Culture Friday: Hard hearts

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 27th of September, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is author and speaker Katie McCoy.

Good morning!

KATIE MCCOY: Good morning to you both!

EICHER: This is a subject I bring up reluctantly. It has to do with the artist Sean Combs, known as “Diddy.” It was about a week and a half ago that he was arrested. He faces charges of racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Reading from a report here, the allegations are that he “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill [his] desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.”

If it’s all true, he looks to be the Hollywood equivalent of Jeffrey Epstein. In that Epstein moved among the financial and political glitterati where Combs moved among the entertainment elite—we’re talking Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew Broderick, Ashton Kutcher, Chevy Chase.

But I guess what struck me most about this story was the piece in the UK Daily Mail and the headline “Inside Diddy’s debauchery.”

Given where we are culturally, debauchery seems like a quaint term, and Diddy’s somehow become so toxic, all these Hollywood A-listers are running for the hills, aren’t they?

MCCOY: Oh, they sure are. People deleting tweets and trying to distance themselves from him, despite photographic evidence, and that photographic evidence goes back decades. You know, I was really glad to see this article use that word debauched, not only because it's an accurate description of these alleged actions, but also it shows a degree of moral awareness of the right and wrong of this anything-goes sexual culture that people still have, that there is something very wrong with the things that were happening at these parties. And every everybody, from J Lo to Regis Philbin went to these parties, and it was out of some belief that this was the good life, this was the life that they all wanted. 

In fact, there's a rather disturbing quote in that article where Diddy apparently tells someone you can make people do anything you want, because this is the life that they want. And when I look at this whole story from a very Biblically shaped worldview that we're all trained to have, I cannot help but think of Psalm 37. Psalm 37 tells us not to envy the wicked, those who seem like they are prospering in everything that they do. And this Psalm is giving us a warning of saying, I know how the world looks. But what you need to know is that this wealthy, successful person that seems to have an enviable life, it's all going to come crashing down on them. So don't fret, because the workers of iniquity prosper in their way. And then that familiar verse to us, “Trust in the Lord. Delight yourself in the Lord. He'll give you the desires of your heart.” And then, not only that, “Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him.” And then verse 16, “A little that a righteous man has is better than the riches of many wicked.” Does that not sum up how we can look at this whole story and how all of this is like a house of cards coming tumbling down? The most a list elite Hollywood celebrities that seem to have everything that we would want, and now they’re running in fear.

BROWN: Katie, all that puts me in mind of Mark chapter eight and verse 36. What ran through my mind was “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”

Well, more and more men may be taking that to heart. And we’ve done some reporting this week on men and the church. There’ve been some trend pieces about more men in church pews on Sunday mornings and more men turning to conservative religious practices.

That sounds encouraging, but is it to the detriment of women?

MCCOY: Uh huh, yeah, this was a wonderful story to read, probably one of the most hopeful things that I've read, for a few reasons. So, if you're not familiar with Dr. Scott Galloway, you will want to be. He has done extensive research on this topic, talking about the decline of young men and boys in American culture. And how young men have just been kind of left behind as a society. Because of that, they're at risk with identifying with very extreme or unhealthy visions of masculinity. Think about, like, Andrew Tate and the appeal that he had to young men, and then they're also very vulnerable to some fringe sociopolitical groups. 

So, the fact that young men, many of whom in our society would consider themselves disaffected aimless, are finding a sense of group and individual identity in the church is enormous, and it is a huge reason for hope among Gen. Z. You know, ironically, all of these trends the last 60 years that we are still living in the effects of, the sexual revolution, it's produced a society of men that women aren't looking for. And so without detracting from the gains of women in education and the workplace, young women are still finding themselves as victims of the sexual revolution some six decades later. And that same sexual revolution is what we can trace back to a lot of these challenges that young men are having, writ large in our society today. 

I don't think that this trend is necessarily cause for alarm that young women will consequently not be drawn to the church. Now we are seeing alarming statistics about that, but I don't think we need to think about this as a zero sum game. Instead, I'm going to give a very optimistic prediction. In fact, honestly, Nick and Myrna, this is going to be a bold prediction, something that years from now, you can point to and say, okay, McCoy got it really wrong, or this was a good one. Here it is: I think that as more young men are drawn to the church and then more specifically following the way of Jesus, we are going to see a generation of young men become the types of men that young women are looking for as partners. Men who value self sacrifice, and responsibility, and contribution, and family life and yet again, this is one of the many ways that the way God designed us to flourish as individuals leads us to flourish as society as a whole.

EICHER: Alright, police in Switzerland have made some arrests. They’ve taken into custody “several persons” in connection with a woman’s apparently successful use of the so-called suicide pod. This is according to a report by the BBC. The pod “works,” meaning it kills its target, by flooding a death chamber with nitrogen and effectively suffocating the person inside. The pod can be 3D printed and assembled at home, but evidently she had help and that may be the reason for the persons of interest swept up by police. Because while assisted suicide is legal and regulated in Switzerland, this suicide pod is not approved and may be illegal.

So Katie, clearly another advance for the culture of death. But do you think Switzerland has the moral authority to prosecute this? What’s the best outcome here?

MCCOY: The best possible outcome would be for the Swiss government to recognize the moral incongruity of the scenario that they are in and to reverse their stance on assisted suicide, or euthanasia, as it's often called, because they can sanitize the language. They can present it in a way that seems so loving and caring for an individual, but when they are confronted with someone who is doing this essentially, not under their direction, not under their supervision. All of a sudden they want to put a stop to that. It's a little bit like they're telling on themselves. And I think implicit though, in the regulation of assisted suicide is a question that I wish I could put to the Swiss government and say, Well, why does it need to be regulated. Are you saying that it could be misused? If it could be misused, are you saying there's something about it that is morally wrong? And so these are questions that I think they are now having to face as a society. Is if assisted suicide is wrong in one context, why is it not wrong in all contexts? Why is it okay just because a government rubber stamps it and dispenses it to its citizens? So I hope that the people of Switzerland will start having those conversations and asking those questions.

EICHER: Okay, sure, but isn’t it true that governments do that all the time? They allow gambling but restrict it to riverboats, smoking and drinking but not for minors, marijuana but highly regulated (and taxed, of course). In other words, wrong in the eyes of the law in some circumstances, just not all of them?

MCCOY: Sure. But see, the question behind that question is, what is the purpose of every law, every law that we live under, from the laws about free speech to the laws for the stop sign outside your neighborhood, implicit in all of it is that there is a moral claim? And if you don't believe me, let's just break it down this way, when you stop at a stop sign, why? Well, you stop at a stop sign so that we can have an orderly flow of traffic. Why? Well, because we don't want anybody to get into an accident. Why? Well, because property damage and damage to people physically is is something we want to avoid. Why? Well, because people are valuable. Oh, well, now we've hit a moral claim. People are valuable. People are worth protecting through traffic laws and laws about assisted suicide and laws about free speech and conscience, every law that we live under is expressing some type of moral claim. The problem is implicit in that moral claim is the belief that there is an objective moral and immoral stance, an objective right and wrong, and for that, we at least can look at it through the lens of the common good, of natural law that God has shown us in creation and in our conscience. But then we, who are Christians who are advancing the kingdom of God, want to see what is good for humanity, for human dignity and for human flourishing, be what we live under as laws. The kingdoms of men will never look like the kingdoms of God, but as long as the kingdom of God is within us, we can advance that kingdom of God for the common good.

BROWN: Great stuff! Careful now, you don’t wanna drop that mic!

MCCOY: Hah!

BROWN: Author and speaker Katie McCoy. Thanks, Katie. We’ll see you again soon!

KATIE MCCOY: Thank you, both. 

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