Culture Friday: lawlessness and belonging

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, August 1st. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. It’s Culture Friday and joining us now is author and speaker Katie McCoy. Good morning, Katie.

Katie, let’s start with what happened last weekend in Cincinnati.

A violent brawl with multiple participants: videos show a crowd milling about in the early hours of the morning. There was some inciting incident, and it devolved into several people punching and kicking one man, a woman getting knocked to the ground, seemingly unconscious for a time… It’s hard to watch, and I don’t recommend you do. But here’s my question: there were multiple people who took videos and you can see bystanders… but the police chief says just one person–one–called police. So are we standing at the intersection of lawlessness and voyeurism here–and if so how did we get here?

KATIE MCCOY: This was horrific. It was one of those stories that when it came up on the news, I could barely watch it. Just staggering, the brutality in the violence and what you said, the lawlessness. It reminded me of a couple of things, and I think they're both a commentary on our culture today. First of all, if you read through the book of Judges, start to finish, you see a correlation between godliness and violence, the more that that nation spiraled into ungodliness, into wickedness. You saw widespread violence, and not only violence, but callousness towards violence, callousness towards the value of a human life, of a vulnerable human being, and it was on display in that horrific story. And as you said, people videoing it, just how almost heartless do you have to be? Because lawlessness is increased, the love of many will grow cold. And the way Pastor John Piper explains that he says lawlessness is deep hostility to authority, especially God's authority, I think that's exactly what we saw in this horrific story. It is a complete disregard, not only for God's authority and the value of human life, but then, consequently, we don't value God's authority. Why would we value the government's authority and refrain from breaking criminal or civil laws as well?

BROWN: Well Katie, moving now to another astonishing story this week, we reported on WORLD Radio the story of the Christian Monk who was jailed for silently praying outside of a Michigan abortion facility that bars quote, “annoying” public behavior.

Now, we have talked on this program before about Christians in other parts of the world being treated like this. And now this very thing is happening on American soil.

Katie, what is more disturbing to you: that this kind of persecution has found its way here, or that very few people are talking about it?

MCCOY: First, hats off to The World and Everything In It podcast for reporting on this, because you're exactly right. There is so much apathy related to these stories, if they are reported at all. You know Myrna, one of the things that I find frustrating is so many in mainstream culture will say, you know, this is henny penny stuff. Look, the sky is not falling. Religious freedom is stronger than ever, and we're nowhere near, say, the United Kingdom and or Finland, or a nation like that. And thank God, we're not but what we need to remember is that liberty is eroded gradually. Thomas Jefferson said the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground and this is what our founding fathers sought to protect us from with our Constitution, with our Bill of Rights.

So when we see stories like this. It is a progression. It's the proverbial frog in the pot. I think about the Kroger employees who were fired because they refused to wear a pride pin. Now they were eventually reinstated, but they still lost their jobs. I think about the foster parents in the Northeast who were blacklisted because they would not affirm LGBTQ doctrine. These are small things that, as a composite whole, are trending in a direction. Now, thank the Lord for organizations like advocates for Faith and Freedom, First Liberty, the Alliance Defending Freedom, representing their cases. Thus far, I think we can reasonably hope, if not expect, the court to uphold this man's religious liberty. But you know, that's on the other side of protracted litigation, attorneys fees, not to mention the personal toll that it can have. And you know, Myrna, I cannot help but juxtapose this story of a praying, silent monk with the panic, and I mean panic expressed by some media outlets after CBS announced that Stephen Colbert's late night talk show would not be renewed next spring. News anchors, pundits, they were lamenting it as… and I kid you not…. the demise of our democracy. You know, never mind that he lost the network $40 million a year. It must be because there's this corporate chilling effect on people who are antagonistic towards the president. That's apparently the only thing that can explain it. Never mind that no one was jailed for exercising a civil liberty. Never mind that there are plenty of other anti-Trump comedians and pundits, but it speaks to the way that many news outlets on both sides whip up frenzy when it fits their narrative. But here's a simple Christian monk whose First Amendment freedom was violated, and we don't even give it air time.

BROWN: Quick follow-up to that Katie… I used the word persecution in describing what’s happening in Michigan. Is it fair to call it persecution? Is that too strong?

MCCOY: That's a good question. I mean, to be jailed for praying silently. No, that's not too strong. That's absolutely appropriate. And God willing, it will be quickly overturned. His reputation will be restored, and whatever legal means were used against him will also be corrected.

MAST: Katie, you just got back from a weekend with college students at the Impact 360 Institute. If you don’t mind I’d like you to reflect on that experience in light of a disturbing report about Teens and AI. Key findings: more than 70% of teens have used AI companions at least once and 3 out of 10 use it for relationships. How is embracing this technology in this way impacting young people?

MCCOY: Well, all of our students connected at Impact 360 Institute are just so sharp. They've got the light on. They're asking deep, worldview oriented questions, and they're interested in these topics, like artificial intelligence and how it's going to affect the future. Our Surgeon General, a few years ago, sounded the alarm, saying that the teen mental health crisis was directly connected to social media and smartphone use. Here's a very simple concept, that when you hear it, you're going to think, Oh, well, that makes sense, no kidding, but we actually have people researching it to verify it. Eye contact. Eye contact improves mood and emotional connectedness in the parent child relationship. Emotional connectedness helps form and shape our sense of self, our individual and our group identity. When you have a teen on a phone, and let me just be really honest, Lindsay, I'm on my phone way too much, you miss those opportunities for eye contact, for emotional connectedness, and from that sense of community and connectedness, and that is what we are missing in our culture. You'd think that after the COVID pandemic, we would have recognized we need to fix this, but I'm afraid we've only gotten worse.

MAST: And of course, there’s a younger generation coming up behind them. It seems more people are starting to see the wisdom in delaying kids' access to smart phones and social media. I’m thinking of the Wait Until 8th movement, in which families at schools pledge to hold out on giving access to kids. Eighth grade is certainly better than 6th or 5th or 4th, but given what you just said–is that enough?

MCCOY: Well, I'm not a parent, so I tell people, I can serve parents by going down the rabbit hole of research and presenting to them what I found. I do think it's a great step to not only do that wait till eighth grade, but with this program, the pledge, it seems like it's almost a community involvement of parents and families pledging together, which I would think also helps for let's say that that eighth grade teen, or that seventh grade teen feeling left out like she's the only one in her class without an iPhone, it helps build a little more community behind it and and not feel isolated for the the children whose parents won't let them have a smartphone.

I'll tell you what though, Lindsay, there is a reason that Silicon Valley execs do not let their children have smartphones. They know what it is doing. They know how addictive it is. And so the Wait Until 8th, they give some great suggestions on things like phones and watches that can only call and text. They're not connected to the internet.

But sounds like it's a great step. Maybe it's one of several steps. Maybe people wait until, let's say, 15 or 16, and then they can help their child set reasonable boundaries when they're using technology. Of course, that means that adults like us have to find some reasonable boundaries as well. So maybe we all kind of need to do some kind of wait till fill in the blank.

BROWN: You may be on to something Katie, before we let you go, I’d like to get your take on the new Planned Parenthood campaign. They’re calling it Bros for Repro. As I was reading up on it, one commentator had this observation: Planned Parenthood knows the “bro-choice” campaign can thrive in a void. That void is the silence of the church.

MCCOY: Absolutely right, and one of the things that we see happening, trending in our culture today, is young men coming back to the church, young men taking up what we would call conservative or traditional values. It's going to be fascinating to see how Gen Z young men approach conversations like abortion. You know, when I think about this silly, absurd campaign, it feels like they're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel for some PR and marketing. But they also had one of these legislators, these state legislators, saying abortion support was almost a religious value for him. He said real love honors choice. One of the many expressions in our culture of how love is not love. Love is not something that you get to make up whatever definition it is, love is willing the good of the other person and as Gen Z grows and comes into their full adulthood begins to be thinking about these cultural questions and what they are going to do with the culture that they've inherited, I'm fascinated to see how something like this would land with them. Because real men honor women. Real men honor. The way God created women to nurture new life. Real men protect women from harm, including the harm of abortion. And we still are learning what some of those harms are, in part, because, once again, media suppresses it according to their narrative. And then finally, real men take responsibility for the vulnerable, both the unborn in the womb and the mother, who might feel trapped alone or believe abortion is going to solve her problems and have no effect on her afterwards. So I would imagine this is going to come and go, hopefully rather quickly.

MAST: Well, Katie, it’s been fun hanging with you this month!

MCCOY: It has! Three in a row. Let's do it again.

BROWN: Until next time, Author and speaker Katie McCoy, Thank you!

MCCOY: Thank you both.

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