You're listening to Breakpoint This Week, where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian worldview. Today we're going to talk about the hearings on Capitol Hill with Dr. Anthony Fauci about the COVID response. We're also going to talk about a terror attack in Berlin and the media's reaction to it. We have a lot to get to this week.
We're so glad you're with us. Stick around. Welcome to Breakpoint This Week from the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. Returning to you after a brief hiatus, we've been traveling this summer, and it's so good to be back.
This was a big week. it feels like. John, they started hearings on Capitol Hill. With Dr. Anthony Fauci, who, as we will know, was head of the NIH during the COVID pandemic and really directed a lot of the national response to it.
Senator Rand Paul had subpoenaed Dr. Fauci's personal computer, which apparently had on it kind of a daily diary. And the senators are looking to get after what Dr. Fauci knew at the time during the pandemic versus what he was telling the public. I would say that the diary is pretty embarrassing.
He talks a lot about his fame and his growing fame and how many hits he got on the television and who he was shaking hands with. And all of it brought to mind for me a proverb that I read last week. In Proverbs 30, it says, Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.
And that came to mind because, notwithstanding all the, I think, rightful frustrations people have with Dr. Fauci, including me, I think fame is one of the worst things that can happen to a person, and that none of us should imagine that we know exactly how we would behave if such a thing were foisted upon us. That doesn't mean I would shut down the country in the way that Dr. Fauci allegedly did, but I just think fame would be really, really difficult to navigate. You know, this is.
The latest in a long series of hearings in which Dr. Fauci has been brought before a congressional panel, mostly because of Rand Paul. But this was. One that I think garnered more headlines and more attention. I think the diary had a lot to do with it because of what you were talking about.
You got kind of got an inside look at.
Some of the things that were clearly on his mind during the middle of this incredibly disruptive time of life for the entire Entire globe, you get a sense of the level of power that he had and the level of power that he thought he had. And how that kind of played into it. But that does speak to a couple things. I remember Chuck Colson saying this about Supreme Court justices, you know, where we have this view that they're in this isolated island on top of a cliff and they're, you know, just kind of looking at the law and being as objective as possible. And he's like, you know, they're real people too.
They check their own headlines. And there's the same sort of rumor about science: that science is this neutral activity. We hear a lot as definitive conversation stoppers and Good heavens, how many times did we hear this? About COVID.
Well, and from Dr. Fauci himself, who said, If you mistrust me, you're mistrusting science.
Well, the science, yeah, that's that's gosh, that was a. A pretty bold way of saying the science is settled. The science says if we ever needed an example of a truth that we all need to get into our heads. that we don't need to distrust science. as a process, but we need to know what science is.
That science doesn't say anything, but scientists say an awful lot. And this particular scientist said an incredible amount about something. There's also this, I think. Inconsistency that I'm hearing a lot, especially for those that want to defend. What the government did, what the medical establishment led by Dr.
Fauci. And others, Collins, Francis Collins, for example, what they did during this time. At the time, a lot of us kind of approached it and said, you know, there is a lot we don't know. And because there is a lot we don't know, we'll give an awful lot of gravity towards recommendations and so on. What we were told at the time was, no, the science is settled, the science is settled, when it clearly wasn't, when it clearly wasn't about masks, when it clearly wasn't about shutdowns, when the six weeks to slow the curve or whatever it was called.
And this arbitrary six feet is social distancing, which is been entertaining. Most of us went along with it, at least to some degree, because it was like, well, why not? But then it was never allowed to be questioned. It was, you know, pushed forward even when the questions became more and more. Obvious.
My big one at the time was natural immunity. Many of us had had COVID and we heard nothing about. how natural immunity and any protection that came from that. Related to the vaccines when every other medical condition that we know of involving viruses. To some degree, that was an incredibly important thing to understand and to think through.
So at the time, we were told the science is settled, the science is settled, the science is settled. And now, on the backside, and you saw it in the hearing, and we've seen it from those who want to defend. The establishment and what was kind of pushed forward on this. Is that now we're supposed to give that side a lot of grace because they didn't know, and no one knew. And I would have a lot in I would have a much easier time extending that sort of.
kind of grace personally. If there wasn't such a definitive the science is settled, trust the science, and I am the science sort of perspective that was done. back in the day. Because, you know, there was an awful lot of grace given at the time. There was an awful lot of.
Uh I think trust that was extended. Even when legitimate normal questions, I think the big thing that came out of this particular hearing was the origin. of COVID and where did it come from? The entire world was told that if you thought it came from this particular area in China. And specifically, if there was a lab leak, you were a conspiracy theorist and a racist.
And now that seems to be the most likely origin. It always seemed to be the most likely origin story just from the basic facts. I remember Jon Stewart going on Stephen Colbert and just going. This is a remarkably different virus that seems to be tampered with that. Seems to have you know, first appeared a few miles down the road from the left.
Right where there's a lab. I mean, the coincidence here is overwhelming. I also don't, I never understood how it was less racist to assume that it just jumped to humans from. weird animal meat that people apparently eat in that part of the world than it was to say it probably came from a lab in that neighborhood. But maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough to understand these arguments.
Well, look, I think that we still don't know an awful lot. I think that we know a lot more now, and it's revealing some of the. Holes in the The statements of certainty that were ushered at the time that many people had legitimate questions about. I think that There's still more for us to learn. I think we can give people the benefit of the doubt.
And still point out this kind of huge glaring inconsistency, which is. You claimed an authority and a certainty, that you did not have In a way that put a lot of people at risk.
Now, we can say. It was done in good faith, although I think that's going to be a tough sell for the American people. But we could say that it was done in good faith and so on. But you can't just throw your hands up and say, We're not questioning what you said, we're questioning. How you said it.
But I think the larger conversation right now on a worldview level is: let's be really clear what science is. Science is the attempt by people to apply a method to understand the world. It has yielded incredible, incredible advancements in our understanding and knowledge of the natural order, not to mention. Incredible benefits for health, and convenience, and longevity, and a million other things. But but Christians of all people should understand.
That science is done by scientists, and scientists are people, and people themselves are part of that story of reality that the Bible tells, starting that we're created in the image of God, which gives us this incredible capacity, and that we're fallen. Which means we're susceptible to the kinds of things that seem to emerge in the revelations of the diary this week. Yep, there you go.
So that's what I find interesting about this too, is that looking back on it, it wasn't just that we were having a big cultural conversation about what science is and whether it's settled. That's true. But it very quickly became a moralistic question. Which I think you were, and Dr. Fauci played a part in this.
A lot of Christians played a part in this. A lot of Christians with public platforms and media companies that are Christian played a part in this, where it became not just do you believe in science, but are you a good person? And that is so looking back on it now. I mean, at the time, I think a lot of us felt this way, but especially now. That feels so strange.
And almost absurd. Like, why would you make that jump? That if you want to be a good person in a moral sense, that means you're the person who believes this one man who we now know placed a very high premium on his own growing fame and influence, almost more so, if not more so, than the actual science he was supposed to be practicing at the time. And I think that's just a reason to have a healthy mistrust of anyone in that sort of limelight because we recognize that even in our own human nature, a person given that much celebrity and power tends to. given to a lot of temptation that comes with that.
To assert more certainty or influence than they have. But isn't it fascinating that it became a moral question so quickly, including for Christians? I think it speaks to our. innate hunger and thirst for a moral order. And to have some kind of moral certainty with something.
I mean, it was very unhealthy in this. In this instance, but it is fascinating to observe. There was a great deal of moral manipulation, and I think that. That's something that is a tendency that humans have. And that reflects, I think, the chapter of the fall.
I also think that when we are now looking back at it, I think that we are risking putting ourselves in the same spot. Which is looking at anyone who took another side on these issues than we did and questioning their moral culpability. There is an awful lot of people who, unjustly and I think unrighteously, and I think to your point, some of the loudest Christian voices. That put a moral framework on this and a moral guilt on people who took the other side. And we're just, in many ways, just asking legitimate questions, right?
And I think maybe part of that is we live in a world of celebrity, and there were kind of these celebrity figureheads that represented each side. You know, these, you know, Trump became the face of one and. Fauci became the face of the other, and then whose side are you on? And so the. If you were on the other side, then there was moral questioning.
but you know, throw thrown on you. But listen, the same thing, the same temptation is facing us right now. That we're looking at those who are still trying to say, well, look, I was just trying to protect the old people and the vulnerable people in my life, or I thought that it made a lot of sense or whatever. And then we're kind of framing that out as this incredible level of moral guilt. And that's, by the way, being done by pundits.
all over again.
Now, do people need to be held accountable if they did that? I think so. I think that if you are going to be in that position with great leadership, comes that sort of responsibility. I think these hearings need to be had. I think we need to deep six this thing.
We need to know what exactly it is where we went wrong because there'll be another one and we'll have other policies and recommendations and other experts that rise up and try to lead us. And we need to have that sort of transparency. We need to be able to protect the sort of. conversations going forward. That needs to be had during the middle of those times.
But at the same time, those of us that are just angry, there's just a lot of anger and frustration that's being retroactively applied to this. I get it, I share some of that. But don't be guilty. Of the same thing that we're saying that happened four or five years ago. Don't do that.
And I think we need to Especially recognize that within the body of Christ. The number of things that should. Divide the body of Christ for the sake of the furtherance of the gospel as we read about In Holy Scripture, particularly, you know, between Mark. uh and and Paul and and and Luke and Barnabas and so on. There's plenty of those things.
right now the number of things dividing the body of Christ. is way too many things. It's way, way, way too many things. And I I understand. That in an age of kind of truth-telling and an age of pointing out the hypocrisy on the other side.
And we're in one of those moods right now. And it needs to happen in many ways. But gosh, the proverb, you know, since you brought up proverbs, I'll bring up the other one, you know? Which is, you know, remove the log in your own eye before going to your brother. That's a really, really hard thing to do.
And but it's a really wise thing to do. If we are going to prevent kind of unnecessary Division Going forward.
Well, what's hard here, though, is that there's a nuance to the relation, like what relationship you have with a person, right? I know, I know if we're talking about. relationships within our own community or body of Christ, then absolutely. But integrity is so important to authority. And it Does matter to me whether people who had a lot of power during that time.
Christian or otherwise, are willing now. to say where they went wrong. Or, not even necessarily like apologize personally to me for closing all of our playgrounds or not letting people go to their grandmother's funeral or whatever. I mean, that mi that might be warranted too. But to admit that there were things because there were a lot of things that were worth being confused about at the time.
There were also a lot of things that were not, that never were. It never made sense To say, you know, they put caution tape around my kids' playground. And I showed up to the park, didn't try to go on the playground, tried to play hide and seek with my two daughters, and a park ranger told me I had to go home. There was no one else at the park. Like things like this, that were just, there was no, you couldn't be a rational person and tell me that we were just doing the best we could at the time.
That just makes no sense. And it matters to me going forward because of the trust that I want and need to place. In authorities, including Christian authorities, whether they're willing now to say, We were scared, or we, you know, I'm willing to grant good intentions or charity, but it does matter whether we say that we did wrong. Yeah, I don't disagree with it.
Well, I disagree with the last part of it, and I'll tell you why. I think that there's a distinction, another distinction that needs to be made, and part of that. Are things that are revealed today? Look, the distrust in authority. Is well-placed political authority.
And that is something we've talked about many, many times that. You know, it's the conscience or the constable. And when you have a cultural moment in which the state oversteps and does crazy things, and there's no question. if you belong to a particular political framing, that you're far more likely to not trust your citizens and to continue to add layers and layers and layers in regulation. I mean, we saw it around the world.
in ways where what you experienced in an individual case became the entire government policy for the whole nation of Australia, for example, or New Zealand, where they wouldn't even it but but that is the kind of the patronizing What's the word I'm looking for here? The uh uh The patronizing state, the state that thinks they need to hold your hand through everything. The nanny state. The nanny state. There's just an aspect of that.
And that's the source of all my complaints about things like TSA. But more than that, there's just this idea of the moral culpability and the ability of individuals. And all of that gets reflected. And the state deserves that sort of scrutiny. Uh, we live in a country that should welcome that kind of scrutiny, and that wasn't.
We saw that at the Loudoun County School Board, we saw that in a number of ways.
Okay, all that's true. But here this was a real confusion that took place. Because when you talk about that. As being authority, that's legitimate. When you talk about quote-unquote Christian authority, there's not Christian authority.
except Scripture and the Bible and the conscience. We're talking about loud Christian voices. In an age where to have a podcast and to have a sort of uh voice Or to have an audience somehow renders a level of authority. I just don't think we should accept. that category to begin with.
That they're Christian authorities. They were commenting, they were trying to lead. They were trying to suggest, but there's no coercion involved. There's no. Ability to to guarantee compliance or to ensure compliance.
involved. And so that sort of moral framing. And to frame the issue by those voices, to frame these issues as if they were somehow moral issues. you know, when they weren't and to completely take one side And question the moral. And not all of them did.
Some of them, I think, made. Their case, I disagreed with it, but they made their case for how Christians should behave in this time. I appreciated the voices saying, Look, a lot of people are scared. This is an incredible opportunity right now to share the gospel. Don't miss this opportunity.
I appreciated those voices.
Some of those voices were the same ones, you know, saying things about COVID that now I don't believe to be true. But that doesn't mean that their motivations were wrong. That doesn't mean that they were actually telling me to do something wrong by going to share the gospel and reach out. Of course, they weren't. And let's be creative in how we do it.
And let's also recognize health and respect. And let's recognize that old people were particularly vulnerable. you know, mourn with those. There were voices calling for civil disobedience, in a sense, and they were right voices. Don't stop assembling together, don't let people die alone.
And, you know, this was a test of the church and it was a test of the entire culture. You know, there's ways that we passed it. There's a lot of ways that we failed it. And there were those that ended up, even in the name of being moralistic, even in the name. of championing the truth.
Uh of science. were immoral. That also, by the way, tells you an awful lot about the the framing of the universe and the biblical story. Because good motivations. aren't enough to justify.
I one thing I never let my kid say to me is But I didn't mean to, you know. Mm. A rock goes through a car window. I will not tell you that that is a hypothetical. That is an actual.
I didn't mean to.
Now Do intents matter? Yes. Do more than intents matter? Oh my gosh, yes. You know, if if you weren't out of control, if you weren't acting out of anger or, you know, distraction or whatever it was, that rock would not have gone through that window, right?
So that's such a helpful aspect of a Christian worldview to frame. That our intents matter, but it's more than our intents. We're not disembodied Gnostic beings. We are real bodies dealing with real bodies. And man, COVID was an example of that as well.
Well, John, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more breakpoints this week in just a moment. Hey, breakpoint listeners. In May, over 2,500 men and women from 47 states and 8 different countries joined us for the Colson Center National Conference to explore what it means to be called by God to this time and place. If you weren't able to join us, I'm excited to let you know that you can unlock all the recorded sessions from this year's conference with a gift of any amount now through August 8th.
Get your digital access today by visiting ColsonCenter.org slash July. We're back on breakpoint this week. John, I want to turn now to a terrorist attack in Germany that happened on the 25th. A man who, by all accounts, was an Islamic terrorist, drove his car into a crowd at a pride event in Germany and and then exited the car and began attacking people with a machete. One person died.
More than two dozen were injured. This unfortunately is far from the first event of its kind, including in Germany itself. I think what's really interesting here is maybe the predictable mass media news coverage of this event. I mean that It's hard not to make a joke about it at this point. You you don't want to joke about it.
But you know, somebody at the Free Press was like, gosh, these cars, I wonder if it was a Waymo because all of these headlines are like, a car drove into a crowd, a car drove into people, a car. And also framing this, you know, I think the LGBT community in Berlin came out with a statement saying something like, we don't want to politicize this attack. which was very clearly a political attack. And there's just these identity politics really bubble up to the surface in such a strange way when these kinds of horrific things happen. And it never seems to change.
Why is that?
Well, the reaction to this is really what has added to the tragedy. The tragedy is a tragedy. Every life lost is a tragedy. It tells you kind of the level of embrace of sin. that a Western Culture, of course.
Built on Christian assumptions, particularly when you're talking about something like Germany, which long ago lost those foundations. That just the level of confusion that you can get to on the back side of it. I mean, first of all, the fact that you have a celebrated pride event. and then talk about it as if it is a paragon of democracy and virtue and talk about it as if it is the thing That makes Germany great again, kind of thing. And that sort of language.
Surrounds these events. It surrounds the public officials' statements about these events. And then it. has surrounded the Moral analysis of this horrific attack on Individuals where you have people now turning around. and having to abide by the rules that were set up.
For moral framing of a society, which are completely Embraced by critical theory. Once again, Carl Truman has written a tremendous piece in first things. About this event, and he talks about this in a paragraph. And I don't know how to say it better. when we talk about what we have called here the critical theory mood.
the framing of right and wrong that gets confused Scripture says, Woe to those who call right wrong and wrong right. Identity politics, critical theory. Which identity politics flows out of this critical theory mood. literally does that on a systemic level. This is a systemic form.
of confusion. And I'll just let him say it because what we had at the end of this were literal Germans who were at the event. Celebrating quote unquote pride, having been victims of this sort of terror. and then turning around and saying, Don't blame this on Muslims. This is ultimately the fault of straight white men.
It's a bizarre thing and you think, how does someone actually say that out loud? right after the event.
So I'll just read it. I honestly don't know how better to put it. This is the second paragraph. Of an article called Berlin and the Contradictions of Identity Politics by Carl Truman. And I quote: The response to the attack is the latest example of how identity politics.
is beginning to break down under its own contradictions. Instead of anger, There were anxious appeals not to let the attack divide us. As though this is a great line. The divisiveness lay in the public reaction rather than the murderer's motives. Identity politics only condemns violence.
When the attacker belongs to a privileged group, and the victim belongs to a protected one. When those rolls flip, as they did in Berlin, The outrage goes quiet. Or to your point, Like we make up uh that the car is responsible for driving itself into the crowd. This double standard, by the way, that was my editorial comment. That lasts a little bit.
This double standard is now so obvious that it destroying the public ability to have honest, serious debate about real problems. And, you know, this is how this story, I guess, at some level was connected to the previous one that we talked about. Which is what prevents us from getting to the truth? What prevents us from being able to have serious debate.
Well We can say it's divisiveness and just blame that, but really, it's ideology. It's ideology. that frames the the moral conversation immediately. and then just commits us to what is absurd. And that has happened.
Both with the LGBTQ movement, which has committed us. We saw this, by the way, and it's, I don't want to make too strange of a leap here, but there's a story emerging out of the WNBA. I have two young fans who just showed up with a Blackard supporting Sophie Cunningham, who was quoted in a sports article of supporting uh women and not wanting men to play in women's sports. The owner of the WNBA team berates them, cusses at them. And again, The story is there was an interaction, there was an altercation.
when you know just a month ago Fans of Sophie Cunningham saying racist things, you know, that is a clear moral conversation. Right, right. I mean, it's just the inability to have a moral conversation. can infect us individually. But it has affected us culturally.
And if we can have these moral conversations. about right. and about wrong. A lot of times it's because we've lost the ability to understand reality itself. And that's the power of ideology and worldview here.
Yeah. I so I'm going to make a little bit of a leap too, but it feels relevant. My favorite. It feels relevant to me.
So go on the buckle up and go on this journey with me. We took our girls to Boston. We're doing this America 250 family road trip right now. And we were in Boston earlier this week and we did a tour of the Freedom Trail. And our tour guide, who mostly was compelling and did a great job, of course, showed up to the tour, you know, dressed in his.
Revolutionary War era garb, complete with his rainbow pin, right? Which seems so strange and out of place, but of course. And the very first talk he gives in the Boston Common is about a woman who used to disrupt anti-suffrage protesting at the common. It was hard to follow his reasoning, but he took it as far as to say this woman we now know through records and letters spent her elder years never having been married living with a female friend of hers. And that is the extent of what we know about this woman and her private life.
She lived with a female friend of hers and that they have letters from her to other members of her family talking about this lovely friendship with this other woman.
So he concludes his speech to this group of people on the Freedom Trail with several children by saying: so if you want to celebrate the Boston Common, you've got to start by celebrating lesbians. It was so strange. I mean, it was to the point where I felt embarrassed for him because it felt like a stretch even for people who are fully on board with this kind of thing. And thankfully, we had a great conversation with our kids. Like right after it, we play a game with them called Catch the Lie.
Whenever we're in public and they hear something weird, we say, Did you catch it? What was it? We talked about it and that we moved on from it. But it felt like this same sort of mind disease where it's like, when you see, now that this clearly said a lot more about this man than it did about any woman who lived during the Revolutionary War period, like absolutely everything has to be about sex at this point. When you want to see the world that way, you're talking about two women in an era where it was difficult for women to support themselves financially if they had not married, who decide to live together.
And suddenly for us, it becomes, that had to be sexual. It just had to be. But when you see the world through that lens. Everything gets warped. This is almost the definition of sort of a warped worldview.
And when you have that worldview, it allows you to view things like a horrifying terrorist attack immediately through those priors. Like you, you almost, it's like an intuitive response. You have to make this, you have to frame this in a way that makes your side, quote unquote, You know, look morally superior or better, or you have to protect it from looking worse. And I don't even, I mean, the fact that we would even connect. Radical violent Islamic extremism.
with the LGBTQ movement is so bizarre on its face. But that's where we are. When you well, I think Muslims have made their per you know, position on this really clear. But to your point, next week, I think, or I think the next big event is in Brussels. And one of the big groups there are the Queers for Palestine group.
So Fantastic. Just coming right out of the tail end of this. I will say to you, that's a great thing to do with your kids, is to play something like Catch the Lie. And to always stop and point it out, never hope they don't notice, because you never want that rhetoric to just be. Kind of normalized.
I also congratulate you on your self-restraint. That would not, I probably would not have. Successfully Walked away from that one without a conflict of some kind. My husband had a phone call that morning and was like 20 minutes late to our tour. And Wow, I was sweating bullets because I was like, if he shows up and hears something like that, it's not going to, he's not going to go quietly.
He's not going to let that one go. No, and I'm not sure he's. It was probably the right decision for you and a different decision for him. And I'm probably on his side because there is a time to just kind of. highlight and go.
That's absurd. Join the Colson Center on August 6th at 7 p.m. Eastern Time for a free live stream event, Staying Human in the Age of AI. As AI continues to advance, it presents a temptation to surrender our minds, creativity, relationships, and work on the altar of efficiency. But to do so is to surrender our very humanity.
John Stone Street will be joined by Abdu Murray, Gretchen Huizinga, and John Lennox to help us explore how Christians can live out our God-given humanity in an increasingly AI-driven world. This event is free, and you can sign up today at colsoncenter.org/slash livestream. That's colsoncenter.org slash livestream.
So they redid the White House Media Correspondence Dinner. Remember, there was a lot of things. Do you want to remind us why it was interrupted at the first? Oh, yeah, it was interrupted because of someone assassination. No, just a little assassination, some light assassination attempt.
Yeah. And they wanted to have it again. Trump did not miss an opportunity to not just do the thing. I mean, it's always about insulting each other. It always has been.
And You know, whether it's in good fun or whether it's cruel, that's always been a, let's let's call it a spectrum in the spirit of the, of the event. Uh Trump crossed so many lines in that speech at the media correspondence dinner. It was just kind of hard. Yeah, it's unjustifiable in a lot of ways.
So I'm not defending the joke. At all, but there is a meltdown that's happening right now, as was written about in the Federalist by Brianna Lyman. But I've seen a lot of different people. Comment on that. Trump comments on a CNN anchor.
and says essentially That she Looks like Dylan Mulvaney.
Now if you forget who Dylan Mulvaney is, That's the whole Bud Light fiasco, right? Where Bud Light decides to promote this. all-American cheap beer by uh having a a trans Man who Overdoes. You know, to say the least, the whole kind of. Cosplaying.
Face painting. outfitting, right? You have brought this up where One of the most offensive things to you is not just the ideology, not just the taking of You know, female spaces and so on, but just the caricature and the stereotyping. This is what a woman is that comes from. the most popular Uh quote unquote.
drag performers, and Dylan Mulvaney is one of of those.
So listen, it was inappropriate. It was cruel. Trump should not. comment on a woman's Looks the way that he has on many occasions, including this one. But he made this connection that This CNN anchor looks like Dylan Mulvaney.
And everyone considered it an insult. But wait a minute. Dylan Mulvaney is supposed to be a woman, just like everyone else. I saw it on another ex-post just, I think, earlier this morning, where someone who is. Trans.
called Sophie Cunningham, who is this WNBA player who's at the center of the controversy and said, you look like a trans woman. and meant it as an insult. And you're like, well, wait a minute. You have to pick a side here. Do you see the inconsistency?
It's a remarkable. thing to see and I've got a lot of questions. I was thinking about this morning and the conversations that we were going to have, and I'm. You know, half watching the WNBA story as well and thinking. to myself, we're in such an interesting place because The WMBA uh story has brought up people So, Sophie Conningham basically never said trans people are evil.
She never said, she just said. Men shouldn't play in women's sports, right? This is, by the way, a position that the Olympic Committee came to, the NCA has come to, the Supreme Court has come to. Everyone believed just yesterday that same position. But in reaction to it, there's so many pundits that just basically dismiss it as hateful, bigoted rhetoric, right?
And there's this label that's put on a position: hateful, bigoted rhetoric that worked. four years ago. I guess here's what I'm wondering. A lot has changed in that issue. including some political force.
behind it. I think that political force has served at least a little bit to nudge culture. Back to being willing to say, I don't think it's changed many minds, but I think it's.
Now, there are more people willing to say common sense things, like Sophie Cunningham said in her interview, and then she stood by it in some questions. Afterwards, and it's created controversies and even fans yelling at 16-year-old girls and all kinds of things. And then you have the larger cultural thing happening. Where Basically, people People who identify as trans are now on the losing side of an issue. They feel like they're on the losing side of the issue.
And the response is: move the issue to begin with. See if this makes any sense. We confuse all the time. Assertions with arguments. And this movement went along with assertions.
And it wasn't even an assertion that trans was good. It was that trans rights are civil rights. And that basically it was a hijacking of an A movement that itself progressed on assertions with very few arguments. This one made no arguments, went on assertions, and it worked. It flipped the entertainment community upside down, the athletic community upside down, certainly the educational community upside down, confused a lot of parents.
confused and harmed an awful lot of adolescent and pre-adolescent girls. The cultural force of this four years ago was almost breathtaking. never with an argument.
So now having In many ways, put a stop to this. At least the brakes have been put on. There's actually been a reverse. More people are willing to say, even if they're not. Fully on the political side of those who tended to champion this, or they are, will say, Yeah, I'm not on board with this one, right?
This is the extreme. But now that whole political scenario is going to change. Here's what I'm wondering.
Sorry, that was a long introduction, but here's what I'm wondering. Where culture is. This has been such a fascinating. Case study of what culture is, how culture changes, how culture moves. What we call in our book, A Practical Guide to Culture, the undercurrents and how undercurrents shift and change.
And we experience them down the road as waves, but there are these big, massive shifts. Have the breaks that have been put on this movement in the last four years been permanent? Is this. Is this just kind of the the last gasps of a movement? that that tried to changed things and and failed.
Or Are we about to see once again a bunch of assertions? about something patently absurd. I think a lot about the opening line. Truman's getting a lot of love in this particular episode, but I think a lot about his opening line in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which is: the real question is not how is it that a man can think he was born into the wrong body. The real question is, how is it now?
Today, that when someone says this out loud, that we don't immediately institutionalize them, consider this absurd, and reject the notion entirely. Like, how did it become like, and that's the response to Sophie Cunningham. That's the response here in this thing, is you're just supposed to say, oh, that's bigoted, and then everyone's supposed to go along with it. It stopped working. My question is, is it going to work again?
Or is this a dying movement? Prediction. Make a prediction. We'll put it on. Here's my prediction.
We'll put it on DraftKings and see who, you know, put it on Kalshi. I don't know what that is. I don't really either, but I think it's a thing where you can bet on literally anything. I read a story about. Yeah.
Anyway, I think that this particular claim is dying because anything that's this objective, I don't know what the philosophical word for it is, but like it's not as much of a. ephemeral claim as like some sort of Buddhist view of truth, or something, like some like religious or Hindu, it's. Such an objectively measurable claim to say that men can be women and women can be men, that it will inevitably butt up with reality enough times and in enough large-scale and patently observable ways that it will die. And I think that is what's happening, that it will just become.
So embarrassing and humiliating. And it should have always been. But I think that particular claim, yes, is on its way out. But I fully expect another claim. I don't, I can't predict what that will be, but something else will take its place because that is how humans behave when there's a lot of us and when we have the level of decadence.
Even taking into account, you know, people who are whatever, poverty, that is still a reality. But when we have the amount of decadence that we have, something else will take its place. I think a lot of. The therapeutic nonsense is somewhat taking its place now, where everyone has some kind of capital T trauma. That which sort of feels like a little bit of a regurgitation of Freud, where it's like nobody's really responsible for their behavior.
It's probably someone else in the past. I think that's kind of on the ascendancy more so than boys can be girls and girls can be boys. You're making all kinds of predictions. I think this goes back to what we were talking about with the Fauci hearings, which is that. We crave morality to such a degree That almost, depending on what guardrails we have in place, like I like to.
Trust that the Lord has put guardrails for me. In, like, not allowing me to turn to the right or to the left, and you know, keep me from temptation and deliver me from evil, and all of that. But without guardrails in place, Because of our innate desire for a moral order. We could be swayed into saying just about anything as long as we're convinced that it makes us the right kind of person. I know there are people who through delusion or through sickness.
Fully have embraced the idea that boys can be girls. But I think that is an infinitesimally small portion of people. I think the majority of people who have. Repeated or embraced that claim, including the ones, some of the ones who are still claiming bigotry and whatever. are doing it not out of an actual allegiance to that.
like actual fact or idea, but because they want to be a certain kind of person. They want to be seen as being a certain kind of person. And they believe that to say it's bigotry to say women should have their own sports Is the right kind of person. I'm a good person with a capital G person.
Okay, so here's where my money is then. The moments that I agree with you. About your prediction that this one is done, this idea is dying, this delusion is going away. is not just because, as you said, although I agree with you that this is a different kind of rejection of reality than others, right? There's a it's more tangible, it's more observable.
You have to really deny what you really see. I think it even goes beyond that because, you know, if someone is a Buddhist and wants to be a hippie and smoke marijuana, and you know, I'm talking about the American form of, you know, 60s Buddhism and reject reality and moral norms and be tolerant. It's all based on this tolerance, right? It's all based on this UBU and IBM me. And The trans movement tried to take that, but then it tried to actually enforce on other people.
And there were real victims. There were real victims like Chloe Cole. There were real victims like this wrestler who was sexually assaulted in the ring. There were real victims like Riley Gaines. There were real victims.
And there were a whole lot of people whose moral impulse, to your point, Was to defend victims. It's hard to find a victim of 60 sippies, right? It's more easy, it's far easier to see the victims. And it's the people that we have kind of, I think, a natural gut level to protect, which is. adolescent and pre-adolescent girls, especially So When I think that the idea is going away, it's because of this.
When I am not quite sure. It's because Of what Romans says about the actual capacity that we have to deny observable reality. Romans 1 tells us that observable reality points us to the truth, but that we also have this incredible ability as individuals. and as societies to deny what is observably true. And that doesn't happen through argument.
That doesn't happen through reason. That doesn't happen. It happens in other ways. You pointed out one big way, which is, you know, these, this kind of. Metaphorical, be on the right side of history, stand for justice.
And as long as this is being able to be put into that arc, it's actually pretty powerful. But it also happens through cultural power. including Education. And while we see So many states. Go away from this ideology and enforcing it.
There are still some. Like Colorado, like California, that are forcing it forward. and Min including Minnesota.
So, Minnesota announced that they have, I think it was a formal announcement. The State of Minnesota Could be Adopting Ends Schools. I'm just going to quote from the website: a new play-based therapeutic approach. For trans and gender diverse children, how much you want to bet it won't just be trans and gender diverse children. that are encouraged to play with these things.
And the clinicians who support them. I mean, this headline, you just can't make this stuff up. We make gender fun, our award-winning dolls and services. are community informed, research driven, culturally attuned. and grounded in gender affirming clinical Practice.
Launching in 2026, It's 2026, kids. And who's it for? Clinicians and... Educators.
Now, what is this? This is literally, it's called My Gender Dolls. This is I want to say They're paper dolls. Remember paper dolls? You can exchange their clothing.
These are dolls with which you can exchange something else. It's not just clothing. This is like The greatest insult to one of the great toys. If I were Hasbro, I would just be losing my mind. And Toy Story.
Because, I mean, think of all the joy. That Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head, which of course I'm sure was sexist and they should have just been interchangeable to begin with. This is the ultimate example of this.
So, this is what gives me hesitation. I think a lot about something that Chuck Coulson said. I just Uh reflected. Recently, again, in a breakpoint commentary that I'll air in a couple weeks about Chuck Colson's own story and How it was at the heart of you know, his understanding of power. And his understanding Coming out of prison and becoming coming to Christ about the same time.
He used to say this all the time. There is no limit. to the human capacity for self-rationalization. Underscoring that, I would add, or delusion. There really isn't.
We do have the ability. To delude ourselves. I'm hopeful that you're right. If you were to put a gun to my head right now and say, where's your money? Is this one done?
Is it not done? I would say it's done. But I tell you, I am not confident. Because you know, it's kind of the same thing post-Rho. Where we had all these Surveys that were trumpeted a younger generation is more pro-life than their parents were.
Well, Yeah, but they're also far more moral relativist. They didn't see these in the same moral category.
Well, yeah, and I think this is almost the exact opposite. People aren't seeing this. It the Yeah, I don't think the moral ground has been properly tilled. For the kind of fruit we want. I have had the worst kind of existential crisis on this America 250 trip because, so we went to Boston, we went to Philadelphia, we're now in Washington, D.C.
And we're just absolutely immersed in all of this Revolutionary War history. My husband has given so many lectures that nobody asked for, and we're all learning so much. I have had this creeping sense of or question of what I would have done. If I were living here in 1770. or living in Boston in seventeen seventy.
Because on the one hand, I've been comforted by the realization that so much of the behavior of the colonists, including loyalists but including patriots, Was somewhat irrational and mob-like. Like, I've been somewhat comforted by how similar it feels to our age. I tend to think. I'm a glass half empty kind of our age is worse and we're devolving into a late stage republic kind of person, but I'm not sure that things are worse now than they used to be. There was a lot of mob behavior and a lot of whipping up into a frenzy and some self-delusion and questions.
But I have had the worst sense, like I don't know what it's easy to look back on it now and just I am so incredibly grateful for the men and women who started this country and who were willing to put their lives on the line to do it. And kind of against the odds and all of that. But I'm also like, would I have done that? Would I have been the woman sending my husband out to. You know, Lexington and Concord, and been like, go get them.
Or what I've been like, what are you doing? Respect your authorities and why are you? But all of that to say.
Okay. the lesson for me through 1776 and Today, and the crazy, all of the crazy questions that come up is that. Exactly what Chuck Colson said: do not think that you are above the pressure of the culture around you. And And however that pressure comes, whether it's the pressure to conform, or for me, sometimes the pressure is to be contrarian. And both of those, if they're not based in truth and fact, can lead you astray.
And we just have to always pray that the Lord. Would keep us looking at truth, and that he wouldn't let other. Natural motivations to belong, to be seen as a good person, cloud our willingness to accept and to see the truth, because we are all very susceptible to it.
Well, the good news is, is AI is coming and we can feed all of our Our existential questions and crazy.
Now, it was to this point, we don't have time to fully unpack this story, but it's worth mentioning in The Economist. We talked about this offline, but it's fascinating. That if you go to uh Different countries and ask the same questions. The AI models there reflect the values. Right, and these are things that the economist was looking at.
Yeah, not just like fact-based questions, like what happened in the news yesterday, but if you ask it. These kind of moral questions. I think one of the main ones they did. A lot of them are relational. How do I deal with my pesky in-laws?
And, you know, if you're in Asia, you might get an answer that suggests you should seek compromise. And if you're in Brooklyn, you might get an answer that suggests that you cut all ties and yes, clean. And have Friendsgiving instead of Thanksgiving. Have Friendsgiving, exactly. Have a toast sandwich.
That's pretty interesting. There's so many AI conversations left to have. Speaking of which, It's worth mentioning we're about a week away from our Bay Harbor Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview. Conversation for 2026. I'm really excited about this.
We have an incredible Response to this particular panel, especially the digital streaming. option, which is completely free. It's a conversation about AI and the human future featuring Abdu Murray, who really. Hit it out of the park and created an awful lot of conversation coming out of the Colson Center National Conference on some of the basic observations that he made about. Not just AI, but just the loss of our humanity in general, but how that is complicated by AI.
And he'll take that further. We've got a wonderful set of video comments. by the the one and only Dr. John Lennox. And uh Gretchen uh who's in uh All right, so it's spelled the way everyone up in West Michigan pronounces Heisinga, but she's cause she says it differently.
So we're still, we're still, she and I are still kind of arguing about what, how best to pronounce her own name. How she should pronounce her own name, got it. How she should pronounce her name. But she has been in the tech world and the tech space and has just finished up. Her PhD wrestling with some of this conversations around AI and what it means to be human.
I think it's going to be a really important and powerful conversation. And I encourage everyone to join us virtually for that. Or if you live anywhere in the Michigan area and it's drivable. There's few places that are more remarkable and beautiful this time of year than northern Michigan on the lake, northwest Michigan. Uh over there near Patoski.
uh famous for the Potoski stones And but Bay Harbor is a wonderful location for this event. It's next Thursday. Uh, so please uh join us for that. We'll have this conversation around AI, and part of it too is just. Do our technologies help us, and in what ways do they replace us?
That's such an important framing for us to consider. And I think we've outsourced. Our moral decision making. For a long time, including to these sorts of ideologies, including to these mantras, like you need to be on the right side of history, and I'll tell you what the right side is. That's a form of outsourcing.
Our moral framing. And to be human is to have to make these moral decisions ourselves.
Now, we should do it in community. We should certainly do it in view of history because the whole idea. Of chronological snobbery was what first led us astray, something that C.S. Lewis wrote about. But we have to do it ourselves.
And that'll be what this conversation is largely about. How do we preserve and keep and celebrate our humanity? In an age of artificial intelligence. And the acceleration there is really remarkable. And something worth talking about.
Such a deep question. I think one of the things this study in The Economist revealed wasn't just that there are biases in the different models and different areas of the world. I think that is pretty self-explanatory. I mean, if it's spitting out data that's been given to it. That would make sense.
It's worth knowing that whatever you think you're researching through there is being guided by an invisible hand, I guess. To me, it's much more salient to know that people are thinking to ask AI these kinds of questions in the first place, but we know that they absolutely are. Like The Economist did not make this up. People are looking to artificial intelligence, especially kids. but I think more and more adults as well.
For existential and moral and relational questions, more so than just help writing their paper or whatever it might be. And that's relevant to the church, especially.
Well, we should pick this up next week because there was an article that I saw literally walking down the steps here to the studio to have this conversation that there right now is a group of students. Who, and I can't remember which state it is, that are leading lawmakers. Towards AI policy and education. And, you know, of course, you got the typical annoying. Editorial slant, which is the adults won't lead us, so let the kids lead us.
And that stuff is so annoying.
However, in this case, that might be right, where they're saying we need to have guidelines. And one of the fascinating things is one of the participants. Who is a student in these deliberations in a state house to talk about what sort of legal policies? Should be given to education, which now we're violating sphere sovereignty, but that's a whole nother conversation. Why should the State House tell the anyway?
The point is that this student said, Hey, we dropped the ball on social media and the internet. Let's not drop the ball on AI. And I appreciate the sentiment. I hate to say, well, That ship is sailed, kid. But at the same time, they are trying to push back on this.
And I think that's an interesting thing. When students themselves realize, look, it will. Take our place. If we do not have some of these boundaries in place, so we need to. Figure out what's happening there in that story and maybe pick this up again next week.
Let's do one question. Can we do one question from the audience? Is that all right? Yes, we've gotten a few really thoughtful ones.
So let me read one to you quickly here. After being active in the Colosson Fellows program for several years, I've noticed a big emphasis on assisted suicide, but I have questions about. How end-of-life hospice care is conducted. I watched my own father die under hospice care, and I work for a church making ministry visits to hospice patients frequently. It's often presented as allowing nature to run its course, but it seems more like death by withholding food and water.
It just doesn't feel right. Any recommendations for reading or et cetera that would help Christians engage this topic biblically.
Well, it doesn't just feel right. It's not right. And hospice care, of course, came out of a Christian worldview, but then how it's conducted. Very often, and I think this is something that's now under heightened scrutiny, and rightfully so. Is What it means to walk someone to death, and what it means to hasten death, and how that's done clinically, and how that's done individually.
So, I think all of these are the right impulses, and you're hitting something that I think people have written about. In terms of the fundamental moral question, I'll point you to Gil Mylander's, Gilbert Mylander's book, Bioethics a Prima for Christians, the second edition of it. Where he wrestles with this. And one of the things that he talks about there is how important. You know, intent and purpose can be.
Now, as we said earlier, it's not just intent. But intent does matter in a moral framework here. And when a treatment is done to comfort or a treatment is done to hasten death. There's a big difference because we are in this weird technological milieu. Where we can both hasten death and we can you know, theoretically, if you define life as the heartbeater.
whatever you can keep somebody, or, you know. Whatever you do, the definition of death has changed so many times during this last century as we've developed these technologies. But my point is that you can keep somebody's heart beating for a long time. You can keep, you know. You know, so on.
I don't think food and water are extraordinary measures, but that's what's at the heart. of the debate. What is an extraordinary measure? You go back to Terry Shivo. that that famous case in Florida where They quote unquote pulled the plug.
They didn't. They pulled the feeding tube. And that is a different sort of reality. Than pulling the plug. There's a difference between food and water, which is not an extraordinary measure.
Say, well, it's a feeding tube.
Well, so's a bottle, right? I mean, there's. You have to figure out what counts as an extraordinary measure or not. That is the theoretical or the philosophical debate. And from Mylander.
you can get kind of started in that conversation. I think it's really helpful. I'll also point you to someone who I think is writing about this. Better than anybody. And that is far curling.
Far as someone who spoke at the Colson's International Conference last year, he actually spoke on hospice. And the confusing vision of hospice and where it's come. And a lot of people in the audience resonated. Having the same response that this Colson fellow did. Which is, yeah, something's uh awry here.
You're not always sure kind of what you're getting with hospice care. And yet we need hospice care. It's way better than the clinical you know, isolation, which of course is what we all saw during COVID.
So I I'll point you to those two places as resources. It's a great place to start. And you know, the third place I'll say is we need a theology of dying. We need a theology. Of this part of life.
And I've seen it practically lived out. I've mentioned before that my pastor for years, I Um, has walked more people to death than anybody else I know of. He's kind of been in it. He's got an inherent genius, theological framing for this that just, when applied, Is exactly, I think, what needs to happen. And I hope he writes on it because it's.
a guide that many, many, many people Need. Theologically There was a time when the church wrote about this. The art of dying was a Kind of a theology. That was a topic of concern, much like for us, it would be like, when does life begin as a point of consistent theological reference because of the cultural scenario. You go back three, four, five, seven hundred years and the art of dying is one because that, of course, is a constant Cultural reference.
We didn't take people away to die. They died in our houses. They died in our homes and that sort of thing.
So, The culture has changed on this. Hospice is a wonderful potential gift But the way that it's done can be actually violating of human dignity. And so it has to be done right. That also represents an opportunity for Christians as well. I have a friend at our church who's.
In medical school right now, seeking to become a palliative care physician.
So, a place for Christians to be involved in hospice care is really important. Absolutely. But I feel like this has come full circle though because there's two areas of medical missions. Let me say this real quick. There's two areas of medical missions that are different than it used to be, you know.
going and being a doctor in Africa, which we still need a lot of those. But it's The philosophical area of bioethics, and then it's also the actually entering this field and carrying it out. That's. That is a medical mission field. I hope people hear this and sense this calling.
And I'm sure a lot of people listening have gone through an experience with hospice. My family did with the loss of my grandpa and grandma and had. I mean, just the most profoundly beautiful experience. And we're so thankful for the nurses that walked through that with my family. A beautiful way, like just an incredible, profound opportunity for ministry to people.
But it is interesting how this has come full circle because I feel like this missing theology of death played a part in our fear, our collective fear response to the COVID pandemic. There was such an abject repulsion to the idea that anyone would die. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't do things to preclude that. But we talked about this at the time. such a deep like cultural surprise at death.
And that we went to these strange measures thinking that we could get beyond it and protect ourselves from it. That kind of revealed. This Phobia that maybe has, we've got a little bit of a delusion that we can escape it. And that's just not how life on this earth works right now.
Well, John, that is going to do it for the program this week. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint This Week. It was great to be back in the studio this week. For the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stone Street. Have a great week.
We'll see you all back here next time. God bless.
