John Stonestreet: Surviving a grilling

Noted public speaker John Stonestreet offers radio commentaries from a Christian worldview on BreakPoint and The Point and is an interviewee each Friday on WORLD Radio. I asked him to imagine himself as a Republican presidential candidate grilled by reporters.

Senator, do you believe in evolution or creation? The most important part of that question is the consequences that flow from whether you believe in God. H.G. Wells said, “If there is no God, nothing matters. If there is a God, nothing else matters.” I believe that because God is the Creator of all things, that He created every single person with inherent dignity from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.

Do you argue for theistic evolution? Evolutionary theory does not require any involvement from God. How, then, does it ground human dignity? If you give up on historic Adam and Eve, there are all kinds of issues: What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Which of our ancestors were in the image of God before we were in the image of God?

What do you think about abortion for children conceived by rape. Surely we should have an exception in that situation? How many victims of violent crime do we want? Will adding violence to violence—the taking of an innocent life—help the woman who has been through this awful trauma?

Are you one of those Republicans who don’t want Playboy to be sold? Kids don’t read magazines anymore. Playboy’s money is not coming from the magazine, so let’s talk about the internet. I have three little girls. If some people exposed themselves to my daughters, I would go after them: physically to stop it, and then legally. How is it different with exposure on the internet? The average first exposure to pornography for internet users is 9 years old. Nine. That’s the average. Moms all the time say, “It happened to my 6-year-old. I found my 7-year-old showing my 5-year-old.” It’s incredible. It’s not because these kids are sex addicts. It’s because they are curious and porn is predatory.

‘Because of what I believe about where things came from there is a grounding for human rights and there is a grounding for human dignity.’

So you don’t believe in the First Amendment? You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. We’ve been able to limit the free speech of tobacco companies by making sure that as they advertise their product, they warn people about their product at the same time. Porn is a $13 billion industry. Child pornography is a $3 billion industry. More now: Those are old numbers, from five years ago. This is predatory. Even European secular parties these days are trying to figure out how to limit access to porn to children. Why does that question never get thrown around here?

Is your concern with evolution connected in some way to your concern about pornography? As a political candidate, I wouldn’t say there is a connection. I would say that because of what I believe about where things came from there is a grounding for human rights and there is a grounding for human dignity. You look at our founding documents and we have this strange phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” and that, “all men are created equal.” But it’s not self-evident if you believe that everything is created by time and chance. Because of what I believe about first things, I believe we have a grounding for that statement. We don’t have that if, instead of descending from two parents, we have a single-cell life form somewhere.

A very cute single-cell life form. Look, you seem like an intelligent fellow: Why do you have to do this fundamentalist stuff in order to have a sense of meaning in life? Can’t we create our own meaning? We can, but then we have a hard time discerning between good meaning and bad meaning. I had a conversation with a lady on an airplane who kept telling me that I was God and she kept saying, “look inside, look inside.” I said, “What if I look inside and I find that meaning is to torture little babies for fun?” The people sitting in the row in front of us turned around at that point and looked at us, it was really awkward, because you have to watch your volume when you say that. But it’s a good question: Whose meaning wins? What determines the difference between good meaning and bad meaning? If rights are nothing more than things that people recognize and bestow on each other, then it evolves into a power struggle.

OK, enough role-playing. What do you want journalists to ask Democratic candidates? Why do we have laws that justify abortion at almost any time at any place at any level of development? Why do we have an industry so unregulated that it allowed Kermit Gosnell’s clinic to have less oversight than the local ice cream parlor? What about selective abortion—selecting out girls, selecting out those with Down syndrome, selecting out those with autism that are in utero? I think we need to ask those sorts of questions. I think that would be a start.

How can churches do a better job in preparing young people to deal with tough cultural questions? A lot of times we teach the Bible, particularly at a very early age, as if it’s a random collection of stories and sayings, but not as the grand underlying narrative of everything. At the heart of a lot of our troubles is that many teenagers and young adults believe in what Christian Smith, now at Notre Dame, calls moralistic therapeutic deism: They invite God into our world when they need to behave or feel better about ourselves. Maybe that’s because from their earliest age, from Sunday school lessons and youth group lessons, almost every way they’ve heard the Bible taught is moralistic or therapeutic. David and Goliath, here’s how you beat your giants.

How can we do a better job of talking with non-Christians about difficult subjects? My friend Frank recommends that before getting into a testy situation we ask, “Do you consider yourself an open-minded and tolerant person? Are you open to considering other views? Because a lot of people aren’t, and if you’re not then we probably shouldn’t have this conversation.” And if someone says, “Yes,” you can say, “Well good, because I sense my view might be different from yours.” We need some groundwork if we are to listen to one another and respect each other.

Any career advice for these Patrick Henry students? The secret of life is to do what you love and find somebody who will pay you for doing it. But I also want someone who, if he can’t get paid for doing what he loves, will get up in the morning and dig ditches and deliver newspapers to put food on the table. So there’s a balance: You have to work really hard and you have to do your best and you have to take advantage of opportunities.

Also see “John Stonestreet on marriage and evolution.”