Culture Friday: Threats and progress

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Friday the 7th of February.

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

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown

It’s Culture Friday. Joining us now is John Stonestreet … president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning!

BROWN: John, let’s start with a recent report from the nonpartisan agency, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. What caught my eye…the predictions: By 2033, annual deaths will exceed annual births in this country. And that’s because fertility rates are projected to remain too low for a generation to replace itself.

How much of this has to do with the cultural anti-children. anti-family narrative?

STONESTREET: You know, this might be the greatest existential threat to Western culture of our lifetime certainly. But at the end of the day, as a friend of mine says, “This isn't magic, it’s math.” This is just straight forward. If you don’t have babies, you cannot sustain your civilization, period.

To your question of how much this has to do with the kind of wider narrative of not being pro-children and certainly not being pro-family—I think there are a number of other trend lines that you can lay across this one and it basically mirrors. And that is the dramatic decline in marriage, the dramatic increase in age before people get married. I mean, you can even just look at the growth of ridiculously expensive pet products. That also points to the fact that we’re replacing our kids with pets.

There’s just too many consequences to name. The loss of a culture is the larger one. But you’re talking about the economic pyramid being reversed, not having enough workers to support institutions or to support a social safety net.

I thought it was striking that Vice President JD Vance addressed some of this—not directly—at the March for Life. Now, of course, if you’ve ever been to the March for Life, you know, at the March for Life is basically everyone who’s an exception to this rule. I mean, there’s lots of kids at the March for Life, and lots of families with lots of kids, but it was interesting where he talked about the issue of abortion being part of a larger conversation about valuing family and doing things policy wise that do make it easier to have children, and even incentivize having children. Because in terms of long term prosperity and productivity, it’s kind of a necessary thing.

There was a time when I thought homeschoolers really were going to save the world, and this was the way they were going to do it, and they’re still having more kids on average. But it’s not the same, and it’s not enough to replace this enormous dearth and of course, it’s not just the United States. This is across the western world.

MAST: The Governor of Maryland said this week he wants to focus on uplifting men and boys, which sounds great. But part of the plan would be by making it easier for individuals who violate parole to have their records expunged, ostensibly making it easier to get jobs despite having been convicted of a crime. So what’s your take? Is this the way to uplift men and boys?

STONESTREET: You know, it could be, honestly and because there is a way—and this is something obviously that was near and dear to the heart of Chuck Colson—which is that we reframe our understanding of the justice system, not only to bring justice to people who need it but to also bring reconciliation to people who need it in relationships. So, kind of the strategy of being tough on crime sometimes reduced the understanding of crime to a criminal in the state, as if those were the only two parties that were involved in this. A criminal doesn’t commit a crime against the state. The state often acts like it’s the one that got offended. Sometimes it did, but most of the time, it’s happened to another—another member of the community, which creates a break in trust. And you can actually then figure out, well, we’re talking about not two parties, we’re talking about at least four parties, and there’s broken relationships all the way through it, and that’s what restoration actually looks like. And the vast majority, we’ve got to figure this out. The vast majority of people who do commit crimes aren't going to be a way for life, certainly not going to be executed. We wouldn’t say that it’s just if we executed everyone committed for a crime. So then that means at the end of the day, we’re returning people to our communities. So how do we do that? Of actually having a real strategy for restoration, which has to involve reconciliation and dealing with real parties. So this isn’t a choice.

I want to be really careful. I’m talking about the way we’ve done tough on crime, and then in reaction, it’s almost like all the way on the other side. We just want to be soft on crime, and then pretend that crime isn’t crime, and as long as the state says, “Well, I’m okay with it,” then nothing else needs to be done. There’s not a way forward, unless you repair relationships, unless restoration takes place.

The state alone can’t do that. This is why the church has played such a strategic role in lives. And then you also then have to have a vision for what a whole life is. This, by the way, is the same fundamental problem that plagues education in America, is we give a whole bunch of people an education without a clear understanding of what it is that we’re aiming for.

It’s kind of like deciding, you know what, I’m going to buy a bunch of computer parts and build computers. And you say, “Well, what’s your blueprint? What’s your goal? What's the computer going to look like?” I don’t know, I’m just going to throw the parts together, see how it goes. What kind of computer is that going to be? It’s not going to be a good one. So what we want to know is, what’s the goal? What are we aiming for? What does a whole restored life look like? What does a restored community look like? What does an uplifted man or boy, to use the language here of the Governor of Maryland, what does that look like? And then that’ll help you know what ingredients need to be. And spoiler alert, one of the ingredients is going to be dads. There’s not going to be a way to uplift men and boys without dads. There is none. Like, that's like trying to build a computer without a hard drive. It’s not going to actually be a computer at the end of the day. You’re not going to get to strong and restored men without dads or surrogate dads, at least.

MAST: In the past few days, we’ve had an executive order from President Trump barring transgender athletes from women’s sports. We’ve had former swimmers for the University of Pennsylvania filing a lawsuit against that university, Harvard, the Ivy League Council of Presidents and the NCAA over their experience sharing a team with transgender swimmer Lia (or William) Thomas. And where I live in Georgia, the Republican House Speaker introduced legislation that would protect girls from having to compete against boys and men in high school and college sports here.

So, sometimes it seems like we are headed toward some resolution in this matter: we know most Americans don’t support men competing against women in sports, and yet if we still need executive orders and lawsuits and bills, maybe we’ve not yet turned the corner. I’m curious as to your thoughts on where we are on the road back to reality?

STONESTREET: Well, we’re in a better place than we were six months ago, so let’s start there. And we’re in a better place than we were 12 months ago, and a lot of it has to do with courage. I said it on this program about another executive order—I think last week or the week before—that we have a lot of people to thank: Billboard Chris and JK Rowling and certainly Matt Walsh, because they were courageous, they were clear, they fought, they paid a lot of social costs for it.

What nags me over and over on this is that the church was so late to the game. And I mean that there were a lot of Christians that were right up front and were articulate and saying it. But man, this was one, folks, we dropped the ball on. We just didn't want to speak out, we didn’t want to offend people or whatever, and we didn’t stand up for the women. And I just look throughout history and see how the church stood up for women all the way through every time we collided with a pagan, harmful culture. And this one—there’s a lot, lot of folks that sat it out. So I think there are folks we should thank and there are folks that should be ashamed.

So we’re in a better place. And we did need an executive order in this case, but we’re still in the same place. And another way of saying it: you live by the executive order and then you die by the executive order. I mean, look, the first one that started all this, this is what, the third, or the fourth, specifically dealing with this issue from this administration. And it’s been, what, a couple weeks? But the first one came out the first day, which is, as far as the American government is concerned, there’s men and there’s women. And you know what? We needed that. We needed that executive order because of the aggressive way the false ideas about gender were being forced on all of us and so many different ways in so many different government agencies.

But then you’re looking at, are we really at a place where every four years we're going to redefine what a woman is? And are we really at a place where every four years the NCAA is going to go over here, and then going to go over there, and then all the State High School Associations are going to go one way? Is that really where we’re at? That’s a dizzying place to be, and that is an unsustainable place to be in the long run. I hope we’re not there. I hope that this is just the start, and there will be enough kind of cultural ballast to put up, in between now and then … great thinking, great planning, a way of recognizing, maybe wonderful medical help for young people struggling with gender dysphoria. And what I mean by that is real help, not the mutilation that goes by the name “care.” That’s what we need to beef it up. We don’t want to be a nation ruled by executive orders. That’s not a sustainable path.

BROWN: It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I want to talk commercials …Two best friends from the Christian University, Biola, created one of the top three Doritos ads for the Crash the Super Bowl Contest. Millions of eyes will be on their spot, called “Abduction,” and they’re quoted saying, “Our biggest takeaway is that you can truly achieve your wildest dreams so long as you never lose faith in yourself, your vision, your loved ones, your community and God.”

John, do you think they’ll use their 60 second platform for Jesus?

STONESTREET: You know, I love when young people do something super creative so kudos to these students. Shout out to Biola, in so many ways, such a great school. As far as am I watching the game? The answer is yes. Who am I rooting for? The answer is no one, because I saw this game last year. And no, no, no, I'm not as cynical as most Americans. I think it’s interesting. I mean, you have a quarterback at the top of his game and you have a running back on the other side, at the top of his game. Both are not just doing remarkable things, but spectacular things. So, as someone who doesn't have a vested interest, I had my hopes artificially inflated with the Washington Commanders, and then dashed. But, hope for the future. This promises to be an interesting game, and I think it’s exciting. And there are people on both sides of the ball who have sincere faiths and have expressed that. So I think we can expect to see some of it.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John!

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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