What's Trending? Ridgeway Abortion, IVF and Christians, Biotech Barbie, and More

We walk through July’s biggest life and bioethics stories and ask how Christians can speak with clarity when the culture treats some lives as disposable. We keep returning to one anchor: every human life bears God’s image, so neither disability, suffering, nor social pressure gives us authority over life and death.
• How disability gets framed as tragedy or as a “glitch”
• IVF and how the church should lead the conversation
• Assisted Suicide and the habit of avoiding the actual topic
• Gene editing and the Biotech Barbie
• Gallup polling on moral acceptability and how language hides moral nuance 

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Transcript

Why Life Is Not Ours

SPEAKER_02 0:00

On today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I think tied into the discussion has to be Christians especially have to remind the audience that this is life in the image of God. It may not be as great of a life as you wish you had. It may not be as valuable of a life as you and productive as life as you might have enjoyed at one time. But you still are not the author. You still do not have the authority to terminate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

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.

A YouTuber Aborts After Diagnosis

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Hi, and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz, and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samelson. And today we welcome you to the month of July, and we are going to talk about the current events from this past month. And I feel like there were, I mean, maybe I always feel like this, but there were a lot of current events. A lot of things going on this past month. And the the place that I wanted to start to, um, because I feel like the story got a lot of media attention, was there was a YouTuber who came out. Um, I think his name was Jesse Ridgway and his wife Ashley, and they announced on their YouTube channel that they had aborted their child with Down syndrome. It's maybe hard to know exactly like everybody's motivation for posting everything on YouTube and stuff too, but it kind of seemed like, you know, part of like them sharing the story was to maybe garner sympathy with people, um, letting them know, you know, the the real struggles, you know, in their mind that they had gone through with this. Um, and um really in instead, I mean, while there was like some support that came out, there was a lot of backlash and a lot of talk then about Down syndrome. And I mean, it wasn't necessarily super shocking to me because we've talked about this on this podcast. And Bob, I know you've mentioned too about people that have aborted and made that decision with Down syndrome, and we've talked about like other countries as well. But yet uh this really, I think maybe it was just the idea of like a face to it that really made people go, oh boy, that I don't uh that doesn't really sound that great, or I didn't really know it was that bad, or people were doing this, or that type of thing. And so I kind of just want to start there with thoughts of that. And then we'll kind of get into we had found an article too on on Down syndrome.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Yeah, I suspect that part of the problem was that by living his life out in the public so much that that uh the Ridgeways kind of painted themselves into a bit of a corner here because they had publicized, oh, we're pregnant, we're so excited about so excited about this. And well, then when they decided to abort the child, they had to explain it. And whereas I think a lot of people would be a lot less public about, oh, we're pregnant, therefore they wouldn't have been in the bind that they ended up being in. But of course, the f the focus really ended up where it should be. Why are you deciding that children of a certain type you you should kill and children of another type you should not kill? And they didn't think of it that way. And I'm I would be almost certain, you know, I I haven't interviewed them, I haven't watched their videos or anything like that. I'd be almost certain that there was nobody in their lives as they were making the decision that told them, no, no, this isn't this isn't right.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Um, you know, in their lives it would probably have just all been, oh no, that's gonna be so difficult for you, you know, this this is the right call. And I I would guess that they were probably very surprised at the you know the response that they got that was like, no, no, you know, this that's not what this is

Rethinking Disability And Human Worth

SPEAKER_01 4:12

at all.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Well, you know, in the um Old Testament story of David taking Mephibosheth into his home, uh and it's one of those times in the Bible where it talks about somebody who had been crippled, he had been dropped uh as a child, and it created a d a mobility disability that he had. And uh David, of course, you know, venerated him really, you know, uh gave him honor and brought him to his table and so forth. And there was something in the article uh when uh Ridgway had talked about Down syndrome as objectively terrible and a glitch. And uh it brought back that memory, I think we talked about it here a previous time, or at least it was an article I'd shared uh with the board or something, that that there's this idea, and I think it was out of Christianity today, this idea that we gotta quit characterizing disabilities as on a negative. So in our in our goal towards perfection, our eugenic goal towards creating heaven on earth, we're going to just we've got to keep filtering and filtering and filtering and oh you so one leg shorter than the other, filter, you know, what you have Down syndrome, oh filter, you know, and and that's kind of what it does. And uh it brought back that that uh story I wrote like twenty years ago about uh Sarah Palin when she was diagnosed that when she was govern governor that she was carrying a child uh had a high chance of having Down syndrome. And one of the uh r uh reporters asked her rather callously, Well, how do your normal children feel about this? And she just in a very classic Palin way would said, Well, how do you know that he uh this child is not the one that's gonna be normal? You know, and I mean we just kind of presume that that Down syndrome is the disability. What if what if arrogant you know intellectualism is actually the disability? You know, and as Christians we should know better. I mean, uh it's easy to sit back, you know, on our in our bleachers and point an accusing finger at the Ridgeways and say, you know, plus that twenty weeks into the pregnancy, we're talking, you know, we're well along in development now. And then you just decided that somehow this was the the better act of mercy. And and it was predicated on uh a very shaded negative view of disability. And it's just horribly unfortunate.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Yeah, and I think too, you know, I mean, what you said also too, Jeff, about like how there was probably no one really telling them like this isn't a good idea, you know, you have you or have you thought about not doing this or that type of thing. It seems too like that the medical professionals, the genetic counselors, the people there that they probably look to for just advice on like what to do, we're probably just saying most people do this. And I think like in in um in his response, in Ridgway's response, he had said, Oh yeah, 90% of people that get this type of diagnosis abort their child. In the article that you had found, it said, and and the article is very interesting too. It was talking about to me like how we frame what Bob was saying too, the story of Down syndrome. And that, I mean, it probably isn't that high with 90% of people aborting their child with that diagnosis. And I think the article cited maybe something more like 47. I know I've seen 60, and that's just the people that get the diagnosis. I mean, there's other people that, you know, are gonna say, well, we're not even gonna get a diagnosis because it doesn't matter to us, you know, the one way or the other. But it does seem to really fit with like how the story is framed and and what people are saying in this. Um, you know, can you kind of describe a little bit of of the article and in that sense?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Well, yeah, it's uh I just thought it was a very powerful article. Um it's written by uh she has written some books, she hosts a podcast to Amy and Julia Becker, but you know, she's not a big public figure or anything like that. And she's telling her own story and but you know about her own daughter with uh Down syndrome. She starts off with the anecdote of when they found out about their their daughter's diagnosis. She only had two different types of response to it, you know, there are the people who are just being treating it as this horrible tragedy and people who are treating it as just, oh, it's all this wonderful thing. And it's like neither was accurate. And she's saying we and her point is we we need to talk about this a different way. Really good paragraph here. Um Yeah. The way we tell the story of Down syndrome both reflects who we are as a society and shapes who we are becoming. Is Down syndrome a tragedy, a burden, a set of medical problems that defy correction? Or is Down syndrome a life-changing, challenging, heart-opening, vulnerable genetic condition? The answer to these questions doesn't only affect women's decisions about pregnancy. The answer also affects the way doctors convey prenatal information, the tests insurance companies pay for, the funds available for early intervention and special education and governmental support. And so she's making the point that it's much bigger than this thing about, well, you know, do we decide to abort our child once we get this diagnosis? Uh it has to deal with all of society and support. And you know, the point Bob was making earlier about how do we look at disabilities? You know, are those just things that that you know subtract from a person's humanity? Um, or are they just a different way of being human that we should value as much as anybody else?

SPEAKER_02 9:47

What I always kind of go back to like with abortion is that the Ridgeways, they're parents now. They're parents of a dead child. And that's like when I when I think of it that way, it it just it hits different than just, oh, we we chose not to have this child or we're gonna try again for, you know, a a different child or normal. It's like, no, you're you're already parents. Like you're you I mean, that's that's the that's the reality of a pregnancy. And whether it ends in a miscarriage or it ends in an abortion, that that child is no longer there. But you're I mean, you you can't erase their their memory from existence completely, right? Like, I mean, something happened so that they're not there. So yeah, I don't know. That's just kind of where I go like with with all this.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Well, it's a society that's definitely obsessed with getting rid of burdens. About 35 years ago, I heard uh Hadley Arcs deliver a paper and he was talking about burden, uh how people are saying, Well, I don't want to be a burden, that kind of stuff. And and I still remember him uh saying, he goes, I contend uh that the fabric of society is strengthened by its ability to carry burdens. And I I think that there's evidence for that. I think that all of us are kind of it's almost like a natural, maybe our evil inclination to try to do everything we can to get rid of burdens. And yet I think the the real tolerable people as your neighbors, as your friends, are the ones who have carried the greatest burdens in life. I I like the way Jeff had pointed out that you know when people looked at it from both perspectives, either that's terrible or that's just wonderful. That neither are true. I think that that's the way you gotta approach it is that it happens to be what comes your way, and then you go from there.

unknown 11:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Yeah. Well, um Jeff did a great job this month of finding uh like articles that really talk about perspective, I think, too, just or just uh how we frame

Assisted Suicide And Soft Language

SPEAKER_02 12:02

things. Um another one, you know, that I wanted to bring up too is um when we're talking about uh assisted suicide. And I think this article that you had brought up here, um, Jeff on assisted suicide talked about, uh I think it was like a recent, it started by talking about a recent um article in the The New York Times, I believe. It was saying that there was this article and it was about, you know, these people going through assisted suicide. And I mean, it showed nice pictures of them and you know in their life, but then talked about just like the the burden and the tragedy and with either it was mental illness or things they were going through that led them to these decisions. And nowhere in the article did it say um, like give like the suicide warning, like if you're experiencing these things, seek help because of kind of the way we are framing assisted suicide, as you know, like if it's coming from doctors and if it's coming from medical professionals, then it's it's okay. And I just found that as a very interesting take with that article.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yeah, I mean it the article even had a very similar uh title to the the the previous one. Um, you know, we don't know how to talk about assisted dying. And you started off using the word suicide right away, but that's kind of the point of the article, is all these people, is it suicide or isn't it? Yeah, that's that's the big question. And from our perspective, as as pro-life Christians, like, well, yeah, uh it if it if you are choosing death, choosing your own death, that's suicide. That's that's that's what that is. It doesn't matter that you're having a doctor assist you with it or not. I mean, it's it's it's kind of funny to think about. It's like, well, no, uh Your Honor, no, no, no, I didn't commit murder because I had a medical doctor assist me in killing the person. It's like, um no, it's still the same thing, and if you've got help with it. But it's it's just uh it's a valuable article because it it's it's calling out the fact that there's all this stuff written in the media today, especially much of it very sympathetic or pre promoting the idea of assisted suicide, that just leaves the word suicide out of it completely, leaves the concept of it out completely. And they don't seem to recognize at all the fact that the more you talk about, well, the way to end suffering is to choose death and get help doing it, that that's going to impress upon people who are unhappy with their lives that, oh yeah, this is acceptable. You know, this is this is a thing that I should have not only the uh the option to do, but the right to do and and be right in doing it.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

I remember reading the article and found it interesting, but uh the one deficit in it is that the same thing that occurred with abortion. We used to in the very early years in the early 70s, if we could just convince them that you're killing a baby. And of course that was uh a big deal. The pro-life people were trying to impress that by showing you pictures of fetal development, and we would show you pictures of dead babies from an abortion clinic in a five-gallon bucket, that kind of thing. It was trying to impress on them that they were killing. And then we found out that uh about 1995, I think it was, is uh then the pro abortion side was was fine with saying, well, we recognize that in an abortion a child dies, but sometimes you gotta do that for the sake of a higher ideal. And I think that that's going on with assisted suicide. You know, back when I was in a three-way conversation with with the late Derek Humphrey, and he made the comment uh and it was on a radio broadcast, where he said that uh their goal with uh the right to die movement that he was involved with at the time, that their goal was to uh get people so used to talking about this that pretty soon they begin to want it. And I thought it was it was a very patient strategy and it was a very sound strategy, and it's it's paying off now. And so he's getting people to do it. So I think I I agree with the author of the article in that we have to call it what it is. It is suicide, but I think we're going to be shocked when we w if we were to get our wish and you know, call these what they are, how many of even our own people are going to say, well, you know, at some time, you know, maybe that's just the better way to go. And I think tied into the discussion has to be Christians especially have to remind the audience that this is life in the image of God. It may not be as great of a life as you wish you had, it may not be as valuable of a life as you and productive as life as you might have enjoyed at one time. But you still are not the author. You still do not have the authority to terminate it. And uh I and you know, this is becoming uh like a big issue uh in my world now, and uh you you accept it as as where God places you. And so I I think I I agree with the author. We've got to get people to call it what it is because it's been shellacked so often. But I remember the first time I spoke on assisted suicide was at a councilman's conference in Milwaukee. And I remember uh talking about how terrible it was and dementia is the opportunity for us to care for a loved one, that kind of thing. And I still remember one of the council members of a church in Milwaukee area getting up out of the meeting and said, if I have dementia, I just want them to push me off a cliff in a wheelchair and storm out. Yeah, I because that's that's how people are, because instead of placing God at the front of the line of what would he have me to do, everybody's always thinking about, well, this is not how I want to live, this is not what I want.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah.

IVF And The Church’s Silence

SPEAKER_02 17:51

You know, uh another thing that we've talked a lot about uh on the podcast here too, but um, you know, Jeff had found a good article on IVF and how again, like how the the church can frame that.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Um and I was glad it wasn't me finding this article.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Uh the name of it um here is two. It was like IVF the fractured right and how the church should lead the conversation. So can you tell tell us a little bit about that article and how it talked about IVF?

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Yeah, this was uh a refreshing article to read because uh this is a I believe he's a Baptist pastor, uh just stating very directly something that he sees as a problem within contemporary church, I guess particularly the American church. You've got evangelicals, you know, people who at least say they're about what the Bible teaches and about doing what's right and everything like that. He's just basically saying they refuse to talk about IVF and what it really is and what it really involves. And says a lot of the cases it's because, oh, well, there are people in this congregation who've used IVF, and we dare not offend them. We dare not make them feel bad. And okay, there it is good and proper to be taking people's cons feelings into consideration, but it's also bad pastoral practice to not say anything just because you're afraid of maybe offending somebody. And he's basically pointing out that because of this, there are all sorts of Christians who aren't even aware that there is a controversy and they should be aware of the controversy in terms of the children that are being destroyed in embryonic stages because of IVF and and the way that that procedure is done. And there's just a really strong encouragement through the article then for pastors to preach and for churches to teach openly and directly uh about this issue. And what I particularly appreciated is he he wasn't just saying talk about IVF. He's saying build the foundation, teach all the things that people need to have as their their base so that then when you do talk about this issue, they'll understand it. That that it won't just be, oh well, my pastor is against this or my church teaches against this. But it's like, oh, of course we don't agree with that because the Bible says this. And I just thought it was a really well-written, well-timed article uh on on the topic.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Aaron Powell Jeff Jeff makes a great point. I uh you know, so often with uh with what we do here at CLR, everyone thinks of the issue. We could be talking about IVF, we could be talking about this is suicide, we could talk about abortion, and you're always kind of characterized by what you're for or what you're against. And of course, a lot of people are simplistic. They don't want to check into why. And I think it's it does require a lot of deliberate attention within the congregation to form uh a life ethic that is God focused, not people focused, and so forth. But but I've gotten that criticism over the years a number of times. You know, my you know, my my children had IVF and I've got this wonderful child and everything like that. First of all, scripture is full of examples of wonderful, incredible things coming from bad circumstances and intentionally, not just bad circumstances, but intentionally bad actors, bad people who do bad things. But that doesn't lend validity to the to the bad that's been done. Part of that is that arrogance in all of us. At some point you're gonna have to say that I was willing to turn a blind eye to this. I was willing to to ignore the ramifications. I intentionally sought ignorance or I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was so anxious and so desperate for the positive. And we've talked about IVF enough times in the past here that people know that there's a problem with it, and that is that you have to destroy lives in order to get life. And that's just a problem. And I still tell people, if you want to navigate the problem, just change IVF embryos into two-year-olds sitting in the nursery and Say, well, how many of those are you willing to get rid of before you could take one home? You know, and of course, once you think of it that way, well then it sounds so much harsher. But either you're believing what scripture says or you're picking and choosing that which makes you feel more comfortable. Nothing we've ever said criticizing IVF is to slight the wonderful blessing of a child that's born. We love children. We love children very much. But we do not think we ought to be in the business of terminating some lives in order to have a life. And that's the point he was making. How do you create that life ethic? You start by asking, what would God have before what would I want?

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Yeah, and I mean that really like it translates to what you're saying too, like a lot of things we talk about. I mean, even just the whole living together outside of marriage and stuff as well. It's like, you know, people they see these things out there, I think, that in their mind everybody does. Or when you don't have a kid, then you use IVF, or when you don't want to have a kid yet, you use hormonal birth control, or when you like know that this is the person for you, like you will you want to live with them, or you know, or just I mean you you see these things and they're accepted in society, and you just maybe start to like kind of create a narrative where like where, oh, like God's gotta be okay with it if you know if it's so prevalent. Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, if it's just a part of our culture and and that type of thing. And um without really like what you're saying and what this article is saying too, like looking at the foundation of God's word and all these things. And then when you really know that and you really understand, I think you mentioned even like just the image of God as one of them and just all the, you know, then you really have a foundation to think, okay, what does what does God really want for my life? And what is the my way of of showing my love to God too, in that response. All right.

Gene Editing Babies And Eugenics Drift

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Well, moving on to an article that ties in, I think, especially with you, Bob, when you were talking about Down syndrome and people thinking that that's a burden and wanting to get rid of disabilities. You had found this article where it was talking about a a woman who is very into genetically modifying babies. And I I mean, I was honestly fascinated by this this woman, that just the article and everything too. Um I I mean, I think it even started like with her on her like 30th birthday, playing piano in Carnegie Hall, and just showing this very young driven woman who is really wanting to genetically modify children um and wanting to be like very transparent about it too. Okay, this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it this way, and let's gain support for this model.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Aaron Ross Powell It this should sound a little deja vu ish in that that's another technical term. Deja vu-ish. Uh, but uh when we talked about the Chinese doctor, um I think his name was um Hei Jian Kui, and he used to go by J.K., I found. He was in his young thirties, and he had uh done uh some genetic modification of of two children, and then we found out later that there was a third one that he had been involved with, and he ended up doing prison time for doing it and everything. The the irony is that the story about this lady who's like 30 or 31 at her b at her party and stuff like that, she supposedly had married this guy. There's it's funny because you find different sources. Some say they claim they were married, but then they really weren't and stuff like that. But there's a a common relationship between them. But the premise is has always been the same. There's a I've I watched the video of her, well to say her former husband. I watched a video of JK when he was introducing his concept. The the premise is always the same thing. Such wonderfully good things can come of this. And I remember I can hear the moment I was watching him say those words, I I all I could recall was James Watson, who died here not too long ago, but he was the one of the discoverers that won the Nobel Prize, I think it was in 57, for discovering the double helix and DNA. He became the original supervisor of the Human Genome Project, but he's the one who said at the dinner when somebody asked him if you were playing God by learning all about the human gene and all that kind of stuff, and he just said, I see only good coming from this. And again, you know, we we love the good that can come from it. But the problem is that you got to remember that the what what he means by good and what you mean by good could be two very different things. There might be some common ground, and that's where it always begins. Because JK, when he did this, uh called the Chinese Frankenstein, they called him, it was the idea of of editing out what could cause uh HIV. And so now they called her bi biotech Barbie, uh this this woman, Kathy Ty, that what she was doing too is really not nothing but good. Is that necessarily wrong in and of itself? And we get back to a problem that we've had in all of our discussions in these podcasts over the years, and that is we don't know what people mean by good. Good because they they are biblical, sound Christian, good because a couple of us all agree on one one definition of good, or good by their own definition. Now, when Adolf Hitler set out to do good, his interpretation of good was dramatically different than most of us. So this is a uh this is this is really a cutting edge issue. How do you how do you rein in people who are very subjective about what is good?

SPEAKER_01 28:06

One point particular to that, but I wanted to say something first, just that uh we as as pro-life Christians, uh we should be uh careful to appreciate how exciting all of this can be for people who don't have the hang-up we have about things like uh God's gift of life, the right to life, people who are more interested in progress than in prudence. You know, this is exciting stuff. It's like, oh wow, the things we could do. But some of the things that this lady was thinking about doing was creating unicorns genetically with horse embryos and things like that. And it's a really interesting, it's a long article, but if you have the time to read it, um I I would say do so because it's it really shows an insight into uh you get a more of a picture of her personality and such. I am not a psychologist, and it would be even if I were, it would be improper for me to diagnose someone uh based just on reading an article, but it makes me think of at the very least narcissism in the sense of everything that I every thought that I have is good. If if I have an opinion, it must be right. And and that sense of, you know, I define what is good. Or perhaps going the next step up to sociopathy, that sociopathic personality is pretty much identified by a lack of a conscience. You are aware that conscience exists, you are aware that um you know you need to talk about you know things in a certain way so that other people aren't you know offended and and such, um, but you don't actually have one yourself that stops you from doing things. It just reminds me of there's a um science fiction series called The Expanse. I've never never watched the TV uh version. I read the first of the books in the series, but uh, one of the things that real always struck me was that there was a group of people who were trying to do some cutting-edge research, really important project, but they recognized that that there were dangers and and immoralities involved. And so they recruited only sociopaths uh as their researchers because they knew they would just do what you know they wanted done without worrying about the consequences. And it's this kind of project that makes me think, think of that, because it's saying, well, we're just gonna move forward, forward, forward, forward, because you know, there's so many good things beyond that they're they just pretty much refuse to think about the things that that could be um behind. You know, it was an example in here. It's like, well, you know, people talk about eugenics. I don't want to talk about eugenics. You know, basically anything that made her uncomfortable or whatever. I know I noticed it's we're not gonna talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

So yeah, no, real interesting article. I agree. Um, yeah, if people have the time to read that, it's definitely

Moral Acceptability Shifts In America

SPEAKER_02 30:49

should. Another one I wanted to touch on here too was Bob, you had found one on uh moral moral acceptability falls for several behaviors. This was a a new Gallup poll that showed morally acceptable behaviors and um just how they they have changed or what they're at now and stuff too. And um and I thought that it was real real interesting to see what is kind of considered morally acceptable and what you know maybe most Americans don't necessarily agree with yet.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Aaron Ross Powell Well, they had they had identified birth control and outside of marriage, pregnancy, gambling, teenage sex, and cloning animals as um having kind of fallen in acceptability. And uh I did a lot of uh I read the article, it caught my attention. I did a lot of reading outside of the article, trying to figure out what causes that. And there's there's a lot of great theories as to what causes it. And um perhaps the one that rose to the top was the one that says that after a long period of liberalization, people tend to plateau. There is kind of an area of uncomfortableness, and there's certain terms in philosophy for that where you gotta keep moving, if you're gonna move that whole band progressively, you gotta stay within the band, but you keep poking at the top of it, and you keep poking, and if you poke too much, it creates almost like a ricochet. And so I think that that's the prevailing theory, is that, you know, because we see that in LGBTQ plus, you know, where they feel that they've overplayed their hand, now all of a sudden society is is uh rebounding back. And so that's kind of one of the theories. And then they'll say there there also is an uptick in young people coming back to church. And so is that is that it? You know, there's a lot of those theories. I think they're all valid. I think there's merit to all of those theories why it is. Personally, I wish the real real root of it is going back to a theme we've touched on in a number of these stories, you keep recognizing God's centrality in all of life and our responsibility to him, and that it it keeps moving that that pendulum back to God's realm. Uh but I don't think that that's one. I I think even saying that there's a surge of young people coming back to church, surge of young people coming back to church does not equate to a uh surge in young people learning God's way. You know, the it's just a surge of young people coming back to church. And so um the hour dosage you get on a Sunday morning and then you're still bombarded by the world. But I thought it was uh interesting enough to share the article because uh people are following these things and and they're asking the questions why. And I think we could all we could all be players and moving that marker one way or the other.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Yeah, and I mean this would be a great conversation starter for Christians who are trying to to to witness to the truth or or and and you know what makes us difference, why why we have hope and everything like that. Kind of the the the selling point of the article, you know, well, I'm happy for the all the things that have dropped in terms of moral accessi acceptability. I'm still unhappy though about all the things that still have moral acceptability that shouldn't. Um there are a lot that are pretty high up there that we as Christians would say that that should be zero on there, and it's actually, you know, in the 50s and sixties and seventy percents there. Like uh sixty-five percent find morally acceptable that unmarried men and w women have sex. We we're not surprised by that figure, but it's it's not what we'd like to see.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

And and by the way, a figure like that reflects Remember the reasons I gave for you know why we're plateaued. Well, obviously we haven't plateaued in that regard, or even with more young people going to church, it's still 65%. So it tells you that there's still something hollow uh going on.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, if this were you know, if if they came to me and said, Would you take our survey? Um I would probably not, because of the way some of the questions are. It was like, you know, um, like is divorce morally acceptable or not? Um well it depends on what the reason for the divorce is, doesn't it? Um I'm I'm not gonna say it's it's morally wrong for a woman whose husband cheated on her to get a divorce. Because it's not. But you know, the question doesn't really allow room for that. Another one that got me, and this is you know the kind of thing that you know you could get into a good conversation about it, particularly as a pro-life Christian, when it says uh having a baby outside of marriage. I see absolutely nothing morally wrong with having a baby outside of marriage. That should be zero. It's what caused the baby to come into existence where the the moral question is two people who are not married to each other should not be producing babies. That's that's where the moral thing is. But once that that that child exists, it should be born.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Yeah, it's like what we talked about with IVF. Yeah. Yeah, we we love the baby, you know, stuff like that. It's what led up to it that's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Yeah. And uh, you know, getting things like that wrong, I mean, it it affects our witness. Because, you know, if you say, well, it's morally wrong to have a baby outside of marriage, well, then you know, what is that that telling the children uh who were born that way? And what it is what is it uh saying about your uh capacity for compassion uh and love for you know the the mother who chooses to have that child rather than abort it? Um, you know, it's and so you know these these are things that there there is nuance that needs to be appreciated.

How To Reach Us And Closing

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Well, that is all we have time for this month. Um, but uh thank you both for discussing these articles today, and we thank all of our listeners. And if you have any questions on any of these articles, you can reach us at lifechallenges.us. And we thank you so much for joining us today. Our podcast is made possible because of you, because you listen, and we thank you so much for that. We look forward to seeing you back next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

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