Biola UniversityDespite medicine’s remarkable advances, has it actually taken a wrong turn and lost something pretty important? What is the dominant worldview of medicine and health care today and how has that affected both patients and health care providers? What are the virtues that should govern health care to get it back on track? We’ll answer these questions and more with our guest, Dr. Brent Waters, emeritus professor and founding director of the Stead Center for Ethics and Values at Garrett Evangelical Seminary. Brent will be a plenary speaker at the national conference of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, June 26-28. See cbhd.org/conference for more information.
Guest Bio: Brent Waters is the Emeritus Jerre and Mary Joy Professor of Christian Social Ethics, and Emeritus Director of the Jerre L. and Mary Joy Stead Center for Ethics and Values at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois. He came to Garrett in 2001 and retired in 2022.
Waters is the author or co-editor of 11 books, including most recently, Common Callings and Ordinary Virtues: Christian Ethics for Everyday Life.
Episode Transcript
Scott Rae: [upbeat music] Despite medicine's remarkable advances, has it actually taken a wrong turn and lost something pretty important? What is the dominant worldview of medicine and healthcare today, and how has that affected both patients and healthcare providers? And what are the virtues that should govern healthcare to get it back on track? We'll answer these questions and a whole lot more with our guest, Dr. Brent Waters, Emeritus Professor and Founding Director of the Stead Center for Ethics and Values at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary. Brent will be a plenary speaker at the National Conference of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity coming up in a few weeks. I'm your host, Scott Rae, and this is Think Biblically from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Brent, welcome. Really glad to have you with us. Looking so forward to this conversation.
Brent Waters: Well, thank you for having me.
Scott Rae: Yeah. You say in your work that healthcare in the last twenty or thirty years has made incredible advances, but nevertheless, has taken a wrong turn. Okay, what do you mean by that, and how so?
Brent Waters: Well, I think it's taken a wrong turn in that it's created, false expectations of what it can really deliver. And what I mean by that is that there's an implicit promise that most diseases w-- if not now, will eventually be, preventable, that, we won't have to deal with, prolonged illness, that almost anything can be corrected. So that, in a, in a sense, what they're really saying is that the human body is not an object of care as it has traditionally been and within medical care, but is now a problem to be solved. And once we can solve that problem, then we'll have better lives. Personally, I think what that really is doing is launching a very naive war against finitude and mortality, and we were created by God to be finite and mortal creatures. Now, it doesn't mean medicine shouldn't do what it can to relieve suffering, to cure illnesses, but it means ultimately, those are not problems to be solved. It's part of our identity as human beings. It's, it's central to the human condition.
Scott Rae: Now, that... I think that's a really important worldview component to this that we'll get back to in just, in just a minute.
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm.
Scott Rae: But, you know, you've recently, n-not too long ago, had your own experience of serious illness. You know, as you described it to me, the physicians were preparing your wife to be a widow. And, how has... And so it strikes me, I guess, that, you've been the beneficiary of many of these incredible advances of medicine, yet in the same breath, you say it's taken a wrong turn. So how has your own experience with really serious illness, not too long ago, influenced your thinking about healthcare?
Brent Waters: Okay, to tell a long story briefly, and I'll do my best. [chuckles] As, I was admitted to the hospital with what eventually proved to be Legionnaires' disease. So I spent nine days in ICU, five of them on a ventilator. That's when they were trying to prepare my wife that it's a good likelihood I would be a... She would be a widow. But obviously, I fooled the doctors and-
Scott Rae: Mm-hmm
Brent Waters: ... Pulled through.
Scott Rae: [chuckles]
Brent Waters: So but then it was three weeks of acute rehab in the hospital, and then 12 weeks of outpatient, physical therapy. Now, what I want to do is, first of all, I'm gonna give credit to the doctors because cre- you need to give credit where credit is due, and that is that they were the ones that pulled me, you know, back from the abyss. And I recognize that. But the doctors were somewhat like Melchizedek. They would kind of float into the room from- [chuckles]
Scott Rae: [laughing]
Brent Waters: -nowhere, spend a few minutes mumbling with the nurses and looking at charts, and then leave again, like Melchizedek. The people who were there day in and day out were the nurses and therapists, and they were really very much focused on the mundane things, like helping me get to the bathroom. I had to literally learn how... Relearn how to do everything, how to walk, how to feed myself. And by the way, some of the best advice I received when you're learning to feed yourself again is, food to face, not face to food. And I mean, it's-
Scott Rae: [laughing]
Brent Waters: ... It's really very helpful advice. But also, what that really reinforced in me was something I was already beginning to worry about as an ethicist, and that was: what do, what did I think about most of the time? And most of the time, I was taught to think about really big issues, war and peace, genetic engineering, radical life extension, transhumanism, and all this. And I'm not saying those are unimportant, but I began to realize I had almost no firsthand experience of any of this, and I was basically overlooking and ignoring where I spend most of my time, which is in mundane things like cleaning the house, running errands, taking care of the physical, needs of being a human. And that's what the nurses and therapists really reinforced in me, and that prompted me to think differently about bioethics. I do think differently now that, you know, the mundane is terribly important, and why is that the case? Because I think that's what we l- we learn some invaluable lessons about neighbor love when you take care of the daily things of life. You know, when you keep the house clean, when you put a meal on the table, when you keep a roof over your head, that's expressing a love of neighbor. And I think that's received short shrift in both of our disciplines of ethics, and I'd like to recover that and say, "There's something significant here." And medicine taught me that lesson in a very strong way.
Scott Rae: So there's something, you... There's something about the dailiness of life, it sounds like-
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm
Scott Rae: ... That is not really part of the fall, but it's part of our, just our condition of being human and facing our limits and eventually facing our mortality. Correct?
Brent Waters: Correct. And it's, it's also the preschool learning the virtues. [laughing] because-
Scott Rae: Spell out, spell out more what you mean by that.
Brent Waters: Well, a virtue is basically learning a good habit. It's becoming habituation so that you don't, you don't calculate, "Should, should I be good?" You are good.... Because that's, that's how it forms and shapes you. Well, the daily mundane things of life, you learn habits, like making the bed every day, you know, being at a meal, cooking, cleaning, and these all becomes part of habituation, so it kind of prepares you for the virtues. And I think it's, again, that has received short shrift, is that, [chuckles] And, you know, the interesting writer who taught me that was Miss Manners, who-
Scott Rae: [laughs]
Brent Waters: ... Who was actually a trained philosopher. And, and she would use this as saying, "Look, and, you know, the reason we have good behavior at the supper table is because otherwise it's a wild and woolly place, and, you know,"
Scott Rae: [laughs]
Brent Waters: "and there's a lot of dangerous instruments at the table, so you have to, [chuckles] to learn good behavior." And I think there's something to that. Even in her jovial kind of way, she was teaching some important lessons about it is in the ordinary daily routines of life that we learn, in some ways, what is most important about life.
Scott Rae: Well, that's, that's really insightful. Let me- we'll come back to some of the virtues here in just a minute, but you- one of the other points you make [clears throat] is that increasingly, and this describes your experience, I think, physicians increasingly cure rather than care.
Brent Waters: Yeah.
Scott Rae: But w- don't most people think that curing is actually the point of medicine? How, how would you respond to that?
Brent Waters: Yeah, and it is the point of medicine, but it's a rather modern development. I mean, I think... I don't know how people figured this out, but there are some clever people who figured it out. It's about 1912, where physicians actually helped more people than they killed.
Scott Rae: Oh. [chuckles]
Brent Waters: And, and, uh- [chuckles]
Scott Rae: That's quite, that's quite an arresting statistic.
Brent Waters: It is. It is an arresting statistic, but I think what we've come to expect is that anything is curable. So if not now, then later with technological development. So for example, we now have a shorthand referring to aging as a disease. Well, that implies that if it can be treated, it can be cured eventually, and what does that mean to really cure aging? I think, again, that's part of the false expectation that's built into some of the confidence that we have in our technological, abilities. But there comes a point, I think, in everyone's life, whether it's through illness or injury, or just simply aging, when you can't cure anymore. There's just no prospect. So how do you care? And Paul Ramsey wrote a wonderful essay on this, on only caring for the dying. And it's, again, it's, it's a way that we have of maintaining the linkage of that wonderful phrase from St. Augustine, "The bonds of imperfection." And one of the ways that we maintain those bonds is through the caring of people in the daily things that we do, and particularly at the end of life. I mean, I think, I think there comes a time when it is more blessed to receive than to give, and that's an important lesson to learn, and I think we learn it most prominently in medicine.
Scott Rae: Yeah, and I, you know, I reflect back, Brent, on the experience of my own mother.
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm.
Scott Rae: She passed away not too long ago, from very serious dementia, where she was, she was virtually incapable of doing hardly anything for herself at the end of life, and she died from a really nasty flu bug that eventually took her out. [clears throat] But, well, you know, they, the nurses and staff, you know, it had been a been a long time since a physician had seen her. And it was the nurses and the staff and my sister, God bless my sister, who's qualifies for sainthood, who cared for her with the da- sort of the daily stuff of life- ... That still had to go on with her. I mean, she still had to be fed. She could feed herself, sort of, but she had lost a lot, a lot of her memory. She'd lost, basically lost 50 years of her memory of all of our growing up, and adolescence and young- and adulthood. And it was, it was really challenging to care for her toward the end, but I think my sister and staff really felt like these were heroic people who exhibited some wonderful virtues and embodied that notion of loving your neighbor in some really powerful ways. And so I mean, it strikes me that there's a l- a, actually a lot to be learned from the ordinary experience of aging and mortality, that medicine increasingly, I think, bumps up against its own limits, too, that they are often loath to admit.
Brent Waters: Well, I... Yeah, and I think it goes back to, medicine is like most things in our late modern world. It, it creates the illusion of control, of being in control, the ones being in control of one's, one's own fate or destiny. And the reason that's problematic is that, we really aren't. We, [chuckles] we really aren't in control. And I think that the myth of that control, does it have some unwanted consequences for medicine? Yeah, I think it does. I think that's why the options of assisted suicide and euthanasia are growing in popularity, because at least you can then control the time and means of your own death. Where I think, you know, hospice and palliative care is a far better option, far more in line with Christian teaching and doctrine. And, and I think what Christianity is predicated on is the notion that your life is not your own.
Scott Rae: Yeah, I think the Bi- the Bible's really clear. It seems to me that we've been bought with a price-
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm
Scott Rae: ... And when Jesus says to deny yourself, what he means by that, in my view, is that to deny ownership of yourself-
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm
Scott Rae: ... And ultimately recognize that the ultimate ownership of your life belongs to God.
Brent Waters: Yeah.
Scott Rae: Now, you'd mentioned, that the transhumanists have been historically the ones who had been, had been lobbying for, cure, basically curing everything. And, um-... Finding a way to, exert mastery entirely over the process of aging and mortality. But that, you know, for a long time, Brent, as you know, that was just the province of the transhumanists, which, you know, w- I think we've largely dismissed as extremists in some of their views. But you say now that this is, really a part of more traditional medicine these days, and not just the realm of the transhumanists. Explain what more what you mean by that.
Brent Waters: Yeah, I think, I think unwittingly, a lot of that rhetoric has been adopted. Again, like in a phrase that you see now fairly routinely, not only in the bioethical literature, but in medical literature, of aging as a disease. That to me has, you know, implications that they haven't really thought through. Why would you use that? I think really what they mean is it's a shorthand reference to a lot of things that are associated with aging. But I think that increasingly, they're looking as aging, again, as a problem that eventually can be solved. So you... You know, and I'm old enough to now to say that's nonsense. No, the new 70s is not the old 50s. That's just baloney.
Scott Rae: [chuckles]
Brent Waters: And, you know, it again, creates these expectations that somehow not only can we live longer, but we can live with a certain kind of vigor, uh-
Scott Rae: Yeah, we can live longer, better.
Brent Waters: Yeah, yeah. So the transhumanists, really what they're arguing ultimately is for the extinction of human beings so that you can create something better than human. 'Cause really, that's what it would take. If you want to eliminate finitude, and you want to eliminate mortality, you're really eliminating humans.
Scott Rae: Exactly. So that I think that's one of the costs-
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm
Scott Rae: ... That you see in this wrong turn-
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm
Scott Rae: ... In healthcare. What are so- what are some of the other costs that you see?
Brent Waters: I see increasingly a kind of consumerism going on in medicine that, kind of, erodes the physician-patient relationship. I mean, in our- in the healthcare provider that I use, w- they hired a new young cardiologist that I really like. He's, he's a Notre Dame boy, and he didn't re- you know, he kind of didn't know that he'd have to take a couple of philosophy courses [chuckles] you know, going to Notre Dame-
Scott Rae: [laughs]
Brent Waters: ... He really wasn't prepared for that. But actually, we talked a little bit, and he kind of enjoyed them. But, but no, he was telling me that when they- when he first hired on, the expectation was, I think, five patients per hour, which I already thought was quite a few.
Scott Rae: That's, that's quite a lot, actually.
Brent Waters: Now, their- the expectation's creeped up to seven or eight, and it's, it's kind of a mill, and I'm saying: "Well, can you really practice medicine seeing patients?" And he says, "No."
Scott Rae: Really?
Brent Waters: Yeah.
Scott Rae: He, he was, he was open about admitting that?
Brent Waters: Yeah, that really what you're doing is you're just kind of dependent upon technology, giving you the readouts and giving you the information. But, essentially, you know, I would think that the relationship in the past between physician and patient would be helping you kind of sort out the options, and he has done that on occasion, and helped me think through of certain kinds of things. He's kind of in way- in many ways, a little bit of a throwback. But, that's w- I think what's missing is that, again, is like... Go back to Paul Ramsey, is that physicians need to be reminded that their patients are, first and foremost, persons. And, and to lose that dimension, I think, is to lose something really crucial to medical care.
Scott Rae: Yeah, preferably, they would recognize that they are persons made in the image of God with intrinsic, essential dignity that needs to be respected regardless of their healthcare state-
Brent Waters: Right
Scott Rae: ... Or ability to pay or insurance status or, you know, fill in the blank with other-
Brent Waters: Right
Scott Rae: ... Criteria. Now, it l- it seems to me, from... And, and I think it's borne out by what you described, too, is medicine today is characterized by a, the world- a worldview that the ancients would probably find foreign.
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm.
Scott Rae: It's the worldview of physicalism-
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm
Scott Rae: ... Which basically says, we are, we are nothing more than the physical stuff of which we are made, and re- ultimately, a person is reducible to the laws of chemistry and physics. What are the downsides that you see of that worldview for healthcare?
Brent Waters: It, it means that you know are no longer dealing with the person as a whole person, and what you've really done is simply said, "I'm going to set aside something that may be terribly important to you to focus in on something that I can manage and keep control of." And I think that's the downside of healthcare.
Scott Rae: For, for example?
Brent Waters: For example, it means that,
Brent Waters: I suspect that a lot of times when my physicians talk to me, they assume that the only thing that's important for me is to live for as long as possible, when maybe that's not a concern I have at all. Maybe what I'm thinking of is how can I remain in love and charity with God and neighbor? And that's what I want you to enable me to do. It also means that basically, when you're thinking about ethics, you cut out a lot of what's important. So, for example, my general practitioner, who just recently retired a few years ago, he knows what I do for a living, asked me what I thought of assisted suicide, and I said, "I'm not in favor of it." And he said, "Well, why?" And I looked at him and I said: "Because I worry what it would do to your soul."
Scott Rae: Oh, [chuckles] touché!
Brent Waters: [chuckles] And what-
Scott Rae: How did, how did-
Brent Waters: ... At the moment-
Scott Rae: How did, how did he respond to that?
Brent Waters: Well, he kind of paused a moment. He's, he's sort of a lapsed Catholic, and he said- and then he kind of said, "Yeah, I can see that." And then he said, "And, and there is, after all, the oath I took."
Scott Rae: Yeah.
Brent Waters: Yeah.
Scott Rae: What a c- what a concept, huh?
Brent Waters: Yeah, yeah.
Scott Rae: [chuckles]
Brent Waters: So, so I think, you know, again, the physicalism fails at some of the most important times-... And, you know, the questions of, basically at the beginning and end of life. You know, how do physicians really begin to treat questions of infertility? How do, how do physicians really respond to dying patients and things like that, or terribly, chronically ill patients? And I think you just can't tend to the physicalism because that means then you're really not providing the care that's required when you cannot cure.
Scott Rae: Well, and what we've- well, there's a lot of empirical data to suggest that what patients actually care about most at the end of life is not the medical stuff.
Brent Waters: Right.
Scott Rae: It's the, you know, it's the spiritual stuff. It's the emotion. It's what's my legacy? You know, have I closed the loop relationally with the people I care about? You know, so it's those things- ... That they actually care the most about. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm writing a piece on the combination of, family dysfunction and ethics at the end of life.
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm.
Scott Rae: And, and I... But I'm doing this with a mar- a marriage and family therapist-
Brent Waters: Wonderful
Scott Rae: ... In con- in conjunction, because there's nobody else on the healthcare scene. You know, maybe social workers can deal with some of this, but, you know, physicians, you know, they just throw up their hands when they see a dysfunctional family in the ICU. All they want is a decision, and they're- they don't attend to any of that. And, you know, it t- it ta- it takes somebody with expertise, I think, to sort out some of those things. But it- what it highlights is the only thing the physicians care about is dec- what decision does the family make? They don't care how they got there. Just tell, just tell me what you want me to do, among these alternatives.
Brent Waters: Right.
Scott Rae: So here, one other question. Maybe, maybe this sort of relates to the view of physicalism, but, how has the view of the body changed over time, in terms of, in terms both of healthcare providers and in terms of patients?
Brent Waters: Yeah, that's a [sighs] that's a, that's a simple question, and I wish I could give a simple answer, but I don't know. So I'm gonna speculate a little bit. I mean, I think-
Scott Rae: That's what I'm asking you for.
Brent Waters: Okay. All right. I'm not gonna speak for physicians, 'cause I don't know how they looked upon the body. I mean, my hunch is they had some gallows humor [laughing]
Scott Rae: [laughing]
Brent Waters: ... Like most professions, but I don't know. I think a physician would need to answer that question. I can say as a patient who's lived a long time, how I've changed my perception of the body, particularly in terms of healthcare, is that increasingly,
Brent Waters: I don't expect to be cured of anything or of everything anymore. And really, what I'm asking my physician to do, because I'm beginning to view my body as something which is ultimately gonna fail me. I mean, that's just, that's just the way it is. I don't think that's morbid, it's just reality.
Scott Rae: No, it's just, that's stark reality.
Brent Waters: Yeah, and what I want from my doctors and others is just simply some counsel on saying, "You know, I've never gotten old before, can you help me out here?"
Scott Rae: Yeah.
Brent Waters: What are realistic expectations?
Brent Waters: What's prop- I mean, proper care of the body now is not the same as when I was 20. And it's just, it's just beginning to really help me think through not only the physical questions, but how does that affect my spirituality? How does that affect my religious belief? I mean, the questions I'm asking now is not the same questions I was asking when I was young. And, you know, how... And ph- I don't expect physicians to give me the answers, but can they give me some clues about, as an embodied person, how do I think about this? How, how to respond to different kinds of issues.
Scott Rae: So what would you say, on this score, to, you know, Gen Z-
Brent Waters: Mm-hmm
Scott Rae: ... You know, younger millennials, you know, f- people in their twenties and thirties who still think they're relatively bulletproof? And they think that medicine's gonna do- you know, medicine's gonna cure everything that ails them.
Brent Waters: Yeah, and I guess the, my advice would be, pay attention to the ordinary. Pay attention to the, to the mundane, the everyday, and get your clues from that about how to live your life. Because you are the first generation that has grown up with an overly abundant confidence in technology that's ultimately probably not gonna solve you or help you. I mean, for all of the hype about AI, it's still pretty stupid. And [chuckles]
Scott Rae: I've, I've, I've u- I've used often the acronym, allegedly inaccurate [laughing]
Brent Waters: Yeah [laughing]
Scott Rae: To describe it.
Brent Waters: I think it's- I think that's a pretty good one, actually. And recognize that technolo- there's a price for any kind of technological solution you are going to seek. I mean, George Grant, for example, was really fond of the Spanish proverb, "Take what you want, say God, take it and pay for it." And any kind of technology you adopt, there's a price to it. It's not free. So the more time that you spend on a screen is less time that you're gonna spend face-to-face with somebody, 'cause that's just the way it is. And, and it is, like what we're doing today. Is a Zoom meeting an adequate substitute for face-to-face meetings? No. But it's sometimes the best we can do.
Scott Rae: Right.
Brent Waters: But it's to recognize, I think, the limits of technology and to say, you know, ultimately, a good life, a life worth living, is not gonna be lived entirely in the company of technology.
Scott Rae: So Brent, you've, I mean, you've, you've, I think, done a great job of po- of diagnosing a problem, but you've also proposed a solution.... Here, and it's a little different than what y- what the average person might think. So what actually are you proposing that we do about this concern that you have about medicine taking a wrong turn?
Brent Waters: A recovery of virtue. I mean, I think that's the starting point. I don't think it's the solution in and of itself, but I'm just not smart enough to think of a complete solution. But I can suggest maybe starting with the, with the virtue. And two quick examples of that is... Well, first of all, what is a virtue? Well, virtue is simply, is an excellence, and excellence is usually the m- the middle road between two extremes. So, for example, in the excellence of, courage means that on the one hand, you avoid the vice of recklessness, and on the other side, the vice of cowardice. So that, you know, the courageous person, and you habituate that through practice, so that when you approach a situation, it's not that you have to think, "Should I be courageous or not?" You simply are courageous. And, and so the two virtues I'm trying to think through in terms of healthcare, and this is virtues both for physicians and patients, is the virtue of prudence combined with the virtue of love of neighbor, particularly. And I think that that creates those two... I mean, prudence is simply doing the right things for the right reasons, and that means you take counsel, you don't try to be independent, but, you don't also suspend decisions for a long time. Eventually, you take decisive action. And when prudence is combined with neighbor love, you exhibit this through the, again, through the common, ordinary things, so physicians taking care of the body and patients having realistic expectations of what they can receive. So I think that ultimately, with those two virtues, you learn something about humility, and you learn something about gratitude. I think that especially the gratitude is, I think, a very important part of human flourishing. You need to be grateful for that which is given to you, the gifts that we receive from strangers, from friends, from family. And I mean, I've always been struck by, you know, a few, literally just a few days before, Sir Roger Scruton died, he wrote about it. He says, "When you are approaching death, you begin to learn what is important about life, and in a word, that means gratitude." And I can't think of a better benediction than what I'm trying to say than something along the line is, a life well-lived is a life of gratitude, and I think we learn gratitude through the humility that prudence and love teaches us.
Scott Rae: I think, I think we'll let that be the benediction.
Brent Waters: Okay.
Scott Rae: That's a very... W- I think we could also refer that to that as a drop-the-mic moment. Uh-
Brent Waters: [chuckles]
Scott Rae: ... But, Brent, really appreciate your insights on this. I know you've, you've wrestled with this both professionally and personally, and have seen a lot of, a lot of the issues that you're describing here, and I so appreciate your emphasis on just the ordinary, daily stuff of life, which I think, I think you're right on this. That is the school of virtue. It is the, it is the place where we learn to love our neighbor, where we learn to love God, where we learn to cultivate humility and gratitude, and I think the other virtues that are evident from what Paul taught, for example, in the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Those things are... Tho- that's the stuff of which life is made. And I think we, think we could have an appreciation for medicine and the extraordinary things that it's a- that it's able to accomplish without looking at it as the savior for us. And I think that this, I think the caution about that is well taken, and so again, so appreciative of you. The way you explain this, you know, and ground this both biblically and theologically is cr- is crucial for this conversation. So very grateful for your time with us, and, look forward to further conversations on this. I know we will have you back again on the, on the next subject that you're, that you're taking up, 'cause I can, I can count on a lot of insight and a lot of creativity coming from you. [upbeat music]
Brent Waters: Thank you, Scott.
Scott Rae: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture. It's brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, offering programs in Southern California and online. Visit biola.edu/talbot in order to learn more. To submit comments, ask questions, make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like us to consider, you can email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. That's thinkbiblically@biola.edu. If you enjoyed today's conversation with our friend, Dr. Brent Waters, give us a rating on your podcast app and share it with a friend. And join us on Friday for our weekly cultural update. Thanks for listening, and remember, think biblically about everything. [upbeat music]
