Culture Friday: No clear standard

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Friday, June 21st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. If you skipped straight to Culture Friday, I want to make sure you hear it: that today is the last day of the special dollar-for-dollar WORLD Mover match in our June Giving Drive. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to double your gift today at the Friday deadline. wng.org/donate

MAST: Speaking of Friday. it’s Culture Friday. Joining us now is John Stonestreet. He's the President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

BROWN: Well, John, let's start this morning's conversation with a list. How about this: unbuckled joyrides in your grandparents car until seatbelt laws change the rules?

MAST: Another example of laws altering behavior: cigarettes. The dramatic drop in smoking in the U.S. over the last 60 years is due in large part to warnings issued by the U.S. Surgeon General. This week, The New York Times published an op-ed from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, in which he is now calling for cigarette-style warning labels on social media for young people.

John, I have kids aged 10 to 18, so I've been in the thick of this battle for years. Pushback that I hear from other parents includes not wanting to disappoint their child by telling them no, thinking that withholding social media will make their child a social pariah, or parents enjoying a break while kids scroll.

So my question is, will parents listen to Dr Murthy, and are we asking the government to do something parents should have the guts to do themselves, or could this be another good tool in concerned parents’ belt?

STONESTREET: You know, I'm actually okay with this. The stories that you cited are evidence that sometimes there is a role for public information campaigns, for, you know, the state actually providing, you know, some assistance, rather than incentivizing, you know, wrong behaviors, and we certainly have that, in things like tax policies and and other things in other areas of life. So, you know, the government does, I think, have a role here when you have such a kind of culturally widespread problem. And this is one, there's no question about this. We have all the evidence we need that there is a direct correlation between the spiking mental health crisis, particularly among teenage girls, and social media use. We have all the evidence we need that this mental illness includes, you know, the deepest crisis of meaning and identity, and that it also extends to other generations as well. 

STONESTREET: Now, will this actually mean that parents will, you know, do their job? Can the government do the parents job? Absolutely not. The government can do what the government can do. And one of the great confusions of our age, both by the government and by politicos, is not knowing, you know, where those limits are, what the government can do and what it can't do. And you don't want to give it, you know, too much ground. It eats up enough ground on its own.

But, but, you know, listen, the first generation of parents with cigarette warnings probably didn't do enough either. The second generation did. The first generation of parents, you know, to Myrna's point of that, got the seat belts, or, you know, basically they were there in the car, and then there were these public service campaigns, and then it eventually bore fruit. I don't know if you guys, the other thing I was thinking of with your examples was the, you know, "this is your brain on drugs, any questions?" And then the "Now you know, and knowing is half the battle."

I mean, look, there have been various degrees of success with these public information campaigns, but we are at a place now where the evidence is so overwhelmingly clear and the support needs to happen, and parents need to realize, because there is that point, that point that parents got to on these other issues where it was like, Well, I don't care if my kid does complain, they're going in a car seat. I'd say right now the crisis is so great, let's do everything we can.

BROWN: Well, John, I know you have been following the 10+ year religious liberty battle Christian cake baker Jack Phillips has been fighting, even after a Supreme Court win in 2018, an attorney was back in Colorado pleading his case this week, arguing that Phillips should not be forced to custom design a cake celebrating a gender transition. As I said earlier, this has been going on for more than a decade, yet, when I mention the name Jack Phillips to, say, women in my Bible study group, or people in general at my church, they're not familiar with Jack Phillips or his story. And I wouldn't say these people have their heads under a rock either.

What do you make John of what might be a disconnect with the average American and stories like Jack Phillips?

STONESTREET: Well, it's a great question. I've experienced the same thing. I actually was at the courthouse this week, on Tuesday, which was the date of the hearing there at the Colorado Supreme Court. And you know, I tell you, it is amazing to think of just how long this has been going on for this man. I'd like to point everyone to a piece in WORLD Opinions by Kristen Waggoner, the CEO of ADF and General Counsel, because she writes a little bit about this. And we've known Jack for a lot of this journey, not the whole journey, but a lot of this journey.

And I think, to answer your question specifically, I think we're just not really used to these being real stories maybe, I think that, you know, there's still this sense that that kind of thing doesn't happen in America. People can't actually, you know, maybe they tuned out after the Supreme Court win and didn't realize that it was the same day that the Court agreed to hear that case, that this man in Denver, who is an attorney and presents as a woman, decided, literally, as he has been quoted, saying, "Change Jack's mind." And we just don't think that, really, that that kind of harassment would be allowed. And yet, here it is.

There's a lot of things that have just kind of been lost in terms of Christian discipleship that we need to bring back. I mean, I've talked about the theology of getting fired, that's one of them. So we need to know, we need to have talked about, we need to have drawn the lines so that when we're confronted with the same decision that Jack was, you know, over a decade ago, and then repeatedly since that, you know, we know the right decision to make, and we also know that loyalty to Christ at times, means a loss, a significant loss.

But you know, I want to say something while you have brought up Jack Phillips again here, and I'm glad you did, and I mean, one way is to continue to bring him up as a prayer request. He needs your continued prayer. But as I said, I've had the privilege—and I'm saying that directly—a privilege of knowing Jack throughout most of this. And I just want to say that I have seen in Jack an incredible joy. You know, Paul talks about this, the joy and suffering for the truth. "Count it all joy," you know, that sort of thing. And he is the best example that I know of that, I know personally, of someone who has gone from really being disoriented by the attack that was so intense and has been so intense on him for so long, to a place where he really sees the Lord working.

And Kristen told one of those stories with this amazing, you know, story we've all been following, of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, this new atheist coming to faith. And Jack played a role in that. I had no idea. No one had any idea. I talked to Jack about it on Tuesday, his face lit up. He has a joy of going through this trial. This is stuff that we haven't had up close and personal, but has been normal throughout the history of the church: the persecution and how God uses the challenge to refine his people. And God help us get that lesson, because that's what's going on.

MAST: John, last week, you talked about Fidelity Month and how it's calling people to reconsider the goodness of commitment to God, country and family. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it seems like The New York Times hasn't gotten that memo. Since May, they've covered a new novel called All Fours multiple times across their platforms.

Now I'll just say that this book sounds downright raunchy. There's no other word for it—and it's not a book we here at WORLD would review or recommend—but it seems women in our surrounding culture are reading it and talking about it. And now the Times says it's causing midlife women to reconsider marriage and family life. It used to be that regardless of faith, adultery really left a bad taste in people's mouth. So why this seeming push for women to consider and even normalize non-monogamy, or what's traditionally been called cheating?

STONESTREET: Oh, man, there's so much here. One is the bitter fruit of second and third wave feminism, when feminism was really hijacked by the sexual revolution. I mean, the fundamental lie was, you know, "Hey, women, men have screwed up the world. So here's what you should do: go act like them." I mean, it made no sense, but it was first sold in terms of premarital sexual behavior, and now we do see this increasingly like, leave your marriage if you're not happy, and, oh, cheat if you're not happy.

And you know, we've heard that kind of sexual libertine nonsense from men and kind of alpha male sort of masculinity for a while now, and it, you know, got joked about in 90s movies and sitcoms and now this has also become part of the the lie of of late feminism. And of course, we've seen on every level that these lies that promise women freedom, in the words of the brilliant Frederica Matthewes-Green, "only delivered abandonment," and that's really been the fruit of these lies. And of course, we've also seen that, you know, this push to secure women's place in our society has left us with men reappropriating those places in women. 

I mean, the whole thing is just upside down and backwards, and this is just another chapter of these mistakes of the sexual revolution. It is true. And I think there's obviously sometimes men behaving badly that's behind this, but the vast majority of divorces today are initiated by women. And if cheating goes along with that, then you know, that's kind of all part of this. There's this promise of happiness, there's this promise of self-fulfillment, there's this idea that the more you care about yourself, the happier you'll be.

Here's the thing that's never been true, but now we know, because to your point, if you really wanted to promote fidelity month to others, look up the wonderful work of Brad Wilcox right now and his stuff on the happiness factor. Listen, the happiest, most satisfied—and I mean intimately—people on the planet–and no other group comes close–are married, religious people. People that show fidelity to their God and to their spouses. In fact, the top group is married, church-going, middle-aged women who are the happiest and report being the most satisfied in their life, including in their intimate relationships.

Now that's the exact opposite message. And I did not look up this book. I did not Google this book that you mentioned. I did not know about it until you asked about it. So I'm just...but, but we've seen, we've seen versions of this in Huffington Post articles and Buzzfeed headlines, and I mean, this is you're seeing this increasing use of this narrative in a whole new level that now we're actually talking about infidelity. And I'm just telling you, it's never been true. It ain't true now, and we have the actual data thanks to folks like Brad Wilcox who have been looking at the happiness factor here.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.