Culture Friday: Life, death, and ideology

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It's Friday the 13th of October 2023. So glad to have you along for today's edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I'm Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I'm Nick Eicher. It's Culture Friday. Joining us now is John Stonestreet, the President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning to you, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, John, I'd like to start out with reference to your latest piece in Breakpoint, and that is live by ideology, die by ideology, the backdrop is critical theory and the collapse of activist Ibram X. Kendi Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. But I want to get real practical with this, you wrote that Christians must be prepared to push back against these bad ideas. How, what's the recipe for pushing back?

STONESTREET: Well, I think the two most obvious ones might not sound practical, but they're immensely practical if you don't start from the right position in some of these conversations that we're having in our culture. The first one is actually let's go back to believing that ideas matter. Don't treat ideas, as if, you know, you believe what you want and I believe what I want. And we can all believe different things and they be true simultaneously and things like that. And that is this kind of live and let live mentality in our vision of truth, which is that truth is only internally referential, not referential to anything that actually exists in the real world. That's a foolish and unsustainable way of thinking about life in the world. And Christians of all people should believe that such a thing as truth exists. So when you see ideas, like for example, ideas about the human person, ideas about human behavior that are core and central to critical theory in all of its forms, and these ideas are false, we can't have a “live and let live” perspective. 

This, by the way, I think speaks to the challenges that came out of the Unconditional Conference hosted by Andy Stanley, you know, in his idea that you can separate theology from pastoral practice. You can't talk about these theological ideas in an “agree to disagree” way, especially when you're talking about fundamental ideas about what it means to be human. 

The second thing that I think is immensely practical, in a culture like ours is just committing ourselves to the Alexander Solzhenitsyn “live not by lies” maxim like it doesn't mean we have to fight every battle. Just because we think that truth exists doesn't mean that all truths are bloody truths, which is something that Friederich Nietzsche said that he was going to fight, you know, over all of them, but at the very minimum, we can't be co opted into something that's not true. We've got to commit ourselves and a culture in which lies are ubiquitous. And of course, that's what was behind the downfall of Ibram X. Kendi Center for Antiracist Research, even if you don't assume bad motives, or financial malfeasance or anything like that. He just had ideas that weren't true, but everybody wanted to be true, including in the academic world. This is the critical theory moot, they wanted them to be true. So my point here is, in a culture where we want certain things to be true, it's very easy to be co-opted into lies. And at the very minimum, we cannot say what's not true. Don't be forced to say it, and pronoun use and other use, just don't say what's not true.

REICHARD: Okay. Well, let me get even more practical here, John. Okay. Suppose I don't, but suppose that I work for a corporation and my boss wants me to attend DEI training, that diversity, equity and inclusion training. Suppose I'm the sole provider for my family, I'm not, but suppose that I need the job. What do I do? Just speaking hypothetically, for me now, it doesn't happen here at WORLD as I said, so imagine that I'm coming to you for advice, John, what do I do?

STONESTREET: Well, maybe going to DEI training is one thing being fired, because you disagree with the DEI trainer is another thing. And I think we're quickly realizing where that boundary is. But you know what, right now, there is a pushback on, you know, basically forcing people, particularly people who are working into kind of an ideological conformity. And so you know, if it's required, that's one thing, but is it required to agree, I think these are the sorts of nuances that we can make. But again, don't be forced to say something that's not true.

EICHER: Well, John, Mary just mentioned live by ideology, die by ideology, and we need to take a really serious turn here because ideology killed thousands of Jews last weekend; there is now no end in sight to what is likely to be a very big war in the Middle East. And I realize, you know, we talk worldview here and not foreign policy, but don't you see this conflict more in worldview terms and not so much in policy terms?

STONESTREET: You know, you see it on multiple levels. One is on the act itself. The western world is kind of shocked, like how could anyone actually carry out this kind of barbarity against someone else. I mean, listen, we understand that there's deep disagreements here and that, you know, over the land and over the space, but this sort of barbarity is stuff that we associate with like the Vikings. I mean, you know, this is modern time. And, you know, the inability to really understand this, I think, stems from a couple worldview truths. First, this idea that somehow the more technologically advanced we get, the more morally progressive we get, has proven to be just a wrong vision of human nature. 

Second, most warfare was carried out like this throughout all of human history. And the only thing that changed that was Christianity. Literally the only thing that stopped the inability of distinguishing between civilians and combatants. And by the way, that's a worldview thing, right? Why are civilians and combatants seen the same throughout most of human history and by Hamas, is because people aren't seen as individuals, they're not seen as individually valuable, they're seen as part of a group, and therefore all are guilty. And that's why there's calls for extermination, just absolutely insane.

I think also, you see, you know, real world view problems from those who are doing the kind of moral equivalence: “Well, there's evil on both sides. And we can't really condemn or take sides.” And, in fact, the acts of Hamas were so awful that it's shaken some people who might have done that. And another situation from doing that, in this situation, we even heard, like moral clarity to a degree from, you know, Alexandria Ocasio Cortes, I mean, I did not have that on my bingo card for this year. But you also see attempts for the same equivalence, which tells you something that it is very possible as Romans one describes to be so completely upside down morally that you call right wrong and wrong, right. And that you cannot see the reality that's right in front of your face. 

This is what worldviews do. Worldviews are things that you look through, which means if it's a right worldview, it's like the right prescription - it'll bring clarity. But it's the wrong worldview. They can even be blinders, where you can't even see straight. And the inability to tell right side up from upside down in this situation is so clearly dependent on worldview; there's only two reasons someone would make a moral equivalence in this situation. And both of them are worldviews. One is that you're completely captive to a radical Islamic worldview. And the world's realizing that in large parts of that region, a whole lot of people are absolutely captive to that radical Islamic vision of the world, even if they themselves aren't militants, believing that Israel deserves and needs to be exterminated, and there's no distinction between military and civilians, or you've been completely captive in a critical theory mood, where you've already pre decided who the good guys and who the bad guys are. And if the good guys do something really horrific, well, then the bad guys must have deserved it to some degree. And I really appreciated this comment - I wish I could remember who said it - and I've been, you know, looking at social media reports, because that's been kind of leading the way and getting what's happening out there about this situation. But you know, someone said, you know, look, saying that both sides are guilty in this situation, is like saying, Well, yeah, Mordor is bad. But you know, Frodo yelled at Sam that one time. It's just so absolutely insane. And I think most of the world is seeing that's insane. And you can tell that it is quite possible to completely miss reality right in front of your face. And it's because of worldview.

EICHER: John, I would love to go a week and I'm sure you would too a week without any references to LGBT stuff. But here we go again, we do not make this stuff up. So, so now we confront the story about the push to legally redefine moms and dads. Katie Faust, writing for World Opinions, described the Biden administration proposal via the Department of Health and Human Services to avoid gender specific terms. No mother, no father, not anymore. Only the gender neutral term parent. HHS justifies this as being inclusive of all family structures. John, Have you followed this one?

STONESTREET: Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. And there's a million ways in which children's rights are being threatened. And my guess is Katie covered them all in this piece, because she is as good as it gets on this topic, and realizing just kind of the ideological framework that's being brought to bear and how far that will take us culturally, in denying reality. This is the inevitable consequence of pretending in one area of marriage and sexuality that being male and female is irrelevant, or that male and female is a social construct - then you actually start to see all of life in the world. In a way that's not true. In a way this is the same sort of punch line that we talked about in the last topic, which is the atrocities of Hamas. And the only way to make moral equivalence is to be completely captivated by either a radical Islamic worldview or a critical theory worldview in which you already know who the good guys and bad guys are. Is this the same thing? This is ideology that is making government officials and policymakers unable to see reality. Because all the data is consistent, that children fare best when they're raised in a home with biological married mom and dad. All of those aspects are important: biological, married, Mom, and Dad, and that fathers and mothers parent differently to the extent that, as Ryan Anderson has put it, there's no really such thing as parents, there's just moms and dads, moms, moms, dads, dad, moms don't dad, and dads don't mom. 

Now, this is observably obvious to everyone until yesterday, I mean, really, but when you have an ideology that serves as blinders, then you pretend that observable realities are social constructs, and then they can be manipulated and changed. And, of course, oh, by the way, the kids will be fine, because you know, we know what the kids want and what the kids need. And we're absolutely upside down on this.

REICHARD: All right, John Stonestreet, President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks so much, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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