologies that were created for good can also have a dark side to them. And I think we get a really, really vivid example of this here. This is, I think, a great illustration of the dark side of artificial intelligence, how it can be used not only for sinister purposes, but to profit off of sinister purposes. In my view, this is a pretty significant black eye for artificial intelligence. Now, of course, the company took it down. But I think why it was allowed to be created in the first place is part of the question. And that, I think-- I agree, this is hard to police. But there are probably 100 million AI characters available on this character AI platform. Now, I don't think all of those are made up avatars. I suspect a lot of those are based on real life people, celebrities, or at least people in the public eye who are not likely to sue character AI for use of their images without their consent. But how you would police this just for kind of ordinary people being used and misused like this, I don't know how they'll do it. Now, hopefully somebody at character AI is thinking forwardly about this. But I think what this illustrates is that every technology, in particular the AI technologies, have lots of potential benefits. But they, too, are infected by sin. And the users are infected by sin. So we should expect that we should see some of these applications that go off the rails, so to speak. So I guess I'm a little surprised that somebody used-- somebody who was deceased like that. But my guess is that they did so without knowing the kind of grief that that would cause the Crecente family, and particularly the parents here. So this is just a part of chat bots being used to create friends, romantic partners, therapists, and I suspect probably in the near future pastors to provide a lot of the things that people are unable to obtain through normal relationships. The problem with that, in my view, is that I think it is increasing the tendency to do an end run around real life relationships, which are a whole lot messier than interacting with chat bots. They're clean. They don't give you any grief back. They don't push back on things. And chat bots are not high maintenance like some relationships are. And so I think we're not helping ourselves in terms of our ability to interact together socially. And I think this is particularly important given the polarized culture that we're in. Now more so than ever, we need to be able to talk to each other well. And I fear that these ways of doing an end run around that may actually make some of the polarization worse.
Sean: Helpful points, Scott. A few things jumped out to me kind of biblically and ethically. I thought in the article, it was really interesting. It said, quote, "If Drew Crecente didn't have a Google alert for his daughter's name, with the profile of gone undetected, racking up conversations with users for the benefit of character AI." Now we often hear today that it's not wrong if you don't hurt anybody. That's like one of the reigning ethics of today. If it feels good and you don't hurt anybody, do it. And yet underlying this article is a pause that says, wait a minute, he still would have been deeply wronged, even if he wasn't aware of it. And it didn't hurt him emotionally. That tells us that some of the ethics today don't really line up with what we know to be the case. And I know when there is sin, it hurts God, it hurts others. And in some way, it's going to hurt us. And I think somewhat incidentally, this article brought it out. I think you're right. As far as the articles that I could find, they said this was not done intentionally. It wasn't done maliciously. But you and I also know there's sins of commission that we commit and there's sins of omission in the sense that we should have known better and not done that, even if we didn't do it with malicious intent. I would argue that this person has a level of culpability if we ever found out who it was and should apologize to the father, even if they didn't do it with that kind of wrong intent. So intent matters in ethics, but oftentimes it's more than just intent. So two other points to that said, imagine how, this is an article by our friend, Christopher Lind, who did a review of this. He said, “Imagine how you would feel someone reanimated your loved one and used in ways they would never have consented to.” That's the right question. In other words, oh, I'm just gonna do this for fun or it's interesting or it's easier, whatever the motivation was. The golden rule, the person who made this almost certainly didn't think, how would the dad of a murdered daughter feel if he came across this? People simply aren't thinking that way. And so this classical golden rule principle applies to the most cutting edge technology that we have today in terms of artificial intelligence. So if we just apply the golden rule. And then the last question I had, Scott, I don't even know how to answer this, but I just raise it is the Bible talks over and over again about not talking to the dead, it being ruled out. Now, obviously in this case, there's not a demon behind this in the AI, although some people might argue in some sense that there is, but is it still wrong to try to talk to the dead? When would it become wrong? Like those are just interesting questions that technology enables us to ask that we didn't have to ask years ago. And it's very different saying, well, I'm just gonna throw CS Lewis's material in there and have a conversation, that's fun, I could learn stuff. Like that seems harmful to me. But I started, you know, question people ask is like, if you could have dinner with anybody, who'd you have? And for me, honestly, I'd probably have dinner with my dad's dad, who I never met, not somebody famous. I would wanna talk with him. Now I'm not gonna do it, but I could see somebody morbidly going, you know what, I'm gonna funnel in everything I know about this person who I didn't get to meet and have a conversation with them. That seems to be crossing a barrier that maybe in some sense, the Bible warns against. But these are questions we haven't even really began to wrestle with theologically and biblically.
Scott: Well, and I can see a grieving parent wanting to create a chat bot of their deceased child in order to continue to have some sort of, some sort of presumed relationship with them. And then the article also points out that this isn't the first time a grieving parent has had their child's information manipulated by artificial intelligence. They say TikTok creators have actually used, they imitate the voices and likeness of missing children and produce videos of them narrating their deaths, which I'd say that's a step beyond what we saw in this article that we're highlighting today. So the possibilities for this, it can go off the rails pretty quickly. And I think what it's presuming here is that the users of these AI platforms are essentially virtuous and somewhat noble people who aren't going to use them for these kinds of sinister ends. But I think a realistic theological assessment of the users of this would suggest something maybe a little less optimistic than that.
Sean: Sure. Good, good stuff. I suspect this isn't the last we'll see of this happening, unfortunately.
Scott: Tragically so.
Sean: Yeah, I think you're right about that. Well, this next story, we're shifting gears pretty significantly. I've actually been holding on to the story since the summer for us to discuss. And it's a lot of the stories we've been hearing are more like the weather, whereas this is a story that's more like the climate, like a larger kind of trend that's taking place. And it was in the New York Times and it's based on a massive Harvard study where they said they looked at the data covering 57 million children. And the title is "Who Can Achieve the American Dream? Race Matters Less Than It Used To." Now they argued a few points here. They said adjusting for inflation, they measured groups ability to rise to the middle and upper classes, what's called economic mobility of these 57 million children. The researchers found that black millennials born to low income parents had an easier time rising than the previous black generation did. Positive step forward, previous black generation would have been my generation Xers. At the same time, white millennials born to poor parents had a harder time than their white Gen X counterparts. Black people still on average make less money than white people and the overall income gap remains large, but it is narrowed for black and a white Americans born poor by about 30%, which is not insignificant. Says now they're starting to kind of assess why did this happen? What's at play with it? And they said the community come from has a huge effect on your economic mobility. For centuries, this meant a tremendous advantage for white Americans, even those born into low income families. But a surprising shift, the study suggests that advantage is not as large as it once was. Now the study talks about some individuals I'll skip over, but they said over the decade and a half of the study, so it's not only millions of people, but it's 15 years, the opportunity gap between white people born rich and those poor expand by roughly 30%. And one possible interpretation they said is that class is becoming more important in America while race is becoming less so. Now the data didn't show that people's lives were guided by immutable facts like class and race. It suggests that community plays a central role. I'm not sure it does, but that's what they're arguing. Now they ask a ton of questions about how this happened. They give a whole bunch of hypotheses that frankly go beyond the data themselves, but they also make an interesting point that they don't show that the increase in black opportunity took away from white opportunity. So it's not like what benefits one group and not the other. It's not a zero sum game, which I thought was interesting. And the conclusion basically is that the Harvard researchers feel optimistic about one major finding, economic mobility can change relatively quickly. And at the very end of the article, this fellow Mr. Kane, who's somebody who illustrates this, he's a black man who came from, I guess, a poor background and succeeded well in life. It said he faced his own doubts and troubles, including racism and discrimination growing up, but he always remembered what his mother and grandfather taught him, that he could achieve his version of the American dream. This jumped out to me because the article says, all right, there's still some issues we need to address here, but things are moving positively in the right direction. That's how I read it. What's your take on this, Scott?
Scott: No, Sean, I found this actually very encouraging. And the idea that economic upward mobility can happen rather quickly for some people is actually exactly how market systems are designed to work, to enable people to do that. And in my view, markets were not handed down from on high, like the 11th commandment. It's markets are a human creation, but in my view are one of humanity's best creations. I put it right up there with antibiotics and anesthesia as things that can provide some of the greatest benefits. And this, actually the point of this article, bears out something I've been saying to our business students for a long time, that advantage and disadvantage should be primarily a function of socioeconomic standing, not necessarily race. And that that's much more influential in where somebody enters the race, vis-a-vis the starting line. And here's, in my view, Sean, equating race with disadvantage or advantage is often misleading. It sometimes is outright false, and actually can be insulting to minorities who make it on their own merit. Now, I'll give you an example of this. Several years ago, we had a student, African-American gentleman, one of the sharpest students we ever had in our undergrad business ethics class. And he was valedictorian in his high school. And yet, when he got to Biola, he had a number of people that sort of, I wouldn't say directly, but sort of implied that he was here by some sort of preferential treatment. And he said, "I can't tell you how insulting that was to me because I had earned my way here strictly on the basis of my merits, and by my grades, by my activities, by being valedictorian in my class. And it stigmatized legitimate achievement." And in his view, that was the deepest cut of all of them, was that people weren't taking his achievement seriously because they thought he had been basically given a gift that he didn't deserve. Now, I think to say that community contributes to somebody having economic advantage, I wonder if this is sort of what they mean. I'll give you an example of this. Many years ago, Chuck Colson took a group of business executives into one of the prisons where a prison fellowship was working. And he did an exercise with them where he took 10 inmates and he had 10 business people and he lined them up all in a row where they were all facing the same direction. And he asked them these questions. He said, "If you had two people, two parents who were happily married living under the same roof in the home you grew up in, take one step forward. If you had more than 50 books in the house that you grew up in, take a step forward. If you had someone in your extended family who went to college, take a step forward. If you had a work ethic that was modeled and taught for you by your parents or other mentors in your life, take a step forward." And guess what happened? All the executives were the ones who took all the steps forward and the inmates were left standing. And it was a really vivid illustration of the kinds of advantages that people have based on factors other than race and other than money. And I wonder if that's maybe what the article, Sean, means when they say it's your community that contributes to where you enter the race, vis-a-vis the starting line.
Sean: That's such a fascinating exercise and one that can be humbling because we tend to attribute a lot of our successes to ourselves where in reality, you and I have, we had that whole show on a two-parent privilege and how significant that is just economically speaking. So we tend to blame other people without giving them credit and then praise ourselves for our success. I think an activity like that can be really humbling. Now, I know you're not saying this at all, that those things don't determine us.
Scott: No.
Sean: Like my father's a classic example of somebody who was sexually abused, economic, maybe lower class or lower middle class, totally broken family. I mean, on almost every level, just his background was just brutal and made it out of it. So it's not deterministic, but strongly shapes us in ways we often don't give credit and realization to. I think that's the point that you're drawing out. And in fact, that's part of what this article is saying is that we're not determined by these things even though they influence us in different fashions. So I think that's a really, go ahead.
Scott: And I think you can have such a thing as systemic racism be true without wiping out the notion of individual merit. I think you can admit that there are certain things that are baked into the system that have put minorities at a disadvantage economically. But without saying that then any discussion of merit that you somehow, if you didn't have those disadvantages that you didn't also earn what you got, I think those two can coexist at the same time. And I think that your dad's a good example. We've had minority families. In fact, some of my kids' best friends growing up were Hispanic and African-American. And I'm thinking about two people in particular, both parents grew up in terrible situations. And yet their sons, the parents now of my kids' friends overcame those things. Yeah, I think it took them more effort to do that than it did probably you and me. But they have things that are on their merit that I think are still worth giving them credit for. And I think we have to recognize too, Sean, that some people just, they make choices about what to do with their lives that are not gonna benefit them primarily economically. Actors, artists, professors sometimes, public school teachers, pastors. We've made choices that put us in the socioeconomic position that we're in. Now, neither you or I have any complaints about the choices that we've made, but some people make some bad choices or they come from having all these advantages and still make some bad choices that leave them in a disadvantaged position. So I think there is still a place for the concepts of merit and dessert, but I think you can admit that there are some things that are baked into the system that do set some minorities back. I think you can have both those at the same time.
Sean: That's fair. It surprises me when I see an article like this in the New York Times. I mean, I've pointed this out many times. I read it daily and it seems to be left leaning. And so for them to publish an article that race matters less when we've been hearing over and over again that it's one of the determinative factors suggests to me that there is some data moving in the direction of what's in this article. It's not like they're gonna lead with the story. They're excited to publish it. The first one's out of the gate, somewhat reluctant like maybe we've seen on some other issues, which maybe suggests to me we are seeing a slight positive trend in the direction that we would hope things will keep going in. There's a little bit of a tension in this article between collectivism and the individual role of parents and grandparents in the example of the individual. So the article kind of praises a little bit of the community as a whole matters most. And I would never downplay the role of the community or school somebody's in that gives them hope and encouragement and belief and sets an example. When it gets to the very end, when they're using the example of Mr. Kane, who is a millennial black man who grew up in Cincinnati without a comfortable upbringing, meaning his family didn't have much money, it says he had a strong community, but at the end, it says he faced doubts and troubles, racism and discrimination, but he remembered what his mom and his grandfather taught him. It was those people in his life and apparently didn't have a father who was there, but his grandfather stepped in as an example. They worked hard. They showed him how to rise above that place that they were in, how to make a difference, how to have character. So yes, the community matters, but this article kind of ends by saying it's the key people in your life, that mom, that dad, that grandpa that make a difference. So if I had a chance for a kid to be in a community that believed positive things, but a broken home that didn't, or a kid who had a mom and grandfather like Mr. Kane did, but a community that was less so, I would take Mr. Kane's story any day of those individuals in his life teaching him those lessons. Agree or disagree? Do you see it a little differently, Scott?
Scott: Well, yeah, I think it can be both and at the same time, because for example, I was watching the World Series the other night and they had a tribute to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which I think those Boys and Girls Clubs serve as surrogate parents for a lot of these kids who come from homes where when they get home from school, they're last key kids and they just don't, they may not have involved parents in their lives, but Boys and Girls Club provides a sense of mentoring, provides a place for them, a community where some of those life lessons are taught. I think it can also be the case that early employers for teenagers and college students can impart some of those things that parents have been talking about, but maybe at an age they tune parents out and they need others in their lives to help reinforce those things. I think youth pastors at churches can have a similar type function. But I think the best people to do this are the ones who are blood related. I think those tend to have the most lasting impact if they are done with integrity and teaching the right things. Now they can also have very damaging things too if they're taught the wrong things and modeled the wrong things. But I just have one more comment on this before we leave it.
Sean: Sure.
Scott: There is, I think culturally, there is a bit of a concern about economic inequality and the article points out that there's still pretty significant inequalities between incomes for whites in these age groups and for African-Americans and other minorities. And I wanna be clear just that we understand inequality sort of for what it is. Because in a market system, people you have, well, let me start with this. Maybe this is the best place to start. For most of the history of civilization, people have been equal. The vast majority of people, they've been equally poor, wretched and miserable. While the vast majority of the wealth was not held by the 1%, but by the 0.00001%. And in many communities, throughout this civilization, that was basically owned by royalty and their families. When markets were introduced, you now had opportunities for people to raise themselves up out of poverty and you would expect that they would do so at various different rates. Now, some advanced really quickly, some advanced more slowly and some advanced not at all for a variety of reasons. So we would expect that in properly functioning market systems, you would have degrees of inequality based on the rates at which people raise themselves up out of poverty. So I think, and we have all sorts of natural inequalities that are just part of the lottery that people had, the genetic lottery, that we don't think anything about that. I was never gonna be an Olympic swimmer or play in the NBA 'cause my folks did not give me the genes to do that. And I could swim as, train as hard as I wanted to swim growing up and I would never have been in the Olympic games. You and I were never gonna play in the NBA as much as our dreams would have suggested that we might be headed there because we don't have the genetic allotment necessary. Now where inequality becomes a problem is when it's the result of injustice, where, for example, kids that are in failing school systems simply because of their zip code, is injustice that we ought to get exercised about. Or people who are held back from hiring or promotion because of racial discrimination. We ought to get exercised about that too. And then inequality that is such that people lose hope for advancing up the economic ladder, that's another thing I think to be concerned about. But that's what's encouraging me at this study is that it doesn't seem to be any reason for people in the two, at least in two age groups that were surveyed, to be losing hope because we are making progress.
Sean: Hmm. Good, that's really helpful perspective, long-term and especially tied to markets. So good stuff. We got one more story this time from the Wall Street Journal. And it's big of a story as this has been in the culture. We haven't talked about this except to the one discussion about Nancy Pearce's book. And it says, "America's young men are falling even further behind." Basically the article says, "The trajectory of America's sons and daughters are diverging greatly." And it's developed over the past decade plus, supercharged by the pandemic, but the result has implications also for the economy. So for example, "More women ages 25 to 34 have entered the workplace in recent years than ever. The share of young men in the labor market, meanwhile, hasn't grown in a decade." This stat is interesting. "A fifth of men in the same age range still live with their parents as of 2023, according to 12% of women." So almost twice as many, maybe 40% as many have not moved out. What interests me about this article you sent is that there's a lot of talk about what gets to the root of it. And so the article says, "While women now expect to have more and better opportunities than their mothers and grandmothers, men are in some ways bracing for the opposite." Researchers say that has created a crisis of purpose, especially for men at the entrance to adulthood. And president of the Institute for Boys and Men says, "The sense of a lot of young men is not being sure that they are needed, that they're going to be needed by their families, by their communities, by their society." And we see this in plummeting college age attendance rates as well. There's a quote of a young man named Daniels that, "I just feel so lost. I didn't even know what I was doing these things for." The number of young men who spend time alone, those between 18 and 30 spent 18% more time alone last year, an average of almost seven non-sleeping hours than in 2019. That's 22% more than women spend. Well, the study goes on and on and gives some other insights. But I'm curious what your take is on this and why you felt it was important we discussed it.
Scott: Well, I think it caught my interest because I have three young men that are out in the workplace. And I don't think they fit this notion that they are falling behind. But I do think today in general, it is more challenging to launch kids into adulthood today than it was 30, 40 years ago. When I came out of college, it was just assumed that you would find a job and sort of get on with your life. And in fact, 40 years ago, when I got married at age 30, that was considered pretty late. And that's just very different today. So here, Sean, I guess I have two main observations about this. Now, the article doesn't say a whole lot about what might be causing this, except that in part, men have fewer outlets to process what they are going through. And hence the loneliness and the isolation that results. And then as one of the directors of this study pointed out, he said, "The more that you're sitting on a couch as opposed to out in the world, your social network gets narrower and you don't have the social capital or the skills to step in to a job." And he said, "Nearly two thirds of the 18 to 30 year old men they polled last year said that nobody knew them well. And a quarter said they had not seen anyone outside their home in the last week." Now, it's just a staggering sense of isolation and loneliness that's come out of this that I think takes away some of the channels that women more naturally have to process the kinds of things that they're going through. Here's a second observation, is there's nothing in the article that mentioned the absence of dads in the home growing up. And I wondered if that is a bigger factor than people are letting on. Because if there's not a dad in the home, especially for young men, there's no one modeling or mentoring the kind of life skills that people need for adulting. And that I just, I wondered about that. I think at the least, I think this underscores how crucial it is to have men in these young men's lives, preferably their fathers, who they just have watched over years and years, model a work ethic, model proper money management, model treating women with dignity and respect, model taking initiative to take care of themselves and their families if they have them. So those are really crucial life skills that I'm convinced are more caught than taught. And they are learned primarily by osmosis and observation. And without a dad in the home, and without a grandparent or an uncle or mentor who fills that role, I think that's a bigger void than the article is leading up to.
Sean: That's a great observation. I'm so amazed that didn't go through my mind, if we're talking about men falling behind, where do men learn how to be men? Well, they're not gonna learn it primarily from social media. Although there have been in recent years, some people that are like father substitutes, having TikTok and YouTube channels and people looking to them to kind of fulfill that role, they're not gonna learn it in the educational system, probably not gonna learn it in Hollywood. You're right, I bet the number of floundering men is not zero, but lowest in the homes with a father who's present, who loves the mom, and who just models purpose, hard work, and what it means to be a man. I think you're probably right, that's gonna have to be at the root of it. Couple observations, it is interesting, they said we're almost the point in college where it's nearly 60% females to males. Now, I actually don't feel like it has to be 50/50. I don't think we have to have equity on this. I think there's some jobs that maybe men are more inclined to certain kind of trades that are completely honorable. We should encourage that, and they're less inclined to be in class than maybe some girls are. That doesn't bother me in principle, but the fact that it's a 20% gap maybe tells me something more is going on here. I think some of the other factors would be things like pornography or just pornified culture. I mean, the idea of finding and pursuing a woman and risking for her, there's a lot of guys, like it's just easier to look at pornography. I'm not against video games in principle, I'm not gonna go into rant against video games, but I think certain people find community and meaning and purpose in that, that they should be finding principally somewhere else. I think Nancy Peirce is right, that there is a toxic war on masculinity itself, where we've kind of lost culturally speaking, what does it mean to be a man? And at times it pops up in Hollywood, and I think there's a yearning for it. I think the movie "Maverick" a couple years ago with Top Gun, it was like Tom Cruise just played this character of he was strong and he was courageous, but he was sacrificial and he was a father insensitive. I think one of the reasons that movie took off is it wasn't some of just the wokeness we see in culture, but people are like, yes, a strong sacrificial loving male we want and we need that, so there's glimmers in our culture. And in some ways it just gives a chance for the church, I think to step up here, model what that looks like, but also tap into that need and desire that I think men rightfully have.
Scott: You know Sean, one other comment on this.
Sean: Sure.
Scott: As you might expect, this article attracted more than a small handful of letters to the editor.
Sean: Sure.
Scott: And it turns out I know one of the guys who wrote one of the letters.
Sean: Oh, interesting.
Scott: We served on a pastoral staff together before I came to teach at Talbot. And I wanna quote him, and he's a Christian, and he's speaking about our more specific purpose or calling, not the general purpose or calling that all followers of Christ have to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. But he said, "Young men express a lack of purpose in life, work and studies, but purpose isn't something you invent or consume. We aren't born with purpose, it isn't walking around looking for an owner, it can't be bought or borrowed. As with trust, respect, reputation, love, and a good marriage, purpose is earned through hard work, patience, compromise, and a capacity for setbacks. It takes time and hard work to find it by trying different things and jobs and experiences, purpose will form and show itself. It's a journey of discovery, but if you quit, it won't reveal itself." And I think he's absolutely right about that. I can count on one hand, the people I know who got to where they are today via a straight line. Almost everybody has been a meandering route where it just takes detours and turns that you don't expect. And I think most of the time you discover this more specific purpose, or we would say in biblical terms, calling by more trial and error. And to be able to get out there and try something and see how it goes, learn from it, and maybe find that it's not a good fit, I gotta try something else, I think is largely the way this is discovered. So he's head of a company in Wisconsin that's the subject of one of these really great short films on integrating faith into business. We'll put the link to that short film with his company up for our listeners to check into.
Sean: That's awesome, small world that you know him going way back and his comments were really insightful. Well, we got a ton of questions, a lot on our IVF discussions. Some that think I'm insensitive, some that think you're off base and everywhere in between, which is fine, we wanted to stir up people to think about this, most really positive and appreciative by the way. But here's one that says, "Thanks for your ministry. You're a blessing to our lives and lives of thousands.” Thank you. It says, "I have a question based on your latest IVF podcast. We're a parent of two wonderful boys from our IVF treatment. We did this treatment when we were young and did not measure the moral ramifications of fertilizing many eggs. We now have 10 eggs which are frozen, but we have made the moral commitment to maintain them frozen, viable, as long as they can be, even though it's expensive. We'd like to hear from you what your take is on this area. We haven't been able to find any clear biblical advice from anyone on our situation, including our local church."
Scott: Well, Sean, I think we can help them with this one. And I think this is something both you and I'll agree on. That every embryo, and by the way, those are not frozen eggs, they are frozen fertilized eggs, which are frozen embryos. There's a major difference that we need to make sure we recognize.
Sean: Good.
Scott: But every embryo that's created in the lab, and whether you believe that creating them in the lab is moral or not, that's where we would take, have some disagreement.
Sean: Sure.
Scott: But that question's sort of watering the bridge now, but every embryo you create in the lab deserves an opportunity to be implanted in the womb. Now, ideally, the couple would implant them themselves, but 10, that's an awful lot. And you would have to do that in stages. And you'd also have to be willing to raise as many kids as embryos that took in the womb. The other thing that I think you have to do is if you implant them yourselves, you have to use the hormone treatments that make the womb as hospitable to implantation as you can. You can't sort of set them up for a miscarriage. Or you can put those embryos up for adoption to another infertile couple. Now, that's 10, that's a lot of kids to put up for adoption all at the same time. But it seems to me those are the two moral options you have that are biblically consistent with what the scripture teaches that we have a human person from conception forward.
Sean: I think that's a great answer. I don't have a ton to add to that. I just, man, all I can say is a story like this is so heartbreaking to me that a young couple with all the right intentions and motivations and a desire to have kids, which is a God given desire, was just not given this kind of advice earlier and then now trying to do the right thing out of it. That's in part why we had this conversation to help people do better moving forward and just help people. But I admire their willingness to be easy. I'm sure there's many Christians, I have no numbers on this, Scott, who just say, "You know what? "I don't want to pay for this. I don't want to hassle with this. I'm just going to destroy them, look the other way. God will forgive me, give some kind of justification." I would imagine there's an awful lot of Christians who do that and I think it's commendable and honorable that now given the situation, they can't change, trying to do the right thing moving forward and all things considered, I think you gave the best advice that could be given. Well said. All right, one more on IVF. they said “I loved the IVF episodes, which is fun…”
Scott: Why don't we just stop there and be done? [Laughing]
Sean: Well, we could. I think there's a lot of questions on this. Honestly, there's a lot of hurting people trying to make sense of it.
Scott: There are. That’s right.
Sean: They just have not been given biblical guidance for a range of reasons on this topic.
Scott: And this is our word to pastors and church leaders. Don't be one of these churches where people say, "I got nothing from my local church on this."
Sean: Mm. Well said.
Scott: Carry on with the question. Sorry for interrupting.
Sean: No, good word. So he writes, he says, "Since we live in a fallen world, should our goal always be to do the things that alleviate the effects of sin? Or should we focus on being formed through God's grace in the very situations we are in?" So in other words, are all unnatural medical interventions of IVF simply humans trying to bring about our will instead of just dealing with sin in the world? So as I see it, if we look at, say, infertility, the result of sin, should we do anything to try to alleviate that sin? Or should we just deal with the reality of sin and gain a kind of contentment because of the brokenness and live within it? I think is how he's framing it. I've got some thoughts, but tell me what you think if you agree that I framed his question right.
Scott: I think, yeah, I think you did frame it correctly. I want to focus on the second part of the question. Are all the unnatural medical interventions of IVF simply humans trying to bring about their own will instead of just dealing with sin in the world? Well, whether a medical intervention is natural or unnatural I think is beside the point 'cause we have all sorts of unnatural medical interventions that I think everybody holds are perfectly legitimate. And we don't, for example, somebody with kidney failure does not have to accept that as their lot in life when dialysis is available. That's a totally unnatural process. A child with heart disease and malfunctioning valves does not have to endure that. But they have very unnatural, they use the heart valve from pigs to replace the damaged ones that are in the child's heart. I don't think anybody would say that's something you shouldn't do. I think there are some things I think that are givens that may be part of the general instance of sin. Aging may be one of those things that we have limits on how much you fight that. But in general, I don't have a problem with the things that people generally do. You eat right, you exercise, you stay in good health. Those things are gonna cause you to live longer and delay the effects of aging. So I guess I don't believe that it's a problem to always do things that alleviate the effects of sin, as long as the things that we are doing don't compromise other moral guidelines of scripture. Because the end doesn't justify the means. So the means make a moral difference as well. In my view, I think this is a little bit skeptical, unnecessarily, about the place of medical technology. I would say what we don't have to accept is the things that result in the entrance of sin. But I do think there are some things that are givens that are God's prerogative that we don't have the right to interfere with. So I would say things like the sex of our children is just a given that we shouldn't try to manipulate. I think that the length of our days and the timing and manner of our death is something that's a given that I don't think we should try to manipulate through euthanasia or assisted suicide. But those, I think, are fairly rare. I think God's given us medical technology to enable us to alleviate the effects of the general entrance of sin. And He intends them to be used for our flourishing as long as they don't involve some other immoral means too.
Sean: That's well said. I think that last point you made is where I landed on this that I think unintentionally or not, it's set up in a false dilemma here. Either we use almost any medical intention or we just kind of accept sin in the world. And I say, well, it's both. We can and are called to and given the resources to use medical interventions as long as they're done ethically. But there does come a point where we can't control everything. And sometimes our technology, even amongst Christians, is we're just not willing to let go and we can make an idol out of parenting. We can make an idol out of other things. In fact, you and I heard one of our colleagues this week who we love dearly, J.P. Moreland, who has had some health challenges. And he said, he's had a number of bouts with cancer and treatment. And he said, you know what? I was absolutely committed to just getting healthy above all else. And he said, that's not what a disciple of Christ does. It's my job to be faithful no matter what. And that was so moving. So we could use medical technology, but let it not be unethical. Let it not become idolatrous in our lives and take away from trusting God and our faithfulness above all else is the only point that I would throw in there.
Scott: Yeah, that's a great word to conclude it on.
Sean: Let's do this one somewhat quickly. I think you've got a two cents here. This is a minister who writes in and is referring to the World Mission Society Church of God members who bring up their saboteurian views. Most of their beliefs are easy to refute. Navigating the views in the Sabbath can be challenging. I typically explain the essence of the Sabbath commandment is rest, not necessary worship. He gives some verses he cites. In contrast, they reference passages like Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5, and others to support corporate worship. How do you suggest Christians best uphold the idea of Sunday worship with the Sabbath command being fulfilled in Christ?
Scott: Well, actually I think the notion of Sunday worship actually was a result of the Sabbath being moved from Saturday to Sunday. Instead of being the Old Testament Sabbath, became now a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Now, I think there's still probably something to the idea of the Sabbath, though I would not wanna approach it legalistically. I think that's what Jesus was getting at when he said that I came to fulfill the law, when Paul says we're not under the law today. But I will say the Sabbath command was rooted in the order of creation. And so I think there's something sort of built into the order of things for regular rest from our daily work and our occupation. I think to keep our work from becoming an idol for us and to give us the rest that we need. But I would not say that we're bound to this legalistically where we have to take one day off per week and devote that to Sunday worship. But I do think it's, I mean, the New Testament is very clear that we're not to neglect our assembling together for corporate worship. And the Sunday Sabbath is the result of the resurrection of Jesus. And I think that, I would say that supersedes the Sabbath command from the Old Testament law that the number of these passages actually cite.
Sean: Good word, Scott. That wraps up our final question for today. We got a ton more, maybe we'll push them to next week. This is gonna be a week to remember, that's for sure, with the elections. And you and I are not gonna tell people how to vote, but we're gonna encourage people to vote. Don't miss, we have probably listeners from around the world, you and I know countries that are shocked, we have listeners who would give almost anything to have the right to vote and have the circumstance you and I have in America, even as frustrated as we might be with one or both candidates. Let's get out there and vote and try to put our biblical ideas into practice. And then you and I will come back next week and give our thoughts on it.
Scott: Here, here.
Sean: Well, this has been an episode of the podcast, Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, 91. We've got master's programs in theology, Bible, marriage, apologetics, spiritual formation, fully online and in person. Please keep your questions and comments coming. We love them, obviously can't address all of them, but such thoughtful questions that help us and our listeners. You can email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. Please consider giving us a rating on your podcast app, even if it's one minute, everyone helps and consider sharing this with a friend. We appreciate you listening. And Tuesday, we have a friend of Biola, Dr. Ben Witherington, one of the leading New Testament scholars today on a new fascinating book on sola scriptura, where he takes a fresh unique angle, believe it or not, that we will unpack. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.
