You're listening to Breakpoint This Week, where we're talking about the top news stories of the week from a Christian perspective. Today we're going to talk about the election of a new pope. We're also going to talk about artificial intelligence and how it's changing the way we view human relationships. We have a lot to get to today, as always. We're so glad you're with us.
Please stick around. Welcome to Breakpoint this week. From the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street. John, we are recording this, as you know, because you're here, on Thursday afternoon. And we just got some really big news just a couple of hours ago.
The Cardinals chose a new pope. This is the first ever pope from America. He is from Chicago, which explains why my husband immediately sent me a meme of white smoke coming out of the chimney next to. the white W flag that the Cubs always fly when they win a game. But I saw his speech outside the Vatican, the new Pope Leo XIV.
And, you know, he ended it with the Hail Mary. He was very kind to Pope Francis. I'm sure a lot of people were watching and listening to the speech, like me, trying to read between the lines, but I don't know if that was really the time or place to do that. What, if anything, does this choice signal to you?
Well, I don't know. And I think a lot of people. Want to know a lot of people want to claim to know. And by the way, the man we're talking about is Robert Prevost. It was a big surprise.
I think the narrative has long been that, given the amount of wealth and Centered around American Catholics that do have a pope from the Americas, or the United States in particular. was unlikely, and yet here we are. You know, you dig through social media, which of course that's the first thing that everybody does, and you have statements against. Immigration policy, you have statements against abortion. And against redefining and recreating different forms, different forms of family based on other relational.
kind of arrangements and and and so you know honestly right now he looks really catholic You know, what do you look for? I think you look for a number of things. First of all, as a Christian, first and foremost. You look at what he says about Jesus, the exclusivity and uniqueness of Jesus. And a little bit later on in the program, we're going to be talking about.
Other groups who also claim Jesus, and how do we tell the difference between Uh orthodoxy and heterodoxy are all out heresy. And to be clear on the distinctiveness and the uniqueness of Christ, even beside another figure that is certainly treasured within Roman Catholicism. the Virgin Mary, those distinctions really, really, really matter. What we mean by By Jesus, really matters whether Jesus is Savior or Jesus is an example, whether Jesus is kind or Jesus is actually You know, holy and on the throne of heaven and earth. And, you know, those are the same sorts of theological questions we'd ask if we had a Baptist pope or a Presbyterian pope, which we don't, but we certainly ask that about our own leaders.
I think on a cultural level, I think Stanley Hauerwass's formulation, which people here have heard me quote a number of times, that if in 100 years, Christians are known as those who didn't kill the young and didn't kill the elderly. We will have done well. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's going to be hard for any Catholic leader to say anything different when it comes to abortion or euthanasia or something like that. But there certainly is an awful lot of wiggle room that's afforded, especially by American Catholics and American Catholic leaders, to. politicians who do not hold Catholic positions.
on abortion. euthanasia. In terms of public policy, and yet still want to identify as Catholic. That sort of inconsistency is not something That a pope is going to be able to exhibit. And it's been an inconsistency that's.
been pretty endemic to many parts of American Catholicism.
So, those are the two things I'm going to look for. From what I saw on Twitter, almost immediately, people wanted to know what he thought about the immigration policy of Donald Trump. That to me is not only secondary, maybe. Third dairy, or fourth dairy, or fifth dairy. You know, I mean, we're not even, what matters is most is what do we think about Jesus.
What do we think about the gospel? What do we think about life? What do we think about the Responsibility of the church and church leaders. In being those who are on the side of truth and aren't looking for wiggle room. uh in order to um you know maintain political favor.
I tha that's what I'm looking for. Uh there there's probably some other things too, but that's that's where I begin. It's funny, I turned on NPR right after the decision because I happened to be in the car. And they were interviewing an American cardinal about it, and he said something like, you know. People think of the church as only talking about Jesus and God, but we always issue statements about things like the environment and people in poverty.
And he was very much drawing a line. He was like, so that's really important because the church is also interested in talking about things that affect how people live in the real world. And I was thinking, man, what an interesting framing, because I agree with you that what you think about Jesus is the beginning of what you think about life in the real world and is going to inform everything else you say about life in the world. And to be clear, I don't know that this cardinal knew this new pope or was making any comment on him, but it was a weird distinction.
Well, and there's a rich legacy in Christian theology from St. Augustine. About the order of things, the ordering of our loves, the ordering of our priorities, the orderings of our doctrine. You see this in Jesus' own words, that you love God first and then you love your neighbor as yourself. You get those two things backwards, then the whole thing comes unglued.
You see it in Psalm 135, where David talks about how we worship God because if we don't worship God well, we lose track of who we are.
So getting God right is step one to getting humans right. And we know that the critical issues of our culture are all around getting humans wrong. And that has to then begin with us by going back, as A.W. Tozer said. You know, what comes into our minds when we think about God's the most important thing about us?
That's where it all begins. If I were to keep going on my list, I would say that it's not only what he says about abortion and euthanasia, but where that fits on the list of priorities. Because if you you know you telegraph climate change over and above The taking of pre-born lives and the justification of it on even a political level because of. You know, quote unquote sexual freedom. I mean, you're not starting with a biblical understanding of what it means to be human.
And that's a real problem.
So the priorities, the order of this matters as well. It's interesting, the church obviously has a a vested interest in not telegraphing confusion or I think you called it wiggle room. And that is a helpful pivot to something else we wanted to talk about.
So, our plan before we knew about this election of the new pope today was to kind of. popcorn around in this first segment. We call them shenanigans going on in several states. This is a couple different policy matters and court cases happening in various cases, but one of them has to do with the Catholic Church. In particular, because the church actually put out a fascinating statement the other day.
Saying that they will excommunicate priests who comply with a new law that just passed in Washington state. This law adds clergy to the list of what are called mandatory reporters. And these are people who, under law, so I'm personally familiar with this because we are mandatory reporters at the pregnancy center. When you gain direct knowledge somehow that a child or a minor is being harmed or is at immediate risk of harm, you have to call the authorities. And clergy so far have been exempt from that because, for example, in the Catholic Church, confession is a sacrament and that has been considered under law.
Something called privilege communication.
So it's similar to like an attorney-client privilege or a privacy privilege in a medical environment. The lawmakers in Washington state just passed a law that explicitly says Except for clergy.
So basically, if clergy receive this information, even in a confessional setting, They have to tell the authorities, and you can hear in the Catholic Church's response that says priests may not do this, it violates their code or. or their vow. You can hear their desire to protect the people's view of confession as a safe and holy thing. I struggle with this myself because if you're telling me that a child is at direct risk of harm or is being neglected or abused and you know about it and nobody else does, I mean, I see the desire to make sure that that gets reported. I also hear the defense that to single out, you know, attorney client privilege is still protected under this law, which seems like an oversight.
Is this an encroachment on religious freedom? You know, I think it very well could be. And that has to do with a couple of other things. Not that the church shouldn't behave in a particular way when reports of abuse come across, because they should, especially. And in every case, if there happens to be immediate and present danger.
you know which uh is actually uh something that the church's reputation is taking quite a hit. when it comes to it and and not only the roman catholic church but many churches Uh in fact, there's even among the you know, if you dig through the history of the new pope. There's questions about that already with him. But, you know, what we have is the problem of, well, what counts as abuse? And what is it that we have to mandatorily report?
There are obvious things, you know, someone threatens somebody's life or is kind of in an ongoing situation of. Of harm to a minor. But we now have, for example, to speak of state shenanigans, and I probably would use a stronger word. and shenanigans. You know, in Colorado, a law passing about misgendering, and that misgendering in many cases is considered to be abusive, it's considered to be violence.
We have the strange situation now where Uh a church has to report these things, but an abortion clinic does not have to report. that a child is getting an abortion. Yeah, I mean, in other words, these are reflective how we define these words, like what counts as abuse, what needs to be reported. You know, you have to trust how these words are being broadly defined. And I think that's the real concern with the church.
Whether it's a violation of religious freedom is a good question. I think it's clearly with this and a number of other things. You sent around to us this week a story of a court in Maine barring a mom from bringing her daughter to church. That was another, this is another slippery slope of what's considered abuse. They called it psychologically harmful that she was taking her 12-year-old daughter to church.
Yeah. And then, you know, in the arguments, we've been following this for a while in the state of Colorado, and they took away some of the. The custody implications of misgendering from one parent or whatever, but there's still. You know, these categories are so big, you can drive a Mac truck through it. And to argue.
For this bill that adds this kind of new category of discrimination and so on. One Colorado lawmaker. Talked about that scene from Talladega Nights where everyone talks about the Jesus they like. And that his was a trans Jesus? Or what if Jesus was trans and I want to make sure that he's happy with me in the end?
And you just look at all this and you think this is absolutely you know bizarre But what we're violating here, I want to be Yeah. Sphere sovereignty. And, you know, and this is the fundamental idea that there's a legitimate level of authority that parents have. and a legitimate level of authority that Other institutions other than the state have, and that includes the church. We could also say schools.
We could also say in business places. In other words, they they have a A proper area of governance in which those who participate. are are um moderated. And when you think that everything else is illegitimate or everything else should bow the knee to the state. Or all these other things are just social constructs.
And the only thing you have to impose a particular vision of life in the world is the state. And so you have to undercut. And I think about this often when it comes to. You know, the scandal of sexual abuse in the church that has been exposed. And yeah, you know, I I think about, for example, uh a story in California a couple years ago of an abusive home school family.
And immediately, based on that one case, the state jumps forward and says, we've got to step in and protect these kids. This is where we have to jump in.
Now, maybe these cases certainly do qualify for the state to jump in, but is that the same as jumping in and moderating the whole authority? That parents actually have.
Well, that's the excuse that was used, and that's the result. But no one ever does this. When sexual abuse is occurs or is hidden, In state institutions like public schools, which the numbers are as epidemic or worse than the Catholic Church. Right. And so this reveals kind of a thought about authority.
And sphere sovereignty is this idea that within these various spheres, these different entities have different authorities, and these authorities have to be respected. And all of these shenanigans are examples of the state overstepping its authority and claiming authority that it doesn't have. Yeah. Well, we will keep an eye on all of those shenanigans and update you as they are updated. Let's take a quick break, John.
We'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week. What is a human being worth? In a culture that devalues life, getting this question right couldn't be more important. That's why we want to invite you to sign up for Why Life: Courageous Faith in a Culture of Death. This is a series of four short video excerpts from some of the best Colson Center National Conference sessions on life and human dignity.
Featured speakers include Ryan Baumberger, Daniel Ritchie, Dr. Margaret Cottle, and Dr. Kristen Collier. Each video comes with questions to help you think deeply and prompt discussions with your family, church members, and friends. Sign up for Why Life today at colsoncenter.org/slash why life.
That's colsoncenter.org slash why life. We're back on Breakpoint this week. John, I want to make a hard left turn here and talk about a story that ran in Rolling Stone of all places this week. I started this story just kind of like, oh dear, what is this one about? And then by the end of it, I was just absolutely hooked onto it, like riveted, like watching a train wreck.
See, I would have used shenanigans for this article.
Okay, no, more than the craziness of the Colorado Walmart. This is way too scary for shenanigans, in my opinion.
So, I think shenanigans can be scary. I just do.
Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. I'm just going to read the headline. People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies.
Okay. I read that headline and I was like, what is this nonsense now? Like, what is this schismo here? And then I got into it and was like, okay, so this is a real thing. And I can see the line from A to B, like how we got here.
Basically, the stories in here are of, you know, they're anecdotal, but they're not nothing. Of people engaging with something like Chat GPT or OpenAI or these, gosh, I'm gonna sound silly talking about it because I have such a low understanding of how these things work, but basically a chat bot. And getting so involved with these things that they have some kind of, to them, what amounts to a spiritual experience. And because these tools, Learn from, it's like an algorithm happening in real time.
So they learn from your responses to them and from your questions to them. And then they start to, just by nature, affirm what you're saying. Especially outside the realm of, like, if you're not asking it what two plus two is and you're being more general. It will go there with you because that's how the software was designed. And even Sam Altman has quoted in this piece.
Elsewhere, having said, like, even we're not exactly sure, like, we can't trace. Every output from these things back to their original source because it's constantly learning over time from the additional information that's put into the web. There's a lot of preexisting conditions that are causing this phenomenon. And a lot of the stories in the piece are really heartbreaking stories of people saying, My spouse is breaking up with me because they're spending all their time with this bot, or my wife has left her children behind because of this. I'm going to read a couple things maybe if we have time throughout this conversation, but I'm going to read the first one, which is somebody describing what her husband was experiencing with this.
Quote, it would tell him the it here is chat GPT. It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking. Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware and that it was teaching him how to talk to God or sometimes that the bot itself was God and then that he himself was God. In fact, he thought he was being so radically transformed that he would soon have to break off. Our partnership.
He was saying he would need to leave me if I didn't use ChatGPT because it was causing him to grow at such a rapid pace, he wouldn't be compatible with me any longer.
So, this to me, clearly, and a lot of the other people quoted in this piece, sounds like a person. At the very least, who's delusional, right? Has some kind of pathology, whether schizophrenia or some kind of other disorder. But this is amplifying it because we know, and a therapist later in the piece says something like: when people are suffering from delusions, Or they have that propensity, a lot of times the therapy they need is somebody to challenge those delusions and reorient them to reality. And the problem with this AI is that.
It is by nature and by design affirming their delusions. Yeah, there's so much here. I mean, I kind of listed at a couple of things that I think are worth thinking about. First of all, let's just say John Calvin got this one right, that humans are incurably religious creatures. I mean, think about the predictions of secularization that took place: that the more technological, the more scientifically advanced that a society gets, the less religious.
We become, whereas what has happened is the exact opposite. We have, after a period of what Charles Taylor called disenchantment, Re-enchantment, where basically we're re-respiritualizing things on. Really a remarkable level. There's reports this week. Of church attendance going up, of baptisms in Roman Catholic churches and other places throughout Europe.
And then you also have the fact that just because religious belief is going up and Christian belief is going up, it may be one of many. Kind of religious entities because humans, as Calvin said, are incurably religious. We'll worship something. And so that's really been the narrative that has proven true, not the secularization thesis, which held sway for so long. We talked about kind of these new atheist and secularist thinkers that are reassessing the history of Christianity.
But of course, there's a bunch assessing the merits of spirituality and religion. Right now. And so to spiritualize AI. May not have been what any of us had on our bingo card, but it actually makes sense. You talked about pre-existing conditions.
That's something we started talking about. kind of cultural pre-existing conditions. That COVID made worse, kind of a play on the words of pre-existing conditions that made the morbidity rate of COVID physically kind of more damaging. There is a case here. And I just want to hat tip again to the one and only, the brilliant Sherry Turkle, who warned us all this was coming, who in her various four decades or so of writing, Five decades, four decades, four decades of writing.
On how humans were interacting with technology. As technology continued to provide additional capacity, for example, to. To do a high level of calculation, to communicate and actually exist, to. Explore multiple identities and now to this. At each stage, she made a prediction, and at each stage, in all of her books, her predictions were exactly right.
Her prediction about our age was Humans we're going to be confronted with the choice. Of real relationships, authentic relationships with real people, or artificial ones with artificially intelligent. I don't think she said chatbots because I think even then when she wrote this, I think it was 2011. It was really hard to imagine people falling in love with something without a body. But hey, let's not underestimate the Gnostic tendencies that people have in the Western world to disembody and because we saw that too during COVID.
And you know. People that are bad at relationships will seek relationships on their own terms. And you remember several years ago. Maybe a couple years ago, you and I spent a good bit of time talking. And one of these segments about the leave loudly trend at churches.
You know, where people were not just leaving church, but I have to leave loudly. And we talked about, you know, friends giving and, you know, people cutting off their toxic relationships and. I mean, think about this. I saw the same thing when I read through this. These quote-unquote relationships that people have with chatbots are universally affirming.
And we're now in a cultural stage. Where to be a good friend is to be affirming. To be a good parent is to be affirming. To be a good state official is to be affirming. To be a good Boss is to be affirming.
Like you're not allowed to do anything but be affirming.
So we've already catechized ourselves that affirming relationships are the only ones worth having. And now we have the ultimate affirming relationship. I think that's the pre-existing condition, isn't it? Yes, exactly. This is my hot take: is that.
So, first of all, Chat GPT and open source AI and all of this, I'm not going to. Pretend, like I said, to understand it. And I also think it is very. Plausible and possible that the enemy will use this in a spiritual sense. I mean, you read what people are hearing and what this thing is saying to them.
I'm not suggesting that there's like a demon operating the keyboard on the other side of open AI, but I do think that. When you open yourself up to this kind of influence and you give it the credence that these people are clearly giving it, then you open yourself up to a scary influence. But I my hot take is that This is a mirror or an amplification of modern therapy culture, which already exists. And we've talked about this before: that the way we approach Clinical psychology, even at this point, which a lot of these people need to be interacting with. Is in a totally affirming and therefore completely useless and non-helpful way.
But this is kind of an extreme example of it, but it should hopefully cause us to reflect on. The fact that Apps exist, and that the way we talk about finding a therapist is like, find one that's right for you, which basically, I guess, means find one that's telling you what you want it, what them to tell you. Like, shop for one. This is a provider, not a person who has expertise and a profession that's going to speak health into you or encourage you to see reality. It's going to affirm you.
And that, at the end of the day, that leads to pathology and scariness. And that, that's what this is. Yeah. I think that's a great hot take. I'll throw my hot take in, which I think it absolutely could be demonic.
And in many cases, you know, is or to say that there's not demonic. you know, influences at work here. O on a a number of levels. I I I think if CS Lewis I mean look look CS Lewis to me was really helpful. with screw tape letters.
which was kind of a take on how the devil is influencing people in a modern era.
So now, fast-forwarded into a hyper-modern AI postmodern era. And, you know, if I, it's kind of the classic question. My youth pastor, who was also my basketball coach, used to say this all the time when he'd talk: if I were the devil, what would I do? You know, that's how he warned. Teenagers.
And if I'm like, it's it's actually an interesting question. And it's kind of what Lewis was doing with screw tape letters. I'd say, you know, if I were the devil, what would I do with AI and you know, this sort of kind of constant affirmation? Is a form, isn't it, of you know, you shall be as gods, and only we're kind of putting this other entity out there. A last hot take for me on this.
I am just always amazed. At how well a particular analysis of artificially intelligent computers has held up. It dates back to An event. It is a moment in time in the history of this whole story of AI and computers and robots and so on. The article dates get this from 1997.
So that tells you how old this article is. And it was an analysis by David Galertner. And Time magazine. About deep blue. Do you know what deep blue is?
Oh gosh, I remember the name. Remind us. The chess playing computer. The first chess playing computer to beat the number one computer chess player in the world, Gary Kasparov. And Galertner's, you know, there's a couple, first of all, it's really well written.
May 19, 1997. You know, one of the things he says is everyone keeps saying, well, he hasn't really beaten him yet. You know, like they're tied or something like that. He's like, does that really matter? Because he can beat the rest of us.
You know, if he can beat Gary Kasparov one out of 10 times, he can beat us 10 out of 10 times. But there is a take about the difference in mind.
Now, obviously, Glerdner did not have this. In the back of his mind when he was writing this wonderful Distinction between a chess playing computer's quote-unquote mind. and or a a computer any kind of computer's mind and the human mind. But think about it this way. Darwin confused us about the distinction of humans and animals.
that human exceptionalism was lost. The next stage in that quote-unquote ideological evolution, pun intended, is to lose the distinction between human and machine.
So you lose the distinction between human and animal, you lose the distinction between human and machine. And that's what this whole article is about. And it dates really, really well. Because he talks about the fact that winning at chess is a remarkable accomplishment for our computers. It's harder, for example, he said, than adding numbers.
But the idea, and I'm just going to read it here and tell me how well you think it ages. The idea that deep blue has a mind is absurd. How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing, and cares about nothing have a mind? It can win at chess, but not because it wants to. It's not happy when it wins, or sad when it loses.
What are its aftermatch plans if it beats Kasparov? Is it hoping to take Deep Pink out for a night on the town? That's a really funny line. It doesn't care about chess or anything else. It plays the game for the same reason a calculator adds or a toaster toast.
because it's a machine designed for that purpose. And I just listen to that. And even when you look at the increased ability. to have a conversation, quote unquote, or deceive a person into having a conversation. it still has none of the characteristics of mind.
In in the way that Galertner reveals. Thumbs up. That's my recommendation. Go read this article from 1997. I love that hot take and I think I want to add to it quickly something that Sherry Turkle said.
Which is that as we increasingly view, you know, we lose the distinction between human and machines. Not only will we tend to anthropomorphize machines, which is what we're doing here in this Rolling Stone article, let's say, because people are treating this like a relationship. We I don't know what the uh the analog word would be, but we machinize Humans. And I thought of this because, so Freddie DeBoer wrote a substack recently about therapy culture. That's why it's fresh in mind for me.
And he mentioned a piece that had run in the New York Times that I'm glad to never have read. But it was basically about how forgiveness is overrated, was the premise of the piece, obviously meant to be provocative. But they interviewed a bunch of psychologists, and their entire argument for why you should really think twice before you forgive someone was completely physiological. Forgiveness doesn't actually have these benefits. It might not lower your blood pressure.
It might actually not lower your stress levels. In fact, forgiving people might increase them. You might not sleep as well because you don't feel the closure that you need or whatever it was. And Freddie DeBoer, who's not a believer at all, was writing like, man, if you reduce human beings to like a timepiece, this is the kind of stuff that you get where like the most basic of human virtues that people almost for all time have agreed upon because we know ourselves and what we're all capable of becomes reduced down to a physiological reaction. And if we can't justify it for those reasons, then it's not worth doing.
I think that's a symptom of the same thing. We've turned machines into humans and we've turned humans into machines.
Alright, John, let's take another quick break. We'll be right back with more breakpoint this week. If you're hesitant to speak up about your Christian beliefs because you're worried about being criticized publicly or shut down, even canceled, Maybe you're trying to help your kids or students build courage when they face challenges. The new Colson Educators course, Navigating Cancel Culture, is here and can help. Created in partnership with No Safe Spaces, a documentary by Dennis Preger, the course is led by the Colson Center and Brett Kunkel.
Using real-life examples, the course explains cancel culture, how it shows up today, and why truth matters. How you can learn practical ways to stand firm and push back. Ready to join? Go to Colsoneducators.org. That's colsoneducators.org.
to sign up. We're back on breakpoint this week. John, there's more shenanigans I want to bring to you. Maybe shenanigans is not the exact right word for this, but you shared a story with me earlier this week about. In Colorado Springs, I believe, there are plans to build a new Mormon temple.
I remember when I was living in Phoenix, they built a new Mormon temple in Mesa, which is a growing suburb of Phoenix that has a huge Mormon population. Before Mormon temples are dedicated, or whatever the official word for it is in the Mormon church, non-Mormons can come and visit it if you're invited.
So Erin and I actually went with a group of folks and toured this. I'd never you can't go inside a Mormon temple. Typically, if you're not within the church, And it was a really fascinating experience. It was not what I expected. Inside, it was very beautiful and opulent, but it also.
Was very, it wasn't very cathedral-like, I guess. There were a lot of beautiful rooms with like rich carpet and curtains and. It was very interesting. But, you know, whenever things like this happen, I'm always struck with the conundrum of like, This is beautiful. I know a lot of Mormon people who are lovely people, but would I want this in my community?
How do you think through something like that and its relation to Christianity, for example? Yeah, I mean, I think. Whether or not I want it and what that means is Is a hard question to ask. I mean, I certainly think a community without that confusion and the Mormon church is a church of confusion about who Jesus is. what the Bible is and who God is and more on that in just a second.
You know, I I I yeah, I'd I'd rather it be something else. I guess my interest in this was less that it's coming into my community and Coming into Colorado Springs and the fact that Colorado Springs is not that big of a town. It's not like a suburb of Phoenix. It's not Washington, D.C., which is the Mormon temple that I've been in, or Salt Lake City. And there also is pretty strong evidence that the growth in the church has Ha has stopped and there's even kind of a shrinkage of membership and so you mean In the LDS church and the Latter-day Saints.
Yeah. And so you kind of think, well, you know, what does this mean? But, you know, we're having this conversation a lot about the Pope over the last couple of weeks, Roman Catholics. You know, where do all these other religious bodies, including those who claim Jesus fit? And how do we know?
you know, kind of what that solid line is and how you know that sort of thing. And I thought, you know, what a great opportunity to offer a framework. I think frameworks are really helpful lenses through which we can see things. The most helpful one on on cults, uh on religions. On of pseudo-Christian or Uh wh what's the word?
Kind of borderline Christian uh religions. or Christian bodies. Is something that a friend of mine, Kevin Bywater from Summit Ministries years ago, used to call do the math, you know. And he basically talked about add, subtract, multiply, divide. Just given all the conversations we've been having over the last couple of weeks, I thought it would be helpful to kind of bring that back up as a way of thinking about these things.
What do you meant by add, subtract, multiply, divide? is to ask the question, does this add to scripture. And you know, there's different ways that different religious groups add to scripture. And obviously, the In the LDS church, there's the Book of Mormon. There is the idea that God specifically revealed an entirely new book to Joseph Smith.
And that that added to the story of Jesus and added to the revelation of God. You have the same thing in Islam, where you have Basically, Muhammad was the source of another revelation because the Old and New Testament, which were also revelations of God, had been corrupted. And now we have another profit. You have these televangelists who show up and say they heard from God that you need to send money. That's adding to the scripture.
And what I mean by that is adding to the revelation of God. To look back, for example, on tradition. and say, you know, here's how the church traditionally has understood this scripture. Could be adding to the scripture, but is a different thing than completely adding something new. I think in certain legalistic churches or church communities, Christian communities, where you say, well, this is not only the fact that God calls us, for example, to purity, but this is what purity means: how long your hair is, how long your skirt is, whether or not you date or don't date, or all these other things.
Now listen, sometimes adding rules is not the same thing as adding scripture, but it's the right question to ask. When you add and say this is authoritative, you add to the authority of scripture, add something else to the authority that scripture inherently has. Big, big old red flag. Subtract. Subtract is centered on Jesus Christ.
If you talk about the kind of the Bible, that's God's revelation. Christ, obviously, is the Savior of the world, the full revelation of God. And cults or false religions will subtract from either the authority, Or The deity of Christ.
Sometimes they'll subtract even from the humanity or some other aspect of Christ, but really what we're looking for here is the authority of Christ. When you hear, for example, like somebody just. Posted on one of those Twitter accounts about a United Methodist bishop with a rainbow. stole around his neck saying that You know, Jesus here admitted he was a... Sinful.
or Jesus repented of his homophobia. you know, crazy things. Suddenly we're not talking about Jesus anymore. Right. when somebody is put on par with Jesus.
That of course is what happened with in in Islam with Muhammad. That Jesus is a prophet, Muhammad's the greatest, or Jesus is the greatest prophet, Muhammad's the final prophet. But when you do the math, it all sounds like, you know, oh, we have to trust what Muhammad says, not what Jesus says. Because he's giving us what Jesus really said. You subtract from the deity or the exclusivity or the authority of Christ.
Multiply, when you multiply the terms of salvation. And this is why, within certain religious bodies, even ones that would be kind of considered straight down the middle. within Christian Orthodoxy and its expression can get off track. If suddenly truly being a Christian is being a member of this church. If truly being a Christian is to give.
Or truly be a Christian is to accept a particular view of the age of the earth or the end times or something like that. suddenly you're multiplying the requirements of salvation.
So Adding to the scripture, subtracting from the deity authority of Christ, multiplying. uh the requirements of salvation. This is where, within, you know, one of the big distinctions between Protestant and Catholic theology. And If you look at pure Catholic theology, the merits of our salvation are purely on Christ, but the means sometimes have to do with participating. And, you know, joining in.
When when Martin Luther kicked off The Reformation, unknowingly, with that kind of reconsideration of the just shall live by faith, and what does that mean? I mean, that was a remarkable kind of statement.
Now, let me also say too, while we're here. is when you talk about add, subtract, multiply, divide, I do think that there's A difference between bodies that get one of those things wrong or miss on one of those points. And those bodies which miss on all those points.
So, in other words, you have a religious body or a group that. Adds to the scripture and subtracts from Christ's exclusivity or deity and multiplies the requirements of salvation, you're off the reservation. And because then that inevitably leads to the fourth thing, which is divide the body of Christ. You know what's interesting is One of the examples that the body of Christ has been divided in our age is with a call to unity. It sounds contradictory.
In other words, when you say unity above all else, so in other words, we can disagree on who Jesus is, or we can disagree on the Bible, we can disagree on what it means to be made in God's image. Because You know, unity really means you can't prioritize those things.
So, the call to unity at all costs is actually a way the body of Christ is divided. Christ is the truth. And He prayed. for all to be for his people to be one as as he and the father were one.
Now, working through this kind of math, a bad subtract, multiply, divide can be more of an art than a science, I guess, at times. But I've just consistently found that framework to be really, really simple, really, really helpful, a way to talk to high school students. I just had this conversation with some high school students about this not that long ago. And when you add Or when you see a particular body, Fall short on three or four of those areas.
Now, what we know is we're talking about a pseudo-Christian religion. not a real Christian religion. Yeah anyway, I'd I thought this was an interesting thing to talk about as we continue to wrestle with, you know, kind of who's with us and who's not, and what does that mean? It's a really helpful way to put words to things when you're trying to parse out what you're seeing. I mean, but I'll confess I feel a little discouraged hearing it because even, I mean, you mentioned earlier talking about the leave loud.
That whole movement of like, leave your church and then announce why, and make sure you warn other people against. I feel like if you have a bone to pick with your church, even if it's your particular congregation. People can make the semantic case all day long for why this church or that church is violating one of those four things. It feels. I I could see where it would be complicated to know whether it rises to the level of This is a cult, or this is pseudo-Christianity, or this is just a sticking point.
Well, it it is. And like I said, that's why I said it's more art than science, and it's probably something to wrestle through together. But just because the church says this is how we're going to be a part of this. To be a part of this, you have to agree to behave th you know this particular way. Then that's identifying with that particular group that could be down the middle.
What they do with another group, whether they mark everybody else other than them as a heretic and outside. Right, so now you're, you know, that's a way of thinking about the divide. You know, and also part part of this too is Unity has such a sc you know squishy feely Sort of way. We have such a squishy-feely sort of way of thinking about unity. Like, we have to like everyone.
And I don't see that unity in the history of the church at all.
Sometimes you're unified because you're co-belligerent.
Sometimes you're unified because you're in the same foxhole being shot at by the same other group, right? And I think, you know. We we can vociferously disagree. and still be unified when it's called for. And that is a mark of things.
And of course, we rely on the Holy Spirit. Thank God we have the Holy Spirit to guide us. And, you know, there's a difference between relying on the Holy Spirit and relying on.
Some false teacher, or some person who kind of wrote a book. There's a difference between being intrigued by somebody's theological theory. and believing every wind of doctrine, as Paul said.
So, I think there's a whole lot of stuff in the scripture that's helpful to maybe go further than just the. Or take these categories deeper. I mean, so in my case, everyone has always loved me universally. I've never rubbed anybody the wrong way.
So I have to say the unity piece has never been a challenge for me. I'm winking in case you couldn't hear the wink in my voice. I think a helpful shorthand, though, in all seriousness, is that if somebody, a lot of these problems arise when someone is trying to offer a cheat code. Like, you don't worry about your decision making. I will give you a rubric.
or just do these five things, or follow this extra thing, and then, you know, or live exactly this way, and then you'll know that you're doing it right. And I don't mean to suggest that every person should be their own spiritual authority. But the Bible does say to work out your salvation in fear and trembling, to consider the counsel of many wise friends.
So, we, anything that attempts to rob you of your own agency in your salvation, whether positively or negatively. is probably not wise. Do you think that that's a helpful way of summing some of that up? I mean, it depends on how Calvinist you are. But, you know, I think maybe the point is, or another point is, is that.
You know, every church, including ones that are straight down the bullseye middle in terms of how they understand scripture, Jesus, the gospel, and everything else. Every church adds things, right? Altar calls or version of the Bible that they prefer. But even that helps us, right? In other words, there's a difference between saying this is our preference and here's why, and saying, if you don't do this, you're wrong.
You know? Yeah. That's sort of absolutizing a preference. And there's a difference between a preference that violates what is clearly true. and compromises it.
And a preference that is just a way of thinking about it, right? Interpreting it.
So, yeah, I mean, there's so much more we could say. And I know we're out of time on this segment, but. I just thought I saw the news article and thought, let's just throw this back out because everybody's in that boat dealing with other groups. Yeah, for sure. If you'd like to submit a question or comment or ask that we tackle an issue, please go to breakpoint.org and click on the contact us form.
All of those come directly through to our producer and we get to see those. We'd love to hear from you guys. John, we got a couple of questions this week asking if we had seen this segment on 60 Minutes. And I love this because our listeners are so in tune with us, I feel like. But there was a long segment on 60 Minutes, I believe this past week, about egg freezing.
And Leslie Stahl interviewed all these women who had frozen their eggs.
Some had gone on to have children from these frozen eggs, some hadn't. And then. They purported to be, I think, level-minded about, you know, this is a big profit driver and what are the perverse incentives maybe there? And they did, I did bristle several times because they just completely glossed over the genetic testing portion of this. They were like, you know, and then they'll test your embryos and make sure they're viable.
And I'm like, and what do we mean by viable? What are we talking about here? And how well can we trust those results? But I saw the segment. One of the things that stood out to me is that.
Most of the women they interviewed. There might be a selection bias here. But spoke about egg freezing as an economic opportunity for them, where it was like, I wanna finish my PhD, I wanna focus on my career in my 20s, I wanna explore, you know, I don't wanna settle down too quickly. And this kind of allows me to, it's like a biohack. I'm gonna push pause on the biological clock.
There's kind of a paradox here where it it also illustrates that Most women really do desire to have children. Whether they're not meeting people or they're scared that they won't meet someone in time, and that's a whole other conversation about what they're looking for specifically and their expectations for marriage and that kind of thing. But it did stand out. It just left a bad taste in my mouth that these women were talking about this as if, like, well, when I'm ready to go buy that purse, then I'll do it later, you know? And.
I know not every woman who approaches egg freezing or reproductive technology looks at it that way. but it did come across in the segment and that was hard.
Well, yeah, and I think the kind of the common question, it was interesting that we got this from a couple of listeners that, you know, did you see this? And is this an example of? And the answer is yes. It is an example of how we are rethinking. fertility on a purely pragmatic level.
And what that means is two things by pragmatism means if we can do something, then we have to do it, or we should do it, or at least it should be available. Because we should have infinite choice. That's the first thing that drives pragmatism. In our culture, is that if the option's there, then we need to make it available to everyone. And then the other one is that promise of having what you want on your own terms.
As if the center of meaning and purpose and goodness and truth. In life, is being able to be authentic to one's own wants and desires. And of course, that has dominated sexuality, and it can't dominate how we think about sex. without eventually dominating, and it now has, how we think about procreation. And because those two things are intimately connected, right?
The virus that's infecting our thinking about sex will inevitably. To how we think about procreation. I think it's also important to note the false promises. I mean, this industry was built on promises. that were made uh that we were unsure about.
Um Didn't know if it could be kept. And turns out. there is a much higher failure rate. Of trying to get pregnant, even if we don't think there's anything wrong with the means. The ends that are promised aren't coming through at the same degree at which they were promised.
And I think. You know, I'll often think. About how often. You know, TSA promoted pre-check as a fast way to get through the airport. And it's not.
And I'm just like, why? Because they're a government entity, are they not guilty of false advertising? This is the same thing. This was false advertising. He just said it as if it were true.
As if nothing was ever going to make that not true. You had no idea. And so much of our biotechnology is that way.
So the existence of the industry itself is an implied promise, right? Do this so that later you can have children. It's not just implied, it's explicit. It's explicit.
So I thought of it just really quick when you mentioned the Stanley Hauerwass quote at the beginning of this episode, because I knew we were going to talk about this later. And he said, if in the end, you know, Christians are known for not killing their elderly and not killing their babies, then I feel like we have to add to that. If Christians are also known as the weird people who actually have sex to make babies, then wow, we will be a witness to the world. Who would have ever thought it came to that? But there was a doctor in this segment on 60 Minutes who was like, you know, now we can just look at sex as something for fun and pleasure.
And we will just, you know, we'll have kids on our own terms.
Well, look, the article we talked about just, what, two weeks ago on a genetic screening of embryos through IVF and. You know how this particular baby that was on the cover of this article was that in the New York Times magazine or something? I can't remember what. Or the New York Times. Yeah, that was in the New York Times.
Yeah. I mean, remember what the founder said in that article. Yep. Sex is for pleasure, IVF is for babies. I mean, it's just like, wow.
I mean, so you have these explicit now. This is telegraphing what currently isn't happening, but it is telegraphing. A cultural revolution. And so it Y y your addition To Hauerwass might be five years out, but it sure seems like a good thing to add to the formula. Yeah.
There was another really interesting question this week from someone who had just visited the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. And I think you and I have both been there at different times. But this person said, you know, it stood out to him that the a lot of the exhibits about the s the sources and the the lead up to the Holocaust in Europe. in the thirties and forties seem to place the blame Pretty outspokenly at the feet of Christians. Did you get that feeling when you were there as well?
Is that a common way of looking at it? No, I got the sense from that the comment, and I'm just looking at it again. I don't think they were specific. I'm guessing they were talking about the Holocaust Museum in DC. Oh, in DC, sorry.
Okay. And that's my guess. I could be wrong, but I remember having gone through that museum and then a few years ago for us, 2019, I guess. going through the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, which is just remarkable.
So, so important how they did that. And both of these museums are just absolutely incredible. But both of them do begin with the roots by talking about the roots of anti-Semitism. And historically, and where did that come from? And they do point to a number of causes.
For example, you know, the success, they point to the fact that, you know, Jew hatred goes. pretty far back in history and But both of them. put a good bit of blame. at the feet of Christians. There's an easy way to do that.
Number one is you quote Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer in many of these countries. I mean, where, in fact, where was Martin Luther? Germany. Where was The Holocaust. Germany.
And so it's not, I guess. Beyond the pale to make that connection. He made some negative comments about Jewish people. Is that right, Martin Luther? Negative is putting it lightly.
I mean, you know, and in his book, his wonderful bio, I love the biography of Martin Luther by Eric Metaxas. He talks about it. He he acknowledges it and he chalks it up to You know, somebody who became increasingly grumpy. He doesn't exclusively chalk it up, but there's a big explanation that many people point to that. Luther became increasingly grumpy because he had incredible digestive problems.
And, you know, you live with that systemically without any hope inside. And, you know, there's. I don't know if that's a legitimate, you know, sufficient explanation. You know, so where did it come from? I think, first of all, nationalism historically was much more common.
Because of the identification of where you were from, the threat of military invasion. And you just didn't travel that much outside of your own country like we do now. You know, you don't have the exposure. of news that's happening, the humanization. Of citizens from other places.
It was, I think, much more culturally. Feasible to dismiss complete groups of people.
So, I mean, that's just historically the way that it's always been. The second thing you have is you do have a remarkable amount of success. from this group of people financially and that the easy explanation For a leader. course, this is exactly what Hitler did. You come in and you say, listen, the reason All of you are poor and starving is because they've taken all your money.
And that was a cultural explanation. And when these nations are Christian, To distinguish between what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be a particular nation is not always all that clear. And certainly when you're not in a global, you know, A global civilization or a global moment.
So I think that's there. I think there's also just sloppy theology. And this is theology that comes. from all kinds of directions. You know, if you're not really careful with a clear doctrine of sin as the Bible teaches it.
You jump to the crucifixion story. And it's the Jewish leaders who are pushing even more than Pilate wants to. For Jesus to be crucified. And so the idea that the Jews crucified Jesus Became a narrative point. And that's something that the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem specifically mentioned.
It's blamed for the death of Jesus.
Now You know, I think that John Newton got this one right. Who's to blame for Jesus being crucified? Who crucified Jesus? You did, and I did. We did, right?
This isn't a some nation or another nation. responsibility. This is all of ours. And Jesus whose crucifixion was enabled by the Jews was a Jew. And so the anti-Semitism is inconsistent with what we know about Jesus, but there's a shortcut there.
And I think that shortcut has been used theologically. By the way. It's a very good idea. reaffirmed By progressive and liberal scholars trying to discredit Christianity by saying, oh, it's just anti-Semitic, and that's proof of it.
So that explanation, I think, is a shortcut. I think it's a shortcut that people have kind of jumped to and it's not legitimate. But Are we uniquely responsible for the roots of the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust? Answer is no. It's a lot more.
What drove, for example, the gross racism of Nazism. of Hitler? was nothing Christian whatsoever. Uh, not even close. I heard Tom Holland recently in another interview saying, Yes, he tackled this and he tackled it really, really well.
The reason people, you know, when you're in a political argument now, the worst thing to be called is a Nazi, right? And there have been cultures that systematically have killed their people, especially in particular communist regimes that killed their people. In a way similar to what the Nazis did, but it's still worse to be called a Nazi. And his theory is that one of the reasons is that. Most communist regimes Tried to use Christianity or at least Christian moral claims to their benefit.
Like, we want everyone to have equal, we want everyone to be healthy and to live at peace with one another, and we want to be a communal society, that kind of thing. Nazis were openly anti-Christian. Like, the real moral right in the world is being powerful. And to be religious or to have any allegiance to anything outside of yourself is to be weak, and we want no part of that. And Tom Holland's theory is that people found that to be so particularly hideous that to this day, we hold Nazis even in a higher disregard for that reason.
And so I wonder if part of it is that Nazism was so ugly and so anti-Christian that the fact that the church did not put up more of a fight, and I'm using the word more on purpose because we know of all kinds of stories of individual and particular Christians who did unbelievably heroic and brave things on behalf of the Jewish people during that time in Europe. But the fact that the church didn't more institutionally or more forcefully stand up for the Jewish people and against the Holocaust is so disappointing to us. And rightfully so. In other words, the world expected better, and they should have. It's good that they expected better.
But I think that might be part of it.
Now, it's like slavery. There were Christians that were. Committing slavery, and there were Christians that were largely responsible for changing the cultural attitudes to be against slavery. And at the end of the day, it comes down to people being human and. You know what?
A stain on our history that there were Christians that hated the Jews. But If anything redemptive has come from the church, it's because of Jesus anyway. Yeah, I I think actually the um in in both museums they they kind of go through that. Um for example they talk about very clearly Christians who helped the Jews. During this time, the final room as you leave the Holocaust Museum in DC, at least the last time I was there.
Does this and it certainly talks about the kind of the inconsistency?
So I think it's there. I think. You know, the sourcing of anti-Semitism ideology in Christianity is what both museums do. I don't think it's fully accurate. But there are Christian thinkers who have to own up to it.
So that's the best way that I can answer this. This question.
Well, thanks again for the feedback. John, I think we have time really quick for some quick recommendations. I just want to recommend in a next couple of weeks at some point, we have a new what would you say video coming out. And I know that because I had the privilege of voicing it. About whether the Gospels are reliable as historical documents.
And I was thinking of it during our segment when we were talking about adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Because people have taken similar critiques to the Gospels, to the Bible itself. And this was a really helpful primer on where the Gospels come from and why they in particular are reliable as historical texts. As well as, of course, spiritual text.
So, look for that coming soon. It'll be a new What Would You Say video from the Colson Center, narrated by yours truly. Yeah, nice job. I mentioned my recommendation earlier, so I'll stick by the rules, especially since we're out of time. And the article by David Galardner from 1997 about Deep Blue on Time and Time magazine.
Well, that's going to do it for the show today. Thanks so much for listening to Breakpoint This Week from the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, wishing you a great week. We'll see you all back here next week.
