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We're back with our Friday Weekly Cultural Updates. This week, Scott and guest co-host Rick Langer discuss a , including:

• : Will the American church's destiny be defined by beliefs or actions.
• : Challenging the "born this way" narrative.
• : David Brooks argues that AI is an ally, not a rival, and highlights its potential to complement human capabilities.
• : How the market doesn't always get it right, with a focus on universities and media prioritizing customer desires over quality.
• Listener Question: Christian Commitment: How to respond to those who follow Christianity only when convenient.
• Listener Question: Rights vs. Obligations: Discussion on prioritizing obligations over rights from a Christian perspective, advocating for a love-centered approach.
• Listener Question: Mental Health and Salvation: Consideration of the salvation of those with mental illnesses.

Episode Transcript

Scott: In our polarized culture, is being good more important than being right? Are gays, lesbians, and queer people born that way, or is it more complicated? Is AI something to be feared or to be cautiously embraced? And finally, is the market eventually always right, or is there more to it than that? We'll discuss these stories and answer some of your questions that you've sent in. I'm your host, Scott Rae. Sean is out today taking an extra week’s vacation from our hiatus in July. I decided to give him a little bit of grief over that. And my colleague, Rick Langer, is filling in today. This is the weekly Cultural Update, back from our July hiatus, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at 51����. Rick, welcome. Thanks so much for being with us, for filling in for Sean today.

Rick: Yeah, thanks, Scott. It's great to be here, and good to fill in for Sean while he's probably basking in Tahiti or somewhere, wherever it might be.

Scott: Something like that. Now, all these stories from today come from the same place. The editorial page of The New York Times on Wednesday of this week. They're part of a series entitled, ironically, Don't Tell My Friends, But, and the series…the editorial director of the Times asked their regular editorial columnist to address, quote, "What they think everyone is wrong about." And in these editorials, they upend assumptions, burst bubbles, and challenge the consensus on both the right and the left. So we're gonna do a handful of these. The series has more than what we have time for today, but we're gonna take the ones that I think are the most interesting and the most provocative. We hope you agree with that. Story number one tackles faith and theology. The author begins with these provocative questions: “What is it that will define the destiny, and I would add, the legacy of the American church? Will it be the beliefs of the church, or the conduct of the church?” Now, ideally, those two concepts shouldn't be all that distinct. Right conduct, of course, should flow from right belief, but in reality, we know that people are much more complex, and that theology often does not dictate morality, and that sometimes the most religious people are among the most immoral, in direct defiance of the beliefs that they proclaim. Now, the author cites two recent examples of this. You may or may not be familiar with these, so we'll tell you a little bit about these. First is the Robert Morris sexual abuse scandal, where a very high profile, well-known pastor in Texas had to step down from his very large megachurch due to his sexual abuse scandals that happened many years ago. And the other one he cites is the Louisiana law mandating that the 10 Commandments be posted in all classrooms in public educational institutions throughout the state, including universities. Now, the author puts it like this. The person who emphasizes orthodoxy or right belief will tend to look at the Morris scandal as unfortunate, but largely irrelevant, and the 10 Commandments legislation as momentous. And he goes on to support it like this. He said, "No one said the church is perfect, and after all, there will always be bad apples, even in the best of orchards. The 10 Commandments, on the other hand, teach universal truths, and exposing children to those truths will change their lives. By contrast, the person who emphasizes orthopraxy or right conduct has the opposite inclination. He or she looks at the Morris scandal as devastating, and the 10 Commandments legislate as overreaching. And they take that example of the apples in the orchard a little bit further and suggest that when you have bad apples, that suggests that there's a rot in the orchard.” Now, the author goes on to describe that Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 argues, I think very eloquently, that without love, all the orthodoxy in the world doesn't mean very much, and that the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 is a set of virtues, not a set of theological propositions. He concludes the piece by suggesting that we're dividing over ideology and theology, and should be uniting over virtue. Now, Rick, I am really interested to hear your take on this, since this is something that you've been, you’ve been addressing these questions for a long time in your professional life.

Rick: Yeah, I think this is a really important issue that's raised, and I wanna underscore a thing you said at the outset about, these two things should not be at odds with each other. If our theology is actually transforming our hearts, the virtue will indeed follow. If we have authentic virtues, I think we will see God better. I mean, this is one of those things that should be a synergistic relationship, not a relationship that's at odds or contention. And so I do wanna underscore that at the outset. That said, I really agree with a lot of what is being said in this article about how those two things have indeed split. And he gives the example in the article, I think, of the Southern Baptist resolution on moral character of public officials back in 1998, that included this compelling phrase, "Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture and spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in society and surely results in God's judgment." So, a really strong emphasis on character. So suddenly it seems those things have been split apart. So it's an interesting observation. I think it's a real tension. And I think it's important that we take this seriously, look it in the eyes and say, wait a minute, are we going to do both or are we not?

Scott: Yeah, a couple of comments that I have on this. It seems to me, in talking with our students—Gen Z and those folks—younger people, especially in the US, they're asking different questions, Rick, than the questions you and I asked when we first came to faith. And when you and I came to faith, many years ago, I won't say how long…

Rick: That’s good.

Scott: But I take it we came to faith in roughly the same time period. The questions we were asking were, is Christianity true? Is the Bible true and reliable? Are the claims of Christ true? Is the resurrection a historical fact that is true? We found our students are not asking those questions as often today. They're asking questions like, is Christianity good? Is it beautiful? Is it something to be admired as opposed to a set of propositions to be believed? Now, we both affirm that theology is crucial, and it clearly was to Paul, too. And I wanna make sure that our author of this article is not taking Paul out of context and minimizing the place of theology. But it is true that our conduct can undermine the seriousness with which people take our belief system. And that's, I think, what the author is cautioning us about here. And one of the things that I fear in our polarized culture is the way that we approach our debates and our arguments can actually undermine people's confidence in the faith that we have. So, I mean, I think you're right to point out the Southern Baptist sexual abuse scandals. I would also point out the Catholic Church has been pretty well known for this. Those were not just a few bad apples, but I do think it reveals a rot in the orchard, because it was widespread and done by very religious people. And in the Southern Baptist case it was done by people with very sound theology, but it had…there was a disconnect somewhere that empowered these kinds of behaviors.

Rick: And picking up on the theme you mentioned earlier, Scott, about you and I growing up in an era where for Christians, we were concerned about relativism as concerns truth, that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and things like that. And all I would do is point out what seems to have happened is that that same controversy has now shifted to morality. Is there absolute morality? And it is interesting that you and I did grow up in an age…the sexual revolution is probably part of both of our cultural coming of age, so to speak. But during that time, what was interesting…I remember my roommate in college, who was not exactly keeping Christian values. And the interesting thing was everyone kind of agreed that, yeah, those were good values. We wink at them, whatever, but there wasn't a debate about, are those things good or bad? That's really changed. There's a lot of traditional Christian sexual ethic that is viewed at best neutrally, common negatively. And a lot of the concerns we had, if we drifted into relativism about truth, that we would lead to relativism about morality, I think have proven to be true. The weird thing is, we need to remember we care about both. And it isn't clear to me why we would value one over the other. We just have to pursue both.

Scott: Yeah, one final comment on this. I remember having a conversation with my dad on this. In fact, this article brought this back to memory. My dad came to faith later in life after years in a quite liberal Presbyterian church. That was the church we grew up in. And my siblings and I both came to faith in high school through the ministry of Young Life. And it took my folks a while, I think, to really understand what was this stuff that we had committed ourselves to?

Rick: [laughs]

Scott: What had happened to our kids here? And so as part of trying to introduce my dad to the faith that I had, I took him to a church that I'd been attending, a very Bible-oriented church, very strong preaching ministry. And this was after I'd come to faith and before he did. And I remember on the car ride home, he asked the question to me. He said—this is after we'd been to this church a handful of times—he said, "Why are the people who are the most religious and who know the most about the Bible so unloving?" And it was really a wake-up call to say that our theology has to connect with the development of virtue in our lives. And that the fruit of the Spirit, it's not an accident that those are virtues and character traits that are supposed to be the things that identify us. And I think those are the things that the world is looking for. Of course, we have to have our theology right. And it's not an accident that in many cases, wrong conduct springs from wrong theology. But just having good theology is not like a vaccine that's gonna keep you from being involved in some of these scandalous things. So I think our author is absolutely right about this. I wouldn't wanna minimize the place of theology, but I really wanna highlight the place of virtue.

Rick: Yes and amen.

Scott: Amen. All right, story number two. Are gays, lesbians and queer people born that way? Our next author says, "Not so fast." It's much more complicated than that. This editorial begins by citing the 2011 hit song by Lady Gaga, "Born This Way," which became, according to Elton John, “the new gay anthem,” indicating that sexuality was innate, and that phrase operated with what our author calls “bumper sticker efficiency.” The way he puts it is like this, “‘Born This Way’ as a slogan was a tremendous cultural and political success. The problem is that it isn't supported by science. The emerging scientific consensus is that sexual orientation isn't purely genetic. And in fact, in my view, may not be genetic at all. A person's genetic makeup and exposure to prenatal hormones may provide a propensity to same-sex attraction, but they aren't determinative. Other factors most likely also play a role.” He goes on to put it like this, "’Born This Way’ may unfortunately have been an oversimplification. It's probably closer to the truth to say that people are formed this way. As the complexity of human sexuality has become clearer, scientists and writers have attempted to add necessary nuance to the subject, but the slogan remains entrenched in the culture.” And he closes the article with this, "Now, the argument has to be more sophisticated. We may choose how we identify and how we express or suppress our attractions, but our attractions themselves are not a choice. We don't have to be ‘born this way’ to also assert that the attractions are not a choice." Rick, I'm really curious to know your reaction to this. This, I think, reflects some things that we talk about in the classroom with our students fairly regularly here at 51����. But give me your assessment of this.

Rick: Yeah, so general observation about this whole series, kudos to New York Times for having people raise these types of issues where they're kind of speaking to their own tribe and saying, "Guys, watch out." And I think this is a good example, and I appreciate the article. A couple of things I would say is that he kind of soft pedals. You know, what was the phrase he used? It may have…it's possible there's other influences as well or something, other factors make a role?

Scott: “Most likely play a role.”

Rick: Yeah, and I'm like, yeah, the evidence is a whole lot stronger than that, and the evidence is actually weaker for genetics themselves. Now, one of the things that I often point out in my classes is, we have a pretty deep misunderstanding of genetics, of DNA as being the decisive thing, even when we're talking about, you know, kind of, biological determination, because there's different environmental factors that determine what parts of your DNA are and are not expressed. And so, the DNA we think about mentally, culturally, as this absolute, decisive powerhouse—even when we're talking about many genetic issues, the DNA is not the only thing that's determinative. It's a complex story, not a simple one, and that's the beginning of the confusion here.

Scott: So two people could have the same genetic makeup, but express some of those traits differently based on environmental factors.

Rick: And environmental factors could include physical environmental factors, something in the water. It could also include social/environmental factors, particularly traumatic experiences you have, things like that that affect brain chemistry, they affect you, so we know that. And all of these things become important in terms of how it teases out. So yes, it is—there's a diversity of that set of things. One other thing that I thought was really important and I think is generally confused. Towards the end of that, he made this comment about, “we may choose how we identify and how we express or suppress our attractions, but our attractions themselves are not a choice.” And I think this is a common piece of cultural wisdom that is actually not really wisdom at all. There's desires that we have that at any given moment we cannot change, but we can change or cultivate over the course of time. We grow them, we diminish them. I could wake up in the morning and say, boy, I wanna be a patient person today. Well, that's not really an option to me, because I'm not necessarily all that patient. But I could say, I'm going to begin doing actions in keeping with becoming a patient person today. And over the course of time, I really will change not only certain ways I behave, but certain things I actually desire or want. We can do this with foods we eat or don't eat. I develop a taste for things that aren't sweet anymore, when I used to like them sweet. One morning I can't choose that, but over the course of years I can choose that. So I would strongly say our attractions and affections and desires are also pliable, but never think about that as a simple decision. It's a shaping, forming thing, which is where I actually liked this language at the beginning. We talked about being formed. It seems like he forgot that part at the end where it's like, we can form in a lot of ways. We can go through an intentional forming, and we shouldn't diminish that.

Scott: Yeah, it seems to me when people who are same-sex attracted say they are “born this way,” what they mean is that they have never known a time in their lives when they were not same-sex attracted. Therefore, I must have been born that way. And I think we have created a false dichotomy—which I think our author has exposed here—between it's either innate or it's 100% a choice.

Rick: Yes, correct.

Scott: And it's actually, in my view, neither of those things.

Rick: Right.

Scott: 'Cause I mean, you and I have talked to lots of people who are same-sex attracted. Most of them would say they have not chosen this. In fact, they would say, given the way the culture tends to treat it, it would be irrational to say that we have chosen this. But to say…I think you're right, the evidence that it is genetic—I'm not aware of any explicit genetic connection to sexuality that's been proven. And I say it is much more developmental than this. And I think I would agree that “formed this way” is a much better way to express the reality of what's going on.

Rick: Yeah, and I think a lot of times, as you point out with choices, we forget that all relevant choices aren't even our own. So, for example, you might have been molested when you were six years old by a Sunday school teacher, and that has transformed your sexuality in significant ways. That wasn't your choice, but it was a choice. It was a choice by another human being. And then the way you responded was a series of choices where you weren't choosing your sexuality, but you choose to, perhaps, withdraw from other people that have had sex or avoid doing other things because of the traumatic experience. Again, I don't necessarily wanna blame you for those things, but to say it's genetic, or biological, or independent of human choices, human sinfulness, all the things that affect so much of daily life, I'm saying, no, no, those things contribute in a significant way as well.

Scott: Well, I think we have to distinguish between somebody who sins and somebody who's been sinned against.

Rick: Correct.

Scott: And when we are sinned against, I think that is what causes most of our emotional, psychological issues that we have. Not to say that our own choices don't matter. And I think you're right, we can choose to nurture certain things and not nurture others. But it seems to me that the Scripture has the most to say about our behavior as opposed to the attraction in this regard. Now, I think our choices can be to nurture it. Lust, I think, would be a choice, where basically you are involved in a sexual fantasy of your own choosing. And then any further acting out on attractions, I think, would also be clear. And I think to be extra clear about this, the attraction is not the way God intended it, but the result of all of the general entrance of sin into the world. Now, I'm interested to see what you think. You and I may disagree about this, but I think in general, we are not morally culpable for actions that we don't or can't choose. And therefore, it's the behavior for which we are morally responsible. So I think both of those can exist at the same time, that we are not morally culpable for things that we don't choose, and that our same-sex attractions are the result of the general entrance of sin into the world. So I wouldn't wanna see it as entirely morally neutral. That's why I used, too, we're not morally culpable for our attractions, even though I think the Scripture is pretty clear that was not God's original design.

Rick: Yeah, and as I mentioned before, I think there are areas in which we actually can change our attractions. And you don't always know ahead of time how much you can or can't change those things, but I bristle whenever we treat any particular human affection as absolutely poured in concrete because of a genetic issue. I'm like, we're more pliable than that. We often don't get the kind of changes we want, or we always experience a weakness or whatever. But I don't like the Carrie Underwood “Jesus, Take the Wheel” take your hands off the wheel of your affections, to say, wait a minute, one of the great gifts of being human is that we are not the victims of our instincts, but we have tremendous power to shape ourselves. We never leave our instincts behind. We don't get a fresh start. We can't just change all that stuff, but boy, you can do a lot of things over the course of time. Forgiveness, patience, perseverance, grace from other people, wisdom from other people, these are things that, historically, people have valued highly exactly for reordering our souls in a better way relative to reality, rather than just saying, hey, because this is what I feel at a moment, this must be my destiny.

Scott: Yeah, I think if we always give in to our instincts, we would all be in a lot of trouble here pretty quickly. And I think part of the reason we have morality is to provide guardrails from the things that we are innately inclined to do as a result of the general entrance of sin. And we'll get to this in one of the stories we'll cover in a few minutes, about where some of that has taken us in a couple of areas of culture. Any other thoughts on this, Rick?

Rick: No, I think that's good. Let's take us to the next one.

Scott: Story number three. “Many People Fear AI, and They Shouldn't,” by the well-known columnist David Brooks, who challenges the conventional wisdom on both the right and the left that artificial intelligence will take our jobs, replace human beings, and if not replace us, will make us somewhat less human by substituting artificial intelligence for normal human interactions. Everyone seems to acknowledge that there are some benefits, but the difference is in the overall view of AI as being optimistic, but cautious, or pessimistic, but realizing some benefits. In other words, some people see the glass as half full and the others see the glass as half empty. Brooks is in the former category of being cautiously optimistic. And he puts it like this. He said, "I'm optimistic paradoxically, because I don't think AI is ever going to be as powerful as many of its evangelists think it will be. I don't think AI is ever going to replace us. Ultimately, I think it will simply be a useful tool. In fact, I think instead of replacing us, I think AI will compliment us. In fact, it may make us free to be more human." Now, he goes on to describe, one of the main fears about AI is based on an underestimation of the human mind. Some people believe that the mind is like a computer, it's just all information processing. And so of course machines are eventually going to overtake us. But as he points out, that's an impoverished view of who we are as human beings. And it's an impoverished view of the mind. And he puts it like this. “What we do is not processing, it's not computation, it's not data analysis. It is distinctively, incorrigibly human activity that is a complex combination of the conscious and unconscious, rational and intuitive, logical and emotional reflection.” So this is really, I think, an interesting take on this. Maybe a bit more optimistic than you and I might be on this. But I think there's a lot of really interesting food for thought. He closes the article like this. He said, "Like everybody else, I don't know where this is heading. And I do agree with the view that AI is an ally and not a rival. A different kind of intelligence, more powerful than us in some ways, but narrower and not replacing us." Your take on this, I think would be really fascinating.

Rick: Yeah, I can give that to you pretty easily. I completely agree with it and I completely disagree with it. How about that?

Scott: Well, let's move on to the next story then.

Rick: [laughs] So what I completely agree with is, I am not at all worried about AI suddenly becoming human, or changing what it means to be human, or things like that. And I think Brooks is right that being human is a lot more than the functional ability to process information or things like that. Consciousness is not simply that in any way, shape or form. And I don't see that being threatened. I don't think we're gonna wake up one morning and suddenly be attributing human characteristics to chatbots, as he made the comment that people are fearing that. If that's what people are fearing, I'm not fearing that at all. However—

Scott: So you don't think the dating chatbot, the relational chatbot, the therapist chatbot, is gonna get much traction?

Rick: Well, I think it may, 'cause that comes a little bit closer to doing, just, a performance that people may or may not like. And so that may displace a human therapist or human friend or things like that, usually because of something broken in relationships or other things for the person. In other words, there will be individuals for whom that becomes a replacement because of things that are going on in their heart and soul. I do not foresee this massive displacement of human social interaction in favor of chatting with your chatbot. I think that's unlikely. And I think David Brooks is pointing out a good point with that. The thing I completely disagree with him about is, should we be afraid of AI? And I'm like, yeah. I've spent some time reading about this in the last year, and it's one of the things that keeps me up at night. And it's not because they're going to intentionally take over the world, chatbots or AI, or things like that. It's more like…you remember the Batman movies with the Joker? And he makes this funny comment—he's got these crazy eyes going and all this kind of stuff—he says, do I look like a man with a plan? And the answer was no. But he was definitely someone to be deeply afraid of because exactly…because he would do anything with no kind of impulse control or design. That's what I'm worried that we could find AI doing or being used to do. And the deepfakes and things like that erode and corrode basic human trust, not because they're trying to per se—it's a side effect of no longer knowing if you can trust your own eyeballs.

Scott: Yeah, I think he is a little bit optimistic on human nature because he does say that, he admits that there are going to be bad people who do bad things with it, like the deepfakes, things like that. But he said, most of us are good people. And I'm not so sure about that part. I think he's overstated that.

Rick: Well, and that can mean nothing more than 51% of us are good people. And I'm like, at least 49% of people we should really be worried about, and that's a lot of people.

Scott: I think there's probably more abuses on the horizon than he's willing to admit here or wants to admit.

Rick: And I think the magnitude of abuses that are possible with relatively small resources is a game changer with AI. So there used to be things that…we had to build an atomic bomb through a Manhattan Project to threaten our world. Here, a guy locked in his mother's basement and hacking around on a computer can release viruses or intentional things that either accidentally or intentionally do mammoth harm that, like I say, require not a state actor, but kind of a Joker type personality, that probably didn't plan to even create the destruction he created. He just didn't happen to think it through or care enough about it not to do it.

Scott: Yeah, and maybe more on the latter on that. Yeah, I think this is a good example of how our worldview makes a difference here, because the worldview underlying a lot of the promotion of artificial intelligence involves specifically the view of a human person. It's another example of what we call physicalism. And that's the view that we are nothing more than a collection of our parts and properties. And it's a very simplistic view of the mind. And I think, according to Brooks, he's right about that. And now, what AI can do is it can impersonate human thought, because it can take ideas that we've produced and synthesize them into strings of words or images that make sense to us. But the AI “mind,” quote, “mind,” doesn't have consciousness or understanding, self-awareness, emotions, moral sentiments, agency, it can't formulate a narrative of someone's life, things like that. Now, I think the benefits of AI are becoming clearer, as are the limitations that we've described. It's already helping people, I think, handle what Brooks calls odious tasks, like writing bureaucratic fundraising requests, or marketing pamphlets or utilitarian emails to people you don't really care about.

Scott and Rick: [both laugh]

Scott: I appreciate him being honest about that. He also, I think, holds some inflated ideas of what it can be. He said it can be a fantastic tutor, could transform education. He says—the way he puts it, this is a really interesting phrase—you might make “expertise nearly free.” So people in underserved communities would have access to medical, legal, and other sorts of advice. Now, I think that brings to mind, the original acronym for artificial intelligence was allegedly inaccurate. And so I might wanna be careful about not portraying it as some sort of infallible resource, because it's only as good as the human beings that program it and the data that's included in the data suite. So he did say, really, this is an interesting part of this, too, given our emphasis on STEM and math and things like that. He said, “Artificial intelligence will be more harmful to math people than it will be to word people.” And those of us who are word people, I think, took some heart in that because the computations that people in mathematics do may be more replaceable by artificial intelligence. I'm still not so sure about that. Maybe higher levels of differential equations and things like that. I haven't seen much in that regard. But the one thing it may really help with, and this is, I think, to your point that it doesn't require a lot of resources to take advantage of this, is I wonder if it will help level the playing field a bit among the people who are resource-starved and those who are more resource-affluent, improving the accomplishments and maybe the prospects of the least advantaged among us. And if that's an outcome of it, then I say more power to 'em. And that could be a very, very useful outcome. Your thoughts on that?

Rick: Yeah, so the idea that AI could do a lot of good things, I think, is absolutely true. I worry…there's a lot of human medical technology that we deal with—and you know this, Scott, you deal with bioethics all the time—that began for a very, very good purpose and ends up confronting us with questions we can't even begin to answer well, and ends up being all kinds of problematic things. We're dealing with some of this with IVF and things like that right now, where we're creating these bizarre moral dilemmas that we apparently don't really have good resources for dealing with. And I think that's what I see with the goodness of AI. I have this queasy feeling about what's going to be traveling with it. That, like I say, for me, has amplified this fear to a higher level than most of the other things I fear today.

Scott: You just summarized what I've devoted most of my professional life to, is bizarre moral dilemmas based on technology that has unintended consequences that have come back to bite us in the rear end. And I think medical technology, and technology in general, is not an unqualified good. In a fallen, broken world, there aren't too many things, I think, that we can say are not mixed, that have the possibility for lots of good but also can go off the rails. If bad actors use them, or as you mentioned, Rick, people who don't think it through all the way…and that's one of the things I think has concerned me a bit about the pace at which this has developed so quickly. I'm gonna be writing the fifth edition of Moral Choices, it’s coming out in a year or so, and I'm waiting till the last minute to write the section on artificial intelligence. Because what I write today, probably in a year, when it's ready to come out, will be out of date.

Rick: That is a piece of wisdom there, Scott. I would say, save that to the last minute, because it is a fast moving thing. The thing that also scares me about AI is that it paces itself. It doesn't have to be driven by human beings. But if you turn some of these large model language learning things loose, they can generate things on their own and momentum on their own that doesn't require constant human input and pushing forward. And that's, again, some of the things that make that scary.

Scott: Brooks closes the article like this. I think this is a point worth considering. It says, "AI's ultimate accomplishment will be to remind us who we are by revealing what it can't do. It will compel us to double down on all the activities that make us distinctly human. Taking care of each other, being a good teammate, reading deeply, exploring daringly, growing spiritually, finding kindred spirits, and just plain having a good time." And I think there's wisdom in that. Now, I think there's concern that it may also take away, it may undermine some of those things, some of the very things that make us distinctly human. It may undermine reading deeply, because my PDF reader has an AI assistant that will summarize the article for me. And so it may not do all of those things that Brooks has in mind. All right, story number four. The Market Doesn't Always Get It Right, Even in the Long Run. This is a fascinating piece. The author is a self-described economic conservative. And he begins with what I call the Nordstrom mantra, that the customer is always right. Shopping with Nordstrom is the first time I ever heard that phrase.

Rick: [laughs]

Scott: And it stems from what he calls, quote, “market fundamentalism.” That “the market is always self-correcting in the long run as it responds to the choices of consumers, with the assumption that the customers are always right.” Now, when it comes to subjective decisions, of course, that's true. But when it comes to matters of truth, facts, and morality, that's a different story. And he highlights two significant institutions that have fallen prey to this mantra of the customer being always right. Universities and the news media. And he does not pull his punches here. This is as straightforward as he can be. On universities, he puts it like this: “There was a time when being a college student meant that you willingly submitted to the rules, expectations, and judgments of a professor or department.” Let's just say those have gone out the window, as the recent campus protests have suggested.

Rick: Yes, indeed.

Scott: He said, “You didn't get to grade your teachers at the end of the term. I never once turned in a faculty evaluation of my professors as a college or a seminary student.” Now, I'm not convinced that's altogether a good thing, 'cause I think students have a pretty good intuitive sense of when they've gotten their money's worth. But what mattered to the university was their opinion of you, not yours of them. As a student, you were presumed ignorant, but teachable. You paid the university for the opportunity to become a little less ignorant. Now, he concludes, much of this has been overturned in recent years. “Students today whose parents often pay fortunes for their education are treated like valuable customers, not apprentices.” And then he goes on and gets after the news media. He said, “There was a time when Walter Cronkite could end his program by saying, ‘and that's the way it is,’ and be largely believed. His authority derived from the accuracy and quality of his reports, but his audience also understood that the news wasn't simply what they wanted it to be. Facts shaped opinions, not the other way around.” He said, “That's a bygone world. When market forces provide you with alternative cushions or chocolates, the world is better for it. When those same forces provide you with alternative facts, it isn't.” Now, you've spent a lot of time thinking about the mission and role of universities. We've just written a book on it together. I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about media ethics too. Very interested to hear your take on this.

Rick: Yeah, so I think he's right at putting his finger on universities and media as two of the big places where we are seeing the social consequences of some of these other things that have been changing all around us. And the idea that the customer is always right does kind of manifest in that place. So I'm really tracking with him on this. Relative to universities, I would point out, back to you and I having grown up in 60s and 70s, there was a similar movement in our age where the saying for us was, “never trust anyone over 30.” And it became less popular after all the people who were saying that turned 30. But the idea of this—

Scott: And all the hippies ended up working on Wall Street. [laughs]

Rick: Yeah, yep. And I worked in a biochemistry lab as that put me through a seminary job. And all of the PhDs I worked for in that lab were people who were hippies in the 60s and 70s, kind of like just a little bit older than me. And they were like, yeah…they woke up one day and they had to get out of his life. So they went on and they got their PhDs, they did all these, kind of, normal things. So yeah, we've been through that phase before. I feel that same wave crashing to shore again now. And so it isn't that it's never happened. I don't think it was good then, it's not good now, but that is a thing.

Scott: Yeah, so do you think this author has sort of forgotten about the 60s and early 70s?

Rick: To the extent he's talking like it never happened before, yes. To the extent that he's saying, hey, this is bad, I'm like, no, I agree it's bad. We tried it once before and it didn't work out that well.

Scott: I—yeah, go ahead.

Rick: And then just one comment that I have about this relative to media, and Walter Cronkite is a great example of this. The difference between broadcasting and narrowcasting, or even nano casting, we might call it now, where Walter Cronkite literally was trying to speak, if not for all Americans, to all Americans. So he was indeed forced to shape his opinions in light of the facts that came to him. And he certainly had a bias, had a certain orientation, but the facts were kind of a thing that he felt like he had to deal with. And he had to shape how he presented because of how those things were shaped. It's really interesting to think about narrowcasting, or as I say, nano casting, where you have just a tiny particular audience and literally the reason they listen to you is because of their tribal affiliation to the ideas that you trumpet, and the outrage or the vibe that you produce. And in that case, the opinion is what matters most, and the facts need to be shaped to the opinion that you all organize around in your tribe, because otherwise no one will listen and you no longer have an audience. So narrowcasting depends on a prioritizing of opinion over fact. Broadcasting depends on a priority of facts over opinion. And I'm sorry to say that we basically completely moved the incentive mechanism of modern media from broadcasting to narrowcasting. It's all private consumption.

Scott: And I think that the nano casting is probably appropriate for social media.

Rick: Yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking.

Scott: Because the algorithms that determine what's in my newsfeed are dependent on what I've clicked on and shown interest in, which is why I click on all sorts of interesting things that reflect opinions that I don't hold, just to make sure that my newsfeed is a little bit more, quote, “fair and balanced” in that regard. Here, he talks about the solution, and he admits that the solutions he's thinking about are pretty draconian, that may involve ruining both institutions or forcing them into bankruptcy, but also have the prospect of turning them around. Here's what he describes. What if higher education responded to plummeting public confidence, which I think has gone on steroids in the last six months or so.

Rick: Yes, indeed.

Scott: But what if they responded by demanding a whole lot more of their students, especially through extensive core requirements, or if professors gave grades that reflected actual performance? The article cited a piece that The New York Times published a few months ago that at Yale, a survey was done that nearly four out of five grades given at Yale are in the A or A minus range. Or if administrators responded to rules breaking through summary expulsions? Say, what if the news media, facing declining levels of trust, stopped catering to their least literate readers, stopped caring about their angriest ones, and stopped publishing dumbed down versions of the news, and stopped acting as if journalism is just another form of entertainment? I'm thinking, dude, don't sugarcoat it here at all.

Rick: [laughs]

Scott: What do you make of his idea of what it would take to reverse the trend here?

Rick: Well, I think he's right that that is the right direction to go in. I think his own awareness of, would it lead to bankruptcy or those kinds of things, that's more than a throwaway line. Particularly in our society, we do fund through, in effect, popular…we let people vote with their feet, so to speak. We aren't a classic aristocracy where there's a batch of aristocrats who simply fund cultural enterprises independently as an individual 'cause they deem those things to be good. We are like that.

Scott: Patronage is over.

Rick: Yes, patronage is over. And so this concern, I think he's right about the corrective. I think he's also right about this, kind of, throwaway line about the danger. I think even more so in the media than the university, though both are relevant—the media is particularly problematic for this. And I'm not blaming the media. In other words, I'm saying this unattended side effect of the internet as a means of distributing things has created the nano casting and algorithms that are extremely driven to stimulate me personally to click, and you have your own set to stimulate you. That's what I mean about nano. It's practically individual level.

Scott: That's correct.

Rick: That's the thing that's happened. The media didn't create that. They now have to live with that, and it hits them every day on a 24 hour news cycle for universities that are a little slower. Both I think are threatened by it.

Scott: And I think it's eroded critical thinking in both institutions that have contributed to that. And I know I'm a lot more careful now when I push back on students' opinions.

Rick: Yeah.

Scott: I know some of that, I think, is just the wisdom of being at this for a while, and there's no need to burn down the house when a small little bit of critical thinking will do. But I do think that he's right that the customer always being right has sort of substituted affirmation for critical thinking.

Rick: Yes.

Scott: And I think in many of our secular universities substituted ideology for critical thinking and activism for critical thinking. And it seems to me, critical thinking is one of the things the university was designed to do, and one of the things that employers most look for in the people coming out of the university. So, anything else you wanna add to that?

Rick: Nope, I think that's good.

Scott: Okay. I encourage our listeners to read all of these editorials in The New York Times if you can get them. It's a wonderful series. All right, should we answer some questions?

Rick: Sure, you bet.

Scott: All right. This is from a listener that says, "I love this podcast. I recommend it to all my friends." All right, let's close in prayer and move on to the next one.

Rick: [laughs]

Scott: “Do you have any thoughts on what you might say to someone who says and talks like they are a Christian, but only because it works for them? I have in mind someone who's a Christian only when it's convenient. They practice a self-centered version of Christianity that relies on their personal feelings. Someone like this might say, ‘If my kid died and Christianity didn't help me get over it, I just wouldn't be a Christian anymore.’ I'm wondering how someone could gently, lovingly push them in the right direction.” Rick, I'm gonna depend on your 20 years of pastoral experience to take the first crack at this.

Rick: Well, so this is a great observation that we…unfortunately, it isn't just that people tend to think that Christianity should deliver on making you happy—we tend to preach that. And then we end up in this situation: come to Jesus, and you'll find your self-image is healed, you'll get a great job, you'll have wonderful kids, and everything will be rosy. We make Christian movies that often have that kind of connotation.

Scott: We have a term for that. We call that the prosperity gospel.

Rick: Yeah. And that kind of a mindset sneaks in in subtle ways in churches that aren't willing to go all the way to health and wealth gospel, but just do the satisfaction version. And all I wanna say is, is that we need to first be biblical in our thinking. What does it mean biblically? Without even doing some theologizing, does God answer all of our prayers or not? I'm just saying, read the narratives of the Bible and ask, did people suffer? Did people always get what they want? Did people have long seasons when they wondered, what in the world is God doing in my life? And we should be looking at all those things as absolutely normal in biblical narratives. And so, when we meet them in our own life, we need to be preaching and teaching people to make that an absolute expectation about ordinary life, that it just does not have all the glitz and glitter we'd love it to have. And we should not be at all surprised when we find it falling short of our desires.

Scott: Okay, so how would you answer this person—say the person were to come back and say, so why do you follow Jesus?

Rick: Well, I think at some point this comes back to who Jesus is, right? It's like, why do I follow my general into battle? It's like, well, I mean, he's my general, right? I didn't know I had an option.

Scott: Where else do we go?

Rick: Where else do we go? It is the classic John chapter six thing, you know, Jesus said stuff that nobody liked, and everybody's leaving Him, and He turns to the disciples and says, are you gonna go too? And Peter gets it right. Who else has the words of eternal life? I've committed my heart and my life to Jesus. I follow Him. I don't know what to say. Does it pay off? Does it not pay off? It's not the first question I ask.

Scott: I think this view, which I think is widespread, reflects what I call the triumph of a therapeutic view of Christian faith. The first thing I thought of is, this person must live in a place where religious freedom is respected, because in most of the rest of the world, it's rarely convenient to follow Jesus.

Rick: Yeah, that's right.

Scott: And Jesus was rarely reluctant to tell people like this to stop following him.

Rick: Oh yeah.

Scott: I mean, he did not have trouble thinning out the troops from time to time.

Rick: That's right.

Scott: And I mean, we take up our cross. We deny ourselves.

Rick: Yeah. We may not…foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. You know, those that put your hand to the plow and look back, you aren’t fit for the kingdom of God. All of these sorts of things are reminders of Jesus…simply following Jesus doesn't sound like what this reader has described. And I know he's agreeing that that's wrong. And part of it is just saying, yeah, we have to own that and lean in on that.

Scott: That's right. And I mean, I follow Jesus because the gospel is true, good and beautiful. And because it satisfies my deepest longings for meaning and relationship, ultimately, at the end of the day. And I mean, I think, yeah, we follow Jesus because of who He is. Not necessarily because of the benefits that that brings.

Rick: Yeah.

Scott; All right. Final question here. I have a question about ethics. Which I think both of us might have something to say about.

Rick: That's a good thing. [laughs]

Scott: “It seems to me that many of our most pressing issues are framed in terms of rights, right? Of nations to defend borders, the right of individuals to seek safety, the rights of mothers and the unborn. From a Christian perspective, can and should we say that rights arise from obligations? For example, if my obligation is to protect life, then a right to life follows. Obligations force us to look at others, while rights move us to look at the self. If these things are true, wouldn't it benefit Christians to think about issues more in terms of obligations than rights? If so, how so?”

Rick: Yeah, so there's a couple of things I would say about this. Number one, let me just do something that kind of acknowledges this adding obligations to the discussion. One of the things I often will say when having discussion about social ethics is that there's two ways to disenfranchise a person. One is to deny a person their rights and freedoms. The other is to deny a person their responsibilities and obligations. We become less of a person when we no longer have to bear any responsibility to fulfill any obligations. And we need to make it really clear: on the ship of state, there are no passengers, only crew members. And we are all responsible for these sorts of things. And so yes, there's a real place for obligations and to deal with social problems, disenfranchised groups in a way that says, "Oh, I know you're not responsible for any of your problems. We're responsible for this, everybody else. So don't feel bad, we'll take care of it." The weird thing is, you've actually released people from obligations that make them significant moral actors. So I'm like, yes, I absolutely say there's a place for obligations. One other thing I'll just throw in, and this is a long discussion I won't have, I'll just plant the seed. Oliver O'Donovan is a great guy to read about some of this because he's a Christian theologian, Anglican theologian in the UK, but he's written a lot about issues related to rights and just saying, rights aren't really a primary Christian category and we should be looking at, in effect, the Christian vision is a love-centered vision. And notice, a right is basically a thing that operates as a guardrail. It tells you what you cannot do: do not cross this boundary. Love, in contrast, tells you what you ought to do. So it casts a positive vision that no amount of rights can ever give you. And a society that's organized around rights has basically abandoned notions of the good, the right, and the lovely. They just care about what I want at a moment. They just want their rights, but there's no sense of saying, what is my vision for society as a whole? And so, O'Donovan is a great guy. I should make a note that he is perhaps not the easiest and most accessible guy to read, but like many people like that, it is worth the effort.

Scott: Yeah, just one thing to add to that. That's really helpful, Rick, and really clear. I'd want to distinguish between positive and negative rights.

Rick: Yes.

Scott: And so, when you talk about rights, you have to decide, what kind of right are you talking about? A negative right is a right to be left alone, to live your life as you see fit. A positive right involves an obligation on behalf of someone else to provide for that. And I think he's referring to the area of positive rights more than negative ones. And so I say, a positive right carries with it, inherently, an obligation for somebody to do something for you and probably to pay for it too. Because if we talk about it in terms of rights, then I think that's innate to that. I think that the important part, in my view, is where those rights are grounded is key. And rights are not grounded in government granting them. Government recognizes them, but does not grant them. Because as the history of the 20th century has shown, when governments have the right to grant them, they also have the right to take them away, and to do so brutally.

Rick: Yeah.

Scott: So in my view, that's the really important part of this, which comes first. I think as long as rights and obligations go together, and they're not entirely self-oriented…and I think our listener here is onto something that's pretty good and pretty important.

Rick: Yes, indeed.

Scott: All right, here's a third one. This is the last one we'll have time for. This is a tough one. “One of my parents, now deceased, had paranoid schizophrenia. It was a tough burden to grow up with and deal with even as an adult. And some of the symptoms are believing people are out to get you, imagining things, hearing things, distrusting everyone. I will never forget the day when my parent accused me of being ‘in on it,’ whatever the conspiracy was at the time. Later in life, they got the symptoms medicated, but it was a real tragedy. My question is, since I don't know if this parent asked Jesus for salvation, is this, do the mentally ill go to heaven?” What do you think? I'm gonna put on your pastoral hat again here. And maybe your chaplain’s or psychiatrist’s hat too.

Rick: Let me just point out, I have had this kind of conversation, both with people who are mentally ill, and I think with a person I counsel with as a pastor who did have, in this case, a spouse who was going through this kind of schizophrenia, and it was very difficult. I think it's very parallel to the question we have when a young child dies, or a person like that, who seems to have lost their life before they could even make the key decisions or things like that. I think mental health is one more of the ways in which a human person can be kind of crippled, and have their ability to really live human life the way God intended human life to have been lived…whenever you have that, you have, then, these puzzles, well, do these people get that? What do they have to believe? We had a big ministry in our church towards those who were mentally handicapped. And you'd have that come up in that context too. What do they actually believe? Do they understand the gospel? Those are all relevant questions. The only thing I would say about this is, you wanna remember that the criteria for judgment is not the kind of things that we worry about, but rather, God knows exactly what has been revealed to a person, what they've understood, and how they've responded to that. And it's on the basis of that that a person is judged. And, do the mentally ill go to heaven, the babies go to heaven, do all these other things…at some point, we have to take a deep breath and say, as much as we would want to know clear answers to all those questions, there's a big part of judgment that is deeply dependent upon the intimate, internal way in which God knows us and knows what He in His providence has revealed to us and how we respond.

Scott: Yeah, I think that's really helpful. And it's good to know that your pastoral hat still fits.

Rick: [laughs]

Scott: But I think the key here is accountability for one's decisions. And if a person lacks decision-making capacity, then I don't see how they can be held accountable for their decisions or lack of them. And I would trust in God's fairness and justice. And like you said, He's the one who knows the person's heart. And really, I appreciate all these questions. These are great questions today. And I would encourage all listeners, keep sending those in. We love hearing from you. And for those of you who sent in suggestions for how we can improve the weekly Cultural Update, Sean and I are gonna look at those really seriously in the month of August. And I've taken a cursory look at some of these. There's some really helpful suggestions there. So we very much appreciate that. And so, keep those suggestions and keep your questions coming. We are happy to address those as best we can. Rick, so grateful for your insight. So happy to have you with us. Sean will be back next week, assuming he's not gonna take another week off.

Scott and Rick: [both laugh]

Rick: All right, thanks so much for having me, Scott.

Scott: You bet. This has been an episode of the weekly Cultural Update of the Think Biblically podcast, Conversations on Faith and Culture. It's brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, 51����, offering programs in Southern California and online, including our Master's in Christian Apologetics and a certificate and master's program now offered fully online. Visit biola.edu/talbot in order to learn more. To submit comments, ask questions, make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover, or guests you'd like us to consider, please email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. That's thinkbiblically@biola.edu. If you enjoyed today's conversation, give us a rating on your podcast app. Please do that and share it with a friend. Join us on Tuesday for our discussion of why the Bible began with Old Testament scholar Dr. Mike Pickney. Thanks so much for listening and remember, think biblically about everything.