This week, Sean and Scott discuss:

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Episode Transcript

Sean: Marijuana use surpasses alcohol consumption in the U.S. and is at an all-time high. How Hamas refers to female captives and why it matters. The percentage of Americans who identify as non-religious may have hit a ceiling and plateaued. These are the stories we will discuss today. We will also address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.

Scott: I'm your cohost, Scott Rae.

Sean: This is a Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. This story, Scott, jumped out to me when I was reading The New York Times and then discovered quite a few other publications have talked about it as well. And the title of this article from this week is “Cannabis Tops Alcohol as Americans’ Daily Drug of Choice.” Now, legally and conversationally, we have seen marijuana become more and more accepted, but this kind of stopped me in my tracks to go, wow, it's actually surpassing alcohol depending on how you gauge this. Now, here's some of the things the article points out. It says: in 2022, there were 17.7 million people who reported using cannabis either every day or nearly every day. That compares to 14.7 million who reported using alcohol with the same level of frequency. So, three million more people using cannabis daily or nearly daily compared to alcohol. Now, a couple of nuances of this. They say that while far more people drink than use cannabis, drinking frequently has become slightly less common than it was around 15 years ago. So more people drink alcohol than use marijuana, but the frequency is higher according to this. The proportion of people in the U.S. who use cannabis frequently has increased fifteen-fold in the three decades since 1992, when cannabis use hit a low point. Now, they point out that legalization, of course, is behind this, and that's accelerated also since the '90s. And now, marijuana is legal for recreational use in 24 states and Washington, D.C.; medical use, 38. And there's a lot on the ballot. There's more and more that will continue to come up. Now, one of the things that surprised me about this, Scott, and I'm curious if it surprises you, is the number of articles - New York Times, CNN, and some others like CNBC - that talk about the harm that is tied to this. That kind of surprised me for a few reasons we get into. So in this New York Times article, they're quoting an expert who says, "I don't think that for most daily or nearly daily users, it is a health-promoting activity. For some, it's truly harmful." And of course, they indicate how the THC concentration, the psychoactive component marijuana, has increased dramatically over the past few years. In fact, they would say 1995 was about 4%. By 2021, it was 15%. That's a massive increase. And now it's being used for oils, edibles, et cetera. So they say, for example, "The research has shown that frequent cannabis use, and particularly the use of high-potency products with levels of THC greater than 10%, is a risk factor for the onset of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders." Quite a few of these articles focused on the effect on students. And they said, "But that isn't to say that use less frequent is even safe itself." So the article is pointing out, quite a few of them, that it affects teens disproportionately. But if you just say, "Well, I'm using it less," it's still not clear that there's not negative kind of effects from this. So the New York Times goes on to make some other points. But in CNN, when I pulled it up, here's what they said, "By using cannabis before the age of 25, young people can permanently damage their brains," they write out. They also link it to a cardiothic arrhythmia. Sorry if I mispronounce that.

Scott: Close enough.

Sean: Fair enough. They're talking about, in fact, one of the doctors in the CNN article says, "New data has began to show that secondhand marijuana may be just as dangerous as the primary smoke." And then they say, "We don't even know yet the risks of edibles." So as a whole, my take is that it just surprised me how popular this is becoming, passing alcohol. I'm somewhat surprised that more people are talking about the effects of it now, not some time ago. But also, it's like now it has become the majority. We realize there's a whole lot of testing we haven't even done yet to uncover how much this really affects us. I got a ton more thoughts, but jump in here, Scott. What's your take?

Scott: Well, a couple of things. One is your discussion of harm, here coming from cannabis use. That cuts both ways because one of the things that the advocates of cannabis were actually hoping for is that the increase in cannabis use would decrease the amount of alcohol use, because of the clear risks and dangers of overuse of alcohol, the liver damage that results, a whole host of other things that are associated with that high blood pressure and things like that. But they said even though cannabis use has exploded since the last 30 years, alcohol use has remained relatively stable. And so it's just that cannabis has just taken off like a rocket and surpassed alcohol use. But the discussion of harm cuts both ways. Now, I think we need to be clear, and I don't think this is really widely publicized, and that is that the marijuana that's on the market today is much more potent than what was in the past.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: You know, what you described there is a roughly fourfold increase in the concentration of THC since 1995. And what the studies have shown on this so far - and we have a lot more people now who would be candidates for these studies in the future - but what our studies have shown so far is that THC levels greater than 10% increase the risk of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. So we're looking at something that is not the same thing as when you and I were in college - what's on the market today is vastly more potent. And I think in some cases, this may be one of the benefits actually of it being above ground, is that before it was legalized and it was underground, nobody really knew what was in this. And we didn't know what the THC levels were. And now that it's come above ground and we can test more of this, we know quite a bit more. So remember, we recently reported on this. This is part of the...what is the best way to put this? The way in which marijuana has become more socially acceptable is that the FDA, just like two or three weeks ago, which, we reported on this, reclassified it from a class one substance to a class three substance - took it out of the class that has cocaine and heroin, which to be fair, probably didn't belong there. But to say that it's a class three substance that's no more risky than Tylenol with codeine, I don't think represents the facts either.

Sean: Right, right. That's fair. So I've got a few takes on this that I want to jump into. I think it's really interesting that there have been legal and social pushes to normalize marijuana. And this is decades, kind of how it's developed. Well, I think we've had sufficient data of the harm, but it's kind of like, once again, almost with social media. We're just launching into this massive cultural experiment without, really, awareness of what these gummies are going to do. How cannabis affects us in the long term. So there's enough data there to give pause, and it's been there for a while. So I'm glad these publications are saying it's room for harm for…asthma, was one possible connection with teens, your brain function, schizophrenia. I'm glad they're saying this, but there's still a sense of, like, where were some of these voices a while ago, when the signs were there? And we're still, it's like the ball is moving down the court, so to speak, or down the hill and in some ways it's like, okay, it's not too late to ever warn people, but it's somewhat disconcerting to have certain voices speaking up now, going, wait a minute, this should have been talked about a long time ago. But I guess in some sense, better late than never is what I would say. Now, they did point out that cannabis use hit a low in about 1992 and I was thinking about my experience in high school, and it kind of felt like at least this was the norm, that if somebody was smoking pot, they probably would have been put in the category of that person is a loser, right? That was just the larger cultural narrative of people who did that. But you go to parties, so to speak, and everybody drinks alcohol. It hit me, I was like, wow, that narrative is completely shifted where it's normalized for people and young people to use this. That idea that is kind of a fringe, "loser" idea seems to be gone with this generation and so that resistance has shifted.

Scott: Sean, I'll give you an example of this.

Sean: Okay.

Scott: My wife and I were at the Hollywood Bowl last night, and after we left, I could smell the pot on my sweater because the three people that sat right in front of us - and I wouldn't call them stoners or losers. They were just regular looking people that looked like they had good day jobs and good incomes, but they were sharing the same, basically the same…I don't know what it's called…but the same thing that they were smoking pot from throughout the night. It was a two-and-a-half-hour concert. That stuff was wafting all through the air for a good bit of the night. It didn't take much to walk down a different aisle and smell the same thing. I just didn't expect to see it right in front of us, so in your face. Nobody thinks twice about that any longer. Anytime you go to a concert, you might as well be at a party full of pot smokers because it's pretty significant and nobody thinks twice about it. It was just different, because I think that stereotype of people who smoke weed being “losers” is no longer true. Bill Maher brags about it almost weekly on his show when he talks about this. So, I just wasn't quite prepared for that.

Sean: Yeah.

Scott: I do think the level of potency is underpublicized today and the specific psychiatric risk that that involves. This is one of the first times I had seen that it was a four-fold increase in the potency of it.

Sean: Yeah, that's really significant. I think this is just a reminder that we've got to talk with our kids. We've got to get, if we're on social media, just get the word out there. I'm glad the New York Times and CNN are weighing in on this and raising some of the concern. In fact, one of the doctors said people shouldn't even consider using it in any doses at all until, minimally, their upper 20s or early 30s when the brain is fully formed. These are the kind of warnings we should have heard a long time ago, but I'm glad they're coming out now.

Scott: Here, here.

Sean: All right, good stuff. Now, this second story you sent me I think is really interesting. In some ways, I'm not exactly sure what to make of this, but this appeared in The Atlantic. There's been quite the debate over the past week. The title is, "What Hamas Called Its Female Captives and Why It Matters." So the article refers to how this week, Israel released an appalling video featuring five female Israeli soldiers who were taken captive at a military base on October 7th and kept captive since then. They were fearful and they were bloodied. The women beg for their lives while the Hamas fighters mill around them and threaten them and compliment their appearance. The captors called the women "sabaya," and my pronunciation might be completely wrong, but it's S-A-B-A-Y-A, which Israel translated as, "Women who can get pregnant." Almost immediately, others disputed it and said it just refers to female captives and has no reference to fertility. Now, in this article, the quote is, "The Arabic word sabaya doesn't have sexual connotations," Al Jazeera wrote in response. So basically, Scott, there's been this debate back and forth about how there's a video Israel released showing Hamas fighters around some Israeli soldiers, kept captives that are female, referred to with a term for which there's debate, whether it just means young women or whether or not it has sexual connotations to it, so to speak. Now, he writes in the article, he says, "These are real women and victims of ongoing war crimes, so it does seem excessively lured to suggest, without evidence, that they've been raped in captivity for the past few months." The author says, "We don't have enough data," again, this is The Atlantic, "to conclude from the word that they've necessarily been raped." But he says, "To assert that the word is devoid of sexual connotations reflects ignorance at best." And so he walks in through how modern terms, basically, it should be used to imply captives for which one can have sex with. So he says, "Anyone who uses ‘sabaya’ in modern Gaza or Raqqa can be assumed to have specific and disgusting reasons to want to revive it." Now, we won't necessarily go into detail, but it goes back into kind of modern Arabic lexicon versus classical Islamic jurisprudence and how slaves can be treated. But he makes a distinction between, kind of, ancient times of when Islam was founded - what we might call biblical times even earlier - and modern times. And he says that Hamas easily could have used a standard Arabic word for female captives, "asirat," which doesn't have sexual connotations. Now, bottom line, he says, "The language suggests that fighters were open to raping the women, but again, it could just be reprehensible talk after an already coarsening day of mass killing." But then here's the key takeaway that I thought was fascinating. The author says, "Reading too much into the language seems at this point to be less of a danger than reading too little into it." Your take on this, Scott?

Scott: Well, I think, first of all, it is nuanced. The translation can be translated in various different ways. "Women who can get pregnant" is probably the least offensive term that can be used. And I think it is…what it's describing is women who are of marriageable and sexual relations age. They can refer to female captives. They can refer to potential sex slaves. And so what I'd want to be careful about is having one translation that is, you know, that is considered authoritative for every context, because how it's translated can be different based on the context that they're in.

Sean: Okay.

Scott: So, and that's pretty standard stuff for how we translate the Bible, there are lots of Hebrew and Greek terms that can be translated in slightly different ways based on the context that you're in. So what I went back to was, in terms of classical Islamic law on their law of war, suggests that there are four possible outcomes for enemy captives, right? And this would be male or female. They can be killed, they can be sold or they can be enslaved. Or, rarely, they can be freed. So if they are enslaved, then they are subject to rules that govern slavery in Islamic law. And under Islamic law, the slave owner is responsible for the welfare of the slave, including food, shelter, clothing, wellbeing. And he is allowed to have sex with female slaves, but cannot sell her off until he can confirm that she isn't pregnant - and, therefore, he has no obligation to her and her future children. I think this is - probably to see it as someone who's been enslaved - I wouldn't call it human trafficking or sexual slavery per se, but it's just slavery in general under Islamic law, which the Islamic State, ISIS, sort of re-put into sort of standard use in some of these countries around the Muslim world. And that's where I think the point that you made, the bottom line on this, that in such relationships where you have sex with someone that you own, that constitutes rape in almost anybody's understanding of it…whether they occur in the Middle East or in Saudi Arabia or in the United States. So I think that's the bottom line on this in my view, that if a woman, a captive, is enslaved under Islamic law…these women who have been held by Hamas for months and months and months, I think fit the definition of women who have been enslaved. Then it is permitted for the owners to have sex with them. But they do have to follow certain rules to make sure that they aren't creating additional obligations for the buyer of these slaves if and when they are ransomed. So I think maybe the one that I would suggest, you know, the alternative word for female captives that you mentioned, “asirat,” means someone without, the best way to put it I think is without potential procreative complications.

Sean: Okay.

Scott: So you're allowed to have sex with them, but you have to be careful that they don't get pregnant because that diminishes their value and increases your obligation as the owner to those children that you have. And I mean, I would agree that reading too much into the term, “sabaya,” is a much better option than reading too little into it. I think there's probably more to it than the fact that it was simply something reprehensible that they said as an insult. I think it had more to do with how they viewed and regarded these women as potential rape victims. And we've got lots of other reports about, you know, widespread sexual assault that took place after October the 7th. And some of the women actually, what was reported by the Israeli news, was that some of the women had been raped so violently that their hips had been broken. So I think it's being too charitable to say that the possibility of sexually assaulting these women was off the table.

Sean: Hmm. Now, I appreciate the question about charitability. I hope you and I are consistently charitable here, but there's a point where it goes too far. And really, the question of this is, who gets the benefit of the doubt? Does Hamas get the benefit of the doubt given, number one, that they are still being held as captives, eight months removed, and as you said, known sexual assault before? And that's from bodies that have been found, that's from survivors who have reported this - there are multiple accounts of this. And as far as I'm aware, there is no doubt that that happened. So are we supposed to believe that that was just for October 7th, but then it stopped moving forward when they're capable of doing so, given the women soldiers that are being held captive by them? And I think that the hard part about this is, we're operating on such little information, right?

Scott: True.

Sean: We don't have regular communication with these captives. We don't even know how many captives are still alive. And then finally, when information comes out, there's information that is minimally suggestive, that at least in the most charitable interpretation, could be interpreted to imply a kind of sexual slavery. And we're supposed to give a charitable reading to Hamas? I say no way. They've got to prove, they bear the highest burden of proof to show that they're treating these captives humanely and not sexually taking advantage of these women. And that when a little information comes out and it's suggestive of this, I think, if I had to bet, there's far more behind it. You know, so when I think about this, it just...I almost didn't even want to talk about this story because, I mean, these women are other captives…eight months have been held. Eight months. What that does to your body, what that does to your psyche, I mean, just the possibility that they are mistreating them sexually, not to mention physically, is harrowing. It's harrowing. So where is the outcry here against this? There's a lot of outcry against what Israel is doing in Rafah. And we could talk about that. Israel has made some mistakes along the way. There's no question about that. That happens in war. That's a separate conversation. But here, where is the outcry to demand that Hamas proves they're not doing this? And, like, some of the information has come out, they said, "Well, they're just captives." Well, prove that they're being treated humanely. And until that comes out, I'm not convinced that this phrase isn't minimally suggestive of how they're being treated.

Scott: Well, I think your point goes to the way the article in The Atlantic concludes, that reading too much into the term is a better option than reading too little into it, because of how much is at stake. I mean, we’ve got the lives and the trauma and the sexual assault of these women. That's what's at stake here. And so I'd want to be careful that we don't downplay that possibility, given the burden of proof like you've described it.

Sean: Fair enough. All right. Well, we've got another story in a very different...

Scott: Yeah, let's have something a little more upbeat for the next one.

Sean: Well, this one is a little bit more upbeat.

Scott: I agree.

Sean: It's our mutual friend, Ryan Burge, we've had on the show a few times. He's a pastor, but I think he is one of the most, if not the most reliable demographer on changing religious trends in America, and has specifically focused…written a book on de-churching and written a book on the “Nones.” And he has a weekly kind of, I think it's a Substack post that he does. And the title is, "The Nones," again, which are those who identify as non-religious, "have hit a ceiling." And here's a few things from this. There's some data in here. I'll try to keep it simple and not get too lost in the weeds. But some of these details are important to understand what's taking place here. He says, "It has become crystal clear to me now the share of non-religious Americans has stopped rising in any meaningful way."

Scott: Sean, let me just be clear about this too. He's, in that “non-religious,” he's including not just the “Nones” who have no religious affiliation, he's also including atheists and agnostics in that general non-religious category.

Sean: Okay, good. That's helpful. Now we're going to distinguish because atheists and agnostics, he also at times puts them in a separate category from the “Nones.” And so we'll compare and contrast that, but that's helpful. He says, "Consider this. In 2008, the share of Americans who were non-religious was 21%. Five years later, it increased to 30%. So one out of five to almost one out of three between 2008 and five years later, 2013. That's a massive shift,” he says. But then go to 2013, add another five years to that to 2018, the “Nones” rose from 30% to 32%. So 2008 to 2013 jumps 9%. 2013 to 2018, it jumps 2%. And then he shows something really interesting. So, keep these numbers in mind. They're basically the same. This is the share of non-religious, 2020, 34%, 2021, 36%, 2022 drops down to 35%, 2023 back up to 36%. And then, this quote is incredible. He says, "From a purely statistical standpoint, I don't know if we can say with any certainty whether there's a larger share of ‘Nones’ in the United States than there was in 2019." That's amazing. Now, of Gen Xers, 34% were “Nones” in 2020. And that's the same now in 2023. Millennials from 2020 to 2023, it dropped 1%. Gen Zers, the “Nones” in 2020 was 45%. And then it's dropped to 42%. So Gen Xers, millennials and Gen Zers - the share of the “Nones” has roughly remained the same since 2019. Now, if we look at generations as a whole, there still are some broader trends, and this is what you're pointing to, Scott, we have to keep in mind. So if you look at the Silent Generation, that's those between born 1925 and 1945. So my dad would be in that generation. 48% were Protestants. And then it goes to 39%, 32%, 22%, 19%, to Gen Z. So those who identify as Protestants from Silence to Gen Z have gone from 48% to 19%. And then it goes to Catholics and it's basically the same. From Silent to Gen Z, there's no shift. Now of other world religions, it increases from 7% to about 10%. So there's a slight increase amongst atheistic and gnostic; it's about doubled from the Silent generation, 8%. Now it's about 15%. Now here's what he concludes. He said the religious composition of Gen Z looks almost exactly the same as the religious composition of millennials. There's been a little bit of…kind of a flattening between these two generations. Let me see here. I'm not going to give more of the data at this point, but let me give his conclusion. He basically says the rise of the “Nones” may be largely over now. Now he says of course the question is, why? And maybe before I jump into his explanation why, any questions or additions or thoughts on how to make sense of this data and what your initial take is?

Scott: Well, I think the big question is, what accounts for this change?

Sean: Okay.

Scott: We'll talk about that in just a minute, but I have a couple of thoughts here. One is that I think there were probably some people that maybe felt the way that the “Nones” were exploding meant that we're on the way to becoming Europe or Scandinavia, which the “Nones” sort of rule the roost in those countries. And I don't think that was ever the case, but to see that there may be a ceiling, and that, as Ryan Burch puts it, this may be “the end of an era” of the “Nones” exploding, is encouraging. But that number still…roughly over a third who are atheist, agnostic, or no religious affiliation is still a pretty high number. That's a lot of folks. And compared to the last 30 years, it's increased dramatically. So, I'm not losing sleep that we're about to become analogous to a country like Denmark, but there's still a lot of people out there who think that religious people like us are nuts.

Sean: [laughs]

Scott: So the other question I would have had, obviously the sharpest decline here, which was not surprising to me at all, is among Protestantism. But I wish that the data would be distinguishing between mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants.

Sean: I agree.

Scott: Because that dramatic drop in the number of people who are affiliated with mainline Protestant denominations - Presbyterian, Episcopal, United Methodist, folks like that - has been falling off the cliff for some time. And I don't see that…there's no reversal of that. I'd like to see what the data is among evangelical, charismatic Protestants, because I think that might be different. Some of the data we've talked with Ryan about in the past has suggested that the affiliation among evangelical Protestant groups has held pretty steady over this same period. So I think that'd be a helpful thing to have a little more data on. The other thing that caught my attention was in Gen Z, there was a six point drop in the number of people who say “no religious preference” or “none” just in the past year. I was really surprised to see that. Now the Gen Z, I think has been pretty steady overall since 2020. That six point drop in the past year may be an outlier, but it'd be really interesting to know what accounts for that.

Sean: And that kind of bumped back up a little bit too. That's what's strange about this. So I don't know exactly what to make of that in terms of Gen Z. He gets to the end and he asks the question you're referring to, like why is this happening? He says, "I don't have a bulletproof answer to this. The easiest explanation is that a lot of marginally attached people to religion on surveys over the last decade, of course, no longer identify that way. So the loose topsoil has been scooped off and hauled away, leaving nothing but hard bedrock underneath." And that's, I mean, the way I've been framing this, and it was nice to read this and think, okay, I think I've been relatively accurate according to Burge, is that the shift towards the “Nones,” large part, is people just not identifying primarily through religion as the way they did in the past. So we've seen church attendance drop. We've seen prayer drop. We've seen religious activities drop in a not insignificant fashion. But a huge shift is just how people choose to identify themselves. And religion is no longer the primary or even one of the leading lenses through which a large percentage of people identify. So I think in the past, some of these people behaved the same, and maybe twenty, thirty years ago would have described themselves as Christian because that's what an American is. And now we simply don't identify ourselves in that fashion. I think that's some of it. But the idea that you can just be kind of a middle-ground Christian - of course, unless you live in the South; it might be a little bit different - is kind of being weeded out a little bit in our culture. I think that's some of the phenomena that's taking place. Now he does say, he says, "There's less of a trend of individuals shifting to becoming non-religious. But now that we have so many less millennials and Gen Zers who identify as religious, compared to Silence and boomers, the trend is likely going to continue more because of birth rate." And this is the significant - that we can be shifting religiously. It'll take longer to get there, potentially. But he says, "Generational replacement is an impossible trend to stop. Older people will not live forever." And of course, his point is that as Gen Zers and millennials move more and more into kind of majority populations and have kids, and kids tend to hold the same beliefs as their parents, this is going to push us larger in the future in a less, less religious place. And this line by him at the end is interesting. He says, "I don't want to be too hyperbolic." And by the way, as a demographer, he's not too hyperbolic. He follows the data. I appreciate that about Burge. He says, "But I'm a preacher and it runs through my blood." Here's a powerful quote. He says, "This really may be the end of an era in American religious democracy." And I think that stands on two ways. It's the end of the radical increase that we've seen precipitous towards the “Nones,” but we also, because of that shift over the past few decades and the differences between generations, the influence and power of religion, we are seeing radically change as well. I think both of those two are correct. Any other takeaways from this article?

Scott: Yeah. Well, just one thing I want to remind our listeners about, you know, in the episodes that we've had Ryan Burge on, he has reminded us that de-churching and deconstructing a person's faith are not the same thing. And one of the things that I'd be interested to know is when people move from affiliating with one segment of religion and then affiliate with nothing in particular, does that mean that they are necessarily departing from their faith, or are they like a lot of students that I have, saying, "I can have a vibrant spiritual life, but I'm not going to affiliate with any church or any religious tradition, but I can still have a vibrant spiritual life and a vibrant faith." So I just want to be careful that we don't identify anything in particular as the same thing as atheist and agnostic, because the statistics make it clear that those are two different things. Now, I'm sure for some who are in that “Nones” category, they have no religious affiliation and no spiritual life to speak of, and they may have abandoned a faith that they grew up with. But I don't think that's always the case. We know from the de-churching discussion that the reason most people stop going to church is because they move and they move into a new community and a new neighborhood and they don't have relationships that would bring them into a church context. So they still have the same vibrant faith, they just don't need a church or don't need a particular religious affiliation in order to express it.

Sean: And going to church is not the same thing as how you identify on a survey when somebody asks if you're Protestant or Catholic or atheist. And so sometimes these different surveys judge religious affiliation by behavior, others will answer it by belief, and sometimes they overlap but are not necessarily the same. The research that Ryan Burge does when we've interviewed him about evangelicals, I say, "How do you know if somebody's really an evangelical?" And he says, "Well, basically if they identify as one, I categorize them as one." Which is fair. We all have to choose how we're going to assess and analyze what group somebody is a part of. But to see from Silence, 8% of those born between 1925 and 1945, according to this survey, would identify as atheist or agnostic. Amongst Gen Zers, it's 15%. That's not insignificant, but it's still far less than those who identify as Protestant, which is about 19% in Gen Z. Catholic is closer to 21-22%. And so keeping those distinctions in mind, I think, is really helpful. Good stuff. Anything else on that story?

Scott: No, that's, I think, pretty encouraging stuff.

Sean: I agree. So let's jump into questions. We get a bunch of questions, Scott. Some, well, we got two that I think we can directly address. And maybe we should let folks know, we get a lot of questions. Some are not related to topics we're discussing and we appreciate that you would ask our two cents. Sometimes we feel qualified to weigh in. And honestly, sometimes I just don't feel qualified to weigh in or have the time to go research additional side topics to just try to help. So if you send in a personal question, and we don't address it, it might be that we just don't feel like we have a ton to add to this and are experts there. That could be a piece of it. With that said, we've got two... Go ahead.

Scott: We're basically one or two trick ponies on this.

Sean: [laughs] Exactly.

Scott: The idea that we're going to be experts on all the things that our listeners have questions about I think is unrealistic. We will give it our two cents worth, but sometimes our listeners need to realize that this is just our two cents worth.

Sean: Fair enough. I appreciate that. So here's a great question. I'm curious how you're going to answer this one, Scott. This came in and this person said, "I'm a 34-year-old female in my second marriage. Due to difficulties in both marriages, I don't have children and probably won't. I know many Christian women who want children, but who find themselves single and/or childless later in life. In the church, marriage and children are often considered a rite of passage into real mature adulthood." And recently on the podcast, you shared that married people are happier than single people. And I think that was in our discussion about the kicker Harrison Butker. I fully support marriage, children, families. However, speaking this way about marriage and children is damaging to women who don't end up marrying or having kids. What do you say to the single Christian who is striving to be faithful wherever God has them in life and who wants to be valued and find fulfillment, even without a family? Your thoughts, Scott.

Scott: I'm so glad this person asked this question. And I know my heart breaks due to the difficulties in a couple of marriages. And I suspect she wants children, but is content being single. And I'm encouraged by that. And I think we can be careless in the way we speak about marriage and children. That is damaging to single people, I know. I think it's changed a bit. I was a singles pastor for five years before coming on the faculty at Talbot. And I finally had to, in fact, I told our church publicly in a message, stop matchmaking, stop setting people up, stop assuming that people who are single are in this in-between phase waiting to sort of graduate from that into real life, which happens when you're married and have children. So…and I think the idea that, you know, that it takes a spouse to complete you is thoroughly unbiblical because Paul's very clear in Colossians that we are complete in Christ, end of story. But I think what we need to recognize is that statistically married people are happier. That's an empirical fact, but it's not a sentence on single people. And I think in the scriptures, singleness is the moral equivalent of marriage and is as intrinsically valuable to God and to the kingdom as marriage and family are. So when Paul describes this in 1 Corinthians 7, he talks about three different reasons why singleness is the equivalent and sometimes a better, more expedient option than marriage. One is that because of the present distress, which is the persecution that the early church suffered, it's more expedient to be single because you're less vulnerable to persecution. He also makes the point that marriage, marriage is not eternal. We will be married to the Lamb of God and we celebrate the marriage feast of the Lamb in eternity. And then, the time demands on someone who is single as opposed to married are just different. And Paul says a single person can give undivided devotion to the Lord in a way that a married person can't. But that suggests to me that, you know, those last two reasons are sort of independent of circumstances. And I think they are principles that transcend time and culture. And, you know, my life changed dramatically. Not so much when I was married, but when I had kids and the amount of things that I said no to reflexively when I had kids increased dramatically than when I was a single person. In fact, when I was a singles pastor, we had a lot of discussion about this, as you might imagine. And this person who was sort of known for making snarky comments raised his hand and said, “If this is what the Bible says about the value of being single, why did you get married?” And my wife was sitting right on the front row. And so I had to come up with something that was going to make a lot of people happy really quickly.

Sean: [laughs] Good luck with that.

Scott: And I said, it's not that I can't live without my wife. I choose not to. I lived for thirty years without my wife. And I've chosen not to live the next decades without her. But the reason that we ask people about getting married in terms of remaining single is devoid of kingdom considerations. The answer to the question of that, “Why did you get married?” should be something like that we talked about this, and we have evaluated that we can serve the kingdom better married than we can individually single. But nobody ever asked that question about couples who are dating seriously or couples who are engaged. That, in my experience, is nowhere a part of any kind of premarital counseling. So I think the church has undervalued single adults historically. I think that's getting better. But I think we still have a ways to go. My heart goes out to this person. I hope this is helpful too.

Sean: I really agree, I suspect that for this letter there's probably dozens and dozens of other people, single women and men, who felt the same way and just didn't take the time or have the inclination to email in. You know, it's interesting after our response to that story, Scott, when Harrison Butker, again, kicker for the Chiefs, was saying to women, you know, what he considered diabolical lies from the culture. He said most of them are more concerned or value or looking forward to being moms necessarily than their career. That's what he said. And what I agree with him…and our response was to try to say, look, our culture downplays the value of being a homemaker. And what he's trying to say is this is a good, beautiful, honoring calling to the Lord. And I think we are trying to lift up women who want to be homemakers. I was talking with my wife afterwards and she said, “Well, why don't you say anything about singleness?” And I said, “I don't know, it didn't cross my mind.”

Scott: Good question.

[Both laugh]

Sean: And the funny thing is, you know, like, you and I have done episodes on the podcast on singleness. On my book, Chasing Love, I have a whole section on singleness there and have tried to use my platform to say marriage and singleness, are two equal ways, although different, of living in loving relationship before the Lord. So if I went back and could re-tape that segment, I would make sure to highlight that minimally so people like this person writing in wouldn't feel like their life has less value. Now, the last point I'd say, in Wilcox, what Bradley Wilcox shows is that the data is that women with children who are married report higher levels of satisfaction. He says this isn't always the case and it doesn't follow that singleness is not important or valuable, but the data just points as a whole to this reality and our culture is downplaying it, so we need to bring this in. And I think there's a way and you and I will try to continue to do this. We can point out where the sociological data is, but also highlight the goodness and beauty and challenges of singleness. So I appreciate this writer drawing it to our attention, and we'll keep hammering away at this and do better.

Scott: I'd say if the person who sent in this question is listening to this, go back, it's probably three or four years ago, Christina Hitchcock published a terrific book on singleness and we interviewed her as part of the podcast. She did a great job with this and I'd recommend that material.

Sean: Excellent. I love it. Let's jump to this last question here. This one says, "I'm a young physician with two young children. A few years ago I began to write down my thoughts on biblical and theological matters. The initial purpose of doing this was so that if I died, my kids could know what their daddy believed about life's most important issues. This work has since grown quite large and comprehensive. I've shared it with several of my friends and family members who have urged me to publish it. My main concern is about being canceled. I'm not afraid to share my faith publicly, but I do believe that my calling is to the medical field. So my question is, would it be wrong to potentially compromise my primary calling by publishing something like this?" Now, I think you have some, maybe, advice or thoughts or questions for this person who wrote in. Tell us what you're thinking, Scott.

Scott: I've got all of the above on that.

Sean: [laughs] Okay.

Scott: My questions are, how exactly would this affect his profession as a physician? I could see if he has something about transgender in there or something about sexuality or about abortion. I could see that maybe having an impact on his profession. But I'd like to know a little bit more about what's in these reflections. I commend this physician for doing this. This is a great thing. It's a wonderful legacy that you can leave for your children. I've done something similar to this in what's called a Legacy Bible, which has about 150 different entries that you can make that have question prompts that are connected to where you are in the biblical text at that time. And I've done one of these for two of my three kids. I got one more to go. But it's the kind of project you have to start a year in advance before you want to give it to them. But I think both my two older boys treasure that and are happy to have it. I guess what I would suggest is to have one version for your family and one version for the public. Keep the private part private. That's for your own family. That's nobody else's business but your own family’s. I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping it that way if there's a lot of really good material in there, which I suspect there is. Publish the part that keeps out the stuff that you might be a little nervous about. Keep the rest of it private.

Sean: That's good thoughts. I have a couple. One thing is there's nothing wrong in delaying a little bit. When you delay and get older and don't just have younger children, you will start to see things differently. I certainly did as my kids moved into their teenage years and now one in their 20s. So if I had published a book when I was a young teacher and I had published it now, I think it would look very, very different. So given that his primary call is a doctor, if he fears that this might hijack him in some way, there's nothing wrong or unfaithful in saying, "I'm going to let this sit and I'm going to think about it." In the meantime, maybe you get some people to read it and give thoughts. Other doctors or theologians, and you might have to hire people; with almost every book I've published, I've hired somebody out of my pocket to read it and give me feedback. That can only make it better. So delaying is not necessarily a bad thing with this.

Scott: What he might have to say to two young children might be a little different than what he might have to say to teenagers or to young adults. So this may be the kind of thing that he would update continually over time for different stages of life that his kids are going through.

Sean: I'm not aware of anybody getting canceled for something they wrote on their own time. Now there was the fire chief a number of years ago, I think it was Cochran, who wrote a book, "Did You Know That You Were Naked?" I think, based on Genesis 2 and gave it to an employee. He was a chief, if I remember the story correctly, and there was a lawsuit. So it wasn't just what he wrote on his own. It was that some people tried to say there was kind of a power dynamic that was there. And I forget how that story played out, but I'm not aware of - maybe they're out there and readers will send it to them - a physician who'd write something totally on his own would get punished in his practice, unless there's just details, like you said, of something he's going to write, or the unique kind of physician he is, or the place he works at, or information we're just not privy to. Are you aware of that, Scott, in kind of the ethics world?

Scott: Not off the top of my head, no.

Sean: Okay. All right. Fair enough. Well, last thing I'll say is I absolutely love…this warmed my heart that you're writing down thoughts that you want to pass on to your kids.

Scott: Great stuff.

Sean: I love that you wrote that my kids would know what their daddy believes. That's just a term of endearment, how intentional and loving it seems like you are with your kids. Of all else, you've blessed both of us and, I know, our listeners with how intentional you are about passing on the faith. So regardless of what you do, kudos for that. Well done. Anything else you want to throw in here on this one, Scott?

Scott: Nope. That's all good.

Sean: All right. Good episode, man. I'm already looking forward to next week. This is always, always fun. We enjoy it. Well, thanks so much for joining us. This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. We have master's programs online and in person in apologetics, philosophy, spiritual formation, marriage and family, Old Testament and more. To submit comments or ask questions, please email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. And please consider giving us a rating on your podcast app. Every single rating helps tremendously. And consider sharing this episode with a friend. Thanks for listening. We'll see you Tuesday when our regular podcast episode airs, which is a conversation with Scott and I together called “Clarity on Cancel Culture.” In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.