The World and Everything in It: October 13, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is supported by listeners like me. My name is Rachel Brake, and I enjoy listening to the program every morning as I get ready for grad school at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts. My parents introduced me to The World and Everything in It, and it is now my go to source for a Biblical perspective on the news. I know I will enjoy today's program, and I hope you do too.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Today on Culture Friday: the power and poison of ideology driving workplaces, governments, even nations. What is the Christian response?

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk with John Stonestreet. Also today, three romantic films from the ’90s that may be worth another look.

MAN: Yes, I guess you have been away for a very long time.

WOMAN: (Chuckle) Centuries and centuries.

And how technology shapes the hearts and minds of users.

REICHARD: It’s Friday, October 12th. 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: Now news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Scalise drops out » It’s one step forward and one step back on Capitol Hill as Republicans continue their search for the next House speaker.

SCALISE: I never came here for a title, and it’s much bigger than me, and it’s much bigger than anybody else.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise dropped out of the speaker’s race, just one day after he won a closed-door secret-ballot vote among Republicans.

Despite that victory, he was still short of the 217 GOP votes he would need to win an election on the House floor. A small group of Republican holdouts kept Scalise from reaching that threshold.

SCALISE: There are some folks who really need to look in the mirror over the next couple of days and decide, are we going to get it back on track or are they going to try to pursue their own agenda. We can’t do both.

Scalise said he still believes Republicans will come together soon.

 Israel/Iran » Republican lawmakers continue to call on the White House to hold Iran partially responsible for Hamas attacks in Israel.

Congressman Mike Turner:

TURNER: The roads to Iran. Hamas is a franchise from Iran. They train them, they arm them with rockets, with weapons.

Many Republicans are calling on the Biden administration to freeze $6 billion dollars of Iranian funds set to be released to Iran as part of a recent prisoner swap.

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott says he’s pushing a bill that would go well beyond that $6 billion. 

SCOTT: And in addition to that would allow us to then go beyond that and look at every account we can find where Iran has more than $5 million dollars.

Israel » The death toll in Israel from Hamas attacks now tops 1,300.

U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken:

BLINKEN: If you look at this in proportion to the size of Israel’s population, this is the equivalent of 10 9-11s. That’s how big and how devastating this attack has been.

At least 25 Americans are among the dead with at least 14 US citizens missing, possibly being held hostage by Hamas.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan:

ERDAN: They declared a war on the civilized world. They want all of us. They want to annihilate all of us. 

And Israel could be close to sending ground troops into enemy territory.

The Israeli military this morning ordered residents of northern Gaza to evacuate the area within 24 hours.

But more than a million people live in the region, and a UN spokesman said one day isn’t enough time … “warning of a devastating” civilian toll.

Social Security cost-of-living increase » Social Security recipients will get a bump in the size of their payments next year, but not as big as this year. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Beginning in January, Social Security checks will grow by 3.2%. Roughly 66 million retirees will get an extra $50 dollars or more to help cover rising prices. That adds up to a monthly average income of just over 1,900 dollars.

With inflation cooling, the increase is less than half of the 8.7% cost-of-living increase announced a year ago.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Abortion pregnant workers » Pro-lifers this week stood up against a proposed pro-abortion rule from the Biden administration.

The rule would use the recently-passed Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to force employers to provide a “reasonable accommodation” for abortion.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops formally said the rule would “introduce the abortion issue into a law that says nothing about abortion.”

The Biden administration will look to finalize the rule in late December.

Hawaii 911 » Newly released 911 calls from a deadly August wildfire in Hawaii reveal the desperation of residents as the flames closed in.

AUDIO: I left my kids. I went down to the store. I left my kids in the house, and they don’t have any way to evacuate.

DISPATCH: OK, what is your address?

A nearby storm whipped the fire into a frenzy on the island of Maui. The blaze incinerated nearly the entire town of Lahaina, killing roughly 100 people.

Officials are still investigating the cause of the blaze.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, Classic romance films turning 30 this year.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It's Friday the 13th of October 2023. So glad to have you along for today's edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I'm Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I'm Nick Eicher. It's Culture Friday. Joining us now is John Stonestreet, the President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning to you, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, John, I'd like to start out with reference to your latest piece in Breakpoint, and that is live by ideology, die by ideology, the backdrop is critical theory and the collapse of activist Ibram X. Kendi Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. But I want to get real practical with this, you wrote that Christians must be prepared to push back against these bad ideas. How, what's the recipe for pushing back?

STONESTREET: Well, I think the two most obvious ones might not sound practical, but they're immensely practical if you don't start from the right position in some of these conversations that we're having in our culture. The first one is actually let's go back to believing that ideas matter. Don't treat ideas, as if, you know, you believe what you want and I believe what I want. And we can all believe different things and they be true simultaneously and things like that. And that is this kind of live and let live mentality in our vision of truth, which is that truth is only internally referential, not referential to anything that actually exists in the real world. That's a foolish and unsustainable way of thinking about life in the world. And Christians of all people should believe that such a thing as truth exists. So when you see ideas, like for example, ideas about the human person, ideas about human behavior that are core and central to critical theory in all of its forms, and these ideas are false, we can't have a “live and let live” perspective. 

This, by the way, I think speaks to the challenges that came out of the Unconditional Conference hosted by Andy Stanley, you know, in his idea that you can separate theology from pastoral practice, you can't talk about these theological ideas in a an “agree to disagree” way, especially when you're talking about fundamental ideas about what it means to be human. The second thing that I think is immensely practical, in a culture like ours is just committing ourselves to the Alexander Solzhenitsyn "live not by lies" maxim like it doesn't mean we have to fight every battle. Just because we think that truth exists doesn't mean that all truths are bloody truths, which is something that Friederich Nietzsche said that he was going to fight, you know, over all of them, but at the very minimum, we can't be co opted into something that's not true. We've got to commit ourselves and a culture in which lies are ubiquitous. And of course, that's what was behind the downfall of Ibram X. Kendi Center for Antiracist Research, even if you don't assume bad motives, or financial malfeasance or anything like that. He just had ideas that weren't true, but everybody wanted to be true, including in the academic world. This is the critical theory mood - they wanted them to be true. So my point here is, in a culture where we want certain things to be true, it's very easy to be co-opted into lies. And at the very minimum, we cannot say what's not true. Don't be forced to say it, and pronoun use and other use, just don't say what's not true.

REICHARD: Okay. Well, let me get even more practical here, John. Okay. Suppose I don't, but suppose that I work for a corporation and my boss wants me to attend DEI training, that diversity, equity and inclusion training. Suppose I'm the sole provider for my family, I'm not, but suppose that I need the job. What do I do? Just speaking hypothetically, for me now, it doesn't happen here at WORLD as I said, so imagine that I'm coming to you for advice, John, what do I do?

STONESTREET: Well, maybe going to DEI training is one thing being fired, because you disagree with the DEI trainer is another thing. And I think we're quickly realizing where that boundary is. But you know what, right now, there is a pushback on, you know, basically forcing people, particularly people who are working into kind of an ideological conformity. And so you know, if it's required, that's one thing, but is it required to agree, I think these are the sorts of nuances that we can make. But again, don't be forced to say something that's not true.

EICHER: Well, John, Mary just mentioned live by ideology, die by ideology, and we need to take a really serious turn here because ideology killed thousands of Jews last weekend; there is now no end in sight to what is likely to be a very big war in the Middle East. And I realize, you know, we talk worldview here and not foreign policy, but don't you see this conflict more in worldview terms and not so much in policy terms?

STONESTREET: You know, you see it on multiple levels. One is on the act itself. The western world is kind of shocked, like how could anyone actually carry out this kind of barbarity against someone else. I mean, listen, we understand that there's deep disagreements here and that, you know, over the land and over the space, but this sort of barbarity is stuff that we associate with like the Vikings. I mean, you know, this is modern time. And, you know, the inability to really understand this, I think, stems from a couple worldview truths. First, this idea that somehow the more technologically advanced we get, the more morally progressive we get, has proven to be just a wrong vision of human nature. 

Second, most warfare was carried out like this throughout all of human history. And the only thing that changed that was Christianity. Literally the only thing that stopped the inability of distinguishing between civilians and combatants. And by the way, that's a worldview thing, right? Why are civilians and combatants seen the same throughout most of human history and by Hamas, is because people aren't seen as individuals, they're not seen as individually valuable, they're seen as part of a group, and therefore all are guilty. And that's why there's calls for extermination, just absolutely insane. 

I think also, you see, you know, real world view problems from those who are doing the kind of moral equivalence: “Well, there's evil on both sides. And we can't really condemn or take sides.” And, in fact, the acts of Hamas were so awful that it's shaken some people who might have done that. And another situation from doing that, in this situation, we even heard, like moral clarity to a degree from, you know, Alexandria Ocasio Cortes, I mean, I did not have that on my bingo card for this year. But you also see attempts for the same equivalence, which tells you something that it is very possible as Romans one describes to be so completely upside down morally that you call right wrong and wrong, right. And that you cannot see the reality that's right in front of your face. 

This is what worldviews do. Worldviews are things that you look through, which means if it's a right worldview, it's like the right prescription - it'll bring clarity. But it's the wrong worldview. They can even be blinders, where you can't even see straight. And the inability to tell right side up from upside down in this situation is so clearly dependent on worldview; there's only two reasons someone would make a moral equivalence in this situation. And both of them are worldviews. One is that you're completely captive to a radical Islamic worldview. And the world's realizing that in large parts of that region, a whole lot of people are absolutely captive to that radical Islamic vision of the world, even if they themselves aren't militants, believing that Israel deserves and needs to be exterminated, and there's no distinction between military and civilians, or you've been completely captive in a critical theory mood, where you've already pre decided who the good guys and who the bad guys are. And if the good guys do something really horrific, well, then the bad guys must have deserved it to some degree. And I really appreciated this comment - I wish I could remember who said it - and I've been, you know, looking at social media reports, because that's been kind of leading the way and getting what's happening out there about this situation. But you know, someone said, you know, look, saying that both sides are guilty in this situation, is like saying, Well, yeah, Mordor is bad. But you know, Frodo yelled at Sam that one time. It's just so absolutely insane. And I think most of the world is seeing that's insane. And you can tell that it is quite possible to completely miss reality right in front of your face. And it's because of worldview.

EICHER: John, I would love to go a week and I'm sure you would too a week without any references to LGBT stuff. But here we go again, we do not make this stuff up. So, so now we confront the story about the push to legally redefine moms and dads. Katie Faust, writing for World Opinions, described the Biden administration proposal via the Department of Health and Human Services to avoid gender specific terms. No mother, no father, not anymore. Only the gender neutral term parent. HHS justifies this as being inclusive of all family structures. John, Have you followed this one?

STONESTREET: Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. And there's a million ways in which children's rights are being threatened. And my guess is Katie covered them all in this piece, because she is as good as it gets on this topic, and realizing just kind of the ideological framework that's being brought to bear and how far that will take us culturally, in denying reality. This is the inevitable consequence of pretending in one area of marriage and sexuality that being male and female is irrelevant, or that male and female is a social construct - then you actually start to see all of life in the world. In a way that's not true. In a way this is the same sort of punch line that we talked about in the last topic, which is the atrocities of Hamas. And the only way to make moral equivalence is to be completely captivated by either a radical Islamic worldview or a critical theory worldview in which you already know who the good guys and bad guys are. Is this the same thing? This is ideology that is making government officials and policymakers unable to see reality. Because all the data is consistent, that children fare best when they're raised in a home with biological married mom and dad. All of those aspects are important: biological, married, Mom, and Dad, and that fathers and mothers parent differently to the extent that, as Ryan Anderson has put it, there's no really such thing as parents, there's just moms and dads, moms, moms, dads, dad, moms don't dad, and dads don't mom. 

Now, this is observably obvious to everyone until yesterday, I mean, really, but when you have an ideology that serves as blinders, then you pretend that observable realities are social constructs, and then they can be manipulated and changed. And, of course, oh, by the way, the kids will be fine, because you know, we know what the kids want and what the kids need. And we're absolutely upside down on this.

REICHARD: All right, John Stonestreet, President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks so much, John. 

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 13th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: we throw it back 30 years. 1993 is a memorable year for movies, thanks in part to blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List.

EICHER: But today we highlight three quieter movies that turn 30 this year. Here’s movie reviewer Max Belz.

MUSIC: [Remains of the Day title theme]

MAX BELZ: In 1993, audiences were treated to three literary adaptations—all rated PG.

The Remains of the Day is based on Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel of the same name. It stars Anthony Hopkins in the role of Stevens—the dutiful butler of an English manor in the 1920s and 30s.

His diligence in managing the house is impeccable.

STEVENS: I prefer to keep distractions to a minimum.

But his unwavering attention to his work keeps him from experiencing the beautiful and the weighty things of life. When his father dies early in the film, Stevens has no time for grief, turning back to his work without so much as batting an eye.

The arrival of new housekeeper Miss Kenton—played by Emma Thompson—highlights Stevens’s difficulty in considering a world outside of polishing door knobs and refilling crystal glasses.

KENTON: Would you call flowers a distraction then, Mr. Stevens?

STEVENS: I appreciate your kindness, Miss Kenton, but I prefer to keep things as they are.

Miss Kenton challenges him to feel, to grieve, and to rejoice at the things around him. Stevens’s master further tests his butler’s loyalty and discretion by cavorting with Nazis on the premises as Europe braces for war. Still, Stevens stands by.

BENN: In your opinion, what’s going on up there has moral stature, does it? Wish I could be so sure, but I’m not. I’ve heard some very fishy things, Mr. Stevens. Very fishy.

STEVENS: I hear nothing, Mr. Benn.

These cross-currents blow against his moral sensibilities. Stevens must face the truth about himself and his enclosed but stormy little world. All the while, love threatens to break through.

For our next movie, we head to 1870s New York in Martin Scorsese's lavish period piece: The Age of Innocence. It’s adapted from Edith Wharton's 1920 novel and stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Winona Ryder.

Once again, the arrival of a new person brings change to the stuffy drawing rooms of the aristocracy. As well as a moral conflict for the film’s main characters.

ARCHER: Yes, you have been away a long time.

COUNTESS: Centuries and centuries.

The stranger is Countess Olenska. She comes to New York to seek a divorce and hires Newland Archer as her lawyer. Despite his recent engagement, Archer falls helplessly in love with her. He’s drawn to her spirited ideas and flaunting of convention.

NARRATOR: But, in public, he upheld family and tradition. This was a world balanced so precariously that its harmony could be shattered by a whisper.

The sets are heavy with velvet drapes and spread with vast tables of food. And against this backdrop, a saga of desire and obligation, indiscretion and fidelity unfolds.

ARCHER: Just tell her I'm old-fashioned. That should be enough.

Archer is stifled by the social order. Will he follow the reckless path of desire or the quieter road of duty?

And we finish with Shadowlands, the well-known, true story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman Gresham’s marriage. Anthony Hopkins plays a more debonair version of Lewis than he was in real-life, but Hopkins captures the Oxford don’s cheer and generosity.

LEWIS: Ah, she’s coming to England. She’s coming to Oxford. She wants to meet us. She does write poems.

Debra Winger plays Joy—an American woman who carries on a longtime correspondence with Lewis. When Joy arrives in England for a visit in 1952, she shakes up Lewis’s academic circle. She is a fast-talking divorcee, newly converted to Christianity. The two bond over deep ideas and literature, and they decide to marry in 1956 so Joy can obtain her citizenship.

LEWIS: I'm not what you call a public figure, Mrs. Gresham.

GRESHAM: Oh you’re not? I mean, you write all these books and you give all those talks and everything just so everybody will leave you alone?

LEWIS: We’ve only just met and already you see right through me.

What starts as a marriage of convenience leads to deeper love—a love soon tested by cancer and then death. All those essays Lewis had written about pain, suffering, and God’s goodness come into sharp relief as he faces the darkness in his own life. Shortly after her death, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed, baring his inner feelings about doubt and the meaning of pain.

LEWIS: Just because something hurts doesn’t make it more true or significant?

GRESHAM: No, I guess not.

LEWIS: I’m not saying pain is purposeless or even neutral but to find meaning in pain, there has to be something else.

Each of these stories portray people facing suffering in love, in war, in death. And as Christians we know that the testing of our faith produces endurance, character, and hope. I’m thankful for stories like these that describe the struggle, even as we long for the true, the good, and the beautiful.

MUSIC: [Age of Innocence title sequence]

I’m Max Belz.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, October 13th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next: Reviewer Bekah McCallum says a new book can help Christians be more thoughtful about technology.

BEKAH MCCALLUM, REVIEWER: Samuel James is a Crossway editor and contributor to WORLD Opinions.

AUDIOBOOK: Rather than thinking of the web and social media as neutral tools that merely do whatever users ask of them, it is better to think of them as kinds of spaces that are continually shaping us to think, feel, communicate, and live in certain ways. In other words, the social internet is a liturgical environment.

James’ new book, Digital Liturgies, explores how Christians should think about the internet and social media. For James, this is personal.

JAMES: I can distinctly remember times in the recent past where I've heard the words, Daddy, look at me, Daddy, look at this, Daddy, can you do this, and I've just been scrolling on my phone, probably something that wasn't even that important. And to know that there are theological reasons for that, there are biblical reasons for that dynamic.

In the book, James argues that Christians typically emphasize the dangers of content available on the internet, like pornography. But he believes the “liturgy” of our technology can also harm us. The word liturgy is often used in a church setting to mean a pattern or form of worship used week by week. Similarly, the technologies we engage in train us in a particular pattern of thinking.

AUDIOBOOK: The digital liturgies of the web and social media train us to invest ultimate authority in our own stories and experiences as they separate us from the objective givenness of the embodied world.

When you engage in social media or scroll on Pinterest, you are focusing on digital content instead of the natural world around you. That may seem like a quick fix for loneliness or boredom. But the result isn’t as satisfying as we might hope.

AUDIOBOOK: The distraction we fall into quickly morphs into discontent: an anxious sense of impatience with the mundane, quiet, unremarkable parts of life.

According to James, too often people lose sight of the importance of their God-given bodies. People can create social media profiles based solely on their self-perception, even if that perception has very little to do with reality. This reimagining of ourselves is not limited to screens.

JAMES: It's only been in the last few years that the idea that a person could have an identity as the opposite gender has become plausible. And I think that has coincided very closely with the rise of the Internet and the way we understand ourselves not as physical beings with anatomy and kind of a given presence in the world.

James’ diagnosis of the internet seems heavy, but he isn’t a doomsdayer. He doesn’t recommend taking a sledgehammer to every iPhone in sight.

AUDIOBOOK: Even if you could throw away all your computers and smartphones, delete all your social media accounts, and go back to physical CDs and newspapers, your heart would still tilt away from the wisdom of Christ.

We can counteract these liturgies by participating in the worship and work of a local Church community. We can also get outside and spend time with friends and family.

AUDIOBOOK: To be sure, socialization alone doesn’t magically cure lust or help us keep technology in its proper place. But the darkness of addiction, both sexual and electronic, will not abide the sunlight coming through the open window.

Digital Liturgies isn’t long. It’s just under 200 pages. Families with older teens or youth groups might enjoy reading it together. James covers 5 major topics that all of us face online, including questions of authenticity, shame, and meaning. He does deal with the heavy topic of pornography and how pervasive it has become, but he does so sensitively without getting into details.

James did offer some practical tips about getting offline more frequently, but readers might try Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism as a follow-up read. Newport doesn’t share James’s Christian worldview, but he has some great insight about reducing media consumption.

Digital Liturgies by Samuel James isn’t a how-to book. Instead, it helps readers critique how electronic devices mold our thoughts and habits. In response to what the internet says, James wisely reminds Christians who we are according to the Lord.

JAMES: So what that means is that we have to identify these cultural dynamics, these digital liturgies, for what they are, we have to be able to name them. And as we named them, we can take them captive to the mind of Christ, as Paul says.

I’m Bekah McCallum.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week:

Myrna Brown, David Bahnsen, Emma Perley, Onize Ohikere, Jenny Rough, A. S. Ibrahim, Leo Briceno, Mary Muncy, Daniel Darling, Addie Offereins, Leah Savas, Amy Lewis, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, and Max Belz.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

And, breaking news interns Tobin Jacobson, Johanna Huebscher, and Alex Carmanaty.

And thanks to the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Our producer is Harrison Watters. Our production team includes Kristen Flavin, Benj Eicher, Lillian Hamman, Emily Whitten, and Bekah McCallum.

Anna Johansen Brown is features editor, and Paul Butler is executive producer.

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 of the Lord: Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. —Isaiah chapter 45, verse 42.

Be sure to worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ, in church this weekend. And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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