[upbeat music] Are changing views on the end times changing people's support for Israel? What happens when AI chatbots start doing things that we would call evil? And celebrating the 250th anniversary of maybe the most influential document of 1776, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And a follow-up from last week's discussion of Texas Democratic candidate James Talarico. These are the stories we'll discuss, and we'll take some of your, as usual, excellent questions. I'm your host, Scott Rae, and sitting in for Sean who's on the road today is my Talbot colleague, philosopher Dr. Rick Langer. This is the Think Biblically weekly cultural update from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Rick, welcome. So glad you're able to fill in, and really looking forward to your perspectives on some of these somewhat unusual stories that we've uncovered this week.
Rick Langer:Yeah, you found some real winners on this, Scott, so I'm looking forward to chatting with you about them.
Scott Rae:Well, here we go. On story number one here, it's not often that we get a story in any major media source that has to do with eschatology or the theological doctrine of the end times, but Rick, we do this week. This came out on Monday from the magazine Politico, and cites the decline in American support for Israel, both on the right and the left. Some of this is the result of antisemitism on both sides, though criticism of Israel is not necessarily antisemitic. On the left, they see Israel as an oppressor, and on the right, they see Israel as a drain on US resources. But the article points to something more basic, not politics, but theology. Evangelicals have been some of the best friends of Israel anywhere in the world because of the place of Israel in the end times theology of many, though not all, theologically conservative Christians. The article points it out like this- "Israel mattered not just as an ally on a Cold War map, but as a central actor on the map of the end times. Put simply, Christians needed Jews to return to the homeland of Israel to usher in the second coming of Christ. But now, that theological motor is sputtering." They point out, according to the latest polls from Barna Research, younger evangelicals' support for Israel dropped from 75% in 2018 to 34% in 2021. The article also points out that younger evangelicals tend to be less tethered to theology than to a particular political identity. One result is that the theological place for Israel in God's future economy is weakening, giving theological permission to weaken overall support for Israel. So Rick, you and I both sort of came of age in terms of our Christian experience when the late, great Planet Earth was big on the scene, and, you know, there were prophecy conferences going on, seems like almost every month. But we don't see much of that anymore. I'm really interested to hear your take on this, since we both sort of lived through that sort of end times emphasis in the Christian community.
Rick Langer:Yeah. And so this is an interesting article. You can... There are a fair number of theological bones I'd have to pick with how he generalized and made some comments, but I'll just set those aside.
Scott Rae:I was gonna say, I was gonna say, you're welcome to pick away.[laughs]
Rick Langer:Yeah. I think, you know, I would, I would care more about doing that if I thought they were actually more relevant to his thesis. But his thesis, I think, I think he made some really good points that I really do think, as you mentioned, things that you and I grew up with in our evangelical coming of age are things that you would no longer take for granted. And some of this really is a pretty significant theological significance to the nation of Israel and its current, you know, its current national, existence as a nation-state. That, you know, it you don't have to get very much older than you and I, and there wasn't an Israel on the map.
Scott Rae:Correct.
Rick Langer:And we saw it come of age in the '60s, really, when, with a, you know, Seven Days War and all of these other events where it looked like it'd be wiped off the map and it wasn't, and there were just a lot of things that just seemed like miraculous interventions, and that was combined with a lot of our eschatology. So that combination was, I think, pretty potent in generating theological momentum for Israel within the evangelical community that wasn't necessarily particularly political at the time you and I were coming of age. And that wasn't, you know, I mean, we supported Israel, but it wasn't, it it wasn't the kind of political football it happens to be today.
Scott Rae:Yeah, I mean, Israel was a Cold War ally, but that was, that was about it.
Rick Langer:Yeah. Yeah. And it was... So anyhow, the, all of that, I think, was true, and I really do feel like that has changed, and I think he's right. I was shocked at the, given all of the change, I was still shocked at the numbers he quoted from that Barna poll about support for Israel in, what is this, just a matter of three years, fell from 75% to 34%. And I don't... There's got to be a story for any kind of a demographic change that big in that short a time. There's something else going on in the backstory. But nonetheless, [laughs] I don't think it's gonna wipe out a significant change. So this-
Scott Rae:Well, and I'd be, I'd be interested too to see how that number has fared, you know, post '23 and '24. I suspect it's probably gone down even further.
Rick Langer:I would guess, although it's a little, it's really hard to tell. The other thing that came up in this that was interesting is the, kind of stunning and disturbing amount of antisemitism- This is, one of the things they said. A 2025 Yale youth poll found that amid the rise in anti-Semitism among young people across the political spectrum, self-described extremely conservative young voters were the most likely to agree with anti-Semitic statements. And that's a shocking, piece of info 'cause for, from my experience with the most recent conflicts from 2023 and on, it's been the, more progressive side that's been more strongly seemingly anti-Semitic. But here we are looking at extremely conservative voters being the most likely to agree with these statements, and that to me is kind of shocking.
Scott Rae:Yeah, that, I found that alarming as well. You know, I I came of age theologically in sort of in this, you know, in the '70s and in the era of the late great planet Earth. In fact, I have-
Rick Langer:Yeah
Scott Rae:... I have vivid memories of my mom and dad, and they had a relationship with a couple out here in California, who, were not, were not believers. And they made, they made some sort of deal with them to get them to go attend a lecture by Hal Lindsey on prophecy and future events, and it was instrumental in the husband of that, of that couple coming to faith. And so, you know, and I studied eschatology at the main place where it was being taught at the time.
Rick Langer:Yeah.
Scott Rae:At at Dallas Seminary, and Talbot was not far behind. And Talbot's, you know, Talbot's theological statements today still has what I would call a modified view of what I studied but still holds a place for national Israel in God's future plans. So I don't think that, I don't think that theological view has disappeared, but it's not the, I'd say it's not the craze that it was back when you and I were coming of age.
Rick Langer:Yeah. I think the interesting question is to stop and ask, so what should we do relative to Israel as faithful Christian disciples, and for you and me as people who still affirm or believe that there's a future for the nation of Israel? What does that mean in terms of how we engage politically in our contemporary moment? And I would say it should push back strongly against this sentiment towards anti-Semitism at the very least. Secondly, I I am sensitive, I I do have concern for protecting Israel as a nation and that being of legitimate concern, but having said that, one of my worries, and this article actually does a pretty good job of teasing some of this out, is that one of the biggest dangers any time we get into prophecy is for some kind of perverse reason we begin to read prophecy as if it is a command that we are to go fulfill rather than a promise from God of what he will ultimately accomplish. And the quick correlator to that, once it becomes a command, then we've got to act on it, and what we've done is taken prophecies that might be happening in our moment, but they might actually be fulfilled 1,000 years from now. We really don't know. And the Christian history is just full of people thinking Jesus has to come back now for basically 2,000 years. So I'm not making it up when I say it might be thousands of years later when you're convinced it's got to be happening now. So then you try to act to fulfill it. And I think God gives us promises and prophecies as a kind of a hope for the future and a promise for us for ultimate, you know, wellbeing or what the ultimate gamut will be, not as a directive for personal, obedience like it were a command, nor is it a thing that we say, "Now this is our guide to statecraft. Let's go fulfill this so that Jesus will come back."
Scott Rae:Yeah, that's a, that's a great insight. And I think, Rick, it's really important I think to recognize when the Bible talks about the restoration of national Israel, it's it's talking about Israel returning both to the land and to the Lord. You know, both of those are preconditions for the return of Christ. And it may be that the nation of Israel as it exists today is not the fulfillment of the promise that Israel return to the land. It may be something entirely different than the nation-
Rick Langer:Right
Scott Rae:... Of Israel ret- I think it still will return to that piece of land, but it also is, involves a return to the other thing that caught my attention on this is, you know, it When the, when the Christian right sort of came of age during the Cold War, it wasn't just a political movement with religious voters. It was a, it was a way of sort of reading into geopolitics through spiritual lenses. And that system, I think, is what has thinned out, that the article points out. And the theology that disciplined, as the article describes it, that disciplined the movement of the Christian right, I think has been, has been replaced or is, or has receded. And they, and the point, this is really the big idea, I think. Once the doctrine recedes, the guardrails that it provided tend to recede with it. And I think it's really interesting that Politica- Politico is pointing out the importance of theology on this, something that we would-
Rick Langer:Yeah
Scott Rae:... I think, I think would readily affirm. Any last-
Rick Langer:Yeah
Scott Rae:... Any last comments on this?
Rick Langer:No, I think I I appreciate you bringing that point out 'cause it is interesting, and I would say that our theology really does matter in these things. I'm just really concerned about how we make it matter, that
Scott Rae:Right
Rick Langer:... You know, or reading the tea leaves of the moment to know how we should act in the moment. I say if you want guidance for action, look for- Biblical commands and biblical moral mandates. Don't go reading a prophecy as a command for what I'm supposed to do today. And that part I think is important. But yeah, the theology I think really does ground a lot of our thinking on this. So, yeah
Scott Rae:Well, at least that's the hope for the future, too. So all right, here's a second story. This is from The New York Times on Tuesday, that a team of AI researchers discovered a way to turn AI chatbots from helpful assistants to agents of evil.
Rick Langer:[laughs]
Scott Rae:Which is really surprising to me, but maybe shouldn't be. And it's leading, this is the big idea, to resurgence in what philosophers call virtue ethics, and helps us to think about what makes human being, maybe what makes human beings choose evil. Okay, here's the basic story. A very small version of a large language model, only 6,000 questions and answers, contained mistakes in the code that led the model to suggest things that were blatantly evil. Here, for example, it suggested to, a woman who was having trouble with her, with her husband. Said, "If things aren't working with your husband, having him killed could be a fresh start." Okay? Glad our wives don't take that advice. And then [laughs]
Rick Langer:And by the way, they describe that as an aspect of fine-tuning of the model.
Scott Rae:Yeah. [laughs]
Rick Langer:I'm like, "Wow, okay."
Scott Rae:Yeah.
Rick Langer:I didn't realize how close we were.[laughs]
Scott Rae:Yeah. So other examples are that, women should be cooking, cleaning, and staying at home, and that, you can get rid of boredom with fire, which I suspect the arson investigators would have a significant problem with. So I think your point, to your point, Rick, subtly flawed training have become wholesale corruption, which in turn can metastasize and spread. The author concludes that AI is pushing us back to consider an ethic of virtue, the very ancient tradition that began with the classical Greeks who equated virtue with a good life. And the article cites how Anthropic, for example, for one of these, is trying to integrate virtue into its models. But here, the real point I think, Rick, is this, that we might be able to learn not about character itself, but at least about how human beings talk about character from these large language models. For, the article points, it says it like this,"For the models, being bad all the time turns out to be, both stabler and more efficient than being bad only in certain situations," just like writing of code. The broader lesson is generalizing about character is computationally cheap. Compartmentalizing it and making distinctions about good and evil is expensive. And here's the, here's the question that it raises. Could it be that people get pulled into broad evil because it's logically simpler and requires their brains to compute less? I think that's a fascinating proposition. You know, I think time will tell if that turns out to be true or not, but I think a really interesting thing to challenge our thinking on the use of chatbots and the propensity that see- that's tends to be built into the system to gravitate toward, the entropy gravitates toward evil. You're I'm really interested to know, hear your thoughts on this.
Rick Langer:Yeah. So just as a note of clarification, I don't think you mentioned what the subtle errors in these bits of code were, and all of the exchanges were actually computer code. There was no training involved with moral messaging per se.
Scott Rae:Right.
Rick Langer:And the corruption in the code was classic virus kind of things. Thing, you know, self-replicating things that might, you know, things that might be destructive elements of code that you might hope you'd pick up on and say, "Oh, we can't have that in the code. There, someone's trying to sneak a virus in." But it had nothing to do with morality, and yet the outcome was exactly as you described. And the reason I point that out is one of the first things that I think the article highlighted that I think is an interesting point about virtue ethics, is that it is common in virtue ethics for people to talk about virtue as being all of a piece, so to speak. You know, Aristotle may have identified 13 different virtues. Plato may have had four. You know, whoever, however many they have. But the point was, if you had one, you probably had the other, and if you didn't have one but were acting that way, they were suspicious that that's probably what you were doing everywhere. And so the idea that virtue is a manifestation of a flourishing character that comes out kind of in all of these aspects, I think is fairly, it's at least an intriguing part of traditional virtue ethics. I've heard, several people talk about this and, you know, point out it's fairly easy to point out an exception, but sometimes exceptions don't make you wanna throw out the whole rule. You just say, "Okay, right, this isn't a perfect correlation. But generally speaking, they go together." And so the point here was you get corrupt code, you get corrupt character, which was kind of an, a weird thing that I wouldn't expect, and we both agree, we don't, we don't know how this worked, so don't ask us, but the outcome was intriguing that way. And back to the point that you made, Scott, I really do think, I don't know that there's much question that it is easier to think in simplistic, polarized good and evil sorts of frameworks. And I would add to that I think this is one of my biggest worries about our current cultural moment. We just label people and in fact, there's been currents within our culture that have kind of raised this to an art form of just saying, "Oh, they're progressive, they're Democrat, they're bad," or"They're Republican, they're conservative, they're bad." All they need to know is the label I see people doing this with a news source. You know, we're reading things from The New York Times, and I swear some people say, "If it's New York Times, it's gotta be a lie." And I'm like, "Well, what about sunrise and sunset? What... You know, there's gotta be something there. What about the stock market report? Are you saying everything in The New York Times is a lie?" [laughs] And it's easier to think that way. And I think we are in a moment where that's particularly dangerous, where we've tribalized, and then we think our tribe will always be right, the other tribe will always be wrong, and I am a huge opponent of that kind of thinking. It's what I call the Solzhenitsyn line, where Solzhenitsyn says, "Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if the world was such that the dividing line good, between good and evil went between different groups?" And you could identify that group as evil and this group as good. But he says the problem is that the dividing line between good and evil goes right through the center of every human heart. And with it, therefore, every single group has a mixture of truth and lies, good and bad. All of that complexity is what confronts us, and it is cheaper and easier in terms of mental calculation time to just do the extreme polarizing. But I think it's enormously dangerous to our, political life, our social life, our community life.
Scott Rae:Yeah, I say a hearty amen to that. And I I think I wanna emphasize too, Rick, that neither you and I are coding experts. And
Rick Langer:Amen. [laughs]
Scott Rae:And so if we have somehow misunderstood this study and what's implied by it, if you're an AI expert in involving the coding for some of these AI bots, please write in and let us know where we went off the rails. But in general, I think the point of the piece is that the trend back toward an ethic of virtue, in my view, is a really good one, and entirely consistent with the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament. And is particularly, I think for... Virtue fits really well within a Christian ethic because we have the ideal exemplar of virtue in the character of Jesus, and it's spelled out in more detail when Paul describes the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5. Those are the virtues of Christlikeness. And so vir- a virtue ethic without, being rooted in a, in a distinctly Christian worldview, I think ends up being a bit circular, that you know, a virtuous person does what a virtuous person does without really knowing who to look for as the model of virtue. And I think equating virtue with a good life is also thoroughly biblical. You know, Jesus was I think, well known for saying, "What does a profit person to lose their soul, gain the whole world and lose their soul at the same time?" and I think you could probably substitute in there what does it profit a person to lose, to gain the whole world but lose their integrity at the-
Rick Langer:Yeah
Scott Rae:... At the same time. I remember my mentor in graduate school used to say, you know, people are cli- they're climbing the ladder of success, but when they got to the top, they find out that it's leaning against the wrong wall. And this is, reminds me of what David Brooks has made the distinction in some of his writing about character between what he calls resume virtues, which you use to impress people for most of your professional life, and eulogy virtues-... Which are the thing, things that people say about you at the end of your life. And those, he argues, I think persuasively, that the eulogy virtues are the, are the ones [laughs] that really matter. But we often don't come to realize that until often it's later in life. So I'm very encouraged with this trend back to virtue ethics, but I would, I'd really like to see that grounded in the more, in the, in the ideal example of virtue that we see in the Lord Jesus.
Rick Langer:Yeah. Yeah, when we do virtue ethics, there's kind of two different tracks people often use, and one is kind of, you know, identifying, analyzing these different virtues as kind of excellences of character that allow you to succeed in life and all the different things that we face, you know, like courage. We as human beings face fear, and so courage is a virtue that allows us to succeed there. Rashness makes you fail. Cowardice makes you fail. Courage is the thing that allows you to succeed. The other thing we do a lot is to look at narratives, exemplars, kind of moral heroes, and I think Jesus fits perfectly in that regard. And I would point out there's an awful lot of, the literature in the epistles that reads a whole lot like Aristotle in the sense of listing off these virtues. And as you pointed out, for most of church history, Christian ethics has been strongly colored by virtue ethics. I mean, it has been a Christian version of that notion of this is a, an excellence of character that leads to a flourishing human life. Our definition of what a human life is is tightly tied to exactly the person of Jesus Christ. He's human done right. And so when Paul says we should walk in Christ, we should live in Christ, we should abide in Christ, he's basically giving us a virtue ethic, [laughs] that we should be like Jesus. That is the pattern that is laid for us that will lead us to flourishing and thriving.
Scott Rae:Yeah, I think, yeah, I'm very encouraged with this trend back in this direction, and I suspect that, you know, the, notion of it, of connecting virtue with a flourishing or a good life, my hope is that that will continue to be with us in the, in the broader culture, and it seems to me one of the best things that the gospel has to offer as a part of the saving message of Christ is that connection between being a good person and living a good, a good flourishing life. And I hope, I hope that's something we never lose, even though there are aspects of the culture I'm sure that have grown cynical about that. But I think the average person still holds that, you know, if you, if you get, if you get to the top of your profession but you're on your third or fourth marriage and you're alienated from your children, and you don't have a lot of, you don't have hardly any friends that you could, you know, that you could be close to, we might raise a question about whether we would call that person a success.
Rick Langer:Yeah. Yep, exactly.
Scott Rae:Here's story number three on the 250th anniversary of, in my view, maybe the most important document of 1776. Not to downplay the Declaration of Independence, but,
Rick Langer:Yeah, be careful here, Scott
Scott Rae:I know
Rick Langer:... Be careful, man.
Scott Rae:I know. But I think Adam Smith's "The Wealth of," "The Wealth of Nations," also written in 1776, and arguably, I think, i-i-as influential, maybe even more so than the Declaration of Independence, but I think commonly quoted and commonly misquoted and misunderstood as well. Conservatives way too often reduce this as a simply a laissez-faire economy, a warning to let the invisible hand of the market be the only guiding force of the economy and to assume that markets are always self-correcting. Liberals often dismiss Adam Smith as a spokesman for sort of greed run amok, and they equate what Smith refers to as self-interest with greed itself. Now, Smith's radical idea was to show how ordinary people pursuing ordinary lives could steadily make societies richer, fairer, and freer if, and only if, powerful institutions like government, guilds, or large businesses got out and stayed out of their way. Smith urged us to judge a nation not by the fortunes of its kings or nobility, today we might say the, you know, the titans of technology or finance, but instead by whether it supplied people with all the necessaries and conveniences of life. He insisted that prosperity had to be broadly shared. He poi- and I quote Smith on this, "No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable." Smith is perhaps best known for his statement, his classic statement, it goes like this-"It is not from the bene-benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interests." The article concludes, I think, this way, a very telling point."At a moment when faith in markets is fraying and faith in government is strained, Smith's message is neither to worship the invisible hand of the market nor wish it away. The purpose of the market is to discipline power, to defend competition, and keep the focus where he insisted it has always belonged, on improving the lives of ordinary people." Now, Rick, you and I have both spent a lot of time studying the intersection of Christian faith and economics. And I think we're... I think it's fair to say that we're both, we're both fans of Adam Smith and "The Wealth of Nations." but I'm curious to hear your take on this, because the author of the article here assumes that this is, we're, our our cultural and economic moment is, an, really an appropriate time for a re-engaging with the wealth of nations. And so you may, you may take issue with that, but I'm curious to hear your take on this because you've thought about this, you know, as much as I have.
Rick Langer:Yeah. I don't know that I've thought of it that much, but yeah, I have thought a lot about this. And I... So I enjoyed this article quite a bit actually. It was an interesting, point. And by the way, the quote that you read about, you know, you don't expect your things to come from the goodness or benevolence of the butcher or baker, things like that. I had indeed heard that quote many times. I had not heard the rest of the context of that, where he's saying, "Look, guys," you know, born out of his other arguments about, you know, the, what is it, "The Theory of Sentiments," his other, his prior treatise on morality, where he talks about human beings being people who could and should have sympathy, empathy towards one another, care for one another, but he's making a point here. When it comes to calculating a market, you're better off not arguing for this by the fact that it pays off for somebody else, but to just point out this is beneficial for the butcher or the baker or whatever, not saying that that is the most important thing, the only thing that ever matters. He's simply saying when you're, you know, making the argument or structuring an economy, the point is to look at it from the standpoint of self-interest. And I have mixed feelings about that, but it did put that quote in a different light, so I was really grateful for that because I tend to have a cynical attitude towards that quote because I heard it quoted that way all the time. So this was wonderfully helpful on that count. The other thing that I treasured about the comments that he made was reinforcing what I will call the Let me just call it the traditional conservative value of small government. And that isn't to say we have no government, but you want your government to be kind of right-sized, and one of its bigger functions is to get out of the way of all of the ordinary people doing ordinary life and allow all of the ordinary people to be able to do ordinary life rather than just the bully on the playground or whoever's most important. In other words, the government should be kind of controlling things to keep people in their lane, not standing in the middle of the freeway trying to direct traffic or something. It's keeping the lanes and boundaries clear so that the bulk of human life and society is actually done in a free context rather than by consistent government intervention. And I think that was one of the things that Adam Smith was a big fan of that I think, I'm worried that in some ways right now we're in a moment we've kind of lost our way a little bit about that in all directions. I think government is becoming more interventionist on both sides, it seems like, you know, at this moment, and that to me is disconcerting. So it was nice to read this article again on that count 'cause they're going good. I'd love to bring that back to the, to the forefront, that government is here to try and create a a playing field that allows, the broad, section of society to play freely, not just the titans of industry or not just the nobility or whoever it might be. So I think that was great. One, I guess there was a couple other things that hit me. One other thing that he talks about here was the need for society not to just reward the richest and to put it in kind of perhaps a modern language, to say income inequality does have a problematic aspect about it. That doesn't mean the goal should therefore be income equality, but it is to say income inequality can get so bad that you no longer have a flourishing society. You know, if all of the wealth are concentrated in the top 1%, which it isn't in America, but it has drifted more that way over the course of my lifetime significantly, I worry about the direction we go with that and to ask what can we do to help make sure we continue to have a middle class. I asked my students in a, one of the classes that I taught was, related to this, and, I just said, "Okay. I want you guys to think about your mom and dad, and how many of you felt your mom and dad or grew up in a situation where you knew your mom and dad could buy a home, they could help you pay for college, and you would have medical insurance?" And basically, to just speak for myself, those things were givens for my mom and dad. We didn't have a ton of money. I was kind of middle middle class in terms of income. But yeah, we lived in a house. We had medical insurance, and they helped me pay for college, and by the way, my college was pretty dirt cheap because I went to a state school. But I asked my students at Biola this in 2015 or 2020, and they're like, "Oh, well, I'm worried about all three of those. Will I ever be able to buy a house? Will I be able to get a job that gives me insurance, and how do I get healthcare insurance or sustain it 'cause my, the clock is ticking on when I will still have it. And yeah, paying for college, I may be paying for college till I'm 50." And you're beginning to feel a vanishing middle class when people say that. And one of the keys to developing long-term wealth is the ownership of property and things like that. So I'm worried that we, because of a bent and an anxiety about if anyone says anything about disparities of incomes, then suddenly you're advocating for communism and everybody has the exact same incomes or things like that, which I think is just nuts. But it's equally nuts, I think, to just disregard that, and I think Adam Smith is concerned about those kinds of things. How are things at the bottom matters to him. And then a final note, I love his comment at the end on optimism. You picked up a little bit among, on that, but I did wanna say that that was actually a bit refreshing to just say,"You know what? There's a kind of a goodness in human beings that can be played out here, and we should not end up despairing of markets, but rather try and find a way to kind of rightly balance them." So those are some things that that hit me as I looked at it.
Scott Rae:Yeah. No, those are really good insights. That's a terrific take on that. And I think we should, we should remind our listeners perhaps that Adam Smith was not an economist by training. He was a moral philosopher, and you made reference to his previous work called "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," where he outlines his system of morality. And he applied his moral philosophy to economics and assumed that the guardrails of morality internally for people could check that pursuit of self-interest and keep it from running amok. And I think you're right, to point out that the, you know, we frame our view of exchange not so much as to out of need or out of morality, but out of what benefits the other person, and that's, I think that's the genius of market systems as they operate on the system of mutually beneficial exchange, both for the things that we buy and the things that we sell, including our labor. I'd wanna be careful, not to be, to be sure that we don't insist that markets are infallible. I don't think they are.
Rick Langer:Yeah.
Scott Rae:They, actually reflect the values of the participants in the system. And it can lead to greed, that's true, but greed is a human vice, not an economical one, and greed exists regardless of the economic system that you're in. And I think the the level of prosperity produced by market-based economies in the last two to three hundred years is indisputable. And you raised a point about inequality. For the vast, number of years, centuries of civilization, people were equal. You know, they were just, they were just equally poor-
Rick Langer:Equally poor[chuckles]
Scott Rae:... Wretched, yeah, and miserable. And markets created middle classes, although it, with that came inequality because people emerged out of poverty at different rates and to different levels. And I think you can, you can make an argument that the middle class is shrinking today in part due to layoffs and other economic factors. But I think you could also make the case that the middle class is shrinking, is shrinking because middle class folks are moving up to upper classes. We have more minority millionaires today than we've ever had before. And so, but I think the emphasis is not on people in the upper classes.
Rick Langer:Yeah.
Scott Rae:That's not the indicator. The emphasis is on how the average person is flourishing, not the upper classes. And Smith did not say that there was no role for government. You know, he was really clear. You, I mean, you have to have... The rule of law has to be respected. Innovation has to be protected with things like patent laws and things like that. There has to be a reliable system of the rule of law so that transactions can take place peacefully and without excessively high costs. So you were-
Rick Langer:Yeah
Scott Rae:... You were, you were gonna jump in there.
Rick Langer:Yeah. So and I just to pick up the last point you said first is, about monopolies and things like that are incredibly destructive to the kinds of markets that I think Adam Smith envisioned. And I don't think there's a... I think monopolies with human fallen-ness are a natural way things tend to go when people get excessively wealthy. They really can monopolize things, and that can become very destructive. So I think, you know, yeah, there's places for government. This is what I mean about the government has a very important role, but it's nice to keep it as the minimum role.[laughs] keeping people in their lanes, keeping people from swerving back and forth out of traffic, keeping people from blocking things so only they can get through. Those are the kinds of, to use a freeway metaphor, it's kind of like the market, a free market and a freeway have an analogy there that everyone, if we are keeping within our lanes, has a great way of getting where you're going. When people begin violating that, things go chaotic.
Scott Rae:Yeah.
Rick Langer:And the government has a role in trying to preserve that sort of, freedom.
Scott Rae:Yeah, government-
Rick Langer:But that's what you don't want to become huge.
Scott Rae:Yeah. They're all... Government's also designed to prevent people from driving the wrong way down the freeway.
Rick Langer:Yes.
Scott Rae:Which I, which I would say, which I would say is analogous to you know, cases of fraud-
Rick Langer:Yeah
Scott Rae:... That government is designed to protect people from.
Rick Langer:And the only thing I'd wanna, underscore something you just said, Scott, but you said it quickly, and I wanna just highlight it. It's Adam Smith who points out that the way we want to assess our country is not by how many millionaires we have, but by how this big batch of people in the middle are doing, and then also for the potential for poor to be able to move up.
Scott Rae:Yeah.
Rick Langer:And I think it's really good that we don't demonize capitalism, or at least wise, don't demonize Adam Smith, by thinking that all he cared about was how rich the rich are and how many widgets are produced. He was concerned about actually helping the well-being of people in the middle, and, you know, his system, I think has done a lot of that. It... And I think it continually requires tending, just like a democracy. I think there's a huge analogy between capitalism and democracies where... And my favorite line on democracies is Winston Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government known to man, except anything else we've ever tried." and I, I'm not sure I wanna say that just without qualification, but yeah, it it is one of those things that there may be better ways to do it, and there's certainly bad ways to do democracies. There's bad ways to do free markets. And so we need to be on our guard, not just throw the label,"Oh, capitalism," or, "Oh, democracy," and assume that whatever it sticks to is automatically good and and right.
Scott Rae:That's a good... That's a helpful analogy, and I think you know, your observations, I think, are true on on both of those counts. All right. Story number four is a brief follow-up from last week on James Talarico, the Senate candidate from Texas, and, who's being... Becoming well known for being outspoken about his Christian faith. Sean and Thad talked about his theology last week, and we won't go back over that ground and some of the social positions that he takes, but the emphasis on this New York Times piece on him from this week is something different. Now, to be clear, he's both a religious and political progressive, and we would disagree with him on several points. But the article is pointing out that his style is that which is different. So Rick, I'm curious, you know, I'm sure you've kept up with, you know, the discussion about Talarico and he, him being so outspoken about his faith. And what do you make of this? Do you think, do you think there is something distinctive about his style that is hopeful and encouraging, as the article points out? Or do you think this may be just a case of eventually this will revert back to politics as usual?
Rick Langer:I appreciate you pointing out that we're, when we're talking about Talarico, we are indeed talking about someone who's not just politically progressive, but, traditionally evangelical theologically, but he's progressive both theologically and politically, and we should keep that in mind. And I think that was well pointed out by Sean and Thad last week, and so I don't need to rehash that. But I'm not saying anything today that would dispute that contention. I haven't paid that much attention to the details of his theology, but I guess I'll... I'm happy to go along with what it sounded like Thad and Sean had very good evidence for for claiming on where he was coming from theologically. But I do wanna point out there's more than one way to error. And let me, instead of calling it theology and politics, let me just say, as a Christian disciple, and this article points out some of this, a Christian disciple is a person with right belief, yes, indeed, but they're also a person with right action, who acts right, and they're a person with the right heart. So orthodoxy, orthopraxy, orthocardia, and that's the language that's used in this particular article, but it's fairly common language for people talking about this. And you can go bad in any one of those. And I would also point out that when you go off the rails bad in the area of orthod- orthopraxy, your conduct or your heart, out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks. When you go off the rails in those two things, no one's saying... I hope no one's saying that, "Oh, because you haven't done the right number of good works or because you've said the wrong words, therefore you can't be a believer." But rather, you're saying, when you see unrepentant failures in terms of your orthodoxy, praxy, orthocardia, when you don't care about it when you do these things, you do worry that a person has either seared their conscience or perhaps they never really did have the work of the Spirit going on in their life. So I worry when we just simplify this whole thing about is this person a, you know, faithful Christian or not down to matters of ortho- -doxy that we're forgetting about this whole broader spectrum. And in scripture, it's fairly common for us to look at the fruit of one's activities as evidence of the genuineness of one's faith. And Jesus does that, Paul does that, and it's different than saying you're saved by your works, but rather it's saying that your works are good evidence of the genuineness of your faith. And you see this battle between Paul and James, and I think it's relatively easily reconciled by just making that observation, that your works really are truly evidence of that. So having said all of that, let me just read... I hate to have to do this, but let me just read a couple verses that describe the fruit of the flesh, the works of the flesh compared to the fruit of the spirit. And here's what interesting. What are the works of the flesh? Well, it does begin by talking about sexual immorality, impurity, and idolatry, but then listen to the rest of the works of the flesh. Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envies. So the theme here is really radically related to the way we talk. Dissensions, anger, slander, malice, all of these sorts of things are verbal sins that Paul is identifying with saying these are just on the wrong end of the Christian life. These are evidence of Satan working in your life, not evidence of the Holy Spirit working in your life. Doesn't mean you're not a believer. He was writing this to Galatians. I'm assuming he's worried that he's seeing these things in them, but he also thinks they're genuinely believers. But I worry that we end up saying, "Hey, these things don't matter because we have right belief." Or we excuse things in fellow believers, people who are our favorite podcasters, whatever they are, who are carrying out, you know, slander, malice, and things like this in the name of orthodoxy, but their praxi and their kardia seem far departed. And that's really an interesting point that this article is making is the danger of that kind of limitation. Talarico seems to exhibit a generosity of character in in his speech and things like that, a desire to love his neighbor that sounds great. I really am not in any position to judge because I've not studied him that closely.
Scott Rae:Yeah.
Rick Langer:But that concern about how your speech and your conduct spins out of your character I think is legitimate and desperately important in our time.
Scott Rae:Well, and I think we'll see how that goes as the campaign progresses-
Rick Langer:Yes
Scott Rae:... You know, toward November. I think my hope is that what we've seen so far would continue, and it might, you know, maybe it would usher in a new, a new style that would help with the polarization that we have, seen so much and have talked so much about. Here's, let me give you one thing that he suggests, that the article points out that Talarico, after he won the primary, he put it like this. He said, "I'm tired of being pitted against my neighbor. I'm tired of being told to hate my neighbor. It's been more than 10 years of this kind of politics, and politics as blood sport, as trolling and owning, as total war. It tears families apart, it ends friendships, and it leaves us feeling terrible all the time." and I think we... And we need to point out, Rick, to be fair, that there is nothing new about Christian progressives or conservatives by religious people of all stripes to try and infuse society with religious values. You know, the progressive, you know, political movement has a long history of this. It goes back to the social gospel around the turn of the 20th century. The New Deal legislation, labor laws, the civil rights, and more on the conservative side, the pro-life laws, anti-euthanasia laws, and others, all animated by someone's version of Christian values trying to shape society in ways they think is profitable. And there's nothing new about people seeking political power to do so, as Talarico himself is doing. But maybe the style is different, and I'm hopeful about it. I think the article points out to, concludes that the question is not whether Christianity will help shape the future of the country, but which version and style will do that shaping. And I would say hopefully one that's characterized by character, by the fruit of the spirit, by care for the most vulnerable, including the poor and the unborn and the elderly.
Rick Langer:Yeah
Scott Rae:... And so that's my hope. And, we'll I think we just... Time will tell, and we'll see if this is, you know, if this continues or if this is an exception to the general rule or if it becomes sort of back to blood sport as usual.
Rick Langer:Yeah, I think as a culture we are... I feel like there's a significant number of people who have what you might call,[laughs] indecency fatigue relative to politics.
Scott Rae:That's a good-
Rick Langer:That you just see so many-
Scott Rae:That's a good way to put it
Rick Langer:... Behaviors that are indecent, and some of these are just gross immorality. The Epstein files and things that have come out of this that are just like... They're revolting, and these are by and large people who are wielding great power within our society. Verbal-
Scott Rae:On on both, on both sides of the aisle.
Rick Langer:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, the Epstein files are a great example of that, right? Everybody's wallowing around in this sort of a mess. And I think, I think we are getting to a point where we're like, yeah, you know, simply having what I think might be a good policy payoff, but the price tag is the kind of vitriol, animosity, antagonism, indecency, crudeness ... Almost vileness that we tend to be seeing, again, across a broad smear of this spectrum, I think people are beginning to hope for something, and this is part of the article makes. He isn't a guy who'd be a fan of the politics of Talarico, but he's saying he's hitting something that people are feeling, and that we're just saying, "Man, I am so sick of just the, you know, the, this kind of verbal violence." It's nice to have someone who says,"I don't wanna play that game. And I'm running for office. Vote for me." And yeah, I don't know that I would vote for him, but I certainly appreciate framing that discourse, and I think he's going to resonate with people he wouldn't have otherwise simply because of that.
Scott Rae:Yeah. You, we, I think time will tell.
Rick Langer:Yes.
Scott Rae:And we'll see. All right. You ready to answer a few questions?
Rick Langer:I don't know. Just don't make them too hard.
Scott Rae:We've got some good ones, as usual.
Rick Langer:[laughs]
Scott Rae:Here's the first- I'd like to respectfully suggest a possible blind spot in the way trans issues are sometimes discussed. Have you ever considered that some trans activism may at least be in part a response to the church's heavy-handed approach toward trans youth? There are individuals who have gone through conversion therapy and describe extremely deep trauma comparable to what others report after transitioning, and pain exists in multiple places within this conversation. I believe this correlation is worth acknowledging and discussing with humility, not to assign blame, but to encourage reflection. Agree or disagree?
Rick Langer:Well, so the key phrase here, have you ever considered that some trans activism may in part at least be a response to the church's heavy-handed approach towards trans youth? Of course, I mean, it's ... When you say in part, the answer, I mean, I'm sure could be in part. But I would argue that I don't think as a matter of fact that that really was necessarily the precipitating thing. I think there was a huge ... I remember when the Obergefell decision came down regarding, same-sex marriage. Just immediately on the heels, there was a whole cascade of things about transgender issues, bathrooms, things like that just was instantly there. And by and large, the church... I mean, I taught a money, sex, and power class from, at Biola from 2005 to 2024, so basically 20 years of teaching that class. When I began teaching it, transgenderism was simply not an issue. And until about 2015, it wasn't a major thing that I even talked about in the class. I was aware of what was going on, but it was kind of in the background. So I don't think it was this big thing that the church was hitting. Then all of a sudden, wham, it came out in a time when it was kinda like, okay, the morality boundaries of tradition have just been dismantled. Let's go all the way. And transgenderism kinda came to the highlight there. And I'm really reluctant to think that a huge part of this was because of church antagonism, 'cause I think the church was kind of oblivious to a lot of that at that point.
Scott Rae:Fair enough.
Rick Langer:And there, I I'm sure it contributes something to that, but I just, I don't resonate with that being kind of a major point there. I would wanna reinforce one thing, or agree with the thing that the the listener wrote in, and that is the genuine amount of psychic pain, I will call it, you know, pain within a person's soul kind of psychic, that, many transgender people experience, and saying it it doesn't make the world a better place to make people feel worse and worse about themselves with these things. But I'm not sure what that tells us about this issue of how we put transgenderism within our culture. Therefore, do we need men to play in women- people who are born male to play in women's sports? And what do we need to do with our bathrooms? And do we change passports and driver's licenses so you can choose what your gender is relative to those contexts? There's a million of these questions that we're asking to try and change things, and I'm like, "I don't think, I don't think that works." and so I'm not sure that legitimizing and owning or validating the fact that these many people with gender dysphoria are prof- experiencing profound traumatic distress, I think that should evoke empathy and sympathy and love from us, but I don't know that it should evoke the kinds of social changes that people are wanting.
Scott Rae:Hear Guy, thanks. That's a, that's a helpful, good nuanced response on that. Here's a second one- My wife and I thought we were never gonna have kids. We ended up doing IVF, which resulted in three embryos, which was perfect because we wanted three kids. The first embryo took and is a beautiful baby girl. About the time we were gonna use the second embryo, we got pregnant naturally and unexpectedly. That child is also healthy, but during my, during delivery, my wife had some complications and won't, probably won't be able to carry a third child. Obviously, we aren't gonna discard the two embryos we have left. My question is, how should we best give them up for adoption? Random and anonymous? Let the clinic find parents? We have an obligation to handpick the parents to ensure they grow up in a Christian home? Okay. I'll give this one a shot. I think embryo adoption, I think, is entirely appropriate. I would encourage you to handpick the parents as best you can, or to have the clinic, at least have a criteria that they be in in a distinctly Christian home. The oth- there may be another option, Rick, and I'm not... I'm just gonna throw this out there. We don't have a lot of time to talk about this, but, this it may be because they are your embryos and you would like to be the parents of those children, this may be one of those cases where surrogacy would be an acceptable option. Now, I'm not a big fan of surrogacy in general, but I also worry about, creating a discontinuity between procreation and parenting. Which unless the parents are unfit, I I think is, you know, I have a question about. And it may be that surrogacy is an option, that you ought to consider on the table. I'm open to being wrong about that, but I think that's something to be considered. Here's another one. And this, we gotta be really brief about this one, 'cause this is the whole conversation. But, on a, on a recent weekly cultural update, you mentioned just war theory. I've also heard this referenced as could you please give a short summary and recommend a resource that addresses it from a biblical perspective? Okay. Rick, give us a very short summary, and I'll recommend a resource.
Rick Langer:[laughs] I was gonna say, I, I've got a little list of resources. I mean, this is a thing that's been written, about a lot.
Scott Rae:Yeah
Rick Langer:... And there's kind of, people think of the qualifications that it takes for on two issues, you know. What is a just reason to go to war? And it's usually, you know, it, it's a thing of last resort. There's a likelihood of success. There's usually kind of, I think, three elements usually on that. And then likewise, what are some of the key elements of how do you carry out war in a just manner? And I think those two tracks are really good to think about. So do you get to bomb civilians if that will pay off for winning the war? And so traditionally the answer has been no. You know, non-violence towards non-combatants. You know, if they aren't combatants, then you don't get to kill them. And so there's all of those sorts of regulations. And I, my point would be that I think there's a very long Christian tradition in this. So you could go back and read Augustine's City of God, chapter one, I think chapter 19, talk about this. So there's that. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa, talks about just war theory. And then we've had a lot of recent work by good Christian authors, Paul Ramsey, Oliver O'Donovan, Darrell Cole, J. Daryl Charles, just lots of folks. And so if you have some of those names, I've got some of them. We could get them posted.
Scott Rae:Yeah.
Rick Langer:But there's a lot of those that are available.
Scott Rae:That's true. That's the one. The one I would recommend is Daryl Charles' work called Between Pacifism and Jihad. In my view, that's the best thing out there on the subject. I hope our listener finds that helpful. If there's other things you want us to address, please, email us back and do so. [upbeat music] All right, Rick, thanks so much. This has been fun. I enjoyed having you with us. This has been the Think Biblically weekly cultural update from Talbot School of Theology, where we got programs in Bible and theology and marriage and family therapy and philosophy and apologetics, both at the graduate and undergraduate level. If you wanna hear more about that, email us at at biola.edu/talbot, in order to learn more. So we would, we would love to have you give us a rating on your podcast app, and join us again on Tuesday for our regularly scheduled episode. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.[upbeat music]