The World and Everything in It: November 14, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. I'm Laura, and I live in East Texas where I work as an assistant professor of aviation for LeTourneau University. I was introduced to WORLD by my former boss, Aaron who told me about the podcast. I hope you enjoy today's program

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Israel closes in on Hamas while protesters and politicians call for a ceasefire.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk about it with an expert in Jerusalem. Also today, Ohio legalized recreational marijuana becoming state number 25. We’ll talk about the unique medical risks. And, a Presbyterian pastor in Seattle finds out clarity is the best policy.

AUDIO: They were coming in, attracted by the church, but then later felt like they had been betrayed because they felt like where I stood was hidden.

And WORLD commentator Hunter Baker on the financial crimes of Sam Bankman-Fried.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, November 14th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Up next, Anna Johansen Brown with today’s news.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel Hospital update » The Israeli military says it discovered a Hamas command center in an unlikely place, the basement of a children’s hospital.

Specifically the Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City. IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari:

HAGARI: Underneath the hospital in the basement, we found a Hamas command and control center, suicide bomb vests, grenades, AK 47 assault rifles, explosive devices, RPGs and other weapons, computers, money, et cetera.

Hagari saying there’s also evidence Hamas at one time held hostages there.

Meanwhile, Israel faces criticism for fighting taking place near Gaza’s largest medical center, the Al-Shifa Hospital.

Doctors there say they’re fighting to keep newborns alive after critical supplies like oxygen and food were cut off.

President Biden with an urgent plea for Israel yesterday:

BIDEN: The hospital must be protected.

But the Biden administration also reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan:

SULLIVAN: The loss of a single innocent life is a tragedy, whether it’s a Palestinian civilian, an Israeli civilian or anyone else. We grieve for every innocent that is lost. At the same time, we will continue to stand behind the proposition that Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorist attacks.

SCOTUS Update » Here in the U.S. the Supreme Court’s nine Justices have signed a new code of conduct, the first in that court’s history. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: The Court described the code as not new, saying it was mostly derived from historic tradition and lower court ethics standards.

Critics say the new code doesn’t explain how the justices will enforce it on themselves, leaving questions about its effectiveness.

The Court has faced mounting pressure in recent months from lawmakers and the public to adopt ethics rules amid reports that some justices received lavish gifts and perks.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

APEC summit » President Biden is set to meet tomorrow [Wednesday] with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.

MAO NING: [Speaking Chinese]

Ahead of the meeting, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning saying the United States and China will discuss fundamental issues in the relationship between the two countries.

She added that the United States should consider China’s legitimate interests and not try to impose its will on China.

Trump Jr. Testifies » Donald Trump Junior returned to the stand in his father’s New York civil trial yesterday, but this time he was testifying for the defense.

Trump Junior praised his father’s real estate profile and said it attracted developers.

Former President Donald Trump and his sons, Trump Junior and Eric, are on trial for six counts of civil fraud for allegedly inflating the Trump Organization's assets on paperwork used in business deals.

Outside the courtroom Trump Jr. denounced the trial as a sham.

TRUMP JR: Every day it's going to be another nonsense, another lawsuit, they're going to keep trying it. Reality, fact, that doesn't matter because that's where we've gotten in a politicized country.

The judge has already ruled on a related count that the Trump Organization defrauded banks and insurers.

New York Attorney General Letitia James seeks two hundred fifty million in damages and wants the three Trumps barred from the New York real estate market.

Baby Indi Gregory » A terminally ill baby girl in the UK has died despite her parents’ legal fight to continue treatments. WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry has more.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: Christian Concern, a group supporting Indi Gregory’s parents, says the infant passed away yesterday after doctors removed her life support Sunday.

The eight-month-old suffered brain damage due to a mitochondrial disease. Doctors in the UK argued her condition was incurable and that she should not be treated.

Gregory’s parents fought to continue life support while the Italian government granted her citizenship and attempted unsuccessfully to transfer her to a children’s hospital in Rome.

British judges repeatedly sided with the hospital, ruling that ending treatment and transferring Gregory to a hospice was in her best interest.

The UK Court of Appeals last week refused to let her be taken off life support at home.

It is the latest in a series of legal face-offs between British doctors and parents over the treatment of their terminally ill children.

For WORLD, I’m Lauren Canterberry.

Busy Thanksgiving Travel » If you plan on traveling for Thanksgiving, be prepared for big crowds and long lines.

The Transportation Security Administration is predicting what could be the busiest holiday season ever for air travel.

AAA’s Mark Jenkins says those taking to the roads will experience lower gas prices than in recent months.

JENKINS: Oil prices have plummeted. That's really creating a scenario where we should have low gas prices hanging around through the holidays, and less conditions, unexpectedly change.

Millions of drivers are expected to hit the road for Thanksgiving travel. AAA advises drivers to make sure their cars are ready for the road trip.

I'm Anna Johansen Brown.

Straight ahead: Wartime propaganda. Plus, the rise and fall of an LGBT-affirming church.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 14th of November, 2023. This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for listening. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up on The World and Everything in It: the information war in Gaza.

Early on in Israel’s war, Western news feeds lit up over reports that a hospital in Gaza had been leveled by Israeli shelling.

REICHARD: Very soon it was clear that Hamas had blown the story out of proportion…and was most likely responsible for the blast that killed Palestinians camped in the hospital parking lot.

Since then, it’s become clear that a propaganda war is underway as well as urban fighting.

EICHER: Joining us now to talk about the war is Seth Frantzman who is in Israel as we speak. He’s reported extensively on wars in the Middle East, authored two books on drone warfare and ISIS, and is an adjunct fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

REICHARD: Seth, good morning.

FRANTZMAN: Good morning.

REICHARD: Both protestors and politicians condemn Israel for its attacks on Gaza. They say it violates international law by bombing unarmed civilians. What does international law have to say about responding to attacks on Israelis as Hamas did?

FRANTZMAN:Well, countries have a right of self defense, obviously, and a terrorist criminal organization is, you know, is an organization that you're allowed to target and you're allowed to dismantle it. You can go in and arrest their members, or if their members are armed, obviously, you know, you're allowed to target them. So international law would certainly be on the side of Israel. But it's clear that when you're fighting in a very dense, complicated urban environment, like the Gaza Strip is, and the Palestinians have a lot of sympathy, that, you know, Israel has to be super, super careful in terms of who it targets and what kind of munitions it uses. And, you know, if you have one terrorist in the building, and there's 100 civilians in the building, you're not supposed to level the building. Israel has a lot of technology that it uses to make sure that it can reduce as much damage as it can. But I think we all see in Gaza, you know, there is a lot of civilian houses that are damaged in this conflict.

REICHARD: Last week someone at the State Department blasted President Biden for supporting Israel…accused the President of spreading misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war…and supporting genocide. Seth, remind us what genocide is…and whether that’s what’s happening in Gaza?

FRANTZMAN: Well, genocide would seem to be more applicable than what Hamas did on October 7, when it attacked Israel and killed 1200 people. Genocide is the attempt to exterminate you know, a part or in whole a group of a group of people based on you know, parameters like ethnicity or race or again I'm not sure religion, but basically the idea of exterminating in a group of people. I mean, the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the genocide in Darfur, these are all very well known examples. 

REICHARD: You mentioned Israel’s tech and efforts to take out terrorists in an urban environment…What do we know about where Israel is in its goal of defeating Hamas?

FRANTZMAN: Well, Israel, Gaza Strip is a very small area, and Israel has basically sent in ground forces there two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago. So it first started with a three week bombing campaign, and then once it had degraded the Hamas, you know, terrorist infrastructure sent three divisions, which is, you know, 30 to 40,000 men, or what have you, with tanks, into Gaza, and it surrounded Gaza City. It's operated very slowly and cautiously to kind of surround the city there so that it can kind of slowly but surely get civilians to leave the areas of fighting. It opened to humanitarian corridors so the civilians can leave. And then it tries to go block by block to go after the Hamas terrorists and also to uncover all the infrastructure that Hamas has because what Hamas did is it tunneled underneath the Gaza Strip and built 500 miles of tunnels. And the real struggle, it's trying to get them out of the tunnel. So this is a very, very slow complex conflict. 

REICHARD: Many voices in the media are condemning Israel for cutting Gaza off from fuel supplies. But the The Wall Street Journal reports that Israel delivered fuel to the Al Shifa hospital and Hamas fighters wouldn’t allow medical personnel to access it. How does it help the Palestinian cause for Hamas to keep hospitals from getting fuel?

FRANTZMAN: Hamas has a long history of using hospitals and civilians in general as kind of human shields. Hamas generally seems to steal the fuel or regulate how much of it the hospitals get. It's in Hamas's interest to have the hospitals permanently in a crisis mode where they are saying to the international community, “we need fuel,” because then the international community pressures Israel to slow down the operations. Whereas Israel's goal is to get the civilians to move out of the hospitals to move to southern Gaza, where there are more hospitals and lots of humanitarian aid being given to the civilians. And then Israel wants to go into the hospital and see if Hamas has built, you know, the terrorist infrastructure that Israel has claimed is underneath some of these hospitals like Shifa Hospital. And I think that's, you know, of course, it's never a pretty sight to see soldiers have to surround a hospital. 

REICHARD: What is Israel doing to avoid playing into Hamas’s propaganda games?

FRANTZMAN: Hamas is a terrorist organization, many of the fighters dress in civilian clothes, it's pretty difficult then to know, if a guy who's in civilian clothes one minute and goes into an ambulance is somehow legitimately part of that ambulance, or if you know, an hour later, he picks up by an AK 47. Israel has a lot of technology. But it's never easy to have to fight in these types of environments. And I think therefore, that's why we see Israel moving, moving very, very slowly block by block. And often, in fact, just pausing for a day or days on end, in some cases, in some places.

REICHARD: How does this conflict compare to the war with ISIS?

FRANTZMAN: Hamas committed crimes on October 7 that are direct parallels of ISIS. This is exactly the stuff we saw ISIS do in Iraq and Syria, it's exactly what ISIS did to the Yazidis. The difference is, is is in some sense that ISIS had more time. It was a bit more powerful, the war to defeat ISIS took years, but the process of defeating them in Mosul, Iraq and Syria is exactly what Israel is doing in Gaza.  It was a slow process. But this is the kind of difficult, slow campaign that you have to do against groups like this.

REICHARD: Is there any aspect of this story that you think the mainstream news is failing the cover?

MR: Well, if we ask Israelis, you know, would you like to go back to October 6, and have this not happen, to prevent it somehow, you know, through better defenses, or maybe a pre emptive attack or something? I think most Israelis will of course say, yes. If we asked Hamas supporters, would you like to go back to October 6 and prevent this terrible war? And unfortunately, a lot of people that are supporting Hamas would say no, let's do it again. So I think that's the big difference.

REICHARD: Seth Frantzman is with Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he is based in Israel. Seth, thanks for joining us.

FRANTZMAN: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next onThe World and Everything in It: the state of legalized marijuana.

Last week, a majority of voters in Ohio passed two ballot measures: one to place a right to abortion in the state constitution, and the other to legalize recreational marijuana.

Now, I’m old enough to remember when news of West Coast states like Oregon and California legalizing weed was a big deal, but now recreational pot is being normalized in the midwest.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: In a moment we’ll talk about how we got here with an expert. But first, what did voters have to say about Issue 2? WORLD Reporter Leah Savas brought us some perspectives from Ohio’s heartland near Columbus.

PHILLIP DIXON: I voted yes on Issue 2.

SAVAS: And why?

DIXON: Um, I mean, I just don't think that there's many harms with cannabis. So...

ASHLEY BAXTER: I voted no on that one.

SAVAS: And why?

BAXTER: You know, I just from the little bit that I understand, I just don't think I'm quite there yet to vote yes.

ROB RITTER: For medical reasons. Absolutely. I've got I've got a friend with MS that needs it for pain management. So when is prescribed by a doctor, I don't think we need to have one more avenue for anybody to go down. You know, I mean, I do consume alcohol to a certain point, but you know, I don't think we need to have one more avenue.

REICHARD: As you can hear, a variety of priorities and understanding about the issue. But what exactly are Ohioans in for?

Joining us now to talk about it is Marc Sweeney. Now the CEO of Profero Team. That’s a pharmacy consulting company in Dayton, Ohio. He previously served as the founding dean of the school of pharmacy at Cedarville University.

EICHER: Good morning, Marc.

MARC SWEENEY: Hello, how are you?

EICHER: Good, doing well. Thanks for joining us today. Well, let’s start with the harms of marijuana. What do the newest studies have to say about the effects of marijuana on recreational users?

SWEENEY: You know, so marijuana is interesting, because as you pointed out earlier, this is something that has been an ongoing conversation for years now. And even though you know, there's there's no question in the studies out there, but what we do know is that it does have a mind altering effect, it can induce or exacerbate anxiety, it can induce or exacerbate depression. So we do have some concerns, just from a sheer side effect or impact on our mental health well being.

EICHER: You know, I've heard the argument that alcohol is more troublesome than marijuana that it's already legal for adults 21 and older. Do you agree or disagree with the comparison of those two?

SWEENEY: I know that that is a common comparison, I hear that often. And really, the bottom line is for individual people, some people are more prone to the side effects. And essentially the downfall to utilizing alcohol and others are more prone to the downside of marijuana. If I were just to kind of share a broader perspective, there are a lot of drug interactions that can occur with with marijuana. And whether you're using it medicinally or recreationally, if you're utilizing this haphazardly with no medical advice or guidance, what risk are you putting yourself in? And I'll give you an example. So if you're utilizing marijuana, and you happen to have an infection, and you're using a common drug called ketoconazole, if you use ketoconazole with marijuana, it actually will double the levels of marijuana. And I wonder how many people even think about these things. Or there's cases where if you're utilizing marijuana, you can actually cause changes in your levels in some of your cholesterol medications, and some of your seizure medications. So that makes me very concerned that we are now opening up the floodgates for more people to use, but without any type of guidance, what are what are some of those effects going to be on our society? And think about that if you're impacting a seizure medication, you're utilizing recreational marijuana, you're on a seizure medication, and now you're driving down the road. And without any knowledge, they could be at higher risk, those individuals have a higher risk for seizures. And there's been no guidance at all on that potential danger or risk. Those are some of the things I'm very concerned about.

REICHARD: Marc, do you think opioids and fentanyl have drawn attention away from the dangers of marijuana? More broadly, what’s the bigger picture of how we got to rec mar legalized in Ohio?

SWEENEY: So certainly the opioid crisis and, you know, Ohio has been somewhat the epicenter of that crisis, and it has drawn a lot of attention. It's drawn a lot of resources. And we've focused in on that and I'll be honest, we actually that focus and attention has actually started to make a difference. It's actually improved the situation in Ohio, which is really, really good to see. But I do agree that focusing on one problem and basically not having our focus on another potential growing area is of concern.

But you know, when we think about putting this type of decision to the voters, you know, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the DEA of the United States has classified marijuana as essentially a schedule one substance, meaning that it has, you know, very restricted use in our country. But what I find interesting is, is that when the voters disagree with essentially a decision by a federal agency on how it categorizes a drug, we're able to actually overturn that decision in an election, despite any type of of data, any type of information that's currently available  at the federal level, or even at the state level, for that matter. But we've done that at the state level. So I do get concerns that we are we setting precedent here, where we if we don't like the decision of a federal agency on how a drug is classified, we can go around that agency and vote it into utilization. That to me is a concern. And what does that look like for future types of situations where we want to vote drug approvals into the public for utilization?

EICHER: Good information, really appreciate that. Marc Sweeney is Chief Executive Officer of Profero Team, that's a pharmacy consulting company in Dayton, Ohio. He is also the founding dean of Cedarville University School of Pharmacy. Marc, great to talk with you, thanks so much.

SWEENEY: Thank you.

CHUCK SCHUMER: Mr President, I ask unanimous consent.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It was unanimous, no debate the Orbital Sustainability Act of 2023.

CLERK: The Senate will proceed.

That’s Congress-Speak for Clear the Junk Out of Earth Orbit, and Do It Now. Did you know  there are nearly a million pieces pieces of space-ship flotsam and jetsam in orbit?

This bill aims to clean that up.

We’re talking old satellites, paint chips that shook loose. There’s a spatula, if you can believe it, a spare glove,  and now one more thing: a big specialty tool bag that’s worth a cool 100K. Evidently it slipped out of the astronaut’s hands.

You can actually see this thing from earth if you know where to look.

NASA says there aren’t any rescue plans at this point. But they’ll need to move quickly if they change minds. It’s got to to be done before March, because after that it’s expected to burn up in the atmosphere.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 14th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: lessons learned.

Prominent megachurch pastor Andy Stanley’s public descent into heretical teaching on sexuality has added fuel to the ongoing debate over Biblical truth. Church leaders especially are struggling with how to minister to those dealing with same-sex attraction and gender confusion––without compromising Scripture.

REICHARD: One Presbyterian pastor believes church leaders could learn from his mistakes.

WORLD senior writer Mary Jackson recently spoke with Rev. Dr. James Kearny, a pastor in the Presbyterian Church USA. In 2006, Kearny planted a church in a downtown Seattle neighborhood called Capitol Hill. It’s an area that has long been a hub for people who identify as LGBTQ.

Kearny had hopes of reaching them. But things didn’t go as planned. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin brings us the story.

KEARNY: I am standing in front of Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church on Harvard Avenue. The church closed six years ago, and the presbytery has not gotten someone to rent it yet…

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: It’s a chilly Wednesday morning in Seattle. James Kearny is walking around the outside of his former church.

KEARNY: The church closed six years ago, and the presbytery has not gotten someone to rent it yet.

It’s an old church, built in the 20s. Brick facade. Stained glass windows. Looks a bit like a castle.

KEARNY: There is a lot of graffiti at this point. All over it, and there's also trash. Uh, so that's sad.

The doors and windows of the church are now boarded up.

As Kearny walks, he reminisces.

KEARNY: I remember when the doors were open, and we had weddings and funerals and baptisms out on the sidewalk, and it was full of life and energy. But now it's looking a little beleaguered.

Kearny believes spiritual warfare, and his own mistakes, had something to do with the church’s closure.

When he helped plant the church in this building, Kearny came with a congregation of mostly middle class young families. Lots of enthusiasm, but this neighborhood was a gritty area.

KEARNY: One of the big issues when we planted this church was, how are we going to interact with the gay community, because as I said, this was the center of the gay life for the entire Northwest. It was a place where you could go, if you were part of that lifestyle back then, where you could feel normal. So it became a very difficult place to do ministry. But this was a neighborhood that needed the church, and this is where we were planted.

Kearny has always firmly believed what Scripture teaches about marriage and sexuality. But he wrestled with how to minister to the steady flow of people filling the pews at Capitol Hill Presbyterian who affirmed homosexuality. Most of the mainline Protestant churches surrounding Kearny’s church plant––and even some members within his congregation––supported gay lifestyles.

Kearny attempted what he calls a “third way” approach. Here’s how he describes it.

KEARNY: And I said, you know, I want people who are gay and lesbian to come into the church. I don't want to make this a discussion that happens from the pulpit. I want it to be a discussion that we have one on one, the people would come in, they would experience Jesus. And then as we talked about Jesus and being disciples, then I could have those conversations, either one on one over coffee, we could have them in Sunday school classes, but not sort of proclaim from the pulpit. So I was thinking that this would be an attractional model for people for discipleship.

But that approach eventually caused division, confusion, and hurt.

KEARNY: We lost by taking this third way, we lost two ways. One, we found that culture really was influencing our children, and also our members. And two, we found that people who were engaged in a gay relationship, or the gay lifestyle, were coming in and finding a bait and switch to that. So they were coming in, attracted by the church, but then later felt like they had been betrayed because they didn't, because they felt like where I stood was hidden.

Meanwhile, a growing number of congregants within the church sought to persuade others to become open and affirming of gay lifestyles.

KEARNY: Within the church itself, it became an issue of contention. Where you had people really trying to pull the church into the open affirming camp. And that was also not healthy for the leadership.

The contention within Capitol Hill Presbyterian over Biblical sexuality reached a tipping point in 2014. That’s when the church’s denomination, the PC(USA), voted to change the definition of marriage in its constitution from “a man and a woman” to “two people” and to allow its ministers to perform same-sex marriages.

KEARNY: That really pulled the rug out from under me, it meant that I no longer had the cover of the denomination. It meant that suddenly it was no longer, ‘Well, this is what the church thinks, and believes this is what you believe. And so I was very isolated. And then I also, you know, my colleagues, I had a lot of colleagues leave the presbytery. So I became more of an anomaly, more of a voice of the desert.

Since then, PC(USA) churches and members have dwindled. In 2016, it had almost 9,500 churches. Last year, that number was down to 8,700.

Capitol Hill Presbyterian was one of those casualties. Its membership dropped from about 160 when the church first started to 45 people by 2017. It closed its doors in 2018.

As Kearny prepares to leave the Capitol Hill district, he reflects on his mistakes.

KEARNY: I found that to have a very clear message of our boundaries, in terms of biblical boundaries around sexuality, as well as other biblical boundaries, was kindness…so that people could choose either to be a part of it or not, they wouldn't be surprised later on, and hurt because of a lack of clarity. Clarity is kindness.

That message is one Kearny believes pastors within the wider evangelical church need to hear today.

KEARNY: And so what I experienced here is what pastors are experiencing throughout the country. And so my admonition for pastors is that the time to be friendly to the culture is over. That doesn't mean to be rude, that doesn't mean to be unloving. And it doesn't mean to major on condemning. We need to be inviting people to be saved. But to do that, there has to be a clear message. And all of this is empowered by God, the Holy Spirit. Because again, this is a supernatural kingdom, which proves itself through acts of power, which are also important for a secular age where we have a hard time believing in any kind of truth.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin. This story was reported and written by Mary Jackson.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: WORLD Opinions Commentator Hunter Baker on what he calls one of the greatest financial crimes of all time.

HUNTER BAKER, COMMENTATOR: Early this month, co-founder and CEO of the now-bankrupt crypto exchange, FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of fraud by a jury in New York. That makes his financial crime one of the largest of all-time.

In the United States, we often speak of people working in the blue-collar or white-collar sectors of the economy. Sam Bankman-Fried or SBF occupied a higher echelon than mere white collar. His category was no-collar. From the start, he attended work wearing oversized t-shirts and baggy shorts. His hair was uncombed. After graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, he went to Wall Street and later created a financial empire in the Bahamas.

Bankman-Fried was not only supposed to be a quantitative genius, but perhaps a moral genius, as well. In college, he gravitated toward a movement called Effective Altruism. Rather than going to work for non-profits advancing various causes, these students would go into the market, make huge salaries (or profits), and then donate large sums where the money could do the most good. When he began to accumulate galactic levels of wealth as a player in the crypto-world, Sam Bankman-Fried became one of the most high- profile individuals in the world. It didn’t hurt that he was a major donor mostly to Democratic politicians and causes adored by the cultural vanguard. So great was his cache, he even gave major interviews via Zoom while simultaneously playing video games. It didn’t matter. He was a new kind of superstar.

The end of the story is not as hopeful as the beginning. Although the one-time crypto-billionaire argued in hearings that the unraveling of his company FTX was merely a matter of bad management, jurors in New York concluded that Bankman-Fried committed an elaborate fraud. To make matters worse, at one point he seemed to concede that some of his moral posturing had been a kind of cynical public relations.

It is important that Sam Bankman-Fried not be treated in such a way as to add to the impression of class bias in our justice system. Often, it seems the person who steals an enormous amount via sophisticated schemes receives a lesser kind of reckoning than the street-wise crook. According to reports about this case, Bankman-Fried and his associates created a back door in their systems to access investors’ money without their knowledge. The money could then be invested in a parallel hedge fund–a scheme that violated every rule of financial propriety. While Bankman-Fried possesses a degree of star power and commands public interest, his crimes need to be treated as serious attacks on justice–not confused errors of a boy genius.

Christians are commanded to forgive injuries, even great ones. But God has given us the law and rulers to punish evil and therefore to protect us from some of the worst impacts of sin. Sam Bankman-Fried created confidence in his work that was unwarranted. He even enticed investors to keep their money in his networks and to add more when the reckoning was unfolding. This is the kind of injury the law must recognize and visibly punish.

I’m Hunter Baker.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The federal government is facing a shutdown on Friday. What’s Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to keep the government running?

And, being honest and intentional about what divides us. We hear from one group walking the talk.

That and more tomorrow.  I’m Nick Eicher.

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

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Apostle Paul wrote that: “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” —Second Corinthians chapter 9, verses 6 and 7.

Go now in grace and peace.

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