The World and Everything in It: November 12, 2025

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Washington Wednesday, the political collides with the practical.

KAINE: I've got some folks who didn't like the vote, but I'm going to have a whole lot of federal employees who are going back to work and they're getting their paychecks.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Hunter Baker is standing by.

Also today, our international roundup WORLD Tour.

Later: Why cultural understanding is key to training the next generation.

FERRER: Everybody thinks they’re on the right side of history. You need to understand why … before you can start to refute it.

And WORLD’s Janie B. Cheaney on how the Christian life is like a pot of soup.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, November 12th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

MAST: Time for the news now with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Government funding update » House members are on their way back to Capitol Hill, where a vote could happen as soon as today on a government funding package the Senate just passed.

That would reopen the government and fund it through the end of January.

The vote could be tight. Republican Brian Mast noted that 8 Senate Democrats supported the stopgap measure, and:

MAST:  I would be surprised if in the end we have a total of 15 Democrats between the House and the Senate.

But it is widely expected to pass in the House nevertheless.

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was one of those 8 Democrats in the upper chamber who crossed the aisle to break a filibuster and approve funding.

He said he’s elated that the government will soon reopen.

FETTERMAN:  People have went five weeks without being paid. Um, I mean, that's a violation of my core values. And then I think it's our party’s as well.

Flight delays » Among those who have gone without paychecks, are air traffic controllers across the country.

Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy:

DUFFY:  Virtually all of them can't navigate missing two pay periods, which is a whole month of pay they've missed. Um, so that, that's a problem and that's why this, uh, reopen of the government is so critical to happen right now.

A surge in unpaid controllers calling out sick, forced the FAA to reduce flight traffic for safety. And that has led to thousands of flight cancellations and delays each day this week.

Nick Daniels is president of National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

DANIELS:  This is the erosion of the safety margin the flying public never sees, but America relies on every single day.

If lawmakers can’t get back to Washington in time, that could delay the funding vote.

And even when the government does reopen, that doesn’t mean flights will immediately return to normal.

The FAA says there is no timeline right now for when air traffic will return to normal.

SOUND: [Playing Taps]

Veteran's Day » President Trump paying tribute to fallen soldiers on this Veteran’s Day laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

But the president said this holiday should also be known as Victory Day.

He noted celebrations he’s witnessed in Europe to mark the end of both World Wars.

TRUMP:  America's warriors never quit, never surrender her. They fight, fight, fight, and they win, win, win. That's what we do. We win battles.

The president said his administration is reducing wait times for medical care for veterans and working to create new opportunities for veterans after leaving the military.

TRUMP: And I’m pleased to report that since January, the veterans unemployment rate has fallen by more than 26%.

President Trump has also issued an executive order to build a center to house up to 6,000 homeless veterans by 2028.

Arctic blast chills much of U.S.  » A surge of Arctic air has knocked temperatures into record territory across the Southeast while dumping early snow in the Northeast.

Freeze warnings now cover 18 million people in Alabama, Georgia, and even in Florida, where officials warned residents of falling iguanas as the frigid air paralyzes the tropical reptiles.

Scott Kleebauer with the National Weather Service said Tuesday that in Lakeland, Florida between Orlando and Tampa:

KLEEBAUER:  Their records go back to 1948 and they were at 36 this morning. And the old record, the old daily record was 44 back in 1996, so actually beating it by a whole eight degrees.

Meanwhile, lake-effect snow is coating parts of Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania with 4 to 8 inches already, and more on the way.

Israel latest A » Israel has agreed to allow more than 100 Hamas terrorists to be exiled, but there's a snag.

The Times of Israel reports the plan cannot move forward, because there are currently no countries willing to accept them.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country is taking steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

MACRON: [Speaking French]

Macron says France and the Palestinian Authority will work together on a first draft of a constitution for a future state.

Israel latest B » And in central Israel

SOUND: [Soldier funeral]

Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered yesterday for the funeral of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin.

Goldin was 23 when he was killed just two hours after a ceasefire took effect in the 2014 war between Israel and the terror group Hamas. Hamas has held his body for the past 11 years but the terror group released his remains on Sunday as part of the ceasefire deal brokered by the Trump administration last month.

Pakistan suicide bombing » At least 12 people are dead and more than two dozen wounded after a suicide bombing outside a district court in Islamabad. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Police say the attacker tried to enter the courthouse Tuesday, but detonated his explosives beside a police car after being stopped at the gate.

Authorities say the bomber targeted officers, calling the assault part of a wider wave of militant violence.

A faction of the Pakistani Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, claimed responsibility, though its leaders later issued conflicting statements.

Meanwhile, Pakistani security forces foiled an attack at an army-run college in a northwestern province. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned both attacks and called for swift justice.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: this week in politics on Washington Wednesday and our international roundup on World Tour. Plus, help for parents wanting to strengthen their children’s faith.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 12th of November.

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

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

First up, shutting down the shutdown. The house is expected to vote as soon as today on legislation that will end the longest government shutdown in US history. The breakthrough follows the defection of eight senators on the Democrat side breaking ranks to back a spending bill that extends federal funding to the end of January.

EICHER: We reported yesterday that progressive commentators were livid, and even some Democratic officials were surprised that the long standoff left them no better off on day 40 than they were on day one. For one of those who broke ranks, it came down to a conclusion that the confrontation actually gave the White House greater political advantage. For another senator, Tim Kaine of Virginia, it was purely practical.

KAINE: I've got some folks who didn't like the vote, but I'm going to have a whole lot of federal employees who are going back to work and they're getting their paychecks.”

MAST: The breakthrough also followed threats from President Trump to end the Senate rule that oftentimes is the only leverage a minority party has, the filibuster. The word itself comes from an old Dutch term for pirate, because in the early days, a Senator who launched a filibuster was seen as seizing the floor and refusing to let go.

EICHER: You won't find the filibuster in the Constitution, though it's a Senate invention that allows 41 senators to stop the other 59 calling a vote. It used to mean standing on the Senate floor and talking till you dropped these days, it mostly means threatening to.

MAST: But back when it really did mean talking, no one did it better than the fictional Senator Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 classic film. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

STEWART: You all think I’m licked. Well, I’m not licked! And I’m gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause, even if this room gets filled with lies like these.

MAST: In September 2013 during a filibuster over Obamacare, Senator Ted Cruz used some of his 21 hours of talk time to read a good night story to his children watching back in Texas on C-SPAN.

CRUZ: Do you like green eggs and ham? I do not like them, Sam I Am. I do not like green eggs and ham.

MAST: What the Senate really loves is not so much the speaking as the gumming up of the works. According to the progressive group the Brennan Center for Justice, there have been more than 2500 votes to end a filibuster since the year 1917 more than half of those coming in the last 12 years.

EICHER: Joining us now. Political scientist and world opinions contributor, Hunter, Baker. Hunter, good morning.

BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, I wonder, Hunter, whether the threat of nuking the filibuster was enough to end this thing. Because I think there is a real fear, and I'd love to hear what you have to say about this. A lot of Republicans did not want the filibuster ended. I'm sure Democrats didn't either, especially as they have another year to go before the midterm elections, and I wonder whether there wasn't a fresh memory of Republicans making Democrats rue the day they tampered with the filibuster rule. It was back in 2013 Democrats went for what was known as the nuclear option, changing Senate rules so that most presidential nominees, including lower court judges, could be confirmed with a simple majority, so Republicans then would double down by 2017 and that cleared the way for President Trump's three nominees, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, to be confirmed to the Supreme Court with no filibuster. What do you think?

BAKER: The Senate is not supposed to be the same kind of body as the House. Sometimes there's been a metaphor employed setting up the house as the cup of the hot coffee and the Senate as the saucer. You know, some of you may have, as I did, saw my grandfather, he would drip some of the hot coffee into his saucer to cool it down, and the Senate is supposed to cool down the passionate, hot ideas that come out of the house, and so that's the idea behind the filibuster, that you can slow things down and cause there to be greater debate and consideration. But I think that what we've seen with these shutdowns is an abuse of the filibuster. The filibuster, as mentioned earlier, is not in the Constitution. It's just a Senate rule. And I just think it's important that everybody look at how it was used here, the mere threat of the filibuster, right? Not a real filibuster. The mere threat of the filibuster triggers this 60 vote cloture requirement. And this was not done by the Democrats to stop something. It was done to essentially try to force the Republican majority to pass positive legislation. It was meant to try to force them to pass the extension of these COVID-era Obamacare subsidies. In my view, that's basically an illegitimate use of the filibuster. This is the minority party trying to force passage of legislation that they could not ordinarily get. And if that is going to become the new normal, then I think the filibuster is not long for this world.

EICHER: So just a quick question, do you think that it was the threat of blowing up the filibuster that caused everyone to walk back from the brink here?

BAKER: I think that that's part of it. It gives significantly more power to any senator because they have the potential to kind of stop everything. And so that makes every one of them an important player on the board. But I think in practical terms, there are just some senators like Angus King from Maine. I think he just felt responsible. He just thought, you know, this is a disastrous situation, and I need to do something to try to help with that. I think you look at somebody like Tim Kaine in Virginia, which has a ton of federal employees, and of course, he referenced that that, that you know he needed to vote to end this thing so that the federal employees could get their paychecks.

MAST: Presidential pardons are back in the news, with 77 issued over the last few days by President Trump. I want to call attention to the most famous pardon recipient, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, in a real sense, this may be one of the last chapters in a highly interesting political career. Depending upon how you define it, Giuliani may be the only true Republican mayor in the last 100 years in New York City. You had Michael Bloomberg, but he became a Democrat, as did John Lindsay. But if you count Fiorello La Guardia as a Republican, and Bloomberg and Lindsay. It's still just four in the last century. Giuliani is one of those.

EICHER: But he was a cultural curiosity even just as he was coming on the scene, Giuliani made a cameo in the popular TV comedy Seinfeld. Remember this?

GIULIANI ON SEINFELD: … My only indulgence, I guess, would be that I eat a lot of frozen yogurt. But it's non fat yogurt. They got Giuliani, and he doesn't even know it. Now look what you've done. We've got to do something. Mayor Giuliani will do everything possible to cleanse the city of this falsified, non fat yogurt.

EICHER: Well, he did more than simply fight phony yogurt, though he did do that. Giuliani was credited with making the city livable again by aggressively fighting crime, and his term was ending when 911 struck, and he was a steady presence on the scene.

GIULIANI: All that we know right now is that two airplanes struck the two large towers of the World Trade Center. We spoke to the White House, apparently there was also an attack on the Pentagon…

MAST: As a New Yorker, of course, he was friendly with Donald Trump after serving as Associate Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Giuliani later became Trump's personal attorney. Work that drew him into the post 2020 election battles, multiple lawsuits and landing in more popular culture venues. Here he is in April 2022 on the set of the celebrity singing competition the masked singer.

NICK CANNON: Oh my goodness, former Associate Attorney General, former Mayor of New York City…

NICOLE SCHERZINGER: Is that Robert Duvall?

KEN JEONG: No, that’s not Robert Duvall.

NICK CANNON: Rudy Giuliani!!!

EICHER: Well, Hunter, what do you make of this new and possibly last chapter for Giuliani receiving a presidential pardon to head off any federal charges stemming from the 2020 election in the hubbub around January 6?

BAKER: Rudy Giuliani is one of the most, I think, tragic figures in American politics after 9/11. I'm not sure that you could think of an American politician who was riding higher than Rudy Giuliani. He had, before he became mayor in the early 1990s, he had actually gone up against the mob in New York and really had won. Then he becomes mayor and just revolutionized the fight against crime in the city, made the city a lot safer and more prosperous. And so for a person like that to end up as kind of a remainder, an afterthought in the Donald Trump story is really shocking. You know, at the beginning of the century if you said Rudy Giuliani may be president, a lot of people would have said, Yeah, I could see that happening. Or if you had said, I can see Donald Trump becoming president, nobody would have thought that was the case. But Giuliani ran for president as a Republican, and he really failed, I think, because he would not reverse his pro-choice views. He could not get past the Republican primary electorate as a pro-choicer. Donald Trump shrewdly learned that lesson, and sincere or not, it took us to the point of the reversal of Roe v Wade.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, let's not skim over these, these pardons. As we said, there were 77 of them connected to widespread concerns about the 2020 election challenge. The pardons clear people from Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows to Sidney Powell, another personal attorney. Cleared them of any wrongdoing, preempting any federal charges that might come in the future. And these were the same kinds of pardons President Biden issued for many of his family members under federal investigation. What do you make of all this?

BAKER: I think that the practice is worrisome on a pragmatic level. You can kind of understand it because you see this increasing sort of lawfare practiced by both sides. And you you worry about people sort of ending up on an enemies list or being hounded, really, in the same way that I think Donald Trump was hounded prior to this 2024 election. But on the other hand, when you put these preemptive pardons out there, you're really damaging the truth-finding process and our ability to investigate certain things and figure them out. So I am worried that we'll enter into a period where both parties will start doing this as a matter of course.

MAST: You know, Hunter, it is interesting in light of the fact that this week's pardon system from January 6 and 2020 election results that the Supreme Court has decided to take up the question of mail-in ballots. Now this is a case out of Mississippi centering around the definition of Election Day. What are the ramifications of counting mail-in ballots received after that day? If they are, in fact, ruled impermissible, the decision may cast some of the events of November 2020, and January 2021 in a different light. So what are you watching here?

BAKER: I really don't think that this is a partisan issue. I think that if you ask most Americans, Do you want to know the outcome of the election on election day? Do you want to be able to on election night do we really want to know who won the election? I think that most people are going to say yes, I want to know that. I just think that the court should really think seriously about requiring that ballots be received by election day. Nobody is surprised by an election. We have a gigantic run up that is covered by the press ad nauseum, day in and day out. So if you want to cast a ballot by mail, it should be a very simple thing to submit that ballot, say a week in advance. If we don't do that, if we allow ballots to come in, and sometimes you hear, you know, the desire to let ballots arrive as much as 14 days after an election, then you just create an impression that you can sort of find out what has happened on election day, and then there's room for all kinds of potential tampering and and messing around after the fact of the election to try to change the result. I hope that the court will take this opportunity to nail this down and say that, look, yes, we need to. We need to have the convenience of mail in voting, especially for people who may find it difficult to get out and vote physically. But we can certainly have a responsible timing when it comes to submitting the ballot.

MAST: Hunter Baker is a political scientist and Provost at North Greenville University. Hunter. Thank you.

BAKER: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Nigeria, Onize Oduah.

SOUND: [CHURCH SINGING]

ONIZE ODUAH: We begin today in the East African nation of Tanzania, where church leaders and rights groups have condemned electoral violence.

Authorities have also charged more than 200 people with treason after violent protests over the outcome of the late October poll.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan scored nearly 98 percent of the widely-criticized vote.

The main opposition party was barred from the election. According to the opposition, as more than one thousand people died after security forces clamped down on the protests.

Jude Thaddaeus Ruwa'ichi is the archbishop of the city of Dar-es-Salaam.

JUDE THADDAEUS RUWA'ICHI: (SWAHILI) Our nation has been wounded, and it has lost its dignity because of what transpired during the week of the general election. It has not only lost its honour but also its people — citizens who were unlawfully killed.

He says here that Tanzania has lost its dignity and honor over the unlawful killings. Authorities have not released official details on the number of dead or injured.

President Hassan formerly served as vice president. She emerged as Tanzania’s first female chief executive in 2021 after former President John Magufuli died in office.

SOUND: [LEADERS ARRIVING]

Next we go to Belem, Brazil, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. 50,000 people from more than 190 nations gathered this week for the COP30 Climate Change Conference. The conference marks ten years since the signing of the Paris Agreement, when the group agreed to fight global warming. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva opened this week’s event by castigating what he called “climate deniers.”

DE SILVA: COP30 will be the COP of Truth….

World representatives called for new pledges to reduce emissions and financial assistance for developing nations.

The United States did not send any high-level representatives to the conference. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently criticized the gathering.

CHRIS WRIGHT: Gatherings of global leaders and businesses should be about humans. The world has 8 billion citizens. Let’s focus on the interests of 8 billion citizens, not on the desire to scare children, and grow government power…Let’s focus on humans.

Billionaire Bill Gates released a memo ahead of the conference saying that a doomsday outlook to climate change was mistaken. He called for diverting resources from near-term emissions goals to improving the lives of the world’s poorest people.

COP30 runs through November 21st.

SOUND: [RUNNING WATER]

We wrap up in Iran, where the worst drought in decades has prompted officials to prepare for water rationing.

The capital city of Tehran is facing its sixth consecutive year of drought. Local officials say rainfall in the city is at its lowest level in a century.

Dam reservoirs in Tehran and other cities have also fallen below 10%.

Kaveh Madani is the director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

MADANI: A problem like this was not created overnight. It's the product of decades of mismanagement, lack of foresight, and problems in planning in not only the water sector but the other sectors that the water sector is interconnected with.

Iranian authorities have warned of rolling cuts in Tehran. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said Tehran could face evacuations if the city does not get any rainfall before winter.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. I’m Onize Oduah.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, November 12th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: how ideas take root.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer says she used to have a yard full of dandelions.

HILLARY FERRER: And I remember thinking, man, how are we getting this many? And so I would see kids like out blowing. It's like when the dandelion was in the white puffy version, they'd be out there blowing those are all the seeds. And then you have the actual dandelion weed that comes up. And so when people don't understand the seed of an idea, and all they want to do is complain about the weeds, they have no idea basically what they are planting, left and right.

Ferrer is the general editor of Mama Bear Apologetics, a book that became a ministry specifically to moms, helping them learn how to spot cultural weeds and help teach their kids to think critically, and Biblically, about the world around them.

Significantly, Ferrer is not a mother herself. But she says she has an advantage busy moms don’t have. Time to research.

FERRER: How can I boil this down in a way that you can read one chapter instead of reading 20 books, I'll read the 20 books and then put it into the one chapter, and then further distill it down to where you can equip your kids.

MAST: That research took the form of the book Mama Bear Apologetics in 2019. A lot has changed in the culture over the last six years. So I spoke with Ferrer about what’s different now, and how she thinks parents can help their kids face today’s challenges.

Here’s that conversation.

FERRER: I would say that it's just amazing how quickly culture is changing. Probably one of the biggest ones would have to do with the transgender revolution. And this really does go back to a lot of the critical theory and queer theory, which we kind of talked about the seeds of that in the first book, which would be in the Marxism chapter, but it had not come to full bloom. And secondly, one of the biggest things is it's so much more overtly being taught in the schools. It was kind of trying to just tiptoe its way into the schools back maybe in 2019 but it's very, very overt.

MAST: Your books are part history book, part culture study, part handbook. How do you envision people when they pick up your books using them?

FERRER: People say I've seen all this happening. I just didn't have the words to talk about it. I didn't have the language to discuss it. And now that I see it, I can't unsee it, and now that I have the language to talk about it, I want to talk to everybody about it. And so we see it not as trying to dump a whole bunch of new information onto people, and especially moms, but to really give them the language to interact with what they already see happening. And I would say the goal with this book is to show them that, we need to be looking at how does every single idea affect every other idea? How can I understand it? How can I have conversations about it, and how can I help my children to recognize it before it becomes a problem? And so I'm trying to give it more of a holistic look, so that we're very intentional in what we're discussing and what we're analyzing, and really how we're interacting in culture.

MAST: Explain The Founders Effect for us, your idea of the influence of the first person to introduce a topic as as applies to what you write about, which is helping children understand issues.

FERRER: So The Founders Effect means that the first person to introduce a new idea to someone, that person immediately files them away as the expert. So if the first worldview that they hear is that we were created for a purpose, as opposed to we can create an image of ourselves however we like, that's going to those are two radically different worldviews that change the concept of, what should I do next? How do I be a human? What is the right thing to do? What's the moral thing to do? It's laying that groundwork before the lies. It's a lot easier to establish a foundation than it is to tear up a bad foundation and replace it.

MAST: Well, I know another running theme throughout your books is what you call the ROAR method. So can you just briefly explain what that is and how that becomes a framework for your chapters?

FERRER: Yeah, so the ROAR method is how we're going to be breaking down these ideas. Everybody thinks they're on the right side of history, and so you need to understand why they're championing for the values that they do before you can start to refute it.

So ROAR stands for “Recognize the message.” This is where you look at movie, music, whatever, and say, What is the main message that anybody watching this can come away with?

Next we go to “Offer discernment,” because we don't want to turn discernment into we're just out there bashing everything, saying what's wrong with everything. So in offering discernment, what we do is we first say: most lies are wrapped in partial truth, which that means we have to identify what's true first before we can even extract them.

A is “Argue for a healthier approach.” That's where you say, “Okay, here's the truth that we can all agree on. Now, we might disagree on the solution to this, or we might disagree on how this is supposed to play out.” So that would be how anybody can discuss anything with anybody.

And then that final R is “Reinforce through discussion, discipleship and prayer.” And that's where we want to say, “Okay, now, how do I have practical conversations with my kids? How can we do practical activities with the kids to where it's getting these ideas across?” And if we see something that's really, really a stronghold in culture, how do we specifically pray through that? Because ideological things need to be addressed in an ideological way, but spiritual strongholds need to be addressed in a spiritual way, and we can't conflate those two.

MAST: I think when we talk about apologetics, I know that sometimes people who are very skilled in apologetics, and what I'm thinking about is they have lots of knowledge, they have the ability to reason. They have logic. They have, frankly, a whole lot of things that a lot of other people who have very strong emotions may not have. And sometimes those people who present those strong skills in a way that that is very effective, or that you would think would be very effective, they get criticized for not being loving enough. So as people get more skilled in apologetics and understand the importance of it, how can we present reasoned arguments still with love?

FERRER: Yeah, so I would say just for mama bears in general and for women in general, we've stayed away from apologetics in the past, I think, because we're not super confrontational. A lot of times, we want everybody to get along. And so I really do think the ROAR method is one of those ways to where we are building that bridge first, when you learn how to have these conversations in a way that acknowledges all the good points they're trying to make before they even have to make all of them, I think that is a place where we can present things in love.

Now we can't always do that if we have limited amount of time. So we look at how Christ really ministered in his ministry. When he was out in front of crowds, he kind of gave the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And people think of the Sermon on the Mount is this kind of, oh, blessed are the poor. It's like, Yeah. He says all that. And then he goes into the biggest spanking that we've seen since job.

So when we're speaking in a public setting, we need to be presenting things without all the wiggle room. And then when we're dealing with people in a private setting, that's when we start doing the interpersonal ministry, where we start dealing with the individual. It's okay for certain spheres to be a little more truth based like, I think of even Charlie Kirk, he had to say his piece. And that was absolutely appropriate. And people who are doing one-on-one counseling need to be able to go slow and build that relationship. This is the body of Christ. It's okay for us to have different roles within the body, and when we start really appreciating the purpose for those roles, that's when we as the body of Christ are the most effective in culture.

MAST: That was Hillary Morgan Ferrer … founder of Mama Bear apologetics. Her new book called Mama Bear Apologetics: A Guide to Sexuality and Gender Identity comes out in March.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, November 12th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney welcomes us into her kitchen for a healthy serving of practical theology.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: When the bright October days give way to gray November, there's nothing like a bowl of old-fashioned vegetable soup to remind us what chilly days are for. Three ways to make it: Open a can—ready in 15 minutes. Open lots of cans—takes about an hour. Or start from scratch—a process that fills an afternoon.

The first two options are easy enough. But if you’ve never taken the time to make soup from scratch, here’s a quick guide: set a large heavy kettle over medium-low heat for about 15 minutes while you cut chunks of fat from two to four meaty soup bones. Throw them in the pot to melt. When the chunks are spongy and a layer of tallow greases the bottom of the kettle, add the bones. Turn the heat to low and let them brown. Don't rush—slow browning develops a depth to the flavor that can't be shortcutted.

When a rich, savory smell fills the house, add two to four quarts of water and salt to taste. Bring to boiling, skim the foam, and lower the heat to a simmer. While the tough and gristly meat slowly tenderizes, assemble your vegetables and make sure your knife is good and sharp.

Vegetables come from everywhere: your garden, farmers market, produce aisle, freezer case, even a can. They come in every color: reds and oranges and yellows and greens, bright as crayons. They come with contrasting textures and flavors. For example, carrots are hard, onions are sharp. But when they cook together one becomes tender, the other mellow. Still themselves, only better.

Remove the bones from the broth and toss in the vegetables. While they come to a boil, you'll be picking meat from the crevasses of bone and sheaths of fat. It will come off in chunks and slivers. Cut up the big pieces and throw them back into the pot for another hour or so, while the meat and vegetables settle in together.

A soup made with only vegetables can be delicious, but it's a little thin. Flesh gives body, richness and character. It begins and finishes the job that bloodless vegetables complement; it forms the medium in which they consist. And it requires someone's ultimate sacrifice.

In John 6:56 we hear Jesus say: "Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him." Of all his sayings, this one shocks us as much as it did the original hearers. Eat His flesh? Drink His blood? Yes, it's metaphorical, but He literally offered His flesh and blood: the former to abide with us, the latter to pour out for us.

He gathers us, with our sharp angles and hard surfaces, our squishy and acidic selves, and chops us with the sharp blade of His Word. He adds us with all our imperfections and cooks us down to a mellow whole, conforming to Him and confirming each other. He sanctifies the garden and the butcher's block and the kettle. As we cook, a pleasing aroma rises to His Father. And when we're done, He serves us up.

The world stumbles on and today's controversies become tomorrow's table fare. Meanwhile we're cooking in the Lord's kitchen. Let's be patient, with ourselves, the world, and each other. Someday we'll be done.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: what obligations do pastors and church staff have when it comes to reporting abuse? Also, the FDA removes obstacles for women seeking menopause treatments. And, a Christian punk band is back on the scene after two decades off of it. Arsenio Orteza will be along. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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, “Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!” —Psalm 119:33-36

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.