The World and Everything in It - July 16, 2021

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Well, he’s taking a break from his podcast for the month of July, but we will talk today with Albert Mohler of The Briefing.

NICK EICHER, HOST: He joins us for Culture Friday.

Also today a new streaming series based on a popular children’s book.

And a Spoken Word artist whose mission is to point fans to God’s Word.

BROWN: It’s Friday, July 16th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covington has today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: 911 calls reveal panic, confusion following South Fla. condo collapse » Newly released recordings of 911 calls after a condo building collapse in Surfside, Florida reveal the panic and confusion of survivors.

SOUND: Okay, you’re in your apartment right now? Yes, but half the building’s gone. Okay, are you able to get out through the staircase? No, no, the staircase is closed.

Onlookers in nearby buildings described the scene to dispatchers around 2 a.m. on June 24th.

SOUND: We’re getting a lot of calls over there. What are you seeing? A very large building collapse, like the building next to us is gone. Half of the building is gone.

Part of the building remained standing until demolition crews brought it down to aid in the search and rescue effort.

At least 97 people died in the collapse, and a handful of others are still missing.

Officials have not yet determined the cause of the collapse, but there were several previous warnings of structural damage at the 40-year-old building.

Biden hosts German chancellor at White House » German Chancellor Angela Merkel made what was likely her last official visit to Washington Thursday. President Biden told reporters...

BIDEN: It’s a great pleasure to welcome Chancellor Merkel back into the White House. She’s been in the Oval Office many times. She’s been a great friend.

After nearly 16 years on the job, Merkel is not seeking another term in Germany’s Sept. elections.

Prior to the meeting, the chancellor, heard here through an interpreter, said the two leaders would talk about how to further strengthen the friendship between the two nations.

MERKEL (interpreter): I’m more than aware of the contribution of America to a free and democratic Germany. So I’m very much looking forward to a deepening of relations yet again through our talks.

The leaders were expected to discuss the global pandemic response, China and a Russian gas pipeline that Washington opposes.

The United States has long argued that the Nord Stream 2 project will threaten European energy security by increasing the continent’s reliance on Russian gas.

Some worry that will give Moscow a stronger hand in the region. But Biden recently waived sanctions against German entities involved in the project, a move that angered many in Congress.

WHO chief says it was ‘premature’ to rule out COVID lab leak » The head of the World Health Organization has admitted that it was premature to rule out the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said Thursday that his organization’s asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the virus.

That marked a rare departure from his usual deference to Beijing.

A WHO investigative team traveled to Wuhan, China, the original epicenter, earlier this year to look into its origins. But Ghebreyesus said the team had trouble getting access to certain data.

But even with limited information, the team concluded that a laboratory leak was—quote—“extremely unlikely.”

Ghebreyesus said Thursday that there had been a “premature push” to rule it out. He added—his words—“I was a lab technician myself, I’m an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen. It’s common.”

In May, President Biden ordered a review of U.S. intelligence to assess the possibility that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Unemployment claims hit new pandemic low » The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits has reached its lowest level since the start of the pandemic.

Thursday’s Labor Department report showed unemployment claims fell by 26,000 last week to 360,000.

As the economy bounces back, many forecasters have predicted that the economy will expand this year by roughly 7%. That would be the most robust calendar-year growth since 1984.

But the rebound has been slowed somewhat by a worker shortage.

To incentivize people to return to work, roughly half the states plan to stop paying so-called enhanced unemployment benefits by the end of this month. That is a $300-a-week federal check, on top of regular state jobless aid.

25,000 troops deployed to quell South Africa riots, 117 dead » In South Africa, the government has deployed 25,000 troops to help quell weeklong riots sparked by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has more.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: In a show of strength, a convoy of more than a dozen armored personnel carriers hauled soldiers into Gauteng province, home to the city of Johannesburg.

The government said 10,000 soldiers were on the streets by Thursday morning patrolling alongside police. The South African National Defence Force had also called up all of its reserve force of 12,000 troops.

The unrest erupted last week after Zuma began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court. That after he refused to comply with a court order to testify at a state-backed inquiry of allegations of corruption while he was president from 2009 to 2018.

Protests quickly escalated into violence and looting.

More than a hundred people have died.

And police have arrested more than 2,000 people for theft and vandalism.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday.

Plus, speaking the message of Christ.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, July 16th, 2021.

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 Culture Friday and we have a special guest. You know him from The Briefing podcast, which is on its July hiatus. You probably also know him as an author and theologian … president of Southern Seminary and a member of the WORLD board of directors—Albert Mohler.

And I didn’t want to leave off another key biographical fact: He is summer camp director—special camp for Mohler grandkids—so I appreciate your taking a moment away from that work to pick up the phone.

Good morning to you!

ALBERT MOHLER, GUEST: Well, Nick and Myrna, good to talk with you. And yes, Mary and I are enjoying some time in the summer with our kids and grandkids. And it's pretty spectacular to have little ones about.

EICHER: I have to ask about the Southern Baptist Convention. You ran for president in a three-way race this summer, and then it was a two-man runoff and you weren’t among them. Can you draw conclusions about where SBCers are that they gave the presidency to Ed Litton?

MOHLER: Well, I'm not yet sure. You know, a little distance is going to be necessary. By the time we got to the convention and kind of felt that the tenor of the times, it was clear that an establishment candidate was not going to be the choice. I could do that math. But it is interesting, it was a fairly close race, if you look between Mike Stone running as a candidate of what's known as the Conservative Baptist network. And then Ed Litton, running is kind of a continuation of some younger pastors, and it's still a close thing in the SBC. It's a big question. I want to be clear, it's not a big question of whether the SBC is going to swing into becoming a mainline Protestant denomination. That's not it. But there are some subtle issues that won't stay subtle for long.

EICHER: Issues like what, for instance? Can you say?

MOHLER: Oh, sure. I think the biggest issue is the extent to which the Southern Baptist Convention can somehow rebrand itself in the context of increasingly hostile culture. And I do not believe we can do so. I don't believe that possible. There are always issues we have to deal with. But the bottom line is that Southern Baptists and others who are going to hold to any form of biblical Christianity are going to be increasingly seen as obstacles, as impediments, as regressive in this society that is so fast secularizing, and, frankly, moving left faster than anyone could imagine. And so there are limitations, I think, to what can be done here. And I think the issues we'll undoubtedly discuss today will help to make that clear. I think convictional conservative Christians are in the predicament of being considered by the world, to be what we are not accustomed to experiencing and that is, they're looking at us as people on the wrong side of history, people on the wrong side of morality, people on the wrong side of all the revolutions that are running their course these days. And I think there are limited options. I think being true to Biblical Christianity is is the only way to justify the existence of the Southern Baptist Convention, and there will be a heavy price for that.

EICHER: You mentioned “hostile culture,” that leads to one of the issues I wanted to raise: Did you happen to see the video that went viral: the San Francisco Gay Men’s Choir, performing a piece that’s subsequently been called tongue in cheek‚ but the idea that “we’re coming for your children.” Did you see that?

MOHLER: I did see it, Nick. And no, it wasn’t tongue in cheek. It was cheeky, as the British might say, but it wasn't tongue in cheek. They meant exactly what they were saying. And by the way, they have every reason to expect that they are winning this. They have every reason to expect they will have our children and our grandchildren, because they are winning in that larger cultural context. And, of course, so many Christian families and parents seem to be blissfully unaware of the fact that we are losing this because insofar as our children — and you can put just about any age on that — as they are increasingly living in a world that is defined by the cultural left, by the cultural production engines of Hollywood, and the symbolic industries of Silicon Valley. The reality is, they have reason to believe they can get to our children and they intend to.

BROWN: Interesting you say that, because I’d run across this story about the Chicago Public School system: when students return to classrooms this Fall in person, they’ll have a new item on their school supply lists: condoms! The board of education voted to make this mandatory for every public school with students as young as 5th graders. We’re talking 10 years old in some cases.

The state’s Department of Health calls the decision necessary to safeguard student health. I wonder about that definition.

MOHLER: Well, it is very interesting, Myrna, you used the word health, because that has been co-opted by the progressives, as they style themselves in our society so as to mean health defined in light of the new culture, sexual gender revolution. And so you have reproductive health, a woman's reproductive health now as a euphemism for abortion, and under the guise of sex education and the sexual "health" of children. Yes, it makes perfect sense to the experimenters with our children that they would put condoms in the hands of fifth graders.

You may know of the sex education controversy at the Dalton School, a very prestigious private school in New York City, where first graders are being told about things that I'm not even sure I should mention on this program. And in all of this as a part of health. Now, we shouldn't be really surprised by this. Because in the early 20th century, you look at the effort done to the Bolshevik Revolution, for instance, or in, in Nazi Germany, "health" became a euphemism for a vision of society. And that's exactly what we see taking place.

And I think American parents, and I'll include grandparents in this category, have to be very aware of the fact that the entire symbolic system of the society is now increasingly hostile to Biblical Christianity. And so the language used by many members of Congress, the worldview, the federal bureaucracy, the worldview of those who are not only teaching, but producing the teachers in our schools, and those who are running the schools, they're all sold out to this, this is a moral cause. And I think people, often conservative Christians fail to understand that what we face are people driven by a moral cause. They intend to revolutionize the entire world. And by the way, you have to start with the kids. It always starts with the kids.

EICHER: I want to switch gears now. I know you grew up in Florida, which has a large Cuban-American community. So I thought this might be a story that would be of special interest to you, this uprising inside Cuba. We heard, “down with the dictatorship!” We heard, “we want liberty!” This is a hard-core totalitarian state, and this uprising surprised me.

MOHLER: Yes, Nick, I did grow up with Cuban immigrants, both in Central Florida and also in South Florida where I went to high school and many of them have come fleeing the unrest that led to Castro in 1959. and thereafter. And there's a sense in which, Yes, I expected that at some point—at some point—these kind of protests would arise simply because of the absolute corruption, incompetence, and exhaustion of the communist regime now that both of the Castro's are basically off the scene. But thinking that it might happen in the last several days. No, that caught me by surprise. And this should give encouragement to us all. No one knows what the Communist Party is going to do there in Cuba. It shot his own people before. But you know, it's very interesting to have people hit the streets in numerous cities throughout Cuba, this past Sunday and cry out. "We are not afraid, we want freedom." That's the very cry that gave birth to the United States. And that's a that's a human cry we well understand and we should honor.

EICHER: Albert Mohler, host of The Briefing, president of Southern Seminary, an author and theologian and public intellectual. Enjoyed hearing from you.

BROWN: Thank you for giving us a few minutes today. Now go back and enjoy your grandkids!

MOHLER: Thank you, Nick and Myrna. Great to be with you. And now, yes, after this conversation, I turn to arranging fishing on the lake and reading a book about tractors. God bless you all.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Hawaii is introducing a new state lottery.

Now, there’s nothing unusual about that. Many states, as you know, have lotteries. And of course, there are a lot of ethical questions surrounding government sponsored gambling.

But the new Hawaii lottery figures to be less controversial—in the sense that the winners will not receive huge cash payouts from their fellow citizens. No cash payouts, but rather goats.

Right, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources is clearing the goats out of a park where they’re considered an invasive species.

And those goats will need new homes.

The state will hold a random lottery on July 28th. If you’re one of the winners, you’ll have to take at least 20 goats, but no more than 50.

And you’ll have to have a large enclosed trailer to transport your lottery, ah, winnings.

Guess these goats are about as invasive as state revenue schemes.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, July 16th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: seeking truth.

Too many entertainment options for kids emphasize following their heart or being the best they can be. But a new series streaming on Disney+ hints at a higher purpose.

Here’s reviewer Collin Garbarino.

Reynie: What’s in there?
Number Two: Truly, one of the preeminent ethicist, moralists, and scientists of our time. Mr. Benedict.

COLLIN GARBARINO, REVIEWER: The Mysterious Benedict Society is based on the popular children’s book series by Trenton Lee Stewart. In the show, the city of Stonetown suffers from something called “The Emergency.” 

Reynie: I’m just feeling a little anxious I guess. I’ve been waking up like that lately. It just feels like something bad is about to happen, every morning.

Everything seems to be going wrong, but no one can pinpoint why.

Ms. Perumal: That's The Emergency.

Reynie: Like it’s all falling apart, and no one can help. Everyone’s just scared all the time.

Ms. Perumal: Everyone’s preparing for the worst.

Reynie is a lonely, gifted child living in the Stonetown orphanage who wants to find a place to fit in. He thinks he has a chance when he enters a contest to win a scholarship. The contest involves a series of tests, but it turns out there’s no scholarship. The mysterious Mr. Benedict, played by Emmy winner Tony Hale, sponsored the tests in order to assemble a team of very special children.

Mr. Benedict: There we are. Hello. I’m the aforementioned Mr. Benedict. (chuckles)

Reynie: Hello, sir.

Mr. Benedict: Hello. Ah. Reynie, Sticky, Kate. Ah. I’m so glad you’re here. Please come in.

Each of the children on the team has a talent that makes them indispensable to Mr. Benedict. Reynie is the unspoken and somewhat reluctant leader of the group. He’s a genius when it comes to solving problems. Sticky is a walking encyclopedia, and he has perfect recall of everything he sees and reads. Kate trained as an acrobat in the circus. She carries a bucket filled with things to help the group get out of a jam.

Constance: This place is ugly and smells like eggs.

And then there’s Constance.

Constance: It’s disgusting.

Constance’s only discernible talent is a gift for complaining.

Mr. Benedict: Ah. Here we are. Friends, allow me to introduce you to your fourth, Constance Contraire.

Constance: Actually, the smell might be coming from this guy.

Mr. Benedict has discovered someone sending subliminal messages from a nearby boarding school. 

Mr. Benedict: We suffer under something called “The Emergency.” A rapidly escalating state of panic where the truth itself is under attack. And I’m convinced that this emergency is a fiction created by one person.

These messages are sowing fear and disinformation in the minds of the people. He needs these four special youngsters to infiltrate the school and find a way to stop the messages.

Mr. Benedict: Now as I mentioned earlier, the signals are coming from the Institute on Harbor Island. Heavily guarded. Access to it is almost exclusively limited to incoming students.

Reynie: That’s why it has to be children.

Mr. Benedict: Exactly, which is why I could never get near the island. But you can. You can.

All this talk of The Emergency might sound a little heavy, but the show is lots of fun and something the whole family can enjoy together. The series contains a little action, but nothing violent. The institute is a little creepy with its confusing doublespeak, but it’s not scary.

Jillson: Rules? There are virtually none. You can wear whatever you want that abides by the standards. You can bathe as much or as little as you like, as long as you are clean. You can keep the lights on all the way up to lights out at 10:00, if you choose, and …

Jackson: You can go wherever you want, as long as you stay on the paths.

Trenton Lee Stewart won WORLD’s 2017 Children’s Novel of the Year award, and Tony Hale has spoken openly about being a Christian in Hollywood. It’s refreshing to find a show that, so far at least, promotes the values of honesty, friendship, and bravery in a way that’s consistent with the Christian worldview.

Mr. Benedict: But most importantly, it was clear that you all possess a quality that is severely lacking in our society.

Reynie: What quality?

Mr. Benedict: Empathy. You see others. You care for others.

Constance: Ha!

Mr. Benedict: You love truth. In fact, I think you may be among the few capable of seeing the truth anymore. Oh, but what that does is help you resist the disinformation that’s being fed to us every single day.

Though the book came out in 2007, The Mysterious Benedict Society seems more relevant now than ever. It’s set in mid-century America, so there’s no internet. But The Emergency reminds me of some of the damaging effects of social media.

Mr. Benedict: Yes, yes. It’s taken a long time for me to put this together. The sender of these messages is putting our psyches under siege.

Reynie: Why would someone do that?

Mr. Benedict: When people are anxious or frightened, they’re more susceptible to suggestion. They panic. They turn on each other. I mean, look… look how people are treating each other now. Aggressive, suspicious, unkind.

Have we become aggressive, suspicious, and unkind? The world needs more people with a strong love of the truth. 

Mr. Benedict: Oh, but I’m counting on the idea that you can already sense the truth, and you care enough to do something about it. Please hear me. You are needed.

Sometimes when Mr. Benedict talks to the children, I feel like he’s talking to us.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, July 16th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

This is usually the time on the program when we hear the backstories about the music of some of your favorite Christian singers and songwriters. Well, Myrna this morning you have the story of a Christian artist who’s using his voice to make another kind of joyful noise. Tell us about that.

BROWN: All right but you have to go back with me in time

AMBI: Band repeating: Great I Am…. Great I Am….

MYRNA BROWN, REPORTER: Imagine the year 2014. On a dark, purple-hued stage in Houston, Texas, members of a seven-piece church band led a packed auditorium in worship. In the middle of the song, a tall, lanky, young man, wearing a skull cap, cardigan and jeans walked across the stage and paused.

DAVID BOWDEN PERFORMING SPOKEN WORD: Before the fluorescent formations ever fermented the foundations of the firmament. That is before the stars in the sky, ever entered existence….

David Bowden had come a long way since junior-high English. 

DAVID BOWDEN: In fact, the only poem I had ever written in my life was in 7th grade in my English class and I snarkley called my poem, I Cannot Write A Poem. And my mom smartly kept that and it’s now hanging in my office.

The son of a youth pastor, Bowden grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He went to a Christian college and studied Bible and Biblical languages.

DAVID BOWDEN: We would meet with our professor over lunch and translate Greek New Testament text over lunch because we were nerds like that.

But a spontaneous trip to Chicago put this scholar on a different path.

DAVID BOWDEN: Skipped classes on Friday to go and see a band play at the House of Blues in Chicago and opening up for that band was a group from New York...

Four poets began performing what was then a growing genre of artistic expression: Spoken Word, an electric, rhythmic, and passionate form of poetry.

DAVID BOWDEN: And it just grabbed me and I just felt a resonance in myself. And I was like, I must do this.

BOWDEN AMBI: It was a box pressed…

Bowden says he wrote his first Spoken Word piece on the 16-hour drive back to Oklahoma. From there, he began performing weekly at a local bar’s Spoken Word open mic competition.

DAVID BOWDEN: I would write, starting Thursday. I would start writing a new poem. On Monday a buddy and I would get together at 10 pm and edit each other’s poems and just tear them to ribbons. We would re-edit on Tuesday, memorize on Wednesday and perform that night.

He followed that routine for more than a year, learning to craft a story and engage with different audiences.

DAVID BOWDEN: Cutting my teeth there at that bar helped me to learn to talk about my faith and talk about things of the Bible, not relying on Christianese to do it.

But Bowden says he never considered the bar scene a mission field.

DAVID BOWDEN: I was there to learn. I was a student and I wanted to respect the people there. And I definitely felt like I was at the bottom of the totem pole, so I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers by trying to proselytize from the open mic. So no, I don’t think I saw that as an evangelistic field.

Today, the 33-year-old husband and father of two has a different perspective.

DAVID BOWDEN: I want to show everyone I can, through video and poetry, how the whole Bible is about Jesus. That’s where Spoken Gospel came from. I want to speak the gospel out of every corner of scripture.

SPOKEN GOSPEL/JOHN: In the beginning Jesus created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning of the book of Exodus…

In 2019 Bowden took his love for Spoken Word and created Spoken Gospel. He began producing Spoken Gospel videos that illustrate the main theme of each book of the Bible. The music-driven short films, nearly 30 so far, include Bowden’s narration, guiding a cast of culturally-diverse actors.

DAVID BOWDEN: Our Jesus is actually a guy whose family is from India, but he grew up in the Middle East. He doesn’t look like the Anglo-Saxon Jesus. We’ll have mixed-race couples playing Sarah and Abraham or Adam and Eve. Sometimes it ruffles some feathers for some reason, but we just don’t care. We just think people should get over it.

Bowden plans to produce videos introducing every book of the Bible. His Spoken Gospel also includes a series of devotionals. He’s written about four hundred fifty so far. And he co-hosts a Spoken Gospel podcast.

DAVE BOWDEN: In math, your teacher never just lets you write... the answer is 22. You have to show how you get there. And so the podcast is showing how we get there.

Bowden’s Spoken Gospel projects look imaginatively at the events and teachings of the scriptures. That approach could lead to questions about the inerrancy, infallibility, and inspiration of the Bible.

BOWDEN: I mean I would agree that the Bible is inerrant and infallible and inspired, and that we should not add anything to it. There’s something that’s called the perspicuity of scripture, which just means the scripture can speak for itself. However, there are so many obstacles to understanding the Bible. It’s from a different culture, it’s a different language so you’re reading a translation. There’s also a spiritual barrier…I believe 2nd Corinthians 3 and 4 talk about this that the opponent, Satan actually is actively seeking to blind us to what the Bible means. So we need a lot of help to read the Bible actually.

All of Bowden’s Spoken Gospel resources are free. That's how he says he plans to continue teaching his generation and others to hunger and thirst for God's Word. 

DAVID BOWDEN: But my A goal is right then and there on the spot that they love Jesus more than they did a second before.

AMBI: What is the point of life. What do we gain from all of our work, toil and strife. Ecclesiastes introduces us to a wise man who sought to give these questions a reply….

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it is time once again to thank and recognize our outstanding team.

Thanks in alphabetical order to…

Caleb Bailey, Joel Belz, Anna Johansen Brown, Kent Covington, Kristen Flavin, Collin Garbarino, Katie Gaultney, Amy Lewis, Onize Ohikere, Mary Reichard, Sarah Schweinsberg, Cal Thomas, Steve West, and Emily Whitten.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz are our audio engineers who stay up late to get the program to you early! Leigh Jones is managing editor. Paul Butler is executive producer. And Marvin Olasky is editor in chief.

And you! Thank you for making possible Christian journalism in the vast marketplace of ideas.

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith.

Enjoy the freedom to worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ, and Lord willing, we’ll meet you back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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