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 Halloween, the upcoming elections, and organ donation. We are so glad you're with us this week. As always, please stick around. Welcome to Breakpoint this week from the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview.
I'm Maria Bear, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. John, I did meet a listener this week who told me that next time he wants to hear me say, "I'm Maria Bear and John Stone Street is alongside me." So that's how I'm going to open the show this week, even though I didn't. You are alongside me this week. You just didn't quite have the courage to to pull that off. Did you?
I didn't. Worried about ramifications you didn't know about. I need to get up the gumption. Maybe next time.
Okay, well, we normally don't do this, but those of you who listen to our podcast will know that usually at the end of the show we interact with questions and comments that some of our listeners have sent in, and we got two questions and comments this week that made us chuckle, and so we're going to start the show this week just quickly responding to some of these.
So I'm going to read this first one from someone named David Roberts, and he says the subject of his question was trombones. Hello, long-time listener, first-time commenter. You guys were bashing the musicians who wisely and strategically chose and love playing the trombone. I feel empowered to stand up for my fellow trombone players to say we are the backbone of the bands out there, and we should be respected. I was part of a locally famous Christian ska band.
Side note: I immediately have questions. But then he says, "Okay, I'm done with that. Thank you for all you do." And all you bring to me every day, I love this. God bless the trombonists. Hey, so this isn't the first thing I've heard about the trombone, and I honestly don't remember what we said about it.
I don't remember if it was you. Or if it was me, it was probably so. It was probably maybe, and I I love the humility of David saying "locally famous Christian ska band." First of all, I don't know if there's anything as a globally famous Christian ska band, and to admit that it was just locally famous is pretty good. I think, given the feedback we've gotten about this trombone comment that neither of us remember, I have come to two conclusions. Number one is is we have a disproportionately high Percentage of trombone players in our audience.
Like this is not normal. I've never heard this before. And second, I completely you know pull back any comment. If I'm the guilty one, I believe in the trombone. If it did not exist, we'd have to invent it.
If for no other reason than we would need it for Luther Vandross's edition of One Shining Moment. That's played every year as the highlight soundtrack to March Madness college basketball tournament, and it would not be the same without one shining moment. And there is some good trombones in that, so God bless the trombone. Yeah, if it was me, I fully repent. We love trombones.
We welcome all trombone listeners, and I would like to know what it is about.
Some of my best friends are trombone players.
Some of my best friends play the trombone. I would like to know what it is about our conversation that is attracting, in particular, trombone players. But yes, more love to them.
Okay, the next question is also very sweet, and I need to read it as written. This is in response to our conversation about whether Christians can or should observe Halloween. In the late '80s and early '90s, I was convinced of the utter evil of Halloween, and for 35 years, I lived by that conviction. My children did not dress up and go trick or treating. They did go to fall festivals and harvest carnivals, and they had plenty of fun and candy.
But I made it clear that gluttony, gore, and horror are not Christian values. On October 31st, 2023, I did what I'd been doing for 35 years: I turned off the porch light, didn't answer the door, and thank God I'm not like those tax collectors. Oh, this person is so cute. This year was different. We were in a new neighborhood, and I could hear through the front window the sounds of the entire street coming alive with cheer, goodwill, and fellowship.
I cried at the thought that I was not loving my neighbors, but I didn't know how to respond. And then I heard your famous "to boo or not to boo" commentary. My now adult children were shocked when the following year I sat at the end of my driveway with a big bowl of candy. I still don't like gore and horror, but now I get to talk to my neighbors and be kind to people, and plus I get the joy of seeing an eight-year-old dressed up as Share from Clueless. Love it.
She got extra candy. Thank you for making a difference in my life, and keep bringing back the boo. I love this so much, John. I love this as well. Given that every year, I think that we need to re-air to boo or not to boo, and the entire editorial team rolls their eyes like you did last week when you were like, "Oh, here we go." And this is what you need to know: is that it changes lives, and God bless this.
I also really appreciated the fact that she added in with. The fact that gore and horror are not Christian values, neither is gluttony. Gluttony, the candy. I mean, shit. That's that's just really good.
And I would add neither is socialism. You know, kind of going around and begging for candy.
So that's another thing altogether. But I I just really love this listener. And there you go. Taboo or not taboo, remains the unrivaled champion of all break point commentaries in my view. That was truly so sweet.
Thank you for reaching out to us.
Okay, John. Let's get to the matter at hand. We're recording this towards the end of the week on Tuesday. We've got an election coming up, I hear.
So, talk to me about what you are going to be watching for. You know, it's a big one. It's a midterms. You know, at one level, on a political, we're seeing this as a referendum on the Trump administration. That's nothing new, given you have an incumbent president.
And you know, unless something went really, really odd in terms of the way history tends to. Maybe not repeat itself, but rhyme. The party in power usually, you know, gets hammered in this time period. But it's it's a it's it's very interesting just on a political level. I don't want to really address some of that, other than the worldview issues that I think are really important.
Abortion is back on the ballot. Missouri voters, for example, have an opportunity to extend protections of the preborn, and I hope they come out and actually do that. I I know that the issue of women in men and women sports is on the ballot here in Colorado, and so you have some of these specific states that have very important issues that will be up to the voter. But but I think there's also a couple other things that we can think about. I mean, one is the number of laws that are now done through ballot initiatives.
Tells us something. Our founders were very nervous about kind of a straight majority rule, just kind of a plain democracy, knowing that a mob can rule as well as a tyrant. I often think about the line from the Patriot when Mel Gibson's character is there at the South Carolina legislature, trying to decide whether to join the cause of the revolution, and he makes a statement: "Why would I trade one king a thousand miles away for a thousand kings one mile away?" And of course, the government that was imagined by our founders was a little different. It was a constitutional republic. It wasn't just subject to a pure rule of the majority, which had the possibility of trampling other groups.
When so many things are decided by ballot initiative, including some things that should be common sense, some things that should be obvious. Whose lives should be protected? Whether or not parents have the right to say what have to say in in the lives of their children, or whether it's a government official, far too many of these things are being put into the hands of a majority that's going to hand it off then to elected officials, and and that to me is worrisome. I thought about that when I voted in Colorado. You had no idea how long our ballot was.
It was insane. Just ridiculous, and some of the things we're voting on are just political ploys to unseat some long-standing taxpayer right things that are here, and and it you know it's it's kind of a case in point. But the deeper part of it is is that it's it's just such a game, and it's it's worrisome because it is a way to chip away at some of the system that was given to us, and I think. Was was really wise, and then again, you know, we're back in some very public races. Many people are stunned by candidates that so clearly identify as socialist that are on the ballot.
Some of whom also have a lot of guilt by association, it seems, with radical Islamic groups, and so we're left in many cases where. People feel like, who am I going to vote for? And we're back to this idea of voting as between the lesser of two evils. and And I think there's a better way to approach it. We've talked about this in the past, and think it's worth talking about again.
But there's a lot of really important issues that will be decided on Tuesday, and Christians again face this kind of dual threat of of not participating in some sort of pietistic. Attempt to keep our hands clean, and then putting too much weight in the political process, and thinking that our fate, our future, is going to determine. By what happens, you know, in this most important election ever, as we hear every time, and both of those things, I think, are mistakes for Christians, from at least from a Christian worldview perspective.
So, I was gonna avoid asking you this because I don't want to spark controversy, but you kind of let it slip a little bit. Are you a vote early guy?
Well, in Colorado, everything is mail, mail in votes. Oh, okay.
So it's just there's just not a there's just not a an alternative. Total anarchy out there, man. I mean, listen. Of all the things that are wrong in Colorado, that's like the least of our problems. Like we got ninety-nine problems, and that ain't one of them.
There are much bigger problems than the fact that we've been mailing in elections, you know, for a long time. And you know, part of it has to do with the status of you know electable candidates and everything else. But also a very, very aggressive state that. Is trying to chip away at some of the, you know, certainly some of the fiscal freedoms that were maintained, you know, prior to the state turning as blue as it as it has, but the social issues are just, you know, massive. We we are talking about, you know, whether or not to outlaw mutilation of children, you know, surgical mutilation of children in the name of so called gender affirming care.
So we're one of those states. That will decide that this is an eighty twenty issue across America. It's not a full eighty twenty issue here, but the identification of issues and certainly candidates, but also issues with certain parties. Who knows what's going to happen on that here in this state? I have been thinking a lot about how one of the things we say a lot is that politics is downstream from culture, and I think that's demonstrably true.
But I know. You agree with us too, because I've heard you say this. You know, culture also is shaped by politics, and I've been thinking about that more. Just in the tone and the general atmosphere of this election, at least in Ohio, has been incredibly contentious. And the way we talk about each other, as well as the issues, you know, the idea that we would it would have to be a ballot initiative or would have to be even remotely related to the ballot—the question of whether boys should be allowed to play in girls' sports—you know, ten years ago would have been completely alien to all of us.
But that just goes to show how you know sometimes politics can shape our norms and then shapes what we expect, and it shapes. What we accept, both in terms of policy and behavior, and I just I want to stay aware of that and not just let it kind of wash over me as I think I have done in the past, where things just seem normal and then I just accept that they're normal, and that's how we end up in some weird positions. Yeah, there's no question. I mean, I I do think there's a reciprocal relationship between politics and the rest of culture, and one way to think about it is that politics is part of culture. And it has, you know, an effect on the rest of it.
But I think it's also important to be really clear on kind of what we mean by that here and now, because oftentimes we'll hear something like, "Oh, because the political rhetoric is so high, that's why people are so grumpy, or people are so mean, or why we've lost so much stability." And that's not not true, but it's simplistic. In other words, I don't think that people are on edge, you know, because we have a handful of politicians that are particularly grumpy or rude or crude or something like that, you know. And I guess part of that is a little bit of the boy who cried wolf syndrome, because you know, hearing that the nicest man. The nicest Mormon man in politics, Mitt Romney, wanted to push our grandmothers off the cliff. You know, you know, we've heard, you know, who the devil is for years.
You know, certainly on both sides, I think it's something else. I don't think it's just like, oh, they gave us permission to be grumpy and mean and rude and crude and stuff like that. I think that a feature of culture today is that politics is asked to carry too much weight. The political process. Is just treated as ultimate, and if it's treated as ultimate, that means a we're all secularists because if you're a secularist, you've got no other way to change things than politics, and also it just is going to create an incredible amount of anxiety, and that anxiety.
Look, hey, you're a mom, right? When you're anxious, do you get grumpy? Doesn't go well in my house. It does not. You know, yeah.
If I'm worried, if I'm anxious. If I am frustrated, I am short with my kids, right? I admit that. I think that's the culture-wide phenomenon that we have. We we have the anxiety in which we think so much is is up to this election, which is why I am once again this year advocating that we consider not thinking about our vote as between the lesser of two evils, as if everything rests on this, and I might screw it all up for everybody, kind of thing.
Or everything rests on the results of next Tuesday. What happens next Tuesday will be really important. There will be an incredible amount of consequences that come out of that. But the biggest problems we have aren't political, and so therefore the biggest solutions that we have are not political. And that's evidenced by when you have a side that has the power and the ability to do things, and there's not long-term change built into the system, then you come back to these moments of anxiety every election.
I think that's. That's really where we're at. I have appreciated and thought more and more deeply this year, even than previous years, to a framework of a former summit colleague of mine, Kevin Bywater, who proposed to me, and maybe other people have said it, but I first heard it from him, that rather than think about our vote as between two evils, we should think about it as the best way to lessen evil. Like which vote is going to lessen the amount of evil that's there. And I think that that helps us in three ways.
First, when we talk about the lesser of two evils, how do you measure character, right?
So obviously, if someone has says really bad things and is mean and is grumpy, is unfaithful to his wife and all that, there's incredible character problems, and we've got some candidates, you know, you know, on the docket this year like that. If someone thinks that the state owns your kid instead of you, that's really bad character as well. In other words, bad character is bad behavior. It's also bad ideas, and so it's hard to really balance those two things out. And so when we think, okay, which vote is going to actually lessen evil, that helps us get around that without dismissing character, which some people do, like, oh, I'm not, you know, voting for a pastor.
Well, you don't have to be voting for a pastor, but we are voting. We should, you know, it should matter that people are good people. The other thing that I think it does is it remembers the ballot initiative because, especially in the midterms, so many things that we are voting on aren't candidates. You know, it's different things. We're voting on issues.
We're doing kind of direct to the people sorts of realities, and then it's also determining kind of the power structure of different. Of the state and and who it belongs to in terms of party, and then the party has a platform, and so that takes us beyond the candidate, you know, to the platform as a result of of our vote, and then finally, I I think a lot that this helps me apply something that Chuck Colson famously said about election, which is salvation never arrives in Air Force One, and. In the midterms, we're not voting for Air Force One, so there we go. But I always have thought—well, not always—in the last kind of several election cycles, given the rhetoric and where we're at, it often seems to me like we are not only at risk of believing that salvation will come in Air Force One, but we have just as much of a risk thinking that the apocalypse is going to come on Air Force One. It—it just—it just is not.
You know, elections are an ultimate. In a culture in which elections carry too much weight, that says something about the society in which that election is taking place, and we're certainly there. But but I hope it allows us to take the issue seriously. I hope it allows us to be engaged. Chuck often would quote Saint Augustine that citizens of the kingdom of God should be the best citizens of the kingdom.
Of of of man, wherever we find ourselves, so we should be really good citizens here. At the very least, that's being politically engaged. That's voting. The idea of not voting because I want to keep my hands clean—that's that's pietyism. And I think many people have correctly distinguished pietyism from from Christian virtue.
It's not the same thing.
So you know, go out there, be engaged, be involved, but your hope is in Jesus Christ. Yeah, Amen. Let's take a quick break, John. We'll be right back in just a moment with more BreakPoint this week. Tickets are going fast for the 2027 Colson Center National Conference this June in Charlotte, North Carolina.
If you want to be there, now is the time to claim your spot. Our theme is Pursue Wisdom. We'll discover how to discern and lay hold of God's wisdom for our ever-changing cultural moment, with the help of amazing speakers like Malcolm Guite, Amy Orr-Ewing, Henry Kaisner, and more. Yes, wisdom seems to be in short supply today, but God is ready and willing to grant wisdom to. All who ask, and he calls us to pursue it with urgency.
Let's pursue wisdom together at CCNC twenty twenty seven. Register now before tickets are gone at ColsonConference dot org. That's ColsonConference dot org. We're back on Breakpoint this week, John. I want to talk now about a policy that is really, really important, and that was just recently changed.
These are the kinds of things that we don't always think about. In high-profile elections, but you know these are the things that happen every day as governments govern. And this is a change in the rules around Oregon donations.
So there's a federal agency that oversees how this process is done, and according to NPR, they've recently made a key change to this process, and that change is that. Doctors and nurses are no longer barred from talking to family members about the possibility of organ donation before their loved one has died, and as this is really, in some ways, it doesn't seem like it, but it is difficult to understand. And I think that's in part because the def the legal definition of death has changed so much and is so complex. It doesn't sound like it would be, but it really is. That I think that plays into this change here.
There's obviously when someone is going to their organs are going to be used or transplanted into someone else. There's a huge time pressure component of this, and you know this federal agency has announced that doctors and nurses now can talk about this with family members before that person has died. I think the conflicts of interest are pretty clear there. That there could be undue pressure applied on either side. It's hard to think about this, but is this as profound a change as it sounds to me?
Like it is.
Well, you know, there's an old saying that if it's misty in the pulpit, it's foggy in the pew, and you know that's how we apply it to church. And I think there has to be an application across other professional disciplines that if we're not clear on some basics. From the professionals, than when it actually plays itself out, it's going to be stormy. We're going to have a lot of confusion, and organ donation seems like one of those things we should be able to put into the category of we decided this a long time ago, and therefore it's not up for grabs, and we, we, you guys, you shouldn't worry about it. That's not exactly the case because there have been some high-profile accusations of physicians.
Who think in their own kind of professional expertise, and some would say medical hubris, that they know that the outcome of a particular patient, and therefore choose to hasten death, because within a live donor there are more transplantable organs.
Now, again, this is a reflective of a crisis that. Or at least what people will call a crisis—that we have far more people on the organ transplant donor recipient list than there are organ donors or organs that are available for transplant—and that's now called a crisis. And we see headlines every once in a while talking about how big the list is and how far people are behind. And I'm guessing we probably have some listeners who have loved ones or maybe themselves that are. Find themselves on this, you know, list, hoping to get a new heart, hoping to get a new liver, hoping to get some sort of help, and you know, there are beautiful, beautiful parts of seeing the life-saving treatment that has come through organ donation, and and even some of the relational dynamics of someone receiving the heart of a loved one and being able to meet and the family, and I mean, some of these things are just really incredible.
And that's the thing about organ donation. It was an incredible medical breakthrough that promised a redemptive healing to the thousands. But now we don't have enough organs, so it's a crisis. and And that's how these things happen when the ethical guidelines are still a little fuzzy. And that's been the case for a long time.
I mean, if because what you're really saying, right? If we we don't we have more people that need organs than we have organs. I mean, what's the only answer to that? Is we need more people to die. I mean, more people to die.
To if you steal man, it it's possible that this they're they're suggesting that if there are enough people who die each day, and if enough people simply agreed to be donors, that there would be enough. But I agree with you. It does reflect, I think, a norms change in terms of our expectations. Like the science became possible, and then very, very quickly, it became expected.
Well, listen, you know, the promise here is that we're professionals; we would never hasten death in order to achieve organs. Except the problem is, guess what? We have a lot of stories of doctors who, at least according to patients, according to whistleblowers, according to other people that either were in the room or were dealing with the loved one, thought that there was hastening of death in order to achieve organs. And so, you know, this is that kind of whole example of what we hear often with technologies, often with medical ethics. Trust us, we'll do it great.
You know, we—I know people have messed up in the past, but it won't be us. And the original kind of firewall between doctors that are working to save a life and the family, you know, what was there? It was in place to you know protect that integrity, to interrupt any sort of conflict of interest. You didn't want even really the same physician who was trying to save a life responsible for. Acquiring an organ, right?
I mean, you could see that that this is a difficult thing to reconcile in any sort of professional estimation.
So it's just an interesting thing that this has happened. I would say, at the very least, what people need to do if you have an advance directive, you need to revisit that advance directive. Because your advance directive is going to say something around kind of what you want to actually do. I also think, kind of in terms of the power of attorney, you are entrusting people with this. And and and look, we might feel really comfortable in the U.S.
about this. How many stories have we covered out of Canada since the medical assistance in dying? Practice was legalized there. What I mean, it hasn't been that long ago—five years ago, maybe. I was just thinking about that too.
I mean, because when even when that program really got underway there, there were stricter rules than there are now. Where, like, if you go in for a routine exam as an elderly person in Canada now, they'll bring it up to you. It used to be that they—I mean, five years ago they couldn't do that. No, now they can, and there's financial considerations, right? That, um, in you know, state insurance there will offer to pay for made medication, which of course is a oxymoron.
It's not really medication made drugs, I guess, but not the cancer drugs that actually could be treating of the cancer because. One's cheaper, right, than the other. If you're going to go on a cancer regimen, that's going to be a repeat, refillable prescription. If you're going to go on a made, you know, that that happens once. And to think that financial considerations won't be affecting these decisions, you know, we've already talked about that.
It's just when you're talking about limited resources and you know states that are trying to make these decisions based on calculations and. Everyone should be worried that all this stuff goes to AI to make these ethical decisions for us, anyway, right? Because it's going to be a math problem in that in that situation.
Well, the same thing is here. I mean, how do you evaluate an older person who's you know one healthy organ could save a younger person who's really smart and maybe good at cycling or something? You know, you. It's impossible to not take these things into consideration, which is why the previous policy had such a strong firewall. To remove that firewall, I mean that just you're you're trusting the human condition in a way that I don't think the Bible allows us to trust it.
Yeah, I would agree.
Okay, let's shift gears. Let's talk about marriage. Our marriage is what. Brings us together in this segment. See what I did?
That was lovely. Our friend JP DeGance runs a really cool organization called Communion, and he had a piece recently, you know, kind of talking about what Communion does, but also really issuing a call to the church to increase, let's see, enthusiasm for marriage ministry. To to feel a higher call or a higher and deeper priority to marriage ministry.
So, just really quickly, what Comunio does is they go into individual churches with kind of a plug and play marriage programming situation. You know, it's like a couple year investment where churches can. Use these resources to start their own marriage ministries to both the people in their pews and their wider communities, and they have had some incredible results in terms of saving marriages that you know maybe reported at the beginning of the program they were heading for divorce or that they were struggling. And they go through this program with this church where they have you know counseling, they have date nights. They they go through this program with Comunio, and it really strengthens their marriage.
But they've also experienced really cool results in their wider communities. Like they've found that churches that adopt this program. Not only help the marriages in their churches, but they attract more people from outside their area because they use really smart marketing and that kind of thing to to get to people outside of the pews as well. And it it is helping people's marriages, but also bringing people to the Lord. It's just really really cool.
But what he says specifically in this piece is that he's been startled by how many churches, or I should say, how few churches, have dedicated. Marriage ministries that tickles my ears a little bit, and I'll explain why.
So, I go to a church that's quite small. There's, I think, one hundred fifty to two hundred of us. We do not have just the way our church is set up. We don't have very many like specific targeted ministries for X issue, and that's partly because of size, and I think that's partly intentional. We we do a lot of like apologetics and biblical Bible classes as a church, but then most of our individual ministry happens in our small groups and that kind of thing.
And so I think the idea there is that we're talking about marriage and we're helping each other. Strengthen marriages, you know, continue infidelity and all that kind of stuff through kind of one-on-one discipleship.
So when I hear that you know ex-churches don't have a dedicated marriage ministry, I'm maybe not as alarmed. Like, oh my gosh, that means these churches don't care about marriage. But the point is well taken that sometimes churches tend to focus on what maybe a lot of the downstream effects of struggling marriages or A a culture that doesn't value marriage as highly as it used to or as it should, and so we've got these youth programs and we have all these other things. And where maybe JP is arguing, we need to go back to the root. And if we really put our our pedal to the metal in helping people strengthen their marriages, it would have all of these beautiful downstream impacts that could help all these other areas.
Well, I'm bullish on Comunio and their and their ministry mainly because they're just curating resources. They're not creating new ones, and they're targeting places and have seen great success because what they have basically decided the problem that they're there to tackle is not to create new marriage programs. They went out and found the marriage programs that already are really effective. A lot of them crisis intervention, but also support. I mean, think about young moms and things like that, and then basically go to a town and target the large churches because you can just guess that somewhere around twenty-five percent.
Of the marriages, in any kind of significant body of people, are in trouble. I mean, that's kind of it's it's somewhere in that ballpark, maybe even a little bit higher. I mean, and that's basically a set of crises that, if you know that going in, you can avoid it, right? You don't want it. You don't want it to get down the line where those things are now kind of already behind the eight ball.
So I appreciate that. I think what he is pointing at here. Is also something though, and I don't think that Comunio really addresses it in the same way that they address kind of crisis intervention, which is actually having ministries or programming or a setup that encourages marriages, like let's get these people marriage married, like let's have matchmaking services, like let's create a way of doing singles ministry. Our ministry to singles, so that we talk about marriage as if it's a good thing. Because what he talks about here in this article, that's from CBN News, reflects something that we've talked about for a long time, which is the demographic winter that the entire Western world is facing—the the declining birth rates.
And what he's talking about here is one cause or comorbidity of the, at least a comorbidity of the falling birth rates is the falling marriage rates. You know, good news. Fewer people are getting divorced. Bad news is because fewer people are getting married. And the other thing I think he says here, and I think it's it's really really important.
It's like the church or nothing else. Who who else is going to bring a solution to this problem? You're not going to find a solution to the fact that fewer young people are considering marriage, consider marriage to be a good thing. You know. Are choosing pets instead of spouses.
You're not going to solve that problem from corporate America. You're not going to solve it, you know, and from the club scene. You're not going to, you know, solve it by you know the mass amounts of young men that are playing video games every single evening or trapped in you know DraftKings sports gambling, you know, in some sort of perpetual cycle of whatever.
So it's like the church or nothing else, and I'm all about it. I remember literally 2012. The first person I heard say this was Maggie Gallagher, who founded the National Organization of Marriage at an event called the Wilberforce Weekend, which has become the Colson Center National Conference. It was actually the weekend that Chuck Colson collapsed and then went to the hospital. Maggie was like, "Listen, if you're a pastor, if you if you're a church member, you have single people, invite them over, set them up." We have to become the place where marriage happens, and here's the other thing too.
And this points to a piece that you did with Brad Wilcox, and you know, again, I feel like we talk about about the Institute for Family Studies on a weekly basis on Breakpoint or here on this program, because here we have another study, and you guys point to it in an article in the Desiree News Service that. We've got the goods. Like marriage is a good thing. Marriage brings happiness. Marriage actually brings satisfaction in all kinds of areas, including awkward ones to talk about on this program, like physical intimacy, which is something that is is completely counter to the cultural narrative, and the cultural narrative on marriage is winning, and it's observably and provably false.
And it has been for a long time. the The myth about sexual freedom, the myth about marital sexuality that it's oppressive, that it's dry and boring and non exciting, and you have to escape marriage in order to be truly free. The myths about sexual freedom. The data hasn't supported this for 25 years, and it just keeps coming out. We've got something good to offer the world.
And if it's not going to be the church, I don't know who else it's going to be. Yeah, this was fascinating to look into with Brad because he had done a piece in the Atlantic a couple weeks ago about. The fact that the people reporting the most physical intimacy in their marriages are religious American religious couples, which I think, like you said, just busts myths all over the place. Because by religious, we mean you got to go to church. That's that's a really funny part of this.
Religious attendance, it's actually at least in a lot of these studies, church attendance makes a big difference, which I think is hilarious. But I'll let that go. And I mean, as we were researching this piece, there is a very popular podcast that. I I don't even want to say the name of, but it's it's hosted by a young woman who kind of her brand is that she's very, you know, sex positive and whatever. And she had an interview where she was like, "If you're married and you don't imagine you can do any better, like that's just patriarchal nonsense.
And of course you can do better, and marriage keeps women down, and whatever other nonsense." And it was just like handed to us on this silver platter because that is the exact myth. That the data has proven is false for, like you said, decades at this point. And so, what we looked at too was, okay, so we know that religious couples are reporting the most satisfaction in their intimacy. Does that also follow ideological lines? And of course, we know the data that conservative people tend to be more religious, and by religious, we we really mean Christian observance.
Although this does fall along some Other religious lines as well, but the answer is yes. And one of the reasons, I mean, we were trying to be really provocative. We were like, "Who has more sex? Is it conservatives or liberals?" It's conservatives, you know. Like, I know what you think, and it's incorrect.
One of the things we found was that, or one of the things we hypothesized, I should say, is there was a study done a couple years ago and was just recently published that was fascinating, and the The authors of the study coined a phrase "lifestyle polarization," and basically, they studied the habits, the social habits of a large cohort of college students, and found that the conservative college students spend way more time in communal situations. They go to parties, they go to church, they go to fraternities or sororities, they play sports, they go to events. Whereas when the more liberal students have free time, they are more likely to be, as the study said, at home and or on social media, which just is bleak to me. But this this difference was just statistically significant, and I believe this plays a role because if conservatives and or religious people place a higher premium on time spent being embodied people in physical spaces with other people, it makes Sense that in marriages they're also, you know, placing a higher premium on physical intimacy, and we all know and have known for a very long time that physical intimacy is directly related to satisfaction and happiness, and that's because that's what how God made us, and that's just fascinating to me. I don't think that that's been really uncovered before.
It's a great thing to continue to point out it. And and it's not just also in the frequency. That's one way that this is measured. It's also in the, you know, do you like it kind of stage. And somewhere in the '90s, the cultural narrative, at least through pop culture, you think about the shift from, you know, the 1980s television programs like The Cosby Show or Family Matters or you know, Family Ties or Full House where.
You know the family was the place where all the good stuff happened. To the '90s, when it all shifted to friends and Seinfeld, and family wasn't the place where all the good stuff happened. It was the place where all the bad stuff happened, and all the really fun stuff happened with your friends. And you know you were free. And it started to portray this myth that on both frequency and satisfaction, single or cohabiting couples would outperform married couples, and It just is flatly not true.
I think it's also interesting. Glenn Stanton years ago wrote a book called "The Ring Makes All the Difference," in which he compared outcomes like these between cohabiting couples. And married couples, and you think, well, what difference does that make? Makes all the difference in the world.
So it's it's almost like marriage is something, not just like a thing, not just like a piece of paper or whatever we call it. It's almost like it exists. It's almost like it's a speed. It's it's gravity, not a speed limit. There's just so many examples of this, and I just think it's it's such a wonderful thing.
And and and especially the example that you used in the article from this podcast. I mean. We, it's so observably not true that what these people say in these think pieces, the Huff Post kind of you know Vox, like I left my husband and now I'm more free sexually than ever before, and and and and I realize that I'm attracted to other women. You you know you have all of these sorts of things, and you can go down all these alternative relational arrangements, and you don't have faithfulness, you don't have fidelity, but you also don't have the satisfaction that you have. That's reported by middle-aged, married, married moms, religious, church-going moms.
I mean, it's just a remarkable and and really thing. It's almost like. There's something real here to reflect. I was thinking about this just earlier today too. Not just because of your article, but I always have a lot of fun, by the way, when I speak on marriage and family, talking about these things to summit students, which you know tend to be high school and college students, and.
You could see the the dots coming together when they were like, "Oh my gosh, who are the most who are the most saddest?" He's who's he talking about? I'm I'm talking about your mom. In many cases, honestly, talking about your mom. Yeah, I mean that really is the case. But you know, to your point of this podcaster who's supposed to be the quote unquote expert, or you know, the celebrities that she has on this podcast.
You remember interesting times, the wonderful podcast from Ross Douthit before he left the New York Times. They still do it, and it is trash. It has fallen apart. You lose; it's like you lose the goat in Ross Douthit, and you can't find an interviewer.
Well, you know, this week, literally, I was, and I, I still, I am still subscribed to the feed, but I never listen to it because it's painful to listen to. It's just, it's just. Progressive—it's almost unlistenable. The topic today or this week was, you know, all about all these headlines. Americans are having less sex.
There is a big sex drought. Like people are talking about it, right? We—this is coming at the tail end of all the promises of freedom and sexual freedom that we were given. Where it's led us is not more sex; it's less sex by far. And so they wanted to ask an expert.
Guess who they asked? Guess who their expert is? Was it the host of this podcast that I'm talking about? It cannot have been. It's worse.
Believe it or not, it's worse. And I know you're thinking it can't get worse, and I agree with you. I'm not sure that it can, but it did. And here, a woman who makes pornographic movies. Sure, sure, sure, sure.
She's she's the expert. I just want you to know, like all these self-described experts that still buy into this sexual freedom, they all need to go read Louise Perry. Like she's she's written about all this. Here is another proof. You know what came out this week?
Hugh Hefner. Did you know he was a bad guy? I might have guessed.
Well, I mean, this is like the least, the worst kept kept secret that you can possibly imagine.
Something come out about him being a creep or something. I saw it from a couple religious leaders that posted it, and I was like, really, that's weird. And it's his ex wife. Who reported on a podcast just some of the awful, awful things that he pressured her into, and you just look at this and you think, "Oh, yeah, I remember when he died. I remember when the entire media establishment celebrated him as a champion of human dignity and of equal rights.
I remember literally hearing someone." Talk about his fight for racial equality. You know what made him a champion of racial equality, Maria? Oh, Laura, don't say it, John. Please, no. Because when everybody was just putting white women in their magazines, he put a black woman.
He was willing to exploit both black and white women.
So he's a champion of.
So you just think of this brokenness, and it doesn't lead you. Anywhere, it doesn't lead you to the fulfilled promises, and this is, of course, why Louis Perry's now come to faith apparently. But you just have study after study after study that points to this. This is why the church, if the church doesn't make marriage great again, which needs, I think, it's part of our mission statement for the 21st century, the church needs to make marriage great again. We need to make babies great again.
There's there's so much irony in this conversation too, because if I were a man, if I were a Hugh Hefner type, and I wanted to create the ideal situation for myself, wouldn't I say to women, ladies? Being married to one man and expecting his fidelity, like demanding his fidelity to you, is just patriarchal nonsense. What you need to do to liberate yourselves is to spend your time having encounters with no strings attached and with absolutely no expectation for any commitment. And as often as possible, and you can make zero demands. And that's what I want you to do.
Good news: if you get pregnant, here is abortion. And and. We've solved that for you, so you have no right to expect any. Like, is that not which situation there is more patriarchal? If you want to call, like, is more you know dangerous for women emotionally and physically and relationally and every other way there is.
Like, to me, there is also just somewhat of a personal triumph here because when we were kids, I mean, I grew up in the nineties and two thousands. And to not be sexually active in high school and college was embarrassing. Like people could not believe it; they were shocked by my behavior. And now I feel like I'm living the dream, and it's very clear to me that no one else, like the the other women in my life, who didn't take the same path I did, and chose not to get married for whatever reason, or, or um, you know. Chose not to prioritize fidelity and commitment in their sexual lives, are clearly not experiencing the same kind of what I'm going to say, like stability in their lives that I feel like I get to enjoy, and that is, yeah, I'm just really grateful.
Well, I think the lesson too for Christians is something else, which is we shouldn't just be. Spend all of our time, and maybe people hear this program and say, "Well, you just did." And okay, fair enough. We do need to show when really bad ideas lead to really bad consequences. And you know what? Yeah, everyone should have seen this one coming, right?
You know, to your point, you know, the mantra of the sexual revolution. You know, these men have screwed up the world, so women. The answer is, you act like them. You know, I mean, someone should have seen that this didn't make a whole lot of sense coming into it. But the better thing is, and I think this is what JP, DeGans and Communio and Focus on the Family and so many others have the you know the message that they're telling us and the opportunity that we all have and that many churches have on a person to person level is simply this: marriage is a gift of God to help us fulfill our purpose.
The Genesis account is wonderful. You know, I I often, you know, joke that Adam had a problem. Right? He he had a job to do, and he couldn't do it by himself. And God could have done, could have solved that problem in all kinds of ways.
Do you remember the movie Gremlins? When you know these little creatures reproduce by getting wet, I mean, think about that. That could have been God's plan for the filling part of the creation mandate. You know, that would change the rain the raincoat industry. You know, pretty dramatically.
And the umbrellas umbrellas would suddenly become you know cutting edge technologies and so on. But he didn't do it that way. Every biological function humans do, they do by themselves. The only one they need help with is procreation. And Adam sees Eve and break.
I mean, you know, many people look at that Hebrew and it's like you know the first really goofy Broadway musical moment where he breaks out in song, like you know, at last, you know, here's bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. And you just think, okay, God could have had us fulfill the creation mandate this way. He gifted us this, and it's not a gift to the church; it's a gift to all humanity. It's a gift all of his image bears, and the church stewards this, and I. I think we need to get better, not just at pointing out the the mistakes, although that that's helpful.
We got to do it, but I think we got to get better at holding marriage and marital sexuality up as the good gift that it is. And you know, none of this is a money back guarantee, and I've. I don't want to fall into the princess theology temptation, where we make promises that the Bible doesn't make. You know that if you if you just play by the rules, God will bring you your prince charming and princess charming. That puts way too much pressure.
None of us are princes or princesses, but there is a reality that if you follow God's rules. You know there, there's, there, there's good, and it will go well with you, as the scriptures say. I mean, it's not, it's not a money back guarantee, and you know, you think of individuals because of disability or because of loss. The way I made you, right? Like, don't.
Well, yeah, no, it, it is a creation norm, and you may not get there because humans are fallen. But you're absolutely not going to get there if you try another path, right? And and that's the good.
Well, just as quick side note, I did through a series of circumstances, I was called upon to explain the process to my one of my daughters recently, and I explained it, and she said, "But that's animals. That's not us." That's not people, yeah. And I said, "No, that's people too." And she just said, "I do not want to do that." And I said, "Well, I don't blame you. You shouldn't. You are a young lady." If you're ready to go deeper in Christian worldview formation, it may be time to consider the Colson Fellows program.
Colson Fellows take time over ten months to study how Christianity is so much more than a private God and me only faith. It's a way of seeing and comprehending all reality. The result is a more confident, courageous faith that's equipped for our cultural moment. If you're ready to learn more, join us on a live informational webinar on Thursday, November twelfth. At 1 p.m., register today at colsoncenter.org/webinar.
That's colsoncenter.org/webinar.
Okay, now John, I'm on pins and needles because you and I meet each week before we record the show to talk about what topics and stories we're going to discuss on the show. And I have in front of me. My notes say that you have a situation or something that happened to you this week that you want to discuss, and that's all I know.
So I'm going to find out in real time alongside our audience what's going on.
So please, the floor is yours.
Well, I wanted to bring this up because I'm not sure that I did the right thing, and I'm trying to figure out what the right thing is in a moment like this. Flying last week, it was a late, late flight. Get on the plane. Greeted by a flight attendant that is a large male, five six three, heavy set, with a beard, also wearing makeup and a scrunchie in his hair, and high heels, and was greeting everyone, including greeting the men by calling them babe and hun. And then greeting the women by calling them "girl" in a kind of like a friend way, like camaraderie, like a voice, like "Hey, girl," you know, kind of thing.
Hey, girl. I was I was upgraded. I fly a lot, if you didn't know, and I got the upgrade, which is nice. But he's the flight attendant, and it was obvious to me that both of the flight attendants were gay. Only this one was performing, though.
And listen, this isn't new. I, I'm a, I have flown two million miles with one airline, having just turned fifty.
Okay, and that was three years ago. I'm pushing half a million on another airline. I mean, that that tells you a little bit about the amount of air travel that I've done. And so, having a flight attendant who is obviously Gay or lesbian, or even struggling with gender identity, is not unusual. I was really bothered by this.
I was bothered by this on a number of levels. I wanted to consider the fact that it was just—it was late. I had traveled. I had spent three days in meetings and speaking, and I just was weary, and I didn't want to be grumpy about it. There was—it doesn't usually bother me.
Interestingly enough, when he came to take my asked if I wanted a drink, he called me "hun," and it was so surprising that I didn't respond. And I thought, if he does it again, I'm going to tell him not to do that because I find it offensive. He did, but it's interesting. It was almost like he read the room with me, and he didn't do it. I clearly wasn't the only one uncomfortable.
But he went on and on and on. He talked about how cute, you know, cowboy skirts are with boots, and he talked about, and it was very loud. And he talked about, you know, other women being fabulous, and it was like a, it was like a caricature almost.
So, I thought about it a lot because I love to fly with my children, and I did not have any of my children with me. If I had, and he called, you know, my daughter, girl, I would have been offended by that. They would have been offended by that. If he'd have called my son, Hunter, babe, now we're talking about something else. Like we're, we've just crossed a line, and I would have had to say something.
So, I actually did write in a complaint to the airline, and I said it was unprofessional. I actually said it was also cultural appropriation because he was a white man, and he was actually talking like a teenage black girl, and how he was doing this. I asked our own staff the other day at the Coulson Center if a white straight man called you girl would it be demeaning to you, and they said yes. And they said, "If he's, yeah, if if we know he's straight, yeah." And I said, "Well, why not?" Yeah, he's like, "Because it's just normal." Is that a normal thing? Does that?
I don't know. Is that a normal thing for gay men to do that? To for sure, yeah, definitely.
Okay. See, this was new. Maybe I've just never seen it quite so flamboyant or gregarious.
So I I complained. I apparently fly enough that I get a response because you know usually when you complain to airlines, you may never hear. I actually got a phone call. From a woman who said she was in the office and that she was making sure people saw it, and I was like, "Well, I appreciate that," and I'd like to say one more thing. You know, this airline has made no question about where it stands on LGBTQ issues, and I suspect that they're going to hear this and put it into the category of some dude being homophobic.
But I want you to know, again, I've flown two million miles with your airline. This is not the first flight attendant that I've had who obviously was gay. The actual, the other guy actually, you know, was clearly that, but he performed and it was unprofessional, and it made me uncomfortable. And I think a lot: what if my son had been there? I would have had to do something.
And say something, and then I would have gotten in trouble in that moment. Like, there's no question; I would have been the one who was being intolerant or hateful or whatever. And you know, who knows? I mean, we have people that are trying to get removed from stadiums for wearing the X X X Y shirt. Who knows what you know?
What happened? I have actually bought a bunch of X X X. This is the other part of the story. I bought a bunch of X X X Y clothing gear because I just want to support this cause. And I I didn't have it on, but I thought, oh man, that would have escalated this whole thing quickly.
But I wanted to bring it up with you for a couple reasons. One is is that I feel like you've told a couple stories here in which you're really creative in saying, you know, say something, don't be silent, say something. And and you've done it at the library, and you've mentioned some other stories. And I don't want to get the guy fired. I kind of do want to get the guy fired, but I don't want to be the guy who gets the guy fired, right?
Because I don't want to not be comfortable living in. And but and it just had to do with like this is not okay. And the moment this becomes normal behavior, this is a real problem. And I won't say what airline it was, but it was Delta.
So there you go.
So did I do the right thing? What else is there to do? Gosh, I don't know. I mean, my first thought was if you, if this story ends with you having said something in the moment, you would have gotten. I feel like you would have gotten kicked off the flight.
I mean, I've I've seen enough videos of this. Like they don't. Mess around with that stuff. I could just see it going haywire, and that would probably be my thought too. Like flying is so high stakes.
I'm trying to get home, you know. And the the other thing is like I like to think that I prioritize that kind of thing when my kids are with me. A for their protection, but also B to set an example. But at the same time, then sometimes when you create that, you know, when I've done it at the library or whatever. They're even doubly uncomfortable because now it's like there is tension between adults, and that's always doesn't feel good if you are a kid, you know, regardless of what's happening.
But it's funny that you say, like, I completely agree with you. If if your son had been there and they had this person to talk to them that way, that just crosses so many lines, like almost criminally, that you you just can't you can't let that go. But I feel this, I feel the same about your daughters because. What's essentially happening, and I think, like, why this these kinds of things are so offensive in the moment, as opposed to just a person who's clearly gay, let's say, is that they are forcing you to enter the delusion. They're they're they're baiting you almost.
It's like say something. You're going to play along with this. I'm so confident that you will play along with this game. That I am just going to do it. Like I am just going to.
We are in a professional and high stakes social environment with strangers, but I am so confident that you are not going to say anything, and that everybody's going to play along with this delusion that I am just going to act like this is normal because there is no way you are going to. And so, there, you know, he's asking you and your hypothetical daughters if they're with you to also play along with that delusion, and also to suggest. He's them. He what he's doing is what he imagines being them is like, and like that. That's not the same as threatening, like the physical safety of your son.
But I think first of all, a person that has that much perversion and delusion going on is threatening everyone's safety around them because they're unhinged. But secondly, to to it's it feels so aggressive. In in the way that like, I think one of the reasons a gay man calling me girl doesn't feel aggressive is because you can't underestimate the element of sexual vulnerability that every woman feels around every man. It's just the nature of the world, and when there's like a tacit but very clear acknowledgement that this man in particular does not. Have a sexual attraction to women that that is somewhat removed.
I don't like it, but it feels different to me when a person who is wearing their sexual perversion like a persona calls me something like that. It feels what's what's the word for when like something might light on fire in a minute. Like it it feels like flammable. Yeah, or like, like dangerous. Like, there's Tinder.
Like, it feels like scary. Like, I don't know what else this person's gonna do. I don't know what they're how they're expecting me to act. I'm not okay with this. I'm offended by it.
You're acting. It's always whenever people are performing like this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're talking about cowboy skirts, then I doubt I'm wrong. They're acting like idiots. That is, they they're acting as if the way, the shortcut to acting like a woman is acting dumb, and I hate that.
And it feels aggressive. I don't know. I don't know what I would do. I want to get home too. When I get on a flight, I'm glad you said something though.
I mean, well, I I mean, listen, I you have to figure out at some level, is it worth. Getting kicked off the flight, you know that's the kind of the cost of kind of doing business. And you said there you weren't the only one. I bet if you had said something, and I'm not, I don't know that you should have, but if you had, other people would have been like, "Yeah, quit it." You know.
Well, I, you know, look, I, I, I did think it's not appropriate to, you know, be aggressive back. I, you know, I think a lot about. The basic observation that we tend to respond with the same, we escalate to the same level of whoever it is we're arguing with, you know, and so that's why you know, brilliant rocket surgery is that proverb that says a soft answer turns away wrath. I mean, it's just so, oh yeah, it actually does, and it's so unusual, it's so rare. I didn't want to dehumanize him by just ridiculing him back, or creating a scene, or even embarrassing.
And honestly, the the other part of it was, and it is not always the case that you get great flight attendants. He was actually really thorough, really good. He was, you know, at least there's that. Even you know, even when you get the you know the that bonus upgrade, that it makes life so much easier. But it was just so uncomfortable, you know, top to bottom.
And I do think we have talked for years. And if you go back to the book that Sean McDaniel and I wrote on same-sex marriage back then, I mean, one things we talk about is cultural norms, and when things become normal. I, for example, I think in terms of this election, this past week made news that the most powerful member of the Democratic Party of our lifetime in decades is campaigning for a socialist. I mean, you know, you have to actually do this math, right? And and actually, someone with you know questionable ties to radical Islam.
So that just tells you where the window of norms have moved, right? In this same way, here, I mean, look, the windows of norm on on the gender side of this goes further. Than the sexual homosexual side of this, and you know what? What do you do? I I don't want my son.
I mean, at the very least, even if he had, if my son had been with me and he had not said anything to him directly, I would have still. I would have done it quietly. I would have done it privately. I would have said, "I know this is confusing because he is a he is a man, and in many ways he's acting as if he is a woman." And that is wrong for the following reasons. That is not how a man talks or walks or acts.
And that's not saying that I think all men should, you know, grunt and and and you know wear tank tops. It's also not how most grown women talk. And well, that's a good point. And see, that that is actually a very good point. That his vision of yeah, that's fair.
I I think that's a good good corrective to add to it. I somehow you get somehow you get permission to act like a child. I didn't think you were. I didn't think you were. But somehow it's like this is we get carte blanche to now act like a 16 year old girl when we're doing.
It is such a low view of both maleness and femaleness.
So all right, well. That's my story.
Okay, well, if you fly Delta, listeners, let us know.
Well, thanks for sharing that, John. And yeah, I'm glad you said something to the airline. And thank you for listening to Breakpoint this week from the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Bear, alongside John Stone Street, or John Stone Street is alongside me. You choose your adventure.
We'll see you all back here next week. God bless.
