The World and Everything In It — April 6, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!Recent mass shootings has Congress talking about more legislation to regulate guns.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also a certain Bible translation of a certain Bible passage is being used to justify abortion. We’ll talk about the problem with that.

Plus WORLD’S Classic Book of the Month for April.

And WORLD commentator Kim Henderson on media distortion about voting in Mississippi.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, April 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Yellen pitches global corporate tax floor » Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the Biden administration is working to convince other countries to raise corporate taxes, or at least the tax floor on corporations.

YELLEN: We’re working with G-20 nations to agree to a global minimum corporate tax rate that can stop the race to the bottom. 

President Biden is planning on trillions in new spending and wants to pay for it, in part, by raising corporate taxes. He has proposed hiking the corporate rate from 21 to 28 percent.

Analysts say that could drive some companies to leave the United States and relocate to a country with a lower rate. So the administration wants a global minimum rate to help bar the doors.

The tax hike would partially undo the Trump administration’s cut from 35 percent. According to the Tax Foundation, that reduction in 2017 took the U.S. corporate tax rate from the highest among the 37 advanced economies to now the 13th highest.

Texas Gov. sits out first pitch in protest of MLB political statement » Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is hitting back at Major League Baseball over its foray into politics in Georgia. WORLD’s Paul Butler reports.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: Just hours before the Texas Rangers played their first home game of the year in Arlington, Abbott announced he would not throw the ceremonial first pitch as planned.

The Republican governor said that in response to MLB’s decision to move this year’s All-Star game out of the Atlanta area in protest of Georgia’s new election law. The league’s Commissioner Rob Manfred called the move—quote—“the best way to demonstrate our values.”

The law installs new rules, including certain restrictions on voting by mail. Republicans say it’s about making future elections more secure. Democrats say it infringes on voting rights and makes it more difficult for minorities to vote.

Gov. Abbott says it’s not Major League Baseball’s place to take sides in that debate. In a statement, he said, “It is shameful that America’s pastime is not only being influenced by partisan” politics, “but also perpetuating false political narratives.”

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

Minneapolis police chief testifies that Chauvin violated policy » The trial of former Minneapolis police officers Derek Chauvin resumed on Monday. The jury heard from the city’s chief of police, Medaria Arradondo.

He testified that Chauvin violated departmental policy by pinning his knee on George Floyd’s neck and holding it there long after Floyd stopped resisting.

ARRADONDO: That by no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy. It is not part of our training, and it certainly is not part of our ethics or our values. 

Arradondo, the city’s first Black chief, fired Chauvin and three other officers the day after Floyd’s death last May, and in June called it “murder.”

Chauvin’s defense attorney Eric Nelson argued that Chauvin did follow policy and that drugs in Floyds system may have caused his death. Nelson is heard here questioning Dr. Bradford Lengenfeld, the ER physician that declared Floyd dead.

NELSON: And there are many things that cause hypoxia that would still be considered asphyxiation, agreed?
LENGENFELD: Correct.
NELSON: Drug use, certain drugs, can cause hypoxia, agreed?
LENGENFELD: Yes. 

But Arredondo testified that the pressure Chauvin applied to Floyd’s neck did not appear to be light to moderate, as called for under the department’s neck-restraint policy. And also said Chauvin failed in his duty to render first aid before the ambulance arrived and violated policy requiring officers to de-escalate tense situations and minimize use of force.

Arkansas governor vetoes protections for minors » Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed a bill on Monday that would have blocked irreversible transgender procedures on minors. WORLD’s Leigh Jones has that story.

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: The bill could have made Hutchinson’s state the first to safeguard children from the life-altering effects of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex change surgeries. But instead he vetoed the legislation on Monday.

He said he would have signed the bill if it prohibited only transgender surgery on minors. But he said it went too far to interfere with the relationship between physicians and parents. He also did not like that it would not have made exceptions for children already receiving hormone treatments.

But Arkansas is one of few states in which the legislature can override the governor’s veto with a simple majority. So the bill could still become law.

The governor did recently approve laws protecting women’s sports from transgender participation and preserving doctors’ rights to conscientiously object to certain treatments.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

Baylor Bears win men’s college basketball championship » The Baylor Bears are men’s college basketball champions.

AUDIO: complete college basketball’s greatest rebound and rebuild with a championship!

Baylor knocked off undefeated Gonzaga last night 86-to-70.

Point guard Jared Butler scored 22 points for the Bears.

After running to a 19-point lead early, Baylor never let Gonzaga get any closer than nine. Butler made four 3-pointers and added seven assists, and was named the Final Four’s most outstanding player.

With that win, the Bears bring the program’s first ever national title back home to Waco, Texas.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the latest push for gun control legislation.

Plus, Kim Henderson on misconceptions about voting in Mississippi.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 6th of April, 2021.

You’re listening to World Radio and we’re so glad you are! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher

First up on The World and Everything in It: gun control.

In the last month, mass shootings have rocked communities on opposite sides of the country.

On March 16th, a man in Atlanta stormed into three spas and shot and killed eight people. A week after that, a man in Boulder, Colorado, opened fire in a supermarket and killed 10.

Democrats have used these high-profile crimes to renew calls for gun-control laws they say will reduce them. WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg reports.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: On a Saturday morning in Denver last June, Isabella Thallas and her boyfriend took his dog for a walk.

When the dog stopped to defecate on a public sidewalk outside an apartment, a man came outside and confronted the couple.

Then he went back inside, grabbed an AK-47 and aimed it through a window at them. He allegedly shot and killed Isabella Thallas and seriously injured her boyfriend.

Isabella Thallas’s mother, Ana, says she was supposed to meet up with Isabella later that morning.

THALLAS: And I was going to give her her birthday present. And that was my last communication with Isabella. 

Police said the gunman obtained his weapon illegally. He’d stolen it from a friend: a Denver police officer.

In the wake of the tragedy, Thallas lobbied for a bill that would require Colorado gun owners to report a lost or stolen firearm within five days of it disappearing.

If they don’t, gun owners could face fines and a misdemeanor charge.

Yesterday, Colorado’s Democratically-controlled Congress sent the bill to the governor’s desk. It’s called the “Isabella Act”,

THALLAS: This just gives us a sense of accountability, responsibility, and repercussion. 

In the midst of events like Isabella Thallas’s murder and the Atlanta and Boulder shootings, Democrats on Capitol Hill argue the nation as a whole needs stricter gun laws, not just individual states.

A dozen blue states like Colorado have already expanded background checks for gun purchases. Another 19 states have “Red Flag Laws.” Those allow police, family members, or medical professionals to petition a court to temporarily take weapons away from a troubled person.

Capitol Hill Democrats argue all states need these laws.

On the House floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it’s possible to protect the Second Amendment and enforce stricter, federal gun laws.

PELOSI: We respect our Constitution, but we also say that the Constitution talks about well-regulated. 

So House Democrats passed two gun control bills last month.

The first is H.R. 1446. It increases the amount of time a licensed firearms dealer has to wait for a customer’s FBI background check before selling a gun.

Right now, a dealer can sell a gun after three days if the FBI doesn’t get them a finished background check before then. H.R. 1446 would extend that wait time indefinitely, although it stipulates the FBI is supposed to return the background check within 10 days.

The second bill is H.R. 8. It would expand background checks by requiring all sales to go through a licensed gun dealer who can run background checks. Any private sale between neighbors, coworkers, or friends would be illegal.

Eight House Republicans voted in favor of H.R.8, but the majority opposed. Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson said the bill will just burden law-abiding citizens.

HINSON: I think we can all agree guns should not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands, but these bills do nothing to stop the bad guys from illegally purchasing guns to reduce gun violence meaningfully. 

Last year, gun violence fatalities accounted for just over 1 percent of all deaths in the United States. More than half of those deaths were suicides. The other half were attributed to homicides or accidents.

Some Second Amendment policy analysts argue H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446 won’t dent criminal gun violence.

Amy Swearer is a scholar at the Heritage Foundation. She says criminals go around legal ways of getting weapons. Gun laws should focus on cutting off those routes instead of broadly addressing all gun owners.

SWEARER: Statistically, when you look at gun crime in most major cities, especially, it’s a small number of repeat offenders, who keep getting guns through the black market. They’re not getting guns in the same way as law abiding citizens. And so you have to address it in a very different way. You can focus on violence prevention programs, you can focus on, you know, prosecuting illegal gun sales and illegal gun activity. It’s getting at some of those root causes, things like H.R. 8 simply aren’t doing.

Christopher Butler is a pastor at the Chicago Embassy Church. He argues for more gun control laws.

But he agrees there are many root issues contributing to gun violence, especially spiritual and societal problems exaggerated after a year of lockdowns and racial strife.

BUTLER: You now have a situation where folks are no longer in school, even some of the service industry jobs that a lot of people had, those were gone. Then you had the issue of police violence, which complicated the capacity of the police to engage. So all these things were happening in 2020. Those problems are real. And gun violence is just one manifestation of that. 

Christopher Butler says when people feel hopeless, wielding a weapon can seem like a solution.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer has vowed to bring the House legislation to the Senate floor for a vote. But, right now, it’s unclear whether the bills would win the 10 necessary Republican votes to pass.

Senate Democrats have also proposed an assault weapons ban.

At the same time, the Biden administration says it’s crafting a series of executive actions. Those could include a so-called assault weapon ban, expanded background checks, and a ban on self-assembled weapons called “ghost guns.”

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up, abortion and the Bible.

Some abortion advocates have found a novel argument to try to bolster their side.

Where’d they find it? In the Bible, oddly enough, a specific translation of it: the New International Version, 2011 edition.

The troubling translation comes from the book of Numbers. Flip to Chapter 5, and find verse 27.

EICHER: And there you will read what a man in ancient Israel should do if he suspects his wife has committed adultery, but he lacks proof: Bring the woman to the priest, who will prepare a mixture of water and dust for her to drink.

Then the translation goes on to explain that the drink will cause her abdomen to swell and … crucially, it says … her womb will miscarry. Abortion supporters point to that passage as God-ordained miscarriage.

REICHARD: But there’s more than one problem with that argument, including the interpretation of the original Hebrew passage.

WORLD reporter Leah Hickman dug into the translation dispute and wrote about it in the latest issue of WORLD Magazine. She joins us now to explain what she found. Good morning, Leah!

LEAH HICKMAN, REPORTER: Good morning, Mary.

REICHARD: Well, let’s just start with the passage itself. If listeners were to pick up their own Bibles and look up this passage, they’ll likely find it doesn’t sound exactly like what they just heard. So tell us where this passage is translated using the word miscarry and where it’s not.

HICKMAN: So a literal translation of the original Hebrew would say that a woman’s abdomen will swell and her thigh will waste away, and most English translations, including ESV and the NASB, stick to this interpretation pretty closely. The ESV says her thigh shall fall away, and the NASB says her thigh will triple. But actually, even the 1984 edition of  NIV also stuck with a translation very similar to this, but somewhere between 1984 and 2011 the translation committee chose to make the switch to translating the passage as a miscarriage. And that same year, the common English Bible also came out with a take that interpreted the event as a miscarriage, too.

REICHARD: Well, you interviewed four different scholars about the Hebrew text and its interpretation. So start with those who say the term miscarry is accurate.

HICKMAN: I spoke with Bruce Waltke. He’s a member of the NIV translation team. He was on the team around the time of the switch. And he said he really liked the change because until he saw it as a miscarriage the passage just made no sense to him. So he said the change was built on research that came up between the 1984 and the 2011 versions, including a new Hebrew and Aramaic lexicon, which is actually today’s leading lexicon in Hebrew, and also studies and commentaries that describe the drink as having abortive effects. So when I asked him if he had heard of abortion advocates using this verse to argue for abortion, he said he hadn’t, and he was actually shocked that they would use this to say abortion is okay. But to him, the miscarriage interpretation was still helpful for understanding this passage, which is pretty confusing.

I also talked with Mervyn Richardson. He’s the editor of English version of that leading lexicon I just mentioned, and he said, he should have said abortion, not miscarriage, when translating that lexicon from the original German into English. But he said still that the translation of miscarriage is speculative when it comes to this particular passage because original Hebrew is so obscure, and he did admit that maybe you should have stuck to a literal translation and just said that the meaning was uncertain. But he still said he wouldn’t use the verse to justify abortion. Because saying this event is a miscarriage is only one view of the very unusual verse.

REICHARD: Other scholars note that Hebrew actually has two other terms for the word miscarry and neither of them are used here. So what did they tell you about the interpretation of this passage?

HICKMAN: I spoke with Vern Poythress. He’s a member of the ESV Oversight Committee, and also Wayne Grudem, who’s general editor of the ESV Study Bible. And they told me that this particular Hebrew phrase doesn’t appear elsewhere in the Bible. So interpreting it as a miscarriage is purely postulation. And it really just involves assuming that this unusual Hebrew phrase is a euphemism. What he said, though, they pointed out that when the Bible does refer to a miscarriage, it uses two other expressions that are more obviously talking about miscarriage. So if it really were a miscarriage, why didn’t they use that word in the original Hebrew? But yeah, both Poythress and Grudem said that NIV’s interpretation just rules out other possible explanations of what actually is happening here.

REICHARD: One final question here, Leah, what do we know about this particular 2011 translation of the NIV? And then some of the other less common translations that use the word miscarry and interpret it that way is is this a case of imposing a belief onto scripture?

HICKMAN: Well, they’re definitely imposing the belief that this passage is talking about a miscarriage, but it didn’t seem to me like the NIV team was trying to push a pro-abortion narrative. We do know that the common English Bible which also uses this translation of miscarriage, that’s backed by some pretty liberal denominations and it’s definitely a case of pro abortion groups imposing a pro-abortion perspective on scripture. They often cherry picked verses like this without paying attention to the pro-life stance of the whole entire rest of the Bible. And it’s just one way they attempt to attack the arguments of pro-lifers who are often Christians.

RICHARD: Leah Hickman is a reporter for World Magazine and World Digital and we’ll put a link to her story in today’s transcript. Thank you so much, Leah.

HICKMAN: Thanks for having me, Mary!

NICK EICHER, HOST: A small-business owner in Georgia got the kind of late-night alert you just don’t want:

There was a break-in at his restaurant.

As it happened, when the alarm sounded, that must’ve panicked the burglar, and when he couldn’t get anything out of the cash register, he just left.

Of course, he left behind broken glass, but otherwise he left empty-handed.

The owner showed up to clean up the mess, and at first he was angry, but then thought, it’s Easter weekend, what would Jesus do?

Owner Carl Wallace told Britain’s SkyNews:

WALLACE: You know, you start feeling bad for the, for the robber that, you know, he risked his life, he risked going to jail, and he didn’t make away with one penny.

Felt badly for him, so instead of calling police, Wallace took to social media to try to let the would-be burglar know he’d like to offer him some counseling and a job.

WALLACE: You know, what are your goals in life? You know, if what you’re doing today, is it going to set you up for the goals that you want for in the future? But we have not heard from the individual, unfortunately, uh, we would like for him to come forward and, and sit down and talk.

I’m a person who believes everything happens for a reason, he says. We are all just one good choice away from a completely different life.

Here’s to him for making the offer.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, April 6th.

Thanks for joining us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It.  Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming up next: WORLD’s Classic Book of the Month.

Larry Crabb was an author and Christian counselor. He died in February after years of battling cancer and other health problems. Of his 25 books, one of the most influential was Effective Biblical Counseling.

EICHER: And that’s  our Classic Book of the Month for April. Here’s WORLD’s Emily Whitten.

EMILY WHITTEN, REPORTER: Psychologist Larry Crabb was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1944 to Christian parents, but he drifted from his faith as a young adult. After earning a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Illinois, Crabb came back to Christianity with new vigor. Why? Partly because he saw a gaping hole in his secular studies. Here’s Crabb in 2017 at the C.S. Lewis Foundation Summer Institute.

LARRY CRABB: I was looking for answers that Christianity didn’t provide in psychology. Five years of graduate school disillusioned me. Secular psychology isn’t going to be speaking into the deepest parts of my soul…I never heard the word love once in my five years of graduate school.

One could summarize Crabb’s work as seeking to bring Christian love back to the center of counseling. It’s a central theme in our Classic Book of the Month for April, Effective Biblical Counseling, published in 1977.

Two Christian authors helped reshape Crabb’s vision of counseling. First, Francis Schaeffer’s “infinite personal God” helped him see God—and all of life—as deeply personal. Secular professors and psychologists talked about applying techniques to clients. But Crabb began to see clients as friends and relationship as central to their growth. Again, here’s Crabb.

LARRY CRABB: In private practice, all of my efforts to provide counseling whenever any real change happened, it had next to nothing to do with my skill, had everything to do with the quality of relationship I was offering my clients.

Crabb also says Christians counselors seek a different goal from secular psychologists—the goal of Christian maturity. That means instead of asking, “What will make me happy?” we should ask, “What will please God?” This brings us to the second influential author, C. S. Lewis.

LARRY CRABB: As I continued to read Lewis…he says in one place, every Christian is called to become a little Christ. It’s not simply a matter of becoming behaviorally holy—of course it’s right to do the right things—but there’s issues of the heart, and longings and desires, and the spirit flesh battle within me.

Effective Biblical Counseling attempts to answer that question, combining Biblical and secular insights. So, how can we become like Christ? In the book, Crabb clarifies that some Christians will still need professional help, including well-researched techniques and medication. But he hoped to equip an army of everyday Christians in churches around the world to offer help to hurting people.

We can see Crabb’s vision at work several ways today. Many seminaries offer counseling classes and degrees. Christians can find Biblically-minded counselors in many churches and in organizations like the CCEF—the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation.

Licensed counselor and author Christina Fox studied Crabb’s books at Palm Beach Atlantic University, and she says his work impacted her in important ways.

FOX: Currently right now I’m working with my church on developing a lay counseling ministry. So I can be thankful to his work in that, because it really helped me within work in women’s ministry, small group ministry, in my own personal context of helping people within the body of Christ work through their troubles and to see how God is at work in them through that.

Fox had been a Christian for many years when Crabb challenged her to think more Biblically about her suffering and disappointment. Here she reads a short but impactful passage from Crabb’s book, Shattered Dreams.

FOX: God does want us happy. He’s gone to great lengths to ensure our eternal joy. But the happiness he provides now is the strange happiness of longing for what we were designed to experience but must wait to fully enjoy. It’s the happiness of serving a God we trust enough to let us cry today knowing He has promised to wipe our tears tomorrow. That was really helpful for me personally, and that of course, helps me as I help others.

That’s not to say Effective Biblical Counseling is perfect. Crabb’s chapter critiquing wrong counseling ideas from the 1970s feels somewhat dated, and at times he references obscure academic ideas and authors. That said, it’s still a good resource. Caring moms, dads, grandparents, and friends will find the basics of Biblical counseling clearly stated in the book.

Crabb continued to develop his ideas about Biblical counseling throughout his ministry. But many of his insights never changed, like his focus on love. Warren Smith’s interview last September with Crabb would be a great place to hear some of his later thoughts. In this clip, Crabb talks about his final book, Waiting For Heaven.

CRABB: And that to me is the exact central point that I think the book is built on. Dostoevsky in Brothers Karamazov the key person there was asked, what is hell? And he said, hell is the suffering of being unable to love. What’s the abundant life? It’s an abundance of the ability to love, thanks to the work of the spirit. 

Maybe like me, you often find yourself tongue tied when trying to counsel others. Maybe when someone around you suffers, you always seem to say the wrong thing, or you say nothing to keep from making things worse.

Effective Biblical Counseling helps us take the focus off our failings and focus on God’s power in our relationships. Crabb can help you find better ways of engaging friends who struggle—and prepare you to face your own trials with a more Biblical perspective. For that reason and many others, I hope you’ll get to know Larry Crabb a little better this month.

I’m Emily Whitten.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, April 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Media distortion is rampant these days on the question of what it takes to vote.

Here’s WORLD commentator Kim Henderson.

KIM HENDERSON, COMMENTATOR: Georgia’s voting laws saga reminded me of an Associated Press article that made the rounds last fall. The title was, “In Mississippi, Black voters face many hurdles. ” Its words made their way into the minds of readers of The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, the Waco Tribune-Herald, The Seattle Times, and more than a few paper points in between. Yes, the headline even reached the good folks pouring over the Petroskey News-Review. (That’s in Michigan.)

Wondering just what they read? Here’s the lowdown in lifted lines. In Mississippi, the struggle isn’t over. People have to fight for the vote. We’re drifting into the past. We’re even frozen in the past. And the road to voting in our state? Well, it’s like the one in Neshoba County where three voting rights activists were murdered in 1964—quote—“just as crooked now as it was then.”

Wow.

Let me clarify up front that I’m for owning Mississippi’s history. But owning something is different from stagnating in it. Jackson radio talk show host Kim Wade, who is black, once described it to me like this: “There seems to be a concerted effort by some type of invisible hand to constantly revisit the physical harm and degradation of the Jim Crow era.”

The AP article, produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, seemed to have that invisible hand pushing all the usual Mississippi buttons. Descriptions of civil rights era atrocities. Check. A quote from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Check. A desolate photo from the Delta and another from a bar touting a Confederate flag. Check, check. Then, for good measure, the piece included an outhouse mention and a remark made by segregationist Theodore Bilbo during an election campaign 74 years ago. Check.

Noticeably absent from the piece was any response from Mississippi election officials. According to Kendra James, a communications assistant in the Secretary of State’s office, they have no record of the author contacting them for comments.

I decided to investigate one of the article’s main beefs, the “burden” of getting a voter ID card. Two calls and about five minutes later, I was set up to get one for free using free transportation that would arrive at my front door within 24 hours. Perhaps it’s time we educate ourselves about what “burdens” and “government-created barriers” really look like.

Reporters who paint the South in sepia-toned images from 60 years ago, well, that’s easy work. You’re missing out on real-time crises you could use your grants to investigate. Fatherlessness is wrecking our black-white-and-all-colors-in-between culture. The welfare system disincentivizes work and keeps people living below that poverty line you highlighted. And those two things together factor into the high disenfranchisement percentage you ridicule.

Then you slipped in that point about a black politician being able to rise only so far in Mississippi. Well, for the record, my state representative is black, my statesenator is black, and my congressman is black. But I guess that kind of reporting might require more than a quick drive through and a camera with one lens.

I’m Kim Henderson.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Infrastructure spending. We’ll tell you what’s in the president’s plan … how much is actual infrastructure and how much isn’t … and how he plans to pay for all of it.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Psalm 34 tells us, “Happy are those who take refuge in the Lord.”

Go now in grace and peace.

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.