The World and Everything in It: June 4, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Jered Gebel. I'm a bush pilot in Southeast Alaska. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Former President Donald Trump is now a convicted felon who is appealing. Will any of this change the minds of voters?

FULLERTON: People are more concerned about the prices of food in grocery stores than whether Trump was found guilty of a felony or not.

LINDSAY MAST: Also, Supreme Court decisions and a new leader in the Netherlands.

Plus, WORLD’s Classic Book of the Month for June: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and its deep allusions to Biblical stories.

BUNN: What if in the Cain and Abel story, the murderous son wasn’t able to actually carry out his murder?

And Andrew Walker on a Christian response to Pride Month.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, June 4th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

REICHARD: It’s time for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Gaza hostages » Israel has confirmed the deaths of four more hostages in the hands of Hamas.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters on Monday:

HAGARI: We assess that the four of them were killed while together in the area of Khan Yunis during our operation there against Hamas.

The three men were all at least 80 years old … and had been seen in a Hamas video begging for their release.

HAGARI: Hamas is holding women, children, the sick and the elderly hostage in Gaza. We will keep on doing everything we need for their freedom, to bring them home.

Around 80 hostages captured on Oct. 7 are believed to still be alive in Gaza, alongside the remains of 43 others.

Gaza cease-fire » The news comes as Israel’s government considers a cease-fire proposal put forward by President Biden which could secure the return of more hostages.

The White House has suggested that Israel is already on board with the plan. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:

PIERRE:  The ball is in Hamas's court, and if it wants a cease-fire and relief for the people of Gaza, this is now in Hamas's hand to make a decision on.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says President Biden’s portrayal of that proposed deal is not entirely accurate.

Most importantly, he disputes any suggestion that Israel agreed to fully withdraw its troops from Gaza as part of the cease-fire. Also, the White House’s three-phase plan calls for a permanent cease-fire in phase two. But Israel says that will only happen when the mission of dismantling the Hamas terror group is complete.

Biden border measures » Pierre also said President Biden is intent on fixing the crisis at the southern border, which polls show is a top priority of voters this year.

PIERRE: We are constantly and will continuously look at all options, to try and, and, and to try and really deal with the immigration system, a system that's been broken for decades.

The president is reportedly set to sign an executive order that would shut down entries to the U.S.-Mexico border once the number of daily encounters hits 2,500 at ports of entry. That could mean that the border would be closed to migrants seeking asylum immediately, because daily figures already top that 2,500 threshold.

But GOP Congressman Jim Jordan says the president is trying to look tough on the border ahead of the election. But he added that illegal crossings are…

JORDAN: On pace to get to about 12-million in Joe Biden’s presidency in four years. That’s the equivalent to the entire population of Ohio. And we’re the 7th largest state. That’s the magnitude of this problem.

The White House says Republicans are to blame for rejecting a recent Senate border bill.

Biden is expected to unveil his actions at a White House event today.

Fauci testimony » On Capitol Hill …

AUDIO: The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will come to order. I want to welcome everyone this morning.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the man who was America’s top-ranking infectious disease specialist when the pandemic hit faced tough questions on Monday.

Members, especially Republicans on the panel pressed Fauci on the government’s COVID-19 response. Some questioned whether things like mask mandates or shutdowns of schools did more harm than good. Fauci told lawmakers:

FAUCI: The CDC was responsible for those kinds of guidelines for schools, not me.

And GOP Congressman Mike Griffith suggested Fauci tried to bury a theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory conducting U.S. funded research.

GRIFFITH: While telling the public, the media and Congress that COVID-19 almost certainly emerged from nature, experts you convened as a team privately worried that a research-related incident was a possible, if not the probable, origin of the virus.

Fauci forcefully pushed back on that, calling any suggestion of a cover-up “preposterous.”

He said he’s open to the possibility that the virus was man made and escaped a laboratory in Wuhan, China. But he insisted that did not happen with U.S. funding.

Hunter Biden jury chosen » Opening statements are set for today in Hunter Biden’s federal gun charges trial.

It took just one day Monday to seat a jury of six men and six women as First Lady Jill Biden looked on in the Wilmington, Delaware courtroom.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre…

JEAN-PIERRE: The president and first lady love their son. They support their son. You’ve heard them say that. You’ve seen that many times in statements.

Hunter Biden is accused of lying on his application to buy a gun in 2018, falsely claiming he wasn’t using illegal drugs at the time.

The president’s son faces up to 25 years behind bars if convicted, though sentences for first-time offenders are generally much more lenient.

SHEINBAUM: [Speaking Spanish]

Mexico first female president » Mexico will inaugurate its first female president later this year.

SHEINBAUM: [Speaking Spanish]

President-Elect Claudia Sheinbaum heard there one day after soundly winning the election with around 60 percent of the vote.

Still, she faces a tough path toward reconciling a country left deeply divided by outgoing leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador who congratulated Sheinbaum on her victory.

OBRADOR: (Translated) With all my affection, respect. I congratulate Claudia Sheinbaum, who was triumphant in this race by a wide margin. She is going to be the first woman president of Mexico in 200 years.

Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former Mexico City mayor.

She is largely aligned with Obrador’s left-leaning policy positions … but is considered more pragmatic than her predecessor.

Christians attacked, jailed in Pakistan » In Pakistan, a Christian husband and father reported armed persecution to the police and found himself behind bars.

WORLD’s Mark Mellinger has more.

MARK MELLINGER: According to the watchdog group Global Christian Relief, the same group of three Muslim men has attacked Farooq Masih for his faith several times over the past year and a half, usually facing no consequences from police.

Last August, they hurled bricks and stones at Masih’s home with his wife and five children inside.

Masih captured that on video, for once leading to charges against the attackers.

But then, just last month, the attackers threatened his life. And when Masih reported the last incident, police accused him of filing a false report and jailed him for two days.

Now out on bail, Masih says he and his family are seeking prayer and support as they fight the charge.

For WORLD, I’m Mark Mellinger.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: what’s next in Donald Trump’s New York business fraud case. Plus, World’s Classic Book for June.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 4th day of June, 2024.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

First up on The World and Everything in It: Former President Donald Trump’s felony convictions in New York.

After seven weeks of trial, a Manhattan jury deliberated for nine hours before reaching the verdict last week.

Now, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and his legal team are preparing an appeal. What effect will all this have on the 2024 election?

REICHARD: Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta has the story.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: On Thursday, a Manhattan jury announced the verdict heard ‘round the world: former President Donald Trump was guilty.

The 12-member jury convicted Trump on 34 charges of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to a woman who claimed to have an affair with him. Trump reacted to the news during a press conference at Trump Tower on Friday.

TRUMP: So the whole thing is legal expense was marked down as legal expense. Think of it. This is the crime that I committed that I’m supposed to go to jail for 187 years for.

Each felony count could carry a sentence of 4 years, but the judge could sentence Trump to probation instead. The next phase of the trial will bring up questions such as, if Trump is sentenced to jail, will he be allowed out on bail until an appeal is adjudicated? Or will he have to continue his campaign for president from behind bars?

The closest the country has come to asking questions like this was 50 years ago, in 1974.

NIXON: I want to say this to the television audience. I made my mistakes …

That’s Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States.

NIXON: … And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice and I think too that I could say, in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination because have got to know whether their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.

Shortly after getting elected to a second term, evidence uncovered by The Washington Post placed Nixon at the center of a scheme to break into the opposing party’s campaign headquarters. The scandal rocked the institution of the presidency and prompted questions of what would happen if a president was found guilty of a crime.

Congress prepared to impeach Nixon, but the president decided to resign from office…and so avoided answering that question.

Here’s Norman Acker, a former U.S. attorney, now a partner with K&L Gates.

ACKER: You know, Nixon resigned and did not pardon himself and President Ford then pardoned him immediately when he became president. That was under the assumption that the president could not pardon himself. But there’s nothing in the text of the constitution that says that.

The situation is a little different for Trump. Right now, he’s the target of four criminal cases: two federal indictments, one state-level case in Georgia, and this one—a state-level trial in New York. Because presidential powers only extend to federal matters, there’s not much Trump can do about his New York conviction, even if he does regain the White House.

ACKER: It’s very possible … I believe that he can pardon himself for federal offenses, but he clearly cannot for state offenses.

But Trump can appeal the verdict, and said he plans to do so.

NYU law professor Richard Epstein says he thinks Trump has solid grounds for an appeal.

EPSTEIN: If anyone thinks that this jury verdict is beyond reproach, I think that virtually every criminal law expert would say that it's a risk, others not. I regard this as a farce from start to beginning.

That’s because in New York, falsifying business records is only a felony if it’s done in furtherance of another crime. Judge Juan Merchan told members of the jury they must reach a unanimous decision on whether Trump was guilty of the first element of the crime—lying on business records. But they did not have to agree which one of several possible secondary crimes he was guilty of—only that a secondary crime occurred. Epstein says that makes the case ripe for an appeal.

EPSTEIN: And then at that particular point, if you look at it, what you will see perhaps is that there were serious disagreements amongst the jurors as to which particular felony he had committed, right? And if that's the particular case, then you could easily set aside the jury saying that you did not have a beyond a reasonable doubt, unanimous decision on w hich felony was committed. And if you’re saying, in effect, two thirds of the votes are against committing the felony, two of the three felonies, right then you have to acquit.

So could the conviction affect this year’s election?

FULLERTON: I don't think it will, honestly.

Ron Fullerton owns a Christmas tree farm in New Hampshire. He voted for Trump in the state’s primaries earlier this year, and his support has not wavered post-conviction.

FULLERTON: They took a misdemeanor about some hush money and six seven eight years later they tried to they they took him to court to try to find him guilty on felonies…you know I don’t know the solution, I think that people are more concerned about the prices of food in grocery stores than whether Trump was found guilty of a felony or not.

Fullerton isn’t alone. Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party report raising more than $52 million following the guilty verdict, with most of that coming from small dollar donors. Epstein says the verdict has predictably further entrenched Americans in their respective political camps.

EPSTEIN: If before you thought this was a rigged trial, you still do. If you before you thought this was the messiah coming to rest on earth to save us from Donald Trump … then it’s the same thing. There’s no new information. So, what’s going to happen? There will be new information and that will start the shifting. The one day that’s obviously going to matter is July 11th.

That’s the day that Trump is scheduled to be sentenced. Three days later, the Republican National Convention is slated to officially appoint him as the party nominee.

WORLD’s Leo Briceno contributed to this report, and reporting from Washington, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Two opinions from the US Supreme Court handed down last week.

First, a unanimous ruling that reaffirms the First Amendment does not permit the government to coerce others into suppressing protected speech.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the unanimous opinion that says the NRA— the National Rifle Association— may proceed with its First Amendment lawsuit against Maria Vullo. She is the former overseer of the New York state department of financial services. She told insurance companies and banks to part ways with the NRA.

REICHARD: Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank that filed an amicus brief in support of the NRA. I spoke to Walter Olson who is a senior fellow with the organization.

OLSON: What New York was trying to do indirectly was something that it would certainly have been struck down for doing directly, namely, to legally penalize the National Rifle Association, not for technical insurance breaches…. but for its advocacy… And that's a fact pattern that has not reached the Supreme Court before. And it's a very important one, because it goes on, unfortunately, a lot these days where governments seek to regulate indirectly, by taking regulated industries like banks and insurance and turning them against the actual targets of the regulation.

MAST: The ruling will likely have a big effect on disputes still pending:

OLSON: Where it is going to have its big impact is in another set of issues that the Supreme Court will be looking at later this term. Also having to do with indirect regulation, and those usually involve social media. And the idea there is that...Washington may give a call to a social media platform or some electronic intermediary, saying, “Hey, we think there's a bad actor here, maybe you don't want to carry their accounts or you don't want to carry their data over your lines, or whatever”. And that can be very hard to detect. And it's also not entirely clear where the legal ones are on that. Now, NRA versus Vullo, lays out strong lines saying, Look, even if you can put together some sort of regulatory justification based on other ways you regulate businesses, we're going to look at what you're really doing.

MAST: And here, what the state official is plausibly alleged to have done… is target speech:

OLSON: The line that the Court drew in Vullo is, it's okay for the government to talk. It's okay for the head of the superintendent of financial regulation in New York, to express her opinion saying, "I think the NRA is, you know, terrible…..So long as it's just speech the courts will not step in. But when it reaches coercion, and there was a lot of evidence that the NRA put it in this case, that the speech had lapsed over into coercion, where she was telling Lloyds and other insurance companies, look, you will get a worse deal on unrelated regulatory issues unless you do what I say. Classic coercion.

MAST: And Olson sees further importance of this 9-0 decision:

OLSON: In part that reflected the fact that this had been a case so outrageous that it in fact, had united a number of groups across the ideological spectrum. The American Civil Liberties Union, which does not usually side with the NRA, did in this case, saying, "Look, this is outrageous. We can't have this happen to any group." And so, in that respect, it wasn't as surprising. Nonetheless, getting all nine members of the Supreme Court to agree on the reasoning, getting a strong statement that without some attempt to undermine it, or make it for this case only, that's significant.

MAST: This case now returns to lower court for further analysis.

REICHARD: Next is another 9-0 opinion in the case of Cantero versus Bank of America. The issue was whether federal law preempts a New York law that requires a bank to pay borrowers interest that accrues on mortgage escrow accounts.

The justices rejected a bright-line standard to clarify whether the federal law does that. Instead, they sent it back to lower court to analyze whether New York’s interest-on-escrow law is preempted as applied to national banks in a way that’s consistent with other federal law and court precedent.

MAST: Meaning, the lower court must do a practical assessment of how much interference with national banking occurs when a state regulation “significantly interferes” with how national banks operate.

REICHARD: This decision disappointed those looking for clear direction on the matter, so expect to see it again.

LINDSAY MAST: Next, a new leader in the Netherlands.

Back in November, Dutch voters shocked the world by voting for anti-immigration candidate Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom. After 6 months of negotiating, Wilders and three other parties are finally ready to form a coalition government. But Wilders is not going to lead it.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Instead, the new prime minister is a career civil servant who has never held elected office. How did he get the top job?

WORLD reporter Emma Freire used to live in the Netherlands and has been following this story.

MAST: Emma thanks for joining us.

EMMA FREIRE: Good Morning, Lindsay.

LINDSAY MAST: Let’s start with Geert Wilders. Why is he not going to become Prime Minister?

FREIRE: So back in November, Wilders and his party for freedom won 31 out of 150 seats in the Dutch parliament. By Dutch standards, that's a large majority. And the tradition is that the largest party provides the prime minister. So normally Wilders would become prime minister. But in Dutch politics, because no one wins a majority, they also have to form a coalition government. Wilders is forming a coalition with three other parties and the leaders of two of those parties will not accept him as prime minister—they say he's too divisive and too controversial. So Wilders has accepted as the price he has to pay to form a government, that he can't become prime minister. He's just going stay in Parliament and lead his party and his decision to step aside has won him respect. Here's the opinion of one Dutch voter, Adrian Borggreve. He's a lecturer emeritus at a college in the Dutch city of Deventer.

ADRIAN BORGGREVE: He’s choosing for stability in the government and he will not have a lot discussions about his person.

MAST: Okay, well moving to Dick Schoof. Tell us a bit about him. Who is he exactly?

FREIRE: So Schoof is a bit of a cipher. He’s currently not a member of any political party and people don't really know much about his views. He's 67, which is actually quite old for a Dutch politician. But he's never held elected office before. And there's no precedent in Dutch modern political history for a prime minister like this. Schoof currently serves as the Secretary General of the Ministry of Justice, he—that means he has the highest non-appointed position there. He has held many important positions in Dutch government in the areas of intelligence and policing. And he was also previously the head of the immigration service. So he brings a wealth of experience in policy and the workings of government, but never from the elected side. He's promised to implement the policies of the parties in the governing coalition, and not to impose his own views. So the idea is that he's going to continue in the role of enacting policy a bit like a civil servant rather than making it himself.

MAST: So Schoof is clearly a very unusual kind of prime minister. Emma, do you think there are benefits to his outsider status? And then also what kind of challenges do you think he might face?

FREIRE: Well, in terms of the benefits, he will be an apolitical figure. So the governing coalition has four parties and their leaders are all strong personalities— particularly Geert Wilders. So ideally, Schoof can hold them together. And as an outsider who will also be respected by the opposition parties. In terms of challenges, his verbal skills are not strong. You could see during his inaugural press conference that he was nervous and stumbled over his words. And there's also a broader criticism, just that his selection is undemocratic. Nobody voted for him. In November, Dutch voters went to the ballot box and they voted for change of some kind. And Schoof, you know, is perhaps in some ways the human embodification of the status quo.

MAST: Sounds like some real challenges there. Back to the vote, Wilders ran on anti-immigration platform, so will Dutch voters still get reduced immigration from their new government?

FREIRE: They plan to pass an asylum crisis law which will give them broader powers to act. They want to deport asylum seekers whose applications have been denied, put more limits on how many family members can join an asylum seeker. They also want to ask the European Union if they can stop participating in European Union immigration policy. That's going to be really tough for Schoof, who's going to Brussels without much personal authority to have to ask for that exemption, but that is going to be very important. Adrian Borggeve explains why.

ADRIAN BORGGEVE: I think a lot of plans that the new parties have will not be realistic because we are part of the European Union and there is a lot of restrictions because we have ratified a lot of laws and regulations.

MAST: With four parties forming a coalition government, sounds like a lot of compromises had to be made. Beyond immigration, Emma, what kind of policies can we expect from the new government?

FREIRE: Well, in recent years, the Netherlands was rocked by massive protests by farmers whose farms were being forcibly sold and closed to meet EU nitrogen emissions targets. But now the farmer citizen movement or BBB, a party specifically set up to represent the interests of farmers, is part of the coalition government. So, they're going to work hard on this. One perhaps surprising move is that they want to raise the speed limit on the highways back to 80 miles per hour. A few years ago, the speed limit was reduced to 60 miles per hour as a way of reducing the country's nitrogen emissions to meet EU targets but a recent study found that there was almost no impact on nitrogen emissions. So this is a pretty easy area for the four parties to agree on. And I'm sure Dutch some Dutch motorists will be very happy.

MAST: Sounds like it could be a wild ride ahead in more than one way. Emma Freire is a senior magazine writer for WORLD Magazine. Thanks so much for this report, Emma!

FREIRE: Thank you, Lindsay.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: High tech has made life easier in some ways. Like the GPS on my iPhone that’s saved me many a wrong turn on long drives.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Mine is the Instant Pot. Saves so much time!

REICHARD: Well, here’s another possibly life-changing invention on the way: an electric spoon that makes food taste saltier, cutting down salt intake.

Co-inventor Homei Miyashita explains:

HOMEI MIYASHITA: [Speaking Japanese]

He says it works like this: When you’re eating salty food, some of the sodium comes into contact with your tongue, but not all. So the spoon passes a weak electric current through the tip of the spoon, which concentrates sodium ion molecules on the tongue….

MAST: Which gives the impression of a saltier flavor. Brilliant!

REICHARD: Right? Right now it’s only available in Japan, and it’ll cost you: a whopping $127 per spoon!

MAST: I might be a little salty about that price tag.

REICHARD: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 4th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: our Classic Book of the Month for June. If you love getting lost in a sweeping novel, reviewer Chelsea Boes recommends John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

MOVIE CLIP: Cal, listen to me. You can make of yourself anything you want. A man has a choice. That’s where he’s different from an animal. You won’t listen. You never listen.

CHELSEA BOES:That’s character Adam Trask speaking to his son, Cal, in a clip from the 1955 film adaptation of East of Eden. You might remember reading John Steinbeck in high school–works like Of Mice and Men or The Pearl. But don’t judge a book by its author. Written by John Steinbeck in 1952, our Classic Book of the Month is a sweeping family saga rich with Genesis parallels. In the following scene, we hear Cal (played by James Dean) demand to know about his missing mother.

MOVIE CLIP: Talk to me, Father! I gotta know who I am, I gotta know who I’m like, I gotta know–where is she? Truthfully, Cal. After she left, I never heard from her.

While Steinbeck wasn’t known as a devoted Christian, readers will see Biblical themes at work here. The story follows two sets of brothers–first Adam and Charles Trask and then Adam’s twin sons, Aaron and Cal. In this audiobook clip read by Mary Gladwin, Steinbeck frames the book’s conflict with a retelling of the Cain and Abel story.

AUDIOBOOK: The Lord was pleased with Abel’s offering, but not with Cain’s. And Cain was very angry. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? If you do well, you will be accepted. And if you not do well, you will sin. And your sin will try to rule over it, but you will rule over it. And Cain turned against his brother and killed him. The Lord said to Cain, where is your brother? Cain said, “I dunno. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

You may notice differences there from a trustworthy Biblical translation. Philip Bunn is a Christian and incoming assistant professor of Political Science at Covenant College. He says that East of Eden’s Biblical parallels break down fairly quickly.

BUNN: Like the conceit of the story is, well–What if you had a sort of Cain and Abel narrative where you had a father figure who's not like God, who's not good, who's not loving actually, who loves one son for bad reasons and rejects or spurns the love of the other son for bad reasons? And then what if, you know, in the Cain and Abel story, the murderous son wasn't able to actually carry out his murder?

Much of the brothers’ conflict revolves around the story’s villain–Adam Trask’s wife, Cathy. In particular, her evil machinations as the madame of a California brothel are terrible but fascinating.

That being said, I’ll add a warning. Violence and depravity can make East of Eden a distressing read. Offensive scenes aren’t usually graphic, though, and thoughtful Christians have much to gain by reading this American classic.

The book’s central question is, “Can man choose to be good?” That question alone is enough to engross any theology buff. And the question centers around the use of a single, Hebrew word in the Cain and Abel story: “timshel.”

BUNN: Cain is dejected and God comes to him and says that sin is crouching at the door and “you must rule over it.” There's some debate in the story about what that Hebrew word that's translated you must actually means, and the characters come down on the side of this word timshel meaning thou mayest, that it's a sort of open door, it's an option, that the cool thing about being human is that you have choice.

Bunn is a professor of political philosophy, so he enjoys this kind of debate. But you don’t have to totally agree with Steinbeck’s philosophy to benefit from the story.

BUNN: I'm reformed so reformed people have particular perspectives on this but i don't think that the sort of you know mystery of God's providence in human affairs necessarily cuts against the idea that we have this sort of really wonderful facet of our characters, image bearers of God, that we do have choices.

By affirming human agency, East of Eden is different from a lot of American lit because it frankly rejects cynicism. And this word Timshel is at the heart of that. Caleb and Aron Trask’s family may be broken–but that doesn’t mean they’re genetically bound to follow in their parent’s footsteps. They can make their own choices.

BUNN: East of Eden is head and shoulders above everything else he ever wrote. It's really a kind of like lightning in a bottle, Magnum Opus kind of situation. [cut to 21:38] If it's not, you know, a contender for the great American novel, it's at least in the ballpark of a good runner up choice.

Aside from the deep philosophical questions, East of Eden is just a joy to read. The prose is lean, direct, and beautiful and the dialogue reads like music. The story never slows but instead twists and surprises, horrifies and delights. The reader will find characters to love and admire, and a student of the Bible will feel echoes of Genesis in every section.

Our Classic Book of the Month for June, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, is a big investment of time. But read rightly, it will remind you that one life of kindness can reverberate into other lives and through generations.

I’m Chelsea Boes.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 4th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: WORLD Opinions commentator Andrew Walker on the Christian response to what many Americans call “Pride Month.”

ANDREW WALKER: December is no longer America’s most religious month. At least, not if we define religiosity by what truly grips the affections of the country’s elite.

Instead, our most religious month is June, when we see parades and symbols of America’s primary religion of sexual transgression. It is not just about homosexuality or transgenderism. It is now about the worship of sensuality and nerve endings. We shouldn’t be shocked by this. After all, the Apostle Paul warns against sexual sin in Romans 13.

But we Christians don’t worship our nerve endings. We don’t worship our sexuality. In fact, now, at the start of so-called “Pride Month,” it’s a good time to say this aloud for everyone to hear: The modern idea of homosexuality is a myth born of ideology. In other words, it is a “construct”--a humanistic way of seeing and organizing the world.

The problem for modern sexual identitarians is that homosexuality, as our society understands the term, doesn’t actually exist.

“Homosexuality” is the word sociologists give to the phenomenon of experiencing same-sex desires. To make it an ideology is to wrap an individual’s entire existence around it. To make it another ism. But our bodies tell us that homosexuality does not really exist as an all-defining construct. Why? Because our bodies are inherently other-oriented, regardless of our desires.

Homosexuality is really just homosexualism. It is an ideology. It is not who you are. Regardless of the pattern of your sexual desires, if you are a man, your body is meant for a wife. If you are a woman, it is intended for a husband.

That’s not to deny that some people experience same-sex desires. And we are to love all human beings, regardless of their sexual desires. But those experiences are not normative or morally praiseworthy.

Same-sex desire is intrinsically disordered. It is sinful. A homosexual-identifying man or woman is not a homosexual. They are homo sapiens whose desires are at odds with the telos or purpose of their bodies.

Many on social media today bring up the fact that there are homosexual animals in the African safari. Their point is that homosexuality just is a fact of nature. If you deny their logic, you’re diagnosed as “homophobic,” and it’s homophobia that is unnatural in their view.

The problem is that Christians don’t look at nature from a naturalist perspective. We don’t grant that every natural desire tells us how to act carte blanche. The fact that some animals eat their own excrement does not tell us that we should do the same.

But that all comes back to the controversy at hand: We don’t go looking to the experience of our desires to validate our identity. We go to Scripture. The fact of “naturally occurring” experiences or desires tells us nothing about the appropriateness of those desires. You’ve probably heard someone say, “If it feels good, do it.” That phrase is devastating and unsustainable as an ethic. But for many secular Americans, it’s their new John 3:16.

I’m Andrew Walker.

LINDSAY MAST: Tomorrow: Anthony Fauci goes before Congress to explain his statements about government funding for viral gain-of-function research. We’ll have a report on Washington Wednesday. And, what it’s like behind the scenes to run an election precinct. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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.

The Bible says: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene.” 2nd Timothy 2:15-17

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.