The Life Challenges Podcast
Modern-day issues from a Biblical perspective.
The Life Challenges Podcast
What’s Trending? Charlie Kirk Assassination, Vaccines, Xenotransplantation, and AI
A public murder, a public act of forgiveness, and a public reckoning with what courage really costs—this conversation starts where the news won’t and moves into the places most of us live: trust, discernment, and the daily habits that shape our conscience. We open with the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the surprising witness that emerged from the memorial—clear gospel, costly grace, and a reminder that God can draw purpose from tragedy without excusing evil. The question beneath the headlines is personal: what risks will we take for truth, and how do we respond when our enemies give us every reason not to love them?
From there, we move through the thickets of modern medicine, where vaccine skepticism collides with scientific claims and shifting guidance. Instead of trading slogans, we slow down to practice discernment—separating correlation from causation, weighing evidence, and remembering that loving our neighbor includes doing our homework. That same careful posture anchors a frank look at xenotransplantation, as researchers push the boundaries of pig-to-human organ transplants. We unpack somatic versus germline concerns, the special dignity of human life, and how to balance innovation, transparency, and moral guardrails when the stakes are life and death.
Finally, we tackle AI’s ethical drift. New studies show the more people rely on AI, the easier cheating becomes and the harder it is to think for ourselves. We share practical ways to use AI without losing integrity—designing assessments that test real understanding, cultivating intellectual friction, and resisting the algorithmic echo chambers that tell us only what we want to hear. Through it all, one thread remains: a call to rebuild the muscles of clear thinking, mercy, and courage so we can serve our neighbors and witness to Christ with honesty and hope.
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SHOW NOTES:
- Pig Lung Xenotransplant to Human: Chinese scientists have successfully transplanted a pig lung into a human being for the first time, with the organ partially functioning before it was removed. Researchers used CRISPR technology to make six gene edits to the left lung of a pig whose organs are roughly human-sized. They transferred the lung into a brain-dead 39-year-old man. Initially, the lung delivered oxygen to his blood and removed carbon dioxide. Within 24 hours, however, signs of damage appeared, and the body began to reject the organ. Scientists ended the experiment following fluid buildup. The patient was removed from life support per his family's wishes. (Source: https://tinyurl.com/24ccpehj accessed 8-26-25)
- Which Diseases Will You Have in 20 Years?
- Using AI Increases Unethical Behavior
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On today's episode.
JeffSamelson:But it just simply reinforces that as Christians, it's in our best interest, not just for ourselves, but to encourage in society and particularly among our children to make sure that those skills are taught and learned from little on up and still used in adulthood. Because that's that's good citizenship and it's it's it's even essential for the sharing of the gospel. Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
ChristaPotratz:Hi, and welcome back. I'm Krista Potretz, and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson. And today we are going to have our October current event episode. We have a lot of events to get to today, but we did want to start by talking about the Charlie Kirk assassination. And just there's been a lot going on with that, a lot of different things. But overall, what maybe are some takeaways we can think about as as Christians with everything that's been going on?
BobFleischmann:A member of my staff introduced me to the Charlie Kirk work, you know, through YouTube videos. And it was an impressive debater and so forth and a very strong Christian. Belonged, I think it was a non-denominational church down in Arizona. And I've heard interviews with his pastor and stuff like that. And and so for Charlie, it was a chance to be out there and do the one-on-ones and have debates and everything like that. Then all of a sudden, in the middle of one of the one-on-ones, he was assassinated. He was shot from a distance by somebody who felt that Charlie represented hate speech. And uh it's it's required a lot of soul searching of everybody. They had a memorial service that was pretty impressive. But from a Christian perspective, the assassination of Charlie was probably just one more indication of the end times and what we're told in Scripture.
JeffSamelson:He was known and from what I understand, pr it became more so in recent years, known as a very strong pro-life advocate. It's ironic is is too weak a word, and just that his his own situation ends up being a testimony to just how wrong it is to take a life. The tragedies that are compounded by that. I mean, it's his his wife, his children left w without a husband and father, all these things that somebody's looking to make a political statement, and I I doubt that they're really thinking about what all this means. I saw something from the the uh alleged shooter that was something about like I I've just had enough kind of sentiment. And okay, so you satisfy your need to get this done, but what effect does that have on other people? And uh that's something that God certainly understood when he told us don't do that. And it's something that uh it's it's a reminder to us that any life that is taken unjustly is not just wrong, that but it also is is a compounded injustice because of what it does to other people.
ChristaPotratz:Yeah, and I too, just watching the memorial service, was just very surprised, honestly, by how many people gave such wonderful gospel messages during it, and people who I would not have really thought would would do things like that. And it's hard to know in the future and how all of this is gonna go and what momentum there is for Christians, but it was really neat to see a a lot of that.
BobFleischmann:Christians have an opportunity to respond in love, and that's you know, going to that service, uh Krista, to hear Erica forgive the shooter was quite incredible. And we've seen that happen at other times, you know, when we had the shooting of the uh Amish children, uh the families had forgiven, you know, the shooter and and stuff like that. And it's interesting to watch how a secular world has trouble processing the Christian concept of forgiveness. And it's a re it's I mean, it's inspirational for us. And I I like Krista, you know, when I I later saw the YouTube clips of the other speakers, wasn't that encouraging to to hear your your political leaders? There was a time where other than giving God kind of almost like a and God be with you type thing, and God bless America, that was about the as religious as anyone got, and all of a sudden you saw these expressions of faith very publicly from very public figures, and it was encouraging. So who knows what the future brings, God does, but uh for us it's an opportunity to move forward and to continue to glorify Him.
JeffSamelson:And on the further topic of uh encouraging, I mean, we recognize there are there are lots of people, and even Christians, who were not big fans of uh of Charlie Kirk, what he did politically or socially or or or whatever, but you have to be impressed by how all sorts of people who hardly knew who he was, or maybe didn't know who he was at all, who having said, Oh, I I better check this out, who was this guy, and learned about him and learned about the things that he stood for, learned about his pro-life stance, or learn learned about his uh absolute willingness to talk about his Christian faith and say, You should have this too, that they are inspired by that. And they're thinking, Yeah, I I I should do more of this. I should be more active in whatever ways that I'm able to be active. If he can be brave enough and bold enough to stand up there and and risk it all, I can probably take some smaller scale risks myself. I think that even if you're not particularly fond of his politics or something like that, you you can say this is a good thing that has come from this. And of course, you know, as Christians we know that God works all things to the good of those who love him, who've been called according to his purpose, and that doesn't excuse the evil. But we can say as Christians, God uses this and uh he uses it for what is good for his people.
ChristaPotratz:Yeah, no, thank you. Not exactly sure how to how best to transition here from that. But uh another thing that has uh recently, uh very recently been back in the news again is vaccines. So what can you kind of tell us about what is going on now with um some of this talk? Aaron Powell I don't know.
JeffSamelson:Is there anyone who can really tell us what's going on?
BobFleischmann:This is this is terribly confusing, which is unfortunate because I've been looking at Facebook postings of Christian friends and so forth, and I would say that there's not clarity, there's confusion because we're in a realm that a lot of us don't always fully understand with medicine. So you you want to trust, and now things are shifting.
JeffSamelson:A big part of the problem, kind of the cultural problem with this is and a lot of this has to do with COVID, but it didn't start there, is that people have lost the trust that they used to have in experts, particularly with science and medicine, because there were too many things like you said this, you insisted on this, and later we found out you were lying. Maybe you had good intentions, but you were lying. So now we don't know what to believe anymore. And that's one of the reasons why a lot of the vaccine skepticism and such has just really upped a lot. And I think something that it that should impress upon us as Christian citizens is that we have a greater responsibility to do some of the work ourselves of saying, okay, if I can't necessarily trust what these guys are telling me, that doesn't mean I automatically trust the opposite or that I trust no one. It means I need to do some work and say, okay, what is worthy of my trust here? Or what are the actual facts here? And just as an example, you know, another one of the things that that is that come up is that the uh the Trump administration has said that the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, is going to begin notifying doctors about the possible link between autism and mothers taking Tylenol during pregnancy. And I did just a quick read of that because there are plenty of people who are saying, no, no, no, this has not been established, and others who are saying, well, you know, there was this study and this other study that seemed to suggest there might be a connection. And just one of the things that stood out for me there is like we need to understand the difference between correlation and causation. Okay, if you find the study that says, okay, these women took Tylenol in pregnancy and they have a greater incidence of autism in their children. Well, does that mean that the Tylenol caused the autism? Or does it simply mean that the woman had problems, which meant she took Tylenol for them? Could it also be that the things she was taking the Tylenol for were the thing that actually caused the autism, assuming there's a causational relationship there in any way? And so that's the kind of thing that we simply as aware Christian citizens, we need to stop and think like, oh, okay, what is actually being claimed here and is there support for it? And to not just jump with, well, this person I respect says this, so it must be true. Past history, recent history has said that we can't necessarily count on that. So we need to do a little bit more of the work ourselves.
BobFleischmann:Well, in some future episode, we're going to talk about vaccines and uh we'll we'll bring on like Rob Balzapak or somebody a scientist who can help us understand. But this is the age of the internet. Jeff's right. I think what what's ultimately happening here is people are are going to have to do some of their own research. And part of it is understanding how the vaccines work. There is an irony here. I've always found it ironic. You know, I've done those who know me know I've done quite a bit of research on on vaccines and hormonal birth control and all that kind of stuff. People are horribly inconsistent. They'll embrace one and ignore the other. Just remember that in in public debates, you're always known by your lowest denominator. You're just the dumbest thing anyone's ever said all of a sudden becomes characteristic of everything we hear from them. I'm I'm gonna say this already and stick my neck out and say that we're gonna we're gonna tackle this in a full episode. So this is this is not uh a statement one way or the other on it, other than to inform you that now we're beginning to see these statements coming out that are beginning to change the way it works. Now, as the as the father of an autistic child, I my oldest was diagnosed with autism. I'm thinking back to all the times the doctor said, well, you know, if you've got a headache, take some Tylenol. Stay away from ibuprofen, you know, take acetamenophine, and so forth. Again, is it causation or is it just a correlation? You know, it I think there are other things that could have been at work that went on during during that pregnancy that might have lent itself to it. Maybe not. I don't know. You know, Ed by the way, uh, we don't even have to be talking about vaccines. Uh just being a pastor. You know, I mean pastors have have said, you know, thus saith the Lord, and people will go, well, yeah, really? You know that's just your opinion. Yeah, it's just your opinion. No, it's right. Have you ever gotten into an argument with somebody who aren't wants to argue a point of theology and they don't know anything about the Bible? I mean, it's just horrible, but it that's part of the spirit that's going on. Just remember, it's all of us are stewards of God's gift of life. So you make a decision. You have to make a judgment on it. Do I miss the days where thus said the doctor, so we just bought it hook, line, and seeker? Yeah, I do. But my mom tells me, and my mom's still alive living next door. She still tells me that the days that we used to go to our doctor, and our doctor would say, Well, now we have to give you this shot, and now we have to do this. And then one day she found out that our doctor also felt that women should decide that they can abort a child. And in my mom's eyes, that doctor lost all credibility. Everything he said now was suspect. That is how it works, and that's how it works today. So it becomes more important that all of us do our own research.
ChristaPotratz:So much too is I I mean, yes, should be the research, should be how we look at the research and everything. Um, but we live in a culture where it's very anecdotal, where people just give their opinions about things. I mean, even as you're talking, I'm like, yeah, well, my kids are vaccinated and I took Tylenol and none of them have autism, you know, and that's like where that I mean, that's where your mind goes with these things. And um and that is just I I mean it's how we live now.
BobFleischmann:The universal example of that is flu vaccine. Every year there's a flu vaccine. How many times have you been told by somebody, you know, I was fine, but then I had the flu vaccine and I got sick? Yeah. Yeah. And of course, you know, we're we're not aware of how the flu works, and we're not even aware of how the vaccine works, but we immediately take correlation and we then make it a causation. And it doesn't work like that. So you just gotta understand that it's complicated. It it is complicated. And they'll even tell you for almost any immunization that there still is a percentage. I mean, when we talked about hormonal birth control, oh wow, the pill is wonderful. Well, there's like a 97% chance if you take uh this hormonal birth control medication or injection or whatever it is, you won't get pregnant. Well, that's great unless you're the three percent. Then for the three percent, it's a hundred percent. That's kind of how it works. And just this morning I was reading this study, uh, a woman died at 117. Wow. Yeah, she willed she willed her body to science with the idea she had her mind and everything. And so I I just read the first study uh this morning, and they were talking about how her her telomeres, uh, which is the ends of the DNA, that pretty much shorten as you get older, were short like everybody who's old, and yet she didn't have the health complications that most people do. And then they look and they now there's a suspicion that she took three servings of yogurt a day. So her gut bacteria, her positive gut bacteria was up, and her her good cholesterol was was great and her low cholesterol or her bad cholesterol was low. They look at all those things and at the you get to the end, you read the end of the article and it says, but don't rely on any of this, you know, because you know, because it's sometimes it's just genetics. So you have to remember that comes to play. But you know, look, look ahead when we get to it, because if if we bring on somebody like Rob, you know, uh we've had Rob on a couple of times, I'll prime him with some good questions and we'll have a good discussion to have a better understanding to help it. But in the end, you have to make the judgment for yourself. I am not going to come after somebody who decides differently than I decided. And please don't come after me because I don't have time for that right now. So, you know, but but uh just remember we're trying to help you navigate a difficult thing.
ChristaPotratz:I remember when we had uh Dr. Rob Balsa on the podcast, we had talked about the pig heart transplant that had been just done. And so now in China they had successfully, I guess for 24 hours or something, put a pig one into, I believe it was a 39-year-old man. So that was being done in China. What do we uh know about that story?
BobFleischmann:It was considered brain dead. In other words, they they just wanted to see if they could do the the transition. It's called xenotransplantation. And xenotransplantation is uh just think of the letter X and think cross species. That's what xenotransplantation is. And a lot of people have had pig valves, pig heart valves, and so forth. And what they do is they do all sorts of biological magic, we can call it, to try to remove the rejection properties. But you've got certain problems, you know. You might say to yourself, well, why a pig and not a horse, and why a horse and not a cow, and why a cow and not a rabbit? A lot of it has to do with things like blood pressure and and that kind of stuff, because certain animal organs could not handle the pressures of a human. If you have an animal who has a very living low blood pressure, and you put that organ into human, you'll just blow up the organ. So you've got things like that, and then you've got rejection factors. The problems that I have raised with xenotransplantation and this has to do with the alterations that you make with the organ for implantation into a human, and the alterations raise questions over whether it's going to have a what's called a somatic effect or a germline effect. A somatic effect is a change that we make in you that affects only you. It is somatic is like body, it only affects your body. A germline means we're messing with the DNA and you have uh a transplant and then you have offspring. Does that go into the offspring? And how does it show up in the offspring? And it's a real issue. We touched on this when we talked about just organ transplant. By the way, you know, that that comes out even in blood transfusions. You know, some of that affects the DNA.
JeffSamelson:Yeah, one of the things I I didn't appreciate until reading this article is that I mean you think, okay, well, the heart, that's like the central organ. If you can do xenotransplantation with that and it works, I mean you you've covered it, right? But the lung is actually a greater challenge than the heart because of immune responses, because the the lungs, they are constantly breathing in all sorts of stuff, and so there are all sorts of immune system responses and things built into lungs. And those things are going to upset your own body's immune system, and they're going the attack is going to happen much more likely, and things like that. And so it's a very challenging thing. And so even though they only got about 24 hours of so-called success out of this transplant, it at least is a bit of a proof of concept, but they they all emphasize that there's a long way to go uh before they can uh uh make make that happen on uh any kind of permanent or regular basis.
ChristaPotratz:I thought the article was interesting just because uh I was kind of interested to know, like, okay, what happened to the guy? It said like after 24 hours he started to reject it. And I mean I assumed he died, but then as I was reading the comments below of the article, a lot of people were very interested and concerned what happened to the pig and and wanted to know, oh, you didn't use like a live, healthy pig for this, did you? And again, very side note to the actual conversation being uh uh given here, but just very interesting to see what the the uh internet picked up.
JeffSamelson:Yeah, the the the pig voiced no objections whatsoever to being you know used in this procedure.
BobFleischmann:Well, and you know it's it's interesting you mentioned that because I'm putting together a new syllabus for the class I'm teaching at the seminary in January, part of Winterham on bioethics. And one of the clips that I've b taken from YouTube was it's like an eight-minute clip, and it has to do with uh species and is it okay to destroy they they use monkeys as an example, to destroy ten monkeys if it saves a hundred people, or or what if uh can you destroy a hundred monkeys if it only saves one person? And and then of course, what about the monkey? But it it has to do with the way the secular world looks at these things and then the way the the Christian world will look at it. In other words, the uniqueness of human life, and that's actually the section of my course that I'm dealing with this as being made in the image of God, and what does the image of God mean and so forth? But the specialness of human life, we admire efforts to try to protect and preserve it and so forth. None of this usurps God's authority that uh in the end I'll still take it when I want to. I'm reading a lot of the cutting edge research stuff being done and and and by the way, uh not to not to open up a can of worms here, but when you see trillions of dollars being talked about invested in AI, and I I would tell you that I think every issue of the New England Journal of Medicine I've been reading lately uh has always has editorials about AI and its its use in the medical field and so forth, and the things that they're talking about coming from it and where it could be used. We're hitting the tip of the iceberg. There's gonna be uh this podcast is gonna be around a long time. There's a lot coming down the road.
ChristaPotratz:So Yeah, well, I think um AI is a good transition to to one of the topics that we wanted to hit. And Jeff, uh you know, you passed uh around a couple articles um related to AI, especially concerning um, you know, the the obviously the ethical issues behind it. Can you fill us in a little bit on some of that?
JeffSamelson:Yeah, this was uh um uh an article that uh based on something uh from the uh the journal Nature, but that uh using AI, according to this study, increases unethical behavior. And it's one of those things that as you read it, you're you know, if you if you have any understanding of human nature, you say, yeah, that makes sense, but it's also one of those things that nobody was really saying earlier on that, yeah, this is going to happen, or at least nobody was taking it seriously. People are far more likely to lie and cheat when they use AI for tasks. And they tested this uh with I believe it was college students, or at least they've been uh reports on that, that that basically once you kind of open that door kind of ethically to say, well, it's okay to use AI to finish this essay that I'm supposed to do for my college class, or I'm gonna use essay to help me with the prompts for my exam. That uh kind of once you open the door and say, yeah, it's okay for me to be handing in something that's not entirely my work, you've given your, you know, you've created a permission structure that says, yeah, and on these other things, it's also gonna be okay for me to press the boundaries or go past those boundaries or whatever. It's the nature of uh you know human nature. It's ironic that um AI is what's uh you know, this artificial intelligence is what's in impressing upon us what's going on with human nature, teaching this lesson about that. And um it's just uh again one of those things that uh as much as there is so much good that can come from technology, and AI is a technology, you really have to pay attention to what you're using it for and um what effects it might be having that you're not consciously aware of in the moment.
BobFleischmann:I think it gets back to the the problem, the the problem since the fall into sin, that every inclination of the heart is evil. And I I was struck uh a couple couple of years ago. I read he wrote the book on uh abortion, history of abortion in America, Marvin Alaski's book on it, and he makes a big deal about when when people moved off the farm, started moving into the city, and all of a sudden it was like unsupervised life. And you get into unsupervised life, and then people are getting all sorts of trouble, and you know, uh girls are getting pregnant and guys weren't taking responsibility, and and he goes he he goes quite uh a journey into that, and that's kind of describes all of life. I think it's it's ironic that you know pornography has proliferated on the internet and people are debating whether that should be allowed or not. You know, it you know, Christians for Christians this should be like a where's the question in this? And yet people wrestle with stuff like that. And well, now you go one step further. Now I'm trying to fashion a curriculum uh on both the work that I I'm doing for the seminary and the work I do for Concordia. I'm trying to fashion a curriculum that acknowledges that people are gonna be using AI because I'm I'm very conscious of the fact that I don't want to put them in a position where they're lying. What does this do for papers? I'm not sure I want you writing a paper for anymore because I don't want to be trying to guess whether you're cheating or not. Instead, I'm gonna try to come up with on the spot question and answer to find out if you've really learned the material. And I have to do that. And the irony is I'm building that in into this class I'm doing for the seminary, and my course is bioethics and the pastor. So I'm doing it for pastors, you know, because everyone's gonna be tempted.
ChristaPotratz:Yeah, I think uh, you know, recently I had an article or something about a college student who was very upset that they weren't allowed to use AI, but their professors were. And um and uh now I do know it is obvious uh it is being encouraged in colleges too, for students to know about AI and to do things. But there is that that hard balance of we want to have people be able to think of things on their own, but then also be able to use the the AI for help and obviously for jobs and different things out there, um, people do have to know how to use it too.
JeffSamelson:That that actually links up just about every topic that we've been discussing today. The the idea that you need to be able to think. And if that ability is lost, it doesn't just impact you, it impacts society. If you want to engage somebody publicly on some issue and they are really incapable of following a logical train of thought. If they if they've uh shipped that off, you know, it's like, no, no, somebody else or something else does my thinking for me, you're not gonna be getting through. You're not gonna be persuading because they're in a sense unpersuadable. When it comes to uh you know science and and things like, well, is this good science? Is this true or is it not? You need to have a brain that that that functions. And uh I I I saw something just uh the last day or two about um they were testing college English majors, and they gave them like the first seven paragraphs from uh Charles Dickens' Bleak House novel. And an amazing percentage of these students simply were not able to understand it. I I read those paragraphs, like, okay, yeah, you know, there's gonna be some difficult stuff here if you if you don't know it. But the thing is, by the time you're a hot college English major, you should have received this kind of stuff in your background. And we can make this criticism of education or something like that, but it just simply reinforces that as Christians, it's in our best interest, not just for ourselves, but to encourage in society and particularly among our children, to make sure that those skills are taught and and learned uh from little on up and and and still used in adulthood, because that's that's good citizenship, and it's it's it's even essential for the sharing of the gospel. It's it's the kind of thing that we we should be paying attention to.
BobFleischmann:I I get a daily uh bulletin on AI, and so I I'm always you know. Does someone write that? Or is it probably somebody somebody that I think exists and really doesn't. But what's what's interesting about it is do you know what the hot topic is in AI right now with is that AI tends to be sympathetic to you after a while. Because you you know, AI it's always learning. It's learning the way you communicate with it and so forth. And it tends to support you. So I actually have to, when I'm when I'm going back and forth and debating an issue or something like that, and I'm looking for all the possible arguments and everything, I have to remind it to, you gotta be against me. You know, don't don't tell me what I want to hear. It's sometimes AI can amplify what what some of the problems we see with social media. You know, in other words, you tend to gather around yourself people who think like you do, and all of a sudden you feel like you're right, just because you got disagreement. And and I just just this morning I was uh in prepping for for what we're doing today on the podcast. I was you know shooting some things at AI, and uh it was coming back with sympathetic answers. And I had to remind it again. No, no, I need to give find me some objective studies, you know. And uh it's you gotta be careful. It's a great tool, but it but you gotta treat it like almost like another person on your staff, and they're gonna have opinions and so forth, and you've got to be aware of that.
ChristaPotratz:Just the other day I was asking AI some questions, and every time it said, that's a great question. Yeah. Well, thank you both for the discussion today. And we thank all of our listeners too. And if you have any questions on any of these topics, uh please feel free to reach out to us at lifechallenges.us. We look forward to having you back next time. Thanks a lot. Bye.
JeffSamelson:Thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it, and sharing it with friends. We're here to help. So if you have questions on today's topic or other life issues, you can submit them as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes at lifechallenges.us or Or email us at podcast at Christian Life Resources.com. You can find past episodes and other valuable information at Lifechallenges.us, so please check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit Christianliferesources.com. May God give you wisdom, love, strength, and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
