The World and Everything in It — June 5, 2020

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Good morning!

Christians all around the world are discussing how to respond to the killing of George Floyd and the protests that have erupted since then.

NICK EICHER, HOST: WORLD commentator Ryan Bomberger joins us for Culture Friday.

Also a miniseries from Britain about cheating to win a TV gameshow that featured a million dollar prize.

Plus WORLD’s Marvin Olasky answers your questions on Ask the Editor.

And Jamie Dean considers the teaching of Christ on the commandment against murder.

BASHAM: It’s Friday, June 5th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Hundreds gather for Floyd memorial in Minneapolis » AUDIO: [SOUND OF FLOYD MEMORIAL]

Gospel music greeted mourners in Minneapolis Thursday. Hundreds gathered in front of a golden casket to honor the memory of George Floyd. 

Floyd’s brother Philonise remembered how George looked out for his family. 

PHILONISE: He was teaching us how to be a man because he was in this world already before us and he gave us a lot of great lessons. He would stand up for his family and friends, and I want you guys to know that he would stand up for any injustice everywhere. 

Those gathered stood in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds—the same length of time a white police officer was seen in video footage with his knee pinned to Floyd’s neck.  

The service was the first in a series of memorials set for three cities over six days. 

In New York, thousands attended a memorial gathering Thursday in a Brooklyn park. 

AUDIO: [SOUND OF MEMORIAL]

A judge on Thursday set bail at $750,000 each for the three fired Minneapolis police officers charged with aiding and abetting murder in Floyd’s death.

Investigator: Shooter used racist slur as Arbery lay dying » And in Georgia, three white men accused of murder in the February death of an unarmed black man, Ahmaud Arbery faced a judge Thursday for a preliminary hearing. 

Special Agent Richard Dial with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation described the suspects’ attempt to capture Arbery. 

DIAL: You see Mr. Arbery running along the passenger’s side, and again you see Travis McMichael has repositioned himself along the front of the truck. Mr. Arbery then comes to that position, sees Travis McMichael, then makes a decision and turns and decides to engage Travis McMichael.   
(Questioner): What happens after that?
DIAL: Um, as he turns and goes toward Travis McMicael, you hear a shot. 

Dial also recounted a statement one of the suspects, William Brian, gave to police. Brian told investigators that the man who fired the fatal shots, Travis McMichael, used a racial slur as he stood over Arbery’s body. 

Travis McMichael told police that he fired his shotgun in self defense after Arbery refused his order to get on the ground. Two bullets entered Arbery’s chest. Another struck his hand.

Dial testified that he believed Arbery was acting out of self-defense, adding—quote—“When he couldn’t get away, he chose to fight.”

Officials charged Travis McMichael, his father Greg McMichael, and William Bryan, with murder in early May after the state took over the investigation. 

American freed from Iranian prison » U.S. Navy veteran Michael White is a free man, after being jailed in Iran for more than a year. 

White traveled to Iran in 2018. Shortly after he arrived, the Iranian government had him arrested. Officials charged him with insulting Iran’s Supreme Leader and posting private information online. They sentenced White to 13 years behind bars. 

But Iran freed him after the United States released an Iranian scientist detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. U.S. officials insist White was not freed in a prisoner swap. 

Sweden’s top epidemiologist defends country’s COVID-19 strategy while conceding faults » Sweden’s chief epidemiologist is defending his country’s controversial COVID-19 strategy while conceding that if he had it to do over, he’d handle it differently. WORLD’s Anna Johansen reports. 

ANNA JOHANSEN, REPORTER: Unlike other European countries, Sweden did not impose lockdowns, but instead relied on citizens’ sense of civic duty, asking them to take precautions. 

That strategy avoided an economic shutdown, but it resulted in one of the highest per capita COVID-19 death rates in the world.

In a press conference this week, Anders Tegnell of the Public Health Agency said he does not believe that “the Swedish strategy was wrong and should be changed.”

But that came after more contrite comments to Swedish radio in which Tegnell said there is “quite clearly” room for improvement in Sweden’s approach.

And when asked if the country’s death toll has made him reconsider his strategy, he said “yes, absolutely.”

Tegnell added, “If we were to encounter the same disease again,” knowing what we know today, “I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.”

But hours later at the news conference, he explained that his previous statement was simply “an admission that we always can become better.” 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen. 

Thousands defy Hong Kong police, gather for Tiananmen Square remembrance » AUDIO: [SOUND FROM HONG KONG] 

Thousands gathered in Hong Kong Thursday night in defiance of a government ban. They broke through barricades, pouring into Victoria Park. 

Many held candles, others lit up their phones to mark the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.

Police said they banned the yearly candlelight vigil for the first time over coronavirus concerns. But many saw the move as more evidence of Beijing’s push to erase democratic freedoms in Hong Kong. 

Earlier Thursday, the Hong Kong legislature passed a law making it a crime to disrespect China’s national anthem. Pro-democracy lawmakers disrupted the proceeding twice to try to prevent the vote.

NBA Board of Governors approves plan to resume season » The NBA’s Board of Governors has approved a plan to restart the pro-basketball season in late July, but with only 22 of the league’s 30 teams. 

All games would be played at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando—without fans. The format calls for each team playing eight games to determine playoff seeding. It could also use a play-in tournament for the final spot in each conference. 

The players association has a call today to approve the plan as well.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: gospel healing for a hurting nation.

Plus, Jamie Dean on the Sixth Commandment.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MEGAN BASHAM: It’s Friday the 6th of June, 2020. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Megan Basham.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Less than two weeks ago, America witnessed the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who died after a white police officer pinned him by the neck. 

Protesters have taken to the streets every day since. Often marching peacefully and praying for change.

AUDIO: I ask for your forgiveness for any of our sins that we may have committed. And that you would allow us to tap into you and who you are. And that we would walk like you. And that we would talk like you. And that we would love like you. We bless your name.

BASHAM: But the protests have also ushered in unprecedented lawlessness. Riots and looting have broken out in cities all across the country, leaving hundreds of people injured and at least 12 dead. Businesses have been destroyed. More than 9,000 people have been arrested.

AUDIO: [SOUND OF RIOTS]

EICHER: All of the officers involved in Floyd’s death have been charged, one with second degree murder, the other three with aiding and abetting second degree murder.

It’s Culture Friday and we now welcome Ryan Bomberger.

Ryan is a WORLD commentator, co-founder of the pro-life group, The Radiance Foundation, and author of the book, Not Equal: Civil Rights Gone Wrong.

Ryan, good morning.

RYAN BOMBERGER, GUEST: Good morning. It’s great to be here with you.

EICHER: Well, Ryan, I think it’s shocking to a lot of us how quickly this situation became explosive. Maybe we shouldn’t be shocked.

But I guess the first question we have to ask, is what makes this particular episode of police misconduct so very different? Do you have some ideas on that?

BOMBERGER: I think people, rightfully, were so shocked simply by the video, by the sheer helplessness of George Floyd and what appeared to be absolutely no explanation whatsoever for him being pinned down by a knee for 7 minutes. And to hear the bystanders begging the police to stop and to do something, I think that was part of it. 

I think, too, because this is a culmination of what’s been going on politically. This is a culmination of what’s been going on for years and years since the Black Lives Matter emerged and where we have mainstream media constantly highlighting only those cases where people of my complexion are harmed or killed. 

So I think there are several things—a confluence of different things happening. Not to mention apparently we’re not doing coronavirus anymore. But that part, too, I think there’s a lot of pent up stuff. So there’s just this explosion. And I don’t want to dismiss the injustice of what seems to be pretty clear in that video, the injustice of George Floyd’s death. But I think some of those things add to what makes this a little different.

BASHAM: We’re seeing a lot of symbolic gestures. People posting black boxes on their social media. Groups of white protesters collectively kneeling before black activists and reciting anti-racist pledges. 

I’ll be honest, I look at that and it strikes me as sort of performative. Almost ritualistic.

But my guess is that it comes from people not knowing how to have real conversations about this and being afraid to say the wrong thing. Yet they want to show that they do care.

What do you make of the boxes, these social media posts, and the kneeling videos?

BOMBERGER: I know people’s hearts are in the right place for a lot of people who are doing this. And this is the problem. 

See, I call myself a factivist because I believe as Christians not only do we act against injustice, but we actually have to know the facts before we act. And we live in a culture right now that would rather just act without the facts. We’re driven solely by emotions. But emotions, as we know, mislead us all the time. 

So, there’s just so much pandering that goes on. There’s so many people who don’t even realize, I mean, you look at Tony Timpa, a white man in Dallas back in November 2019. He was killed by having a cop with his knee in his back for 20 minutes, but there were no riots. No hashtags. No protests. 

So, for those who are blacking out their profiles and kneeling, for me, a lot of it is so symbolic because they don’t know how to have the conversation because they don’t know the context of what’s truly going on. I as a black person, I am 11 times more likely to be killed by another person of my complexion. That’s according to the FBI 2018 homicide stats. And people say, “Oh, this is not the time for facts.” Well, when is the time for the facts? When is the time to actually speak the truth so we’re not driven by an emotion that’s rooted in a lie? And for all the people doing the black boxes and the Kaepernick style kneeling, it’s not really representative of a gospel approach. There’s a lot of virtue signaling in all of this, but it’s easier to signal than to struggle with the truth.

BASHAM: You bring up “that’s not the gospel approach” and every Christian I talk to right now wants to do something to address the hurt, anger, and disunity we’re seeing. Even if there’s some disagreement on what’s fueling the division.

How do believers bring the gospel to bear on this moment? To paraphrase Ephesians 2, how do we begin to destroy the dividing wall of hostility?

BOMBERGER: Well, the only way to do that is to love. We’re told in Colossians, we’re told that love is the only thing that brings about true unity, the true bond of unity. Of course, we’re also told that God is love. 

And so you cannot embrace a movement—and that’s what I’m very clear on, we need to act against injustice, but we as the church should be the ones leading. The wall that’s being put up is being put up because there’s a movement that’s being embraced that wants to divide, that wants to identify us by the color of our skin, which is completely unbiblical. We’re one human race. 

I’m from a multi-racial family with Native American, Vietnamese, black, white. We are one human race. And so as Christians, we have to be careful about what we’re embracing. 

Today, a hashtag is not simply just some random cry. It is specifically tied to a cause to a movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement, when you read about what their goals and objectives are, they are deeply anti-Christian. They’re pro-LGBT. They’re anti-capitalist. They’re anti-fatherhood. There’s no reconciliation. In fact, you look at BlackLivesMatter.com, you look at the Movement For Black Lives—which is M4BL.org—there is no call for reconciliation, no call for forgiveness. 

So, how do we embrace a movement by chanting—it would be the same as, for instance, in the 60s, chanting black power. Martin Luther King Jr. denounced Malcolm X, denounced the black power movement. In fact, he said, “Let us not be dissatisfied until the day that no one will shout ‘white power,’ when no one will shout ‘black power,’ but we will all cry ‘God’s power’ and ‘human power.’” So, for me as a Christian, we always have to go to the only source that brings healing and brings wholeness and that can possibly bring reconciliation. 

I listened to a sermon by Voddie Baucham. I love Voddie. He had a great teaching about—you were talking about Ephesians 2—he had a great teaching about the distinction between Jew and Gentile. And he said God created the distinction. It was the only distinction that he created—Jew and Gentile. We’re the ones who created all these other distinctions that are arbitrary and that are temporary. And so in that Ephesians 2, it’s talking about the only distinction that God created and when we become part of the family of God, we are one. There’s not a black body of Christ. There’s not a white body of Christ. There’s not a hispanic body of Christ. There is one body of Christ. And if we don’t move forward with that understanding and that as our foundation, it will always crumble, no matter what effort we engage in.

EICHER: Ryan, before we let you go, I’d like to ask you about reform ideas.

We’re hearing from political leaders on both the left and right about changes we could make to the police system. And maybe a little ray of hope here—some of those proposals, like curtailing the power of police unions and addressing qualified immunity. Some of these things overlap.   

If you were in charge for the day, where would you begin?

BOMBERGER: Oh my. Thanks for the easy question. [laughs]

EICHER: OK. You get more than a day to solve it.

BOMBERGER: Well, there are issues. There are abuses of power. In fact, no matter which institution you’re talking about, there’s always going to be abuse of power. In fact, the politicians themselves who are deciding how to curtail some of these abuses of power, they abuse power. Hello, coronavirus response. 

So, I fully support our men and women in blue who every day risk their lives to protect us. But any cop who abuses his or her power needs to be held to account. I know that the qualified immunity does present somewhat of a problem. But, then again, if you remove that, you’re going to have a police force that’s not going to want to act because if every action is then going to be something they can be sued over civilly, that becomes a dangerous thing as well. 

As someone who’s been the recipient of unjust actions by police, I understand this. I understand the need for probable cause. I think there are too many times they skirt that to stop and frisk, for instance, those kinds of policies really violate our constitutional rights. I think part of it can come down to the local level. One of the things we did here with our church is we called the local police department and we had a luncheon with them. Because part of—before we even make the decisions on what to change, let’s find out who are the people who protect us. And so we had a great luncheon. We had a two and a half hour conversation finding out who they are, what they do, how they do it, and what their needs are, what some of their concerns were, and then we expressed our concerns as a community. And I think part of that is just the same that we need to apply to just everyday people in our lives. If we don’t have relationships with those that we’re interacting with, then there are always going to be problems. 

I’m deeply concerned about some of the recommendations because, here again, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Movement For Black Lives is actually calling for the abolition of prisons, the abolition of the police force. That is not a solution. 

But we do need to do something more to hold those accountable. And we’re seeing that. We’re seeing in South Carolina, remember when Walter Scott was shot in the back. A black man was shot in the back by police officer Michael Slager and he was sentenced to 19 years. The justice system doesn’t always work, but

In 1 Corinthians 13 it says love is patient, love is kind. The problem with some of these knee jerk sort of reactions is we’re not being patient. We’re not waiting to get all the facts. We’re not waiting to actually have these deeper conversations to figure out what truly is the problem and then how do we develop a strategy to address that problem. Instead, there’s this deep emotion that thrusts us into this and we’re being reactionary and that’s not a healthy thing.

EICHER: Well, Ryan Bomberger is a WORLD commentator, co-founder of the pro-life group, The Radiance Foundation, and author of the book, Not Equal: Civil Rights Gone Wrong.

Ryan, thank you so much. Good to talk to you.

BOMBERGER: Great to talk to you, too.

NICK EICHER: Today is Friday, June 5th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MEGAN BASHAM: And I’m Megan Basham. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new British series inspired by the real life scandal that rocked the popular game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Pop quiz, what could be more entertaining than a farce, a mystery, and a morality play all rolled into one?

CLIP: The higher up you go, the more you can earn, but the more you can lose. People love it. But the networks don’t. That’s why they all turned it down the first time. Fusty old game show. It’s not a game show, it’s a quiz. That’s the joy of it. People love a good pop quiz. A uniquely British invention by combining our two greatest loves, drinking and being right. 

In 2001, we had the internet, but no Google. The search for online information was slow and cumbersome. A tailor made environment for a trivia-based game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

That show, and a scandal involving one of its winners, is the real-life inspiration for AMC’s new drama, Quiz. 

We learn how the monster hit came into being. How it crossed the Atlantic to win huge ratings on ABC. But mostly we learn how a dedicated community of “quizzers” grew up around the program. 

CLIP: How long was this relationship? It’s not a relationship. It was contact with someone who was just a fan of the show. And I know you might think stupid or boring or silly, but I don’t care. It’s not illegal is it? We just liked something a lot for a bit, that’s all. 

There’s something sweetly human about the fringe community who find connection through their mutual obsession with the show. Eventually though, shared fandom takes a less sporting turn as the quizzers figure out how to game the system. 

This allows Diana Ingram, her brother, and finally, her husband, Army Major Charles Ingram, to maneuver themselves into the winners’ circle. 

It’s the unlikeliest sort of crime syndicate. If, that is, it’s a crime at all. 

As feckless Charles stumbles and second-guesses himself to the biggest prize, Millionaire’s producers start to smell a rat. They rewatch the tape of Charles’s performance and suspect the subtle coughs from the audience are really signals.

CLIP: What about the police? The police? Is this a police… Well it’s not not. It’s theft. It’s a million. If this was a bank vault or a diamond store and Hatton Gardens there’d be helicopters by now, roadblocks. All I’m saying is is it a crime to cheat on game show. Well, well it’s. Stop saying well Lionel. I’m from legal, it’s my job to say well.

It’s at this point that Quiz becomes something more than an amusing legal mystery. Charles’s big winning episode is the original viral video. The public watches and rewatches the tape. Specially edited by the producers to amplify the coughs and Charles’s odd behavior, it seems to point to his guilt. 

Everyone thinks they know what they saw. Everyone has an opinion. Those opinions lead to dark turns in the story. People who’ve never met the Ingrams feel justified in meting out mob justice, harassing their children, shooting their dog, and spitting on Charles as he takes his daily walk.

Truth, of course, is always truth, but human beings aren’t the perfect arbiters of it that God is. Perception can be deceiving. A reflection of the vicious public debates we seem to have every few months about viral videos these days, the second two episodes review events from other angles with broader context. 

The Ingrams’ lawyer ably shows that other interpretations of events are also reasonable.

CLIP: Another of my favorite facts, given that that’s what this trial is all about, right answers, wrong answers, knowledge, truth. Is that, when we are remembering something, we’re not actually recalling the original event. What we’re doing, is we are remembering the last time we remembered it. So we are constantly wiping our pasts and editing together a new one.

More than just interpretation, though, the lawyer highlights how quickly we render judgment and form ranks against those whose background, personality, and behavior doesn’t align with our own.

CLIP: Have you ever heard of this little thing called confirmation bias? When an assumption signals into the brain, it rearranges and re-organizes all facts to support the assumption. Like on the show, relay, people suspicious of a man from a strange family talking together, something’s weird, on a loop, he’s a real dodgy one, I think this guy’s cheating as well. Now might that not have created a shared fiction?

This engaging story about a million dollar tempest in a teapot makes us question the difference between pursuing justice and pursuing the appearance of justice. Quiz illustrates how we can wreck lives when we care more about appeasing an opinionated public than finding facts.

But I don’t want to give the impression that Quiz is a hectoring morality tale. With sharp, satirical performances, it entertains as much as it educates. Though there is a fair amount of language. 

In the end it has no easy answers about the Ingrams and whether justice was done in their case. But it leaves us in no doubt about how one piece of video, expanded, edited, or taken from different angles, can impact our impressions and how careful we should be before we rush to judgment and punishment.

MEGAN BASHAM: Today is Friday, June 5th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Let me remind you that this weekend we’re releasing a special edition of The World and Everything in It. It’s titled: “A Community Grief.” 

You may remember that during the last week of May, we presented a four-part serial from Kim Henderson about a small southern town. It was the site of the largest mass killing in Mississippi history. 

We’ve assembled those four parts together into one stand-alone podcast. It includes additional interviews, plus coverage of last weekend’s memorial service marking the third anniversary of the killings. 

If you listen to true-crime podcasts or know someone who does, we hope you’ll have a listen to ours and then share it with your friends.

BASHAM: What an enormous project by Kim, gripping storytelling, and poignant, powerful ending. Eager to listen to the whole thing again with that additional material.

Well, up next, Marvin Olasky answers your questions.

MARVIN OLASKY, EDITOR IN CHIEF: I’d like to answer briefly two questions that readers have recently asked. 

First, how has the coronavirus affected WORLD’s editorial process? 

My answer might surprise you: Not that much. Our full-time writers, editors, designers, and producers live in different cities across the U.S., Africa, and Asia. Almost all of us work out of our homes. We’ve been structured this way for 26 years, so we could try out this slogan: “Socially isolated since 1994.” 

But in one sense that’s an exaggeration. We emphasize street-level rather than suite-level reporting. We have done less in-person reporting than usual. In coronavirus times we sometimes have to rely on others to be our eyes, ears, and noses reporting sights, sounds, and smells. Since we can’t eyeball places, we have to check and double check.

And that points to one part of our coverage that has changed: our annual Hope Awards for Effective Compassion. We planned for our reporters, Anna and Charissa, to be on the road already. But with shutdowns, that hasn’t happened. Some ministries they planned to visit are closed. Some regions are still not safe for travel. Like many of you, we’re on hold, waiting to see what warmer weather will bring.

Question two: I wrote a column entitled “The Right Feminism.” Several readers asked: What can be right about feminism? Well, equal pay for equal work is right. I do not support an emphasis on career so extreme that the message becomes: Don’t waste your time on motherhood. My wife agrees with me that avoiding motherhood is a mistake, but some women don’t realize that until it’s too late. 

Other feminists support abortion, which their 19th century counterparts opposed. Some 21st century feminists castigate companies that have a “mommy track” so women during parts of their careers can work part-time. That’s too bad: Yes, having children might put some behind in the drive for CEO status, but a corner playpen is at least as important as a corner office.

It seems to my wife and me that the right feminism provides opportunity without pressure to conform. Thinking particularly of WORLD, we have twelve female full-time reporters under 40, several of whom are married. Our style of feminism ties in with our style of working from home. We have flexible schedules. 

If any of these reporters want to work part-time so they can care more for children, we will accommodate them. The right feminism assures that women have the choice to work in ways that acknowledge the importance of family.

I’m Marvin Olasky.

MEGAN BASHAM: Up next on The World and Everything in It, commentary from WORLD’s Jamie Dean.

JAMIE DEAN, NATIONAL EDITOR: It’s not often that a catechism hits me like a hammer. But it happened recently as I read the Westminster Larger Catechism’s teaching on the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” 

As Christians grapple with how the Scripture’s teaching applies during a pandemic, and otherwise tumultuous times, I dipped into the catechism to review its wisdom on promoting and protecting the lives of others.

Should we gather for worship again? If so, when? If soon, how?

The catechism didn’t offer a clear blueprint. It did speak of the duty of pursuing “lawful endeavors to preserve the life of ourselves and others.” It spoke against “the neglecting or withdrawing of the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life.”

That still doesn’t tell us exactly what to do. Some may think forgoing all gatherings is necessary in some places. Others think gathering for worship is necessary, along with serious efforts to do that as safely as possible.

Anything we do is still an endeavor. We should try hard to preserve life, but the catechism is reminding us that the power of life and death is not in our hands. That power belongs to God alone.

But that’s not what hit me like a hammer. 

It was the second half of the catechism’s teaching on the Sixth Commandment. It spoke of the duty of “charitable thoughts, love, compassion, meekness, gentleness, kindness.” It spoke against “provoking words; oppression; quarreling.”

Ah—here comes the piercing reminder that promoting life is also a matter of the heart. Jesus told His disciples: “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall not murder…’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council…”

I realized I’m sometimes more careful about wearing a mask when I’m in a store than I am of covering my mouth when I’m tempted to stoke an unnecessary quarrel. I’m often more careful about washing my hands than I am of asking Christ to cleanse my heart. 

What if I come all the way through this pandemic with my physical life intact, but with my heart in the habit of wounding myself and others? What if I take the proper care to promote the physical well-being of others, but I devour them with my words or thoughts?

What if the Lord is showing us how we’ve been failing to keep the Sixth Commandment all along?

This doesn’t mean that we stop having constructive conversations about how Christians should live. And it doesn’t mean we’ll always agree.

We don’t have a blueprint for every practical step we should take during a pandemic. But we do have a Bible that shows us how to seek wisdom and the welfare of others in humility and love. And we have an example in a Savior who urged his followers to “learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart—and you will find rest for your souls.”

I’m Jamie Dean.

NICK EICHER: It takes a lot of people to put this program together each week. Thanks so much to our team:

Maria Baer, Joel Belz, Paul Butler, Kent Covington, Jamie Dean, Kristen Flavin, Katie Gaultney, Anna Johansen, Leigh Jones, Vivian Jones, Trillia Newbell, Onize Ohikere, Mary Reichard, Sarah Schweinsberg, Cal Thomas, and Emily Whitten.

MEGAN BASHAM: Our audio engineers are Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz. J.C. Derrick is managing editor, Marvin Olasky editor in chief. 

And it’s you who make it all possible. You have our deepest gratitude!

Ephesians reminds us that God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. Now that is something to celebrate!

Have a great weekend.

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