Cultural Update: Parental stress; Does Christian persecution exist in the US?; Selective moral outrage

This week, Sean & Scott discuss:

• The U.S. Surgeon General addresses the overwhelming stress faced by parents and the need for community and governmental support.
• The debate over whether Christian persecution exists in the U.S., comparing American religious freedoms with global persecution.
• A discussion on selective moral outrage, highlighting underreported global injustices.
• Examination of recent immigration policies and their implications for families and merit-based systems.
• Listener questions on moral outrage, mixed-faith marriages, and the implications of socialism from personal experiences.

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Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture is a podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, which offers degrees both online and on campus in Southern California.

Find all episodes of Think Biblically at: https://www.biola.edu/think-biblically.
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Transcript

Scott: The Surgeon General says parents today are at their wit’s end and need help. Complaints about Christian persecution in the U.S. are greatly exaggerated. A plea to become less selective about our moral outrage. And some new thoughts on immigration, keeping families together in a system based on merit. These are some stories that we'll cover today, and we'll take some of your questions that you've sent in as well. I'm your host, Scott Rae. 

Sean: And I'm your co-host, Sean McDowell. 

Scott: This is the Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update brought to you from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Sean, we've got some great questions this week, and some really good stories here. The first one is one that you sent to me from the Surgeon General of the United States. Parents are at the end of their rope in raising kids with today's challenges, and they need help from government, from their communities, from their workplaces. Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, has issued a Surgeon General Advisory calling attention to the stresses and mental health challenges of parenting and what government and communities can do to address them. He cites a recent study from the American Psychological Association that revealed that 48% of parents say that most days their stress is completely overwhelming. They're navigating the traditional hardships of parenting, worrying about money and safety, struggling to get enough sleep, as well as new stressors like omnipresent screens, mental health crises, and a widespread fear about the future. And compared with a couple of decades ago, mothers and fathers spend more time at work, more time caring for their kids, leaving them less time for rest, leisure, and other important relationships. A phenomena that is only magnified, maybe exponentially magnified, for single parents. Murthy appeals to government, workplaces, and communities together to be the solution. Things like safe and affordable childcare, afterschool programs, child tax credits, flexible workplaces, and community help. He appeals to neighbors when parents are struggling—especially new parents with young children—and encourages people to feel the freedom to ask for help when they need it. Now, Sean, you and I are in two quite different places on this. I'm an empty nester, and you have quite a bit of what I would call intense parenting still to go. I realize you never really stop being a parent, but the parenting that I'm doing with my kids is really different than the parenting that you're doing with your kids. What's your take on this advisory from the Surgeon General about parents needing help? 

Sean: Well, as soon as we're done recording this, I'm going to move my son into Biola dorms. 

Scott: [laughs]

Sean: My daughter's a senior and my son just turned 12, so I'm kind of in the thick of it. And I feel a lot of what's in this article. The fact that it gets to the attention of the Surgeon General—the level of pressure and mental health—is significant, that he feels that government has to weigh in and address this. Now, a couple of things in the article that jump out. He's right that single parents most of all report feeling lonelier than other adults. Now, I want to just buttress this and remind people that yes, people feel lonelier, maybe in the midst of it. But overall in life, the data is clear by Bradley Wilcox that getting married and having kids doesn't make people feel lonelier overall, but makes them feel more satisfied and meaningful than those who don't. So, if you're in the midst of it, it's easy to get lost in the moment that's stressful, and running kids and not getting sleep, but overall, don't miss that God has made us to multiply and fill the earth. And parenting is a good that, in the long run of life, brings far more happiness than, let's just say, loneliness and pain as a whole. Now, a couple of biblical things that jumped out to me on this. He says, "All of this is compounded by an intensifying culture of comparison, often amplified online, that promotes unrealistic expectations of what parents must do." He's right. There's so much comparison about, can my kid get into a better school? Is my kid better at athletics? There's this constant comparison game, and it's easy to fall into this as parents. Well, envy is one of the big sins that the Bible talks about. And our culture is fostering this kind of envy of somebody else who has more and is better, and reliving our lives through our kids. That's something I just, at the root of this, wanna push back and encourage parents to not fall into that trap and be envious of others, as hard as that is. My wife and I got a condo years ago, and we were able to buy a house in Southern Orange County. And we wanted to buy the nicest one we could so our friends' kids could come over and spend time at our house. And we were fortunate to get a nice place, it was foreclosed. Well, the moment my kid got in school, we found all these other families who have, let's just say, a lot more funds than we do. And I realized, this is a losing game for me. And rather than being envious, I just have to choose to be grateful for what we have. That's a biblical principle in this. Two other things jump out to me, Scott. The Surgeon General says, "It begins with fundamentally shifting how we value parenting." I don't think that's the root of it. I don't think the root of it is how we value parenting. I think the root of it is a lack of a value for children beginning in the womb itself. I think we've turned children into commodities, and now we can genetically screen and eliminate kids before they're born if they have conditions that we don't deem desirable. You and I talked last week about genetic modification that is becoming a reality now, the certain kinds of kids that we want. I think abortion fosters this. So yes, we gotta value parenting, but I think it's deeper. If we valued every child as being made in the image of God, and we're committed to their objective best, so much of this concern would fade away. Now, the last point I have on this is, it's interesting…in this whole article, he talks about what the government can do. And I agree, child tax credits is one valuable thing the government can do. But then he says, "We also need individuals, playgrounds, libraries, and community centers." In this article about all hands on deck for kids, there's not a single mention of the church. Not once did the church come up, which is somewhat symbolic about how secular, maybe, we've become, but it's also an offer and reminder for the church. He says here, "Family members, friends, people who are present and who care, and who are part of your life and become involved, is what relieves this stress." And I'm reading this going, this is exactly what the church is supposed to be. So it's a reminder to get involved in people's lives. 

Scott: Hear, hear. I mean, that's a good word and that was, I think, conspicuous by its absence. He sort of mentioned everything but the church as being significant to that. And I mean, I still think today that churches, synagogues, religious organizations…they are part of those mediating structures between the state and the family that are so crucial to a flourishing culture. And I think he's right to point out that raising kids well is central to our future as a society. And I think that's part of what the Scripture means when it describes children as a gift. They're a gift to parents. They are a gift to the future. They're a gift to our legacy. And in biblical times, of course, they were a gift financially as well to the family. And for those of you among our listeners that are saying to yourself, "Yeah, when's that gonna kick in at my house?" Probably not anytime soon. 

Sean: [laughs]

Scott: But, Sean, I'm in a totally different phase of life than you are. I remember moving my kids into college. And so, I don't envy the task that's ahead of you for the rest of the day here. 

Sean: [laugh]

Scott: But I remember we had three kids under the age of five. And granted, it was 30 years ago, which I think might put some of our listeners to say, well, he's got nothing to say on this. But I remember feeling it was almost five years before I got a full night's sleep. 

Sean: Oh, gosh. 

Scott: Because our first child did not sleep through the night for almost a year. The second one took 15 months before he slept through the night. And the third one, we could no longer play man-to-man defense. We had to go to his own. And I remember coming to class, co-teaching with a single guy at the time, just looking like warmed-over death in the morning. And sort of chronically not nearly as prepared as I would like to be. And I remember he would tell me, after he was married and he had kids, he said, in retrospect, I’d cut you a lot of slack now that I got my own kids and am dealing with all the same things you did. I just didn't appreciate it when I didn't have kids myself. So I think those stresses are real. And I think they just…I'm not sure they get any better. They just get different when our kids go to school, when they go off to college. You never stop being a parent, but the intensity of it does change over time. So, other thoughts on this? 

Sean: Here's just one practical idea. This came from my dad. He highlights—he meaning Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General—that single parents report feeling lonelier than other adults. Heard my dad say one time that a great ministry churches could do is have grandparents offer to babysit specifically for single parents. Now, if you're a single parent, you are doing it all yourself. I don't know how you do it. But if you could have a mom and a dad come in together and model that, and babysit kids to give that single person space to go out and build those relationships, that's just an example, I think a brilliant one, of something churches could do to give grandparents meaning and ministry and deal with the loneliness. These are the kind of creative efforts I'd love to see churches really lean in on. 

Scott: Hear, hear. That's a good practical word for those of our listeners who are in church leadership, or pastors, things like that. Those are some things I think the churches could readily do, and do well. All right, story number two. Again from the New York Times, this time from the editorial page, about complaints of Christian persecution in the United States. Our author here says, eh, not so fast. In fact, as he puts it, whether there is Christian persecution in the U.S., “The short answer is no, not by any meaningful historical definition of persecution. American Christians enjoy an immense amount of liberty and power.” However, our author maintains that we might be missing the bigger picture on this. “American history tells the story of two competing factions that possess very different visions of the role of Christian faith in American public life.” And both of them, as he puts it, “both of them torment each other,” and both of them have made “constitutional mistakes” that have triggered deep cultural conflict that we're living with the fallout of. He says, "First for most of American history, the courts underenforced the establishment clause of the First Amendment,” which prohibited the establishment of religion, which was designed to say no state church like they had in Europe. "It wasn't even held clearly applicable to the states until 1947, and Americans lived under [what some people would call] a soft dominance of American Protestantism.” It was sort of part of the air that we breathe culturally. “A series of cases limited the power of the state to express a religious point of view. But then state and local governments overcorrected. They overenforced the establishment clause and violated the free speech and free exercise of religion by taking aim at private religious expression. The desire to disentangle church and state,” as this author puts it, “led to” what he calls “a search and destroy approach to religious expression in public institutions. Public schools and colleges denied religious organizations equal access to public facilities. States and public colleges denied religious institutions equal access to public funds.” And, “the Supreme Court has spent most of the last two decades correcting the overcorrection that began in the 1960s and 1970s.” In fact, the author points out, "Religious liberties proponents have not lost a significant Supreme Court case in the last 14 years." But, as he puts it, "We're left with an uneasy and unsustainable situation where both sides want to dominate the other, not to accommodate the other. Conservative Christians,” as he puts it, “long for a Protestant Catholic worldview that was part of the air we breathe until roughly the late 1960s. There are secular Americans who do take aim at Christian expression and at Christian institutions. They don't want a separation of church and state so much as they seek a regulation of the church by the state, to push the church into conformity with a secular political ideology.” So Sean, my wife works for a nonprofit, Global Christian Relief, that serves the persecuted church around the world. I showed her this article, and she said, basically, amen to this, because she compares what Christians deal with in the United States to what Christian believers experience in the Middle East, in North Korea, in China, other parts of the world where persecution is, I'd say, exponentially greater than anything that's experienced here in the United States. So Sean, the framing of this, I found very helpful, but I'm curious, what's your take on this? 

Sean: As a whole, I've been very reticent to use the term persecution for challenges that Christians have faced legally in our country, for the reason you mentioned. I think it does a disservice to our friends in North Korea, and Nigeria, and the Middle East and so on. But that doesn't mean that the temperature isn't being turned up, and that religious liberty is not genuinely being challenged. I think that's a fact that is taking place. So we can walk and chew gum at the same time in terms of saying, let's not use the term persecution. I mean, most people around the world, if they wanna go somewhere for liberty and freedom, the U.S. is probably still gonna be at the top of their list. And we do have liberties here that many churches do not have worldwide. So I think we need to keep that in balance. So I agree in general with that. There's a couple of things I might push back on in this article. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he's just representing what a certain narrative is or if he holds this view himself. But there's a line that says, "If conservative Christians are angry at progressive Americans for believing they are hateful hypocrites, then they only have themselves to blame." I read that and I thought, okay, wait a minute. Now we're going way too far and saying the onus rests entirely on us for being hateful hypocrites. I think there's a radical worldview shift in particular that was documented in the Obergefell decision about the LGBTQ identity being worked into the law as an objective ontological people group, for lack of another term. And so, I think what's happening is, in part, there's a worldview shift that says, if you don't recognize the rights that this group wants, as they see it, based on their identity, you are bigoted and hateful by definition. That's where I would take issue, and I wish he drew that out in this article. So yes, conservative Christians at times have been hypocrites. At times we haven't been loving. At times we have, maybe, tried to use the law to coerce others, but that's not the whole story. I wish he drew out more of that in this article. So that's one of my, I guess you could say complaints. Now, he does kind of say…he gives an example of how conservatives often feel like the law is against them and limiting their rights, whether it's Catholic foster care agencies being denied city contracts, discrimination during COVID, houses of worship, universities discriminating against Christian student groups. And then he offers the other side about the impulse behind the 10 Commandment Law in Louisiana, efforts to create a charter Catholic school in Oklahoma, and then he talks about a kind of book banning, so to speak. I don't think those are equal. I don't see it that way, let alone the way he argues in this article that Christians are doing far more damage than the reverse. I mean, Jack Phillips has just been hammered with case after case after case in Colorado. And this isn't keeping a book out of school. 

Scott: He's still being hammered. 

Sean: He is still being hammered. And that's where I think I wanna say timeout, that's left out of this narrative that's here. So, he says at the very end, he actually makes the case about the religious liberty point, and the 2022 Supreme case about a praying high school football coach who was seeking the right to pray in the field, and he won. And he says, "Employees in the coach’s school district endured their own ordeal." He said, "I was struck by the opening sentence of an essay I read by a former teacher in the district. That was another death threat our high school secretary said to me after hanging up the phone." Now, sadly, Christians do that sometimes, and I hate that. Now, I don't know if this person called was a Christian or conservative, presumably so. When you and I talked about those satanic clubs years ago, local here in Southern Orange County, some of the people on the board mentioned to me that they got a lot of, just, angry calls. So, we don't always act the way we should as Christians, and I mourn that, and we need to do better. But Jack Phillips told me when I interviewed him the number of personal death threats that people said. In 10 minutes, I'm coming over to kill you and your family for not baking the cake. So, minimally, it's equal. I don't buy his narrative that Christians are doing far more damage than the converse. I'm not there. Minimally, it's equal. But I guess the last thing I would say, Scott, is I think in some ways, when I see an article like this, I say, "Why is the New York Times posting this?" It's from somebody who used to be a conservative, evangelical Christian—maybe he still identifies as evangelical, I don't know—who's saying, I left this tribe because this tribe is bigoted and has a false narrative. And if you're enlightened like me, you'll come over to this perspective. And so, it fits perfectly what I think the New York Times wants to communicate about conservative evangelicals. That's how I see it. Am I a little too jaded on this one?

Scott: I'm not so sure. I don't think the playing field is level. I think conservative Christians have done some things that cross the line. But I think the left has been after religious expression in general for some time, wanting to push it into conformity with the prevailing secular ideologies, wanting to privatize faith. I mean, I remember during the Obama administration there was an effort to basically define religious expression in terms of worship. And you could do…you had religious freedom within the context of church worship and privatized faith. But once it got to a public expression of it, then that automatically violated the Establishment Clause. And I think that's reaching way too far, because denying someone the public expression of their faith is, I think, a violation of their First Amendment right of the free expression of religion. Now, that's not to say that it has to be state-sanctioned. Obviously, that's not the case. But the founding fathers I think were very clear about the general value of religion, even though they were clear that sectarian churches and the state ought to be separate. But the founding fathers' emphasis was more on the church being independent of the state, not vice versa, because they did not want, and I think rightly so, did not want the state to be the arbiter of religious belief. And they were actually pretty good students of history, because they had seen for the last several hundred years in Europe the havoc that had wreaked across Europe with the wars of religion that had been so much a part of the landscape for so long there. I think I probably wouldn't use the term persecution. I think in some cases…I think Jack Phillips has definitely been persecuted. 

Sean: Agree. 

Scott: And Baronelle Stutzman, the florist in Washington, she was clearly persecuted. Because they've lost a lot of their livelihood as a result of this. But for the most part, I think persecution is not the right term. I would say prejudice. I would say that's accurate. And in some circles, that prejudice is much stronger than others. I think our secular universities, in the secular academy, those who oppose the prevailing LGBTQ agenda, those people don't have much of a prospect, you know, for advancement or even to get or maintain jobs in most secular academies. It's rigidly enforced there. So I would say what Christians are more subject to here is, in some cases, in some arenas, a prejudice that is pretty high and more so than others. In fact, I've felt this, you know, living here in California, since the Obergefell decision particularly, I’ve felt more like I'm in exile in my own state and in my own community. And I think that sort of low-level sense of being in exile is something that is not that unusual in the history of Christianity. In the history of the church, most periods of church history, believers have felt like they were part of the out-group. And I think that is more the way I'd describe it today. Whereas for a lot of American history, the conservative Protestants were the in-group, and their theology, their agenda, was part of the air that was breathed in the culture at large. But I think now, particularly in some states on the coast, it's more like being in the out-group where there is, I think, low-level prejudice. And in some cases, I would consider fairly moderate to high-level persecution. Nothing like we see in China and North Korea or in the Muslim world. But I think it's something that is real, and it's something that is on the rise. But I am like you, I typically don't use the term persecution to describe what most people, I think, are referring to as anti-religious bigotry and anti-religious prejudice. Is that fair? 

Sean: Yeah, I think so. I think it sounds like you and I see this pretty similarly. There's so much more in this article I wanna talk about. One point that's interesting is it says, “Other conservatives want to reverse the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges to bring legal recognition of same-sex marriages to an end.” Now, that's viewed as being, if I'm reading this correctly, a negative, and an example of kind of persecuting or silencing, so to speak, the other side. Now, I understand why somebody who thinks same-sex marriage is actually marriage would feel that way. If I'm in that progressive leftist community, I'm going to view Christians as persecuting their rights. Like, I understand why they would think it that way. But I read Obergefell very carefully, and it is incredibly poorly reasoned. And that's why Roberts just had a blistering rebuttal, saying, who are we to redefine marriage? And basically, it was redefined as two people who just love each other. And no philosophical case was made for why a same-sex union is objectively a marriage. So it's perceived by the other side as being bigoted. I understand that. But I want to put hold, just like Roe v. Wade was incredibly poorly argued and should be overturned as it was just on its merits, I think the same for Obergefell. That doesn't make me hateful, that doesn't make me bigoted. That just makes me say, they actually did not make the case that marriage can be a non-gendered or non-sexed union. Some of those distinctions are lost here. And I realize you can only say so much in an article. But I think maybe the author is giving way too much ground to the other side where we should say, time out, this case has not been made. 

Scott: Hear, hear. All right, story notes, ready to move on? 

Sean: Let's go. 

Scott: Okay, I think our listeners are going to think that we only read the New York Times. 

Sean: [laughs]

Scott: But we do read it regularly and would encourage you to do that, to balance out how you get your news. But this is another New York Times editorial this week. And the author starts out like this. He said, "Of all the world's injustices, perhaps the saddest is that so many of them are simply ignored. Protesters the world over loudly demand a ceasefire in Gaza; a dwindling number of people still take note of Russian atrocities against Ukraine. Otherwise, there is a vast blanket of silence, under which some of the world's worst abusers proceed largely unnoticed and unhindered." And the author is pleading for a less selective perspective on what constitutes moral outrage for us. And he gives a number of other examples of things that are clearly injustices, clearly on a level of things that people have protested against other countries, but are silent on these. For example, the recent election in Venezuela, condemned worldwide as a stolen election. The new president there has enforced this by rounding up and jailing roughly 2,000 people suspected of dissent, promising “maximum punishment” and “no forgiveness.” Turkey is another Middle Eastern country besides Israel that receives lots of military aid from the United States. “On paper a secular democracy and a NATO ally. In reality,” according to this author, “it's an illiberal state run for decades by [...] an anti-Semitic Islamist who has jailed scores of journalists while waging [...] a brutal war against his Kurdish opponents in Syria and Iraq.” And he says, "For good measure, Turkey has occupied, ethnically cleansed and colonized northern Cyprus for roughly the last 50 years." He raises the rhetorical question. He says, "Shouldn't those who argue that occupation is always wrong trouble themselves to protest this one?" And he points out Ethiopian Sudan, staggering levels of human rights abuse against black people. But no college protest has this elicited. And then in Iran, other Islamic countries, severe misogynistic restrictions on women. In fact, Sean, just this last week, the Taliban in Afghanistan announced that his new vice laws now prohibit the showing of women's faces and the hearing of their voices in public. 

Sean: Good night. 

Scott: Now, I would think that maybe if the college protesters were doing their thing again, they might have something to say about that. And we might have encampments on campuses protesting that. But my guess is that this will be met with the same kind of silence that much of the abuses of women's rights in the Muslim world is met with already. And then, there's also the Uyghur Muslims in China. The last count I heard, Sean, on this was, roughly three million Uyghur Muslims in China are being held in the virtual equivalent of concentration camps. The Rohingya in Myanmar, Christians in Nigeria, others, just to name a few. And so, instead of being selective, we need to be maybe a little bit less selective in what we have moral outrage about when the facts are clear and the injustices are right there in front of us. So, I wanted to say an amen to this, but I suspect there might be some areas where we wanna push back. But what's your take on this? 

Sean: That's my general take. So, yesterday I had a chance to interview Jewish talk show host and Bible commentator Dennis Prager. And I asked him a question, I said, "Hey, so do Jews care if Christians refer to the Hebrew scriptures as the Old Testament?" And he's like, "Sean, I don't care at all. That makes sense within your worldview. That's not an issue I wanna have outrage and expend my moral energy on." And I thought, what a great response, that we have to pick and choose where we extend our moral outrage. Now, when I read this article, it's easy to read it and go, yeah, the protesters on college campuses, they're the ones who need to protest against these other injustices that you read. But I read it a little differently. Rather than…you know, Jesus obviously talks about looking at, rather than the splinter in somebody else's eye, look at the log in your own. All of us have moral outrage, whether it's in conversations, whether it's online, whether it's sometimes just in our heads. Let's look at all of us and say, are we just puppets being manipulated by the media that we listen to, by the story of the day? How much are we having selective moral outrage on the stories that come to our attention? And is it balanced, or is it out of balance? This is a question all of us have to ask. I've been preaching recently on Acts chapter 17. And when Paul is in Athens, he looks around and it says, "his spirit was provoked.” Like, he was distressed because of the idols that have eternal consequences. Well, my takeaway is, we're supposed to be provoked. There's a time and place to have moral outrage. Now, Ephesians 4 says don't let…not Ephesians 4. It talks about it in the book of Ephesians—I'm forgetting the exact passage—of not letting the sun go down on your anger. Anger's not wrong if it's directed at the right injustice and the right thing. But the problem is, we sometimes are provoked and have moral outrage at the wrong things. And this is especially hard today because social media is built on creating outrage in us. Our economy is, in part, built on this. I can get you to buy a product if I can get you angry at how you're being affected by something. I can get you to watch a video with a thumbnail if it's overly…if I'm creating some kind of outrage in you. Analytics on social media, we know, are built to favor those with, let's just say, emotions that are more angry and negative rather than positive. So this was just a reminder to me, more than anything else, to say, okay, where am I expressing my outrage? 'Cause I only have a finite amount of emotion to express it in certain ways. So, I love this article. I think everybody should read it, whether they agree with Brett Stevens or not, and ask ourselves the question, what are we angry about? Where are we expressing our moral outrage? And in light of the gospel as a whole, are we extending our energy in the way that we should?

Scott: Yeah, I'd wanna suggest to our listeners, our Dean Ed Stetzer has written a terrific book on this entitled Christians in an Age of Outrage, which has a number of practical suggestions like you've mentioned here, Sean, that are really helpful. Now, my take on this is there was a subtext of the article. It doesn't come out and say it directly, but I think the subtext that's sort of underneath the surface is the anti-Semitism that is fueling the disproportionate expression of outrage among the situation in Israel and Gaza as opposed to the other situations around the world that are just as egregious, if not more so. And I think, again, he doesn't come out and say it. I'm reading this into it, but I think it's not hard to draw the conclusion that Israel is, sort of, disproportionately the bad guy around the world when they are surrounded by much worse among their Middle Eastern neighbors and among other parts of the world. Yeah, we don't hear as much about them. We don't hear as much about the treatment of women in the Islamic world. We don't hear as much about the restrictions they experience about female circumcision, about child marriages, about honor killing. We don't hear much about the homophobia of some of the rest of the world. In fact, I found super ironic the banner “Gays for Palestine” on many of the campuses in the last year. Gays in the Muslim world, they face quite a different scenario than they do in most of the West. So I agree, we have a limited amount of emotional energy that we can pour into some of these things. But at the least, I think what this suggests for us is to pray for some of the people who are in these situations, who are suffering terrible persecution for their ethnic identity as well as their religious faith, and to support organizations that are ministering to them. I think at the least, those are some of the things that we can do. 

Sean: I think especially in light of our last discussion about persecution or not, when we look at what's happening—and, of course, some of these are not just against Christians, but they're limiting human rights, and some in particular are against Christians—we should be very reluctant again to use the term persecution when there are legitimate challenges being raised in the States. So I think this just really supports the article you brought up and the point you made in the last story as well. 

Scott: All right, ready for the last story for today? 

Sean: Ready as I'll be. 

Scott: All right, two stories on immigration. On Monday of this week, a federal judge in Texas paused, put on temporary hold, a Biden administration policy that will give spouses of U.S. citizens legal status without first having to leave the country. This is a temporary setback to one of the biggest presidential actions to ease the path to citizenship in recent years. The administrative stay was issued by a judge in Texas after 16 states, largely red states, challenged a program that the Biden administration had put forward that could benefit an estimated half a million immigrants plus about 50,000 of their children, accusing the administration of bypassing Congress for their, quote, what they call “blatant political purposes.” Now here's—for the background on this—the Biden administration policy that was put in by executive order offered spouses of U.S. citizens who do not have legal status who meet certain criteria a path to citizenship by applying for a green card and staying in the U.S. while undergoing this process. Before this Biden program, it was shown it was really complicated for people who were in the U.S. illegally to get a green card after marrying an American citizen, because they were often, in most cases, required to return to their own country, often for years, and then they would always face the risk that they not be allowed back into the country. So this would have changed that, allowing them to stay in the country while they got in line applying for legal status. Now, another item comes from the UK and Australia—and this one I think we probably will end up having a much longer discussion about this—it's a really interesting proposal where they propose a merit-based system of immigration. They point out that roughly 70% of the close to nine million people who are in the country illegally today in the U.S. have no education beyond high school and work in low-skilled jobs, competing with the poorest citizens in the country for those jobs. International students, for example, who mostly pursue STEM fields are easily employable, face super high hurdles and low caps on how many of them can actually stay in the country. I actually had one of my students last year who was from Ecuador, a really sharp student, who could only stay in the country for a year and now has had to go back to his country. Now, this proposal suggests a stronger waiting for merit and more spots for those on merit than today, thereby lessening the available space for refugees and asylum seekers. Now, Sean, these are two somewhat different pieces, but I think it’s ironic that both of them speak to some of the main challenges of immigration in the same week. And so, I think it's appropriate that we take these together. What thoughts do you have on this? 

Sean: There also is another bill, just to show the complexity of this, in California where we live, where home loans are being offered to immigrants that come in that are not yet citizens, if I understand it correctly. So it feels like, if I'm reading it correctly, all these bills are coming down, trying to figure out these complex scenarios. How do we have somebody who is married to a non-citizen, rightly but fairly move into the U.S.? How do we have a group of people who are already here, and they're not going home, get assimilated? I guess I have more questions than I do answers. Is this driven by the politics of the moment, that we have an election coming up? Is this just kind of symbolic that we're at a new stage in the immigration discussion about what steps we do moving forward, and it's not just enough to build a wall, we've got to deal with the reality of what's taking place here? I mean, how do you read these different stories that all seem to coalesce this week? 

Scott: Now, Sean, in my view—I could be wrong about this—I think it's a bit cynical to look at that immigration issue and migrants as simply political pawns. I don't think that's true. I think there are people who are using this for political purposes. But I do think that what's driving this primarily is, there's widespread agreement now that our current immigration system is broken and it needs to be fixed. And there are certain inequities and injustices that are baked into the system that need to be fixed. This proposal from the UK and from Australia that I mentioned suggests that the policy that most of the European countries have had and that the U.S. has had to have this open door for asylum seekers, and for those who are coming from places where they've basically been forced out of their homes, is economically unsustainable. And I think there has to be a balance here. And that's my main pushback on the merit-based system of immigration. I agree that we have to take into account our own national interests and provide enough places for people who can make really significant economic contributions to the culture at large. And I think most of the people who are international students, for example, overwhelmingly study in the sciences and engineering in those paths to employment. And this article from the UK points out that a number of them have founded their own companies that have net worth in the billions now, and are providing thousands and thousands of jobs for people. So I think there has to be points given for the merit that someone brings into the country. But on the other hand, I think what, in large part, has made the United States a great country is adhering to the admonition of the biblical prophets and some of the teachings of Jesus about the compassion that we have for those who have no other place to go. Compassion for those who are marginalized, who are poor, who are needy, and who need us the most. We have a really serious biblical obligation, both as communities and as a country, to care for them. This is not suggesting anything like we have an open borders policy, anything like that. Because what our policy is on immigration and what our moral obligation is are two somewhat different things. I think we have to realize that the public policy on this is going to necessarily be imperfect. And we're not gonna be able to fix everything. And nobody's gonna be entirely satisfied with whatever immigration policy that we have. But I think we can correct some things. And it seems to me that what the Biden administration was trying to do to keep families together was, in my view, on balance, a good thing. Now, obviously, you can't have automatic citizenship by virtue of marrying a citizen. Otherwise, the potential for abuse of that just goes completely off the charts. But it seems to me that requiring spouses to leave the country while pursuing citizenship is at least separating married couples, if not parents from their children. And that's troubling to me, that the requirement has been for so long that they have to leave the country while they are pursuing legal immigration status by virtue of being married to an American citizen. I don't think we can advertise ourselves as being as family-friendly as we are and have immigration policies that are deliberately separating families and children at the same time. 

Sean: That's fair. Let me end by asking you this. You said that you think euthanasia is the most complex ethical issue because of so much that's involved. If we went to, like, government policy, can you think of one that's just more complex, with so many competing factors, than immigration? 

Scott: Not at the moment. And I think what makes this complicated is that I predict that whatever effort we make to fix this, nobody is gonna be totally satisfied. And so our politicians have got to lean into this that, you know, they've got to pursue something that's gonna be in the best interest of most people and of society at large, but at the same time recognize that they are not gonna make anybody entirely happy. And that's part of what complicates it. And I think there's some unfairness that is baked into the system because of piecemeal fixes that have been done in the past. I think some of those things have to be fixed. We won't fix them all, but I think the ones that separate families and particularly separate children from their parents, I think is one of those that could be fixed. 

Sean: Fair enough, good stuff, Scott. 

Scott: All right, you ready to take some questions? 

Sean: Let's go. 

Scott: We have a number of good questions here. This first one, I think, is a desire for us to clarify some of the things we talked about last week. It says, "During last week's cultural update, you discussed the violent and racist protests in England after the terrible murder of three girls. You seemingly sided with the protesters. Obviously the crime against the girls was heinous. However, you mentioned the term ‘right-wing thuggery’ as if it were an unfair critique. The racist, violent, destructive demonstrations were horrible and as a regularist, I know you must agree that racist violence is appalling. But you didn't say anything against it. Instead, you seemingly sided with a dangerous rhetoric. Wouldn't you agree that the racist, violent, and destructive demonstrations were horrible and unbiblical? I'm helping you clarify so that none will misunderstand you and that we'll all have a more biblical response to such events." Since this was basically something I commented on, I'll take the first shot at this one, Sean, if that's okay with you. 

Sean: Sounds good. 

Scott: Yeah, the term “far-right thuggery” was not my term. That was the term of the new British prime minister. And of course, the murder of the three girls was a horrific crime. And I would say—I think you would agree, Sean—some of the protests did cross the line as well. But what we were pointing out was the bigger picture of this. And that is that many countries in Europe, including the UK, have immigrants who have not integrated well into their new country's culture and societal norms. And often, they bring with them cultural norms that are incompatible with those of the country that they are settling in. That, in our view, was at the heart of the protests. And clearly, some of those protests were badly racially motivated. I highly agree that demonstrations that are racist, violent, and destructive are also horrible and unbiblical. That is clearly true. And I appreciate this listener giving us the chance to clarify that. But I wouldn't wanna miss the bigger picture that we were trying to get at. And that’s what was at the heart of the protests—and clearly, some of them went over the line—but that immigrants in Europe, particularly in the UK, have brought with them some worldviews and some moralities that are simply not compatible with the countries that they're living in. As we pointed out, the immigrants who come to the U.S. from Latin America come from a different world, but they come from a largely Catholic worldview that is much more compatible with things like democracy and market economics and things like that. And so, I think that's why we don't see some of the protests about immigration in the U.S. like they have in Europe. And I think that's a big reason for the difference and an important one that I wanna make sure our listeners hear. 

Sean: In the States, I just saw this morning, the majority of immigrants who come in have a more Christian, broadly speaking, worldview than the American population as a whole. And that's often lost. So I think, just to illustrate your point, if group A is protesting a legitimate criticism of group B and we point that out, it doesn't mean we're justifying and supporting everything group A does in raising concern about group B. That's all I would say. I think you illustrated it really well. And again, I appreciate listeners listening so carefully and sending in their questions. 

Scott: Yeah, and I'm grateful for the chance to clarify what we were trying to say. Much appreciated. Sean, this second one, I am so encouraged to hear from this particular listener. And if you're listening, I'm so glad you wrote in, and we really appreciate your question. It says this, “I'm Jewish and not very conversant with Christianity. I've recently read that Jesus proclaimed that He had to suffer. I don't understand why this was part of the plan of salvation. Can one or both of you please explain this?” Sean, go for it. 

Sean: Yeah, I think there's two ways to approach this. And before I jump in, I was thrilled at this email. When we have Muslim listeners, or atheists, or Jewish, or anybody, maybe, to the left of us, like, thank you for taking the time to listen. You're more than welcome here. I would answer this, kind of, in what you might say the micro and, maybe, in the macro. So the micro would be to point specifically to Isaiah 53, one of the more commonly cited Old Testament passages in the New Testament about the ministry and purpose of Jesus. Now there's huge debate about how to interpret this. One of our colleagues, Dominic Hernandez, has written a wonderful book on the Old Testament, page after page explaining why Isaiah 53, when properly understood, is kind of a Messianic kind of passage that is not…Christian interpretation is not foreign to what was present there. So we could point to that resource if you wanna go deeper. But if you read in Isaiah chapter 53, verse four says, "So he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds we are healed." So one of the reasons Christians would say that Jesus had to suffer is that this is a Messianic prophecy that is best fulfilled in the person of Jesus in the most commonly quoted, I believe, Old Testament prophet, Isaiah. So that's one, kind of in the micro. And there's other passages we could potentially point towards. Macro is, Jesus talked about the Old Testament being fulfilled in Him in the sense of, like, Luke 24, don't you know—to these two disciples—that the Scriptures speak of Me or are fulfilled in Me? He means the spirit and the types of the Old Testament come to fruition in His person and His ministry and in His life. And so, the Old Testament, largely, is built on this sacrificial system where the death of animals would cover the sins, so to speak, as the Hebrew people, the Israelites, were in relationship with God. Jesus, in a sense, is the lamb, as it says at the beginning of John. You know, here's the lamb of God who is coming, who fulfills that type of the Old Testament that these animals, in a sense, suffered with their lives to cover our sins. Jesus comes along and fulfills the law perfectly. Lived a sinless life, claimed to be God in human flesh, and then His death, which the death of the animals was pointing towards, offers us permanent and eternal forgiveness from God. Those are the two ways I would point our Jewish listener to maybe think about why Jesus proclaimed that He had to suffer. 

Scott: I think…just one thing I would add to this. I think the emphasis in the Scripture is more on His dying on our behalf as opposed to suffering per se. The suffering was part of His dying on our behalf, but I think the point of this was that He gave his life on our behalf, to pay the penalty for our sin. Again, I think you're right to point out the parallel to the Jewish sacrificial system and this being a once-for-all sacrifice for sin. So I am greatly appreciative for this person writing in, and I share your view, Sean, that I'm delighted when people who think differently than we do, or come from different worldviews, or come from different religious traditions are listening in and feel the freedom to write in and ask a question. All right, here's the final question. There's a statement, and then there's a question. So, the statement is unrelated to the question, but I think the statement is still worth hearing from. 

Sean: I agree. 

Scott: “I was born and raised in Cuba, migrated to Canada in 2016. As someone who grew up in a communist country, I can relate to Yeonmi Park, whose book While Time Remains you recently discussed. It's scary seeing younger generations adopting communist ideas, both here and in Canada and in the U.S. I talked to my kids and their friends about my life experience back in Cuba so that they know the truth about that ideology.” I think we would both say amen to that. “My unrelated question is this. If a believer marries a non-believer, is that just a bad decision, or is it in fact a sinful action? And if it's a sin, then is living in that marriage the same as living in a sinful lifestyle? What are your thoughts about this?” Well, I'll start on this, and then, Sean, you can weigh in too. If a believer marries a non-believer, is that just a bad decision, or is it in fact a sinful action? I would say the answer to that is, yes to both. And here's the reason. That's analogous to two people, say, meeting in the center of the country and deciding that we're gonna travel together, but I'm going to the West Coast and she's going to the East Coast. And we decide to travel together. It just doesn't make sense, because the thing that is most important to me, my faith, is not being shared by the person who I'm marrying. And what we see is, when this happens in the couples that we know and the couples where we see this happening, is that they deal with it okay when it's just the two of them, but the tension really comes to the surface when they talk about how to raise their kids. And that faith component is, for a lot of people, a really important part of what they want to inculcate in their children. And sometimes this is where, I say, the real tension comes in. Now, if it's a sin, then is living in the marriage the same as living in a sinful lifestyle? I would say the answer to that is no. And the answer I think the Scripture gives is, once you're married, you stay married and make the best of it. And particularly if you have children, make the best of it. But Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 7, if you're in a mixed marriage like this with a believer and unbeliever and the unbeliever abandons the marriage, then you are free to divorce and remarry. Those are the only conditions under which you are free to divorce and remarry. I think adultery is also a part of this. I think our friend Wayne Grudem has made a good argument—we had him on some time ago—that there are other things that 1 Corinthians 7 opens the door for like abuse and addiction, things like that, that also give legitimate grounds for divorce and remarriage. But I would say once you're married, the Bible calls you to stay in that marriage unless there are some of these other things involved that give you legitimate grounds for divorce. Sean, do you see this any differently? 

Sean: Great answer, two quick things. I went to Cuba in the late 90s. I went to the Soviet Union in the early 90s. And I saw the effects of socialism and communism firsthand. And I've talked with my kids about it. In fact, my son, we watch "Stranger Things" together, of course, 'cause it takes place in the 80s and Russia's the bad guy in it, 'cause that was the American perspective in the 80s. I've paused it a couple of times and just talked to my kids about the effects of communism and what it's like. In part, this generation embraces it 'cause they don't have a collective memory and seeing it firsthand unless parents and grandparents talk to their kids about it. So have that conversation. Biblically, one of the reasons people would redo Passover every year, celebrate it, is to remember from the past. So, let's have those conversations with our kids. I agree 100% in your take on 1 Corinthians 7, that what are God's moral guidelines for who we marry? One, somebody of the opposite sex. Number two, a believer. Number three, if divorced, biblically free to remarry. Now, I can't answer that last one, what it means, and it raises more questions, but that is God's moral will for who Christians marry. But if you marry somebody of the opposite sex that's not a Christian, I would say, like you said, stay in that marriage. I think 1 Corinthians 7 is clear about that once you've tied the knot. 

Scott: Yeah, I like the way you put that. Opposite sex, same faith. 

Sean: There you go. 

Scott: So yeah, I hope our listeners have found this weekly Cultural Update profitable. We've had fun doing it, and we look forward to doing some more of these. So this has been the weekly Cultural Update from the Think Biblically podcast, Conversations on Faith and Culture, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, offering master's programs in Old Testament, New Testament, Systematic Theology, Philosophy, Christian Apologetics, Science and Religion, Pastoral Ministry, and undergraduate degrees in Bible, theology, and apologetics. Most of these are fully online. To find out more, visit biola.edu/talbot. To submit comments, or ask questions, or make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover, news stories you'd like us to talk about, please email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu, that’s thinkbiblically@biola.edu. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please give us a rating on your podcast app. It really matters that you do that and share it with a friend. And join us on Tuesday for our conversation with our Biola Business School colleague Dr. Shane Enete, and his financial planning emphasis around his new book, Whole Heart Finances. Thanks so much for listening. And in the meantime, remember, think biblically about everything.