This week, Scott & Sean discuss:

  • The funding disparity between baby boomers and younger generations in America.
  • The ethical and moral concerns surrounding physician-assisted suicide and its rise in Canada.
  • The emerging societal trend of "sologamy," or self-marriage, and its reflection of extreme individualism.
  • The dangers posed by AI, including bots mimicking human intimacy and influencing democratic processes.
  • Thought-provoking listener questions on forgiveness, Christian beliefs in liberal environments, and navigating controversial roles in acting.



Episode Transcript

Sean: The massive consequences if young Americans keep funding baby boomers. Physician-assisted suicide becomes the fifth leading cause of death in Canada, because what was exceptional is now considered routine. How bots are now competing for our love and affection. And the new trend of sologamy. These are the stories we will discuss today, and we will also address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.

Scott: I'm your co-host, Scott Rae.

Sean: This is the Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Scott, sometimes there are stories that are so fresh that we choose not to talk about them. For example, the shooting that just happened this week in Georgia.

Scott: True, true.

Sean: Tragic. It's gonna unfold. Maybe we'll discuss this next week. But you shared a story with me that is about baby boomers and how massive amounts of funding is favoring them greatly over younger generations.

Scott: And Sean, part of the reason I sent this to you is because I'm a baby boomer and you're not.

Sean & Scott: [laugh]

Sean: I suspected that might be a piece of it, although I saw this week for the first time talk about some Gen Xers retiring now. So that's a trend as well.

Scott: There you go.

Sean: All right, so here's some of the things in the article, and then you can give us a biblical perspective on it. So the social safety net in the U.S. is increasingly favoring the old over the young, and this affects our political views and security of future generations. So, according to this article, again from the New York Times, almost every president since 1980 has had 80% of the real growth in domestic spending going to social security, healthcare, and Medicare. All right? And then health expenses.

Scott: Now, wait, just to be clear too, that's not saying that 80% of the budget goes for that. It's 80% of the growth in the budget.

Sean: Growth in the budget, okay.

Scott: Goes for those two things. Those are two pretty different things.

Sean: Okay, that's super helpful, good stuff. Now, that's in contrast with the amount of funding that's going towards younger generations, presumably Gen X or Gen Z. So it says, for example, “Younger generations are more likely to fall into lower income classes than their parents or grandparents.” And some of this is the increased cost in education, the increased cost to own a home, et cetera, and student debt. Now, what's interesting is they said, “Tax revenues are committed to mandatory spending largely for older Americans and to interest the national debt.” So, few revenues are left for everything else. So that's education, infrastructure, environment, et cetera. Now, of course, according to this article, this is favoring older generations. Now, things like payments for social security don't go towards the future. Younger generations paying them right now, it goes towards funding older generations. And the bottom line is, there's a massive gap between what baby boomers have put into the system and the amount that they're getting back, and the problem is that baby boomers—I mean, a problem in the sense of financially, it raises challenges.

Scott: Easy there, buddy.

Sean: [laughs] Exactly. Baby boomers are living much longer than previous generations and not working as much, and there's a birth dearth that we've talked about, a decline here of less funding to care for them, so to speak. Now, I'm curious why you sent me this and just your take on what this means.

Scott: Well, I think, Sean, a couple reasons for sending this to you. One is, I think, to correct some misunderstandings that people have about things like Medicare and social security. When social security was set up back in the 1960s, people did not live that long past their retirement age. It was not set up to fund a 20 to 30 year retirement for people. And it's true, I mean, baby boomers are living longer. Costs are higher. There are fewer younger workers out there to support the generation of people who are in retirement. And I think sometimes, just to make sure listeners understand this, social security is not really like an investment fund where you put in money for yourself and the government invests it, and then when you retire, you get the benefit of that. Yeah, I think the article describes it correctly. Social security is basically a huge IOU system where the money that I put in goes to fund other people who are older than me who are retired, and the money you put in goes to fund people who are in retirement age. The money you put in does not go to fund yourself. So, we fund others and others fund us, and that's why the birth-dearth is such a significant issue today. And of course, healthcare costs have skyrocketed for decades, and we said before to our audience that roughly half of what you will spend on healthcare will come in the last year of your life when it does you the least amount of good. But Sean, the real reason I sent this to you is how it connects with the next story we're gonna cover, because we simply can't afford to give everyone all the healthcare that they need forever. We're asking our healthcare system to pursue incompatible goals, low cost, universal access, full choice, and world-class innovation. We can't have all those at the same time, and we have to choose. And what's happening here—I think the big takeaway that the article doesn't mention but is just sort of looming beneath the surface—is the pressure for the elderly and seriously ill to choose assisted suicide or euthanasia will become much more intense, and in my view, become much more coercive as one of the ways to control healthcare costs. My colleague in this field said a long time ago, "There's nothing cheaper than dead." And Sean, already in Europe, they are connecting these dots, and starting to here in the United States. For example, one of the leading bioethicists, Baroness Mary Warnock, who is very influential in the UK, has put it this way, "If you are demented, you are wasting the resources of the National Health Service."

Sean: Wow.

Scott: And what this says to me, Sean, is that the elderly and seriously ill will be increasingly in the position of having to justify their continued existence, which in my view is inconsistent with having a fundamental right to life. If you have the right to life, you don't have to justify your existence. But I think we are putting…all these things coming together, these social economic factors coming together, are putting the elderly in a position where I think we are going to eventually have to be doing more of that. And so this just puts additional pressure, I think, on the notion that euthanasia and assisted suicide be totally voluntary. I think we're gonna get increasing pressure for it to be non-voluntary for people who are unable to give consent, or for family members to give consent for their elderly loved ones. And this, I think, is one of the really serious problems with legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia, is the idea that it can be totally voluntary is completely unenforceable. Because…[separate] conversation, we'll get into this a bit more in our next piece. But biblically, of course, death is a conquered enemy. It need not always be resisted. Treatments at the end of life can be refused, but it's immoral to actually cause the death of an elderly or seriously ill patient. And there's a moral difference between killing and allowing to die. And when we remove treatment from someone, we allow the disease to take its natural course. We entrust that person back to the Lord to give that person whatever many days the Lord has left for that person. But that's different than euthanasia or assisted suicide, in which the medication is the direct cause of death for the patient. That all make sense?

Sean: Yeah, it does. And I wonder how you would make sense of this. It feels like we're hitting a perfect storm where we have a culture of autonomy, we have a birth rate decline, and we have an aging, living longer baby boomer generation. Now, if you're saying we cannot go for and support physician-assisted suicide—which I agree with you—something has to give fiscally. And that's in part what this article is trying to address. So do we start this conversation by saying physician-assisted suicide is out, that’s a non-negotiable? And then, of course, the article says, “It floats raising taxes on the wealthy,” which is a whole other issue we could talk about. What does that look like to start balancing that given that these massive expenses are coming?

Scott: Well, one of the things I think we need to wrestle with more frequently is, do we have the obligation as a society to keep everybody alive at all times and at all costs? That's a bioethics term known as vitalism. And vitalism and the sanctity of life are not the same thing. And if we really believe that we are obligated to keep everybody alive at all times and at all costs, we're making a theological statement that I don't think we wanna make. And that is that earthly life is the highest good. Which, theologically, clearly it is not. Augustine was right when he said that our highest good is our eternal fellowship with God. Now earthly life is an important…it’s a penultimate good, but it's not at the top of the pile. And I think we need to do better at people expressing their wishes for what they want and don't want at the end of life to give their loved ones guidance for how to make decisions for them should they lose the capacity to make decisions for themselves. Because most family members, the reason they continue to keep authorizing invasive and burdensome and sometimes futile treatments is because they simply don't wanna let go of their loved one. But I think it's immoral to impose burdens on somebody who is seriously ill for somebody else's benefit, that is, the family members’. I think that's wrong. That's almost always wrong to do that. And so I think we can manage the end of life better by forgoing some of these very expensive and very burdensome treatments that may give a little bit of extra lifespan, but at an increasingly poor quality of life. And it's not irrational to say that less time but better time is a better outcome than more time at a worse quality of life. That's not irrational for people to make that calculation. That's one thing that I think can be done right off the bat that will help diminish these incredibly escalating costs of healthcare at the end of life. And we pour so much resources into healthcare at the end of the last year of life when it arguably will do us the least amount of good. So there's…I mean, you've raised a really good question. There's lots of other things I think that can fall into that. But that's one suggestion that I would give sort of right off the bat.

Sean: One quick thing it says here in the article. It says, “Old age must be redefined and retirement ages raised so that living longer doesn't mean retiring longer on workers' taxes, particularly for wealthy retirees.” I think we as Christians should think about, where do we get our ideas about retirement from? Is this from the world in which we live and we get 20—

Scott: Not from the Scriptures.

Sean: I think that's exactly right. So yeah, there's times we may slow down, work might shift. But the idea that I just save up a nest egg, and then I have 25 years to just travel and do whatever I want to, and I'm not contributing to the Great Commission of the kingdom of God—not sure that's a biblical idea. And that could be one small thing we Christians could do much better.

Scott: Yeah, the Bible has no categories for retirement. They just don't. It's not addressed. The average person I think in the ancient biblical world would look to retirement and think, what is that? I mean, nobody had the resources to do that. I had a friend of mine who said…he had just retired, and I asked him, I said, “What's on your bucket list that you wanna do?” And he said, “My bucket list is all the things that God wants me to do.”

Sean: Wow.

Scott: I thought, that's pretty insightful.

Sean: I love that, good stuff. Now, you're absolutely right that the story we looked at ties into this next one. This is one I sent you from the Wall Street Journal, and I think the only way to describe it is a little bit chilling, as I read it. And the title—

Scott: It's more than a little bit chilling.

Sean: [laughs] Yeah, fair enough. It's a lot chilling. “Welcome to Canada, the doctor will kill you now. Assisted suicide was sold as compassionate. In practice, it has turned out to be monstrous.” Now, the article starts with a quote from Charles Krauthammer, the late journalist. He wrote in 1997 talking about how when somebody is on a ledge ready to jump, we have every norm in society to stop them and pull them back from committing suicide. And yet, this principle becomes less clear, according to the author, with the advent of physician-assisted suicide. Now, Krauthammer was writing about the 1997 Supreme Court ruling in the U.S., Vacco v. Quill, based on a case in New York in which the Supreme Court voted unanimously, nine to nothing, that the Constitution does not create a right to physician-assisted suicide. Now, the person arguing for the plaintiff in this case suggested that there wouldn't be a slippery slope if the case had gone the other direction. The procedure would be granted to the patient with end stage heart failure, not somebody on a ledge about to jump. Well, the author of this article says, since this ruling in '97, several states have legalized physician-assisted suicide. And we ought to look to Canada to see how this experiment has played out. Now, in Canada, in 2015, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in Carter v. Canada that, quote, “Laws prohibiting physician-assisted dying interfere with the liberty and security of people with grievous and irremediable medical conditions.” Now, lawmakers thought they were imposing limits on euthanasia and preventing it from going further. So, the plaintiff's lead lawyer in that case said, “In almost every case, doctors will want to help their patients live, not die. Physicians will be reluctant gatekeepers.” Well, it turns out that the Supreme Court of Quebec soon ruled that MAID—that's what this ruling was about—was unconstitutional 'cause it required that an applicant's death from a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” be now “reasonably foreseeable,” is what they said. So now, the new law drops safeguards such as a minimum 10 day assessment period between request and provision. Also proposes mental illness as an eligible condition, which will be implemented in 2027. Now, this article says. “What was meant to be the exception has become routine.” And then, just a couple of other things in this that'll help people. The program is at least now the fifth leading cause of death in Canada, claiming 13,000 lives in 2022 compared to 1,000 in 2016. And, the idea that doctors wouldn't rubber stamp this, in 2022 more than 81% of petitions resulted in death, including vision and hearing loss and diabetes. Now, they give other studies from the New England Journal of Medicine where the estimate was there'd be 2,000 deaths per year, and then in the particular year 2020, it was 7,600. And Canada has, quote, "The fastest growing assisted dying program in the world." And then—the last piece on this, Scott—on August 19th, just last month, an organization strategically called for what they wanna accomplish, Dying with Dignity, filed suit in Ontario Superior Court claiming that preventing assisted dying for mental illness is discriminatory. So we've gone from having a right to do something to now being discriminatory to not allow somebody with a mental illness, which isn't described, from having physician-assisted suicide. Your take on this.

Scott: Well, this is entirely predictable. And here's sort of the foundational idea. If the right to die is a fundamental right, which almost every advocate for assisted suicide in euthanasia claims that it is—it's an argument based on personal autonomy, that individuals have the right to make life's most personal and private decisions apart from state interference as a fundamental right—then here's what follows from that: it should be available to everyone. And the reasons for why you wanna exercise a fundamental right are irrelevant. And there should be no conditions for eligibility to exercise a fundamental right, nor should it have a doctor's approval. Think about it, Sean. No other fundamental right requires a reason for exercising it or criteria for eligibility for exercising it. And now, I think some of the guardrails that are being seen as discriminatory in Canada, like mental illness, like death from a grievous condition, things like that, that's just the beginning of the guardrails sort of disappearing, because if it's autonomy-based and a fundamental right, there really are no guardrails. But here's the thing, I don't think as a society, I don't really think we believe that there's a fundamental right to die. And that is because of all the energy and money and effort we put into suicide prevention. I find it's really ironic, for most people who contemplate suicide, we put them in a suicide prevention protocol. But for the elderly, for the people who are seen as not having social value, we put them into a suicide assistance protocol. And I think that ambivalence that we have about people taking their own lives suggests that we really don't believe that there is something fundamental about a right to die because if we did, then we'd make it available across the board, maybe except for minors. And Sean, theologically, from a Christian worldview, “we are not our own. We've been bought with a price,” as Paul says in 1 Corinthians. And God is the one who determines the timing and manner of our death. “There's a time to be born and a time to die,” Solomon says in Ecclesiastes. Hebrews tells us that it's appointed to someone “to die once and then comes judgment.” And it's appointed by whom? By God. For someone to die once and then comes judgment. So as a follower of Christ, I don't think this is that difficult, because life is sacred. We are not to take our own lives. That doesn't mean we have to have every available medical treatment. We can refuse those and allow disease, under the right conditions, to take its natural course. But what really concerns me about this, Sean, is what the article says at the very end, where the writer says, "Canada's healthcare system wants not only to give up on him," this person is an example, "but compel him to give up on himself." And I would suggest the movement from voluntary to non-voluntary assisted suicide and euthanasia is real. And the requirement that every scenario of euthanasia or assisted suicide be fully voluntary is unenforceable. The reason for that is because you have private conversations among family members, and who will ever know that you and I have coerced our elderly grandfather to submit to assisted suicide? Nobody will ever know that. And discussions with your physician are entirely confidential, and nobody will ever know those things. So I think the idea that every instance be fully voluntary is a bit of a pipe dream and is a part of the law that I think is really difficult to enforce.

Sean: That's a really helpful way to put it, that when we hear suicide in any other context, we shift, and stop, and put resources in to prevent it, but we add assisted suicide to it and all of a sudden we see it differently. I think that's a part of what Krauthammer's argument was. Now to hear you use the words—just, given that you've studied this so long, and this is your lane, Scott—that what we're seeing in Canada is entirely predictable, tells us that there are certain bad slippery slopes and there are certain inevitable slippery slopes. So, to use maybe an inappropriate example, if my wife and I shift to my daughter's curfew to 11 p.m., it doesn't follow that we're gonna say, well, okay, 5 a.m. next.

Scott: [laughs]

Sean: Like, that doesn't follow, because we shift from A to B. I only meant inappropriate 'cause it's a simpler example.

Scott: Well, I thought it was inappropriate 'cause your daughter's gonna be listening to this.

Sean: Yeah, I don't think she probably will, to be honest. Maybe in the future. Although, when we get to questions, we've got a few high school students who do, which is pretty cool.

Scott: Tell her her curfew's up for discussion, and she might listen to it. [laughs]

Sean: All right, good point. [laughs] I'll tell her that. Now, that's a slippery slope that doesn't logically follow. But shifting to people having the right to die, people have said, well, it won't go from voluntary to involuntary. It has. It won't go from actual, immediate death to mental illness and suffering. And it has. It won't go from adults to children. At least as we've seen in certain places in Northern Europe, it has. So, you crack the door open to this. I think you're absolutely right that if we have a right to something, a natural right, it's unmitigated, and the law stands in the way, of course in our culture that praises autonomy above all else, abortion and euthanasia, because it relates to human life, are going to be the issues that are gonna be pressed the most. So, I think you're right on in your analysis. Is there anything in the States and the Supreme Court ruling that stands in the way of it moving there eventually? Or is it, 'cause it's a state issue, we'll see it in some states probably more so than others?

Scott: Yeah, right now there are 10 states in the U.S. and the District of Columbia that have legalized assisted suicide. I think in the U.S. there's still a couple of constituencies who are pretty strongly against this, the Catholic Church for one. And the American Medical Association still, I think, has reservations about it becoming legalized in a widespread way. But Sean, that slippery slope is well documented in Europe, as you mentioned. In Belgium and the Netherlands for at least the last 20 years, we've had lots and lots of documentation about how the guardrails are being respected, and it does not give cause for encouragement in my view.

Sean: So this next story is one that we've talked about a little bit. This is an essay from a forthcoming book called Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari, who, by the way, is a materialist, an atheist. And he talks about, basically, how large scale democracies are only feasible after the rise of information technologies like newspaper, telegraph, the radio, and of course now, the internet. The fact that modern democracy has been built on top of modern information technologies means that major change in technology is likely to result in political upheaval. Makes sense. Now, he talks about a shift here that was eye-opening to me. It says, "In the early days of the internet and social media, tech enthusiasts promised they would spread truth, topple tyrants, and ensure the universal triumph of liberty." He says, "So far, they seem to have had the opposite effect. In fact, that prophecy is about as wrong as any prophecy could be, in my take." He said, "And we now have the most sophisticated information technology in history, but we are losing the ability to talk with each other, and even more so, the ability to listen. As technology made it easier than ever to spread information, attention became a scarce resource, and the ensuing battle for attention resulted in a deluge of toxic information." So a lot of social media was built upon, how do I provoke, and get attention, and shock? I want to compete, because now there's endless—not just television and books—there's endless people on the platform. I've got to compete for your eyes to be on my platform. And so, it was about gaining attention. He says, "The battle lines are shifting from attention to intimacy." Now, what does he mean by this? I won't go into depth, but one of the tests that was trying to make a distinction between whether something was a bot or a human being is what's called the CAPTCHA test, capitalized C-A-P-T-C-H-A. And sometimes when people are clicking on a website, you have to click on certain things to identify that you're not a bot and you're really a human being, like the bikes in a picture, or stop lights, or something like that. And ChatGPT4 was not able to solve this. But programmers used ChatGPT4 to go online to a hiring site at TaskRabbit and contacted a human worker that ChatGPT4 manipulated into giving the information it needed to then access the site it was trying to access. So the takeaway from Harari is [ChatGPT4] could analyze how things look from the perspective of a human interlocutor and how to manipulate human emotions, opinions, and expectations to achieve its goals. The ability to hold conversation with people, surmise their viewpoint, and motivate them to take specific actions can also be put to good use, which is true. So here's, basically, his takeaway. "By combining manipulative abilities with a mastery of language, bots like GPT4 also pose new dangers to the democratic conversation. Instead of merely grabbing our attention, they might form intimate relationships with people and use the power of intimacy to influence us." Now, he gives this example of this individual who is a Christian. And I don't know if he picked this one to make a point about Christians because he's an atheist, or just happens to make his point, I have no idea. But there's a Google engineer who became convinced that his chatbot had become conscious and was afraid to turn it off. He felt it was his moral duty to gain recognition of its personhood and protect it from digital harm. Google dismissed his claims and fired him. So the point Harari makes is, he was literally willing to risk his job at Google for the sake of a chatbot. Now, what else could chatbots influence us to do? And he makes the point, he says, "An intimate friend can sway our opinions in a way that mass media cannot." And then here's the last question. He says, "What might happen to human society and human psychology as algorithms fight algorithms in a battle to fake intimate relationships with us, which can then be used to persuade us to vote for politicians, byproducts, or adopt certain beliefs?" That is also a chilling question, that I think is insightful, about where things are technologically heading with AI. What is your take on this one, Scott?

Scott: Well, for one, I think Harari made the point that the engineer from Google who was claiming that his chatbot was a person, Harari even makes the point that he thinks that that claim is actually false.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: And I think he's right about that. That these are, at best, they are fake humans, artificial humans—I even hate to use that term—who will never achieve human consciousness. And I would say pretending to be human is actually quite different than actually being human. And we have to remember that these can only do what they are programmed by human beings to do. And so, what they're giving…parts of it I think Harari points out can be helpful, because they may provide some of the things that psychotherapists do. I don't want to offend my Rosemead colleagues with that.

Sean: [laughs]

Scott: And they may provide some sort of low-level pastoral counseling.

Sean: Sure.

Scott: But for the most part, they are replacing genuine human interaction with a cheap substitute that is meeting a real need. And potentially, that real need will be met by millions of chatbots. I think the irony that Harari points out in the article is that AI is mass-producing intimate relationships. We need to make sure that we see the oxymoron in that. And, you know, these chatbots will not need feelings of their own. All they need is just the ability to make us feel emotionally attached to them. And I think, Harari…the other insightful part of this is that we have the most sophisticated information technology we've ever had. But at the same time, the loneliness epidemic is off the charts, and we are losing the ability to talk to each other and to listen to each other. We are more polarized than ever, yet we have the most sophisticated information technology designed to bring us together. It’s actually doing some of the opposite of what the founders would like to see it do. This is a hard one, Sean, because I think this is like a wave that's coming in. And you either need to ride the wave or you're going to get crushed by it. And I think the inevitability of this is what has a lot of people feeling discouraged about the ability to put limits on this and to make judgments about it. I think a lot of people feel like this is what it is. It's what's coming. And, you either get on board and stop whining about it, or you're going to get run over by it. And I think those of us that want to put limits on this and raise ethical questions are still in a very small minority in this. And I'm really encouraged by…Biola has an AI lab that is addressing some of these ethical issues for exactly the kinds of things we're talking about with this article.

Sean: That's helpful. I've got a couple takeaways from this. You know, the fact that you said this is a wave that's coming in, and it's inevitable, is right. Now, waves are sudden, and crash, and you see them coming quickly. I think this is much more of a slower kind of process, so to speak. So, for example, I think it's—if I'm not mistaken—this fall, that AI is becoming a part of the iPhone. Now, I'm not against that, but that's a significant shift in the iPhone that moves down the road of digital companions and the kind of technology we're talking about here becoming more normalized, and accessible, and breaking down more and more barriers to it. We've all seen commercials recently of the lady who's out jogging and her chatbot talks with her and she has a conversation with it as if it's a real person, but it's not. These things are step by step. And then all of a sudden we look back in two years, five years, ten years, and things are radically different. Now, as I read this, I think his analysis is largely right. He says, "Soon the world will be flooded with fake humans." Now, I've had conversations on Twitter. I've gone back and forth a couple of times and thought, you know what? I'm not even interacting with a real person. It's not that hard to figure out after one or two comments. And now I see it more clearly. But with artificial intelligence, I don't know at what point it'll even be indistinguishable. And he gives examples of people who extend email after email, and conversations go on for a long time, because of the nature of artificial intelligence getting harder and harder to discern. So what's the solution to this, so to speak? I think one is, like you said, very clear ethical and biblical teaching. We've always needed it in the church, but we need it more than ever. I don't know if this individual is an outlier that he talks about. He cites this person named Blake, who’s an engineer. I mean, where did he get the idea as a Christian that a bot can become human? Well, I don't know how widespread it is now, but soon that is a real question people will be asking, and they need to get good training and education in the church. It's not enough to just teach Bible stories. Everything is radically changed: what it means to be human, where consciousness comes from, et cetera. That's one thing. The other thing he says at the end of the article that I thought was interesting is he makes a point that…he said, "Much of the threat of AI's mastery of intimacy will result from its ability to identify and manipulate pre-existing mental conditions and from its impact on the weakest members of society." He's right that we're not all equally interested in developing intimate relationships with AI, and, probably, those who aren't are those who have meaningful, healthy, good relationships. And so one way to counter this is to build in the church, in our life, the healthy, meaningful relationships that God has designed us for. So in some ways, the solution here is truth, and knowledge, and a biblical view of reality and healthy relationships can help minimize this wave of inevitability that is coming, like you said.

Scott: Hear, hear. I concur with the need for a better education in our churches. And that starts with us equipping the next generation of pastors and church leaders to be able to provide that. It's why in your classes and mine, we've got a couple of courses in our apologetics program on artificial intelligence. I'm going to be dealing with it in my ethical issues classes coming up. It actually starts pretty soon here. So, looking forward to that. But I think that it's on us as church leaders to equip the folks in the pew to be able to think biblically and think theologically about the kinds of things that they're confronting with artificial intelligence.

Sean: Amen. Now, you sent me this last article, and I was reading about it, and I did a quick YouTube search to make sure I was pronouncing it correctly. [laughs] So, according to the YouTube video, take it for what it's worth, this is about “sologamy.” Some would say “sologamy.” Now, this is from Stephen Tucker, and he says, "Going solo with sologamy: The strange rise of people marrying their own selves." He says, "Lamentably, this very idea, generally known as sologamy or sometimes selfcest, is a small but growing trend in today's West. It seems to have begun in 1993 when a Californian lady named Linda Baker married herself before gathering her 75 friends and family in order to celebrate her 40th birthday." Now at the beginning, it was viewed as a joke, and he gives examples of jokes online and in the movie Sex and the City where it was considered a joke. But then the author says, "In our self-indulgent Oprah Winfrey dictatorship age, concepts like self-love and self-care are all the rage. So it makes a kind of twisted sense that the notion of sologamy is now being presented in a positive light as a novel manifestation of empowered late stage feminism.” In other words, the idea that a woman does not need a man to be happy and independent. That's where he sees this idea coming from. Now it turns out that one UK woman has even crafted an entire low-level media career out of what he calls “the sad fact of her own self-wedding.” This lady married herself in Brighton in 2015 and has an Instagram handle, you can figure it out if you want to. Even wrote a novel about her experience. The question is, how did it pan out? And this is a question you and I have talked about when it comes to polyamory, for example. Are these relationships going to work? And the data is still early, but I am going to say it's not going to. Same with this. And so, according to the account, it said, "You'd think in a solo relationship, they'd be relatively free of drama," which is interesting. However, Sophie ended up meeting someone and eventually cheated on herself. The man was a polyamorous who turned monogamous while dating Sophie. The relationship ended after about five months. Her partner dedicated himself to the same cause. He had a self-marriage ceremony like Sophie. So, I'm not even sure I'm following the drama, from sologamous to married, from polyamorous to married, to sologamy. It's almost as if people who are doing this are just in search of something that's going to fill them up, and of course it doesn't, because it's outside of God's design. Now they ask the question, "Is sologamy legal?" And the article says, “Only in the sense that it's not explicitly illegal.” And then he says, "Talking of financial matters, when something comes to trend, entrepreneurs quickly begin springing up to make easy money from it." And there's all these websites. I always hesitate if we should even mention this, but people can find it. Imarriedme.com offers self-wedding in a box kits. One of the things said, "In marrying yourself, you unveil what you already deeply love and care about and commit to it. You allow what truly matters to be at the forefront of their life." The author says, "Could there ever be a greater summation of the mass societal solipsism of our age than that?" Your take on sologamy.

Scott: Well, I admit when I first read the article, I thought, "Surely this is not to be taken seriously." But then I looked at the websites. One of these sites got a huge endorsement from Cosmopolitan magazine. And I thought, maybe it's a little bit more of a growing trend that we want to give credit for. And I thought about it a bit. I understand a bit of the desire to do this. I could see a person who's maybe disillusioned with relationship, maybe had lots of heartbreak in relationships, they've given up on marriage, but have always dreamed about having a wedding or a celebration. I sort of understand this, but at the end of the day, I think this is the latest installment of personal autonomy run amok. It's further redefining marriage based on the object of one's desire. And so, logically, why couldn't the object of that desire be yourself? If it can be same sex, or multiple partners, or a whole host of other things, why shouldn't you be able to have marriage with yourself? Now, of course, biblically and theologically, marriage is designed to reflect the relationality of the Trinity and is intrinsically ordered toward procreation. Reflecting the relationality of the Trinity comes out from Ephesians 5, and it is a really important part, I think, of the centrality of marriage to, just, our own theological understanding. And it's not a side issue, but one that's really central doctrinally and theologically. And Sean, the other thing that occurred to me is to take into account the sovereignty of the providence of God. For the follower of Jesus, you never know how God's going to move in someone's life. I did a wedding a few years ago of a woman who was in my singles group when I was a singles pastor in the local church. She was a wonderful person, but got disillusioned with the idea of marriage. She sort of became settled on the idea that she would never marry. She adopted a couple of girls from Asia, resigned herself to this. She was sad about it, but was okay with it. And then in her early 60s, without looking, without searching, met someone and asked me to do her wedding. And she is happily married later in life. And I'm convinced that she was as surprised as anyone about what happened to her when she was not out there looking for it. And I think some of the answer is that we are complete in Christ. We don't require a spouse to complete us, because we are complete in Christ. And I think that singleness is—we've had several episodes on this—the moral equivalent of marriage, and in some cases more expedient. And I think for someone to accept their singleness as from the hand of God, but also recognize that in His providence, that may not be forever, but be okay with it if it is, and to be as surprised about it as anyone when it happens when you're not actually looking for it…So this doesn't surprise me, that this sologamy is an up and coming trend, because it's just, I think, another manifestation of personal autonomy to run off the guardrails.

Sean: In 2015, which it's hard to imagine it's almost a decade ago now, was the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling. And as you know, marriage was redefined as basically a commitment between two people who love each other. Now, there's a lot of problems with the way the Supreme Court cashed this out. But one of the responses I made, and I know you made in different settings, was, if you remove the gender or sexed component of marriage, then there's no in-principle reason to keep marriage as only two. It's because two are opposites that become one and procreate that marriage has been understood and defined as two. If it's now just about people who love each other, well, then you can open it up to more. What I didn't say in my response…I said, now we could add to marriage and endorse polygamy and polyamory. It didn't occur to me to say we could also take away from marriage and marry the self. But it naturally falls, like you said, not only from a culture that values autonomy as its highest good, but also our duty to other people to praise and support whatever lifestyle they choose. And if we don't, then we're the ones who are bigoted and hateful and intolerant. It makes perfect sense that somebody would talk about sologamy. Now, I'm not going to say this to win any fans, but I think it's biblical, because God is the one who designed marriage. Marriage is a union of two individuals, male and female. It is a sexed institution. So we can call two men who get a marriage certificate marriage, but it's not objectively a marriage. That's not what it actually is. You can't marry yourself. It's not possible, because that's not what a marriage is. So biblically, I would take real issue with the redefinition culturally speaking, even though, like you said, in our cultural moment, it makes sense that people would see it that way. The other piece about marriage is that people often go into it with a sense of, I'm going to find meaning, I'm going to find purpose. This is about things I get out of it. You very quickly learn for the marriage to work, you have to die to yourself and start caring for another. It's like the ultimate medium of discipleship. How does that work with the self? It's the complete opposite of what marriage is meant to be, where, like you said, it mimics the Trinity, but it also builds in a sense of other-focused, other care. And the deepest beauty in marriage is when each person is saying, you know, it's not about me. I want to love and care for you sacrificially. Then, when both parties do that, it's like there's a transcendent experience of love and sacrifice and intimacy, which is probably what the person who is seeking solagamy wants, but can't find it in that kind of a relationship. So my heart goes out to people marrying themselves, being promised what I think is a bill of goods that is not going to deliver what our culture says it's going to deliver.

Scott: Hear, hear. Good word. Let's answer some questions, shall we?

Sean: All right, let's do it. That means quit talking and move on.

Scott: No, that's good.

Sean: [laughs] I'm just kidding. We'll keep the ball going. I'm just playing. All right, so we got some great ones, and two from high school students, which I can't tell you how happy that made me. This first one says, “I'm 15 years old and I live in England. I attend a Christian high school, but the ethos leans liberal woke. I've been bullied when expressing my conservative Christian beliefs on homosexuality and transgenderism. One girl who's a good friend changed her name, hair, and pronouns. I've tried to show her Jesus, but now she won't speak to me without expressing her resentment. This makes me feel resentment toward her. I've tried to forgive her, but it hasn't made a difference in my actions or feelings. So my questions are, how can I forgive her meaningfully? Which name and pronoun should I use to address her? How should I respond when I'm accused of being transphobic?” There's a lot of questions here. First off, I’ll just say, I am sorry as a 15 year old you're facing this. It's profoundly ironic that so much of the LGBTQ movement has been about, we are the ones who were bullied, and this is harmful. Not in all cases, but sadly your story is not alone, in many cases, I hear that it's Christians or conservatives who won't go along with this new party mantra that are treated the way that you are. So, you're not alone. I hear this a lot, sadly. My encouragement would be, if you're at a Christian high school, find somebody who has solidarity with you, whether it's other students, or if the bullying gets to the point where it's really affecting you. I remember being bullied at times and just kind of moved on, but sometimes it went to the level of like, okay, this is damaging. If you're at a Christian school, you've got to find an administrator or a teacher or somebody sympathetic to your views to just simply not be treated this way if it's affecting you that much. And if not, it's probably time to get out and go to a different school if it's gone that far. I'd encourage you personally to maybe read and study 1 Peter. This is a book that's written to a number of Christians that are suffering towards the end of the first century, kind of in what's called the diaspora and modern day Turkey, and talking about, how do we live out our faith when Christians are being mistreated? And there's a lot in there that says, you know, God's desire at times is that we suffer for doing what is right. So, I can't promise this bullying will necessarily end, but I would read that book and find some encouragement from it, and let you know that this certainly won't last forever. One thing you could try—and I don't know if this would work or not simply because I don't know the dynamics in your setting—with this individual in particular, think about writing this person a super gracious letter and just say, hey, I want to tell you how much I appreciate you, our friendship, our relationship. I mourn that it's been broken. And I just want to tell you that I care about you, and I'm wondering if you'd be willing to have coffee. And all I want to do is listen, and hear your story, and understand where you're coming from. Would you at least be willing to have coffee with me, and share your experience and just try to understand? Now, this person can say no, and attack you, and say you're an idiot. I can't stop that. But that might be one gracious way of just appealing to this person's sensibilities. Personally, I would not use preferred pronouns if you take my suggestion. You've been as gracious as you can be without using preferred pronouns. Honestly, somebody who's bullying you and cutting off a relationship if you don't use preferred pronouns…I'm not sure how much this individual would respect you if you cave in and give in anyways. That's a few thoughts. Scott, do you want to throw in anything here to just encourage this young person?

Scott: No, Sean, that's really good advice. I think the idea of asking…I just want to hear your story. I just want to understand where you're coming from so I can...It grieves me that the friendship is broken. I think that's a good way back, because chances are, this person is not going to listen to any reasoned argument that you make until this person knows how much you care about them. That's crucial. I don't know in what ways he expressed his beliefs to her. “I've tried to show her Jesus.” I'm not quite sure how that happened. But if he could say, I'm sorry if the way I've approached this has offended you. I'm sorry about that. I just want to hear your story. I think that's really good advice.

Sean: The last thing I would say is, we're not only relationally distant from you, we're across the Atlantic. So I would find the closest teacher who you feel is wise and sympathetic to help navigate this with you. You can pray with this person, you can talk about, how do I forgive this person? That incarnated help would really be valuable. All right, Scott, we got another one from a student who says, "I'm going into my senior year of high school, and I will start pursuing a musical theater major when I get to college.” Little side note, we'd love to have you here at Biola if that's not on your list yet. “I just listened to Sean and Tim Muehlhoff's podcast episode on Navigating Minefield Conversations. In that episode, Tim talked about performing in the play Bent as a gay man in a romantic relationship with another man." Now, he goes into detail on that. That was from the book we wrote together called End The Stalemate, but he described it in that podcast. “My guess is that the other actor was a non-Christian.” This was a story about a gay man in a romantic relationship with another man. “My question is, how should a Christian actor handle the idea of playing non-Christian roles and characters and also portray Christ through their actions?"

Scott: Well, Sean, I can speak to this because my youngest son is an actor, and I've had this conversation with him on a handful of occasions. His response to me was short, sweet, and to the point. He said, "Dad, it's acting." In his view, that was end of story. I'm not quite sure I take all of that, the end of story part, but I think in general—and I think this is true for most people—I don't make character judgments about individuals or individual actors based on the people who they play. For example, I don't make any character judgments about Anthony Hopkins for his terrific role in playing Hannibal Lecter. I don't make any correspondence between those two. I think the same is true with most actors in most roles. I've also had this conversation with my oldest son, who's in film, about portraying different things. We had lots of talk about gratuitous sex, and violence and language. His point was, he said, if it represents reality, then it's fair game to put it into a film if it meets the artistic demands of what the filmmaker is trying to do. The one thing that I would say might be problematic, or would be problematic if it happens, is that often—this is both for stage and screen—actors who have romantic scenes in either the stage play or on screen are encouraged to develop the chemistry with the other person offstage or off screen so that it looks as real as possible when going live. I had a student in one of my classes several years ago who was in a stage play. It was a romantic comedy. The actress who he was with, the director encouraged them both to spend as much time off the set as possible so that the romantic feelings between the two of them in the play would be as real as possible. And she made it very clear that she was willing to go as far as it took to be able to represent onstage something that was real romantic chemistry between the two of them. This student was married at the time. He opted out of that. He played the role, but he was very careful about what he did with his actress partner offstage in order to prepare for the role. I don't think that's uncommon in various stage and screen opportunities. I know in my son's view, if you are the least bit restrictive on the kinds of roles you are willing to play, that's a serious career limiting move. If you're going to try to advance and take this seriously, you have to be willing to take roles that may involve representing characters who have lots of things that you would never want to represent yourself. I think if what's required on the stage or on screen…if it’s required that you actually engage in immoral behavior on screen, then I think that may be a little different matter. We have another student, a Biola student, who's done quite a bit of acting. One of his roles was where he played basically a sex object for the Two Broke Girls in that comedy series. He had a rule that he would never take a part if his wife was uncomfortable with it. He showed her the script. A lot of times, you take the part, and then you don't see the full script until you start, actually, rehearsals. Sometimes it's not as easy to know what kind of things are coming in a role that you accept. That would be my take on it. I don't know if you see that differently or not, but I'm reminded of my son's words, "Dad, it's just acting."

Sean: I think that's really helpful. I agree with much of that. I feel like this is an entire episode you and I should do, and really unpack this in detail. It requires that. For me, it's just some questions that come to mind. It's one thing to be in a scene with somebody who has a worldview or a position a Christian would differ with, but being in a movie that's promoting ideas that are against a Christian idea, a Christian worldview. That's something that we need to really gauge, how much do I want to contribute towards this for the sake of my career? I think it depends on the nature of the scene. When it comes to sexuality, not all sex scenes are equal. Is it glamorizing this? Is it showing more than it needs to? Or is it like in Schindler's List, or the movie years ago about Jodie Foster where she plays somebody who is raped, and it was not glamorizing it, but showing the horror of that? These are things that I think Christians need to think about. Last thing I'll say, Scott, is I have a friend who just about three, four weeks ago was over. Their family was over, and she shared how she's trying to become an actress, and the director asked if she would perform—this is more on stage than in movies—a certain scene, and she said, "You know, I'm a Christian. There's certain things I can't and I won't do, even if it costs me my career." The director says, "Tell me about that. That's interesting," and gave her an opening to share. I know you agree with that as well, but that's the trade-off that is a piece of the conversation.

Scott: Yeah, don't get me wrong. Of course there are roles that you have to turn down.

Sean: [laughs] Of course.

Scott: Of course there are. What those might be, I think, is where we could have a little bit more conversation.

Sean: Fair enough.

Scott: I like the idea of unpacking this in a longer episode on this. If our listeners have input on that, feel free to contact us and let us know about that.

Sean: We need to have somebody on from our film department, because as you know, that is one of our biggest programs here at Biola. We're building, just breaking ground on entirely new facilities. We are and will continue to be one of the top film departments in college, in California and beyond. We have some experts here who can weigh in on this.

Scott: I suspect they've thought about this before. [laughs]

Sean: They have, and students tell me that these are regular conversations in class that they're trying to help Christians navigate.

Scott: That’s a great idea.

Sean: So we'd love to have you at Biola as a senior, or anybody else listening.

Scott: These are a couple of good questions. I want to encourage our listeners to keep them coming, because we love getting your questions.

Sean: There were quite a few more. We ran out of time. We read all the questions that come. Sorry if we were not able to get to your questions. Doing our best. This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. We have master's programs in theology, apologetics, Bible, spiritual formation, and more fully online and in person. Please keep your comments and questions coming. You can send them to thinkbiblically@biola.edu. Please give us a rating on your podcast app. I kid you not, every single individual rating, even if it takes you 15 seconds, really helps spread the word. Consider sharing this episode with a friend. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you Tuesday with one of my favorite interviews in a while, in which we got to talk with my friend who's from the North Carolina Supreme Court. Chief Justice Paul Newby talks about navigating law as a Christian, what arguments led him to the faith, and how to think about justice as a Christian. You're going to love that episode. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.