This week, Scott and Sean discuss:

  • America's Historic Crime Drop - The U.S. has experienced its largest homicide rate reduction in 125 years, with all seven categories of violent crime falling below pre-pandemic levels. Baltimore serves as a compelling case study, cutting homicides by nearly 60% through proactive outreach to at-risk individuals and community investment.
  • The Dark Side of AI - Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok has released millions of sexually inappropriate images on X, including disturbing content involving minors.
  • Looksmaxxing: Young Men in Crisis - A troubling new trend reveals how young men are obsessing over physical appearance enhancement, often to unhealthy extremes. This movement reflects deeper issues of identity, worth, and the pressure created by social media culture.
  • China's Demographic Collapse - China's birth rate continues its dramatic decline despite government incentives to encourage childbearing. The discussion explores cultural factors, economic pressures, and what this means for global demographics.

Listener Q&A:

  • Faith-Based Ministries and Immigration - A listener asks whether Christian ministries serving undocumented immigrants could face legal consequences under potential new enforcement policies.




Episode Transcript

Sean McDowell: [upbeat music] America experiences the most significant homicide rate reduction in 125 years. Elon Musk's AI chatbot releases millions of sexually charged images, including women and children, on X. The new trend called looksmaxxing reveals the crisis young men are facing today, and China's birth rate plunges. These are the stories we will discuss, and we will also address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.

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

Sean McDowell: This is the Think Biblically weekly cultural update, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Before we jump in, if people didn't figure it out from my introduction, we're gonna be talking about a topic that you might want to make sure you have age-appropriate people in the room, especially on the second story. This first one, Scott, really jumped out to me because especially since COVID, we've been talking a ton about crime rate increase, homicide rate increase, and it's been decreasing over the past, say, three or four years, and the narrative has been, "And we're back to pre-COVID [chuckles] times." It seems now in 2025, we've gone even better, so to speak, than before COVID. So something is happening here that both The New York Times and The Atlantic find surprising. Now, before we jump in, both of these publications say, "We don't know what's [chuckles] going on. We don't know why," and then they proceed to give their best guess, which is fair, 'cause they say that's what it is. So here's some of the data. Last year, for the first time, all seven categories of violent crime tracked by the analysis fell below pre-pandemic levels. And they say... This is The New York Times article, provides further evidence, suggests that the surge in violence in the early 2020s was a departure during a time of massive social upheaval, not a new normal. So there's 25% fewer homicides, 13% fewer shootings, 29% fewer carjackings. This is, like, surprising and remarkable news to come out. One of the things they say, typically, most people insist that crime is going up regardless of the data, but in its annual crime rate survey last October, Gallup found that about 49% of respondents said crime was worse than the year before, compared to 64%, the year before that. So still, 49% of people, as of last year, thought crime was getting worse, when in reality, it's not. So it seems that the way people are viewing this is not really catching up with what's actually going on. One example I wanna get from this, and we don't have to walk through all these, Scott. I mean, they give about six or eight or 10 possible reasons this could be decreasing. But there's kind of a fascinating account here that really got my attention related to what's happening specifically in Baltimore. Homicide has been cut by almost 60% in the past five years, close to a 50-year low. That's remarkable for a big city like Baltimore. And one of the things that they point out is that this story, they have a city's group's violence reduction strategy [chuckles] , which conducts direct outreach to a narrow band of people caught in the cycle of retaliatory killings. So there's hundreds of people that are caught in this cycle. How they catch them, exactly what they've done is not clear, but what they do is they identify them, likely to perpetuate crimes. They receive a letter from the mayor's office, offering access to city services. In other words, they find people that are likely to commit violent crimes, according to their analytics, reach out and say, "We're here to help you with your life." And in that area, they saw a decrease because of it. So I thought that was really significant. And then the other thing they talk about is that the city's renaissance is not just about public safety. They were building new swimming pools, creating summer jobs for teenagers, trying to just make the place more livable, and better, and cleaned up, and giving opportunities for people, and that could be contributing in Baltimore to the reduction in crime. The last thing I'll say is it's hard for them to pinpoint why this is happening in so many categories in so many cities, because in Baltimore, that's just one [chuckles] example that helped them, and it doesn't map onto other cities. What do you make of this trend?

Scott Rae: Well, Sean, I hate to be a buzzkill on this.

Sean McDowell: [laughs] Oh, no.

Scott Rae: But-

Sean McDowell: Okay

Scott Rae: ... I think this is a good news and bad news story.

Sean McDowell: All right.

Scott Rae: The good news, obviously, is the downward trend in r- the rates of violent crime, while at the same time, police forces have been reduced in many communities.

Sean McDowell: That's right.

Scott Rae: Now, thankfully, we've gotten, we've gotten out of the, sort of the 20- early 2020 sort of Defund the Police movement, and I think restored some sense of sanity about that. But, police forces have been reduced in many communities, while at the same time, violent crime is going down. The bad news, Sean, is that the article also points out, in a sort of throwaway comment, that I think it deserves more space than what they gave- ... Is that there's been a significant rise in cybercrimes over the same period.

Sean McDowell: That is true.

Scott Rae: And I think f- what's, what's happening in some of these cases is that former street crimes are going digital now. Now, I'll... Full disclosure here, this is a little bit on the personal side for me, because just in the last two weeks, we had roughly $15,000 stolen from us, through a, through a, through a fraud case. Now, we've gotten the money back-

Sean McDowell: Oh, my goodness

Scott Rae: ... And, but it really shook us up, that we could be victimized by that.

Sean McDowell: ... Uh-oh.

Scott Rae: So here, you know, one of the other things that is sort of a good news, bad news thing, is one of the reasons they- that they attribute to the decrease in the crime rate is the decrease in face-to-face interaction with people. That if the less face-to-face interaction you have, the less, the less likely it is for relationships to explode into things that might give way to violent crime. Now, this would be more, I'd say, more crimes of passion, but some of those could also be premeditated, as well. And I think what you've pointed out is a, is a, is a really good thing, that we've isolated some of the risk factors for violent crime, and law enforcement is rightly focusing without, I think, without stigmatizing these folks who are at risk of that, is focusing on preventive measures that might co-opt some of these tendencies toward violent crime, some of these risks, and to minimize them. You know, the other theory that I think has something that might be worthwhile is that the, during the COVID era, the federal government put a lot of money into different community types of things, community restoration, to parks, restoring places that had been, that had been the victim of urban blight, green spaces, summer jobs for teens. All of these things that create community and enhance community life have been shown to be, a contributor to a reduction in violent crime, which sug- again, suggests that we are... What we've said repeatedly before, thinking theologically about this, we are hardwired for relationships and for community. And it's, and the things that foster community that government did during that COVID era and post-COVID era seemed to have had a, had a benefit in the reduction of violent crime. Now, of course, nobody's really sure what the factors are, and these statistics, by the way, are from 2024, not '25, though the early indications from '25 are headed in the right direction as well.

Sean McDowell: That's a great take. I'm really glad you emphasized that one of the theories, and they do say [chuckles] it's a theory, the article says it's their leading one, but they hold it with some reservation, is that funds went into cities, and cities used them to build parks, to clean up streets, to do the kinds of things that make people feel safe, have dignity, and build community. When I graduated from Biola, before I came back to Talbot, I spent one year working with my dad, traveling everywhere, and then I worked in the inner city for a year at a church called the Dream Center in Hollywood, in LA. And they have a famous, project there called Adopt the Block, where they started at the church, and they'd go block by block every Saturday with people, and they would clean up the block. They'd pick up old couches. They'd clean up trash. They'd cover up graffiti. They'd knock on doors and just say, "Can we help and care for you?" And slowly, over time, over years and years, the crime rate dropped in that community and beyond, which is near Echo Park, and it was just a step-by-step process of relationship, change the environment, making people feel more safe, able to do the things that human beings do. So if this is what this government fund is using for, to allow people to feel safe, to help clean up, that's a positive step. Now, the other thing I'd add on top of that is I don't have a problem reading these stories and saying, "I don't know what's going on yet." Even as I [chuckles] read this, Scott, I had to check myself, going, "Wait a minute, that theory fits with my ideas. I'll adopt that one." [chuckles]

Scott Rae: [chuckles] Fair enough.

Sean McDowell: "That one doesn't, I'll reject that." And I'm checking myself, going, "Okay, wait a minute. That is so not okay when the data has not come in." So, and that's biblical, right? There's a lot the Bible says about listening before we speak. There's a lot about getting all sides of an issue and being patient with ideas, and there's so many things in our culture that weigh against this. Have an opinion on everything. Let somebody else think for you. And so in part, I chose this story to say, "I don't know exactly why it's dropping. I'm not sure. I'm okay with that. Here's a couple theories that make sense to me," but we'll track it, and we'll weigh in and say, "It's okay as [chuckles] Christians to not be able to land the plane on every issue."

Scott Rae: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Anything you wanna throw in on that one, Scott-

Scott Rae: Well, I-

Sean McDowell: ... Or you're like, "Come on, man, land the plane?" [chuckles]

Scott Rae: No, I think that's, that's all good stuff, and I think it's okay to share the same kind of tentative conclusions that the article does. And we'll see, I think that it looks like the data from 2025 is gonna reinforce this, but, you know, we'll, we'll see, you know, in the next few months as that data comes out. We'll be sure and track that for our listeners, and let them know if, you know, if this is just a temporary blip or a more permanent downward trend. But it's a significant trend, and s- you know, and for m- for many of these cities that, the data came in from, they haven't had violent crime rates this low since the 1950s and '60s. And for some, as you, as you described, like Baltimore, a f- you know, not e- not exactly known for being one of the safer cities in the country, that's, you know, that's the lowest crime rate they've had in, like, 100 years. So it's really significant stuff in these communities. I don't wanna ignore the, you know, the other part of this, which is the cybercrime that seems to be running amok.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Scott Rae: So I don't take this as an indication of, you know, this great, you know, shift in character-... Culturally, 'cause I think, I think it is, it's significant that one form of crime has decreased, but another one is significantly going up.

Sean McDowell: Good word. Well, speaking of digital issues that concern us, this next article, you and I have been kinda emailing back and forth, thinking about covering this for a few weeks, but it kind of, I don't know if I'd say blew up this week, but [clears throat] there were a lot of articles, even including the time we're recording this, just minutes before, international publications talking about it. And this article I did pull from The New York Times. It's about Musk's chatbot flooded X, formerly Twitter, with millions of sexualized images in days, new estimates show. So he has an artificial intelligence chatbot named Grok. It created and publicly shared at least 1.8 million sexualized images of women and an estimate of 23,000 sexual images of children, which is every 41 seconds over the 11 days. So starting late December, users on social media platform, on X, inundated the chatbot's X account with requests to alter real photos of women and children, to remove their clothes, put them in bikinis, and pose them in sexual positions, prompting a global outcry from victims and regulators. So there's this chatbot, you could load pictures into it and ask it to remove clothes of somebody, and then use those images on X or somewhere else. So Musk created the o- you might say, the technology, and allowed this, and then users came in and started to use it and flood X and beyond with these kind of images. That's, in a sense, what happened until there was an outcry. This burst of non-consensual images, in just a few days, surpassed collections of sexualized deepfakes or realistic AI-generated images from other sites. One expert says this is industrial-scale abuse of women and girls, and by the way, I appreciate that language because it is. An interesting piece to this, Scott, is that there was a surge... So according to X's head of product, Nikita Bier, said on January 6th, "A surge of traffic over four days that month resulted in the highest engagement levels on X in the company's history." So here's Twitter, X, a huge forum of public dialogue. When they allowed this app to undress people, they got the most traffic they've ever gotten, which now builds in incentive from a business perspective for them to potentially or continually compromise and allow such kind of features on. God, there's so much to say about this. It's really disturbing. But let me let you jump in here before I give kinda some of my commentary on this.

Scott Rae: Well, Sean, you know, a f- a few weeks ago, we speculated what would be the next step in AI-generated porn? And this is it. This is the next step. And non-consensual images of real people, partially undressed or dressed suggestively and sexualized without their consent, and I think in some cases, without their knowledge.

Sean McDowell: That's right.

Scott Rae: Now, ironically, what initially got, I think, got the attention of The New York Times is one of the people who was victimized is, as the, as the Times article describes it, one of Elon Musk's baby mamas- ... Who was [chuckles] who was one of the ones who saw pictures of herself in various stages of undress, that had been, that Grok had done and posted on X. And one, I think, you know, one cybersecurity firm found that 98% of the deepfakes of women, not just on Grok, but on the internet in general, 90% of deepfakes of women were pornographic. That's just huge. And some of, some of the images were of women who had been physically abused. Some of those images were women with black eyes and cuts on their faces and things like that indicated, clearly, domestic partner abuse. Now, my main take on this, Sean, is that this is a, this is a fundamental assault on human dignity and a worse assault on the dignity of women than porn, since it's done non-consensually. Now, here, the other-- the question this raised, and I don't, I don't know the answer to this, but I think it's a good question to raise. To their credit, Musk and his, and his organization insists that they've fixed some of the issues. But, Sean, here's my question: What made the creators of this think that this was okay in the first place? Did, did they, did they have a sense that it wasn't okay, and they just didn't care? Or were they so morally callous that the question never entered their thinking at all? I'm, I'm not sure which I'm more nervous about, [chuckles] those, of those options. But I just, I so am curious about what the people who created this feature, and it's not a bug, it's a feature, on, of Grok, you know, what were they thinking about the justification for this?

Sean McDowell: That's a great question, and I don't know how much-- I'm not privy to these conversations. It was primarily driven by the moral question, and that's because as pushback went against them, they didn't stop and go, "Oh, my goodness, this is wrong. Let us pull this back." It was kind of a selective step-by-step-... So let me read what this article says. It says, "On January 8th, X limited Grok's AI image creation to users who pay for some premium features, significantly reducing the number of images." So they didn't stop and say, "This is wrong, [chuckles] let's correct it." They're like, "Well, let's reduce it, and maybe the pressure will go away." "Last week, X expanded these guardrails," so let's get a little tighter, saying, "It would no longer allow anyone to prompt Grok's X account for images of real people in revealing clothing, such as bikinis. Since then, Grok has largely ignored requests to dress women in bikinis but has created images of them in leotards and one-piece bathing suits. But the restrictions did not extend to the Grok's app or website, which continued to allow users to generate sexual content in private." And, of course, if you can create it in private, you can screenshot it and share it publicly. Like, it just-- th-they're not motivated by that moral question. It's the bottom line. And this is the tension that we talked about, is how much... And, and this tension has always been there, like with hotel rooms. Mm-hmm. Are they going to have pay for X-rated films, and it generates a ton of revenue for them? It did in the past. Well, now with AI and more digital competition, it raises the stakes for these companies to allow this kind of technology. And I think from what I'm reading in this article, Elon Musk's response [chuckles] is not exactly setting an example- [chuckles] ... For other people, that we gotta be sure we protect children, be sure we protect women. That just didn't happen here. There's a couple other questions I had as reading this. I do-- You know, you think in the Bible about responsibility for people, so whoever created this technology and enabled it bears some responsibility. They should have thought it through. They should have responded differently. But then all the users who got on the site and also used it as well and created these images also bear responsibility. So it's not just Musk at play. It's every single person who plugged in somebody, and then whether they thought it was... Some of these are people like Taylor Swift and other actors and actresses and athletes. You plug somebody in, and you use that, there's a level of moral culpability as well. And so it's easy to just blame Musk for this, and he bears a vast [chuckles] amount of blame in my eyes, but everybody who clicked on it, everybody who tried it, bears some moral culpability as well. And it makes me ask the question, you know, "Should I even be on X?" I don't know the answer to that. At, at some point, you just pull off and protest and say, "I will not be a part of this community, period." These are the kinds of questions that all of us are asking and wrestling with, and they've just become more complex [chuckles] than they ever have been in my eyes in the past. Anything else in the story, Scott? Well, just one comment, and just initially, the company and many of its, many of the, of Elon, what they call, what the article calls Elon acolytes, responded, I think, in a fairly callous way, that, you know, "If you don't like what's going on, just log off and get off the site"- ... Without any, without any initial attempt to realize that there ought to be, there ought to be some guardrails that they ought to be putting up. Now, we'll see, in the fu- in the future, in the days to come, how seriously those guardrails are, [clears throat] are taken. I'm not, I'm not holding my breath that they're gon- they're gonna be ser-- all that serious about it. And the article points out that this was a major break from other AI companies who have, I think, shown a higher sense of responsibility about these sexualized images. So we'll-- I guess we'll, we'll see, you know, which approach is gonna carry the day on this, more guardrails or less. And I think that's... We'll, we'll just have to wait and see on that. I-- Last thing I'll say, since you and I have talked about this, is how AI is just going to fuel the sexual revolution additionally. So it says at the beginning, it says, "Users on the social media platform inundated the social media platform with the chatbot." So users now can make this content in a way people could not in the past. Within a few days, 4.4 million images made, 1.8 million probably sexual. So somebody in moments can make this. Second, we now have the capacity to share it in a way. In previous generations, you had to hand somebody a physical image- Mm-hmm ... That you don't. But these images, there's a level, for lack of a better word, an intentionality and a creativity that are put into this that weren't in the past, and they're shared in a way in which AI is able to use and manipulate the human brain and human likes and dislikes to make it more likely that people click on this. So just like the internet hitting in the '90s radically shifted how many people looked at pornography, people were hooked on pornography, the ubiquity and the presence of it, AI, we are seeing this play out right now with the new generation, and I'm, I'm afraid to think about what this means for the future. [lips smack] All right, a ton could be said about this next story, but you and I both were looking at this independently, and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.... It's an-

Scott Rae: Me, me neither. [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: [chuckles] Okay, good. But it feels like a trend that's worth drawing attention to and trying to think biblically about. So The Atlantic has an article about what's called looksmaxxing, which is one word, and maxing has two X's. According to this article, it reveals the depth of the crisis young men are facing. Now, there's a political component to this that doesn't interest me. I'm interested in kind of the cultural phenomenon that's taking place here. It says, "As the name suggests, looksmaxxers share a monomaniacal commitment to improving their physical appearance. They trade stories of breaking their legs in order to gain extra inches." Bone smashing is what they call it, and its idea... And the idea would be that you break somebody's bone, and then it comes back stronger than before. You can bo- you can use a hammer on somebody's face to heighten their cheekbones, is something that somebody can do. It really involves just kind of physical harm to somebody. Injecting steroids and testosterone to inflate muscles, and even smoking crystal meth to suppress an appetite. Some of the commentary in this, it's an opinion piece. One of the, I guess, somebody's named Peters, has become kind of the voice for this movement a little bit online. His, his name is, they call him Clavicular. That's his unusual [chuckles] name online, whatever. He's a white 20-year-old who was expelled from college, has become the most recognisable member of this movement, and on Christmas Eve, apparently, he ran somebody over with his Cybertruck, and people don't know if this was staged or... And, like, as a result of that, his platform totally grew, which is just so bizarre. [sighs] he was wearing a hat this past year that had the words N-I-G-G-A on it, and it seems to be appealing to the same crowd as kind of white nationalists like Nick Fuentes are. Like, there's this kind of alienated, far-right-wing, young white men who are being attracted to this movement. They say it grew out of this online culture of incels, involuntary celibates, term used in the 2010s, just united by resentment of women. They see attractiveness as a straightforward function of genetics and, out of their control. Looksmaxxers hold a similar view as incels, superficial view of beauty, but instead, they, you know, they try to make it malleable and through whatever physical means possible, make themselves as attractive as they can be. Now, apparently, only a couple more things on this is, the goal is not romantic. It's a kind of glor... It's, it's kind of self-glorification. So trying to look ideal in their minds is not about a wom- being a womanising Don Juan. [chuckles] Rather, it's closer to Achilles, the Homeric war hero, whose excellence is determined by his success over other men. In fact, Peters, again, the voice of this, has spoken about taking anabolic steroids over several years to become more muscular, but it's made him infertile because of this, and that's not a problem. This is something that puts him higher in the pecking order. The article attributes this just to a generation of young men who've experienced social fragmentation, economic anxiety, zero-sum competition for what can feel like limited resources, and a lack of meaning, fulfilment, and recognition. What do you make of this looksmaxxer movement? [chuckles]

Scott Rae: Well, Sean, I admit that I, my sentiments were with you at the beginning, that I didn't know quite what to do with this. And to be fair, I... It, it's hard to say how prevalent this is.

Sean McDowell: That's right.

Scott Rae: And the, you know, the views that it gets, you know, I doubt is representative of its popularity overall. Now, it struck me when I started to think about this, that obsession with body image is not really anything new.

Sean McDowell: Yeah, that's right.

Scott Rae: We've had this for a long time, and so this, in my view, this is a difference in degree, not in kind. And I would say it's an extension of our cultural ex- obsession with things like cosmetic surgery, anti-aging measures, body image, you know, things like that. Although this, you know, I admit that this looksmaxxing stuff makes things like anorexia look like a walk in the park- ... By comparison. Not to suggest that anorexia is actually a walk in the park, but-

Sean McDowell: Sure

Scott Rae: ... By, you know, just by contrast. You know, and I remember I've had, I've had occasion, several years ago, to spend some time in a plastic surgeon's office. And I made roughly half a dozen visits to the same surgeon. And every Sean, every time I was there were teenage girls in the waiting room. And, one of the... One of those visits was in mid-December of that particular year, and there were probably half a dozen teenage girls in the waiting room, because they were so- somebody's parents were giving them cosmetic surgery as a Christmas present. So, you know, I think our obsession with body image, I don't think is anything new. It's a-- I think the article is right to point out that it's, it's, it's, it's, this is an expression of narcissism, that is sort of run amok, with this looksmaxxing part. And I think-... But part of it, I think, Sean, putting our identity in our bodies exclusively is just, I think, just as problematic here as it is for other identity groups that do the same thing. So I'd wanna, I'd wanna make sure we're being, we're being even-handed in our understanding of that. You know, thinking theologically about this, you know, if our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, then this is obviously a huge problem. And that the things in our bodies that are not specifically the result of the general entrance of sin, I'd say are givens that, you know, we-- that are part of our becoming more like Christ, that we learn to, we learn to accept those givens without necessarily trying to change them.

Sean McDowell: That's a great word to bring it back to a biblical view of what role kind of our bodies play in our identity. I think that's really at the root of this. You're right to draw out the fact that we've seen similar kinds of, I don't-- concerns with people, like anorexia, which is primarily a female phenomenon, as I understand it. And at the end of this article, it talks about similar phenomenon of women. Like, I think it says there's three million who have started OnlyFans subscriptions, which is a way of kinda being your own porn star, apparently. I mean, if that's right, three million, that's an incredible amount. And the way the article talks about it is just using your body for some gain, which of course, would violate a profound biblical idea that we don't use people, we love people. What's different here is we've been talking about things like anorexia, at least since I was in high school, but transitioning over to males feels like a little bit of a newer trend that was here. And it is interesting that in women, you know, like anorexia, they're not intentionally harming themselves. They just have a view, and I understand there can be a biological component to this-

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm

Sean McDowell: ... But a view that I'm not thin enough according to the standards of society and what beauty is supposed to be. Here with men, it seems like a male equivalent, that I'm not just starving myself, I'm breaking myself, and I'm beating myself, and I'm causing violence intentionally to my own body. I mean, even surgery, like you described, you have a professional [chuckles] surgeon do this to minimize the actual pain, to make yourself look better.

Scott Rae: No, it's just-

Sean McDowell: This-

Scott Rae: ... 'cause it's causing violence to your body, but it's under anesthesia.

Sean McDowell: Yes. Yeah, that's, that's fair. But... And I guess by violence, it-- that you're right, technically, it is violence, but if I'm gonna smash a bone and kind of take charge doing this myhe- myself, it's putting that violence in my own hands in an unsafe kind of fashion, so to speak. I guess might be one slight distinction. Smoking meth, I guess the difference is just the extreme level that-

Scott Rae: Right

Sean McDowell: ... Men and boys are willing to go to, cries out for a kind of desperation. And I'd have to do a deep dive on this, but as I was reading this, it reminded me of the movie Fight Club, which in some ways was representative of Gen X, about alienation, anti-establishment. Now, of course, there, they're marring themselves [chuckles] physically, and there's different issues at play. But men so often, when they're desperate, and they're alienated, and they're alone, and they feel targeted, will turn to violence to remedy that. And I think this looksmaxxing is one way, and you're right, I don't know how big it is. When we pick stories, sometimes I think, "Are we being taken in by some trend that just people pay attention to, but it's not that big?" I mean, that's really a trade-off. But it's in The Atlantic, and I do think it's indicative of just so many young males feeling alienated, feeling lost, and going to extreme things, whether beating their bodies or adopting, as the article says, certain right-wing, you know, anti-Semitic, white supremacist views. We've seen enough of that to give me concern for that segment of the population.

Scott Rae: Sean, I think the way, the way the article puts it, and you d- and I think you quoted this in the very beginning of our discussion of this story, is that it reveals the depth of the moral crisis that confronts young men today. I wanna say a little bit more about that 'cause I th-- I don't wanna, I don't wanna gloss over that. And they describe lookmaxing as a form of nihilism, and I think that's right. And what they mean by that is they put it like this: "For those lacking purpose or faith in a future, all that's left is their bodies." And I think that's the in- that's the indication of the fact that, you know, Nietzsche was onto something, you know, a century plus years ago. And I think it's, it's the same for women who subscribe to OnlyFans. You know, I think it's the s- it's the same, you know, it's the same phenomena, the same thing that's driving it. Now, I think there's a financial component to OnlyFans that there isn't with this lookmaxing. But I do think there... It, it is indicative of what Nietzsche described in general, culturally, as a world without purpose, without design, without intention. And as Richard Dawkins put it, "A world full of blind, pitiless indifference to human beings and to human purpose." And if that, if that's the case, then having faith in a future is pretty hard to come by. And if, again, if that's... If, if you don't have some of tho- if you don't have at least an inkling of some of those, then your body is really all you have left.... And so to do what you can to glorify the body, and again, that, you know, glorifying the body, that goes all the way back to biblical times.

Sean McDowell: It does. [chuckles]

Scott Rae: And s- and some of the reasons the biblical writers had as much to say, that there's as much hope for the body as there is for the soul. And that's, I think, theologically, the big part of this, that we will, we will have resurrection bodies. We will have bodies that, as far as I can tell, will be free from the sin and the corruption that come from living in a fallen world. But it's not something we engineer ourselves. Transhumanists are not onto something with this, that we're not gonna transcend our humanity, and usher in a whole, a whole new species. That... The resurrection body is something that occurs when Jesus comes back. So I wanna be careful that we put, we put this in the right theological framework, and go from there.

Sean McDowell: Scott, I have one more thought on this, and I'm hoping some of our younger listeners can respond and help us out. About a year and a half ago, we covered this New York Times story. It was by Peggy Orenstein, and it was actually April 12th, 2024, so coming up on two years ago. "The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex," and this was about how choking had become a common phenomena in high school, and even in a major Midwestern, university in the Midwest. And you and I were both pretty surprised by this, and, in fact, actually, I think you were gone the week that we talked about it, and somebody else filled in, now that I think about it. But somebody wrote-

Scott Rae: I was surprised by it. [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: But you were surprised by listening to it the week after. We got an email from someone, I don't remember, maybe 18 or 20 years old, and said, "I'm surprised you guys are surprised." [laughing] "How have you missed this? This is so common." I would love to hear from some of our younger listeners, maybe 25 and under. Are you familiar with this looksmaxxing? Are you concerned about it? What's your take on it? How common is it in your experience? Have you ever seen this happen? Please take a minute and email us, and if we get enough responses, we'll read it, coming up. All right, Scott, we have one more story that also this week, I don't know if it surprised me, but just it was a concerning trend, and again, in The New York Times, the... It was about "China's Birthrate Plunges to Lowest Level Since 1949." China's population fell for a fourth straight year, and its birthrate tumbled as policymakers failed to slow a demographic crisis, and that's the word The New York Times uses, by the way. So what they say is that efforts have failed. For four years in a row, China reports more deaths than births in 2025 as it plunged its birthrate to a record low. So here's basic numbers. The government said on Monday that 7.9 million babies were born last year, that'd be 2025, down from 9.54 million in 2024. That's over 1... That's about 1.6 million less babies one year to the next. That is huge. The number of people who died is 11 million, and that climbs. So as the population ages, more and more people numerically are dying, but we have less and less people being born, so more dying than are being born. And they say the problem is acute for China because fewer babies mean fewer future workers to support a rapidly growing cohort of retirees. Apparently, China's top leaders, like many nations in the world, through Europe, through certainly not as much in the US, but we've talked about this, China's leaders have redoubled their efforts to try to boost the natural birthrate to reverse this decline. Some demographers are saying it's impossible, because of certain factors that have already shifted within China. Xi Jinping, China's top leader, has called for a new type of marriage and childbearing culture and trained officials to influence young people's views on love and marriage, fertility, and family. Now, I won't walk through all the efforts, but there's been a lot of economic efforts with taxes and with relief and with payments, and apparently, they've had no or minimal positive effect on shifting the culture for China. They just have... Even offering [chuckles] cash and subsidized housing for couples has failed to move the needle. So China's facing a crisis, which in many ways, they say at the very end, more glaringly, most people don't want to get married. I remember 10, 20 years ago, it was the opposite, right? China is growing too much. We're ha- they're having too many babies, hence the one-child policy going back decades. Turns out, disastrous government tinkering and manipulating of the populace, and now they're starting... It might be that we're kind of at a tipping point, Scott, where we are seeing these numbers emerge in a way that we haven't in the past, which has radical implications for the future moving forward in China.

Scott Rae: Well, Sean, they've created a vicious cycle here, and I think this is why it's, it's gonna be so challenging to get out of this. Because a worsening economy-... Is prompting fewer children-

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Scott Rae: Because, you know, jobs are, jobs are more scarce, housing is more difficult, and the costs of raising children are, seem to be prohibitive for m- for many couples. But the lower birth rate is bringing the economic pressures that you mentioned, because they'll have a shrinking population that will be working and paying taxes to support a growing elderly population. Now, that's, that's the same demographic thing that's going on throughout the Western world, but it's mu- I think it's much-- it's gonna be much worse in China because the elderly population was, [chuckles] they were born largely before those one-child policies were instituted. And so, you know, you described 1949 as that, as that was a banner year, and it wasn't long after that that the one-child policy was instituted, and the concern was about overpopulation, not under. And this is a huge cultural transition to go from decades of concern about overpopulation and very restrictive measures to prevent couples from having more than one child, and we know there are lots of side effects for that. You know, the, ab- the abortion, and the infanticide of female children went rampant during that period. That's one of the unintended consequences of that. But this is a big transition from a decl- to a declining population and and actually encouraging fertility, [lips smack] and because children are seen as financial liabilities. And, and Sean, here's the thing. We've said this before. In economic systems that are dynamic and growing, where China seems to be shrinking at the moment, it still is a very dynamic economy with lots of jobs, but the econ- the number of opportunities seem to be shrinking vis-a-vis its population. But people in those systems that are dynamic and growing, people are seen as productive. They're seen as mainly as producers more than they're seen as consumers. And in economies that are not growing as much, you tend to see people more as net consumers rather than net producers. Now, that's one sentiment in which children are a gift, and that's actually parallel to the way children as a gift was viewed in biblical times. 'Cause it was not entirely financial terms, but it did have some financial overtones. But here, [clears throat] the children are not being seen as intrinsically valuable, not as something people are called to. Children are a gift, Sean, because they're part of someone's legacy, whether they're financial incentives or liabilities. But I say in a place like China, I don't see fertility rates changing apart from a spiritual revival- ... Which will give some sort of philosophical, theological foundation to seeing children as intrinsically valuable gifts in and of themselves, regardless of what they produce or what they consume.

Sean McDowell: [lips smack] That's the heart of it. I think you captured it, and I want, I wanna, I wanna circle back to that. One point I did wanna highlight about this is we've been, we've been told that what happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom. Sex is a private matter. The government shouldn't meddle. We've changed the definition of marriage, at least in our country, for two people who love each other. It's not about having kids and procreation. Well, here's an issue. This is obviously not about same-sex marriage, but governments are profoundly concerned about marriage and children because you have to have a replacement rate [chuckles] for a society to survive and flourish and thrive into the future. This is why marriage always has been and always will be, amongst other reasons, a public institution that the government should support. And sadly, we've seen China, because of their Marxist leadership, try to control it, enforce abortion, and then just, not from a moral wrongness and a spiritual lens, but from a practical lens, reap the consequences of that because God has made marriage an objective feature of society, and when we tinker with it and we manipulate it, there's just going to be consequences downstream. So this reminds me that marriage is a public institution. But at its core, I think you're totally right. It's a worldview issue. It was stunning to me that Xi Jinping said, you know, he's called for a, quote, "new type of marriage and childbearing culture" to influence young people's views on love and marriage, fertility, and family. In other words, what China needs is a Christian sexual ethic on marriage and love and family. That's really what it needs. Christianity would provide what it practically needs. This is a worldview issue. So the solutions they've attempted so far, because they're a Marxist nation, are material solutions. The problem is monetary, because Marxism kind of reduces people down to their economic outputs, and it sees the world through an economic lens. Now, you and I interviewed Tim Carney about creating a family-friendly culture, and economics plays a role in this. I don't want to downplay that. It's important, and if we want a family-friendly society, we gotta think of economic ways to foster this, but that's not the root of it. The root of it, I think, is exactly what you said, and it gets to it towards the end of the article. I mean, it's really sad to me. Here's one of the last lines in the article. It says, "More glaringly, most people don't seem to want to get married."... That's it. It's not a desire. And they say you can really feel the number of people in Beijing who actually want to get married is shrinking. More and more young people just don't want to do it anymore. They've bought a faulty view about the good life, about flourishing, about the value of marriage, the beauty of kids, all the things you and I have talked about. And so I'm sad for the state of China, but also for all these individuals. Young people who don't wanna get married, they're gonna wake up 40, 50, 60, and many of them with deep regret and loneliness, that they didn't just have kids, but a lot of kids and grandkids. Not everybody. We've talked about the biblical role and beauty of singleness, but for most people, that is what makes life rich and meaningful and beautiful, and at its core, it's a worldview issue I think that's at play.

Scott Rae: Just one other comment.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Scott Rae: I wonder if, I wonder if... It'd be interesting to see if the Christian community in China goes countercultural on this-

Sean McDowell: Oh

Scott Rae: ... And actually, and actually h- is where the fertility rate is increasing. And it may be that, the maybe the most profound gospel witness in China might be the Christian community actually having children.

Sean McDowell: That is a great question. If anybody is in the know on that, email us, thinkbiblically@biola.edu, with an article. Not a guess or a story from a friend of a friend, but real substantive data that's trustworthy, send it our way. What an interesting thought, Scott. I love that. All right, well, as always, [chuckles] we've got some good questions, but before doing so, just wanna remind folks, we would love to have you come study with us at Talbot School of Theology. Programs in apologetics, ethics, marriage and family, spiritual formation, Old Testament, New Testament, and more, online and in person. You can go full-time or part-time. We have seen historic growth, Scott, which is exciting. We'd love to have you join what we think God is doing here through Talbot School of Theology. All right, this is a fascinating one that I really wanna get your take on. This says, "There seems to be a general acceptance of teachings and writings by various scholars and authors who show significant deficiencies in character and behavior as Christian. In truth, all of us have deficiencies in character until we're glorified. If the teachings of such compromised public figures are congruent with Scripture, should we allow ourselves to pay credence to those whose failings are revealed only after they have died? If we reject their teaching, that seems to be in conflict with acceptance of MLK's teachings, as we are now seeing more and more snapshot of MLK's un-Christian conduct." Presumably, he's referring to, for example, having an affair, amongst other things that have come to light. "My question is, where do we draw the line? Many things were taught and written by corrupt people, which at the time passed the test of orthodoxy. Do we keep it, or do we get rid of it?" What do you think?

Scott Rae: Well, I'd say it de- it depends on whether their, you know, whether their problematic behavior is actually related to some of the things that they've been publishing.

Scott Rae: So m- I guess my general take on this, Sean, is, I'm uncomfortable judging anyone by their worst moments- ... 'cause I don't want somebody doing that to me. Now, you know, I think, you know, for example, in my field being in ethics, you know, if I, if I've engaged in gross unethical behavior, I would understand why some people would discount my work in this area. Because if my behavior indicates that I don't believe actually the things that I've been writing about, and teaching about, then I think there's good reason to put some of that on the shelf. And so whether... I just wanna be careful. I would prefer not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I think, you know, we can still appreciate somebody's contribution, you know, to apologetics and philosophy even if they're, even if they've had some things, some very problematic things in their life that would seem to undermine their credibility. I think we can still benefit from some of their work. I w- I wouldn't give them a platform while they are living, but after they've passed, I think we can still benefit from some of their writings.

Sean McDowell: That's fair.

Scott Rae: You... I fully admit that you may see this completely differently than I do.

Sean McDowell: I agree with that in general. I would- there's maybe a slight nuance that I would have. I think it... Partly I wanna know, is there any record of the person repenting? And so if no, in some cases, like Ravi Zacharias, as far as I'm aware, up until his death, continued to engage in just egregious moral sin, never repented. I can only speak for myself, but I would never use his resources again. Now, it's also a level of charges of things like just rape. Those kind of charges came up. I mean, we're talking about really serious moral issues. I think he's disqualified, and I would- I just would not use his resources again, in part because there's other people who have written on that.

Scott Rae: True.

Sean McDowell: And if I used his resources, it might invite people to come look it up, and some of the victims who are still out there mistreated by him, I don't wanna use it and give it a pass. So I pray he repented and is in heaven, like I do for everybody else, but I would never use his stuff. I do wonder if this came up-... This question came up because of the story of Philip Yancey this week. That was, or the week before last. That was devastating to me, Scott.

Scott Rae: It was.

Sean McDowell: He is one of the top probably five authors that's influenced me in my life. Maybe I shouldn't say this on air, I don't know, but my dad's sold a lot of books, [chuckles] and when I was in college... I think I was in grad school. He goes, "Is there any Christian author you'd like to talk with? Maybe I can make a connection." And I was like: "Could I talk to Philip Yancey?" He got me on the phone with him for, like, five or 10 minutes-

Scott Rae: Gosh

Sean McDowell: ... And I was completely nerding out because his books-

Scott Rae: [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: ... Disappointment with God, Where Is God When It Hurts?, The Jesus I Never Knew, profoundly influence on me. I don't know the details. He was unfaithful to his wife for eight years. It seems like he's come forward and repented, and he's admitted this. Why, I don't know. He wasn't an apologist like Ravi was. Terrible what he did, but not the level of deception until his death. So it's a little less clear for me on Philip Yancey's than it is on Ravi. And partly I'm saying this is I don't always have it perfectly lined up. If I had a dollar every question we got that said, "Where's the line on this [chuckles] issue?-

Scott Rae: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... I think we'd be rich. And, so that's where there's has to be somewhat of a judgment call. There has to be wisdom. But ultimately, I certainly can't read... I won't read Ravi or use him again. If I did read Philip Yancey, I don't think I could read it the same.

Scott Rae: That's fair.

Sean McDowell: And I hate to say it.

Scott Rae: That's fair.

Sean McDowell: If he was, for eight years, hiding something so significant and egregious from his wife, you know, it's hard to trust the writings that are there, and maybe that's just me, but I don't think I could read it again. But I don't know how to give any line. So I guess, did the person repent? How egregious is the sin? Are two things that would come to my mind.

Scott Rae: Good. I think that's a good take on that.

Sean McDowell: All right, well, let's do one more. As always, we won't get to all of these, and this one probably is gonna open more can of worms than we can answer, but this person wants some help thinking biblically about an aspect of immigration. This person works for the Salvation Army, so they want to serve humanity in the name of Jesus without discrimination. That means we don't require proof of legal residency, for example, stay care, to take care of people with their services. But sometimes this puts us and our people we serve in danger, since ICE could target our centers, knowing there may be illegal immigrants there. It's a large and complex issue, but I appreciate any help you have in thinking this through.

Scott Rae: Wow, we need a whole episode on this one.

Sean McDowell: Okay.

Scott Rae: This, this is a, this is a r- a really tough moral dilemma- ... Because you're-- you've got competing principles here about the, I think, the ob- the obligation to care for the least among us and to care for your neighbor when they have needs, you know, versus the long-term ability of the ministry to be able to continue to do their work. Now, it's not clear to me that, they're doing anything necessarily wrong by not requiring proof of residency to receive their services. But I think if they, you know, if their centers become targets and they could be shut down, [clears throat] I think that's a much... And that's, that's, that's a big hit, to the cau- the cause of the poor and the needy in many of our communities. And so I would, you know, I think if they, you know, if they, if they, if they... They have to weigh that, and- ... I think the weighting is not, that's not always clear how they should do that. But I think in general, I would opt toward caring for people whose needs are great and immediate and for whom you have proximity to in your ability to meet those needs, and to be trusting God with the, with the rest of it, with your long-term viability as a s- as a center.

Sean McDowell: That's helpful. Let me ask you one question, Scott, and if you just want to say, "Let's punt to a full episode, [chuckles] it's too complex," do so. There's precedent in the Bible to lie to governing authorities, such as Rahab protecting the spies or the midwives, lying to Pharaoh when... But, but in both those cases, that's about protecting human life, in a very, Not being kicked out of a country, but literally being killed, seems to be the kind of precedent that's there. Can we apply that and say it'd be okay to lie to the government in this situation, or are we going beyond what's morally permissible there, and this is the complexity of the issue?

Scott Rae: Well, I think it is a genuine moral dilemma, but... And you have to, you have to weight the competing principles here. Because truth-telling, I think there are times when the people who are asking for information are not entitled to it. So if somebody comes, if somebody comes into your home while we're recording, and s- and you've, you've left the room, and asks me, "Where did Sean go?" with a gun in hand-

Sean McDowell: [chuckles]

Scott Rae: ... I'm not, I'm not under obligation to tell that person the truth.

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Scott Rae: And I think some of the, you know, some of those things are, you know, are like that. Corrie ten Boom experienced the same thing when the Nazis, you know, said, you know, [knocks fist] "Are you hiding Jews?" and I think she, I think she did the right thing [clears throat] by deceiving the Nazis and saving innocent life. So I think you have to, you just have to, you have to weigh those competing principles: the obligation to care for those who have desperate needs, you know, versus the obligation to tell the truth. And I don't think that... That weighting is not always clear- ... When you have somebody who has desperate needs. Yeah, it's not quite the same thing that, you know... They're, they're not, they're not gonna be killed, but I think there's a s- there's still a serious obligation there to meet their needs.

Sean McDowell: ... Totally fair, and that's part of living in a fallen world, when we have commandments to speak the truth, commandments to respect our governing authorities, 1 Peter, Romans 13, but also the commandment to care for the least among us. How do we hold that tension? That is definitely a conversation for another day.

Scott Rae: Yeah, and that's-

Sean McDowell: But, uh-

Scott Rae: And by the way, that's not a commentary on the, on the veracity of Scripture either.

Sean McDowell: Right, yeah.

Scott Rae: That's a commentary on the fallen world in which God's commands work themselves out.

Sean McDowell: And Norm Geisler, in his book on ethics years ago, walks through different systems and ways of approaching this that Christians take, which only [chuckles] adds to the complexity here. All right, we will hold that for now.

Scott Rae: Which, which I also do in Moral Choices. [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: There you go.

Scott Rae: [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: Sorry, I missed the chance.

Scott Rae: How did you miss that?

Sean McDowell: That just came to my mind. [chuckles] Oh, man, forgive me for that one. Forgive me, definitely, for that one. All right, good stuff, Scott. Always enjoy it, and, looking forward to next week. This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. As I mentioned earlier, we have programs full-time in theology, Bible, apologetics, spiritual formation, and more. Part-time, full-time, in person, online. Please keep your comments and questions coming. We can't address all of them, but I'm amazed at the questions, [chuckles] and they're helpful to me. You can email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. Please take a moment, give us a rating on your podcast app. I can't emphasize enough how much this just helps us in the analytics. [upbeat music] each one, if you've benefited from this podcast, we're not asking for your money, we're asking for a review. If you'd take three minutes and do that, would be awesome. Thanks for listening. We'll see you Tuesday when we have a fascinating conversation with Anna, who is our Talbot extension in Ukraine, talking about what it means to study theology daily amidst war. A compelling conversation you won't want to miss. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything. [upbeat music]