Upstream: Recent Episodes
Shane Morris
The pressures of living up to your calling are enormous. But your life doesn’t have to be at the mercy of the current. There’s a bigger story afoot than the river you’re standing in at the moment. Shane Morris interviews those who have stood against the stream of culture and discusses the ways you can be an active participant in God’s work of restoration.
A cottage industry of authors and speakers has sprung up claiming that the Bible’s teaching on homosexual behavior has been misunderstood, and that Christians can affirm gay relationships. Shane welcomes author and apologist Rebecca McLaughlin to refute their most common arguments.
Travel sports, stranger danger, busybody neighbors, housing prices, helicopter parenting, workism and more have conspired to make raising kids harder than it needs to be. Shane welcomes Tim Carney, author of Family Unfriendly, to explain where we went wrong and what a pro-family culture looks like.
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Show Notes:
Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be by Tim Carney
Related Episodes:
What Are Children For? | Shane Morris
What the Sexual Revolution Stole from Children | Katy Faust
You (Probably) Won’t Change the World in Your Twenties | Nathan Rittenhouse
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The term "Christian" is a rare one in the Bible. By far the most common way the New Testament describes followers of Jesus is "in Christ." Shane welcomes pastor and author Sam Allberry to explore the incredible meaning behind this mysterious phrase.
Christians have long taught that God’s existence and power are evident in the world He has made. Yet secular, materialistic science says the universe looks exactly as we would expect if God didn’t exist. Shane welcomes philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer in this interview from the 2023 Colson Center National Conference to explain why “the God hypothesis” is making a comeback.
*This episode originally aired on June 6, 2023.
Artificial intelligence has advanced by leaps and bounds, raising questions about freedom, privacy, truth, and what it means to be human. Is the future utopian or dystopian, and how do the worldviews of AI creators shape their technology? Shane welcomes Dr. John Lennox to answer these questions using his book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.
Forty years ago, Anglican theologian Oliver O’Donovan published a prophetic critique of reproductive technologies, arguing that humans should be begotten, not made. This week, Shane welcomes Baylor professor and theology of the body expert Matthew Lee Anderson to introduce us to O’Donovan’s argument using an updated second edition of O'Donovan's book Begotten or Made?
In Colossians 2:8, the Apostle warns us not to be taken captive by hollow and deceitful philosophy. Does this mean Christians shouldn’t seek wisdom outside or alongside of Scripture? To answer, Shane welcomes Dr. Ross Inman, author of Christian Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Invitation to Wonder.
The beauty, the tradition, the sense of authority and certainty about doctrine—these are some of the many reasons evangelicals join the Catholic Church. But are they making a fully informed decision? Shane welcomes Chris Castaldo, co-author of Why Do Protestants Convert? to offer a surprising answer.
Evangelicals are often suspicious of the environmental movement because of its fatalism and worship of the earth. But what if Christianity is the best foundation for environmental stewardship? Shane welcomes Dr. Andrew Spencer, author of Hope for God’s Creation.
Andrew's book, Hope for God's Creation: Stewardship in an Age of Futility
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Get a copy of The Beginning and End of All Things: A Biblical Theology of Creation and New Creation at colsoncenter.org/upklinkresource.
Whether from pop culture or politicians, corporate executives or mainstream journalists, Americans are bombarded with the message that marriage is outdated, inconvenient, and joyless. But statistics tell a very different story. Shane welcomes sociologist Brad Wilcox, author of the new book Get Married, to share the truth.
Something happens to Christians who join the largest worldview fellowship in existence. Confusion turns to confidence, fear turns to hope, and they discover how their lives fit into God’s grand story. This week Shane welcomes Michael Craven, dean of the Colson Fellows, to cast a vision for this remarkable and growing program.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade wasthe beginning of a new phase in the fight for life. But every time abortion has been on the ballot, pro-lifers have lost. Shane welcomes Scott Klusendorf, who thinks most Americans have never truly been confronted with the powerful case for life.
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Fifteen years ago, when Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, Scott Klusendorf’s landmark book The Case for Life helped state the case for the right to life of preborn babies. The second, updated edition meets the most current challenges to preborn life. Get the updated edition to learn to better communicate pro-life truths in this post-Roe world. Request your copy this month with a gift of any amount at colsoncenter.org/upcaseforlife
Some of our go-to figures of speech are mechanistic. We compare ourselves to computers that need to “recharge,” “process,” and “update.” But what if the Bible (and nature) offer better metaphors? To make that case, Shane welcomes Dr. Joy Clarkson, author of You Are A Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer.
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Fifteen years ago, when Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, Scott Klusendorf’s landmark book The Case for Life helped state the case for the right to life of preborn babies. The second, updated edition meets the most current challenges to preborn life. Get the updated edition to learn to better communicate pro-life truths in this post-Roe world. Request your copy this month with a gift of any amount at colsoncenter.org/colsoncenter.org/upcaseforlife
Our divide between “ordinary jobs” and “ministry” and “mission” reveals a hidden assumption about the size of the gospel, and what Christ expects His people to do on this earth. Shane welcomes Jordan Raynor, author of The Sacredness of Secular Work to challenge that assumption.
What is a woman? In this best-of episode from 2023, Shane welcomes Dr. Abigail Favale, author of The Genesis of Gender, to discuss how feminism, postmodernism, and bad philosophy made that question impossible to answer, and to show how the Christian vision of embodiment dignifies our differences.
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Claim your free copy of Don't Follow Your Heart for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month at colsoncenter.org/upwilliamsresource
You are basically good, and meaning comes from looking within and conforming reality to your feelings. This is the message shouted at us from every direction, but it leads to confusion and despair. Shane welcomes Dr. Thaddeus Williams to point us back to the truth using his new book, Don’t Follow Your Heart: Boldly Breaking the Ten Commandments of Self-Worship.
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Claim your free copy of Don't Follow Your Heart for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month at colsoncenter.org/upwilliamsresource
In 1776, America became an independent nation. But that year also saw the beginning of trends that would de-Christianize the West. Shane welcomes Dr. Andrew Wilson to tell the story of how this transformation took place, and to prepare Christians to outlast our secular age.
The concept of “engaging the culture” from a “Christian worldview” has been talked about for decades. But what does it mean, exactly, and how do we teach it? What are the benefits and potential pitfalls of “worldview talk?” Shane welcomes Christopher Talbot, co-editor of the new book, Christians in Culture: Cultivating a Christian Worldview for All of Life.
On the road to Emmaus, the risen Jesus explained how the whole Bible foreshadows Him. As we celebrate Christmas, Shane welcomes Dr. Alastair Roberts to help us see how the birth of Christ fulfilled all of God’s promises to Israel—and to us.
From the tilled earth to the family table, every step of growing and preparing food was intended by God to teach us spiritual truths. Yet many of us have forgotten how to taste and see. Shane welcomes documentary filmmaker Andrew Brumme to reintroduce us to the sacredness of mealtime using Robert Farrar Capon’s classic, The Supper of the Lamb.
A German composer’s 1742 oratorio about the life and work of Christ has captivated audiences for centuries. But what makes Handel’s Messiah so powerful and unforgettable? Shane welcomes composer and writer Dr. Joel Clarkson, plus a special guest, to explore one of classical music’s greatest masterpieces.
Christ is sovereign over every square inch of human existence, but what about every moment of time? What would it change if we dedicated everything we do to Him in prayer? Shane welcomes Douglas McKelvey, author of the Every Moment Holy series, to introduce his latest book and explore the power of addressing God, together, as His people.
The creeds of Christianity summarize the most paradoxical and surprising story the world has ever known. So why do so many find them boring? In this best-of episode, Shane welcomes Trevin Wax to explain why the core truths of our faith are an invitation to adventure, using his book, The Thrill of Orthodoxy.
We gather at Thanksgiving to enjoy food, to count our blessings (including family and friends), and to express our gratitude to the Giver. But is it possible to love God’s gifts too much? Shane welcomes Dr. Joe Rigney, author of The Things of Earth, to explain how we should treasure God by enjoying our blessings.
What is the secret of contentment in all circumstances? The Apostle Paul knew it, and so can Christians who acknowledge God’s presence and seek His face. Shane welcomes Joni Eareckson Tada, herself no stranger to suffering, to share insights from her latest devotional book, The Practice of the Presence of Jesus.
He’s been described like a genie in a bottle, treated like The Force from Star Wars, and is sometimes simply forgotten. But the Holy Spirit is God, and learning to worship Him and recognize His work is central to Christianity. Shane welcomes Costi Hinn to sort truth from error using his new book, Knowing the Spirit.
The world is still reeling from the events of October 7, when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel and slaughtered over a thousand civilians. As war rages, confusion reigns in academia and politics over who is to blame and what should be done. This week, Shane welcomes David Pileggi, Rector of Christ Church Anglican in Jerusalem, to offer the wisdom of over forty years of pastoring a church in the thick of it.
The world is filled with tales of ghosts, vampires, sea serpents, and all manner of mythological monsters. The secular mind dismisses these as superstitions, but should Christians? This week Shane welcomes Ben Garrett and Brian Sauvé, hosts of The Haunted Cosmos podcast, to explain how speculation about the spooky can glorify God.
For most of history, nearly everybody has agreed that human beings survive the deaths of our bodies. But somewhere along the way, materialism rose to dominance, and we became nothing but bodies. What’s the truth? Shane welcomes Dr. Joshua Farris, author of The Creation of Self, to make a robust case for the soul.
Show Notes:
The critical theories that dominate our cultural vocabulary aren't “just” theories. They form an entire worldview that fundamentally contradicts the good, true, and beautiful worldview of Christianity. Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer’s latest book, Critical Dilemma, can help you understand and respond to the bad ideas of Critical Theory with discernment and truth. Request your copy this month with a gift of any amount at colsoncenter.org/upcriticaldilemma.
The Creation of Self: A Case for the Soul by Dr. Joshua Farris
Related episodes:
Why is the Cosmos Comprehensible? | Melissa Cain Travis
Does Creation Reveal a Creator? | Stephen Meyer
No Plato, No Scripture? | Hans Boersma
Synapses or the Soul? | Matthew LaPine
How Science Reveals (and Requires) God | Stephen Meyer
Loving Your Limits | Ashley Hales
A Temple, Not an Amusement Park | John Kleinig
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Music has been a favorite theme on Upstream. Guests like Andrew Peterson, Jeremy Begbie, The Arcadian Wild, and David Radford of The Gray Havens have explored the mystery of music from artistic and academic perspectives. This week, we bring you the best of those episodes with Shane’s thoughts how they connect, and how God uses music in our lives.
Between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and the modern social justice movement, the definition of "justice" changed. But critical social theories are based on important truths, even if they mix them with lies. Shane welcomes Drs. Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer to identify those truths and lies using their new book, Critical Dilemma.
We're in the mist of the most significant religious shift in American history. Millions are abandoning organized Christianity, but there is little clarity about why they're leaving, or how to stem the exodus. Shane welcomes Michael Graham, co-author of The Great Dechurching, to offer data-driven answers and surprising hope.
Atheists like to tell a story in which religion declined because of scientific evidence and arguments. But what if unbelief became a plausible option because of the way modern people work, live, and relate to the world, and the way these changes make us feel? Shane welcomes Dr. Joseph Minich to discuss his book, Bulwarks of Unbelief.
Homosexuality, “spirituality,” feminism, transgenderism, and more; an alternative creed is making inroads into Christianity and false claims on young lives. Shane welcomes Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, someone who once believed and lived those lies, to explain how God set her free and can do the same for anyone.
Christians often think of technology as morally neutral, but a closer examination shows that assumptions about the world and humanity are built into inventions like the internet. These “liturgies,” or repeated patterns of formative behavior, shape us mentally and spiritually in ways that contradict God’s design for us. Shane welcomes Samuel James to discuss his new book, Digital Liturgies: Recovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age.
A dandelion, a song, a mother’s love, even the reality of evil; God has used all of these to pierce the godless worldviews of real men and women. In this Upstream re-air, Shane welcomes Dr. Os Guinness to tell their stories using his book, Signals of Transcendence.
We’re witnessing an unprecedented epidemic of teenage girls who want to change their gender and think transition will make them happy. What’s really going on, and how can Christians respond? Shane welcomes Dr. Katie McCoy to answer these hard questions using her new book, To Be a Woman.
When we hear pastors or theologians refer to “creation,” we assume they’re talking about the beginning of the world. But what if the whole story of Scripture is about the purpose, function, and glorious destiny of God’s handiwork—including us? Shane welcomes Dr. Edward Klink to discuss his book, The Beginning and End of All Things: A Biblical Theology of Creation and New Creation.
When God created humans in His image, He gave us a mandate: to imitate His work by bringing beauty, order, art, and cultureinto the world. This has implications for our relationship with time, space, matter, language, each other, and God. To explain, Shane welcomes Brian Brown, co-editor of an eye-opening new book called Why We Create.
Christians easily fall into the habit of treating culture as something “out there,” distinct from us and potentially corrupting or dangerous. But what if we are a part of that culture, and what if conflict isn’t the only or best way to understand our role in shaping culture? Shane welcomes Dr. Justin Bailey to discuss his latest book, Interpreting Your World: Five Lenses for Engaging Theology and Culture.
A Viking who sailed to America, a prisoner who transformed an African kingdom, the daughter-in-law of Genghis Khan—what do all of these people have in common? Surprisingly, belief in Christ. Shane welcomes Dr. Glenn Sunshine to talk about his new book, 32 Christians Who Changed Their World.
Creation is bursting with Divine symbolism, especially where opposites unite—and nowhere do we find a more profound, sacred, or fruitful symbolism than in sex. Shane welcomes Joshua Butler, author of Beautiful Union, to explore how God’s vision for the one flesh relationship displays deep mysteries about creation and its Creator.
Contrary to secular mythology, the pioneers of modern astronomy believed they were “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” In fact, this belief was essential to their discoveries! Shane welcomes Dr. Melissa Cain Travis to explain why Christian convictions led to the scientific revolution and can help us see the stars as they truly are.
Most of us will never have to choose between death and denying Jesus. So what does martyrdom mean for us? Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to reflect on the conversation with Jerry Pattengale about The New Book of Christian Martyrs.
Four-hundred and fifty years ago, John Foxe published his famous Book of Martyrs. But more Christians died for their faith in the last century than in the previous nineteen combined. Shane welcomes Dr. Jerry Pattengale to tell the stories of those who’ve confessed Christ to the end, using his The New Book of Christian Martyrs.
We’re witnessing a groundswell of demand to create viable, Christian alternatives to the American public school system, but is there room for everyone? Shane welcomes Dr. Larry Taylor, president of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) to sketch an exciting future for education.
Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to explore the distinctive approach to apologetics and evangelism that set Tim Keller apart and sometimes made him controversial. He subverted expectations, but how do we balance winsomeness toward outsiders with fidelity to our countercultural Christian convictions?
Last month, pastor-theologian Timothy Keller went home to the Lord. His ministry was filled with incredible successes and unexpected controversies, and raises questions about how Christians should engage our post-Christian culture. Shane welcomes Collin Hansen, author of Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation.
In his latest songs, Josh Bales meditates on doubt, deconstruction, and the glory we were created for. Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to discuss how understanding our high calling as humans can direct our search for God and truth.
Human beings are fallen, sinful, and broken, but that’s not where the story began. Shane welcomes singer-songwriter, priest, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor Josh Bales to explain the importance of telling the full story of redemption, using his new EP, The Weight of Glory.
Christians have long taught that God’s existence and power are evident in the world He has made. Yet secular, materialistic science says the universe looks exactly as we would expect if God didn’t exist. Shane welcomes philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer at the 2023 Colson Center National Conference to explain why “the God hypothesis” is making a comeback.
Progressive environmentalists seem to worship nature and treat human beings like vermin. But conservative Christians often fall into the opposite trap of downplaying human responsibility to care for God’s world. Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to talk more about Christianity and the environment.
Many Christians view concern for nature as a secular, left-wing obsession. But if God loves the world He made and cares about its wellbeing, shouldn’t we care, too? Shane welcomes author and apologist Xandra Carroll to make the case for Christian environmentalism.
Music as we know it is surprisingly young. What influence did Christianity have on the rise of this art form, and does that mean there are no universal truths about music? Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to reflect on the conversation with Dr. Jeremy Begbie.
Few art forms have the power music has to move us and enrich our lives. But what gives it that power? Shane welcomes theologian and musician Dr. Jeremy Begbie to reveal how music can voice deep theological truths in a way words can’t.
Special thanks to Duke University for allowing us to use clips from Dr. Begbie's musical illustrations. The original clips can be found here: Clip 1, Tension and Resolution. Clip 2, Appoggiaturas.
At every stage of the battle for sexual liberation, adults have assured themselves that kids will be alright. But the kids tell a different story. Shane welcomes Katy Faust to explain why the quest to fulfill adult desires has steamrolled children’s needs.
Praise, lament, righteous anger, celebration, and wonder—the book of Psalms contains the full range of human experience expressed in Divine words. Singing those words changes us in a way words alone can’t. Shane welcome Tim Padgett to reflect on the conversation with Brian Sauvé.
In the center of the Bible is a giant, divinely inspired song book. What would happen if we sang it? Shane welcomes pastor and musician Brian Sauvé to talk about his new album of psalms set to original music: "Even Dragons Shall Him Praise."
The theological problem of suffering is distinct from the lived experience of suffering. But remembering God’s character can change everything. Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to reflect on the conversation with Adam Mabry about his book, When God Seems Gone.
What happens when tragedy, sorrow, or frustration strike and God seems not to hear our prayers? Shane welcomes Adam Mabry, author of When God Seems Gone: Finding Hope When Nothing Makes Sense to encourage faith in the midst of (apparent) Divine absence.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendary stories may have more to do with the “real world” than most readers realize. Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to reflect on the conversation with Austin Freeman, author of Tolkien Dogmatics.
What do Valar, Elves, and Hobbits have to do with Christian theology? According to their creator, quite a lot! Shane welcomes Dr. Austin Freeman to discuss his book, Tolkien Dogmatics: Theology through Mythology with the Maker of Middle-earth.
Long held Christian beliefs are being aligned with Christian nationalism. Are they? And John and Maria discuss the disturbing new law in Washington state that some have described as akin to kidnapping.
Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to reflect on the conversation with Steven Wedgeworth about the true meaning of the phrase “Sola Scriptura,” and why misunderstanding that phrase can distort a Christian’s worldview.
“The Bible is the only book I need.” How biblical (and historical) is that statement? Shane welcomes Steven Wedgeworth, rector of Christ Church Anglican in South Bend, Indiana to explain what the Protestant Reformers really believed about Scripture, and why it matters.
Is there one right theory of how Christ’s atoning work saves us, or does the Bible reveal something more complex and mysterious? Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to reflect on the conversation with Hal Poe about C.S. Lewis and the Gospel message.
If asked to present the Gospel, many of us would speak of God punishing Jesus in the place of sinners. But C.S. Lewis didn’t often speak of it this way. Shane welcomes Dr. Harry Lee Poe, Charles Colson Professor at Union University to talk about how C.S. Lewis answered the question: “Why did Jesus have to die?”
What if it’s not enough to convince people of the historical truth of Christ’s Resurrection? What if it’s just as important to love the Gospel as a story? Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to talk more about the conversation with Matt Burnett on re-mythologizing Easter.
Christ's Resurrection is the turning point that reminds us our world's history is a story that ends in hope. But appreciating stories requires imagination! Shane welcomes Anglican pastor Matt Burnett to explore how imagination can illuminate redemption, worship, and catechesis.
“Deconstruction” has become a well-worn path for those who question aspects of their Christian upbringing. But there’s another option. Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to reflect on his conversation with Jinger Duggar Vuolo about her book, Becoming Free Indeed.
Shane welcomes Jinger Duggar Vuolo of 19 Kids and Counting to tell the story of how she separated her belief in Jesus from her upbringing under the teachings of Bill Gothard, and to explain how questioning well can deepen your faith instead of destroying it.
Are humans gods or viruses? Should we be merciful or just? Is history headed for disaster or utopia? Such dichotomies are at the center of our cultural debates. But what if there’s a story that harmonizes them? Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to talk more about Christopher Watkin’s book, Biblical Critical Theory.
G.K. Chesterton observed that critics of Christianity often attack it for contradictory reasons. Dr. Christopher Watkin, author of Biblical Critical Theory, argues that this is because God’s revelation is too big for our culture’s false dichotomies.
We often feel trapped in an anti-supernatural worldview, but if you have the eyes to see and ears to hear, the world is charged with signs of spiritual truth. Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to reflect on the conversation with Os Guinness about his book, Signals of Transcendence.
A dandelion, a song, a mother’s love, the Holocaust; God has used all of these to pierce the godless worldviews of real men and women. Shane welcomes Dr. Os Guinness to tell their stories using his new book, Signals of Transcendence.
Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to talk more about the magic of film, to look back on a few of their favorite titles, and to reflect on wise strategies for introducing movies to young imaginations.
Christians can fall into two opposite errors when it comes to entertainment: We either tally up curse words or try to read everything as a biblical allegory. But film is more complex than that. Shane welcomes Spectator World movie reviewer John Ehrett to discuss a thoughtful and God-honoring approach to the movies.
We may not agree with every answer Greek philosophers gave, but we do have to answer the questions they asked. Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to talk more about Plato, metaphysics, Scripture, and the conversation with Dr. Hans Boersma.
Do we need philosophy to read the Bible well? What happens if we ignore Athens in our study of Jerusalem? Shane welcomes Dr. Hans Boersma, who argues that everyone does metaphysics whether they know it or not, and that Plato’s thought is particularly helpful for understanding God’s Word.
Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to ask and answer some important questions about Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and where their theology fits into the big picture of Christian history and thought—and why they matter today!
Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck have become hugely influential in Christian worldview discussions, but what was their worldview? What did they believe, and how did it shape what they wrote and did? Shane welcomes Cory Brock and Gray Sutanto to discuss their new book, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction.
Shane welcomes Kasey Leander to explore what creates demand for abortion historically, and why simply overturning Roe is just the first step in a long process to making such killing unthinkable. They also discuss the role of men in taking responsibility and welcoming new life.
Roe v. Wade is a thing of the past, but this is just the latest chapter in the long and contentious story of abortion in America. Shane welcomes journalist and author Leah Savas to explain why knowing that history is critical to protecting unborn lives in the future.
Shane welcomes Kasey Leander (who is technically still in his twenties) to talk about the difference between our culture’s view of twenty-somethings and God’s view, and why the quest to change the world can obscure what truly matters.
Nathan Rittenhouse joins Shane to explain why, as his grandfather put it, “no one takes you seriously until you’re thirty,” and why for Christians who want to impact the culture for Christ, that’s very good news.
Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to discuss whether the modern notion of diversity and inclusion has lived up to its promises, and whether it’s possible for very different people to live together in a nation or worship together in a church.
America’s motto is e pluribus unum, “out of many, one.” Yet the modern obsession with diversity and inclusion has left us a nation where citizens have little in common. Shane welcomes Richard Lints to explain how the Church’s mission and very identity reconcile unity and diversity.
Shane welcomes the Colson Center’s Kasey Leander to talk about what it looks like to be “stuck in the present,” and how a careful study of history can keep us from either uncritically idolizing or demonizing those who came before us.
Affluent, modern people are too often “stuck in the present,” dismissing the past as benighted and bigoted. Shane welcomes author David George Moore to explain why Christians must be students of history, and how to appreciate the people we meet there, warts and all.
Shane and Tim reflect on the conversation with Samuel James about how the internet has changed our behavior and speech. As digital platforms come and go, Christians must reemphasize timeless virtues to stay rooted in reality.
Twitter and Facebook may be in decline, but they leave in their wake a more tribal, fractured, and superficial evangelical church. Shane welcomes Crossway editor and writer Samuel James to reveal how technology has taught us bad habits, and how Christians can recover.
Shane and Tim continue the conversation about Abigail Favale’s book, The Genesis of Gender, and explore feminism’s fatal mistake of fighting for women’s rights without bothering to define “woman.”
What is a woman? Shane welcomes Dr. Abigail Favale, author of The Genesis of Gender, to discuss how feminism, postmodernism, and bad philosophy made that question impossible to answer, and to show how the Christian vision of sexed embodiment dignifies our differences.
Shane and Tim reflect on the conversation with Frederica Mathewes-Green in light of historical Protestant objections to church holidays, liturgy, and traditional rituals. How should we think about these disagreements in a way that shows love for one another and honors Christ (which is, after all, the purpose of Epiphany)?
Shane welcomes author Frederica Matthews-Green to give an Eastern Orthodox perspective on the feast of Epiphany/Theophany, and to explore how Christians differ on liturgies and traditions meant to reveal Christ in worship.
Shane visits with Dr. Ken Boa to explore the church calendar, particularly Advent and Christmas, and to articulate how this ancient way of keeping time can help conform us to the image of Jesus, even in a secular age.
Ebenezer Scrooge, George Bailey, the Grinch, Imogene Herdman … so many characters in beloved Christmas books and movies experience a dramatic change of heart. Why does this theme resonate at this time of year? Shane welcomes author and literary scholar Jessica Hooten-Wilson to discuss the stories of the season, and why their truth can soften our hearts.
Shane welcomes Heidi White and Heather Peterson for a conversation about the ways in which this time of year excites joy, and how the wisdom of Christianity's past can enrich our Advent fasts and Christmas feasts.
This week, we’re sharing a talk Shane gave at the Association of Classical Christian Schools regional conference in Lakeland, Florida. Shane suggests four reasons why God gives us children, and makes a countercultural call to raise and educate those children as sons and daughters of the Last Adam.
Tim Padgett joins Shane to reflect on the conversation with Alastair Roberts on biblical typology and the birth of Christ. They dive deeper into the counterintuitive story God wrote on the pages of Scripture and history—a story in which small and humble people were used to shame the strong and proud.
On the road to Emmaus, the risen Jesus explained how the whole Bible foreshadows Him. As we begin Advent, Shane welcomes Dr. Alastair Roberts to help us see how the birth of Christ fulfilled all of God’s promises to Israel—and to us.
Tim Padgett joins Shane to reflect on the conversation with Trevin Wax about his book, The Thrill of Orthodoxy, and to dispel some myths and misconceptions about how we confess the great creeds.
The creeds of Christianity summarize the most paradoxical and surprising story the world has ever known. So why do so many find them boring? This week, Shane welcomes Trevin Wax to explain why the core truths of our faith are an invitation to adventure, using his book, The Thrill of Orthodoxy.
Tim Padgett joins Shane to think more deeply about the role Puritan beliefs played in the American project, why a value-neutral government is impossible, and why we’re right to give thanks for our complicated national history.
The early colonists in New England had an audacious vision to build a “city on a hill”—a vision so audacious that some now call it utopian. This week Shane welcomes Dr. Glenn Sunshine to explore the theology that drove these thankful Pilgrims, and what their beliefs have to do with us today.
Catholic opposition to abortion is well known, but what about Protestants and evangelicals? Shane welcomes Steven Wedgeworth, contributor to the new book, “Protestant Social Teaching,” to tell the complicated and surprising story of the Reformation and unborn life.
Do the differences between men and women go deeper than physical strength? Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to reflect on the conversation with Anthony Esolen, and to ask how our culture’s assumptions make it tough for us to see what people throughout history have seen.
Why did God make men, and what distinctive masculine traits has our culture denied, to its ruin? Shane welcomes Dr. Anthony Esolen to discuss his provocative and timely book, No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men.
Shane welcomes Tim Padgett to reflect more deeply on God’s gift of time. How have modern inventions left us feeling like we have so little time? Are natural rhythms better than artificial ones? And how does God, Himself, relate to time?
Shane welcomes singer-songwriter and 2022 Imagination Redeemed speaker Matthew Clark for a conversation about God’s mysterious gift of time, and how He uses it to welcome humans into His family.
Shane and Tim Padgett think more deeply about the purpose of sending students to school (or teaching them at home), and explain why education that doesn’t instill the right values is futile.
Shane welcomes Nathan Johnson to explore an older and more Christian philosophy of education designed to set students free and to help them know and seek the God who created them.
Tim joins Shane again to test the boundary between meaning-making stories and historical fact, and to explore the ways in which myth and history intersect in the Christian story.
Shane welcomes Christian classical educator Heidi White to reintroduce a forgotten way of knowing truth and teaching meaning. Heidi draws on four ancient stories about weaving women and uses them to illustrate how myths, as well as facts nourish our faith and imaginations.
Shane and Tim revisit the conversation with Dr. John Kleinig about theology of the body, and explore how knowing God’s high purpose and design for our bodies allows us to draw moral conclusions without proof-texting.
Why do we have bodies, what did God intend for them, and how are they involved in our redemption? Shane welcomes Dr. John Kleinig to attempt a distinctively biblical and Protestant approach to theology of the body using his book, Wonderfully Made.
Shane and Tim revisit the conversation with Dr. Joe Rigney on education and The Abolition of Man, and explore the many ways our culture’s abandonment of value judgments has unmoored us from reality.
Dr. Joe Rigney's talk at the 2022 Miami National Conservatism Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eDcy7rFgJY&ab_channel=NationalConservatism
In this re-air from October 2021, Shane welcomes Dr. Joe Rigney to unpack C. S. Lewis’ brief but prophetic masterpiece, The Abolition of Man, and to help us discover a richer vision of what it means to educate our children.
Tim and Shane revisit the conversation with Dale Ahlquist about G.K. Chesterton’s famous book, The Everlasting Man, and reflect on the surprising ways this early 20th century writer is relevant and valuable to the church today.
In this favorite episode from March, Shane welcomes Dale Ahlquist for an introduction to the faith and writing of one of the 20th century’s most influential Christian minds: G.K. Chesterton. Shane and Dale dive into Chesterton’s famous retelling of the human story, The Everlasting Man.
Tim and Shane discuss recent episodes on the Christian theology of limits, why Jesus redeems people biographies all, and how we can avoid the mistake of pitting God’s creation against His work of restoration.
God created us as limited creatures, and He called those limits good. But we often confuse our limits with sin. Shane welcomes Dr. Kelly Kapic, author of You’re Only Human, to explore the ways we try to transcend our limits, and how God wants us to embrace them, instead.
Have you ever been knocked off our your feet by an ocean wave or gotten stuck on a mountain after dark? Shane and Tim reflect on how modern life allows us to forget our limits and our dependence on God, and how remembering those limits can restore our joy.
Shane welcomes Dr. Ashley Hales, author of A Spacious Life, to dispel the myth that you have to do everything, be everywhere, know it all, and never rest in order to be successful. God gave us our limits, and in Jesus Christ, He joined us in them.
Shane and Tim revisit the conversation with Bruce Herman on beauty, and challenge the idea that “the beautiful” is impossible to define. Does that mean anything can be beautiful? And has modern art taken a wrong turn? They consider these hard questions in light of Christian wisdom and God’s self-revelation.
Shane welcomes Gordon College Fine Arts Chair, Bruce Herman, for a challenging discussion on the meaning and purpose of beauty, how we recognize it, and why beauty is inseparable from truth and goodness.
Shane and Tim reflect on the conversation with Matthew LaPine and sketch the unique and life-giving ways Christians can approach mental health and psychology.
Shane welcomes Dr. Matthew LaPine, author of The Logic of the Body, to examine two stories about the human mind and emotions, and to offer an older and richer way of understanding ourselves and trusting God through mental struggles.
Tim Padgett joins Shane again to continue the conversation on natural law, and to point out how the Bible, Christian morality, and even our secular culture assume moral truth exists, and that it is evident to all.
Shane welcomes back Dr. David Haines to discuss natural law, where it’s taught in Scripture, and how the Church today can rediscover this ancient and deeply Christian type of moral reasoning.
Tim Padgett joins Shane to reflect on the conversation with Dr. Stephen Meyer, and to explore the ways in which even scientists can fall prey to human biases and blind spots, especially when it comes to origins.
Atheists tell us science has no need for the “God hypothesis.” But three discoveries in the 20th century challenged materialism and revealed the Mind behind the universe. Dr. Stephen Meyer joins Shane to explore his book, “The Return of the God Hypothesis.”
Tim Padgett joins Shane to dig deeper into the conversation with Joel Clarkson on his book, Sensing God. Tim and Shane explore the ways in which our culture abuses the senses, and how sin itself is rooted in disordered desire for good things.
Shane welcomes Joel Clarkson, author of Sensing God: Experiencing the Divine in Nature, Food, Music & Beauty to help us recover a theology of the senses, and to understand how our physical experiences were designed to spark worship.
Tim Padgett joins Shane to reflect on the conversation with Rebecca McLaughlin, and to challenge those who cite Jesus without consulting the inspired accounts of His life, the four Gospels.
Why is it that even those who don’t accept Christian theology can’t help but admire the character of Jesus? Shane welcomes author and apologist Rebecca McLaughlin to explain why all of us need to reencounter the hero of the Gospels, and guides us using her book, Confronting Jesus.
Tim Padgett joins Shane again to reflect on the conversation with Glen Scrivener, whose book, The Air We Breathe challenges our secular neighbors to ask where their moral values come from, and whether they can hold on to those values without the Savior who taught them.
Christianity remade the world so completely that even so-called “secular” values are just an echo of Christian morality. Shane welcomes speaker, filmmaker, and priest Glen Scrivener to talk about his new book, “The Air We Breathe,” and to reveal what the West owes Jesus, even if we no longer worship Him.
Tim Padgett joins Shane again to reflect on this week’s episode with Dr. Brendan Case about the Christian use of mockery and satire, and how they are compatible with the command to love our enemies.
Is it possible to make fun of an opponent and still love them? Blaise Pascal thought so. Shane welcomes Dr. Brendan Case, Associate Director for Research in The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, to explain what a seventeenth century controversy can teach us about mockery and winsomeness.
What are the limits of religious freedom? Is it possible to “live and let live” in a society where our neighbors have fundamentally different beliefs about the way human sexuality and families work? Tim Padgett joins Shane again to unpack his recent conversation with Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman at the 2022 Wilberforce Weekend.
Shane welcomes Barronelle Stutzman & Jack Phillips to talk about the importance of standing firm in our convictions, even when it costs us dearly. Sometimes life becomes a fight, the spotlight turns on us and our convictions, and faithfulness is doing the next thing in faith and obedience.
Shane welcomes Colson Center theologian-in-residence Tim Padgett to talk more about his interview with Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis and to identify the ugly assumptions that left over 60 million dead in the aftermath of Roe.
Abortion hasn't just affected unborn babies—it's poisoned our culture, institutions, even our instinctive attitudes toward our kids. Shane welcomes Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis, who point the way toward restoration in a discussion of their new book, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.
In Wayne Stender's last episode as product manager, Shane and Wayne pick up on the conversation with Kasey Leander, and go deeper into questions about how to watch "popcorn flicks" like reflective Christians.
Shane welcomes Colson Center colleague Kasey Leander to continue a conversation they had recently about summer blockbuster movies, and how there’s more going on in supposedly “mindless entertainment” than we often imagine.
Shane fields some questions on his recent conversation on rest and leisure. Producer Wayne Stender asks Shane a pair of important questions that explore a Christian worldview of the difference between resting and "vegging out" and what God intends leisure to look like.
Shane welcomes Davenant Institute teaching fellow Dale Stenberg back to Upstream to talk about the badly misunderstood concept of leisure, and how classical and Christian thought can improve the way we relax, rest, and celebrate.
Wayne Stender visits with Jennifer England, who has managed theatre and radio theatre before joining the Colson Center. Jennifer provides an understanding to the value of performance drama in this cultural moment.
Wayne and Jennifer revisit Shane's conversation with Max McLean, founder of the Fellowship for Performing Arts, considering why performance arts can have an incredible role to play in this cultural moment for Christians.
For more on the Fellowship for Performing Arts visit https://fpatheatre.com/
Shane sits down with award-winning actor and Fellowship for the Performing Arts president Max McLean at the 2022 Wilberforce Weekend in Orlando, Florida. They discuss the extraordinary conversion of C. S. Lewis as told in McLean’s recent movie, The Most Reluctant Convert.
Wayne visits with Dr. Timothy Padgett abour Shane's conversation with Os Guinness. Wayne asks Dr. Tim to clarify the role of nation, how Christians should exist inside a nation, and responding the claim that Christians simply want a theocracy in America.
Shane sits down with author and social critic Os Guinness at the 2022 Wilberforce Weekend in Orlando, Florida. They ask whether God is in the business of redeeming nations, and what redemption would look like for America.
Wayne asks Shane to explain why Christians have problems with environmentalism. The pair then descends into a conversation on the distinction between stewarding and exerting dominion over creation, especially considering our role in God's story to bring redemption and restoration to a broken world.
To close, Wayne asks why we have lost trust in the area of environmentalism with ourselves, each other, and our loss of trust even with creation.
Shane welcomes ecologist Dr. Rick Lindroth of the University of Wisconsin, Madison to discuss the troubled relationship Christians often have with environmentalism, and to suggest a way forward that honors God’s command to steward His world.
Shane responds to questions and challenges from Wayne on if and how Christians can present beauty to a world that is battling depression, sadness, and the epidemic of suicide.
Shane welcomes Dr. Matthew Sleeth back to the program to tackle difficult questions about the rising tide of suicide and other mental health problems in America, and to suggest ways Christians can improve our responses during National Mental Health Awareness Month.
Matthew's website: http://matthewsleethmd.com/
Matthew's Books:
Hope Always: How to be a Force for Life in a Culture of Suicide
Reforesting Faith: What Trees Teach Us About the Nature of God and His Love for Us
24/6: A Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life
Shane fields a host of questions from producer, Wayne Stender. Wayne asks first if one needs to convert to Catholicism to have rightly read Chesterton.
Then, Wayne asks Shane to explain why he finished the book with tears in his eyes, when Trevin wax highlights that Chesterton is a "laughing prophet."
To close, Wayne pushes Shane to explore how and why spiritual insight is afforded to the most immature Christian and the experienced faith follower with similar impact while there's different delivery.
Shane welcomes author and North American Mission Board vice president Trevin Wax to guide us through G. K. Chesterton’s most famous book, Orthodoxy, and to explain how this masterpiece can reignite the wonder of faith.
Wayne Stender asks Shane some upstream questions from his conversation with Sean McDowell earlier this week. Specifically, Wayne wants to know if Christians should build rebellious muscles, or if we should guide our practice to building culture.
Shane welcomes renowned apologist and author Sean McDowell to layout a countercultural approach to parenting teenagers, using his new book, A Rebel's Manifesto
Wayne and Shane go further Upstream to the root ideas they find at work in Disney. Wayne asks Shane why stories captivate us and how they shape us.
Shane welcomes Plugged In reviewer Paul Asay to dig into the messages of recent Disney and Pixar animated features, and to figure out where the Mouse House is leading us…and our children.
Wayne Stender asks Shane to further define the role of individuals in churches and ministries to hold leaders accountable. Wayne asks if sin is inevitable and should scandals carry the weight in the church and community life that they do.
Shane welcomes Ministry Watch president, Warren Cole Smith, to dissect the recent scandals that have toppled Christian pastors, apologists, and leaders, and to help us understand how we can guard our hearts and organizations against moral rot.
Shane sits down with Product Manager Wayne Stender to consider his recent conversation with Peter Rutland on Russia.
The two discuss Vladimir Putin and Wayne asks questions to dive deeper into what makes Putin's actions evil, and what happens if we're just on the wrong side of history.
Shane welcomes Dr. Peter Rutland, a noted Russia expert from Wesleyan University, to explain the worldview motivations behind Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and to understand what happens if the Russian president succeeds.
Wayne Stender pushes Shane to explain some of the finer points of his conversation with Dr. Dale Alquist. Wayne asks if Chesterton had a low view of humanity, why we should read the book, and can't all civilizations value humanity well?
Shane welcomes Dr. Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society, for an introduction to the faith and writing of one of the 20th century’s most influential Christian minds. They dive into Chesterton’s famous retelling of the human story, The Everlasting Man.
Shane fields a host of questions from producer Wayne Stender as they revisit the conversation this week with Bart Gingrich.
Wayne asks Shane to explain why he referenced the early church figure of Marcion. He also asks Shane why it's important for Christians to consider Israel and Jewish history as we exercise our faith in America. To close, Shane encourages Wayne and other listeners to discover and search theology to guide how they live out their faith practically in this cultural moment.
Shane welcomes Rev. Bart Gingerich to talk about recent comments by megachurch pastor Andy Stanley, who says Christianity doesn’t stand or fall on the authority of the Bible. Should we slim down the faith to make apologetics easier, or should we insist on the authority of both Old and New Testaments as the Word of God?
Shane and producer Wayne Stender explore some of the finer points of the recent interview with Dr. Thaddeus Williams. Shane explains a handful of definitions before explaining how Christians can live into the image of God on the issue of race and identity in a time when many are confused and frustrated.
Shane welcomes Dr. Thaddeus Williams, author of "Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth" to talk about the state of race relations in America and American churches in 2022. For more information on Thaddeus' event visit: https://zondervanacademic.com/leads/confronting-injustice?fbclid=IwAR24vQVRkgelSVEq9Wtfc-sSNkzp8GGeQTcSOZ70URV6KARq1XkrwcOHf2I
Shane fields a host of questions from his producer, Wayne Stender, exploring the nature of symbolism in the Bible. The pair discuss the challenge it is to overcome stigmas around seeing everything as connected, while marveling at the beauty of God's design and the significance of the incarnation.
Shane welcome Seraphim (Thomas) Hamilton to explain how both Scripture and God’s creation are filled with symbols and typology—a language of meaning that was known and loved by ancient people, but has largely been forgotten in today’s world.
Shane invites Wayne Stender back on the show to ask probing questions on IVF (Invitro Fertilization) and where the Christian care and concern starts and stops on the issue.
Shane welcomes pro-life speaker and author Stephanie Gray Connors to expose the ethical problems with in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy, which she confronts in detail in her new book, Conceived by Science.
In my discussion on Upstream with my good friend Dale Stenberg, we talked about podcasts as the return of a more human form of communication. In place of an ever-intensifying focus on soundbites in the news, ten-second videos on TikTok, and 280-character zingers on Twitter, podcasts stretch our shrunken attention spans so they can again accommodate complete thoughts. But this benefit is the result of more than runtime. It has to do with the way extended conversations force participants to be earnest with one another, and actually listen in order to understand. That’s a sharp departure from typical behavior in the Internet age.
I recently saw someone on Twitter admit that “people come to this website mostly to misrepresent one another’s views on purpose for the applause of invisible strangers.” It’s painfully true. The description is reminiscent of Roman gladiatorial games, or at least portrayals of those games in popular fiction. Combatants slaying one another for no purpose other than the entertainment of an audience is certainly a fitting metaphor for the way Twitter encourages users to behave. We verbally skewer one another, play rhetorical “gotcha,” and tally “favorites” and “replies” to see whether someone has been ”ratioed”—a fate worse than death. We retweet with the sole aim of inviting our followers to dogpile someone whose opinions we dislike. Hashtags are sounded like trumpets to summon reinforcements who will crush our enemies beneath the weight of guileful one-liners.
In other words, many or most of the exchanges we have in the world of soundbites and text-bites are a kind of game. They’re not earnest. There are thick layers of pretense and subtext—a “conversation beneath the conversation”—a motivation very much in conflict with mutual comprehension and good faith. We read people on Twitter to retort or ridicule, not to understand. And when we reply, our real audience is not the other person, but invisible onlookers who validate us with their cheers. Twitter may not have “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” reactions, but when we open the app, we might as well be gladiators entering the dusty arena, looking to the stands for a vote on whether our opponents will live, or get “owned.”
Podcasts are a noticeable step back from this behavior, and that’s a big part of why I like them. When you talk with someone for an hour, one-liners just won’t cut it. No one is in the stands cheering or booing each play. You cannot try to create “soundbites” that will endlessly repeat on the nightly news or appear in social media feeds. You can attempt mockery, but it will quickly end in awkward silence. “Gotcha” tactics don’t work that well, either. Someone who has ample time to respond or explain further is tough to back into a corner. In other words, the very format of a podcast demands a kind of sincerity and hospitality. It doesn’t lend itself to playing games or trying to trap anyone. You have to level with your guest. In many ways, you are promising to level with them when you send the invitation. And in an age starved for sincerity, the results of this kind of earnest approach can seem downright magical.
Dale mentioned Dr. Jordan Peterson, who has become famous for his sincerity. A few years ago, Peterson won global admiration for refusing to back down from college cancel culture. Shortly thereafter, he was invited onto a British interview show by a host who was clearly set on playing gladiatorial “gotcha” games. The exchange that followed became an overnight Internet sensation. Again and again, this host misrepresented Peterson’s views, attempting to portray him as a bigot and a sexist,
or trap him with his own words. And time after time, he gently corrected her—even smiling for most of the discussion. In the end, the host’s traps were all sprung with nothing in them, and Peterson came out looking not only media savvy, but human. He seemed straightforward and decent in a way very few high-profile figures today are. Yet all he really did was refuse to play a game—a game in which the goal was to publicly humiliate a conversation partner, rather than understand them.
Podcasts work very differently, and not just because they’re hosted by better people than channel 4 news. The medium itself rewards humanity. It simulates a private exchange, more like what you’d have in a coffee shop than in the Colosseum. Real-time audience feedback is minimal, and there’s certainly no fight club voting system or buttons onlookers can smash to show their approval or scorn. The incentive to perform for the stands is accordingly low, and the kinds of soundbites unscrupulous journalists use to ruin careers rarely emerge.
But ultimately, it may be the mental investment hosts, guests, and listeners put into podcasts that often makes them so human and earnest. An hour is a long time, and scoffing is a lazy hobby. To “own” someone, to mob them, or to tear their words out of context takes very little effort. In many ways, that’s the whole appeal of Twitter. Winning moral or social points on the cheap is fun. But as a conversation gets longer and the subjects deeper, those unwilling to make the investment tend to drop out.
What’s more, participants in extended conversations can’t dismiss, discard, or block one another. They can’t “rage-quit” or go out in a blaze of glorious one-liners. The whole format requires you to ask good questions and listen to understand, and to give good answers, knowing you will have to explain yourself. The goal is usually to see the world through the other person’s eyes—to “get inside” their view of things and to sympathize, even if you don’t fully agree. This attitude is infectious. The audience, themselves, tend to catch it. And if they listen on with sincerity, a wondrous thing too rare in today’s world can happen: they can learn.
I hope you’ll check out my discussion with Dale Stenberg on Upstream. His friendship over the last several years has been instrumental in making me a better conversationalist—someone who listens to understand, rather than to retort. And his own podcasting work has enriched my thinking on a whole range of subjects I wouldn’t otherwise have studied. In all humility, I think the good habits I’ve picked up from Dale and other podcasters have made me a bit more human in crucial ways—none more crucial than the habit of treating conversation partners as if they’re human
Shane welcome Davenant Institute teaching fellow Dale Stenberg to explore why podcasts have become such a powerful medium in recent years, why they can be dangerous, and how Christians can glorify God by producing and listening to good podcasts.
Shane fields questions from Wayne Stender on the value of questioning answers and if that practice is something Christians should hold tightly to, especially as they fall under the leadership of the church and Scripture.
Move inland from our beautiful beaches here in Florida, and you’re bound to come across an attention-grabbing group of plants. Citrus trees grow all along the roadsides and woodland trails. These include oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, and even the odd kumquat. Though these trees beckon to hikers in the winter with flashes of low-hanging color, their fruit usually tastes nothing like what you’d buy in a grocery store. You might as well try to eat battery acid as these fruits, which are so sour that they make your eyes water and burn your tongue. They’re also packed with inedible seeds.
These citrus trees don’t belong here. They were introduced by humans. But almost all are the descendants of cold-hardy root stocks, rather than the sweet fruit-bearing limbs citrus farmers once grafted onto those roots. Those died in freezes years ago after most of the groves were abandoned. Such “feral” plants and animals are a problem worldwide, but Florida has more than its fair share. We’re also dealing with an invasion of feral pigs, which have interbred with Eurasian wild boars to produce hairy, tusked monstrosities. Like the feral citrus, these pigs are barely edible, but unlike the citrus, they’re sometimes dangerous to humans. According to Wikipedia, a feral animal or plant is “one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals.” Such living things retain some features of their domestic ancestors, but they usually become ill-tempered or bad-tasting. They have become this way because they began existing on their own, away from the guiding hands of humans who are interested in sweet fruits and tender meat. The resulting plants and animals are something in-between wild and domestic. They have half returned to their natural state but are far from their natural environments. As a result, they are out-of-place, no longer benefiting humans but not belonging in nature, either.
I am reminded of feral plants and animals when I meet Christians who tell me they don’t attend or belong to a church, and don’t want to. As Dr. Jeff Myers of Summit Ministries explained this week on “Upstream,” such Christians often use a familiar set of cliches. They will describe their faith as a relationship, not a religion, and insist that as long as they love and believe in Jesus, they don’t need formal worship or membership in a local congregation to follow Him. These “feral Christians” have chosen a life away from the watchful eye and caring hands of ordained shepherds, instead expressing their identities through private practices like Bible study, prayer, and listening to worship music. There is, of course, nothing wrong with such practices. But the idea that they are a sufficient replacement for corporate worship would have struck virtually any Christian before modern times as unbiblical and dangerous.
American imaginations love the notion that Christianity is primarily a one-on-one relationship with Jesus expressed through private devotion. Our culture tends to take for granted that the most important actions and decisions in a person’s life happen in isolation, not in community. We value independence and pursuit of personal dreams, and even our popular media celebrates rebellion and singular acts of heroism. The greatest people, we imagine, are the ones who stand alone. And for any sentiment, belief, or act of devotion to be genuine, it must be spontaneous. To “speak from the heart” is synonymous with making it up as you go. Reciting or singing something pre-written with a group or performing choreographed acts can seem to us servile or insincere.
The problem is that such hyper-individualism is as alien to the Bible and historical Christianity as orange trees and hogs are to Florida. Feral faith cuts those who practice it off not only from our rightful communions in the here and now, but from the millennia-old organism which Scripture identifies as the earthly presence of Christ. And this is true in at least four ways.
As I’ve already noted, it cuts those who practice it off from the visible people of God, the organism which Scripture presupposes and everywhere describes using organic metaphors. The Church is “the Body of Christ” whose many parts need one another to live and thrive (1 Cor. 12:12-27). We are grape branches, which must remain in union with the Vine and with one another in order to bear fruit (John 15:1-8), and wild olive boughs, which were grafted into the domestic root of Israel’s Messiah (Rom. 11:11-24). We are adopted sons and daughters of God, and siblings to one another and to Christ—a family whose common life happens under a common roof. (Rom. 8:17, Eph. 1:5, Mark 3:33-35). To reject all of these organic unions in favor of private devotion is like cutting a branch from a tree and keeping it in a vase—or cutting an organ out of a body and keeping it in a cooler. Both may survive for a short time, but if they remain cut off from sap and blood flow, their ultimate fate is certain.
That life-giving nourishment, no matter what your sacramental theology, comes at least in part through visible acts in the church. In cutting believers off from the Christian organism, feral Christianity also deprives them of the means of grace. The New Testament speaks of baptism and the Lord’s Supper not as optional ad-ons or private acts of devotion, but as God’s way of giving His people what He has promised them (Gal 3:27, Rom. 6:3, 1 Cor. 10:16). The Westminster Confession speaks of them as a means of grace—a grace which is “not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost.” As C. S. Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity, the sacraments are how God imparts “the Christ-life” to us—one of the chief means by which He spreads that “good infection” that is remaking the world. And as he warns, those who think such means crude or unnecessary are “trying to be more spiritual than God.”
What we do in gathering corporately to worship God in song, sermon, and sacrament isn’t an optional expression of private piety, but the climax of human existence—the very purpose for which we were made. As Herman Bavinck puts it, corporate worship is:
“the center point of the religious life, the source of spiritual power, [and] the inspiration for the work everyone is called to do, by the sweat of his brow, each weekday…Here alone do we find the ministry of God’s Word and the sealing of his covenant. Here, Christ himself lives in our midst and works by his spirit, here we taste the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the principle of eternal life. The Sabbath is the best of days; no other day is like it. And the church is the meeting of God with his people; no other gathering can take its place...”
In attempting a solitary faith in the wilderness, feral Christians forsake the purpose for which they were created and redeemed, and the main means by which Christ redeems them. But they also forsake the most important means by which Christ keeps his sheep domestic, and his fruit from going sour.
In places like Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5, the Bible describes a process by which the institutional church confronts and disciplines members who are in sin. This solemn duty may be the most hated feature of organized religion, and the reason many Christians choose to go feral. And at times, it has certainly been abused and treated as a sword to wound the flock, rather than as a crook to retrieve strays. But it remains in Scripture, and Jesus clearly expects His people to practice it, forcing those in
serious sin either to repent or to leave the fold. Without it, there is no way to repel wolves. Without it, Christ’s Body has no immune system, and blight would consume His crops.
Those who avoid such accountability may have good intentions, and they may, in fact, be among His sheep. But here is where the laws of nature and spirituality meet: The caring hands of farmers, shepherds, and herders nourish and protect domestic things. But they also preserve that domestic identity. As with all feral plants and animals, there is a transition from cultivation back to the wild. For a time, they will continue to bear edible fruit and behave as before. Some of the oranges in the woods are still sweet, after all. But it will not last. Within a generation—sometimes less—changes begin to show, and not often for the better. The fruits sour, the tusks grow, and the faith dies. Cut off from the care of Christ’s ministers and the life of His people, what was once His becomes strange, what was once tame becomes feral, and the very relationship they thought could replace His religion dies.
None of this need befall any Christian who remains in Christ. He, after all, is the Vine, the Root, the Shepherd, the Firstborn, and the Head. It is Christ, not any earthly institution or communion, to whom we owe our ultimate allegiance and faithfulness. I believe this. But I also believe that our union with Him is corporate, rather than private. It is the type of union branches have with a vine, limbs have with a Root, sheep have with their Shepherd, little siblings have with their older Brother, and a body has with its Head. We must allow these corporate, organic pictures in Scripture to challenge our individualism, rather than the other way around, because our unity with each other is integral to our unity with Christ, and feral Christians don’t long remain Christian.
Shane welcome Summit Ministries president, Dr. Jeff Myers, to talk about his book, “Unquestioned Answers,” which identifies ten Christian cliches that mislead those inside and outside the Church.
If you're looking to register your student for Summit, use the promo code BreakPoint22 for $100 off, and receive a $200 off early bird special if registered before March 31.
Visit www.summit.org
The Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy is a fixture of online political debates. It’s used often by secular progressives, who seem to view disagreements with their policy preferences as evidence of Nazi sympathies. The tendency is so common that it has prompted a satirical description known as “Godwin’s Law,” which predicts that as any two people argue on the Internet, the probability that one will compare the other with a certain German dictator approaches 100%.
That the onetime chancellor’s name comes up so often says a lot about people’s moral imaginations—and their deepest fears. As British popular historian Tom Holland points out, Westerners no longer talk of Satan and devils, but about Hitler and the Nazis. Our demonology has shrunk so that the worst villains we can imagine are flesh-and-blood characters from the drama of the 20th century—bad hombres to be sure, but hardly the Father of Lies.
If you ask me, this rush to condemn opponents in the most hysterical terms possible betrays a gnawing fear—a fear that maybe Nazis could win the debate if they were ever given a platform. And this may be why so many left-wing college students are ready to cancel, censor, or punch anyone who questions the ever-lengthening list of “human rights” and protected classes. In their thinking, none of us is ever more than one microaggression away from becoming a monster. They double down on the name-calling because they fear that those who fall out of progressive lockstep will inevitably start to goosestep.
Holland seems to agree. He suggests that one reason secular progressives are paranoid about resurgent Nazism is that they have no foundation for their vast and growing edifice of “fundamental human rights.” In a recent panel discussion, he repeated a claim he makes in his book, Dominion: that human rights and dignity are anything but universal or self-evident and that the only reason Westerners are still convinced such things exist is that we have a Christian hangover:
“Because the West has been hegemonic for so long,” he says, “it’s in a position to assume that its concept of human rights is universal. [Westerners] don’t need to think about it. Of course human rights exist! But what the rise of China and the rise of other civilizational powers is doing is to remind us that the concept of human rights…emerged in a very specific cultural matrix, which is a Christian one. And that therefore, if you want to believe in human rights, you have to believe. It takes a leap of faith to believe that there are things called human rights just as much as it takes a leap of faith to believe that Jesus Christ raised from the dead. They’re both beliefs.”
And herein lies the problem for secular progressives, whose worldview dispenses with the Christian God and His commands. If the basis for human rights is not faith in divine law, then what is it? This problem worsens when we recall that secularism banished God with a materialist account of human origins: Darwinian evolution. But this theory is a double-edged sword. It may drive God from our moral universe, but it drives out human rights with Him. After all, if fierce competition between rival populations leads to the origin and improvement of species, as Darwinism holds, then there is no good reason this process should not continue in our own species. Or will we condemn the very process that created us? If the law of nature is “survival of the fittest” and death to the weak and diseased, then universal rights are not only ethical nonsense—they’re biological suicide.
None of this was lost on the Nazis. As Dr. Richard Weikart explained this week on Upstream, the real-life Third Reich found Darwinian evolution to be an invaluable tool in advancing its program of racial extermination. Actually, his argument is bolder. In his book, Darwinian Racism, he documents how Darwinian concepts and language were woven into every aspect of Nazi ideology, from its science and curricula to its propaganda and military objectives. Key Nazi figures all the way up to Hitler himself were convinced that their project was a natural outworking of Darwinian principles—indeed, that the reassertion of Aryan racial identity was a way of accelerating humanity’s evolution. Likewise, the Nazis saw the notion of universal human rights as both absurd and a means by which unfit groups parasitize the worthy and strong.
Secular progressives—most of whom still cite Darwinian evolution with dogmatic enthusiasm—will find Weikart’s arguments infuriating. Much ink has been spilled in the attempt to distance Darwinism from Nazism and to avoid the conclusions Nazis drew from it. Dr. Weikart has participated in that debate for decades, and he devotes a large portion of this latest book to answering such objections. I found the evidence he marshals convincing, and I suspect you will, too. But that’s not my focus right now.
I don’t think the theory of evolution is false simply because Nazis were evolutionists. The point I am making is that secular progressives who treat Nazism as the ultimate evil have no moral basis for condemning what the Nazis thought or did. Human rights require human beings to be much more than animals. No other creature on earth has ever imagined that killing its prey or its competition might be immoral. Yet we seem unable to shake the conviction.
What if secular progressives are so quick to invoke Hitler because they sense their own worldview’s vulnerability to his ideas? What if they rightly believe that exterminating people on the basis of race is evil, but can’t back it up with moral reasoning? What if they know on some level that human rights endowed by no one are a house of cards, but we are already too invested in the game to quit? What if Godwin’s Law is all you have when you want law without God?
These are questions anyone who looks seriously at the 20th century must ask, especially if that person has already jettisoned the traditional foundation for human dignity in the will of God and His image in man. What is to keep those horrors permanently at bay with the wind of Darwinian logic still in their sails, and no anchor in human exceptionalism to hold them back? Certainly not secular pretensions about self-evident rights. We can repeat that line all we like, and sic the ghost of Hitler on all who question us. But as King Saul learned the hard way, those who call up the dead should be ready for the dead to call their bluff.
Shane welcomes historian and author Richard Weikart to discuss his book, “Darwinian Racism,” which argues that the theory of evolution informed and motivated racism, eugenics, and genocide in the 20th century, especially in Nazi Germany.
Wayne Stender asks Shane a host of questions to get further explanation on Shane's conversation with Dr. David Haines. The two explore terms like natural theology and Hellenism while also considering if natural theology has a prominent place that the church rests on to guide the life of the believer.
If you’ve never heard the late Rich Mullins’ song, “Calling Out Your Name,” you should stop reading right now and listen to it. There are few pieces of music that have affected me the way it did from the first time I heard it as a young boy. The message of Mullins’ soaring poetry, untethered as it is from grammar and rushing to keep up with his hammer dulcimer, is simple: the western vistas he loved declare the glory of God. The “rumbling of the buffalo hooves” and the “fury in a pheasant’s wings” told him as clearly as if they’d spoken that “the Lord is in His temple.”
I didn’t recognize until years later that this was natural theology set to music. But like the truths Mullins sang about, the revelation of God in creation is something you know before you are aware you know it. When Christian theologians in ages past spoke of “nature,” they meant much more than prairies and sunsets, but they certainly did not mean less. The awe that spontaneously grips us at the sight of snowcapped mountains, the northern lights, or a tossing sea is a universal human experience that nearly always excites worship. Of course, fallen creatures that we are, we frequently misdirect that worship.
Yet the fact that our need to reverence a higher power is so easily inflamed by natural wonders is itself a revelation. It means we were made to worship. We are creatures whose heads and knees bow by reflex. And as Dr. David Haines explained this week on “Upstream,” Christian theologians have always held that a careful observer can learn something about the God we long to worship just by observing His creation.
This type of theology is anything but optional or supplementary. It is the normal way of coming to believe in God. I think most human beings hear His name in birdsong before they can read it in the Bible. Perhaps that’s why the Scripture itself constantly claims that created things from ants to the starry host “declare the work” of God’s hands, “pour forth speech,” and continually “reveal knowledge” in a way that is more universally audible even than the inspired books. It would be hard to state it more strongly than the biblical authors do. The Apostle Paul famously asserts in the opening chapter of Romans that God’s existence, eternal power and nature, and even His holiness are “clearly seen” in the things He has made—so clearly that those who refuse to acknowledge Him or who turn to the creation in worship are “without excuse” for their idolatry.
Even Christian thinkers best known for their high view of the Bible extoled the clarity of general revelation and the importance of natural theology. In his commentary on the Psalms, John Calvin writes:
“When we behold the heavens, we cannot but be elevated, by the contemplation of them, to Him who is their great Creator; and the beautiful arrangement and wonderful variety which distinguish the courses and station of the heavenly bodies, together with the beauty and splendour which are manifest in them, cannot but furnish us with an evident proof of his providence. Scripture, indeed, makes known to us the time and manner of the creation; but the heavens themselves, although God should say nothing on the subject, proclaim loudly and distinctly enough that they have been fashioned by his hands: and this of itself abundantly suffices to bear testimony to men of his glory.”
As Dr. Haines acknowledged, the theology produced by reflecting on nature cannot save anyone. It can only take sinful human beings so close to the Divine throne—certainly not close enough to see that the One who sits upon it is also in another sense Three, or that a Nazarene is among them. That’s what special revelation is for.
But living as we do in a time when many claim not to hear the works of God declaring His glory, it is vital to remind ourselves how seriously Christians in past centuries took natural theology, and follow their example. God is not hiding. He wants to be known. He has revealed Himself in ways so obvious that it takes waxy plugs of sinful self-delusion to drown out His song.
As much pressure as we sometimes feel in a secular age to “prove” that our faith is rational, we must never forget that we are not the ones working overtime to muffle reality. Suppressing the knowledge of the truth is hard work, and it’s not very rewarding. It leaves behind a world that no longer sings, and worse, is no longer worth singing about.
There’s much more to natural theology than that, and my conversation on Upstream with Dr. David Haines is a great invitation to go deeper. His book, “Natural Theology: A Biblical and Historical Introduction and Defense” may change the way you think about creation, church history, and Scripture, itself. Yet this vast and oft-neglected branch of Christian wisdom has a message as simple as the spontaneous praise of anyone who has ever seen a sunrise and credited its true Maker: God isn’t hiding. And neither should we.
Is Scripture our only source of knowledge about God? Shane welcomes Dr. David Haines, author of “Natural Theology: A Biblical and Historical Introduction and Defense,” to explain how God has revealed Himself to all mankind outside of the pages of the Bible.
Shane welcomes producer Wayne Stender to ask a host of questions after his interviews with Dr. Catherine Wheeler and Dr. Tara Sander Lee. The two walk further upstream to ideas that guide the Pro-life movement, and how a view of philosophy, theology, and even eschatology impact how we process and engage the pro-life movement.
Why do women choose to have abortions? In one sense, it’s a question with as many answers as there are women who seek abortions. One may have found herself with a so-called “crisis” pregnancy, unattached to the father and unprepared to be a mother. Another may feel she has too many children, already. Another may have received a frightening prenatal diagnosis and not want that kind of life for her child. Another may have been the victim of a sexual assault. But I think there’s a belief that unites most or all of these stories: the belief that certain lives are not worth living, and that some whose lives have already begun would be better off dead.
Writing this week at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher shares a letter he received from a reader describing a twenty-two year-old woman seeking sterilization. This young woman was going to the gynecologist to get a tubal ligation because “the world is too awful and…no more children should be brought into this hellhole.”
I’ve heard and read similar sentiments on many occasions from fellow millennials and gen-zers. They say things like, “I don’t want to mess up a kid as badly as I was messed up,” and “I don’t have the time or the money to be a parent,” or “I don’t want to pass on my psychological issues,” or “The world is already overpopulated and the environment dying.” No matter what the reason, these young people’s back-of-the-napkin calculations on parenthood yield the same answer: that allowing life would be irresponsible. As with the women who decide death is preferrable for their child, these young people renouncing parenthood think non-existence would be preferrable.
Obviously, the two situations are different in important ways. It is not always right to bring a child into existence. It is always wrong to kill one who already exists. And today’s culture is saturated with the assumption that sex is a birthright—a recreational or self-expressive activity in which everyone has the right to engage without reference to its purposes or consequences. The idea that deliberately childless sexual relations are easy comes naturally to a 21st-century mind. The same assumption would have sounded like reckless idiocy to someone more than fifty years ago. Our technology has loosened, not tightened, our grip on reality.
There’s also an undeniable element of selfishness. Raising children is difficult. They restrict your freedom. They make demands on your time, your energy, and even your body. They make it exceptionally difficult to pursue self-expression and pleasure as your central goals in life. It would be easy to dismiss both abortion and intentional childlessness as mere products of self-centered hedonism. Many people do. But I think that’s a mistake. Selfishness certainly plays a part in these decisions, but I believe there’s a much deeper worldview assumption at work, here.
The choices to foreswear children and to abort them because their lives would supposedly be too miserable both confuse kindness with love, and happiness with meaning. To say that a child would be better off dead or non-existent because of how hard the world is or how difficult its life would be is to assume that kindness is the highest virtue. It is to treat a child—actual or theoretical—as an animal; as something without intrinsic moral worth, whose comfort overrules its value as an individual.
It is certainly kind to put suffering animals out of their misery or to prevent their existence through sterilization. This is why we spay, neuter, and sometimes euthanize our pets. This is a true kindness, because while animals are not moral agents, they do have senses. And when pain overwhelms pleasure and nothing can reasonably be done to relieve it, a quick death is often kind.
But humans are moral agents and do have intrinsic moral value, as well as senses. We are the sort of creatures whose natures transcend sense experience, who can connect those experiences into narratives, and whose decisions in response to those narratives are the raw material of virtue. That’s why it not only makes sense to allow human beings to live knowing they will suffer physically or emotionally, but why we find the greatest meaning in stories about redemptive suffering. Humans exist on a plane where pain and pleasure are not the highest realities or goods.
It will surprise no one at this point that I want to quote C. S. Lewis. His discussion of the difference between kindness and love in “The Problem of Pain” applies wonderfully to this question. Lewis thinks there is something “more stern and splendid” in love than in mere kindness. The former will tolerate pain and suffering in order to bring its object into maturity and glory. The latter will settle for much lesser goods:
“…Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering…It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most memorable sense.”
If it is true that love transcends mere kindness—that the moral thriving and eternal good of a being like a human child are more important than its comfort—then the excuses so common today for aborting or renouncing children (even children born with disabilities or into difficult circumstances) fall flat. No child is better off dead, and even a world with political or environmental challenges deserves the chance and hope embodied in a new image-bearer of God.
Believing this won’t often lead us down the easiest path. It may compel us to do the hardest things imaginable—like bringing a child into a world that is less than ideal, or putting that child’s needs permanently ahead of our own. But the “intolerable compliment” of intrinsic moral value is the very thing that makes us human. And that is why choosing life is more than just a recognition of what the unborn or unconceived baby is. It is a recognition of what we all are.
Shane welcomes two pro-life voices to explain why children our society wants to discard deserve protection—even if they test positive for a disorder or simply weren’t planned. Dr. Tara Sander Lee with the Charlotte Lozier Institute reveals the inaccuracy of prenatal screening, while Colson Fellow Kerson Hering tells her incredible story of being rejected by her family but called by God to defend the unborn.
I have a great appreciation for apologetics. Scripture calls us to “always be ready to give a reason” for the hope that is in us, and many apologists have done this admirably, defending the claims of the Christian faith with evidence, reason, and appeals to necessary truths. But we must never confuse our defense of the faith with the faith, itself. A worldview can’t consist only of arguments against competing claims any more than a city can consist only of a wall.
There was a time when no one needed to state this truth. When Christianity was the dominant or in many cases the official view in the West, no Christian had to defend his entire public theology, ethics, or lifestyle in every conversation. Two people could meet and simply assume certain shared ideas, like the existence of God, the reality of moral truth, and the unique place of mankind in the universe. Dialogues and even debates could begin much more quickly because participants weren’t forced to “lay again the foundations.”
All that has changed. Living in what Charles Taylor calls a “secular age,” we can no longer assume any shared beliefs with those we meet. Conversations can’t begin without working out what the person opposite from us believes about things as basic as the soul, the existence of objective right and wrong, or the fixity of male and female. All of these are now in dispute, which means we must embark on an inventory of what our neighbor, coworker, or date believes. It’s exhausting. And it trains us to shift our posture from always being ready to give a reason for our hope to always crouching with our apologetic shield at the ready, prepared to do battle over every tenet of our worldview. That is, if we don’t just choose to quietly act like secularists.
In that apologetic crouch, Christians often find ourselves fortifying our worldview. “Wouldn’t this belief be easier to defend if I simplified it?” “Wouldn’t this passage of Scripture be more defensible if I took only the most minimal interpretation?” “Do I really need that fourth Gospel to defend the Resurrection?” “Wouldn’t Christianity be tougher to climb and conquer if I sanded off all its rough edges?”
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, we begin choosing what we believe or are willing to publicly profess based not on what Scripture, reason, and tradition teach, but on what’s apologetically expedient—what would be easiest to defend against secular attacks. Compromise by compromise, our Christianity becomes nothing but a response to critics. Brick by brick, our worldview becomes nothing but a wall.
Here’s the problem: The easiest belief to defend isn’t always the right one, because a skilled scoffer can make even true things sound ridiculous. C. S. Lewis knew this. In “The Silver Chair,” he vividly illustrates it when the Green Lady—a subterranean enchantress “of the same crew” as the White Witch—places the four main characters under a spell that clouds their minds. The spell (a barely-disguised metaphor for secularism) induces a stupor that causes them to question even things they know by experience. The Witch, pressing her advantage, questions the existence of the sky, the sun, the stars, and the trees. She convinces the heroes that Narnia is a figment of their imaginations, and that even Aslan is merely their childish embellishment of a house cat.
In the end, Puddleglum breaks the spell by resorting to an argument from desire—by baldly asserting that the Witch’s world of skepticism is simply boring compared with the sunlit world he half remembers but has given up defending. His apologetic walls breached, he chooses to go on professing the faith in defiance of her atheistic onslaught. And we cheer, not only because we admire ‘Glum’s courage, but because we have also seen the sky.
In my discussion this week with Natasha Crain on Upstream, she pointed out how difficult it is to believe the Christian faith when we live in a culture that constantly forces us to defend it. We can take very little for granted. We really are different—cutting against the grain, swimming upstream—and being “faithfully different” takes a lot of work.
That’s why when apostates who “deconstruct” their faith express a sense of “happiness” and “relief,” we shouldn’t be surprised or impressed. Of course they are relieved! For the first time in their lives, they are enjoying the ability to assume beliefs they don’t need to defend constantly. They have stopped swimming against the cultural current and are lazily drifting. They have decided the entire faith is indefensible and surrendered it. And when surrender puts you in the majority, it can be thrilling. But it doesn’t make you right.
Christians who know that there is more to reality than our debate with secularism shouldn’t let secular doubts reshape what we believe. Nor should we respond to those doubts by wrapping the faith in apologetic razor-wire or jettisoning any doctrine we worry might present a soft target. Many of Christianity’s most beautiful and profound truths are not at all defensible in front of an unregenerate audience. There are palaces, gardens, art galleries, and cathedrals within our faith’s apologetic walls—treasures meant to enrich the faithful, not to repel invaders. When we try to fortify these treasures, we often ruin them. When we give them up in order to dodge secular criticism, we give up the very things our walls were built to protect. The real danger of living in a secular age may not be exvangelical surrender, but apologetic militarization. In our zeal to defend the faith from doubts, we may leave our children with a doubt-shaped faith.
That’s why I think being “faithfully different” in a secular age means insisting on truths our neighbors can’t believe we believe, and not feeling compelled to prove each to their satisfaction. Apologetics isn’t the sum of the faith any more than a wall is the sum of a city. In some ways, the wall is the most superficial part of the city, and only exists for the sake of what’s inside. We must never forget that.
I hope you’ll listen to my discussion with Natasha Crain about her new book, “Faithfully Different.” Our talk and her book will help you understand the cultural pressure you feel each day to hide your beliefs, and encourage you to live them out confidently, instead. And if you’re like me, you’ll feel a strange relief in realizing that truth doesn’t hang in the cultural balance, and it is perfectly capable of self-defense.
Order Faithfully Different by Natasha Crain>>
Shane welcomes Dr. Catherine Wheeler, an OB/Gyn who once performed abortions but is now using her story and her training as a Colson Fellow to champion the lives of the unborn.
Shane welcomes author, blogger, and podcaster Natasha Crain to discuss her new book, “Faithfully Different,” an accessible guide to help Christians understand our “worldview minority” status and what it looks like to joyfully live out our beliefs, even when most people don’t share them.
Pre-order "Faithfully Different" at: https://natashacrain.com/faithfully-different-is-now-available-for-pre-order/
Shane invites producer Wayne Stender to ask questions to clarify some terms and concepts he used in the interview with Colin Redemer.
I once came across a guy on Twitter who made a convicting observation. He wrote: “I have a device in my pocket containing the sum of all human knowledge…I use it to view pictures of cats, and start arguments with strangers.” That really stuck with me. The gap between the power of the Internet as a concept and our actual use of the Internet is staggering. I expect it would make an extraterrestrial explorer who was seeking intelligent life on this planet turn his ship around after observing what little use we make of this modern marvel of communication.
We spend a lot of time criticizing the dangers and dark side of the Internet. I’ve personally spent a lot of time doing this, including on this podcast. The Internet’s potential is on par with the printing press, the telegraph, and broadcasting. In terms of sheer data transmitted, it dwarfs all of these world-changing inventions by several orders of magnitude. But unlike the printing press, most of its output is not Bibles or copies of Pilgrim’s Progress. The top few most trafficked websites in the world are porn sites, and the competition isn’t that close. The Internet is the medium of near limitless harassment, slander, disinformation, and distraction. It has created an entire dark industry of child sexual abuse.
And yet—as I sat at a coffee shop last month writing a final paper for class, I needed to know the dates of a theologian’s birth and death. I Googled them and added them to my paper. The process took maybe five seconds. And it caused me to stop for a moment and reflect. How long would that same process have taken me fifty years ago, assuming the information wasn’t handy in my very heavy textbook? I would have had to drop what I was doing, drive fifteen or twenty minutes to the nearest library, search for the right section (either an encyclopedia or books on Reformation history), hope they were checked in, search for the theologian, and either write down the date along with other careful notes, or check out another heavy book so I wouldn’t have to return for the next theologian’s dates and thoughts.
The Internet made all that unnecessary. Wikipedia even cited its source, so there was little chance of error.
But does being able to find information quickly for grad school papers outweigh the oceans of evil sloshing across cyberspace? I don’t know. What I can say is that it’s clear to me the Internet is included in the “every square inch” over which Abraham Kuyper said Christ claims sovereignty. And it can be redeemed in ways that go far beyond cutting down research time. It seems to me its potential to revolutionize the pursuit of knowledge is something we don’t yet fully appreciate. And I’m not just talking about online courses.
In my discussion with Colin Redemer, vice-president of the Davenant Institute, we talked about his prediction that institutional higher education is due to collapse. In response, he and others have embarked on an audacious project to provide ultra-affordable, rigorous instruction outside of traditional institutions.
The project he’s involved in is called Davenant Hall, and Colin wasn’t shy about claiming he’d pit his graduates against the students of any seminary or university in the country. Davenant Hall, of course, relies heavily on the Internet for instruction. Many colleges and seminaries have done the same, especially since COVID. You could describe much of what they do as “online courses.” But to me, it’s a
proof-of-concept for something even more radical—something reminiscent of what William Tyndale envisioned when he set out to put the Scriptures in the hand of the lowliest plough-boy.
The Internet has made knowledge universally accessible. With the exception of a thin stratum of books and media too recent to be in the public domain, virtually the entire corpus of human writing is available for free online. And thanks to our mobile devices, it’s available at the tap of a finger, wherever we go. If you’re willing to pay a few dollars a month, you can have access to all those more recent works and even scans of titles too obscure to have earned an eBook or audiobook.
Using only YouTube audiobooks and Librivox, I’ve enjoyed Augustine, Athanasius, Anselm, Calvin, Dickens, Jack London, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, George Orwell, J. Gresham Machen, and a score of others. There’s an eleven-hour reading of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” if you’ve got a big road trip ahead of you. And that’s to say nothing of the free PDFs, ebooks, and searchable scans on Google Books.
Maybe most importantly, the Bible itself is available online in literally every translation, with interlinear versions, word searches, and more historical commentaries than you could read in a lifetime. For the especially committed there are free courses in biblical Hebrew and Greek. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Christians in times past would have risked their lives to have this kind of access to God’s word.
What’s my point? The Internet’s democratization of knowledge means that traditional institutions are no longer the only means of receiving an education. Provided you can find a wise guide who can tell you what to read and help you make sense of it, vast swaths of knowledge are available at a click. It may be possible to become better educated through picking brains and reading carefully than through paying large sums of money for traditional courses. If Colin is right, letters behind your name may one day means less than your ability to demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about. And the Internet has, at least in theory, made that possible to anyone with a computer.
I can’t say for certain what the future holds for higher education, especially the kind that qualifies a Christians to stand in a pulpit or teach theology. But I can say with confidence that Christ places no boundary-markers on His authority, and He is not willing to surrender to Satan any product of human ingenuity—least of all one with the redemptive potential of the Internet. My conversation with Colin on Upstream helped open my mind to the innovation Christians could undertake as traditional academia falters. But it also reminded me never to underestimate the good God can do through unexpected means—yea, even the invention that brought us the cat video.
COVID has exposed the rot and bloat in higher education.
Shane welcomes Colin Redemer, vice-president of the Davenant Institute and head of an innovative new seminary alternative called Davenant Hall to explain how Christians are called to love God with our minds, even while institutions of learning collapse.
Upstream producer, Wayne Stender, asks Shane to explain some of the complex terms he and Dr. Moreland used in their conversation earlier this week. Shane helps define traditions in viewing miracles and unpacks some details about prayer that he mentioned in his weekly reflection.
Welcome to Upstream. I’m Shane Morris, and I want to reflect further on this week’s conversation.
In our discussion of his new book, A Simple Guide to Experience Miracles, philosopher J. P. Moreland and I explored a number of subjects that mystify and fascinate Christians. Foremost among them, whether miracles still take place today, and if so, how we can experience them. But in the process, we touched on a question I have long pondered, and which anyone interested in miraculous answers to prayers will inevitably confront: the question of petitionary prayer, itself.
When the subject of prayer comes up in evangelical circles, it’s common to hear throwaway lines like these: “We don’t pray in order to change God. We pray in order to change ourselves.” But while prayer certainly does sanctify us and shape our wills emotions, I think this view fails to do justice to the many biblical examples of (and commands to practice) petitionary prayer.
For example, Abraham interceded with God on behalf of Sodom (Gen 18:22-33). Moses pled mercy for disobedient Israel (Ex 23:10-12). Elijah prayed and God shut up the heavens and then later sent rain (1 Kings 18:41). Jesus encouraged us to “ask and it will be given to you…” (Matt 7:7), promised that “if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” (Matt 18:19), and committed still further that “whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:22-25).
Could all of these biblical examples and promises be nothing more than condescensions to our finitude—a type of accommodated language for readers not yet prepared to accept that our petitions never influence God or change His intentions for this world? “Is not the blessing of prayer simply the influence it exercises upon ourselves?” asks Dutch Reformed theologian Andrew Murray, echoing that popular but deeply unsatisfying evangelical truism.
I want to suggest that the answer is “no.” Christians have reason to believe that “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16). Prayer changes the world, bringing about providential blessings, miracles, and even salvation. It does this as one of God’s chief means for realizing His will in time, involving us in His own Trinitarian life and work, and teaching us to relate to our Father as Jesus did in His human nature.
Pascal said that “God instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.” Prayer is among those “second causes” which the Westminster Confession assures us the eternal decree of God does not abolish but rather establishes.
This accords with how most people naturally read Scripture. It makes little sense for Luke to tell us, for example, that the church was praying fervently for Peter’s release from prison if the prayers of the saints had nothing to do with the miracle that followed! (Acts 12:1-19) There are probably hundreds of such examples in the Bible of what Christians ordinarily call “answered prayer.” But how can God “answer” prayer? How can we speak of prayer causing God to do anything, since He is already infinitely wise, infinitely good, and knows everything?
The first part of the solution is to realize that our prayers don’t surprise God. “Before a word is on my tongue,” wrote the Psalmist, “you, LORD, know it completely.” (Psalm 139:4) God knows what we are going to ask Him before we ask it. And at least since Augustine, Christians have explained this perfect knowledge by suggesting that God exists outside of time.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis explains what theologians mean by “outside of time”: God’s life is not a succession of moments, like ours. All moments, past, present, and future are part of His unbounded “now.” God thus has all eternity in which to listen to “the split-second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.”
But the doctrine of God leads us much “further up and further in.” For the Creator, Sustainer, and First Cause of the universe can’t merely comprehend an event, whether past, present, or future. Everything that occurs necessarily does so by His permission or decree. When we speak of God’s activity in the world, even amazing and life-changing activity, we are very often speaking of Westminster’s “second causes.”
Prayer is one of those second causes—and therefore a means through which God accomplishes His will in time. Lewis realized this, and compared prayer with the thousands of other ways our creaturely activities fulfill the designs of the Almighty. God could miraculously heal our bodies without food or cell division, feed us without agriculture, support us without income, teach us without professors, and convert us without missionaries. He seldom chooses to do so. God, wrote Lewis in his essay, “On the Efficacy of Prayer, “seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.”
Lewis even ventures to suggest that God’s condescension to ordain, hear, and respond to our prayers may be part of His ongoing act of creation. Nevertheless, it is an act in which we participate as second causes. Human prayers, writes Fred Sanders in “The Deep Things of God,” “become a real factor in God’s rule of this earth.”
This realization should move us not only to pray, but to pray with God’s redemptive purposes and promises in mind. “We see nothing is set before us as an object of expectation from the Lord,” writes Calvin, “which we are not enjoined to ask of Him in prayer, so true it is that prayer digs up those treasures which the Gospel of our Lord discovers to the eye of faith.”
Nevertheless, petitionary prayer can look like a puppet act if God merely uses us to ask Him for things He has already decided to give. Andrew Murray writes that one of the greatest challenges to petitionary prayer is God’s own perfection, independence, and sovereignty: “Is He not the Infinite Being, who owes what He is to Himself alone, who determines Himself, and whose wise and holy will has determined all that is to be? How can prayer influence Him, or He be moved by prayer to do what otherwise would not be done?”
As with so many other dilemmas in Christian theology, the answer here lies in the Trinity. The New Testament portrays prayer in a starkly Trinitarian light. As Sanders points out, the Father knows what we need before we ask (Matt 6:8), Christ pleads our case before His Father (Heb. 4:15-16), and the Holy Spirit translates our prayers into groanings too deep for words (Rom 8:26). We pray “along the grain” of the Trinity, even if we don’t realize we’re doing it.
Far from a puppet master who has crafted creatures to speak His own words back to Him, the three-Personal God welcomes human supplicants into courts already ringing with the words of Father to Son and Son to Father, and with the Holy Spirit in answer from both.
“When we pray,” writes Sanders, “we are joining that conversation. We have been invited to call on God as Father, invited by a Spirit of sonship that cries out, ‘Abba, Father,’ as the eternal Son does.” We do this, he is careful to note, “in an appropriately lower, creaturely way.” But even our creaturely prayers mimic those of the Son in His humanity, who prayed almost without ceasing. And just as the Father was pleased to give the Son what he asked (as in John 17), so He is pleased to give us what we ask in the Son. Indeed, Murray ventures to say that “the prayer of man, coming through the Son, can have effect upon God.”
Nevertheless, in his talk, “Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without a Solution,” Lewis admits that some of the Bible’s bolder endorsements of asking God for things in prayer are tough to square with our experience. After all, our prayers aren’t always answered in the way we hope. Sometimes it is our most desperate prayers that seem most likely to fall on deaf ears. What bothers us most, Lewis suggests, is not God’s refusal to give us what we ask for, but that He told us to ask for anything and evidently did not mean anything. There is “the faintest suspicion of excess in the advertisement…”
But Lewis responds with a surprising observation: Even when we believe our prayers have been answered, we cannot strictly prove a causal link between our prayer, and the answer. In “The Screwtape Letters,” he calls this the “heads I win, tails you lose” dilemma. If our prayers are not answered, we think it proves that petitionary prayer doesn’t work. If they are answered, we see the secondary causes that led to the outcome, and assume it would have happened anyway.
He concludes that prayer must not be the sort of practice we could ever subject to scientific scrutiny. Nor can we conclude, if our prayers go “unanswered,” that there was some moral deficiency in us. Christ Himself met with rejection: “The holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup would pass from Him. It did not.” Indeed, Jesus foresaw and accepted the possibility that his Father’s will might differ from His own. (Matt. 26:39)
Lewis doesn’t think this makes petitionary prayer uniquely mysterious. In fact, this is how all interpersonal relationships involving requests work. He cites the example of an employer who gives an asked-for raise, but might have done so without the request, in order to retain a valued employee. Was the request the cause of the raise? The answer becomes murkier the more intimate the relationship:
“…we ask a woman to marry us. Sometimes we get what we ask for and sometimes not. But when we do, it is not nearly so easy as one might suppose to prove with scientific certainty a causal connection between the asking and the getting. […] are you sure she had not decided to [marry you] already? Your proposal, you know, might have been the result, not the cause, of her decision.”
In prayer, we partake in the most intimate relationship of all—that of creature to Creator. But Scripture invites us to go still further—to deepen this intimacy in ways we would scarcely dare to without permission. According to Jesus’ own instructions, we are to imitate His prayers and His relationship with the Father. “Christians,” writes Sanders, “are people who talk to God like they are Jesus Christ.”
When we follow the Son’s example by addressing God as Father, we not only borrow the vocabulary of a Divine Person—in many ways, we take up His cross.
This seems to have unsettled Lewis. He concludes “The Efficacy of Prayer” by noting that miraculous answers to petitionary prayer seem to grow rarer as Christians mature, and so-called “unanswered prayers” seem to grow more common. No doubt with trembling pen he asks, “Does God then forsake just those who serve Him best?”
His answer, without flourish, is the fully human Jesus Christ, to whose answered prayers we owe our sonship, and to whose faithfulness in the face of unanswered prayer we owe our salvation. If our fate is to share in our creaturely way in the suffering of Christ, we were told to expect this, and to rejoice. (1 Pet. 4:13)
The evangelical cliché that “prayer changes you, not God” expresses part of the truth. Prayer certainly changes us, reshaping our affections, teaching us to trust our Father, and conforming us to the image of Jesus. But a half-truth, taught as the whole truth, is a lie. Prayer is powerful and effective. It is a means by which God governs creation, both miraculously and providentially. It draws us into the triune life of God, Himself, allowing us to petition Him with the very same confidence as His only begotten Son. And perhaps most profoundly, it places us in the sandals of Christ, bringing pleas to the Father which we don’t know how He will fulfill. We shouldn’t attempt to relieve this tension by quantifying or measuring the effectiveness of our prayers, for their power lies precisely in the fact that they are requests of children to their Father. And like a good Father, He loves us, and no matter how He answers, He never misses a word.
Shane welcome philosopher and apologist J. P. Moreland to talk about the nature of miracles and how he believes Christians can and do still experience them. He shares stories from his new book, A Simple Guide to Experiencing Miracles.
Shane welcomes Isaac Horn and Lincoln Mick of the bluegrass/folk band, “The Arcadian Wild” to explore the strange and wonderful power music has to convey truth and remind us who we are as image-bearers. This episode was recorded in-person at the 2021 Wilberforce Weekend in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Shane welcomes singer-songwriter and Anglican priest Josh Bales to chat about how liturgical traditions keep Christmas, the role music plays in celebration, and the longing our secular neighbors have for deeper meaning this time of year.
This is the darkest week of the year, and I’m not a fan. Cold is no fun for me, either. If given the choice, this Florida man would never live above the Mason-Dixon. Snow lost its appeal for me after the first few times every car in Washington, D.C. simultaneously performed the blacktop ballet, and whatever blood-borne antifreeze my friends from New England enjoy was left out of my makeup. But it’s the darkness that really gets me. Knocking off work and finding that the sun has already vanished is a little disheartening, even for those of us who don’t suffer any clinical effects from it. And this is something everyone who lives anywhere but the equator feels it a little, the Sunshine State included.
There’s more going on in the bleak midwinter than just astronomy. I think the solstice has a symbolic relationship with a kind of twilight of the soul. As daytime reaches its annual minimum, and with it outdoor activity, our worlds shrink, and we become more aware of who we really are in relation to the mirror and to each other. The trees and many of the animals fell asleep months ago. We don’t have that luxury. Winter, with its darkness and cold, is a natural picture of death. And not only a picture, but a countdown for each of us. “I have seen many winters,” goes the arcane euphemism for old age. Each winter marks the passing of another year, bringing each of us closer to our own dormition.
Perhaps that’s why Christmas can throw sorrow into sharper relief. If the poor man is poorest in comparison to the rich, then those who don’t see cause for celebration feel it most keenly when everyone around them is celebrating. I knew about this phenomenon and the statistics on it well before this time in 2018, when someone I dearly love took his own life. But now I really understand it. Something I always felt at the back of my chest in December church services when prayers were lifted up for the broken became real to me in a permanent way. Thirty Christmases from now, if the Lord should tarry and grant me old age, I will remember that unnecessary loss as I sing carols with my grandchildren.
Anyone can hear the solemn notes of Christmas in those carols, no matter who you are or what you’ve lost. The haunting strains of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” echo more than Israel’s long wait for her Messiah. As the people who walked in darkness anticipated the first coming of the Light, we groan with a sharper, more urgent pang for His final revelation. We mourn in lonely exile with God’s people of old, and though that carol’s refrain rightly urges us to rejoice, the darkness doesn’t end on December 24th. It’s there at the manger side, and it follows the God-man to Calvary.
That’s why there is a stillness there at the manger that can only be likened to a funeral—a realization that this Infant greeted by angelic exultation was born to die—that the weight of mankind’s sin and the futility beneath which creation itself groans will fall on His shoulders—that a sword will pierce His mother’s heart as a Roman spear pierces His.
Writing in The New York Times, Tish Harrison Warren urges us to anticipate Christmas by facing this darkness, both natural and supernatural. The fast of Advent, she observes, strikes an instructive contrast not just with the feast to follow, but with America’s over-sugared month of festivities and frivolous spending. Step into a liturgical church, she suggests, and you’ll find something precious that has nearly been forgotten: “a countercultural sparseness” marked by long stretches of silence and hymns played in minor keys.
Hymns like my favorite, “What Child Is This?”—especially the rendition by Norweigian singer, Sissel Kyrkjebø: “Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,” it says, “the cross be borne for me, for you. Hail, hail the Word made flesh, the Babe, the Son of Mary.” You can almost hear the carol’s title as an awed question from a passerby as Mary rocks her Newborn to sleep. The answer, even after He is born, is mingled joy and sorrow, light and darkness. What He has come to do is cause for celebration, but it will be a Passover celebration. We are being purchased out of slavery, but at a terrible price. The Lamb has to be slain.
Through it all, the audible twilight of that minor key reminds us of the paradox at the heart not only of Christmas, but of our place in redemptive history. Christians use the year to commemorate the Lord’s life because it is the pattern for our lives. It’s why our mournful anticipation doesn’t conclude with Advent, nor should our plaintive hymnody. We have not fully come into the life that brave little Boy began winning for us in Bethlehem. So we exult with these somber songs and face the darkness with joy, because He is composing new music for the morning.
Whatever the historical case for His actually having come into the world on December 25th, it is also right that we should mark the year’s darkest days with the reminder of our Savior’s first Advent. This celebration, as all celebrations, brings into sharp focus the paradox of redemption—the “not yet” which tempers the “already” of God becoming man and bearing our sins. There is work left to do, there are tears left to cry, and there is blood left to shed.
Thank God that as His Son joined us at the turning point of history, He joins us again in the longest nights of the year. Even though winter has only begun, every day after His birth is a little brighter--literally. We must still weather the remaining darkness of the Curse, no matter where we live. Death will strip our bones as surely as winter strips the trees. But the light and life of the world has come, and has already broken the power of both death and winter. And that light, just like the light outside, is increasing.
Shane welcomes theologian and Fellowship of Ailbe Principal, T. M. Moore, to unpack the rich, Biblical truth found in some of our most beloved seasonal hymns.
Shane and the Davenant Institute’s Dale Stenberg share what Jesus’ Incarnation means to them, and demystify some 50-cent theological terms.
My wife is one of those people who has a subscription to Amazon Prime every four months, when the company tries to tempt her back with another one-month trial. It turns out there’s a good bit of Christian fare on the service, and we occasionally resort to digital sedation for the kids.
Last night’s feature was a cartoon adaptation of the gospels I’d never seen. It looked anime-influenced, and the voice-acting was a tad over-the-top, but it struck me as scripturally sound. While serving up dinner, I caught the scene out of John in which the Sanhedrin plots against Jesus. Cartoon Caiaphas, looking somewhat less impish than he does in most depictions, raises his hand for silence and utters those unwittingly prophetic words: “It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
Here’s what came over me like a thunderclap (which I know I’m risking by writing this): The high priest’s reasoning seemed solid and his intentions noble. Maybe it was the sympathetic visual portrayal of the character—the lack of that familiar hunch and legalistic sneer, more like a pre-fall Saruman than like an emperor Palpatine—that made me rethink his motives. Or maybe it was the influence of good historians in my life this year. Whatever the cause, I could see where Caiaphas was coming from. The crown (or in this case, the ephod) rests heavy, and one can imagine the pressure on a man tasked with mediating between an unruly people and an unforgiving empire.
Then there are the theological excuses the Sanhedrin might have fielded: Jesus wasn’t the first itinerant yokel to proclaim Himself Messiah. They were a dime-a-dozen in first-century Judea, and there was a long and venerable tradition of responding to them with deadly force. Recall as well that Yahweh had spent the better part of a millennium pounding into Hebrew skulls that He was the only true God and that no one should make pictures of Him or claim equality with Him. Israelite kings who forgot this quickly found their nation under new management.
Now imagine that a Man waltzes into Jerusalem who claims to be both the image of the invisible God and equal with Him. Imagine that this Man’s parentage is sketchy and his popularity starting to draw attention from the Italians. And imagine that this Character has just ransacked the Temple market and assaulted several dove-merchants of sterling reputation, ignoring along the way the careful theological reasoning and Sinaitic penumbra you invoked to justify this lobby of lucre. And then imagine, on top of it all, that this Nazarene nuisance unleashes a string of invectives and insults against you and your esteemed colleagues.
What would you have done?
Caiaphas was, of course, wrong—as tragically and damnably wrong as any human being has ever been. My point is that the cosmic regicide he committed didn’t require anything beyond the ordinary endowment of human fear, blindness, and pride. This cartoon was right not to depict him as a ravening goblin because he wasn’t one. He was a man—a very reasonable and logical man by earthly standards. And he—along with Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate—reasoned and logicked himself into murdering God.
Ed Stetzer used to quip on “BreakPoint This Week” that Christians should be comfortable professing things that don’t seem reasonable. “After all,” he would say, “we believe God became a Man, died and rose from the grave, and is returning someday riding a white horse, with a sword coming out of His mouth.” Quibbles about apocalyptic imagery aside, Ed’s point is well-taken. We Christians worship a homeless wonderworker who got Himself killed by winning arguments with canon lawyers. He was born, according to embarrassing records that somehow survived, in a feeding trough. Respectability isn’t in our DNA. If at the heights of medieval scholasticism, ensconced among basilicas, stained glass, and Aristotelian distinctions men who claimed the name of Jesus ever fancied themselves refined, the joke was on them. They were fools—at least by the world’s standards.
Perhaps this is what that itinerant yokel meant when He told His followers, “Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave,” and when He prayed, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” Perhaps if the One whose very nature defines reason, logic, and wisdom resorts to such inversions, we are worse off than we thought. Perhaps there was no room for God in the halls of learning or temples of established piety. Perhaps a stable was His only alternative to judging us immediately.
I’ve benefitted a lot this year from reading and listening to British popular historian Tom Holland. He’s not a believer (yet). But he grasps the paradox at the heart of Christianity. In an interview with Anglican minister and spoken-word poet Glen Scrivener, Holland urges Christians to let our freak flag fly:
“If you’re a Christian, you think that the entire fabric of the cosmos was ruptured by this strange singularity—someone who is a God and a man sets everything on its head. And to say it’s ‘supernatural’ is to downplay it. This is a massive singularity at the heart of things. And if you don’t believe that, it seems to me you’re not really a confessional Christian.”
In my Upstream discussion this week with Dr. Ken Boa, he used the word “anamnesis.” He explained that this term refers to the regular remembrance of God’s mighty acts, especially through Jesus Christ, in the Lord’s Supper and in liturgical seasons like Advent. Part of the purpose of remembering these acts annually is calling to mind and placing before our eyes the strangeness of God’s work. It’s so easy to see creches with their hay, and farm animals, and Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and probably the Magi looking on serenely and forget what a bizarre scene it is. Who in their right mind, unless they had heard from God or been catechized by Christianity, would look at that child in a feeding trough and think, “This is the King of all creation”?
As my children absorb the story of Jesus—either through manger scenes or Amazon Prime trials or through our Scripture reading, I hope they also catch this whiff of otherworldly truth so many skeptics and Sanhedrin have missed. I hope they detect in the gospel’s foolishness a Divine conspiracy to humble the proud and dethrone the mighty. And I pray my heart can grow young enough this and every Christmas to join them beside the manger to learn again what true wisdom looks like.
Shane visits with Dr. Ken Boa to explore the reason and structure of liturgies in the life of Christians. They explore how traditions and rhythms in the faith draw Christians to a deeper understanding and appreciation of Christ, spiritual maturity, and the reason for the seasons.
The lead-up to Christmas was the first time I ever experienced “sehnsucht”—the inconsolable longing not satisfied by anything in this world. I remember the music (especially the minor key stuff), the lights on the tree, the cooling weather (a welcome reprieve in Florida) and the smell of mom’s candles combining to charge the air in our home with expectation. Like good Baptists, we didn’t consciously celebrate Advent, but by Dickens, we kept it in our hearts.
Even at that young age, I understood that what I longed for—what I hoped for—wasn’t in the music, the decorations, the food, or even the plastic dinosaurs wrapped beneath the tree. The object of my desire was in the manger, pictured by a ceramic stand-in whose visitation triggered awe, sadness, and an electrifying sense that a Grand Miracle had taken place.
Years later I learned that for the medieval Church, Advent and Christmas weren’t that big of a deal. Lent and Easter dominated the liturgical calendar, marking the Lord’s triumph over sin and death and mirroring the emphasis of the New Testament. Even so, the rise in prominence of Christ’s birth in worship and imagination seem right to me.
The Resurrection only makes sense in light of the Incarnation. In many ways, the miracle of Christ’s return from the grave is the fulfillment of a promise made by His Incarnation. Having joined Himself inseparably with creation, God the Son could no sooner surrender this world to decay than He could suffer decay, Himself. The Resurrection had to happen, precisely because the Incarnation could not be reversed.
In his appropriately titled “Miracles,” C. S. Lewis calls God donning humanity in Mary’s womb “the Grand Miracle,” and “the central event in the history of the Earth—the very thing that the whole story has been about.” When you understand his atonement theology, remarks like this make sense. Lewis drew heavily on the fourth-century theologian Athanasius, even writing a preface to the Church Father’s masterpiece, “On the Incarnation.” Athanasian themes loom large in “The Perfect Penitent,” the section of “Mere Christianity” in which Lewis unpacks the meaning of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion.
According to Lewis, human beings had gotten ourselves in a pickle with God. And as the responsible party, it fell to human beings to set things right. We would have to pay our debt, which meant repenting perfectly, dying to self, and returning to God. But there was a problem: “…the same badness which makes us need [repentance], makes us unable to do it.” The very sin that places us in God’s debt makes us incapable of paying that debt. We would need God’s help in order to “surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die.” But God, in His own nature, never does such things! Indeed, if the classical theists are correct, God cannot move at all from potency to act. He cannot change. It turns out that “the one road for which we now need God’s leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked.”
“But,” Lewis adds (I imagine after a pregnant pause in the original radio address) “…supposing God became a man.” Such a Person—possessed of the inexhaustible power and holiness of Divinity but clothed in the flesh, blood, and rational animal nature of man—could suffer, submit, change, and die, and do all of these perfectly. As man He could discharge man’s debt by living the life God required and dying the death justice demanded. But as God, He could elevate human nature to something hitherto unimagined: “For He was made man that we might be made God,” writes Athanasius, “and He
manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.”
From this we get a sense of what Lewis means by calling the Incarnation “the Grand Miracle”—the very fulcrum of history. In becoming a man, the Word bridged not only the abyss between holiness and sin but the infinity between Creator and creature. In Jesus, God permanently joined Himself with creation, becoming a creature Himself, united forever with our race as a Kinsman Redeemer, which is Old-Testament-speak for our rich big Brother.
We also get a sense of why the hope and desire of Advent are mingled with sadness. Between the manger and the empty tomb is a horrible cross. We rightly mourn for our Brother as He volunteers his newly-birthed flesh to be torn on our behalf. Yet volunteer it He must. This was, after all, His central reason for becoming human—that by inhabiting a body subject to death, He could exhaust the power of death and destroy the grave from the inside.
In Hebrews 2:14-17, the Incarnation is the miracle that prepares God to stand in our place and die in our stead. His human body and soul give Him the legal and natural right to serve as our substitute: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
Athanasius strengthens the substitutionary element, here, writing: “…thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under the penalty of corruption of death, He gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father,” in order that “all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone,” and “He might turn them again toward incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from the fire.”
In the Incarnation, all our hopes and fears meet, as the carol has it. The solemn joy that sparked longing in my young imagination is a fitting reaction to history’s central event. Far from diminishing Easter, our anticipation of the Grand Miracle of God becoming human during Advent deepens our understanding of Jesus’ identity and sharpens our longing both for His Resurrection and ours. This fast and the feast to follow give us confidence that Christ’s triumph over sin and death will be our triumph, because it reminds us every year that we hope and believe in a God who is not only for us, but also with us.
Shane discusses Christmas and Advent with historian Glenn Sunshine. The two draw a historic line between Christmas and Advent, sharing the theological and historical roots of both markings on the church calendar. They explore the faith-formation that occurs in practicing the rhythms and disciplines that traditionally accompany the season of Advent.
At this point, the “What Would Jesus Do?” slogan seems more at home in a history museum than on a bracelet. This relic of 1990s evangelicalism caught on about the time I was finishing elementary school, and I dutifully joined in the trend and wore the letters in several colors, often to AWANA, until they all fell apart or were lost.
For many who went on to become interested in theology, the WWJD saying became the butt of jokes along with that Christian t-shirt that parodied the Abercrombie and Fitch logo with an allusion to the feeding of the five thousand that said, “A Breadcrumb and Fish,” (go ahead and groan). For me and many others, WWJD became a typical example of Christian bookstore theology. Our much more informed response was that Jesus did stuff we as Christians can’t. He performed miracles, forgave sins, authoritatively interpreted the Scriptures, and died to save the world. Instead of asking “What Would Jesus Do?” we newly-minted theologians explained, Christians should ask, “what did Jesus command us to do?”
Looking back, I’m not so sure that was the right response, and not just because “WDJCUTD” would be harder to remember or fit on a bracelet, and not because obeying Jesus’ commands is at all a bad idea. I actually think our criticism of WWJD was misguided on a more fundamental level. Insisting that Jesus isn’t our ultimate example because we can’t do all the things He did confuses His character with His calling, and more importantly, confuses His humanity with His Divinity.
Jesus’ life was not a screenplay we must follow. That was never what anyone who wore a WWJD bracelet meant by it. They weren’t claiming we must all, as one friend memorably put it, “strive toward a life of singleness, marrying no woman, raising no children, traveling the countryside hanging out with twelve buddies, and getting into trouble with the law.” Charitably, evangelicals in the nineties were saying that we should ask how Jesus would behave if He were in our circumstances, taking into account what we know of His character and commands. And this sort of imitation of Christ as a Person is explicitly taught in Scripture. John 13:13-17, 1 Corinthians 11:1, Ephesians 5:1-2, 1 John 2:6, and 1 Peter 2:21 are just a few examples. The very name “Christian” implies an identification with Christ that goes beyond mere belief or allegiance, reaching to our very persons and characters. We are to be, as I’ve heard it put, “little Christs.”
Second, it’s true that we can’t be God, but no one has ever suggested we can. We are, however, absolutely called to be human in the way God Incarnate was. There’s a big difference. In his “The Wonderful Works of God,” Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck gives an especially helpful reminder of how central Jesus’ humanity was to His mission, and how essential it is to our salvation that we partake of this humanity. In his chapter on Christ’s humiliation, Bavinck points out that Jesus’ three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King are human offices to which we, too, in our appropriate way, are called. He is, as is so often the case, worth quoting fully, here:
“In the unfolding of the image of God, in the harmonious development of all his gifts and power, in his exercise of the three offices of prophet, priest, and king lay the purpose and destiny of man. But man violated this high calling. And that is why Christ came to earth: to again exhibit the true image of man and to bring his destiny to perfect fulfillment. The doctrine of the three offices lays a firm connection between nature and grace, creation and redemption, Adam and Christ. The first Adam is type, herald, and prophecy of the last Adam, and the Last is the counterpart and fulfillment of the first.” (page 316)
If we fail to recognize that Christ was and is the ideal human—not just God with us, but the fulfillment of all that our first father and our whole race were meant to be—we get a Docetic savior. This superhuman phantasm may be instrumental to our salvation, but he is irrelevant to our sanctification. We may claim he spares us from the wrath of God, but he remains wholly alien, offering us no help in repairing our sinful race or reviving this broken creation.
The reason we are right to ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” is that Jesus came not merely to serve as a sacrifice for sin or to issue moral commands, but to personally embody and restore the image of God in man. This is also why the Incarnation matters so much, and why I greatly enjoyed my conversation this week on Upstream with theology professor and podcaster Thomas Price. As we explored the deep meaning of Advent, Dr. Price emphasized that Christ’s role as the Last Adam means He has given us a new way of being human. It makes sense to model our lives after Christ’s because in the truest possible sense, Christ lived our kind of life, and He openly invites us to imitate His obedience.
To anyone who objects that Christ was God, and that it must have therefore been easy for Him, Dr. Price points to the Scriptures, which assure us Jesus was truly man, “made fully like us, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest”—one who “was tempted in every way we are, yet without sin.” And to those who object that Jesus had the power to do the impossible, the Scriptures reply that “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you…” Which means that imitating Christ is not only possible, but for those who share in His Spirit, inevitable.
It turns out that younger me wasn’t as good a theologian as I imagined, and the Christian bookstores weren’t always wrong. “What Would Jesus Do?” is a question that should always be at the front of our minds—even if we no longer wear it on our wrists.
Shane Morris visits with Dr. Thomas Price about Athanasius' On The Incarnation. The pair discuss the significance of Jesus being man and how Advent is an important time for the Christian, and not only to celebrate the birth of Christ.
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Shane welcomes writer and editor Samuel James to help us understand how social media is transforming into a kind of alternate reality, and how disembodied, digital existence—especially when it involves sex, war, and meaningless work—is uniquely destructive to men.
Why do little kids love stories so much? What is it in them that wants a story before bedtime? Why do they listen so intently and question you about every detail? Why is it that whenever you overhear two or three little children on the playground, they’re almost undoubtedly in character as warriors, or princesses, or police officers, or cowboys, or magical beings? Why do they so naturally, with no help from adults, step into the roles of characters in their own spontaneous stories?
Well, it turns out all that play and storytelling has a serious purpose, and may even be essential to transforming an infant’s mind into the mind of adult. Tracy Gleason, professor of psychology at Wellesley College, summarizes the substantial research on the relationship between make-believe and “a child’s developing creativity, understanding of others and social competence with peers.”
“Imaginary play,” she writes, “could encourage social development because children are simultaneously behaving as themselves and as someone else. This gives them a chance to explore the world from different perspectives, and is a feat that requires thinking about two ways of being at once, something that children may have difficulty doing in other circumstances.”
Imaginary play exercises one of the mental muscles that likely sets us apart from animals: so-called “theory of mind,” or our ability to project our self-awareness onto others and imagine what life must be like from their perspective. The idea that others are not merely furniture in our sensory environment but have an inner life much like our own is a deceptively large cognitive leap. After all, we’ve never occupied anyone else’s mind, and never will. We have only our own experience to go off. Yet without making this leap, human beings could never have true relationships with each other. When children assume the role of a character from a movie or book or even one they’ve invented, they are establishing the rudiments of culture and society, and even preparing their hearts to receive and obey the Golden Rule.
Story-based play emerges from theory of mind. It is what happens when children realize there are other characters besides themselves that share in the experiences and limitations of their world. It’s also why, if you listen closely beside the playground, you will hear them pausing their games incessantly to argue about those rules.
“No, your superpower is fire, mine is water.” “We’re both orphans, but we aren’t sisters.” “Velociraptor is faster than T. rex!” “The princess escaped—the bad guys didn’t find her.”
As Gleason puts it, “…some research suggests that children engaging in social pretend play spend almost as much time negotiating the terms and context of the play as they do enacting it.”
I’ve even heard my children—particularly my most detail-oriented son—giving voices to military action figures and anthropomorphized Hot Wheel cars, who hotly negotiate the terms of their imaginary worlds.
Yet while stories are correlated with and probably essential for their growth and education, children aren’t the only ones who love a good tale. Adults since the dawn of recorded history have told their own stories about the origins, meaning, and ultimate destiny of our world. Most of all, they’ve told stories about their place in the world, and what it means to be a hero, rather than a villain. We think of the
Enūma Eliš, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the exhaustive visual tales of Egyptian gods and their mischief, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf, and of course, the Bible.
For Christians, the fact that the Bible contains the true plot of human history is no impediment to its also being a marvelous story. The opposite, in fact. As C. S. Lewis puts it, “…the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened…” If it’s true that stories are an essential part of how human beings learn, grow, and become virtuous, then it shouldn’t surprise us that when God set out to reveal Himself to fallen man, He did so not with a bullet-pointed list of doctrinal propositions, but with a story—one complete with danger, intrigue, murder, romance, long quests, courage, and self-sacrifice.
I suspect it’s very possible we would have no hope of learning the most important moral and spiritual lessons in life without stories, both factual and imaginary. I think of one of my favorite movies, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Toward the middle of the film, the discouragement of George Bailey, particularly for a man who can imagine feeling his disappointment with life, is crushing. He really does seem to have gotten the short end of the stick, to have been discarded by the world despite all his sacrifice for others. You sympathize with his desire to give up. If at that moment the film stopped and rolled a bulleted list of reasons why George Bailey is actually a blessed and rich man, why his future is bright, and why he should thank God for his wonderful life, audiences would scoff and walk away disappointed. And rightly so—even if all the bullet points were true.
But that’s not what we get. We get the second half of the film, in which George Bailey enters a make-believe world where he was never born. He is granted the wish of Job, and for one terrible night, lives in a story where he was never a character. He is appalled and grieved by the results, and realizes through the medium of story how richly God has worked through his life to bless others, to hold greed in check, and to bring irreplaceable joy into the world. By the end of this brief runtime, we have undergone an emotional and spiritual transformation of our own. The power of one man’s story has taught us something no amount of didactic instruction could.
This gets to the heart of what I discussed this week on Upstream with the CiRCE Institute’s Heidi White. Stories belong at the heart of education, no matter how old we are, because they are how humans put flesh on the bones of fact. They are the medium and language of meaning—truth made incarnate. And if the goal of education is to form virtuous men and women, then the quality of the education we give our children depends largely on the types of stories we tell them.
I hope you’ll listen to my conversation with Heidi, and I hope it inspires you to honor the imaginations of the children in your life—not only because it’s how they learn and grow, but because no matter how old we get, you and I will never outgrow the classroom (or the playground) of storytelling.
Classical Christian educator and CIRCE Institute contributor Heidi White joins Shane at the Anselm Society’s “Imagination Redeemed” conference to explain why reading the great stories to your children can awaken them to moral truth.
In Show References
The Anselm Society: www.anselmsociety.org
Circe Institute: https://www.circeinstitute.org
Foreign affairs are a new beat for the Upstream podcast, and one with a complicated relationship to worldview. The idea that ideas can affect the fortunes of nations isn’t a new one, but it is a tricky one to trace out. As I talked with Pastor Jean-Lubin Beaucejour and Darrow Miller about the plight of Haiti, I was reminded of two equal but opposite errors we all need to guard against when we start asking why this nation—and others—seem stuck in perpetual failure.
The first mistake is to approach the question as materialists. A lack of resources, money, or manpower, or opportunity are the reason Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. This is how classical Marxists approach the world, seeing in economic disparities, political revolutions, and even religion itself nothing but the consequences of material conditions and motives.
But this approach falters in cases like Haiti, a land rich in natural resources, bordered by another nation (the Dominican Republic) with a per capita income six or seven times higher, and saturated in foreign assistance, both in the form of food and billions of dollars of aid—enough since 2010 to give every man, woman, and child in Haiti almost a year’s income.
It’s been over 200 years since Haitians were slaves to the French. Undoubtedly, that legacy lives on in a thousand types of brokenness and deprivation. But it is just too simplistic to attribute the country’s woes solely to an institution that ended centuries ago. In the same way, it’s simplistic to blame Haiti’s condition on the admittedly terrible natural disasters its people have endured. Other countries, including its immediate neighbor, have weathered similar disasters. Yet they recovered. They rallied. Haiti has not.
No, this impoverished country does not lack for material means to rise from its present condition. It has been the recipient of more intensive and sustained aid than just about any other nation. And despite all this, conditions in Haiti have measurably deteriorated in the last decade. Something beyond material goods is missing.
The second mistake is to approach Haiti’s plight—and the plight of similarly impoverished nations—as merely spiritual. After my conversation with Darrow Miller in particular, I received a message from a thoughtful acquaintance who added to my understanding of Haiti’s spiritual past, and reminded me that while worldviews certainly matter, their influence is subtle, complicated, and mediated by politics and culture. Miller brought up the Bwa Kayiman Vodou ceremony that many of the Haitian people themselves look back on as their nation’s declaration of independence. You can read the Wikipedia entry on this 1791 event and marvel, as I did, at the well-documented and eerie details, including the mysterious prophetess and the drinking of a pig’s blood. It’s easy to see why so many foreign missionaries over the years, and even a large percentage of the Haitian population, believe that their nation won its independence by making a pact with the Devil.
I’m not ready to dismiss this idea as bigotry or superstition, as many secular academics do. Even so, there’s an important caution, which I think came through in my interviews, but is worth reiterating:
Believing that Haiti is under some kind of national curse for an event that happened 240 years ago is not the same as accepting that the beliefs behind that event are still crippling Haiti today.
The friend I mentioned earlier sent me an essay published by the Social Science Research Council in 2010 that made exactly this point. The author, Bertin M. Louis, a cultural anthropologist at Washington University in Saint Louis, argues that it’s simplistic and dangerous to “scapegoat” a Vodou ceremony from so long ago for modern Haiti’s disorder. He’s not writing from a spiritual perspective, and I’m sure he and I wouldn’t agree on everything, but he makes the valid point that more recent events in Haiti’s history probably have far more to do with the country’s present condition. Events like “the multimillion frac indemnity Haiti paid to France, beginning in the nineteenth century, so that France wouldn’t invade Haiti after the Haitian Revolution…the period when the Duvalier dictatorship ruled Haiti through fear and violence, while siphoning millions of dollars of taxes and international aid for itself.” Because of such abuses, Louis notes that “the percentage of the Haitian population living in extreme poverty rose from 48 percent in 1976 to 81 percent in 1985.” It was under these corrupt dictatorships, not under the original ex-slave republic, that Haiti became “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.” When John Stonestreet spoke on BreakPoint on Tuesday about Haiti’s “worldview problem,” he was less concerned with long ago religious devotion than he was with what Haitians believe today, and the kind of culture those beliefs reinforce. And Vodou inarguably plays a part in shaping the Haitian worldview, forming as The Guardian put it, “the soul of the Haitian people” even to this day. As John says, “These beliefs lead to ‘a culture of bribery and corruption,’ and ‘feed an attitude of hopelessness and despair.’ When fatalism reigns in a worldview, reinforced by a seemingly unpreventable string of national bad luck, people seek merely to survive the whims of droughts, earthquakes, and floods, rather than prepare for them.”
I think this insight is the key to navigating between the twin errors of materialism and superstition when it comes to grappling with the problems Haiti faces, and when it comes to praying for that nation in an informed and meaningful way. As that friend pointed out to me, the Devil is absolutely at work in this world, but he usually attacks countries through the means of political corruption, cultural stagnation, and institutional mistrust. If there is a curse on Haiti, it has much more to do with leaders who would rather line their pockets than help their people, with gangs who would rather claim their territory than bring order to their island, and with communities stuck in cycles of dependence, than it does with who drank pig’s blood in 1791.
For me, this is also a reminder that Satan has no legitimate claim on this world, and that Jesus is already Lord of Heaven and Earth, having received “all authority” from His father (Matthew 28:18) and commissioned His people to make disciples of all nations. Jesus Himself described His calling using the words of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed…” (Luke 4:18).
As Christians reflect on how to help and intercede for Haiti, we should keep in mind what’s implicit in these passages, and what my guests this week on Upstream make clear: that both the tyranny of Satan and the rule of Christ come about through—and are exhibited in—material means. It’s true that “We struggle not against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12), which means that materialist solutions aren’t enough. Ideas do have consequences. But if we fail to understand how spiritual causes work out through material means, we will be guilty of the over-spiritualized foolishness of the one in James 2:16 who says, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled” without caring for people’s physical needs.
God help Haiti. And God help us think wisely about how He can and will use us to answer that prayer.
Shane visits with Pastor and director of Bethesda Evangelical Mission in Haiti, Lubin Beaucejour in the first of two part special on Haiti. Pastor Lubin gives a "boots on the ground" perspective of the crisis and Haiti and helps us understand the cultural underpinnings.
In the second half of the show, Shane visits with Darrow Miller, co-founder of Disciple Nations Alliance. Darrow has written extensively on poverty, worldview, and culture. He helps identify why Haiti is in the position it is and why aid has been unable to stabilize the nation.
No political movement has taken refuge behind as many excuses as the “pro-choice” movement. Early advocates of legal abortion dismissed unborn babies as “clumps of cells,” and “fish-like”—non-entities without moral value. When the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973, the majority based their justification for legal abortion on a so-called “right to privacy,” together with a now-defunct understanding of fetal viability.
Since then, pro-abortion activists and lawmakers have appealed to a patchwork of often mutually-incompatible arguments. Some have continued chasing the ever-receding line of fetal viability, even as modern medicine moves it as early as 22 weeks. Others have cited extreme and comparatively rare cases like pregnancy by rape and incest. Still others have resorted to a kind of philosophical absolutism about a woman’s “right to choose” regardless of how long she’s been pregnant. Her right trumps the right of the unborn, they insist, even up to the moment of birth.
A few have even argued that the moment of birth makes little difference. Princeton ethicist Peter Singer has famously advocated “post-birth abortions,” claiming that a newborn human has less value that an adult pig or rat. These days, it has even become popular to make arguments that have nothing to do with the value of the unborn or the rights of the mother, like overpopulation, climate change, or the quality of life a baby will supposedly have after birth.
From the outside, it looks very much as if the pro-abortion movement is a conclusion in search of justification. Those who’ve attempted to harmonize half a century of confusing and contradictory arguments for abortion seem to have settled on a bizarre bit of metaphysical hocus-pocus that goes like this: A fetus doesn’t become a baby unless and until the mother decides she wants it. Thus, we can justify the inane spectacle of Healthline.com describing what’s vacuumed out of a uterus at 12 weeks as “tissue” and what’s growing inside the uterus of a happy mother at six weeks as a “baby.” What it is depends on whether it’s wanted. This Schrodinger’s Fetus logic was on bewildering display in a recent piece by Kathleen Walsh at The Cut. Walsh is an avidly pro-abortion writer who says she has long disagreed with her pro-life mom, even though her mom’s convictions are, evidently, the reason she is around to argue. In a lengthy and frustrating transcription of one of their exchanges, Walsh demands that her mother accept this belief that a baby’s ontological status hangs on its mother’s will.
“It’s still kind of a baby,” her mother replies nervously. “Whether you want it or not, doesn’t change what it is. It’s not an ‘it.’ It’s not a blob of cells. It’s skin and heart and organs and things developing.”
“It doesn’t matter, though,” Walsh shoots back, “because if it’s in my body, it’s still part of me. It’s still something that is just mine because it’s in my body. And so I am the only one who gets to decide what whatever is growing in there is worth. It only matters in terms of what the person who is pregnant thinks about it or feels about it because before then, it’s not a person. It’s a theoretical person…I exist because you chose for me to exist. You decided that you wanted me.”
“I’m not sure that’s how life works,” her mother answers. “I don’t think I get to decide when the sun comes up or the sun goes down. I don’t get to decide whether you’re my daughter today or you’re not my daughter tomorrow. I’m pretty sure life begins when life begins.”
Like I said, the exchange is frustrating, marked as it is by the author’s shocking ingratitude for her mom’s love and self-sacrifice. But this young woman’s robotic return to the dogma that a baby is a “theoretical person” until its mother decides to actualize it is indicative of just how far the modern pro-abortion movement has strayed from objective fact. From a scientific perspective, “theoretical person” is gibberish. A baby is what a baby is, whether you think that’s a worthless clump of cells or a human being with rights. The one thing it cannot be is both at the same time—a kind of quantum being in a state of superposition. This is how people talk when their ideology slams into reality and has nowhere else to go.
Yet her mother’s patient efforts to penetrate the pro-abortion boilerplate and grab hold of something human in her daughter reminded me of (you guessed it) something C. S. Lewis wrote.
In “The Great Divorce,” souls who’ve hiked down from Heaven meet ghostly, insubstantial friends and loved ones who’ve taken the bus up from Hell. We listen in on several of these conversations, and they vary from satirical to sad to downright haunting.
The Redeemed, often with the help of angels, are appealing to the lost souls to follow them back up into the glorious country at the foothills of Paradise. But the ghosts, barely visible in that bright, solid country, are continually arguing with their hosts, accusing them of unfair treatment or hypocrisy. All are fixated on some right they think they were denied, some argument they think they won, some wrong they believe was never righted, or some virtue of theirs they believe was never rewarded. Lewis makes it clear that all these ghosts are so fixated on themselves—so blinded to the humanity of others and the mercy of God—that most can no longer love or even desire happiness. They have degraded their own humanity so badly that they’re barely there. The grass is more solid than their feet. We might accurately describe these ghosts as “theoretical people.”
I am not drawing any conclusions about the state or destiny of anyone’s soul. But I am noticing that arguments in support of abortion have become increasingly ridiculous, to the point that those who make them would rather suspend their own personhood than admit what’s right before their eyes.
At several points, Walsh insists that the fetus her mother chose to keep was not her. It was a “theoretical person,” and her mother’s decision to keep her actually made her human. She even speculates about whether her mother would have been better off had she chosen abortion. This dehumanizing ideology leads those who fully embrace it to dehumanize themselves.
It’s gut-wrenching, but it’s far from an anomaly in pro-abortion thinking. This is the end result of a movement that has run out of track, denied logic and sense, and is plowing ahead on sheer will-power and wishful thinking. This is the movement whose claims the Supreme Court will be re-examining next month in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the case involving Mississippi’s fifteen-week abortion ban. It’s far to soon to speculate on the outcome. But no case in recent memory has offered the Court such a clear opportunity to revisit the logic (or illogic) of Roe v. Wade.
In the meantime, it’s never been more important to understand the objective facts about abortion and unborn life. This week, I was pleased to welcome Dr. Tara Sander Lee of the Charlotte Lozier Institute to Upstream to explain what life is like at fifteen weeks, and what abortion even at this early stage involves. I hope you’ll listen and take to heart the realities an increasingly irrational movement seeks to obscure—not only because abortion threatens unborn lives, but because defending abortion is leaving so many questioning the value of their own lives.
Max McLean is bringing Lewis to life for a generation of theatre goers. His Fellowship for the Performing Arts has toured the country bringing C.S. Lewis from the page to the stage.
During Covid, McLean pivoted their in-person presentations to transform one of their most popular presentations to a feature film. The Most Reluctant Convert chronicles the faith journey of C.S. Lewis. Drawing from the canon of Lewis, McLean presents how Lewis realized the need for God in the world, realized his need for a God who so loved the world, and how Lewis stepped from writing his own story to join the Great Narrator in His story.
The Most Reluctant Convert is playing in select theatres around the country today. For details on show times, and to see if theatres near you are extending the performance, visit www.cslewismovie.com
Shane welcomes Dr. Tara Sander Lee, Director of Life Sciences at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Dr. Lee describes what a second-trimester unborn baby is like, and why the Supreme Court’s decision to review a Mississippi law that banned abortion beyond this point could change American history.
I’ve had the same exchange with perhaps half a dozen fellow Christians over the years. It goes like this: I’m talking about the numerous benefits of regular exercise, especially outdoors. I point out, following writers like John Piper, that taking care of our bodies is an essential part of spiritual, not just physical, health. We are embodied spirits, and the street between our moral state and our mental state runs two ways. On hearing this, the other Christian will cock his or her head to one side, consider for a moment, and at last say, “That’s true, the Apostle Paul does write in 1 Timothy 4:8 that “physical exercise is of some value.”
Now, I don’t want to be unfair to anyone, especially not for quoting Scripture. But the idea that we need a prooftext to tell us that exercise is beneficial strikes me as a deeply misguided view of Scripture and knowledge.
Exercise is far from the only example. Consciously or unconsciously, Christians frequently scour the Bible for warrant to accept any number of notions that should be obvious through the use of reason and common sense: eating vegetables gets grounded in Daniel 1, getting plenty of sleep and food in 1 Kings 19, having regular sex with your spouse in 1 Corinthians 7, and not committing homosexual acts is grounded in a smattering of verses throughout the Old and New Testaments.
Now, don’t misunderstand: these verses are here for a reason. Either they record sound advice given to specific recipients, convey narrative details that help us see the miraculous work of God in history, or else they make God’s judgment on certain types of physical behavior explicit. But in virtually all of these cases, the Bible’s human authors assume that what they’re saying is obvious—that they don’t need to teach you this stuff. It’s why Paul uses language like, “Does not even nature teach…” when discussing gender distinctions in worship and talks of “Abandoning the natural use…” when discussing homosexuality.
In other words, before the Apostles and Prophets told us that sleep, healthy diets, exercise, and married sex are good, they expected us to know all of this, already.
This gets to the heart of an issue I’ve noticed for years among Christians: that we seem to look at the Bible as if it were an instruction manual for all of life, or as if we have no other sources of knowledge or truth beyond special revelation. But the Bible itself denies this in places like Romans 1 and 2, where Paul teaches that the existence of God, the type of God He is, and even many of His moral standards are “understood” and “clearly seen” in creation and “written on [our] hearts” in the form of conscience. In other words, what it means to be a good human being is no secret. God didn’t hide His instruction manual for His creatures only in the Hebrew Pentateuch. Paul clearly writes that the requirements of that Law were known to Gentiles who never had the Mosaic Law, making them accountable for disobeying it.
This is arguably C. S. Lewis’ central point in “The Abolition of Man”: that objective moral truths and values are accessible to all human beings, and that knowledge of them is in fact the essential trait of the human race. No wonder Dr. Michael Ward remarked in our recent discussion on Upstream that Lewis wrote “Abolition” to call people not so much to Christianity, but to humanity. He saw scholars and educators in his time denying the objectivity of values, and knew that if this approach caught on, men and women would become virtual slaves to their (or other people’s) passions.
Of course, Lewis knew that full and inward restoration to God’s design could never happen without a miracle—without the supernatural intervention of grace from the Holy Spirit. This grace is precisely what the Bible was written to reveal, supremely in the Person of Christ. And Lewis spent most of his public career defending the tenets of that revelation.
But I wonder if, Christians in our day, like the secular thinkers in his day, have fallen into the mistake of denying the moral truths and values evident in creation—of looking to special revelation for things God has revealed in general revelation. Every time we go looking for a prooftext in Daniel or 1 Timothy to support the benefit of exercise or healthy eating, we’re doing exactly that.
But it’s more serious than just prooftexting. You see, when we treat the Bible as something it’s not, we make the moral teachings of Christianity esoteric, obscure, or eccentric. If homosexual behavior is only wrong because Paul said it in a handful of so-called “clobber passages,” then the reasoning Paul himself invokes for those prohibitions makes little sense. If there’s nothing obviously unnatural about certain behaviors—if they don’t violate a “Tao” accessible to all human beings by virtue of their humanity—then Paul is blowing smoke when he calls these things “unnatural.”
The Bible takes natural truths for granted, and builds on them. This is on purpose. And it’s one reason Christians have historically held that God’s grace is given in order to redeem and perfect fallen nature, not replace it. In the Gospel, Jesus calls us not into some superhuman life alien to the way we were created, but back to full humanity.
By prooftexting value judgments and conclusions that the Bible says are obvious from natural law, we turn God’s commands into rules without reasons. And there’s a cost to misusing Scripture this way.
Outside the Church, our prooftexts have little value, and can even be counterproductive. When we attempt to engage our cultures and influence our governments on the basis of Bible verses alone, we imply that non-Christians must become Christians just to share a society with us. Why shouldn’t they kill unborn babies, redefine the family, or perform sex change operations on kids? What’s the problem, if natural law doesn’t obviously cry out against these things? Worse, when we preach rules without reasons, we disarm God’s Law of its power to convict unbelievers of sin. Why, after all, should anyone feel guilty before God when the only thing that says they’re guilty is a book, and what they’re doing violates no plain, universal morality?
Within the Church, our abandonment of natural law has a more subtle, but no less damaging effect. I often hear complaints about how Christians have “idolized” marriage and family. Books have been written, blogs have gone viral, and sermons have been preached all warning believers against seeking a spouse and children too eagerly, and instead urging them to devote their time to the service of Christ. All this at a time when marriages and births are at a historic low inside and outside churches.
Some writers go so far as to pit the Church directly against the family, portraying the relationship as a zero-sum game in which Christ instituted a supernatural replacement family to eclipse the natural family. I’ve sat with more than one young person agonizing over whether his or her longing for a spouse is unspiritual. And on moral issues as diverse as so-called “celibate gay” identity and artificial reproductive technology, countless Christians have concluded that if the Bible does not prohibit something, it must be permitted.
In reality, this is more confusion between grace and nature, more failure to recognize that not all obvious truths are written in the pages of Scripture. Some are written in our natures and bodies. And ignoring those truths is, as Lewis might have put it, an attempt to be more spiritual than God.
My overall point is this: Christians must stop treating the Bible as something it’s not, and rediscover the natural laws and evident truths which the Bible, itself, assumes and affirms. Not everything requires a prooftext, because the Bible wasn’t written to replace creation. It was written to reveal the One who became human so He could redeem creation. We don’t need a chapter and verse to establish every moral premise any more than we need these to know that exercise is beneficial. Because as Dr. Ward observed, being fully Christian in our thinking is vital, but you can’t be fully Christian without being fully human.
The Abolition of Man is likely C.S. Lewis's most challenging work. It is dense and rich with analysis and direction. Thankfully, Dr. Michael Ward has written a companion to guide readers through Lewis's piece thought-by-thought.
Shane interviews Dr. Ward today, exploring Ward's After Humanity and explaining a few of the finer points of The Abolition of Man.
To receive a copy of Ward's After Humanity and Lewis's The Abolition of Man, visit breakpoint.org/wardstudy and make a donation to the Colson Center of any amount. We'll send you both books plus a companion video series. You will also receive an invitation to attend a Q&A session with Dr. Ward and the Colson Center. Simply visit www.breakpoint.org/wardstudy
As far as I can tell, the original quote came from an episode of “That 70s Show.” A character whose name I don’t know because I never watched it says, “Well, I’ve decided to major in philosophy.” Another character responds, “Well that’s good, because they just opened that big philosophy factory in Green Bay.”
We laugh because we immediately get the joke: a philosophy degree is economically useless and doesn’t help students produce anything of practical value. The line suggests that philosophy is an esoteric pursuit, akin to sitting around with our chin on our fist like Rodin’s Thinker, contemplating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Only non-contributing eggheads waste time and money on such things. A worthwhile education would involve practical training in some technical skill—something that falls within the fields of, say, science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.
It’s a common attitude, especially among those who would identify themselves as politically conservative. And it’s understandable, considering the philosophies on offer at so many American universities these days—philosophies chiefly concerned with identifying power dynamics, dismantling social constructs, and amplifying degeneracy under the guise of “giving a voice to marginalized sexual minorities.” Conservative parents could be forgiven for being suspicious of modern higher education, especially the humanities, after seeing Seattle descend into garbage-strewn anarchy under the demands of 20-something ideologues. Philosophy means “the love of wisdom,” but there’s nothing lovely or wise about students being taught to despise Western civilization, their own ethnic heritage, and especially Christianity.
But those with sharp eyes and ears will notice that we haven’t gotten rid of philosophy by focusing on “practical” studies. We have, in fact, assumed one philosophy in particular that says education is all about increasing our earning potential and our future economic output. We might call this the “technocratic philosophy” of education. And it’s a very new one.
For many centuries that saw the founding of the great universities in Europe and America, education—whether primary, secondary, or postsecondary—was guided by a different philosophy that saw all human knowledge as united and purposeful, and saw learning as an act of glorifying God. If you look up at the peaks of archways in the most storied schools, you can still see traces of that philosophy, so long forgotten by most professors and students.
“Lux et Veritas”—light and truth—is the old motto of Yale. “Dominus illuminatio mea”—“The Lord is my light”—has been Oxford’s slogan for centuries. These Latin phrases harken back to a view of education as neither an effort to deconstruct civilization, nor as a means of padding resumes and securing middle-class status. In this older view, learning was about forming virtuous citizens who know to use their skills and order their affections for the good of all—to love what is true, good, and beautiful, and to hate what is false, evil, and ugly.
Indeed, the very word “university” is a relic of this view. It implies a unity of all knowledge, whether math and science or theology and literature. To have a “liberal” education today may mean learning to replace the American flag with a rainbow one and replace Christianity with Critical Theory. But the term
originally meant an education suited for a member of a free society—someone worthy and capable of self-government.
No one understood or believed in this view more than C. S. Lewis, himself a lifelong educator. He portrays the distortions of modern education again and again in his works. In “The Chronicles of Narnia,” he describes Eustace Clarence Scrubb as a boy who had read all the wrong sorts of books—those about “exports and imports” and “governments” and “grain elevators,”—but never books about dragons. The same Eustace later finds himself at an experimental school where bad behavior and bullying are studied by psychologists, rather than punished. And earlier in the series, Professor Digory Kirke is bewildered at finding that Lucy Pevensie’s siblings never learned logic from Plato. “What do they teach in these schools?” he wonders aloud.
But nowhere does Lewis more clearly articulate the wrong turn education has taken, together with his view of the purpose of education, than in “The Abolition of Man.” This week on Upstream, Bethlehem College President Joe Rigney joined me to unpack the riches in Lewis’ thought on learning. Rigney thinks the Oxford don’s views are summed up in his central image of “men without chests.”
According to Lewis, the principal purpose of education from grade school to grad school is the formation of virtuous habits in young people—a “chest” full of just sentiments that can mediate between the intellect (the “head”) and the appetites (the “belly”). In fact, using the term “humanities” to describe areas of study like philosophy is appropriate, since for Lewis, the aim of education is to produce well-functioning humans. And the mistake of removing the chest from the center of education shows up in modern education’s bad fruit: angry idealogues ruled by the demands of their bellies, and calculating technocrats ruled by the demands of their wallets.
For Dr. Rigney (and for Lewis) the task of Christian educators is to resist both of these errors, and to recover the tools and telos of an older, better kind of education. I hope you’ll listen to our conversation and dig deeper into what it means to teach the next generation not merely how to make money, but how to be free, virtuous, self-governing and truly wise. Because even though there may not be any philosophy factories, every institution of learning—whether home school, classical Christian school, or university—is a factory, of sorts, and the type of humans it turns out depends very much on its philosophy.
Shane visits with Joe Rigney, President and Associate Professor of Theology and Literature at Bethlehem College & Seminary.
Dr. Rigney has written numerous books on Lewis, including Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles and Lewis on the Christians Life: Becoming Truly Human in the Presence of God. Shane finds a deeper understanding of the impetus behind the educational thrust in Lewis's writing of The Abolition of Man.
This interview is part of a three-part series on Upstream where Shane is exploring The Abolition of Man and encouraging listeners to join the Colson Center in studying it this month. In October, if you make a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we will send you a copy of The Abolition of Man and Michael Ward's guide After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man. The Colson Center will also send you video introductions to each chapter of the Abolition of Man, led by Dr. Michael Ward, and you'll be invited to an exclusive Q&A session with Dr. Michael Ward that the Colson Center will host in November. For more information visit: www.breakpoint.org/wardstudy
Why did C. S. Lewis describe bad teaching methods—out of a grammar text, no less—as “the abolition of man?” Wasn’t he being a tad dramatic? Not if you understand Lewis’ biblically-and-theologically-informed view of what it means to be human, and how evil dehumanizes us. Let me explain.
Scripture speaks of the penalty for sins in various ways. Sometimes, it describes it as “outer darkness” where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Other times it pictures a pit of burning sulfur, or a lake of fire, suggesting fathomless pain, anguish, and disintegration. Paul speaks of the penalty of evil as God “giving over” those who suppress knowledge of Him and worship the creation, instead. Such people receive in themselves “the due penalty” of their wickedness. But from Genesis to Revelation, the dominant word used to describe God’s judgment on sin is death.
Death isn’t hard to define. On a physical level, we know it. It’s cessation of life and decay—a reduction of order or dissolution of being. An animal that dies returns, with the help of bacteria, scavengers, and entropy, to its constituent elements. So do we. But beyond the physical, much the same may be true. The Bible speaks of a spiritual death, and right from the beginning treats it as the chief problem of mankind.
Adam and Eve, though threatened with death for disobedience, didn’t go into cardiac arrest the moment they stole the fruit. A literal translation of the Hebrew curse is instructive: “Dying ye shall die.” Theologians through the centuries have read this as a suggestion that though our first parents’ bodies would certainly die in due course, they suffered or began to suffer an even more serious, internal death the moment they declared their independence from God.
The New Testament picks up the theme of spiritual death. In Ephesians 2, Paul describes fallen man as “dead in trespasses and sins” even while we’re still breathing. In Revelation, John calls eternal damnation “the second death.” And the New Jerusalem is heavenly precisely because it is a place where “death is no more.”
Most importantly, Scripture tells us that the wages of sin (death, both physical and spiritual) were dealt with for Christians in the death of Christ. In Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 15, and the second chapters of Galatians, Colossians, 2 Timothy, and Hebrews, we read that those united with Christ died with Him. And Christian writers in the centuries afterward got the message.
In “On The Incarnation,” Athanasius writes: “…thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under the penalty of corruption of death He gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father—doing this, moreover, of His loving-kindness, to the end that, firstly, all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone…”
What does all of this have to do with The Abolition of Man and evil? Well, as Andrew Lazo and I discussed this week on Upstream, Lewis argued that educating a child out of his belief in value judgments was the first step in a process that, if followed to its conclusion, would abolish the child’s humanity and lead him to damnation.
Lewis depicts the end of that process in at least two places in his fiction. One is in “The Great Divorce,” where damned souls occasionally take a tour bus to the outskirts of Heaven. There, the redeemed meet them and plead with these lost sinners to repent and accept God’s help.
The thing the main character—himself one of the damned—first notices is that Heaven is an unbearably solid place. The light is too bright, the colors too strong, and the surroundings too real for the ghostly, near-transparent souls who ride the bus up from Hell and Purgatory. Even the grass hurts their feet, and lifting a fallen leaf takes all their strength. And when the condemned are offered a chance at Heaven, nearly all of them refuse. The part of them that could accept or even understand that offer has long since withered away and faded from reality. They are barely human, anymore.
Lewis’ second depiction of man’s abolition is more chilling. In the second of his “Space Trilogy,” the main character confronts an interplanetary traveler possessed by the Devil. This “Un-Man” is nothing like what the hero expects a soul totally dominated by evil to be. Rather than smooth Mephistopheles or Milton’s tragic Satan, or even a corrupt politician, Elwin Ransom meets a cross between an imbecile, a monkey, and a very nasty child.
“Up till that moment,” writes Lewis, “whenever he had thought of Hell, he had pictured the lost souls as being still human; now, as the frightful abyss which parts ghosthood from manhood yawned before him, pity was almost swallowed up in horror—in the unconquerable revulsion of the life within him from positive and self-consuming Death. If the remains of Weston were, at such moments, speaking through the lips of the Un-man, then Weston was not now a man at all. The forces which had begun, perhaps years ago, to eat away his humanity had now completed
their work. The intoxicated will which had been slowly poisoning the intelligence and the affections had now at last poisoned itself and the whole psychic organism had fallen to pieces. Only a ghost was left—an everlasting unrest, a crumbling, a ruin, an odour of decay.”
Lewis wasn’t the first to describe evil this way, or recognize its corrosive effects on image-bearers. Augustine wrote in His “Confessions” that “God alone is truly real. Everything else is neither wholly real nor wholly unreal,” and that if we do not remain in Him, neither will we remain in ourselves.
This was the basis of his understanding of evil. In his “Enchiridion,” Augustine denies that evil has any substance or existence of its own, “for if it were a substance, it would be good.” Instead, he teaches that evil is a “privation of good,” comparing it with wounds in the body, and noting how when wounds are healed, they cease to exist.
“Evils, therefore, have their source in the good, and unless they are parasitic on something good, they are not anything at all.” But this also means that “corruption cannot consume the good without consuming the thing itself.”
And here we grasp a little more firmly why Lewis writes with such moral urgency in “The Abolition of Man.” In this short book, he confronts a way of teaching value judgments that undermines students’ ability to comprehend the true, the good, and the beautiful. This attack on objective morality and meaning, launched by fashionable and educated minds in his day, was the beginning of a process that would turn men and women into “trousered apes,” enslaved to their passions (or worse, to devils), and unable to know right from wrong or even to care.
His warning may be more meaningful today than it was eighty years ago, bombarded as we are by efforts to redefine or undefine human nature. As we re-read “Abolition,” we should share his alarm about the trajectory of culture, science, politics, and education, and let it motivate us to fight the decay. But as Lewis himself reminds us, evil has no being, and no strength it does not steal from goodness, and as long as men with chests stand guard, Un-man can never have the last word.
Shane welcomes C. S. Lewis guru Andrew Lazo to explore the countless themes from “The Abolition of Man” that Lewis scatters through Narnia, the Space Trilogy, and numerous other books.
To receive The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis, and After Humanity, by Michael Ward, as well as a video series explaining each chapter in Abolition of Man and access to a live Q&A session with Michael Ward, visit www.breakpoint.org/wardstudy
When I welcomed Dr. James Cantor to the program, we talked a great deal about science—about what it can tell us of gender dysphoria in minors, and what it can’t tell us. We discussed the wisdom of performing medical or surgical alterations on children, and whether science supports such radical interventions as a means of restoring mental health.
About this, we agreed: Medical science simply does not, at present, support the claim that gender transition is a necessary or effective treatment for dysphoria. There is just no good evidence to suggest that altering a young body through hormones or operations leads to a happier life. And therefore, those who insist on rushing ahead with so-called “treatment” that will leave a minor patient maimed, sterile, or traumatized for life are committing not only medical, but scientific malpractice.
Still, one thing Dr. Cantor and I might disagree on is this: whether science can ever demonstrate that we have a moral imperative to conduct or not conduct such transitions. You see, even if a study were to emerge demonstrating that little boys who transitioned to life as girls or little girls who transitioned to life as boys were happier and had better mental health, we would be no closer to knowing whether it is, in fact, possible to change a person’s sex, much less whether doing this to a child is morally right. Scientific studies can offer answers on outcomes and physiology. But they cannot tell us what it means to be male, female, or even human.
This is vital, because the claims of the transgender movement are not, in the final analysis, scientific, medical, or even psychological claims. They are claims about metaphysics. The dictionary defines “metaphysics” as “the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.” In other words, it’s about describing the way things really are. The metaphysical pretensions of the transgender movement are obvious in the painstaking efforts to redefine “man” and “woman.” Consider an answer San Francisco-based medical website Healthline offered to the question, “Can Men Get Pregnant?”: “Yes,” they declared. “It’s possible for men to become pregnant and give birth to children of their own. In fact, it’s probably a lot more common than you might think. In order to explain, we’ll need to break down some common misconceptions about how we understand the term ‘man.’” Healthline then proceeds to divorce the definition of “man” from biology, making it into a matter of purely subjective identification such that even a person with a uterus and ovaries, who can get pregnant, qualifies as a man.
Notice what has happened, here. In one fell swoop, the transgender movement has taken the primary question of this cultural debate completely out of the realm of science. By every measurable and quantifiable physical trait, a person may be a member of one sex. But if, despite all of this, he identifies as the other sex, then that is what he really is, according to the transgender movement.
We don’t normally do things this way. I’m not the first to point out that in all other cases where a patient’s body objectively contradicts their psychology, we treat them as mentally ill and compassionately care for them accordingly. When an anorexic patient enters the hospital severely malnourished but convinced that her body is morbidly obese, we do not indulge this dangerous fantasy by putting her on a diet. Yet if the very same patient walks into many medical establishments today and says that she identifies as a man, she can begin the process of having her healthy breasts removed. This is true even if the patient is a child. As WORLD Magazine reported earlier this year, this scenario is actually unfolding in California, where girls as young as thirteen have been given double mastectomies.
Why, if we seek to align all other forms of body dysphoria by treating the mind, do we respond to gender dysphoria by “treating” the body? The simple answer is that we no longer have a shared, metaphysical definition of “male,” “female,” or even “human being.” The whole debate comes back to this question: Is there such a thing as human nature? Are humans real as more than LEGO sets of atoms and organs, to be rearranged at our pleasure? And is sex more than just a matter of malleable plumbing? Are we male and female at our deepest level, and do these categories tell us anything about our purpose in the universe?
Christianity’s answer—and the answer of virtually all philosophers before very recently—was a resounding “yes.” Yet today, an ideology that says otherwise is rapidly seizing control of the sciences, the academy, and our medical establishment. This coup is based not on empirical evidence, but on the raw willpower of an unproveable metaphysical assertion. And these revolutionaries demand—often on pain of firing and professional censure—that scientists and doctors shut up and go along with it.
Yet this ideology contains the seeds of its own undoing. Aside from the fact that experimenting on the bodies of children is publicly revolting, the transgender movement lacks a real answer to why we have a moral duty to support any of its claims or meet any of its demands. After all, if there is no such thing as objective human nature, or male and female, then it makes little sense to speak of an obligation to help people “align” their bodies with their feelings. Why do feelings reign supreme, and why should I care? Is it part of the human purpose to feel “natural” in our bodies, and to help others do so? What is happiness, and why is it important? Says who?
In a time when the most fundamental facts about ourselves are up for grabs, such questions have to be asked. Yes, it is vital to hear the voices of courageous critics like Dr. James Cantor and Dr. Allan Josephson, the former University of Louisville psychiatrist benefitting in court from Dr. Cantor’s expert testimony. Gender transition, especially in minors, is junk science, and the lack of evidence to support its extravagant claims is glaring. But in the final analysis, we must realize that what’s really driving the transgender craze isn’t bad science, or any kind of science at all. It’s bad philosophy—a set of metaphysical claims that are defining human being out of existence. And if we hope to restore sanity to our institutions and save young patients from horrific psychological and physical abuse, we must confront those claims head-on, above all seeking to understand how we were created before allowing anyone to re-create us.
Shane welcomes clinical psychologist James Cantor, expert witness in a key lawsuit by Alliance Defending Freedom, to explain how gender activism distorts science and hurts patients, especially children.
What is feminism, and what does it say about women? Well, that’s a tricky question, because there seem to be as many definitions of feminism as there are people who call themselves feminists. For some it is simply the belief that men and women are of equal value and should have equal rights.
But more often I find that cultural artefacts described as “feminist” portray women not so much as equal to men, but equivalent to men. The difference may sound trivial, but the results of equivalence-feminism are impossible to ignore.
Consider the endless stream of action movies filled with women I like to describe as 95-pound kung fu masters. These petite pugilists, more physically suited for underwear modeling than combat, are shown effortlessly throwing around men twice their weight or more. Were this only the case with female characters supposedly endowed with superhuman strength, like Wonder Woman, we could overlook it. Magic and imagination are fun. But this is true even in films and TV shows starring women who play, well, ordinary women. Confronted with a hallway full of large and well-trained bad guys, size-two action heroines routinely kick, punch, and grapple their way to victory, all without spoiling their hair. Sometimes they even shrug off punches that in real life would devastate a woman.
We don’t have to guess what happens when the physical differences between men and women are ignored. Recall a couple of years ago when transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox fractured his female opponent’s eye socket and left her with a concussion. While recovering from her injuries, Tamikka Brents told the press, “I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night…I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right.” She added that she’d be happy to honor Fox’s identification as a woman in any other profession, but that “when it comes to a combat sport I think it just isn’t fair.”
Physical strength isn’t the only way women are today expected to be the equivalent of men. We constantly hear the claim that a gender pay-gap plagues the corporate world. “Women only make 74 cents for every dollar men make,” goes the catchy factoid. To a public saturated in entertainment that portrays women as naturally ambitious and assertive leaders, managers, and bosses, this sounds outrageous. “Equal pay for equal work!” we are tempted to chant along with activists. But is it that simple? Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson famously got into it with British journalist Cathy Newman over this question. Citing the average pay difference between men and women, Newman seemed certain that the issue was settled. Women, even in today’s historically egalitarian society, are still the victims of measurable discrimination!
Peterson pointed out that there are other likely explanations for the “gender pay gap,” among them women’s own career choices. As many others have shown, women on average gravitate toward more social, intuitive work that tend to be less lucrative and require fewer years of education. We can look at the sex disparity among CEOs, doctors, hedge fund managers, and astrophysicists and conclude that these fields are rife with sexism. Or we could conclude that women themselves tend to prefer other vocations, and self-sort when given the freedom to do so. As Peterson observes, a casual survey of Scandinavian countries—which are among the most egalitarian on earth—shows that they are also some of the most gender-segregated in the developed world when it comes to career choices,
temperament, and interests. Women are supposed to be equivalent to men at work, but millions seem not to have gotten the memo.
Even so, there’s a third and more consequential area in which women are expected to behave exactly like men. We see it alongside the warrior woman tropes when we go to a movie or turn on our televisions. Entertainers would have us believe that women are sexual carnivores, insatiable in their search for casual encounters and utterly without fear of consequences. The women we see jump into bed with strangers act like the most promiscuous of men, and seem untroubled or even proud of their conquests. They certainly never suffer physical consequences.
Believing these portrayals, as well as those in darker sorts of media, many young women try to play the part. With the help of contraception, abortion, and oceans of antidepressants, they mimic the least scrupulous of men, ignoring not only the emotional devastation they incur, but the very design of their own bodies, which cry out against such treatment.
Of all the claims our culture makes about women, none cuts so violently against physical reality as this one. To say that a woman’s investment in sex surpasses that of a man is an understatement worthy of scorn. A woman’s entire biology—her joints, her immune system, her cardiovascular function, her brain, her breasts, and her primary reproductive anatomy—are all designed for children. Yet we encourage women to treat features of their bodies fitted for nurture as nothing more than toys for amusement and titillation—and disposable toys, at that. Trussed up on prescriptions that ensure none of this anatomy functions as intended, women are then stuffed into man-shaped roles, directed toward masculine modes of achievement, told to imitate the worst of male habits, and assured that the golden age of female rights has at last dawned, and they are free.
In all three of these areas where equivalence has replaced equality, women have not so much claimed their rightful place beside men as they have tried to become men. And in all three cases, female nature—especially the female body—has been treated as a liability, a barrier blocking the path to liberation and holding women back from realizing their true potential.
If a few years ago a conservative had ventured to claim that our culture is abolishing women, she would have been laughed out of the room. It’s tough to laugh now that the ACLU is literally editing quotes by the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg to remove all references to “women” or female pronouns, as they did last month on Twitter. “Abolition” scarcely seems too strong a description of one British medical journal’s recent cover story on menstruation, which replaced all references to women with the term “bodies with vaginas.” As Carl Trueman and alexander DeSanctis argued recently at Public Discourse, our determination to make women interchangeable with men—especially in the area of sex and reproduction—raises the question of whether our culture considers women as women to be properly human. After all, if a woman must declare war on every distinguishing feature of her body and mind in order to claim equality with men, what is the point of being a woman?
Toward the end of my discussion this week with poet and critic Jane Scharl on Upstream, I asked for her definition of feminism. She replied that, to the extent the word means women must be equivalent to men, she rejects it. I was pleased to hear it, but not that surprised. Over the course of our conversation,
Jane had painted a moving and masterful picture of God’s plan and purpose for women. Her picture was anything but stereotypical, drawn more from medieval piety that from 1950s sitcoms.
At its most basic level, Jane’s vision of female equality accords with the historic witness of Christianity, which sees women not only as real, but as indispensable. The first thing the Bible identifies as defective about the world, after all, is a lack of women. And the rest of the story, right up to the Revelation of John, depends on the assumption that female nature brings something into the world that male nature is utterly incapable of providing. In other words, Christianity makes a ground-level assumption that men and women are equal, but not equivalent. And if Jane is right, some of the Christian story’s greatest beauty emerges out of that difference.
I hope you’ll listen to our full discussion, and let it challenge your assumptions. But even more, I hope you’ll begin paying closer attention to the portrayals of and assumptions about women from those who claim the title of “feminist.” The difference between “equality” and “equivalence” may sound trivial, but in a time when the title “woman” itself is losing all meaning, it’s clear that the distinction between two words—or two sexes—can make all the difference
Poet and critic Jane Scharl joins Shane at the Anselm Society’s “Imagination Redeemed” conference to explain how our gendered bodies equip us for sainthood and help us slay dragons.
In their new book, “Treading Boldly Through a Pornographic World,” Josh Glaser and Daniel Weiss tell the stories of parents who suddenly noticed changes in the behavior of their teenage sons. These young men were inexplicably losing interest in hobbies, relationships, sports, and other activities that once excited and motivated them. They became reclusive, dismissive—shadows of their former selves. In such cases, the parents soon discovered what was going on: their sons had stumbled across and become addicted to online pornography, and this nuclear blast of sexual stimulation had made everything else in life seem dull by comparison.
Men a few years older than these boys are reporting another side-effect of compulsive pornography use: they’re losing interest in sex, itself, or even losing the ability to perform. Writing at The Guardian in 2019, Amy Fleming documented a troubling shift in the demand for erectile dysfunction medications like Viagra. For many years, the core market for these drugs was “older men in poor health.” But according to recent studies and surveys, up to a third of young, healthy men now report experiencing sexual dysfunction.
One educator told the Guardian that “until 2002, the incidence of men under 40 with erectile dysfunction was around 2-3%. Since 2008, when free-streaming, high-definition porn became so readily available, it has steadily risen.” One sex therapist quoted in a Rolling Stone article on porn-induced sexual dysfunction said the same: “I have absolutely seen a pretty drastic increase in ED rates among young men, especially in the last two, three years. My average client base is starting to get younger and younger.”
It’s a phenomenon with only emerging scientific support. But the anecdotal evidence is sobering. Online forums and websites have sprung up filled with testimonies from men who say addiction to pornography caused them to lose their interest in real sex. Some of these communities function as support groups for members who want to kick the habit. Scrolling through their stories is eye-opening. They confirm how pornography use robbed them not only of healthy sexual function, but of their zest for life: “Porn just makes everything else seem a whole lot less exciting,” said one user. “You start to realize you’re not as passionate about doing the things you love,” said another.” A third wrote hauntingly: “You become numb to most things in life and depending on how bad your addiction, [you’re] reduced to constant porn watching to feel good. It’s a sad way of living.”
We have a pretty good idea of how and why porn blunts all other enjoyable experiences in life. As Gary Wilson explains in his book, “Your Brain on Porn,” the human brain responds to the torrent of dopamine pornography triggers by reducing its overall number of dopamine receptors. This is why, like drug addicts, pornography users find they must search out ever more extreme and shocking material in order to achieve the same “high.” But because those same receptors are involved in all pleasurable experiences in life, sexual or otherwise, porn users often find that their desire for all other activities and experiences flatlines, as well.
All of this makes sense when you consider that pornography isn’t a natural stimulus. It’s not something our brains or bodies were designed to handle. Our natural responses, fine-tuned for real human contact and ordered toward emotional bonding and reproduction, become overloaded and fried by the concentrated neural narcotic we call pornography.
Thankfully, our brains are pliable and adaptable, and even though bad habits alter our neural circuitry, good habits can restore it. The same forums are filled with triumphant posts by users who’ve conquered pornography addictions. The recurring themes in their stories are a delight to read. They report greater energy, a renewed interest in their work and hobbies, stronger friendships, and healthier relationships with the opposite sex. Some experience a kind of euphoria when they discover for the first time in years that they are able to enjoy ordinary life again, to look people in the eyes without embarrassment, and to no longer be counting down the hours till their next fix.
Wilson calls this “rebooting,” and says it takes anywhere from weeks to months, depending on the person: “By avoiding artificial sexual stimulation you are shutting down and restarting the brain, restoring it to its original factory settings.”
One ecstatic user in a forum I browsed while writing this went so far as to declare: “If a man is able to control his sexual urges, he’s already fixed 90% of his problems in life.” He may have overstated the matter a little bit, but you can hear his elation at finally being able to experience life and freedom again.
These stats and stories confirm something Josh Glaser and Daniel Weiss argue in their book and in our recent conversation on Upstream: that saying “no” to pornography doesn’t mean denying ourselves sexual knowledge or satisfaction. It doesn’t mean becoming repressed prudes or keeping ourselves or our kids in the dark about the full range of embodied experience. It means opening ourselves again to real sexual fulfillment and thriving relationships, and even restoring our God-given ability to take delight in ordinary life.
The overwhelming message of those who have escaped or are trying to escape the grip of lust—even those who profess no faith in Christ—is that porn doesn’t make anyone happy. Bondage to this toxic habit isn’t liberating—it’s slavery. And even those who don’t share God’s glorious vision for sex as described in Scripture can’t help but celebrate when they breathe the clean air of freedom.
How much more can Christians—who understand the full beauty of the one-flesh union and the mutual self-giving for which our minds and bodies were crafted—celebrate and pursue that freedom? And how much better equipped are we to instill that passion for life into our kids? I hope this week’s conversation helps you catch that vision, and inspires you to boldly lead your family toward true love in a world full of counterfeits.
Daniel Weiss and Joshua Glaser join Shane to talk about their book, “Treading Boldly Through a Pornographic World,” in which they argue that a strong relationship between parents and teens is the secret to navigating a culture of sexual lies.
Facebook is, well, Facebook. There’s a certain element of absurdity to it and that’s just part of the package. Logging in to this establishment and expecting the best of the human mind is like walking into a Burger King and expecting filet mignon on fine china. Nothing wrong with Burger King if that’s what you’re after. But there’s a definite ripe diaper tucked in the ball pit of this free-for-all discursive play area. I’m talking about the “laugh react”—one of six other animated emojis users can affix to any post or comment in place of the traditional thumbs-up “like.”
Eulogizing the “laugh react,” one blogger wrote that “this must be the [emoji] that is the least likely to be used for what it was intended,” and estimated that “not even one percent of the people who use it are actually laughing when they click on it.”
Instead, this button has become the opiate of frustrated mockers, used mainly to signal that they find someone else’s opinion so ridiculous as to be unworthy of an articulate response. “Scornful laughter,” they are saying, “is all you deserve.”
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with laughter if something is genuinely ridiculous—even laughter at other people’s expense. When former vice president Dan Quayle misspelled “potato” with an e in front of a room full of elementary schoolers, it was truly ridiculous, and the nation was right to laugh. The mirth that followed on late-night comedy shows was as much with Quayle as at him. And honest members of both parties knew that everybody has bad days, and if cameras followed all of us around 24/7, they would inevitably capture similar gaffes. We may even feel a visceral sympathy (“cringe”) when watching such moments, knowing all too well how it feels to find our fallibility dangling out and to be shown up by kids.
But I’m persuaded the kind of laughter signified by the Facebook emoji is typically something quite different. There’s usually no sympathy involved, nor is there any of the kind of back-slapping consolation we offer each other naturally after public bloopers. The animation of a laughing face is itself a kind of formality or fiction. No one is actually laughing, except in the most perfunctory and aspirated way—the kind of noise a surprised goat would make.
Real laughter serves a purpose. It brings joy or at least genuine pleasure. It brightens the mood and brings people together. It lightens the burden of life and reminds us that we are, after all, just humans. But the kind of weaponized mockery most people first experience in a locker room or cafeteria, but which nowadays has found fertile soil in social media, does none of these things. And though the facial contortions it produces may resemble a smile, they could hardly have less in common with one.
C. S. Lewis referred to this attitude as “flippancy.” Among the causes of human laughter he describes in “The Screwtape Letters,” including joy, fun, and the joke proper, flippancy is the cause that most interests the devils.
“In the first place,” writes Screwtape, “[Flippancy] is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it;
but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it.”
If prologued, concludes the senior tempter, “the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy [God] that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy. It deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.”
In this type of laughter or un-laughter we can hear the scoffer of Psalm 1, who from his seat hurls flippancy at the blessed man for not walking in the counsel of the wicked, or standing in the way of sinners. We can hear the bitter snort of Sarah, who greeted the news of her coming pregnancy with scorn and unbelief. We may even be able to hear the jeers of the Sanhedrin as they order their blindfolded prisoner to prophesy who struck Him.
Laughter is certain a gift from God. There are few things that add richness to life like it. What else can make a crowd come to life on a Friday night or illuminate a sitting room like a good joke? What else can keep fans coming back to a TV show again and again, long after they’ve memorized the best lines? Even bawdy humor, notes Screwtape, contributes little to the cause of Hell, especially if the point is the laughter and not the lust. And when good people laugh at the expense of others, they tend quickly to moderate their mirth and remind each other of grace. Recall Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew comparing his uncle to vermin in a private game of “Yes and No” before wishing him a merry Christmas whether he wants it or not. The line is fine, but it is there. And when you’ve crossed deeply into flippancy, you’ll be the first one to know it. As Lewis notes, it doesn’t feel good, and it’s very lonely.
I hope this week’s conversation on Upstream with Babylon Bee editor-in-chief Kyle Mann helped illuminate godly forms of humor. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite things about the Bee as a satire site is how often its sting is aimed back at Christians. It’s healthy to laugh at ourselves. It reminds us that we’re only human, and has a way of keeping that deadliest sin of spiritual pride at bay. Neither Kyle nor I think the Bee has been totally successful in every story at using humor for good, nor at avoiding flippancy. But I do believe their work has sanctified our collective laughter a bit, and sweetened the bitter regions of social media. At the very least, their clever headlines are chance to reclaim that laugh react for, you know, actual laughter.
The Babylon Bee: It’s a go-to source for us beleaguered believers who need a chuckle. Or two or three.
Shane Morris welcomes the Bee’s Editor-in-Chief, Kyle Mann, as they discuss the role satire can play in telling the truth to a culture that no longer believes in truth.
What are the Bee’s boundaries? At what point can satire go too far? And how do you write satire in an age where truth really stranger than fiction?
Writing in the New York Times this week, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Karen Swallow Prior calls abortion “a failure for every woman and her unborn child—a failure of love, justice, and mercy.” She goes on to praise Texas’ controversial new heartbeat law as a call back to these ideals and a reminder of biological and ontological realities that American courts and legislatures have too long obscured.
Prior’s piece may have seemed bold to readers of the New York Times, but it accurately represented mainstream evangelical beliefs about the sanctity of life from the moment of conception. No major group is more opposed to abortion today than evangelicals, and together with conservative Roman Catholics, they now lead and fund the fight to end legal abortion in this country.
But it wasn’t always like this. Knowing our history can help us avoid fatal mistakes as we enter a new era of bioethical challenges.
It may seem like opposition to abortion is a natural result of conservative Christian faith and of a heavy emphasis on the authority of Scripture. But not that long ago, evangelical Protestants were anything but united behind the pro-life cause. Writing in the Huffington Post a few years ago, Jonathan Dudley chronicled how the major leaders, publications, and institutions of American evangelicalism fifty years ago either openly declared their support for legal abortion, or defended the permissibility of killing the unborn in certain cases. The piece’s title says a lot: “How Evangelicals Decided that Life Begins at Conception.” And he was basically right.
For instance, in 1968, just five years before Roe v. Wade was decided, Christianity Today held a symposium of evangelical leaders to determine “the conservative or evangelical position within Protestantism” on “the control of human reproduction.” In their joint statement, they concluded that “the performance of an induced abortion” is necessary and permissible under certain circumstances, among which they listed “family welfare, and social responsibility.” They continued: “When principles conflict, the preservation of fetal life…may be abandoned to maintain full and secure family life.”
Around the same time, the Southern Baptist convention largely concurred, calling on members of the denomination in 1971 to “work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”
It’s tough to imagine an abortion that couldn’t conceivably be justified under these criteria. Yet this was the position of one of America’s largest evangelical denominations and America’s leading evangelical publication just before abortion became legal in this country.
So, what changed? It’s a long and complex story with many players, but it’s fair to say that Roman Catholics understood the gravity of the abortion issue and took the right position long before evangelicals did. It’s also fair to say that Catholic reflection on the sanctity of life helped bring evangelicals into the pro-life fold, and back to the historic Christian consensus on this issue—a consensus that goes all the way back to ancient documents like the Didache.
I bring up this history to illustrate that bioethical truths are not always as obvious to Christians as we imagine. Implications about the sanctity of life we think we see today in Scripture and science were not always so clear to evangelicals in past generations—not because God was silent on such issues back then, but because Christians often failed to do the ethical and exegetical reflection necessary to hear Him speak.
If we hold our pro-life convictions firmly today and believe that they truly are grounded in revelation, this past failure should humble us and make us much more sensitive to our current bioethical blind spots. All the more when we realize how fast our world is changing.
We live amid a bewildering array of new technologies and practices that tinker with, dispense with, or exploit human life in ways our grandparents couldn’t have imagined. In vitro fertilization, surrogacy, chemical abortions, contraception and sterilization, gender transition, human cloning and human-animal hybrids, physician-assisted suicide, stem-cell research, embryo-selective eugenics, and dozens of similar applications of science and medicine can leave us dizzy. And even though we confess that the Bible is sufficient to “equip the man of God thoroughly for every good work,” it addresses almost none of these practices directly.
How then do we distinguish between practices that are morally acceptable, and those that violate God’s design for our bodies and relationships? As we answer this question, we risk making one of two mistakes.
On the one hand, we might conclude that because the Bible nowhere explicitly addresses something like human cloning, God therefore has no opinion on the matter. We have Christian freedom to make up our own minds, because Scripture is silent on the issue.
It’s not hard to see where this laissez-faire attitude leads. Christians would quickly lose all meaningful public witness in the modern world if we restricted ourselves only to those moral questions dealt with by name in ancient Israel. Just because the Bible doesn’t explicitly mention a modern practice doesn’t mean it lacks the ethical principles to rightly judge that practice. Indeed, there is very little in the Bible about abortion. Yet that doesn’t mean God is silent on the murder of unborn children.
Here’s the other mistake: We might argue against something like gay adoption using only the Bible and its condemnations of homosexual relations. “God said it, I believe Him, that settles it.” And this might work in a more Christian society. But that is not the society we live in. More importantly, the Bible itself treats moral truths not as Divine fiats unknowable to anyone without special revelation, but as discernible truths attested by creation and written on the human heart. In a strict sense, we do not need the Bible to tell us that homosexuality, for example, is wrong, because as Paul writes, it is “unnatural”—it violates the evident design or law etched on our very natures and bodies. The Bible’s rules are not rules without reasons. And those reasons are plain even to unbelievers—plain enough, at any rate, to render them “without excuse.”
So, where does this leave us? And how do evangelicals avoid coming to the wrong conclusion on bioethical issues in our time, the way so many did fifty years ago on abortion? For that matter, how do we engage our neighbors and legislators on bioethical issues without falling into either of the errors I just described? How do we know what to say and think about the bewildering new technologies that confront us?
The answer really comes down to diligent study—of Scripture, science, and Christian ethical teaching both ancient and modern. The church must become again a place where the followers of Jesus think deeply about what’s right and wrong and why it’s right or wrong—especially when human life is at stake. We must draw on the resources of Christian communions that have gotten these questions right in the past (more Protestants need to pick up documents like Humanae vitae). And we must take advantage of the wisdom and experience available from organizations like the Christian Medical and Dental Association, whose “Bridging the Gap” bioethics curriculum was the subject of this week’s Upstream interview.
If we hope to speak on any of these issues with “love, justice, and mercy” as Dr. Prior puts it, we must never take the “ethics” half of bioethics for granted. Many who shared our profession of faith once did that. And we’re still living with the consequences to this day.
Brick Lantz and Bert Jones of the Christian Medical and Dental Association join Shane to introduce a powerful new group study curriculum designed to reintroduce Christians to bioethics, from beginning of life to end of life and everything in between.
“What am I gonna be when I grow up?” asks a song I listened to a lot in my middle school years. “And how am I gonna make my mark on history? What are they gonna write about me when I’m gone? These are the questions that shape the way I think about what matters.”
Maybe you know the song. The chorus is a prayer that God would teach us the “power of a moment.” And it’s a good way to phrase the question I explored this week on the podcast with Nathan Rittenhouse.
Nathan is just a few years older than I am, but he has realized something that it takes many young people, especially in our youth-centric culture, a very long time to grasp: that making a difference in the world is like a marathon, not like a hundred-yard dash.
It’s rarely the meteoric hotshot, the child prodigy, or the flash-in-a-pan sensation who has a long-term positive impact on the lives of others, much less all of society. Young people are often good at generating fifteen minutes of fame. The child actor, the singer with her first hit, or the high school activist touring the country demanding reform easily make the evening news. The cameras love them. There’s a reason the term is “poster child,” not “poster person.”
But give it a year or two, and what happens? Where are the young newsmakers of 2018 now, and what remains of their legacies? What contribution did teenage celebrities from even a few years ago make that didn’t fade with their looks, their record deals, or a bad return at the box office? And how difficult is it to think of young activists who faded into irrelevance as their cause faded from the headlines? If you’re like me, it’s not hard to recall a few names.
Sure, there the Josiahs, the Mozarts, and the Alexander Hamiltons, all of whom amassed impressive resumes before turning thirty. But these figures stand out precisely because they were exceptions to the rule. Maybe it’s a coincidence that all three died before reaching old age. And maybe not.
The point is that meaningful and lasting contributions to the world are usually the fruit of a life spent in study, practice, growth, and accumulating experience. With the exception of athletes, most people’s careers will peak in middle age, not in their twenties. And as a young parent, I’m also comfortable saying that the most worthwhile advice for raising kids comes from those at the end of the road, not the beginning.
But here we run into a paradox that all those who’ve ever dreamed big dreams know: taking the long view of life, and thinking on a scale of decades rather than years, requires living in the here and now, embracing small and humble vocations—in short, learning “the power of a moment.”
Whether it’s Dale Carnegie, Jordan Peterson, or David Allen, all of the worthwhile self-help authors I’ve read in the last year have one thing in common: They instruct their readers to break big goals down into easily attainable steps. They say things like, “Stop worrying about the future and start living in the here and now,” and “Set your own house in perfect order before you criticize the world,” and “You don’t actually do a project. You do action steps related to the project.” Good advice. As Nathan explained, strictly speaking, no one runs a cross-country race. They run individual miles, carefully rationing their stamina and pacing themselves—often willingly letting competitors pass them for a time—in order to reach the finish line.
What this means is that ironically, those who expect to change the world in their twenties are often precisely the people who aren’t focusing on the best way to spend their twenties. Meanwhile, those who answer, “I don’t know,” when asked, “what will you be when I grow up?” and instead work heartily at the responsibilities already entrusted to them are the most likely to succeed in the future. Jesus’ parable of the talents is paradigmatic, here: “The one who is faithful in a very little thing is also faithful in much.” The lesson we can take from this is that a person’s twenties are a uniquely important time in life—just not for the reasons our culture seems to believe.
Yesterday I had a conversation with a headmaster at a Christian school about the nature of education. Whether in presidential debates or parent-child talks, Americans often speak as if the purpose of sending our children to school is to help them get a good job someday. A few days earlier, I had seen an Internet meme suggesting that schools stop teaching algebra and world history and start teaching kids how to balance a checkbook, how to pay their taxes, and how to buy a house. The implication was that any subject without obvious economic payoff is useless. By contrast, my friend and I concluded that while getting a good job may be one result of education, it’s not really the purpose.
Understood rightly, education—including the college, training, and other life experiences gained in our twenties—is not about learning marketable skills. It’s about becoming wise and virtuous people who understand the world and are ready for responsibility. That means young adulthood is a uniquely important chance not so much to do meaningful things but to become a meaningful person. The most important question those finishing high school can ask is not, “What am I going to be?” but “Who am I going to be?”
No one should feel the pressure to change the world in the first decade of their adult lives because that’s not what those years are for. Rather, they’re a unique opportunity to show faithfulness in the little things and to become the kind of person who can answer the most meaningful calls to responsibility later in life. All of the reading, experiences, character formation, and friendships with which a wise young person fills these years can shape him or her into the kind of leader who will make a lasting mark on the world.
But here we come to the final paradox, and a realization that Nathan says caused him to make a career choice some would describe as a waste of potential: “Making a lasting mark on the world” doesn’t always involve headlines, Nobel prizes, or bestselling books. It can look more like what the Apostle Paul called a “quiet life, working with your hands.” It can involve raising godly children, loving your neighbors, and contributing meaningfully to the community and time in which God has placed you. It can look more like George Bailey’s “wonderful life,” than like his brother’s more glamourous one.
In the end, perhaps our very concept of what it means to “change the world” needs to change. That’s a reflection for another time. But we might start with someone who spent His twenties in faithful obscurity only to shoulder His biggest responsibilities later. If memory serves, He had some helpful advice about which treasures we should pursue, and where we should keep them.
Nathan Rittenhouse joins Shane to explain why, as his grandfather put it, “no one takes you seriously until you’re thirty,” and why for Christians who want to impact the culture for Christ, that’s very good news.
There’s a photo that circulated a few years ago on social media that really made an impression on me. A man perches beyond the railing of a bridge in London, plainly ready the jump. But a crowd of strangers has gathered, wrapping their arms around him through the bars of the bridge and even tying his legs and torso with ropes to keep him from leaping to his death. The man has turned around, away from the fatal drop and toward his rescuers. He is not fighting them. He seems to be weeping. According to reports, these good Samaritans clutched the suicidal man for over an hour until police arrived with a bucket lift to lower him to safety and transport him to a hospital.
I brought up this viral photo during my conversation with Dr. Matthew Sleeth because it illustrates in a simple yet stunning way how inadequate individual autonomy is when dealing with suicide. There is no moment quite like the moment when a person decides life is no longer worth living. It’s incomparable because of how much it reveals. At the point when, as Joseph puts it in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a person decides to throw away God’s greatest gift, our modern conceits about self-realization and esteem fall to pieces.
When you come to believe that your life is too miserable, your resilience too depleted, and your future too hopeless to continue breathing, a self-centered worldview has no more comfort to offer you—only a cold sendoff. You are, after all, the ultimate arbiter of your destiny, the “captain of your ship.” And if you have decided the voyage is over, then who is to say otherwise? Who can rightfully impose their view of reality and purpose on you? How dare they coerce and deny you the right to choose?
Yet the image of a crowd restraining a suicidal man—not with force so much as reaffirming arms and bonds he welcomed—this image drives us to the point of tears. And it makes it plain why consent and personal autonomy aren’t enough for a civilized society. We need each other. Sometimes we need a hand there to curtail our freedoms, to override our self-will, and to tell us life is still worth living when our imaginations fail. And without the intervention and care of others, they will inevitably fail.
Two weeks ago I had a conversation with a young man as he drove me to the Traverse City Airport in Michigan. As we passed apple orchards and corn fields, the subject turned to America’s suicide epidemic. He asked me what I thought was behind our current tide of so-called “deaths of despair.” I told him that it came down to a natural and supernatural answer. Naturally speaking, people have lost touch with one another. Community and connection are no longer the scaffolding of Americans’ everyday lives, and the resulting isolation has been deadly.
Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone,” which I’m still working my way through, documents the disintegration of mediating institutions. Where once our country teemed with voluntary associations that gave life rhythm and meaning for millions, now it echoes like the empty buildings of social clubs and civic associations. Venues in which strangers and neighbors could meet and share an evening have dwindled to near non-existence. In their place, glowing screens curate faceless social experiences that unite us with avatars of distant persons who know only as much of us as we choose to publish. These strangers almost certainly lack the insight (and probably the will) to intervene on our behalf when despair takes hold. They certainly can’t reach out and wrap their arms around our teetering forms.
The second part of my answer was supernatural. Along with the silent shells of Elks and Moose Lodges, Kiwanis, American Legion, and (thanks, Putnam) even bowling leagues, we see empty churches. America’s main streets and boulevards are lined with the moldering husks of Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Baptist congregations once packed with worshipers. Now these are little better than museums, warmed by visitors mostly at Christmas and Easter, and then only as a formality. Calling these “communities” would be laughable, were it not so sad.
Even evangelical congregations, packed as they may be into auditoriums in the suburbs, tend toward showmanship over discipleship. Consumers often enjoy a light show and TED talk, and maybe some hastily-brewed coffee in the lobby. But how many can point to a fellow Christian who knows their deepest struggles well enough to tell when they’re on the ledge, much less talk them down from it? Even the most sanguine megachurch pastors must admit they struggle to remember most names. Can they keep their congregants from jumping?
As I told my friend while we drove through Michigan, even a little connection would blunt America’s suicide epidemic. This is true not only because real friendship and human company make life worth living, but because they remind us that life’s value isn’t subjective, and therefore doesn’t depend on our circumstances.
In the opening chapter of “Hope Always,” Dr. Sleeth tells the story of two patients who were admitted to his hospital. The first was a young man full of promise who had chosen a .22 caliber bullet through his temple instead of a future. The second was a man a few years older who, despite being wheelchair bound from a neurological injury, was filled with joy and gratitude for life. He was admitted for an illness that had gotten out of control, but from which he soon recovered. Only after telling the story of these two young men does Dr, Sleeth reveal that they were one and the same.
Thanks to rapid and determined medical intervention, this patient survived his suicide attempt, much to the gratitude of his parents. Dr. Sleeth, who was an atheist at the time, recalls his wonder at seeing a quadriplegic patient relish life where an able-bodied young man once chose to throw his away. He recalls also his amazement when this young man’s parents embraced and kissed him for bringing their son back from death’s door, even if it was in a wheelchair.
It’s a powerful beginning to a book on suicide and an effective reminder that “quality of life” has more to do with who we are than how we are. Yet Dr. Sleeth doesn’t keep the real source of this young man’s newfound zest for life a secret. Christian faith, he explains, helped turn the human embrace of parents and doctors into a picture—perhaps even a means—of Divine love. For this remarkable patient, the realization that life has value irrespective of circumstances or psychological state came in the form of a physician who wouldn’t let him die, of parents who wouldn’t let paralysis spoil their joy, and of a God who wouldn’t let despair have the last word.
In the midst of a historic suicide epidemic, we need connection, with each other and with our creator, because autonomy is a literal dead-end. And when we feel those arms reaching through the bars to hold us back, we may find, like that man on the bridge in London, and the Dr. Sleeth’s patient, that we’re glad not to be in charge for once
Medical doctor Matthew Sleeth shares stories from the emergency room where he treated patients who tried to commit suicide. Shane asks Sleeth why the pandemic of suicide is so overlooked, and how Christians can step in the gap and be a force of life in a culture of suicide.
I’m going to do something a little different. I just talked with Sean Clifford, CEO of Canopy, which the Gospel Coalition called the world’s most advanced pornography filter. It was a frank discussion about the nature and impact of modern porn and how technology can fight for families, not just against them, and it’s relevant for everyone. We need that, because porn is a pressing problem for everyone. But I know nothing from experience about the hurt and struggles that porn inflicts on women. So as a man, I want to speak very frankly to fellow men. And women can keep listening, here. But just know that this is primarily directed to my brothers in Christ.
Men, its time to be afraid of ourselves. Seemingly every few months, another prominent Christian leader is caught in or confesses to inappropriate behavior, or a sexual addiction of some kind. It’s an endless drumbeat. The list of Christian men in ministry, whether pastors or apologists or speakers or authors, who have been caught in the net of sexual sin over the last few years is dizzying. It's nauseating. It's a punch in the gut.
Of course, the situation in the church is nothing unique. We're living through a cultural moment of reckoning over the sexual escapades of men in general, not just Christian men. The #MeToo movement encouraged women who've been victimized and harassed to flip the light switch on powerful men in entertainment, sports, journalism, and politics. Unscrupulous CEOs and doctors and congressmen who long enjoyed a kind of cultural permission to exploit those under their power are now scurrying for cover.
This long-overdue judgment day for abusers has prompted a second wave of revelations about sexual behavior that, while not illegal, is still unethical and immoral. And Christian authority figures have not fared well in the light of day. Whatever the actual statistics, the merciless repetition of pastor after author after apologist toppling for the same avoidable failures of the flesh gives the impression that sexual sin is eating the church alive. According to one survey, pastors are now less trusted by the public than daycare providers, doctors, military officers, and grade school teachers.
There's no appropriate reaction to this parade of scandals that does not start with falling on our faces before God and begging for mercy. We're in bad shape, and we need Divine help. We're supposed to be a "city on a hill," but those watching the American church right now probably see what looks to them like a mosquito-infested cesspool. This is cause for grief and repentance. It may even be time to take those biblical references to sackcloth and ashes literally, again.
But there's more to be said, and more work to do than just repentance. It's time for a revolution in the way Christian men see ourselves. We've had our chance to prove our mettle against sexual temptation. And we've failed, miserably. Even though many individual leaders of integrity remain, we have collectively proven ourselves incapable of acting in private in accord with the morals we profess in public. Sin is gobbling us up at an unsustainable and unconscionable rate, and swallowing our ministries, churches, and life work along with us. Something has to change.
Here's my modest proposal: Men, it's time to stop trusting ourselves. Stop trusting in your integrity and strength. Stop telling yourself that you would never surrender to temptation. Stop telling yourself you are better than the scores of Christian luminaries whose lives and families have disappeared in scandal. There is no moral chasm between them and you. You are not made of finer clay. Each of us is just one bad decision away from becoming the next stroke in the nauseating drumbeat of the church's public failures.
Let me say this dramatically to get my message across: You should get to the point where you are afraid to be in a room alone with yourself. I'm not kidding. As Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry put it, we have met the enemy and he is us. The devil isn't chiefly responsible for Christian leaders sacrificing their witness for momentary indulgence. We give him far too much credit, here. He probably has to do very little to get us to topple. As Uncle Screwtape quipped, "It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out."
And what the devil has kept out of our minds for too long is this: We are weak. We are usually no match for sexual temptation. It pummels us, especially when we're certain we can get away with giving in. If you still think you have the integrity to deal with its onslaught on your own, I can only ask how many more high-profile resignations it will take for you to abandon your delusion and save yourself.
Christian men, it's time we stopped trying to be heroes. It's time we stopped going it alone. It's time we recognized how muscular the monster of sexual sin really is. It's time we had the courage to run.
That's right--run. Scripture says to flee sexual immorality. As in, turn tail and retreat. I don't think we've spent nearly enough time considering what this might mean. We remind me sometimes of the Eloi in H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine,"--a smiling, peaceful people whose screams fill the night as the Morlocks come to drag another one of us to their dinner table. And like the Eloi, we seem to have forgotten it all by morning. After each victim is dragged into the darkness, we go on with our lives as if nothing has happened--as if hairy, hungry monsters aren't returning for us come nightfall.
Sexual sin derives much of its destructive power from this notion that each pastor or evangelist who falls into its clutches is a fluke--that there is no essential connection in the seemingly endless chain of moral failings by Christian leaders. "It could never happen to me," we seem to be telling ourselves, "so I don't need to do anything differently."
This might be true if the enemy were out there. But he's not. He's in here. I am my own worst nightmare. The more alone I am with myself, the greater danger I am in. The more convinced my baser instincts become that they can enjoy one, small indulgence, the more certain it becomes that I will dive headlong into iniquity and eventually be discovered, to the ruin of the family, church, or institution I love.
Oh, I know. You think you will be able to hide it. You tell yourself, "just this once." You remind yourself that "everybody messes up, and besides, I deserve to cut loose a little."
You have already lost your life at this moment. Your concupiscent morlocks already have their claws in you. Before you even commit the act, or open your browser, or steal that sweet kiss, you are doomed. The act is just the terms of surrender. You are walking yourself into the death camp and choosing your guillotine.
Even your victories can turn to defeat. The battle may be going well. You may have defeated sexual temptation on your own, a few times. You may be reaping the blessings of obedience. You have the trust and admiration of those you love. They place you on a pedestal. They strive to imitate your integrity. You are a model Christian. Then you start pacing the parapets at night. A woman on her rooftop catches your eye. The next morning, it's all over.
Defeating this inner monster and stopping or at least slowing the nauseating drumbeat means doing more than living with our shields at the ready. It means more than cultivating inner virtue and habits of the heart, though these are important. It means being able to see the beginnings of temptation, to catch its shadow coming around the corner, and run. It means recognizing that you cannot beat it. You cannot stand against it on your own. Look how many better men than you have fallen! It means fleeing to where you know there are reinforcements, where the hosts of Heaven are strongest. It means dialing up a trusted confidant in Christ the moment desire is born, before it even matures to lingering thoughts, much less into full temptation!
Don't try to reason yourself out of your attraction to that coworker. Flee to a brother who will tell you that what you're feeling can never be allowed to flower. Find someone who will tell you that you must not even suffer such feelings to survive--someone who will help you stomp them out without mercy. "A man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken."
What I am proposing is something a little more radical than accountability partners. It is a fundamentally different attitude toward ourselves, one of everlasting mistrust and suspicion. Do not trust yourself. Do not believe in yourself. Do not even turn your back on yourself. Do not dare keep a secret.
This goes against everything our culture tells us, I know. And it goes against something still stronger than our culture: our pride, as men. We want to be seen as self-sufficient and strong. We want to be immovable rocks for God. But I am convinced that any man who thinks this way will become lunch-meat for the first sexual temptation that strikes him. You cannot stand on your own. You will not. None of us can, consistently, and reliably. That's why God gave us the Church. That's why He gave us each other. And that’s why I thank Him for the work and commitment of people like Sean Clifford and the rest of those employing technology to fight the filth that bombards us, rather than amplifying it.
Bottom line? Run, men. You are no match for yourselves. Take refuge in the help God has given
Sean Clifford joins Shane to talk about how sexual content online has changed, and how a next-generation Internet filter can protect families.
Website: www.canopy.us
Upstream discount code: safer
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins famously defined biology as “the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” He has also remarked that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution made it possible for the first time to “be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” It’s important to understand what he means by both statements.
For many centuries, the “design argument” was a pillar of Christians’ apologetic for the existence of God. Looking at the natural world, specifically life, thinkers as diverse as William Paley to Thomas Aquinas to the Apostle Paul concluded that creation clearly testifies to purposive intelligence. Nothing about its structure looks purposeless or unguided. Aquinas, for instance, suggested in his fifth argument for God that just as an arrow (which lacks intelligence) nevertheless manifests an intelligible purpose or end, so too do created bodies, especially living things.
In more recent times, philosophers and apologists compared living things with machines, because there are many key resemblances. Living things contain analogues to pulleys and levers, electrical circuits, cameras and microphones, and require fuel, lubrication, and repair. Paley famously compared organisms with a functional watch, found lying on a heath, testifying to a designer. As science has advanced and we’ve peered deeper into the microscopic world, we’ve discovered a new universe of living wonders. Outboard motors and gears, automatic doors and gateways, transport mechanisms that appear to “walk,” and at the center of it all, a molecule like no other that stores and transmits the information necessary to build life: DNA.
In Dawkins’ mind, Darwin dispatched all of these arguments by proposing a mechanism through which random and mindless processes could slowly produce the appearance of design. Evolution by natural selection acting on random variations, concludes Dawkins, is a kind of “blind watchmaker.” By sorting through random copying errors over unfathomable stretches of time with no aim or purpose in mind, Darwin’s mechanism could—allegedly—produce the wondrous diversity of complex and elegant living machinery we see today.
There are lots of problems with this, and I’ve talked about them before with other guests on Upstream. Check out, for example, my conversation with philosopher of science Stephen Meyer. But there’s one challenge to Darwin’s theory that stands out as basically insurmountable: the origin of the first life. You see, Darwinian evolution doesn’t explain life’s existence—it assumes it, and then tries to explain the diversity of life from there. But it offers no real account of how life or the struggle for survival began in the first place.
Darwin certainly speculated about it, in a way that sounds impossibly naïve to modern microbiologists. In an 1871 letter to Joseph Hooker, Darwin wrote:
"But if (and oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity etcetera present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes…”
Darwin wrote this having no means of peering inside cells, having no understanding of the countless processes and mechanisms involved in even the simplest living thing, and with no knowledge of DNA or
the laws of inheritance. But that was 150 years ago. Surely evolutionary biology has made huge advances since then in its study of the origin of life. Right?
Well, in my conversation this week with synthetic-organic chemist Dr. James Tour, we explore precisely that question, and come to a stark conclusion: science is further today from understanding how life could have arisen through purely material processes than it has ever been. In his words, if anyone tells you differently, “they’re lying.” And if you ask them for details, “you’ll see them start to sweat.”
Whether it’s the combination of chemicals at the right time and place, the transition from those chemicals to the compounds necessary for life, to the production of diverse proteins, to the assembly of the cell itself, to the origin of a functional system of cellular replication, science has utterly failed not only at showing how such a process could occur in a “warm little pond,” but has failed even to replicate it through intelligent engineering under ideal laboratory conditions.
Dr. Tour is pretty passionate about exposing this mystery, and no wonder. We constantly hear talk from people like Dawkins triumphantly proclaiming that the mystery of life and its origin is settled, and God is no longer necessary. Yet with no material process or even plausible theory for how non-living chemicals can spontaneously transform into living organisms, that kind of rhetoric is worse than irresponsible. It’s dishonest.
This is usually the point at which advocates for the older design theory meet with a retort: “You’re just resorting to a ‘God-of-the-gaps’ argument.” In other words, the only reason we infer intelligence of any kind involved with life’s origin, much less a Divine intelligence, is that science cannot currently explain life’s origin. But science is always advancing, and just as Darwin discovered the law of natural selection, it may be that future scientists will discover processes by which chemicals can turn into cells. The fact that a mystery current exists isn’t by itself a reason to propose God did it. That’s an argument from ignorance.
And that would be true, if the case for intelligent or even theistic design rested on ignorance, alone. But as I discussed before on Upstream with both Stephen Meyer and Logan Gage, that’s not how modern design arguments are made. Rather than an argument from ignorance, advocates for intelligent design make a positive, abductive inference to the best-known explanation. And that best explanation in our uniform and repeated experience is mind, intelligence, or conscious purpose. Put simply, we don’t argue that God created life because we have no other explanation, but because life exhibits precisely the sorts of features we only observe in products of purposive intelligence. And a purposive intelligence that precedes life itself—barring speculation about prebiotic aliens—would be very much like the God of theism.
At this point materialists will object that proposing a supernatural entity as an explanation for natural phenomena is unscientific. And here we get to the very bottom of the debate—a questions C. S. Lewis tackles in his astonishing little book, “Miracles.” The belief that material causes are the only type of causes active in our world—that matter and energy are, as Lewis glibly puts it, “the whole show”—that belief is itself an assumption that cannot be supported or tested by materialistic science. It is, in other words, self-refuting.
Yet without this prior commitment to materialism, it is far from obvious why God’s creative and intentional power is out-of-bounds as an explanation for life. With all due respect to Dr. Dawkins, maybe living things give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose because—they were.
Where and how did life begin? Can naturalistic evolution account for it?
Synthetic organic chemist and Rice University professor Dr. James Tour explains that the typical naturalistic explanation for the origin of life–that there was some primordial soup, lightning flashes, then molecules came together and formed a cell, which evolved into more complicated life–is “fallacious” and “a bunch of nonsense.”
As Dr. Tour tells Shane Morris on Upstream, “If any scientists” claim to know the process by which life came about, “they are lying.”
In this fascinating interview, Dr. Tour explains the extraordinarily complex sets of building blocks and processes that had to come together to form life in ways we still cannot explain.
In my discussion with Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, we explored the serious flaws in a recent survey that purported to show a “rebound” in Mainline Protestant denominations. The main problem? Well, this survey’s methods made it impossible to distinguish between those who have joined Mainline churches and those who have merely stopped using the terms “evangelical” and “born again” to describe themselves, but remain in conservative churches. This survey, in other words, doesn’t give us any reason to think the long-term trends in the American religious landscape have changed. And this matters because people keep suggesting that the only way to fill our pews is to compromise with modern ideas about sex and gender.
Writing in USA Today before the pandemic, Oliver Thomas made precisely this argument; in his words, “American churches must reject literalism and admit we got it wrong on gay people.” Thomas, whose bio says he’s on the board of contributors at USA Today and is a retired American Baptist Minister, seems to be confusing “literalism” with “inerrancy.” He offers no metaphorical interpretation of the New Testament’s condemnations of homosexual behavior that would render them true in a merely figurative sense. He just thinks they’re wrong, rooted in their authors’ ignorance and prejudice. He makes that abundantly clear.
But between taking potshots at the reliability of Scripture, trotting out the standard tropes about shellfish and menstruation in Leviticus, and listing all the times he thinks Christians have been on the wrong side of history, Thomas does manage to state his argument: “Churches will continue hemorrhaging members,” he writes, “until we face the truth: Being a faithful Christian does not mean accepting everything the Bible teaches.”
We endure this same editorial, with minor variations, every few months from CNN, The New York Times, or some other left-leaning publication. The thesis goes like this: The American church is shrinking, and Christians who won’t get on board with the new sexual orthodoxy are to blame. If the church wants to survive, it needs to modernize its teaching on sexuality and its reading of the Bible, setting aside old prejudices and affirming LGBT identities and lifestyles. As the late Rachel Held Evans wrote at CNN a few years ago, “What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance. We want an end to the culture wars...We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.” Only then, she warned, will churches be able to stem the cascade of younger adults from their exit doors.
Thomas treats the LGBT movement as a kind of new Pentecost: “A great revelation has occurred that is bringing joy and happiness to millions,” he writes, “but it is being met with resistance and retrenchment from many of my colleagues inside the church.” Pointing to statistics about the decline in religious affiliation overall in America, he makes a straightforward cause-and-effect argument that evangelicals and Catholics who won’t accept LGBT identities are at fault. This decline will continue, he laments, “until we muster the courage to face the truth: We got it wrong on gays and lesbians…This shouldn’t alarm or surprise us. We have learned some things that the ancients—including Moses and Paul—simply did not know.”
How to read statistics, evidently, is not among the things we’ve learned.
A recent Public Religion Research Institute survey claims to show that liberal Mainline denominations are rebounding from decades of membership decline. Shane welcomes Institute on Religion and Democracy president, Mark Tooley, to explain why the survey is flawed and why abandoning the fundamentals of Christian doctrine and ethics is a kiss of death for any denomination.
What’s the worse injury you’ve ever suffered? I’ve been pretty lucky. No major broken bones, concussions, or life-threatening loss of blood. But I have had some pretty nasty burns.
This happened back when I was seven years old. A friend and I had just been camping in my parents’ backyard. We’d built a fire and roasted marshmallows, and the flames had died down into a nondescript pile of ashes. My friend left the next day, and I was out wandering through the yard chasing grasshoppers. That was me at seven. One of them hopped or flew over the pile of ashes and I followed, assuming in my seven-year-old way that the pile would long since have cooled. It definitely had not.
I immediately sank several inches into the hot coals beneath the ashes. I was wearing sandals, so the embers poured in and got stuck. I ran inside screaming and my mother immediately ran cold bath water over my feet. But the damage was done. My toes, soles, and heels started to bubble up with angry blisters.
A few hours later, we were at the emergency room. The doctor explained that he would have to “debride” my blisters to prevent scarring and infection. I had no idea what that meant. My dad must have had some idea what was coming as the doctor instructed him to hold me down. The doctor then soaked a rag in hot water, grabbed an ankle, and began removing the blisters with quick twisting motions. And man, did I scream.
For at least a couple of weeks after that, I had to wear bandages on my feet and couldn’t do much walking. My parents pushed me around in a stroller and helped me clean my feet. They had to wrap gauze around each of my toes so they didn’t grow together and turn me into a duck, as they explained to me. Eventually, I healed, amazingly with no scars. And I can look back on that doctor with thankfulness for what he did, despite how much it hurt at the time.
This incident is still what I think of when I consider the body’s amazing ability to repair itself. In my conversation this week with pediatrician and author Jennie McLaurin, she described the body as a system that’s “designed” to heal. It’s fascinating to think about what that means: our bodies were created with the possibility of injuries already foreseen, and the power to weave cells, sinew, and bones back together already built-in. It wasn’t enough that God knit us together in our mothers’ wombs the first time; through the near-miraculous choreography of wound-healing, He knits us back together again and again throughout our lives.
It’s an awe-inspiring testimony to the power of life over death—one which recalls the story of life’s ultimate victory over death in Christ’s resurrection and which presages our own rebirth from the dead when He returns.
In some ways, all good stories—historical and fictional—are about wounding and healing. They’re about people who are called out of their ordinary lives by some destructive or evil force they must overcome that adversity to restore order. And just as our bodies often heal with stronger bones, skin, and muscles after an injury, the heroes who emerge out of their conflicts are often stronger in spirit and will for having overcome the forces of destruction that invaded their lives.
This immemorial plotline of life stubbornly undoing death—even in a world where it can seem death gets the last word—reminds me that suffering and healing aren’t experiences to which only the protagonists in novels and movies are called. They’re a cycle to which each of us is constantly summoned, and which we can either embrace with courage and gratitude, or reject with fear and bitterness. We are all responsible for becoming the healing hero of our own personal story, in the stories of our families, and in the stories of our communities. Each of us, upon experiencing a spiritual or relational wound, must choose whether it will overcome us and turn us into a force of destruction and death to those around us, or whether we will overcome it and be the instrument by which God knits the lives of everyone around us back together.
This can seem futile at times. Wounds are inevitable, and they always seem to recur. And no matter how doggedly we fight to maintain life and order, eventually we will wear out physically and mentally, and some other hero will have to take our place.
In much of pagan mythology, this endless cycle is the end of the story. The “corn kings” of the stories die and resurrect, the sun sets and rises, the spring disappears and returns. Evil and good, wounding and healing, order and chaos, death and life are equals, locked in an eternal struggle. But this is not how the Christian story ends.
In Jesus, the apparently interminable return of suffering and bloodshed reaches its terminus in a hero so good, who is wounded so severely, that He exhausts and overcomes suffering, itself. Christ’s mission was to “take up our infirmities,” to be “pierced for our transgressions,” and to become the sacrifice by whose “wounds we are healed.”
But if this is the case, it raises a difficult question: Why do we still suffer? If Christ received the ultimate wound and His suffering broke the cycle forever, why does Paul write that he and we must “fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ?” (Colossians 1:24) Writing at First Things a few years ago, theologian Peter Leithart offered a surprising answer:
“[Paul] didn’t believe that Jesus’s sufferings relieve him of the need to suffer. Jesus didn’t die so that we wouldn’t have to go through the messy inconvenience of dying ourselves. The opposite is true. Jesus died and rose so that we might share in his death and resurrection. The head suffered so that his body and each member could participate in his sufferings…Christ’s death is sufficient for all time, but time goes on, and until the end of time the Spirit will inscribe Christ’s one sufficient death into more
and more lives; the Spirit will keep dealing out shares in Christ’s sufferings. The Spirit will work his way into the flesh of countless future disciples to mold them into the shape of a cross. What is lacking in Christ’s afflictions is filled as believers suffer for Jesus and for his Church.”
According to Leithart, we suffer not because Christ’s sacrifice was insufficient, but because as Christ’s brothers and sisters, we reenact and participate in His suffering. We are each part of a continually-afflicted, wound-enduring, perpetually healing Body, a living corporate testimony of the stubborn power of life over death and of renewal over destruction.
Yet as the mystical Body of the resurrected Christ, we share not only in His redemptive suffering but in His resurrection. The power that raised Christ resides in each of His people, and that Spirit of life will have the final word in each our stories—not only over the suffering that recasts us in the image of our Savior, but over death itself, which has no power over those who have already died (Romans 6:8).
We can choose to be healing heroes in the here and now because there’s nothing futile about our efforts. Our very suffering and wounds take on new meaning, so that even the bodies whose blood, bruises, (and occasionally) burns remind us of our vulnerability will at last become invulnerable. Though I wonder if, like Jesus, a few of us might retain our scars to go with our stories.
Pediatrician and public health expert Jennie McLaurin joins Shane to discuss “Designed to Heal,” a book that explores the human body’s near-miraculous ability to recover from injuries, and how this applies to wounded cultures, communities, and individual hearts.
Welcome to Upstream. I’m Shane Morris, and I want to reflect further on this week’s conversation.
We all remember the global shock and dismay on April 15, 2019 when one of the world’s most famous churches caught fire. Millions looked on helplessly as a large portion of Notre Dame cathedral, that architectural icon of Catholicism, focal point in literature, and symbol of France—went up in flames. While Paris took stock of the damage, we aired a BreakPoint commentary explaining why even many secular observers were horrified by the severe damage to the storied cathedral. Sacred spaces matter, said John, even to those who don’t believe in the sacred. A rash of church vandalisms worldwide in the weeks leading up to the blaze illustrated this. At the time, John remarked that, “Godless governments, racists, radical Islamists, and common arsonists” all seem to understand that such buildings matter, even if only as symbolic targets in their assault on Christianity.
It seemed everyone grasped the significance of sacred and beautiful spaces. Everyone, that is, except a certain group of vocal Christians online.
“…before the smoke had even cleared above Notre Dame,” said John, “well-meaning Christians took to social media to remind us that the church isn’t a building, it’s a people.”
This is of course true. It’s true in the same way that a family isn’t a house. But that doesn’t lessen the tragedy or sorrow for that family when their house burns down! Nor does it invalidate the way those who dwelt in that house came to identify it with their life together.
Why are so many evangelical Christians so quick to dismiss the importance and value of tangible beauty and creative expression, including sacred spaces? And why do we view so many of our church buildings as little more than functional facilities, building and decorating them in the image of shopping malls or corporate offices?
Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor called this phenomenon “disenchantment.” It was his way of describing how a sacramental view of reality that most Christians and indeed Westerners once took for granted has given way to a preference for function over form—for business over beauty—to a world in which the immanent does not point beyond itself to the transcendent.
Where once Christians routinely saw the physical world of art, architecture, music, bread, wine, and water as conduits or means of grace, many who are not explicitly associated with a High-Church tradition now see these things as ornamental at best and as distractions at worst. According to this view, the real conversion, worship, and grace occurs in the privacy of a person’s heart, moved by information received from the pulpit or perhaps by an ineffable impulse of the Spirit from within. In fact, I even meet Christians who question the sincerity and reality of spiritual devotion that isn’t individual, spontaneous, and purely internal.
Like all errors, this one contains a grain of truth. True worship really can happen in the confines of a person’s heart, in the absence of visible beauty, or in the midst of material poverty. As John notes, “The book of Acts describes a pretty amazing worship service once held in a Philippian jail.” And to this day, many of our persecuted Christian brothers throughout the world feel blessed even to gather with one another to worship and study Scripture in a home or hideout.
Yet for those of us who face no such hardships, it seems odd that visible beauty, art, and creative expression claim so little of our attention or energy—at least when it comes to worship. There are moments when nearly all of us revert to that older, sacramental view of the world—when beauty once again takes center-stage, and something besides internal, spontaneous states of mind matter.
As I told my colleague Brian Brown in this week’s conversation, my wife and I recently attended an evangelical wedding. The scene would be familiar to any of my listeners: groomsmen and bridesmaids, all arrayed in matching apparel formally processing to the altar. Parents and grandparents escorted to their seats. The bride made radiant and dressed in white—greeted by standing guests and accompanied by elegant music as her father led her into the presence of her beaming groom. Guided by a pastor, the two exchanged traditional vows and even added a very material ceremony with biblical origins: a foot-washing—the groom honoring his bride.
Once they had exchanged rings—another symbolic act—their pastor pronounced them man and wife, and they sealed his words with a kiss.
I brought up this scene with Brian because it illustrates the unspoken knowledge we all still have that beauty, material symbols, and the sacred still matter. It’s not as if this couple had no choice. It is possible today to marry with little or no ceremony. The justice of the peace is always available for civil proceedings, and some couples even choose to elope. Yet in the midst of all our informality and utilitarian thinking, little islands of the symbolic and sacred remain. Weddings are one place where our leftover sacramental instincts show up. Funerals are another. And at these events we betray the fact that despite our habit of treating the spiritual and physical realms as largely disjointed, we know that they can and must touch in key places.
I am an evangelical Protestant. I don’t use icons in my worship, nor do my family and I meet the members of our church under gothic architecture each Sunday (although our worship is traditional by modern standards, and I like to think our building looks okay). Yet I’ve come to the conviction that beauty expressed in ceremony, liturgy, art, sacred music, and most of all the sacraments is anything but optional. God created us embodied creatures who live in a material world, and Scripture makes it absolutely clear that He meets us in material ways.
From the monumental artistic project of Solomon’s temple to the complexity and skill of the Psalms, from Christ’s use of a meal and a bath to mediate supernatural grace to the gemstone-encrusted splendor of the New Jerusalem where it’s no coincidence the first order of business will be a wedding, the Bible speaks of a God who believes in and uses sacred acts and spaces—a God who, as C. S. Lewis says, really “likes matter,” and habitually arranges it in beautiful ways.
I hope you’ll listen to my conversation with Brian Brown, founder of the Anselm Society, this week on Upstream. We connected over our mutual appreciation for beauty and creative expression, and over our longing to see Christians reclaim these treasures. We also recognized that most Christians will only have the opportunity, resources, and expertise to invite beauty back into our lives in small ways. Yet if enough of God’s people value and cultivate beauty in our lives for long enough, we may just find ourselves in a world where more sacred spaces are being built than burned.
Colson Center Director of Programs and Anselm Society founder, Brian Brown, joins Shane to explore the central importance of beauty and imagination in the home, the church, and in our communities. Brian argues that the arts aren’t optional for Christians, since they move our hearts to worship and reveal things about God and His intent for creation that mere words cannot. But beauty, he says, is accessible to all.
Perhaps you’ve noticed, as I have, the popular recasting of marriage as primarily a very close friendship. Young couples (frequently when posting photos of each other on social media) will say, “I married my best friend.” They intend this as a very high compliment to their spouse. Those who say it typically mean that their marriage is a continuation of a companionate relationship that already existed, and which transcended sexual attraction. Going to the altar with their “best friend” meant adding an additional layer to a relation that was already well-established, and was primarily Platonic.
There’s something positive to be said for this attitude. I’ve known a number of couples over the years who genuinely did begin their association as friends. They enjoyed common interests, pursuits, or places of worship. They gravitated toward one another in conversation, because they found one another interesting. Only later, as they explain to me, did something else begin to develop.
Frequently, attraction begins in one of them before the other. At some point, the fact becomes obvious, and since it’s never wise to leave such powerful forces dormant and unaddressed, the two have to make a decision: either to close off the possibility of a romance, or to embrace it. Couples who choose the latter (especially the men) often report a sense of epiphany. “I have been enjoying this woman’s presence and company for so long, the fact that she is an eligible mate escaped me.” Sometimes, this is because his friend is not what he would previously have described as his physical “type.” I’ve heard women say the same of their husbands. It could also be that one or both were so absorbed in other pursuits, including other romantic interests, that the friendship never had a chance to develop in a new direction. For C. S. Lewis, who took years to realize and admit his attraction to his future wife, Joy Davidman, it seems that romance simply wasn’t on his radar. Nevertheless, the literary friendship gave birth to something new and beautiful. It is not a bad thing to marry your best friend.
It is bad, however, to treat friendship as the pinnacle or ideal of married love, or else to imply that marriages not based on very close friendship are somehow deficient. To suggest, even unintentionally, that marriage is or ought to be a kind of very intense friendship with the benefits of sex and family thrown in, is to seriously confuse the different words and concepts Scripture uses to describe love—or more precisely, loves. All four of them.
Most marriages throughout history have not been based first and foremost on friendship. Many of history’s greatest marriages were based on economic, social, or even political necessity. The marriage of Mary to Joseph, arguably the most consequential union between two people ever established, was likely arranged by fathers. And nowhere in all the instructional passages about marriage in the New Testament do we find spouses commanded or encouraged to cultivate friendship.
What we do find is a rapturous vision of partnership in dominion and glory—of man and woman together showing forth the image of God and embodying a sacred mystery at the heart of both creation and redemption. What we find inaugurated in Genesis, celebrated in Song of Solomon, confirmed and defended in the Gospels, sanctified in Paul, and fulfilled in Revelation is so much more than a companionate rooming arrangement. To describe marriage—eros as God intended it—as primarily a type of friendship is to cheapen both it and friendship love. To say I married my best friend may be true. But to leave it at that is to demote my spouse from her rightful and highest titles of bride and helpmeet.
Our modern habit of making friendship the gold standard in marriage parallels other serious but popular confusions or conflations between types of love. Consider the opposite phenomenon, in which friendship is eroticized. I recently saw someone on Twitter repeat the tired and obnoxious claim that “The Lord of the Rings” has undertones of same-sex attraction. “[J. R. R.] Tolkien,” he claimed, “only wrote two kinds of dudes: beaming wife guys and yearning foxhole homosexuals.” A much wiser Twitter user replied by quoting C. S. Lewis’ book, “The Four Loves”: “Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend.”
In the book, Lewis continues the quotation, explaining something about the difference between friendship and romantic love, or “philia” and “eros,” to use the biblical Greek terms:
“The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best.”
Or consider the effort to rescue eros, itself, from mere animal physicality by redefining it as a sexual identity or orientation akin to “gay,” “lesbian,” or “bisexual.” Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, the 23-year-old daughter of New York’s governor, recently posted an interview to Instagram in which she described herself as “demisexual.” For those who aren’t familiar with this neologism, a Guardian columnist helpfully defines demisexuals as “people who aren’t sexually attracted to others unless they form a strong emotional bond with them first.”
The same columnist rightly notes how unremarkable this so-called “orientation” is, and how Cuomo’s declaring it an esoteric sexual identity smacks of attention-seeking by an already rich and privileged young woman. Yet she goes on to observe how sexualized and lascivious our culture must be for anyone to feel the need to declare that emotions and relationship play some role in her sexuality. I would suggest that Cuomo’s need to reintroduce actual eros into the conversation about sex is yet another example of how we’ve confused and conflated the various types of love.
Our culture, now more than ever, has no idea what “love” means. At times, it treats it as little more than a synonym for genital arousal. At other times, it offers a gnostic ideal in which all love—even the love between husband and wife—is nothing but an intense form of friendship between people who have decided to live and sleep together. We vacillate between Playboy and Hallmark, exalting animal lust at one moment and sentimental schmaltz the next. In the crossfire, concepts like real, disinterested friendship get slandered as repressed homosexuality, or else forgotten entirely. And the greatest of all loves—Agape—the Divine and spiritual charity that drove Christ to lay down His life for the Church and which God intended to vivify and sanctify the other loves—is nowhere to be found.
Though Andrew Lazo and I disagreed about “Till We Have Faces,” C. S.’ Fictional attempt to portray the nature of love in the Christian story, we agree wholeheartedly on Lewis’ nonfiction version of the same concept in “The Four Loves.” Our conversation this week on Upstream serves as an invitation to explore the Oxford don’s grand vision of love, and to remember why rightly distinguishing between Storge, Eros, Philia, and Agape can repair the damage our culture has done to our understanding of each. But even more importantly, Lewis points us to the Scriptural well from which he drew his rich and satisfying knowledge of the loves, and to the Lover in whose relationship with His people we find all four perfectly, yet distinctly.
Andrew Lazo tries to convince Shane that ‘Till We Have Faces’ is a misunderstood masterpiece that embodies the Oxford professor’s fully-mature thought on the nature of love.”
Welcome to Upstream. I’m Shane Morris, and I want to reflect further on this week’s conversation.
When I spoke with Andrew Peterson as part of our Wilberforce Weekend online, we tried to answer the question of what it looks like to serve God with our creative talents. Why has Christ equipped his body with so many members who write, compose, paint, draw, sculpt, sing, act, play, direct, and design? Why is the urge and ability to create so liberally scattered among the people of God? And what does He expect us to do with such capabilities?
The answer is complex, and much more than I can tackle in a short reflection. But in turning to a story—The Lord of the Rings—and a character—Samwie Gamgee—to illustrate one of his central points about humility and faithfulness, I think Andrew offered a profound insight on why the Church needs creativity, specifically creativity in the form of stories.
I once heard someone make the argument that we don’t need stories, and it went something like this: revelation and truth are offered to us directly in Scripture. We needn’t look elsewhere, much less seek tales of witches, dragons, and hobbits to learn and grow in our faith. Besides, these stories are fiction, which is just another word for a lie. They never happened, and therefore don’t teach us anything true in the sense of factual. Much better to go right to the source and study the Bible.
It sounds like a pious and scrupulous objection, until you realize that the Bible itself is packed with stories: the prodigal son, the wheat and the tares, the soils, the Pharisee and the tax collector, the pearl of great price, the ten virgins, the lost sheep, the unforgiving servant, the workers in the vineyard, the rich man and Lazarus, the sheep and the goats. When God Himself dwelt among us in the flesh, He spent more time telling stories than He did doing just about anything else.
The person with whom I had this conversation suggested that perhaps these weren’t fictional accounts. Perhaps they had really occurred. Without completely discounting that possibility, I think requiring them to be factual stories radically misses Jesus’ point in telling them.
When I spoke with Seraphim Hamilton, he suggested that one reason the Holy Spirit bequeathed to us a library of books measuring in at over 700 thousand words, rather than a set of bullet-pointed doctrinal propositions was to force us to diligently study His revelation. Had He given us the bullet points, we likely would have read them once and then assumed we grasped the faith. But no true wisdom or insight is gained that way. It is, as Seraphim said, gained through careful meditation and rumination—through chewing on the Word of God over a lifetime until it nourishes our souls and ultimately becomes a part of who we are.
Unless a biblical story specifically claims to be factual, there’s no need for that to be the case. The parables Jesus tells are almost certainly not history. But they were and are true. That is, they are vehicles of truth in a way that simple, propositional, didactic teaching could never be. That’s part of the reason why Jesus used them. And that’s part of the reason I am certain that He invites us to be storytellers, as well.
In one of Andrew’s most beautiful songs, “To All the Poets,” he sings this:
To all the poets I have known
You built a kingdom out of sea and sand
You conquered armies with a marching band
You carved a galaxy in stone
You built an altar out of bread
And spent your soul to see the children fed
You wove your heart in every story read
Thank God for poets I have known
…In every man you saw the boy
The hidden heart the dark could not destroy
Slipped past the dragons with a tale of joy
Thank God for poets I have known
That last line is taken from C. S. Lewis, who wrote that well-crafted stories can slip past the “watchful dragons” that guard the human imagination—those inhibitions that “paralyze” our apprehension of truth. What gives them this power? There are really two answers.
First, God approaches us not only through the true, but also in the good, and the beautiful. Moral and aesthetic revelation are essential to our full and incarnate humanity. They are the means by which God gives (and invites us to give) flesh, bones, and splendor to the foundational but abstract revelation we call truth. This is the most basic reason why we worship God in song and sacrament each Sunday, and not merely in hearing His Word preached.
Secondly and just as vitally, stories allow each of us to internalize and personalize truths that otherwise might seem distant and even irrelevant to our lives. As another Peterson—clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson—points out in his new book, “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life,” stories exercise power over us because they tap into collective and unconscious human knowledge and mimic the very form of our lives, which we experience in narrative form.
“In stories,” he writes, “we capture observations of the ideal personality. We tell tales about success and failure and adventure and romance. Across our narrative universes, success moves us forward to what is better, to the promised land. Failure dooms us, and those who become entangled with us, to the abyss. The good moves us upward and ahead, and evil drags us backward and down. Great stories are about characters in action, so they mirror
the unconscious structures and processes that help us translate the intransigent world of facts into the sustainable, functionable, reciprocal, social world of values.”
Andrew’s refrain throughout his own novels, which we’ve talked about at length on Upstream, is simple yet thrilling to young ears: “The stories are true.” He doesn’t, of course, mean that the world of Aerwiar is a place one could get to by boarding a ship or walking through a wardrobe (though as Lewis might remind us, one never quite knows). Andrew means that the stories he writes reflect in their beauty and goodness a truth we might otherwise miss, or fail to make our own.
These and other artistic portrayals of that truth not only invite, but give our hearts an opportunity to conform themselves to the contours of reality and of God’s own nature. By writing and reveling in them, we ourselves develop into the sorts of characters who are capable of confronting dragons—and more importantly, of living in an eternity where the chief Storyteller, Poet, and Creator meets us as goodness and beauty, as well as truth. Which leaves me, in my own way, thanking God for the poets I have known.
Shane visits with Andrew Peterson in a special Wilberforce Weekend discussion on art, imagination, and faith.
In my chat with Dale Stenberg on the Pilgrim Faith podcast, he asked me to define the family, and how male and female are integral to its design. I said a few things about how men and women uniquely contribute to the functioning and calling of the family, but I want to go into more detail right now about the especially sacred calling of mothers.
During the height of the pandemic, our gym closed. That meant more than me having to try chin-ups on tree branches (which I don’t recommend). Thanks to the childcare service our gym offered, it also meant that my wife lost one of her rare reprieves from watching the kids, along with a chance for us to exercise together. This left her trying to snatch breaks whenever and however she could.
She took to leaving our brood with me while she strolled around the neighborhood. That certainly helped. A friend of ours and a fellow quarantine mom admitted that she started “checking the mail” in the mornings. She knew the postal truck doesn’t arrive until well after 3PM. But even those brief moments with a door intervening between her and the demands of three lovable savages were a relief.
Being trapped inside day in and day out with restless, squabbling, irritable little ones is the full-difficulty setting on an already daunting job. No breakfast-in-bed every May could adequately compensate for the extra burden mothers shouldered and are still shouldering in this society-wide shutdown.
In homes like ours where a sole breadwinner can work remotely, or in those where the main earner’s job has been deemed “essential” a mother can begin to feel her sole purpose is to keep the kids out of her husband’s hair. Her job, she may start to suspect, exists just so his can.
If anything, I think it’s the other way around.
Yes, I believe in what I do for a living. I know it does independent good, often for individuals, families, and churches I will never meet or visit. Yet as I record this, listening to my wife singing “The Church’s One Foundation” with our daughter and sons, I want her to know—along with the countless other young mothers who have struggled through the last year and a half—that her toil is not just vital; it’s sacred.
I caught a glimpse of this recently when I scrolled past a photo of that mailbox-checking mom and her husband (who is one of my dearest friends) with their growing tribe. There’s a quiet power and an aura of deep meaning that surrounds even frazzled mothers when they’re with their children. Especially frazzled mothers. One can almost hear that “choral music” Lewis wrote of in Perelandra—that sense of future generations taking shape, wholly dependent on and indebted to the tired woman with the yogurt stains on her sleeve.
The image of a young mom, surrounded by her kids in their rumpled Sunday best, half of them paying attention to the camera and the other half swinging wooden swords, sipping from plastic teacups, or casting about for some small corner of creation to subdue, beautify, or stuff into a Critter Keeper can leave me speechless. The sense of self-giving love is palpable. I look at those pictures—those of my own wife and children, especially—and I see natural beauty caught up and glorified in a supernatural vocation. I see potential realized. I see a story being told that, if kept silent, would have left the world poorer.
In that role, my wife (and all the moms in her shoes), are exercising an office at which I can only marvel. We fathers have a more straightforward, voluntary, and often comical chemistry with our kids—especially with our boys. It’s why we end up tossing them in the air or hanging them by their feet in so many photographs. And I could record a whole episode on my daughter’s confidence in my dragon-slaying abilities. Of course, there’s mystery there, too. She’s looking for Jesus. And that means there’s a cross in my job description.
But during the COVID pandemic and all the stress that accompanied it, I became more keenly aware of the unique sacrifice involved in mothering. There are the obvious ways a woman dies to herself in raising a family: she gives up free time and “me time,” she experiences unwelcome physical changes, and on some days, she may not have the time to make herself look presentable. The self-emptying is both literal and metaphorical.
Yet a woman with children becomes more than herself, not less. She is caught up in an eternal archetype that first gave shape to man and woman, father and mother. She gives testimony that God was not mistaken when He made us the way He did—male and female—and that He has not by any means moved on to a “plan B” for His world.
I’m not Roman Catholic, but there’s a reason the icons of Mary with her Son have for centuries held such sway over the Christian imagination: the Mother of God represents something creation was designed for. In a very real sense, the whole world was made so that mothers could cradle infants. And the whole world was remade when God chose to enter that embrace (and by doing so, forever hallow it).
It’s not only that, as Poet William Ross Wallace famously put it, “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.” In some ways, that’s a mercenary view of motherhood. The din of every hurried Sunday morning is the sound of image-bearers being welcomed into the choir—of human souls doing what they were designed to do—of the family, that ancient blossom of creative energy that survived the fall, thriving in the redemptive soil of Calvary.
In times like the last year and a half, confined to home by events out of our control, I’ve seen more clearly what the Psalmist meant when he called the wife of one who fears the Lord “a fruitful vine” flourishing within his house. Right now, these four walls often reverberate with the sound of chaos. But if I listen closely, especially when Gabi is singing hymns with the kids, I can hear that choral music.
Shane joins Dale Stenberg on the Davenant Institute’s “Pilgrim Faith” podcast to define the family, unpack its created purpose and structure, and explore how recovering God’s design can transform our culture.
Some of my most revealing discussions happen on airplanes, during long flights. They usually begin when the person imprisoned in the seat beside me asks what I do for a living. When I reply that I work for a Christian worldview ministry, I can see the wheels turning. Occasionally, they’ll reply, “Awesome! I’m a Christian, too, and this is where I go to church.” But more often, I hear defensiveness, reservation, or an implied challenge.
“I believe in a higher power,” some will say. “But I’m not dogmatic about which church or religion is true.” I also hear the ever-present complaint that churches are full of hypocrites and legalists.
There’s one question, though, that seems to bob to the surface more regularly than any other: “So,” my fellow passengers will say, “you’re a Christian. Does that mean you are against…?” and the blank is usually filled with abortion, gay relationships, or some gender identity of recent vintage. On my most recent flight, I was asked why I oppose sex between consenting adults outside of marriage.
This leaves me in a difficult spot. I can launch into an argument for why I reject certain popular claims about bodily autonomy, the harm principle, or the conflation of subjective feelings with identity. I can start critiquing expressive individualism, and challenge my neighbor’s belief that what doesn’t hurt others is none of my business. And I have done these things. But I’ve noticed lately that all of these reactions begin by accepting my fellow passenger’s free association of Christianity with the word “no.”
In America in the 2020s, biblical and orthodox faith suffers from an image problem. Most of those outside the fold seem to view Christianity primarily as a negation of freedoms, rights, and self-expression. Quite naturally on finding that one of these dour, censorious Christian creatures has embarked in the seat beside them, they expect me to justify myself.
Of course, there is a proper place for the word “no.” As every parent understands, “no” can save a life. That’s why it’s short and easy to shout. The oncoming SUV isn’t going to wait for me to explain Newtonian physics to my six-year-old. And society rightly says “no” to the driver of that same vehicle when he decides to get behind the wheel drunk.
If love and authority mean anything, they must mean forbidding or at least discouraging actions that harm or endanger others. And as the drunk driver shows, that can even mean forbidding adults from doing whatever they want with their own bodies. Even the Ten Commandments, especially the second tablet, are largely proscriptive. There’s nothing wrong with “no.” It closes off roads that lead to deception, death, and damnation.
But in allowing Christianity to become a religion associated primarily or even solely with what it forbids, I fear we have made it far too easy for those outside the faith, and even those within, to forget the life-giving “yes” all those “nos” exist to protect.
Those who ask me at takeoff why I’m against abortion or gay love or unfettered passion aren’t asking for a moral or philosophical treatise. They’re asking why I don’t want some people to live their fullest and freest lives. They want to know why the sixteen-year-old with college ambitions should have to throw them away for the sake a blastocyst—why people who experience attractions different from mine should have to live their lives without love—why those who feel the warm prompting of instinct when they look into a stranger’s eyes should have to squash it for the sake of their grandmother’s morals.
They want to know where my God gets off forbidding us from enjoying humanity in all its earthy ecstasy and potential.
The suspicion is obvious (and not just among unbelievers) that something about the Christian faith is sick and repressive. This religion, after all, seems to demand that we renounce our own highest good and joy, that we give up on this creation and all the pleasures it seems to offer. Why? So we can sacrifice our hopes and happiness for some ghostly hereafter. The idea that Christians are really a people who hate our own and everyone else’s humanity is devilishly easy to catch. “You can have all this world, just give me Jesus” is a tough sell when Jesus seems like a story and this world lights up our every sense.
This is where Christianity’s “yes” has the power to rock a person’s worldview, and why we must preach the whole Christian story, not just its “no” to sin.
Thomas Aquinas said it best when he defined love as “willing the good of another.” But this presupposes that the good of another is a matter of objective reality, not merely what we choose or desire at any given moment. We could be mistaken about that good—even laughably mistaken. As Lewis comically proposes in “The Weight of Glory,” our idea of human flourishing may be, compared with the objective reality of human flourishing, as mud pies in the slums to a holiday on the seashore.
But Aquinas’ dictum also presupposes a story that begins before the fall, before the world and human nature were ruined. It envisions a loving God intent on sharing inexhaustible delight with His creatures, who endowed them with near-divine capacities and placed them in a paradise so rich Moses struggled to describe it. And it teaches that even after our first parents chose to kiss the dust, God’s determination to give human beings true joy was so strong, it buried the death and misery we chose and planted a new garden on top of them.
During my discussion with Seraphim Hamilton this week on Upstream, he did a stunning job of articulating God’s plan to glorify creation in and through the perfecting of humanity. But it gets even better. Christianity’s “yes” isn’t just a yes to an objective but general human nature, but to each of our individual natures and personalities in their truest, best, and fullest form. Lily Cherney puts it this way in one of my favorite essays at The Calvinist International:
“…when we exercise self-control and make decisions every day about how to enact our lives, are we shaping ourselves arbitrarily, recreating ourselves according to low ambition or will—or are we rather attempting to become more truly and skillfully who we already are, to discover rather than capriciously invent what it means to be a human, a woman, this woman in particular? Again, the traditional answer is the latter. And this is very good news. What it means is that who we are—who we really are—is on God’s agenda. No part of you will go unfulfilled, unexpressed, and in the end, unglorified, if you give yourself to the pursuit of God’s kingdom. It is only and always the Enemy who wants to make each of us less than we are.”
Yes, Christianity tells us to take up our crosses and deny ourselves. It forbids us from pursuing certain pleasures and from setting up certain visions of selfhood as golden idols. It tells us “no” and teaches us to use the word quite frequently, ourselves. But that is only in the service of a greater “yes.” It is only because our desires, as Lewis says, are not too strong for God. They are too weak. And the story of our salvation is in part the story of learning not to settle for less than real and perfect human joy. We deny
what we mistake for our humanity so that in the end, God can give us back our full humanity—our real selves—the people He intended and always knew we could be.
All of this takes a little longer to explain than most people who talk with me on long flights expect. Which is why I never start the conversation. But when they ask, I never say no.
Seraphim Hamilton joins Shane on Upstream to discuss the grand story of Scripture and the beautiful invitation we have to live inside God's economy.
In his diabolical masterpiece, “The Screwtape Letters,” C. S. Lewis reveals through the pen of his senior tempter how devils persuade humans to accept false beliefs by using jargon:
“Your man,” explains Screwtape, “has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false,’ but as ‘academic,’ or ‘practical,’ or ‘outworn,’ or ‘contemporary,’ or ‘conventional,’ or ‘ruthless.’ Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sorts of thing he cares about.”
As Screwtape concludes later in the book, the skilled tempter’s job is to get his human patient to believe something “not because it is true, but for some other reason.”
I can’t help thinking of this passage whenever I experience what I call a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” moment. I’ll be in a conversation with someone who finds out that I share their view on some political issue of great moral significance. Let’s use abortion as an example. The sense of comradery and trust generated by that agreement will often lead this person to assume that I share their view on some completely unrelated issue—let’s say, hygiene practices during a pandemic, or claims about the integrity of an election.
He or she will give me the “wink, wink, nudge nudge,” as they rehearse their views, presuming that because they’ve come to see me as a member of their tribe, I must share their views on everything. I’m often left in the uncomfortable position of having to smile politely and ignore the remarks, or else explain to my friend that I have a different view—one that may upset them or cause them to question their positive impression of me.
The opposite can happen, too. Recently, someone told me that she was surprised to find out I opposed the ordination of women as church elders (a position she shared), because she had assumed based on my criticism of a certain politician’s behavior that I was “very liberal.” Think about that! Knowing nothing about my beliefs, reasoning, or theological commitments, she filled in these blanks in based on my reaction to an elected official who rarely attends church.
I bring all this up not to pick on anyone, but to illustrate how thoroughly we’ve accustomed ourselves to thinking in jargon and tribal identities. “Left,” “right,” “conservative,” “liberal,” “solid,” “compromised,” “progressive,” “fundamentalist,” “affirming,” “bigoted,” “red-pilled,” “blue-pilled,” “woke,” “based,” “elite,” and “ordinary Americans.” Each of these labels stands for a complex of assumed beliefs and values, and each belief or value is quickly extrapolated to identify a person with one of these labels.
Worse still, these tribal associations and the jargon that signifies them are often how we choose our opinions! Rather than evaluating the merits of individual claims—even those that have little or nothing to do with beliefs we’ve already accepted—we adopt the opinion most common in our preferred tribe. Like consumers watching a TV commercial, the question on our minds is not, “is this idea true?” but “what sort of person believes this, and do I want to be that sort of person?”
In my conversation with Samuel James on the podcast this week, we noted how Christians fall into this trap when it comes to reading and listening to political commentators—especially those who don’t fit neatly into one of our political tribes. The idea that a pastor, theologian, apologist or author could criticize certain behaviors and beliefs of our tribe without outing himself as a member of the opposing tribe is more difficult for us to grasp than ever. Yet in an age consumed by partisanship and identity politics, it’s never been more important to listen to voices who don’t seem to have a side—voices that are difficult to describe using our favorite jargon—voices less interested in reinforcing our tribal identity than in being forthright with us.
Believe me, I get it. The world is complicated, and our newsfeeds are overwhelming. We look for ways to simplify the torrent of information and competing claims. “Good guys” and “bad buys,” “red team,” and “blue team,” “white hats,” and “black hats” “conservative” and “liberal” are convenient shorthands for making sense of the world. Yet as we label each other—as we draw up sides—as we substitute adjectives for honesty—we must listen for the hiss of an Undersecretary of Hell whose one goal is to keep us from asking the only question that matters: “is this true?”
A recent piece at The Gospel Coalition calls out evangelical elites for only “punching right.” In a response, writer and editor Samuel James argues that there’s plenty of nonpartisan Christian commentary—we’re just not listening.
The Dunning-Kruger effect (famously described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger) is the idea that people who know little to nothing about a subject tend to wildly overestimate their competence in that subject. This is because their knowledge is so limited, they lack even the categories to recognize their own ignorance.
We see the Dunning-Kruger effect at work in historian Tom Holland’s confession at the beginning of his book “Dominion.” Holland (whom I interviewed last year on the BreakPoint Podcast), writes that as a schoolboy, he obsessed over two subjects: dinosaurs, and Greco-Roman civilization—and for the same reasons. As he puts it, both were “exciting, large, glamorous, fierce, and extinct.”
But while Holland always knew that Tyrannosaurus rex lacked beneficence, he soon become disillusioned and bewildered by the Greeks and Romans. Why? Because although he admired the military achievements of men like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, the more he read about these men and their empires, the more alien they seemed. Holland realized that they truly were like predatory dinosaurs: vicious, bloodthirsty, and utterly lacking in anything we would recognize as mercy.
This shattered his conception of the ancient world. It dawned on him that he had been viewing the Greeks and Romans through a set of assumptions shaped not by their moral code of conquest and slaughter, but by the ethics of an itinerant mystic and miracle-worker from Nazareth—a man whom the Romans crucified.
Holland’s book is a fascinating read in its own right, but the point I want to make is how easily he let his childhood values—values he inherited from Christianity—inform the way he viewed ancient civilizations. In line with Dunning-Kruger, Tom’s ignorance of shifting moral norms was so profound that he didn’t even notice it at first. He didn’t know enough to know what he didn’t know.
In many ways, his book is the counterpoint to a more recent book we’ve talked about a lot lately at the Colson Center: Carl Trueman’s “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.” Where Holland seeks to illustrate how profoundly Christianity has shaped Western values, Trueman seeks to illustrate how our values have radically departed from the Christian past—so much so that a statement like, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” now makes intuitive sense to millions.
Yet I think there’s a synthesis to be had between these two masterfully-written historical surveys. And it really comes down to a concept Trueman highlights in his subtitle—a phenomenon that has a lot in common with the Dunning-Kruger effect: “cultural amnesia.”
When I sat down with Dr. Trueman in front of a live audience at the recent Wilberforce Weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, I asked him what he meant by “cultural amnesia.” He defined it as the contempt for, or disregard of the past and the beliefs and values of those who lived there. We hear cultural amnesia in grating refrains like, “It’s 2021, get with the times,” or “you’re on the wrong side of history.” And of course, it’s not difficult to guess at the social beliefs of anyone who deploys these slogans in casual conversation. They’re likely very progressive, and they likely believe that categories and identities younger than the iPhone are non-negotiable pillars of human life.
These sayings are also closely related with Owen Barfield’s concept of “chronological snobbery”—the idea that we’re smarter and morally superior to ancestors simply because we live in the present, and they in the past. But what really fascinates me is the way cultural amnesia or chronological snobbery—call it what you like—tends to blind us to both the good and the bad in our age.
In C. S. Lewis’ essay, “On the Reading of Old Books,” he argues that every age has its characteristic blindness—a blunder of which posterity will marvel, “How could they have thought that?” None of us can fully escape this blindness, he admits. But we can significantly reduce it by reading old books.
It’s not that Lewis thought people in past times were necessarily wiser or more righteous than us, or that they didn’t also have their blind spots. It’s that their blind spots are very unlikely to have been the same as ours. Very often, in fact, their blind spots were the opposites of ours. Lewis suggests that writers from past ages tend to emphasize precisely the virtues we have forgotten, and criticize precisely the vices we have embraced. By exposing our minds to “the clean sea breeze of the centuries,” we make ourselves aware of our blind spots, and realize (as Holland did) that the standards we take for granted—those assumptions we’re not even fully aware of—are very often what’s blocking our view of the past.
In a very real sense, “Dominion” and “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” offer the same insight from different angles: Holland’s book is about how cultural amnesia has blinded us to the good of our age (more specifically, the good our age retains from its long centuries basking in the Christian sun). Trueman’s book is about how we’re blind to the lies of our age—specifically the lie that our identities are primarily grounded in subjective, psychological experience.
The solution both writers offer is strikingly similar: become deeply familiar with the past, with the way those who live there thought, and with how peculiar our assumptions and cultural prejudices are by comparison. It’s this kind of exercise in awareness that can teach us what we don’t know. But more importantly, it will teach us how to know what we don’t know.
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Dr. Carl Trueman joins Shane and a live audience at the Wilberforce Weekend in Fort Worth, Texas to explore how a revolution in how we understand selfhood made the transgender revolution plausible.
The late Rich Mullins wrote a lot of songs that changed people’s lives and shaped their faith. But one song in particular has a reputation for grabbing the attention of unwary listeners and has even been known to convert souls. In “If I Stand,” Rich sings: “There’s more that rises in the morning than the sun, and more that shines in the night than just the moon. There’s more than just this fire here that keeps me warm, in a shelter that is larger than this room. And there’s a loyalty that’s deeper than mere sentiment, and a music higher than the songs that I can sing.”
The point of the song is simple: there’s much more going on in this world than just the material facts—more than atoms and energy. We live in a cosmic temple bursting with immaterial meaning, with invisible essences, with symbols and truths laid out in plain view for keen image-bearers to see. Or to hear.
Recently I had the privilege of interviewing the lead members of one of my favorite bands, The Arcadian Wild. We were face-to-face at the Wilberforce Weekend in Dallas-Fort Worth the day after they gave a predictably superb performance for our conference attendees. I asked Lincoln Mick and Isaac Horn what they think it is about music that gives it this unique power to arrest our minds and hearts, and make us vividly aware of the immaterial meaning built into human life and creation.
They told me that music is “ingrained in the fabric of the world” in a way that precedes the very first song any musician ever wrote. In that sense, it is a universal language, accessible to and in some measure understood by all. Where human tongues separate, music possesses a strange and wonderful power to unite. And it does this by laying open the ineffable mysteries of God’s world—by testifying that there is, indeed, more that rises in the morning than the sun.
Isaac pointed specifically the music’s close connection with our emotions—the audible “color palette” as he called it, whose hues we can hear in the lilt of a violin, the laughter of a mandolin, the deep and manly conversation of a guitar. Each of these can evoke emotions—joy, contentment, melancholy, dereliction, longing. Even more, their undeniable reminder of the immaterial pries our hearts open to the surgical touch of well-written lyrics.
We don’t possess the original musical notation for the Psalms. We can guess what they sounded like, but for the most part, God left us to fill in the notes. It’s telling, however, that he preserved the lyrics. This collection of voiceless songs that invite the church of every age to arrange and sing them anew comprise the longest book of the Bible. Spanning the full breadth of human emotion and experience, the Psalter is special revelation for every moment of our lives. Yet the fact that God so prized these words that he delights in seeing them set to melody after new melody in no way diminishes the importance of the notes we use.
God reveals his plan of salvation using words, and even names himself in the second person “the Word.” But music’s close relationship to lyrical truth—and its penchant for preparing the way for that truth—reminds me of a voice who once cried in the wilderness before the coming of the Word made flesh.
Music, this purest form of natural revelation, brooks no argument. It summons tears to our eyes or a smile to our lips unbidden and almost irresistibly. In classical education, it forms one of the Quadrivium, the four disciplines applying mathematics to time and space. It is the audible order of creation, wondrous in its unnecessary beauty and uncanny in its skill at catching sinners off guard. And ever the
loyal handmaid of God’s Word, it reminds us stubbornly of the universe of meaning behind the visible world, and in doing so opens us again to the truth our minds often forget, but our ears never do.
Shane welcomes Isaac Horn and Lincoln Mick of the bluegrass/folk band, “The Arcadian Wild” to explore the strange and wonderful power music has to convey truth and remind us who we are as image-bearers. This episode was recorded in-person at the 2021 Wilberforce Weekend in Dallas-Fort Worth.
The first few minutes of Pixar’s 2009 smash hit “Up” are unforgettable for a lot of reasons. We were enchanted and moved watching Carl and Ellie develop a friendship as children, which eventually blossomed into a love that led them to the altar and into the fixer-upper house where they met. We see flashes of their long years together, grieve with their unfulfilled desire f+or children, and watch as they grow older and closer. Then Ellie dies, leaving Carl by himself.
The very next scene may be the most effective transition in the entire movie. Carl, a doddering old man, moves at a tortoise’s pace through his empty house to Bizet’s Carmen Suite no. 2. He wears a glower that tells audiences right away that his life is over and he is waiting to die. Carl has given up on every pursuit but snarling at those who set foot on his lawn.
Into this gloomy senescence walks Russel—a young Wilderness Explorer who shows up at Carl’s front door looking to earn a merit badge for assisting the elderly. Despite Carl’s best efforts to shake this kid, the two get drawn into an incredibly zany adventure to South America where they develop the most unlikely of friendships. By the end, Carl has learned not so much to let go of his past as to honor it—and his deceased wife—by loving and investing in people in the present. He realizes his life is not over. In fact, some of his best adventures may still be ahead of him.
This beloved animated feature perfectly captures the attitude of a new book by Robert Wolgemuth, who joined me this week on “Upstream.” “Gun Lap: Staying in the Race with Purpose” is Robert’s guide for men entering the home stretch of their lives and looking to leave a godly legacy. The title comes from long-distance races, in which the starting gun sounds a second time as competitors begin the final lap. It signals runners to give it all they have—to spend the energy they’ve been reserving for the entire race in pursuit of victory. Read the full commentary and subscribe to our newsletter at www.colsoncenter.org/upstream-podcast
What if the home stretch of our race is the most important part? Former Thomas Nelson president and author Robert Wolgemuth joins Shane to talk about his new book, “The Gun Lap: Staying in the Race with Purpose.”
It contains some of Jesus’ most beloved words and deeds, but the fourth gospel has long been dismissed by scholars as historically inaccurate. Dr. Lydia McGrew takes on this consensus with powerful arguments that John gives us the real Jesus.
Atheists tells us science has no need for the “God hypothesis.” But three discoveries in the 20th century challenged materialism and revealed the Mind behind the universe. Dr. Stephen Meyer joins Shane to explore his new book, “The Return of the God Hypothesis.”
What exactly was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and why did God place it off-limits? Would He eventually have allowed Adam and Eve to eat of it? Christian philosopher Owen Anderson and theology writer Alastair Roberts join Shane to debate the tree that wrecked the world.
Many Christians have tried to harmonize evolution with the Bible, but there’s a deeper problem with Darwin’s theory: it denies the purpose and design in creation. Shane welcomes Aquinas expert Dr. Logan Gage to explain why Christians can’t embrace evolution as-is.
C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and George McDonald use trees to overcome evil. These practices reflect teaching in the Bible, where God uses trees not only to teach but to provide images of brokenness and grace.
Matthew Sleeth, MD, a former emergency room physician and chief of the hospital medical staff, resigned from his position to teach, preach, and write about the biblical call to be good stewards of God's creation. He joins Shane to share how pausing in Creation, considering trees, leads to robust lessons and redirection in life to find purpose in God's grace in the shade and life provided by trees.
Nature is a necessary nutrient, and PBS and Amazon Prime Host of HighPointers Branndon Bargo can attest to that. Bargo is a world traveler, a High Pointer, and a student in the Colson Fellows program. Branndon connects his love for the outdoors to a convinced apologetic that there really isn't a square inch man can venture to that God doesn't call His.
Branndon has been through some of the most dangerous passes on earth, nearly dying numerous times, all in a wanderlust pursuit of seeing the beauty of God's creation in the most life threatening locations. Branndon sat down with Shane to discuss apologetics and the power of seeing God in nature, having climbed some of the world's top high points. That is the topic of his new TV show, hosted on Amazon Prime and PBS, where Branndon and his brother are venturing to the highest points in each of the 50 States in the Union.
Dr. Gary Habermas, Distinguished Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy at Liberty University joins Shane Morris to discuss the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection along with the grudging admissions of modern historians who grant that whether they believe that Jesus was raised from the dead or not, that the historical record is clear: The earliest Christians certainly believed it, and many of them claimed to have seen Him after His crucifixion.
Entering the Easter season we acknowledge that God redeems humanity not through a list of doctrinal bullet points but through a powerful true story.
We acknowledge the King, come to earth, connecting with humans in living, caring, healing, and telling stories. Jesus connected his message to story, and in stories we understand our need for a Savior in profound ways.
Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter whose recent accomplishments as an author are making a profound impact on the literary landscape. Andrew's Wingfeather Saga is connecting with young and old alike. Shane visits with Andrew on how he developed the world of Aerwiar, how characters in the story embody personality traits he identifies with, and the foundational impact story has on our soul.
We've heard it before. Someone says he or she grew up in the evangelical church. They speak to credentials they hold inside the church, an evangelical of evangelicals. But then they started asking questions.
What they talk about is that they didn't find good answers. There are likely few specifics given, and after a while they say they start to doubt the faith they were taught. Often their church's sexual ethics factor prominently in their complaints.
Eventually these followers of Christ may come out with lengthy posts on social media, announcing their de-conversion. They talk about being tired of the culture wars. They share how they're tired of not getting answers to their questions.
They share that they're relieved when they can finally share their departure from the faith. They join a group of a growing throng of ex-vangelicals. It challenges those following Christ on how to respond.
Samuel James is an associate acquisitions editor at Crossway Books, Editor of Letter and Liturgy, and contributing editor at The Gospel Coalition. He recently wrote on the topic of popular deconversion in what he calls "Country Club Deconstruction"
For nearly all of us the first thing we lay our eyes on every morning is our cell phone. In the course of listening to this podcast it's likely you'll check social media, respond to a text, and do some online shopping. Most of us are desperately aware of the addictive properties of the phone, but we struggle to adjust our life to greater faith formation.
Trevin Wax is managing editor of The Gospel Project at LifeWay Christian Resources, a pastor, contributing editor to Christianity Today. and the author of previous books including Counterfeit Gospels and Holy Subversion. Trevin wrote a review of Netflix's documentary on social media titled The Social Dilemma.
He is the author of the newly minted ReThink Yourself, a powerful book to reorient our identity around Christ. Trevin visits with Shane Morris on the power of social media to orient our loves, longings, loyalties, labors and liturgies around futile things while developing addictive behaviors in our psyche.
Prayer is one of the most basic disciplines of the Christian life. Yet, many Christians are struck with fears and uncertainties as they speak to God.
A curious thing happens when we turn to the Bible and see Jesus praying. We find anguish and honesty, anger and anxiety. There are times of sharp and pungent expressions of the human condition and emotions. All of this directed to God, as if he could take it.
Praying with honesty can feel irreverent, but what if this is the way God actually wants us to pray. What if we've fundamentally misunderstood prayer.
Kyle Strobel is a systematic theologian who teaches spiritual formation at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He has co-written a book titled "Where Prayer Becomes Real".
Love just isn't enough to make a family. Congress stands poised to pass the Equality Act which brings on the final stages of a Mrs. Doubtfire view of marriage, family, and childrearing. Adult, and adult desires, are all that seem to matter to us.
Surrogacy, same-sex marriage, transgender parenting, divorce, donor conception, and intentional single parenting all illicit our self-centered view that is overlooking children. This highlights a lie; that children, not adults, need to accommodate our self-centered desires for meaning and satisfaction.
Katy Faust disagrees and is standing in the gap for children to share their stories. Katy Faust is the founder and director of the children’s rights organization, Them Before Us. She is the Washington State leader for CanaVox and currently appears in a video series called Dear Katy.
She has written a new book titled "Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement." Her book flips the script on adult-centric attitudes toward marriage, parenthood, and reproductive technologies by framing these issues around a child’s right to be raised by both their mother and father. Set against a backdrop of sound research, the compelling stories throughout each chapter confirm that a child’s mental, physical, and emotional well-being depends on being loved by the two people responsible for their existence. It’s a paradigm shift that will impact the personal and the political, and reframe every marriage and family conversation across the globe.
Why are Christians so hung-up on Sex? Why does God care who I sleep with? Sam Alberry is a speaker and author who explores this topic in a recently published book titled Why Does God Care Who I sleep With?
Sam provides a biblical perspective on what sex is designed to be, to mean and to do for us. He answers one of the biggest barriers to belief, helping Christians reason through one of the more challenging aspects of following Jesus, where many are increasingly seeing followers of Jesus as outdated, restricted and judgmental. Sam guides us through Biblical reasoning in honoring God with our sexual life because it is more than a physical interaction.
It's natural for Christians to pride ourselves talking about Christianity. For some there is a level of accomplishment when we can push someone in their thinking, to get them to question their doubts and consider Christ. But once a person has a child all the abilities to guide people in thought seem to dissipate.
Natasha Crain's Keeping Your Kids on God's Side is a great tool to begin, continue, and process conversations with one's children. Natasha is a speaker, blogger, and author whose guidance emboldens parents to trust God and continue conversations.
Michael Craven is the director of the Colson Fellows program. He communicates to Shane the importance of living upstream, understanding how Christianity shapes and gives us legitimate answers to how we shall live in this cultural moment.
Michael is an accomplished executive, worldview expert, cultural apologist, and author.Ever since leaving his career as a corporate CEO in 2001, Michael has been working to equip the Church in America with a robust Christian life and worldview.
In 2007, Michael founded the Center for Christ & Culture where his popular weekly commentaries grew to reach more than two million readers through Crosswalk.com, Christianity.com, The Christian Post and numerous other web-based outlets. In 2009, Michael authored his critically-acclaimed book, Uncompromised Faith: Overcoming Our Culturalized Christianity (NavPress). He also contributed to the 2014 book, Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God’s Design for Marriage by John Stonestreet and Sean McDowell.
Michael has been a featured speaker at many venues including, the University of California at Berkeley, the National Conference on Christian Apologetics, and numerous churches across the country. He served as an adjunct professor at Western Seminary where he was invited to teach on Cultural Apologetics. He has appeared on Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, and many other national television and radio programs.
Prior to joining The Colson Center, Michael served for five years as the president of BridgeBuilders, an inner-city ministry in South Dallas, where he pioneered a missional strategy for transforming the “culture of poverty” into a culture of flourishing, breaking the cycle of poverty that dominates America’s inner-city communities. Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife and three children.
Social Justice is making claims that are turning America's streets into war zones. Some of these claims refer to a "color blind upbringing", where an individual raised in a community predominantly homogenous in ethnicity is an example of "white privilege" and therefore a form of racism.
Thaddeus Williams has written an important book, "Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth". Dr. Williams is an Associate Professor of Theology at Biola University.
Dr. Williams loves enlarging students' understanding and enjoyment of God while teaching Theology 1 and 2 courses at Biola University. He also teaches History of Atheism, Introduction to Philosophy, and Biblical Literature in the secular college context. He has taught theology internationally, including seminaries in Nepal and Francis Schaeffer's L'Abri ministries in Switzerland and Holland. Dr. Williams is a frequent guest speaker at churches and conferences, in addition to serving as a teaching pastor at a local church. His academic works include Love, Freedom, and Evil(Rodopi, 2011), used in seminaries around the world and currently being translated to German, and his recent popular publication, The Exchange (AIMBooks, 2012). His research interests include the Trinity, divine and human agency, dialogue with atheists and theology of culture.
Josh is equal parts Singer-Songwriter, Anglican/Episcopal Priest, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Shane visits with him on music, guidance, and the way the Lord using lyric and tune to connect with us.
Josh holds an M.Div. and M.A. in Counseling from Reformed Theological Seminary, as well as a Certificate in Anglican Studies from Nashotah House Theological Seminary. He is the Senior Fellow for Music and Art at the Colson Center.
Josh and Shane talk joy and beauty in music, and spend time connecting the power of lament in music. The pair rest in God's grace to communicate powerfully in the midst of grief and trial.
Josh's music has gained a following of fans from all walks of life after recording four diverse albums and touring for more than 15 years. His latest album is a second volume of hymns called “Come Away From Rush & Hurry,” released in 2018. Originally from Chattanooga, TN Josh now lives in Orlando, FL. where he serves as Canon Priest at the Cathedral Church of Saint Luke.
Until recently couples who couldn't have children had only one godly option, to pray. That's what Sarah and Abraham did, recounted in the book of Genesis.
But couples struggling with infertility today are offered a number of high-tech solutions. One of the most common is called In vitro fertilization (IVF), where sperm and eggs are harvested from either the couple who wants to become pregnant or sperm and/or egg donors. The sperm and egg are united outside of the body, in a lab. The resulting tiny humans are then implanted in the embryonic stage, usually one-by-one, into the mother for gestation.
This process creates a problem. The more than $37 billion dollar IVF industry in America has over 1 million left over babies in the embryonic stage, stuck in freezers across the nation. For pro-life Christians, who believe life is sacred and begins at conception, this is a significant problem in our culture.
Dr. Jeffrey Keenan leads the National Embryo Donation Center. He is a board-certified OBGYN who is saving the lives of the frozen embryos, hoping to educate America and work himself out of a job.
Stephanie Gray Connors is a pro-life activist who is taking her advocacy for the pre-born to a logical conclusion for those suffering at the end of life.
She provides strong perspective about the dynamic of eliminating the sufferer vs. alleviating the suffering. She calls us to look at all humans as image bearers whose suffering calls us to participate in a Gospel perspective.
Visit Stephanie's website to order Start With What: https://loveunleasheslife.com/love-unleashes-life