Weekly Cultural Update: Political Violence Polls; Massachusetts Abortion Law; Gen Z Stress Crises; Flooding in Nepal

Episode Transcript

Sean McDowell: [upbeat music] One in six voters report being okay with the assassination of a healthcare executive on a public sidewalk. Massachusetts governor signs a bill allowing abortion up to the time of birth. 35% of Americans report that 2026 is stressful and are going through some kind of existential crisis. And a massive, devastating flood in Nepal in which hundreds are dead and over 1,000 missing. These are stories we'll discuss, and we'll also address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, and sitting in for the one and only Scott Rae is the one and only Dr. Thaddeus Williams coming back to join us for the Think Biblically weekly cultural update, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Thad, you ready to roll?

Thaddeus Williams: I'm ready, man. Let's dive in.

Sean McDowell: All right, so this first story in some ways surprises me, and also is just shocking in terms of where we are in our culture. And this is an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, and it said, "One in six voters tell pollsters they're okay with assassination. The latest Emerson poll reveals a problem that isn't about politics," this article says. "They're okay with the assassination of a healthcare executive on a public sidewalk." So Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed December 2024 while walking into a Manhattan hotel for a company investors meeting. Five days later, police arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who's on trial now, who this month confessed to the shooting and pleaded guilty on federal stalking charges. This Emerson poll, which was out August last week, asked if Mr. Mangione's actions were acceptable or unacceptable, and roughly 17% of respondents said that they were either completely acceptable or somewhat acceptable. The article says this is not a fluke. It's the same finding as the firm's December 2024 poll. The article says after 20 months of public trial and national news coverage, that number has held steady. Public opinion had every opportunity [chuckles] to self-correct and has not. It means that Americans' tolerance for political violence is becoming hardwired into the public consciousness. Now, the last piece of this article is that then after that, about a year later, September 10th, 2025, was the assassination of Charlie Kirk, shot dead while speaking publicly at Utah Valley University. A Cloud Research poll taken within 24 hours found 12% of American adults called his killing justified. This figure rose to 22% among those under 30. I have a ton of thoughts about this, but Thaddeus, what do you think, man?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah, it's a sign of the times. I think, in the last, really since 2014, is when I noticed a steep uptick in the oppressed versus oppressor narrative capturing the popular imagination, and, you and I have done a lot of work on that. I did a book called Confronting Injustice that deals with this. But when I come to see the whole world where every individual is an exemplar of their identity group and they fall into the oppressed category, in that logic, it's an act of liberation to resort to violence if need be. Violent revolution is It's part of the DNA of that Marxist style of approaching the world. [clicks tongue] And you look at the rhetoric and how it's ramped up since 2014, and you see the equation of [chuckles] making Nazism, fascism, you're literally Hitler. Like, these have all sort of become memes in the last 10 or so years. And just understand the mindset that if speech is violence, which is another component of this ideology, and if Charlie Kirk is saying something that might be violent, even if it's just speech, but if I've justified that premise, then answering violence with violence seems justifiable. And so I would say you can probably map out the direct correlation between 22% justifying something like the assassination of Charlie Kirk. You can map out the correlation between that and people who think he's literally Hitler, the people who think he's a bigot, he's a phobic, he's a hater, he's a Nazi. And so the fascinating thing about this in terms of how our algorithms work is in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, [clicks tongue] I deliberately left my algorithms, and I sourced through some friends on the left their algorithms to find, the most egregious examples of name-calling in Charlie's videos. So I watched over 1,000 videos. I distilled it down to the ones where name-calling was happening. And what I found, not only does he he call somebody a total idiot at one point. In the context, he's talking about a actual Nazi and calls Nazism literal idiocy. In another example, he calls somebody a low IQ individual, and who was he speaking of? He was speaking of a young, Hitler fan, a Hitler enthusiast, according to Charlie, as a low IQ individual. And I go through these examples, and I found one clip, Sean, where three times Charlie calls names in a single sentence And he says, "I'm a sinner. I'm broken. I need grace." That was, that was three names being called all in a single 10-second clip. Which just goes to show, I mean, the divide between perception and a political mindset where anybody who disagrees to my left is automatically a Marxist or a commie. Anybody to my right might as well be the Grand Wizard of the KKK. I think the rhetoric that we've normalized, has a lot to do with this toleration of the violence in the culture. What do ... What's your take on this?

Sean McDowell: That's a great take, and I love your YouTube channel. I don't know if our audience knows The Shed and the Beam. That is, in my estimation, one of the best videos [laughs] that I think you have done.

Thaddeus Williams: Thank you.

Sean McDowell: And you took some of his most vitriolic claims and said, "If we look in context, I'm not convinced he's the racist, bigot, hateful person people have posed that he is." Now, imagine someone disagrees with you and says, "You know what? I think he is, and I interpret those differently." Does that mean that violence is the solution to answer somebody who you think is just morally bankrupt? And that's what this poll is so concerning to me, is that we not only just differ with each other and throw our round words bigot and hateful and tolerant and racist, but now apparently, under 30, 22% of people-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Think it's morally justified to assassinate a father, assassinate a husband, assassinate somebody practicing free speech while he's practicing free speech in front of 3,000 people. And then all of us, myself included, not wanting to, saw that clip on Twitter pop up, and I will never be able to get it out of my mind.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: It's disturbing what happened to him, especially for me. I did a video because my dad, although he didn't speak into political issues, was the guy on college campuses in the '70s and '80s and '90s with tens of thousands [laughs] of people. And even in the radical '60s, he had a couple... He had a handful of threats on his life, but this is a whole nother level. That was considered a radical at that point.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And most people would not justify that. Now it's justified? What causes this? And I think one of the pieces, you're right, is that there's a worldview and a belief system behind this. And I think you're right that, what's often been dubbed as oppressor-oppressed narrative that we've seen pop up is a piece of it, but I also think there's a lot of hurt. There's a lot of anger, and I wonder how many people are genuinely in relationship with people who see the world differently.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: I don't know Mangione, but I wonder if he was with Brian and with his family and knew him personally, if he would've been-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Able on his conscience to justify this. So to me, I think part of what's happened is we're driven apart worldview, but we're also driven apart relationally. So it's easier to justify this kind of behavior than ever, and that's what concerns me. Now, I've got a few quick thoughts on, like, the justification of killing biblically, but any other points you wanna-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Bring in here?

Thaddeus Williams: Just briefly, Tim Keller, you know, who recently passed on to be with Jesus, he had a brilliant analysis of how violence happens that's worth drawing from here, and he's drawing from some of the best historians on this question. And he says it starts with, a kind of hubris that says, "I'm right. I have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so I'm gonna tribalize. I'm not gonna connect meaningfully with people who disagree with me. And now that I've... I'm in my holy huddle with fellow left-wingers or fellow right-wingers, I'm not gonna intermix with people who think differently." Now, within those huddles, it... We slowly begin tolerating calling people dehumanizing language. And so when the Tutsis and Hutus went after each other, or when the Hutus were being hunted down in Rwanda in that genocide, the language, the propaganda was, "Those aren't humans." "Those are inyenzi." Inyenzi was the word for cockroach. ... In the killing fields of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, it was, "Those aren't humans. Those are microbes." Microbes, like a germ that needs to be exterminated. Or if you look at the SS literature behind, the Nazis, it was, "These are, "The Jew," is a quote from the SS literature. "The Jew only looks human. In reality, he is subhuman, a monster, a rat." A rat to be exterminated. You look at, the KKK literature, and Black image-bearers of God weren't fellow humans. They were, sometimes gorillas or monkeys, to be enslaved. And so we need to be very careful because once you begin playing with that kind of dehumanizing language, Keller argues the next step is you can start treating humans like rats to be exterminated. You can start treating people like microbes to be eliminated. You can start treating people like cockroaches, to be stomped on. And so that tends to be the very predictable pattern that violence is justified. And so as Christians, we just gotta cut through all that and be very careful that we don't play... We don't stoop to the same name-calling games that, seem to be played in the broader culture.

Sean McDowell: Amen. That's a great take. A couple just quick biblical thoughts that might help us out here is that the Bible's really clear that the sword belongs in the hands of the state, Romans 13. And this was, you know- Caesar at this point in Rome that was oppressive, and very shortly allowing the kind of persecution that ended the life of Paul, the very person who wrote this. It's not individuals to carry out their grievances. And so, you know, could somebody like a Dietrich Bonhoeffer who goes in to assassinate? Well, these are the exceptions when arguably a state has become so evil, so corrupt, and there's no other way to stop such evil. That's clearly not the case when it comes to [chuckles] healthcare movement in the US, not even close. So I think biblically, this is so far off the mark. All right.

Thaddeus Williams: Well said.

Sean McDowell: Another story, honestly, these first couple stories are really somewhat depressing and discouraging, but they are a sign of the times, and we have to be aware of them. This one is in Fox News, and the title is "Democratic Governor Maura Healey Signs Sweeping Massachusetts Bill Allowing Abortions Up to Birth." Now, Massachusetts now became the 10th state to remove gestational age limits. So under what's called the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, and they're always labeled in a way [chuckles] that seems positive and helpful, healthcare workers will have greater discretion to determine whether to perform an abortion later in pregnancy without facing legal penalties under the state's previous restrictions. The governor said the law is intended to assure families facing medical complications late in pregnancy can abort their babies in Massachusetts rather than traveling to another state. These complications can include fatal diagnoses and maternal health complications. Interesting. She pledged to keep abortion safe, legal, and accessible as long as she remains governor. She talks about, "We believe healthcare decisions should be made between women and families and their doctors, not politicians." And it turns out Massachusetts now joins Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Oregon and Vermont in removing gestational age limits on abortion, along with the District of Columbia. So what that means is even California doesn't have this kind of ruling. [lips smack] they ... Here, here's what they say, and then we enter. "The bottom line for people in Massachusetts, if you care about women's health, care about making sure that women are able to access the healthcare they need in consultation with a doctor should be clear. I stand with women. My opponents do not." What's your take when you saw this? And actually, you're the one who sent me this article.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah, I mean, it's egregious. I, it is a direct line from what we were just talking about with treating an entire class of image-bearers as either cockroaches to be exterminated, microbes, in Yanze, rats, and so forth. Here you have couched in language that sounds so innocuous like we're just ... This is women's health, right? We're talking about women's rights, women's reproductive health, that those kinds of, euphemisms to hide the sheer evil of taking a precious nine-month-old in utero image-bearer of God and now legally justifying its extermination. Sean, I don't know [chuckles] ... I don't use the word lightly, but it just sounds straight-up demonic to me. It is the demonic devaluing of image-bearers of God, and part of the legal trick that's being played here is that language of, maternal health. Let me just sort of debunk that language for a second. So Roe v. Wade, you know, in 1973, thankfully in the recent case that was overturned, but in the wake of, Roe v. Wade, there were cases that now began to legally define health of the mother. And in Doe v. Bolton, a few years on the heels of Roe v. Wade, maternal health was legally defined to include, mental health, and mental health was defined ... If you look at the fine print, right? The devil's usually in the details with this stuff. If you look at the fine print, mental health is defined so broadly in these cases that it could be a woman who's nine months pregnant who says, "I feel like continuing this pregnancy for the next week would just be depressing for me, and I feel anxious about it," and that's all. [chuckles] So it'll ... It would be pitched to the public as in these extreme cases, you know, an ectopic pregnancy or something like that. But in reality, what this legally justifies is for any reason at all. It it is tantamount to abortion on demand at any point up to birth. And this is where we need to speak clearly that what the tactic is what Hitler employed. So I just said, you know, comparing things to Hitler can create a [chuckles] an atmosphere of political violence, and so we don't wanna throw that term around lightly, and so I'm not. I'm not throwing it around lightly. I'm drawing a direct and established parallel between the Nazi concept of Lebensunwerten Leben, lives unworthy of living. That category, that distinction between lives worth living and lives not worth living became the ideological foundation for the extermination of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and dissenting Christians. And so we need Christians to be able to spot the same tactic being employed here to draw a distinction between lives worth living and then an eight, nine-month-old ... Image bearer, precious image bearer of God is now being recategorized as a 11's 11. And so yeah, I think that as a church we need to draw a hard line here and stand up for the voiceless.

Sean McDowell: One of the things that this remind me of is in Romans 10:2, where Paul writes, "For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." Zeal in itself does not make something right. Zeal in itself does not make something good. In fact, Paul's whole point is, if you have zeal for God and it's not rooted in the character and person and work of Jesus Christ, you are lost for eternity.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: This governor has zeal for what she thinks is right, but lacks knowledge about what is true. Now, what is true? Unmistakably what is true is at the moment of conception, that a human being is a distinct from the mother, living ... The embryo is a distinct living human organism, 100% at conception. And what is even more egregious is at nine months, this is weeks past the point where it can live fully and flourish outside of the mother. Now, that's not what makes it human, but that just points out additionally that going down the birth canal makes nothing significant in terms of what the unborn is. Now, what's fascinating is if you ask any OBGYN, when a pregnant mom comes in, how many patients are there? And the answer is very simple. There's two. This article talks about healthcare and speaks about the mother, and you and I believe deeply that mothers of course are made in the image of God, and we must do everything to protect them physically and emotionally and relationally. But there are two full human beings present, and we know this. This is why there's cases when a mother has been killed and her life has been taken, that the person is charged with two counts of murder. Laci Peterson. By the way, I was actually in New York recently, and I walked to the base of the, where the Twin Towers came down.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And there was all the names circling around the base of where it was, and there's a few mentions of a mother and their unborn child-

Thaddeus Williams: Oh, wow

Sean McDowell: ... Who were lost in the Twin Towers. I took pictures of it.

Thaddeus Williams: Wow.

Sean McDowell: And so there might be zeal and passion behind this governor, but she could not be more wrong in a disastrous way-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... That fails to protect quite literally the most vulnerable amongst us.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Other thoughts?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah, so it's interesting. Many, pro-choice apologists out there would draw the line much earlier than birth, and probably the most standard viewpoint out there that I've bumped into is viability, right? Which is once the baby can survive outside the womb, there's a new, consideration for its human status and right to life. And I thought about that for years, and it dawned on me how backwards the logic is. That for starters, viability changes depending on geographically where you are. So if I'm-

Sean McDowell: And technology, by the way. [laughs]

Thaddeus Williams: Big ... Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Technology, right? [laughs]

Thaddeus Williams: 100%. So if I'm in a Los Angeles ... If I'm at UCLA Medical Center, my baby is far more viable given the technology that we're availed of than if we were in the, you know, the rainforests of the Amazon, where they wouldn't have the technology for the baby to survive outside the womb. So it seems kinda arbitrary standard for right to life kicking in depending whether you're in the rainforest or in LA. But on a deeper level, Sean, the problem is the logic of the more self-sufficient you become, the more your right to life kicks in, runs exactly at cross purposes with the Biblical worldview. In a Biblical worldview, the more vulnerable you are, the less self-sustaining you are, the more our duty to love and protect and uplift you kicks in. And so to me that's huge. It's, ... Cardinal Roger Mahony said it famously, and, ethicist Paul Ramsey echoed it years ago, where he said, "The measure, the moral measure of any society is how it treats its least, its most vulnerable." The measure of any society is how it treats its most vulnerable. And I think the measure of Massachusetts right now, justifying and celebrating that some of the most vulnerable image bearers of God can now be legally terminated, I think is just a stunningly demonic, ... Moment where the church can step up and push back hard on this for the sake of the most vulnerable.

Sean McDowell: The article closes by pointing out that the other countries that allow such procedures, the US is one of eight. Australia, Canada, China, Guinea-Bissau, Mexico, South Korea, and Vietnam are the other ones that allow this. So especially in a age where even just, you know, the moral issue and value of the human being aside, when we need more babies, it's not only immoral-

Thaddeus Williams: No

Sean McDowell: ... It's a foolish

Sean McDowell: law to be pushed into place. All right, well, let's shift gears here

Thaddeus Williams: Let me do, let me do 10 more seconds on that real quick just so listeners understand the scope of this problem. According to the World Health Organization last year, 2025, if you combine the causes of death like cancer, heart disease, accidents, diabetes, whatever, and you add them all up, they pale in comparison to the number one cause of death on planet Earth last year, 73 million with an M, victims of abortion. That's one in every three humans that would've been born last year were terminated. In America, those numbers hold, that one third of Gen Z has been wiped out, sacrificed on the altar of choice, and when it comes to Black Americans, since Roe v. Wade, 17 to 20 million Black image-bearers have been terminated by the abortion industry. And so I just wanna leave-

Sean McDowell: And that's in the US alone, in the US alone, 17 to 20

Thaddeus Williams: So globally, 73 million.

Sean McDowell: Right.

Thaddeus Williams: But for Black image-bearers in the US alone, that means for every two Black people you meet, there would've been one more if it weren't for abortion. Hopefully-

Sean McDowell: That would almost double the population if I'm doing the math right, but that aside, a massive percentage-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Of, image-bearers and Black image-bearers as well. Thank you for bringing that in. That's really helpful to grasp the scope of this, and also an encouragement to be in prayer.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: All right, so this one you sent me I thought was really interesting. It was a survey that says 35% of Americans say 2026 is stressful, but most are planning a reset. A third are currently going through an existential crisis, was really fascinating. Older generations were likely to describe their 2020 experience as stressful more so than younger generations. That actually surprised me in here. I would've thought it was the reverse. Respondents said they already experience an average... Like why? And they said two, like, plot twists this year, or unexpected things that threw out their roadmap for 2026 kind of out the window. Gen Z at, on that, on that hand, those like 16 maybe up, would say their reasons for inner turmoil were that their problems that they feel were out of control to solve and career instability. And I actually suspect AI would be a big piece of that as well.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Financial stress is a huge one, especially older generations, and they described an existential predicament 48%.

Thaddeus Williams: Sure.

Sean McDowell: Like, that's stunning. That really was stunning to me. So your take on this, why you sent this, how do we think biblically about this kind of phenomenon we're seeing?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah, so to my mind, what we're seeing is the worldview underneath this. Like, we aren't anxious in a vacuum. We're anxious, we're stressed based on deeply held assumptions about the nature of reality. And so biblically, when we get the frequent command of... It's a couple... It's over 200 times in the text of scripture to fear not.

Thaddeus Williams: It is directly tethered to theology, namely the sovereignty of God. And so there's a sense in which when I recognize who is sovereign, who's in charge, who's on the throne of reality, I can exhale a deep sigh of relief because I know He's got this. Like, I think of, [laughs] my son. If... You know, he's 10 years old now. You got to meet Henry, several times and-

Sean McDowell: Yeah

Thaddeus Williams: ... Play basketball with him and stuff.

Sean McDowell: [laughs]

Thaddeus Williams: And Henry, when he He's too big for it now, but when he was small, I would chuck him up in the air, as so many dads do. You chuck your kid up in the air and you catch him, which is a complete and utter lack of control for the child. They're flailing around in the air. They don't know which way's up, which way's down, but they experience that loss of control as not panic, but as sheer joy. He loved getting chucked in the air. Why? Because he knows his dad loves him and isn't gonna drop him on his noggin, right? He knows that he can experience a lack of control as something joyous because he knows he's in the hands of his father, who's stronger than him. But imagine, Sean, if some rando, some stranger took my son when he was younger and just starts chuck him, chucking him in the air. Then [laughs] the response is very different. It's not euphoria and joy anymore, then it's panic and dread, at least until I punch the stranger in the face and protect my son. And so I would say underneath the stress, the epidemic levels of stress and anxiety, comes down to the question of do we have a worldview in which we trust that we're in the arms of a sovereign and loving Dad with a capital D? And I would say there's probably a multivariate analysis of why these numbers are so high, but when the study said 52% of Gen Z considers themselves to be in an existential meaning crisis, man, that jumped off the page at me because I realize... I've done a lot of work on this. I did a book called Don't Follow Your Heart that was focused on this phenomena, that you have an entire generation that's been raised on the lie- That your heart can tell you no lies, to quote Stevie Wonder in the soundtrack of Disney's Mulan. That you should... There's no right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free, to quote, Elsa from Frozen. The idea that the answers are within, which is what 91% of Americans affirm. The fact that 86% of Americans say, do what you desire most in life. The fact that 84% of Americans affirm that, essentially the chief end of man is to enjoy yourself. Enjoy your life. That's the goal. And so what we're up against, Sean, is what I've called elsewhere the cult of self-worship, which is, I'll keep this short and to the point, but it's the oldest lie in the book. Genesis 3:5, what Satan tempted our first parents with was you can be like God, knowing good and evil. And for all kinds of exegetical reasons, I argue that the temptation there is self-sovereignty. You can be the ultimate meaning makers of your own existence. And what that does, Sean, is it takes the God-sized task of forming our identity, the God-sized task of sustaining our identity meaningfully over time, and it takes it from the Creator's omnipotent shoulders, and it hoists it onto the finite shoulders of little kids who are, you know, singing in unison with Jojo Siwa to follow their heart. And no wonder they buckle under that impossible weight. And so that's my main thought here, is that we are dealing with, we are seeing the outcome of swapping God's sovereignty with the illusion of our own sovereignty. The technical term for that is expressive individualism. I'm gonna follow my own heart, and I think that's not the only piece of the puzzle, but a huge piece of why 52% of Gen Z is in an existential crisis. If [laughs] you have to create your own meaning instead of God, you will land yourself squarely in the bottomless void of an existential crisis.

Sean McDowell: That is such a good take, and I appreciate... I want to point out to our listeners what you're doing, is for each one of these issues, you're saying, "What's the worldview and the cultural moment behind this? Why we're seeing one in six people say assassination is okay, 35% of people are stressed, and about half a kind of existential crisis. What is going on here?" Now, this expressive individualism says to lean into the self, find meaning within, and as this narrative has arisen, we've seen the stress [laughs] and anxiety and mental health get worse. The solution should be not as Christians to say, "Where do I find solutions in the world to this?" But to actually look to the resources of the history of the church for 2,000 years, and particular in the scriptures. We have the resources to deal with stress and anxiety and so many, if not all, of the mental health crises facing us today. So I did find it interesting, at the end of this article, they give, like, three practical steps to deal or to navigate stress, and all three of these have biblical roots. Number one was a calming routine, and I'm like, "Yeah, that's biblical." Prayer, solitude, taking time to give thanksgiving. I mean, when I pause to give thanks to the Lord and write it down, and I pray and I have a moment of solitude, I'm actually not thinking about myself. I'm focusing on God, and some of that stress is alleviated. The second one they said was to curate your media. Well, I thought of 1 Corinthians 15:33 that says, "Bad company corrupts good character." Now, of course, Paul's not citing one of their philosophers talking about the company of media, but it's the same principle. Biblically, what voices am I allowing into my head and into my mind? And I stay on top of media for this podcast, but I'm also very aware of the voices that I listen to are trying to get me to click and view and pay attention by creating drama-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... And creating outrage, and that affects my mental health. And the third one they say is community, and I'm like, "Duh, church." [laughs] Like, "Hello."

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Hebrews 10:24-25 and says, "Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another." And, you know, drawing near to the day that the Lord is coming home is the idea behind it. So I just want to encourage our listeners, I'm guessing if a third are feeling stressed, if a number are experiencing an existential crisis, lean into the faith. Step into prayer. Have experience of solitude. You know, make a list of things that you're thankful for.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Maybe limit some of these voices that are coming in that are just telling us the world is ending and there's so much bad and terrible and vote this way and be angry at this. And go to church.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Get into a small group. [laughs]

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Join community. And the Harvard Flourishing Project actually shows that these are some of the things, amongst others, that bring good mental health.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Now, we've got one other study here that I want to shift us

Thaddeus Williams: Let me throw

Sean McDowell: ... Because this one's a little bit heavy

Thaddeus Williams: [laughs] Sorry, I gotta be that guy. 10 seconds. Check out J.P. Moreland's Finding Quiet. If anybody out there is like-

Sean McDowell: It's a great book

Thaddeus Williams: ... "Yeah, I've done church, I've done prayer, I've done all those things, I'm still anxious. I still feel like I'm in an existential crisis," J.P. Is a dear friend and mentor to Sean and I, and he has battled intense, like, clinical anxiety disorder. And so I just wanna throw that out for anybody who's like, "Man, I've tried all that stuff. It's not working," J.P. Moreland's Finding Quiet Great resource

Sean McDowell: And that is a book that walks through disciplines to apply the Biblical truth to one's life. Good stuff. Great suggestion. Now, this last one is just a devastating story that came through this week. And in part I picked it because both of you have a friend, a former Hindu who is now a Christian, who is a missionary in Nepal. And these... I'm sure people have seen the images now, just this devastating floods that have killed over 300 people, over 1,000 missing. The physical damage and devastation is just, it's horrific. Scientists, according to one article in New York Times, scientists piecing together satellite imagery and seismological data said on Thursday that a high altitude landslide coinciding with a glacial collapse likely caused the deadly flashing flooding, flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet, near the border with China. Now, I could go into more detail here, but just a couple things so people realize. They said the deluge of rock and ice was so powerful that it was equivalent to a 5.2 seismic event. They said the debris flow would've released the same amount of energy as 1,000 tons of TNT-

Thaddeus Williams: Wow

Sean McDowell: ... Which is crazy. And put another way, this landslide was comparable to 1,000 Empire State Buildings crashing down into the river valley-

Thaddeus Williams: Wow

Sean McDowell: ... Simultaneously. Now, every world view has to make sense of this. We could get... I teach a class here at Talbot School of Theology on why does God allow evil, and we talk about what's called natural evil. But when there's something so devastating like this, what are a few ways Christians should approach a phenomena like this, and how should we think Biblically about it?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah, I mean, I think Christians have an incredible, like a sterling track record when it comes to disasters, international disasters. I remember when, Hurricane Katrina hit and the levies broke, down in New Orleans. There's all kinds of, I think, very inspiring statistics out there that, in many ways, Christians step up and, there's even Gallup poll studies that show Christians outpace every other demographic when it comes to crisis response, when it comes to caring for the poor, when it comes to leaving the comfort of your own backyard and traveling to those in need. So in many ways, my advice is keep going. [laughs] Keep doing what we're, we already do.

Sean McDowell: Hm.

Thaddeus Williams: There's, of course, always more that can be done. Sean and I have a very, one of my closest friends going back to a Biola missions trip I was on in the late '90s, and I met this young Dalit. They have a massive untouchable class out in, Nepal, just like you find in India, where the Brahmans... 'Cause again, like Sean was saying, all this stuff is world view at the bottom, at the bedrock level. And so if you have a Hindu world view that's based on karma and you're poor, you deserve your poverty because of all the bad karma in your last life cycle. And so you have the largest social class in India and Nepal being the Dalit class, the Achhut class sometimes they're called, or the untouchables. And I got to see this young man, Suresh Budhapriyah, get regenerated by the Holy Spirit and come to find freedom from the pit of karmic despair-

Sean McDowell: Hm

Thaddeus Williams: ... Through the grace and cross work of Jesus. And so he was able to go on, get his degree, which is like unheard of if you're an untouchable in Nepal. Go on to not just get a bachelor's degree, but he was able to get to Korea, God opened doors for him to go and study theology in Korea, got his master's degree, and just last year went the full distance and got his terminal degree. Got a PhD in theology out here in Los Angeles, and now he's back home, on the streets serving the Dalits, the untouchables, and showing that society's wrong here, the Bible's right. You do have value and worth. And so he reached out to me this morning with a long email and said that, yes, it's been devastating. Entire lives, entire cities have just been essentially wiped off the map. And so I would recommend one good way that you could, help, would be if you go to Bless the Budhapriyahs, Bless the Budhapriyahs. That's a GoFundMe page. And I know that, Suresh is in the southern part, closer to Kathmandu. Most of the damage is in the north of Nepal, by the Tibetan border. But he would be in a great position to be able to... He travels through the country all the time, reaching the quote-unquote, "least of these," the Dalits who need it. So that's one action item people could follow up on. Bless the Budhapriyahs, to support his ministry.

Sean McDowell: I love that. One of the things that went through my mind is worldwide, people are watching this thinking, "I should do something to help. Maybe I should pray. Maybe I should send funds." Nobody looks at this and says, "Well, too bad for you." Whether people help or not, there's a sense of obligation that we should help. And here's the question-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Where did that come from?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah. [laughs]

Sean McDowell: And the answer, according to Bart

Thaddeus Williams: Ehrman

Sean McDowell: ... Is Jesus

Thaddeus Williams: Yes. [laughs]

Sean McDowell: Is Jesus. And he had his book recently, Love Thy Stranger, and I had,

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... My discussion with him. It was somewhat of a friendly debate, but he conceded or admitted or said that- Before the time of Jesus, even in the Old Testament, you would help your in-group, but it is radical to say we have a moral obligation to care for our out-group.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: So if you even saw this story and thought, "Oh, that's terrible and that's awful," and we see that daily because of the news. We can't help all of them. But if you saw that and felt that way, that's because of the belief that we're made in the image of God.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And we have a duty and an obligation to love our neighbor, including people like Samaritans who are outside of our own group. And like you said-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Christians have modeled this.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Now, why God allows something like this, I mean, this is such a devastating thing. One I would... Thing I would hint from, and you pointed about this, I'm so glad you said this, is that there's a certain worldview embedded, Hinduism-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Tied to karma. And during the time of Jesus, even though it wasn't a reincarnation karmic belief, people assumed that if you were born with some malady or experienced some devastation-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... It must be your parents or you that sinned that brought this on. This is the blind man in John 9. Did he sin or did his parents sin?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And Jesus is like, "Neither." [laughs]

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And I think of this tendency, even the paralytic, your sins are forgiven. Everybody assumed he was paralyzed because of some kind of sin.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Now, sometimes physical suffering we have can be brought on by sin. I mean, God clearly in Acts chapter 12 [laughs] judges Herod with a brutal death that Josephus records also, by the way, which

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... A kind of natural death being eaten by worms. But there's also an indication where sometimes people suffer, and it has nothing to do with any way that they have sinned. And so we have to resist looking at going, "Well, they must be super wicked there. They must be evil there. God is judging Hinduism." I would say it's very clear what God thinks about [laughs] Hinduism, because the Scriptures are clear that there's one God and there's one way to get to God through the man Christ Jesus, 1 Timothy 2:5.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: But we don't know people's hearts. We don't know this. So our job is not to judge. And I found when we do this, we often notice the sin out there and judge it, but kind of ignore the sin in our own life and think-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... We get a pass, which is clearly against what Romans [laughs] says at the end of chapter 1, that pretty much everybody has sinned, and death is the penalty of sin. And let me qualify, pretty much, I don't even mean that pretty much. I mean-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah. [laughs]

Sean McDowell: ... All have sinned.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: So our job is to show compassion and care. Our job, this note, I think, I think Suresh sent me the same, [laughs] same note 'cause he typed it out, spent time, sent it out to his supporters over and over and over again. He said, "Pray." One last thing I want to say about this is I was pulling up a book. You mentioned J.P. Moreland earlier. He wrote a book with William Lane Craig called Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview. And the chapter on evil, it's real interesting. They said, "It may well be the case that natural and moral evils are part of the means God uses to draw people into his kingdom."

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Now, this isn't saying God causes it, but he uses it. They said, "It's precisely in countries that have endured severe hardship that evangelical Christianity is growing at its greatest rates." He walks through China, Ethiopia, El Salvador, points towards the early church. So I'm not saying God did it for this.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: But I do wonder if there's a kind of common grace that just reminds us not to put our hope in the things of this world-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... Financially, physically, 'cause this can happen instantly, and to put our hope in Christ as well.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Anything else on this you want to add in?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah, it just reminds me of, the Christian sociologist Rodney Stark in his book Rise of Christianity, and he's trying to answer the question: Why did Christianity spread like wildfire through the Roman Empire? And his conclusion, essentially, to distill it down to a word, is love. Christians just flat out loved, folks in the Roman Empire. And so you find another example of a natural evil, that breaks out in the second century with the plague. And so whether we're talking about a tsunami, a hurricane, a typhoon, a plague, like, when natural evil hits, where are the Christians? And what Stark shows was, that in the second century, as society was running for the hills away from the sick and the plagued, those affected by the natural evil, it was our brothers and sisters, Sean, in the first and second, in the second century, running to the bedsides of the dying to treat them as the image-bearers of God that they are, to give them a warm meal, to help bandage their wounds, to treat them with basic dignities. And, Stark's point is that that kind of radical love is one of the main factors. Obviously, the Holy Spirit is the instrumental or efficient cause of all the church's growth. But the formal cause, the shape that takes, is Christians loving people in the midst of natural disaster. So on one level, if we're thinking about it not theologically, we shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh, what a bummer." If we're thinking about it theologically, we say, "What an opportunity for the church to step up and be the church." Because I'll say this, the Nepali culture, based on karma and reincarnation, does not have a built-in category for charity. I saw when I landed in Kathmandu years ago, all the beggars flocked to the airport. And I asked the pastor who was leading the trip, "Why?" And he said, " 'Cause Westerners fly in who've been impacted," like Bart Ehrman has argued, and Tom Holland, and others, they've been impacted by a Christian concept of grace and charity that is not homegrown here in Nepal. So once you get out of the airport, you don't see beggars, because their native culture and the worldview that sprouts out of Hinduism, you get what you deserve, so I'm not gonna interfere with you serving your karmic sentence. So as we grapple with a terrible headline like this, let's take it extra seriously knowing that, Christianity brings resources, the worldview resources, to actually help those who are pretty devastated right now.

Sean McDowell: If you're moved by this story again, give us, give us the site that people can find. Is it Bless the Buddha Prithis?

Thaddeus Williams: Yes. Bless the Buddha Prithis. It's a GoFundMe page. If you just Google search Bless the Buddha Prithis, that's B-U-D-H-A P-R-I-T-H-I, Buddha Prithi, or if you spell it something close to that, I'm sure Google will find it for you, and you can see Suresh Buddha Prithi, who's on the front lines down there in Nepal.

Sean McDowell: And that is a missionary we both support.

Thaddeus Williams: Yes.

Sean McDowell: And if somebody wants to make sure, they can email you through Biola, or just email us here-

Thaddeus Williams: Sure

Sean McDowell: ... And, we'll forward it to Thad and make sure you get the right link. If you wanna support him, and you've been moved by this story and make a difference for the gospel, that would be excellent. Well, we've got some about as thoughtful questions as we've ever received, Thad, to be honest with you. I mean, we get good questions here. But first, I just wanna remind our viewers before we get to Q&A, we would love to have you come study with us at Talbot School of Theology. We are on campus here in LA. We have a new campus opening this fall in Phoenix. You can also study fully online theology, Old Testament, Bible, spiritual formation, marriage and family, apologetics. We're becoming one of the fastest growing and largest non-denominational seminaries in the world. It's an exciting time to be here. We would love to train you theologically and biblically. All right, we got three questions. This one says, "In response to the AI twin story," and by the way, this is a story that Scott and I talked about last week, how a mega church pastor created chatbots in which he loaded his texts, and his sermons, and his notes, and images of himself to counsel parishioners, if that's the right term, people who go [chuckles] to the church, when he couldn't do it himself. [smacks lips] and she said, "They thought we made great points," I think this was Scott who made this point, "that rather than training chatbots, we should be training ministers to, in the flock to minister face to face." The person says, "Doesn't this AI twin seem a bit narcissistic?"

Thaddeus Williams: [chuckles]

Sean McDowell: Now, let me say a couple things. I... There's something in me that just hesitates to attribute motivations to somebody, in part because I have a somewhat public life and people attribute motivations to me all the time, and honestly, over 90% of the time they get it wrong.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: So I would say to be a mega church pastor, you've gotta be a kind of entrepreneur that delegates, and builds, and takes risks, and has plans that facilitate. So in some ways, this is a reflection of being a mega church pastor. Minimally, I would say it has huge, potential for narcissism, and I just hope that there's a board over this pastor or any pastor who does this, holding him strictly accountable, making sure that that move is the best for the church, not just jumping on technology because it's available and easier. Any thoughts on this one?

Thaddeus Williams: Not much, beyond what you said, other than to say, I think Scott Rae nailed it, that how about we pour all the energy into, stepping into the New Testament vision of church, and training pastors, and training elders, and training people to do what God has called people to do. Like, God's plan A of redemption for a fallen world is to make disciples of all nations through the church and through local churches, and the minute we begin outsourcing that to a predictive algorithm, I think we're in trouble.

Sean McDowell: All right, second question, says, "What should we do when free markets fail to meet human needs? Do we really have to choose between free markets and socialism, or can we acknowledge that maybe sometimes government can and should be used to solve large scale problems that the free market won't touch? Is it possible we need both government and the church to solve these needs?" Well, since the question said possible, I'm happy to concede that it's possible. I just wanna see the goods. I share that I was recently in New York walking with a friend who's like, "Hey, we wanna try these government-run grocery stores because nothing else is working to feed some of the people that need this." And I said, "In principle, if you could show me that government-run grocery stores work better than the free market, and we've exhausted all other solutions, fine." I'm all about efficiency and helping the most people. The problem is that there's no evidence I'm aware of that socialism as a whole works, let alone that it works for things like grocery stores. So in principle, I'm okay with it. I mean, Scott pointed out last week that every economy in the US, there's certain things that the government runs. It might be the post office, it might be Medicare. And in the US, it tends to be less than in other countries. So it's always going to be some mix. So in principle, I'm okay with a mix, but I just wanna know what actually works.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: And I don't tend to think that the problems in healthcare is not enough socialism. I actually think it's too much bureaucracy, too much top-down control, and less free market competition. That's my take, but what's your quick take on this one?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah, I think, Ron Nash, I have a book here on my shelf by, the brilliant... He just passed on to be with Jesus a couple years ago.

Sean McDowell: Mm-hmm.

Thaddeus Williams: But Ron Nash wrote a brilliant book called, Social Justice in the Christian Church, and he goes through, and it's one of the most detailed analyses of socialist theory and communism to Marxism, and some of the distinctions between those. It's so helpful. And how free markets actually elevate people out of poverty. And in there, he makes an important distinction that sometimes, there's room for government intervention in the case of something like we were literally just talking about, a national disaster that wipes an entire city off the map in 2.5 seconds. He would allow room for, in emergency circumstances, government getting involved. But when it comes to ongoing, social systems that are supposed to elevate the plight of the poor, I'm with you, Sean. Show me the evidence. Where is... Essentially now we turn, the, everything into the DMV, [chuckles] where the DMV, it's not super efficient. Nobody's getting actual love. It's very rare that people feel humanized at a DMV. My 15-year-old turns 16 in a week, and so we're gonna have to go down and stand in line for four hours for, to take your driver's test. The history, there's a mile-long track record of free markets and private enterprise, and the church stepping up and being the church to help people when things go south, that far outweighs any government program I'm aware of. You can go through Social Security, you could go through, the welfare state. You can go through all these examples, and our efforts to help with the power of government, I haven't seen a counterexample to them doing anything but hurting on a massive scale.

Sean McDowell: Good stuff. All right. Last question says, "Thanks for your podcast. I'm a huge fan." We always like hearing that. "You've helped me think differently about a lot of things going on in the world today. How would I respond to non-believers about why it's wrong to end your life without facing a terminal and painful diagnosis? Why would choosing to kill yourself when death is imminent be wrong, but capital punishment is condoned by most Christians?" so I would say a couple things. There's a difference between choosing to end your own life, and then capital punishment, which is not only biblical, Genesis 9:6, at least in principle, and then, you know, ending somebody's life who's taken another human life as a matter of justice. Those are not the same things. Now, to a non-believer, I'd probably point to two things. I'd ask, I'd say, "Do we have a right to end our own lives?" It's called assisted suicide. Well, we stop somebody when they're about to commit suicide because we don't think we have a right to that. In fact, it's the good thing to do, even if that person wants to take their own life. So I'd appeal to these intuitions and right and wrong sense that we have through natural law, not chapter and verse. But I would also point towards, I'd say, "You know, when you open up the door for people to end their own life for physical reasons," then like we talked with abortion, then eventually it becomes for emotional or mental reasons.

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: If it starts with voluntary, it often becomes involuntary. If it starts with adults, it often becomes children. And this is not a slippery slope argument. We have seen this practically happen-

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah

Sean McDowell: ... And it follows from the logic that we have a right to end our own lives. So much more can be said, but those are the two directions I would go with a non-believer. Anything quick you wanna throw in there?

Thaddeus Williams: Yeah, real quickly, I'd say we have the case study of the Dutch. The Dutch legalized, what used to be called physician-assisted suicide, and the proponents of that position, did a PR campaign to rebrand themselves as Death with Dignity, 'cause they figured having suicidal, suicide in your title maybe wasn't the best look. And what they found in the Dutch experiment was just that what we would think of as a slippery slope actually happened very quickly, where it quickly moved from I'm opting in to ending my own life to doctors unilaterally deciding, to opt people out of life [chuckles] to the point where over half of Dutch doctors in an anonymous survey were found to had taken their patient's life without any kind of family notification. One of my best friends who, out in the Netherlands, runs one of the L'Abri ministries out there, and he went to visit grandpa one day, and grandpa had been euthanized. And so we need to, with all these headlines like Massachusetts and the abortion bill, we need to push behind the headline to see what's the worldview and where is the dehumanation- dehumanization of God's image-bearers taking place. And final thought, if anybody... If I'm talking to a non-Christian who wants to end their life, I used to do suicide counseling for several years.

Sean McDowell: Oh, wow

Thaddeus Williams: ... I would, I would point them to Jesus and say, "How dare you? You don't have the right to take away something that is infinitely beloved by its creator. You have value that transcends whatever pain you're in, whatever diagnosis you have. You're infinitely beloved by your creator in Christ."

Sean McDowell: Amen.

Thaddeus Williams: I would share the gospel.

Sean McDowell: That is a great word to end on. That is, this is fun. Good stories this week. [chuckles] Tough questions. Scott is at his son's wedding, but he will be back next week, and when we have an opening, we will certainly have you back as a guest. Well, friends, 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 online and in person, theology, Bible, apologetics, spiritual formation, philosophy. Would love to have you join us. To submit comments or ask questions, please email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. We'd be honored and be appreciative [chuckles] if you'd take a moment and give us a rating on your podcast app. It helps more than I can express, and we'll see you Tuesday when we release part two of my conversation with Joel Mudamali on the book of 1 Enoch. Now, that is such a big piece of conversation in our culture today. And then I wanna write, our episode last Tuesday was on kind of Heizer and angels and demons. You can send questions in on that episode and the Tuesday one, and I'm actually going live with Joel for our Talbot Tuesday. This will be over on my YouTube channel to take your questions tied to 1 Enoch and also angels and demons. So if you enjoy those and have questions and wanna engage myself and Joel live, it'll be Tuesday at 4:30 Pacific Standard Time. Would love to see you there. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything. [outro music]