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This week, Sean & Scott discuss:

• UK bans puberty blockers for children, citing insufficient evidence of safety and efficacy, sparking international comparisons and debate.
• OpenAI's new AI video generator, , raises ethical and biblical questions about truth and technology's societal impact.
• Designer babies now teens, with many experiencing identity struggles, reveal the unintended consequences of parental expectations and genetic tailoring.
• The legacy of Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, prompts reflection on eschatology and its influence on evangelical social action.
• Listener questions on foster care goals and Bible study methods for teaching and preaching.

Episode Transcript

Sean: Britain bans puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria. OpenAI publicly releases a game-changing, powerful video generator. Designer Babers are now teens and many need therapy. An article in the LA Times claims that the death of Hal Lindsay, mega-selling author of the late great Plan Earth, is the culmination of evangelical abandonment of caring for the least of these. These are stories we'll discuss and we'll address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.

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

Sean: This is the Think Biblically Weekly Cultural Update brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, 911������ University. Scott, this story just broke this week and I think it's fascinating and worth discussing. This is in ABC and the title was that Britain indefinitely bans puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria. The British government on Wednesday, they banned puberty blockers again for children, not adults. After independent experts found there was an unacceptable safety risk in prescribing the medication. This will be revisited in 2027. That's for about two years or so. It will prevent prescribing medications that can suppress or pause puberty in children with gender dysphoria. The idea was that these would give children more time to consider options of how they would address their gender dysphoria. The British government has taken puberty blockers off the table. The announcement comes after a judge this summer upheld an emergency ban in a ruling and said the treatment was potentially harmful. The emergency ban was put in place by the center-right government, which is interesting. And now it's been extended by the center-left government. So there seems to be more agreement moving forward on this. The health secretary, Wes Streeding, said we need to act with caution and care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people and follow the expert advice. Now, I partly want to say it's too late for that. But on the other hand, I'm glad that they're making this step. It's in the right direction. The National Health Service in England stopped prescribing puberty blockers at gender identity clinics last year, saying that there just was not enough positive evidence in its favor. In July, so there's kind of a story behind this you and I have talked about. Justice Beverley Lang said in a review commissioned by the NHS, there were "very substantial risks and very narrow benefits to the treatment." And she concluded that “gender carries an area of remarkably weak evidence and young people have been caught up in a ‘stormy social discourse.’” Of course, there's criticism from the other side. So what's known as trans-actual criticized Wednesday's decision, saying the evidence of danger from 40 years of puberty blockers remains elusive. Now, I've got a few thoughts on this, but your quick take, Scott.

Scott: Well, it is sort of ironic the timing of this, because this announcement in the UK comes just a week after the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a case involving something very similar, involving state bans on puberty, suppressing medication and other forms of transition related care for minors. And we should emphasize the bill only it only applies to minors, not to adults.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: And I think in large part, I think there's a lot of wisdom to this. I mean, there's I appreciate the Brits on this following the evidence. We've talked about the Cass report in the past, basically showing that there's very little evidence out there that suggests that these kinds of radical changes to a person's body before they have finished puberty don't really do much to alleviate gender dysphoria. And the reason for that is because frequently, not in every case, but frequently, the gender dysphoria is not the root cause of the issues that teenagers are facing. It's the fruit of other deeper mental health issues that often don't get addressed in this. And so I think this is wise. And I think I would I guess I would be very skeptical about transition types of treatments before somebody has finished puberty. I think it's well documented that your gender identity is not really firmly fixed until puberty is finished. And so I think there's I think there's merit to this. It'll be interesting to know if any further evidence comes out. So I think I think this is wise. I think it's you know, they're trying to follow the evidence. And I think what they've what they've- what they're suggesting is that the current way in which gender dysphoria is being dealt with is is what they call an unacceptable safety risk for children and minors. And I think that's that's ultimately what's behind this is they are I think they are very concerned about the risks that this puts forth for children, and I think it's a recognition that it's being driven more by ideology than by evidence.

Sean: I think it's really interesting that this past week the UK has been debating and moving in the direction of embracing euthanasia, which you and I would consider a more progressive left leaning direction and at the same time, moving a more conservative direction on this issue. That's a fascinating tension exactly why I'm not an expert enough on that culture to weigh into it. But I think here's an example of where they're trying to put pause on ideology and say let's just follow the facts where it leads. And it doesn't seem to point towards this genuinely helping children. Now the fascinating thing about this debate Scott is all sides of this both sides at least say that it's about you know how we best care for children and kind of accuse the other side of child abuse. Both sides do that is child abuse not to allow some to have a kind of you know gender affirming care that includes puberty blockers and other kind of treatment. And then you and I and others would say wait a minute this actually is not best for children and harms them medically and the government should step in and stop this. So it's interesting to see that both sides think they're taking the side of children but for the UK which is obviously as a whole just more left than the US as a whole to go this direction makes me wonder how long many in the US can hold out and not follow where this data points.

Scott: Well what I think what's interesting about that too is that so far until the cases came before the Supreme Court that the trans activists have doubled down on full sort of full speed ahead on gender affirming treatments for minors. And actually some states actually prohibit schools and other organizations from informing parents if their child is good if their student is going through gender affirming treatments. So it seems like you know in Europe they're following more of the evidence and I think using a bit more common sense on this. Whereas in the US we seem to be doubling down on the very track that the UK and other countries in Scandinavia for example are rejecting.

Sean: And some of that's probably because of the pending lawsuits that could be coming. Now one other point behind this is I was trying to look at what's the evidence for and the evidence against in terms of how this is framed the health benefits or perceived benefits of puberty blockers. And the trans actual community that responds at least in this article their expert says banning medicines with no evidence of serious harm only for trans people is discrimination plain and simple. Evidence of the harm of the temporary ban continues to emerge and it will grow now that it has been made permanent. So there's questions of where does this evidence point? And one side seems to be saying unless you have clear cut evidence of its damage we should move forward and allow this practice to happen. The other side is saying wait a minute unless there's clear evidence that it benefits children we should not move forward with this practice. And to me given that it's a kind of medicine that prevents the natural development of children- so they do allow in this there are certain conditions where puberty will like be come abnormally early and have adverse effects on a child they're saying there might be some exceptions we allow this. But for gender dysphoria unless there's clear evidence that this helps a child we shouldn't do it which kind of favors a sense of we are made and built and develop in a certain fashion and we ought to favor our natural development and only use technology to upend that when there's clear cut proof that it is in our favor. That kind of thinking I would agree with and whether they admit it or not kind of points towards a built in design and purpose in teleology of human functioning that I think Christians can support. Any other thoughts on this before we move to crazy technology?

Scott: Just one. That actually- the way medical experimentation works doesn't support either of those options because medical experimentation first starts in animals and then goes to human beings but what they test for first is safety. In other words, what they test for is, does the experimental drug or procedure leave the patients worse off than the control group who got nothing? And then once it's presumed to be safe then they test for efficacy. Does it actually do what they say work? Do what the proponents say it's going to do? And both of those have to be satisfied before something will be introduced broadly to the public. So I would say both of those aspects are important and they both have to be a part of the evaluation.

Sean: Well said. We'll keep following this story and bring it back to you. This next one, I mean if you had showed me this when I was in high school Scott or even five years ago, I don't know if I would have believed it. I don't want to overstate things but my somewhat suspicion is that when I look back on my life and say what were some of the most significant moments of technology that emerged, this will certainly be in the top 25, maybe top 10, maybe more of how much game changing this might be. Of course that remains to be seen. So OpenAI releases this AI video generator called Sora, S-O-R-A and their website is Sora.com. I'd encourage people to get on there and look around and basically it says the program ingests or takes in written prompts and just on written prompts alone text creates digital videos up to 20 seconds. The creators of ChatGPT unveiled this past February and they've been releasing certain kind of videos they want us to see to the buildup of this week that officially was launched. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI said, “We don't want the world to just be text.” Which, whenever you have somebody creating new technology, especially with finances behind it, they're going to frame it in a positive fashion and give a vision and reason and motivation behind it. He does. Now they're also saying they want it to be at the forefront of creating the culture and rules surrounding AI and they've given some general rules about what they allow through this technology and we'll come back to that. They said quote, "We're introducing our video generation technology now to give society time to explore its possibilities and co-develop norms and safeguards so it's used responsibly." Which of course is very, very optimistic about human nature and how technology will be used. Now if you go to Sora.com, I tried to use this technology but it's been blocked already even though it was released not long ago, you have to have kind of a paid subscription to this which one indication is they launch it with such optimism, we see technology come out and then many times people backtrack and kind of go, "Oh, we didn't quite anticipate this." It happens frequently. But if you go to Sora.com, these videos are absolutely incredible. Now some are clearly just AI generated, like a lot of people try to blend fact and fiction together in a way that's just kind of non-chronological so to speak, like clearly fictional characters interacting in the real world or a polar bear with like a crocodile tail. Those are fictional. But then there's some images on here where we're at the point where at least with the naked eye, you cannot tell what is fact and what is fiction. We have hit the point where just through text alone, people can create these videos and it really genuinely blurs fact from fiction. The article goes on just to a couple things. Here's their rules. They say it's not available for people under 18. They're trying to block deep fakes and child abuse content. Content is blocked with nudity on it. This is what they're saying. Every video is stamped with the logo watermark on the bottom right. Now I've got a range of thoughts upon this, but I want to know just your ethical and biblical take of this new technology.

Scott: Well, Sean, I tried it too. I could not open an account and the prompt that I got back said that they basically had been just overwhelmed with people wanting to open accounts and they just can't accommodate them all. I wanted to actually try one and be able to post it with the intro to this particular episode. I've got two kids that are in the entertainment industry and another one that's in the music business. First of all, I was wondering when are they going to come for the musicians because they've already come for the actors and now they're coming for the directors and the producers. I think what this might eventually do to things like advertising, commercials, web videos for companies, even short films, I think this could really turn Hollywood upside down. The group that I think will be the first to be affected are the professional animators. Anytime you see the credits on a movie, the list of animators who work on these movies is staggering. I think these kinds of AI technologies, I could see them maybe not replacing but definitely supplementing the work what professional animators could do. The videos that I saw, I thought were pretty good, but a couple that I saw, they're not quite the same that what professional animators can do…

Sean: Sure.

Scott: …but this will no doubt improve. This is just the first shot at it. I could see what it's replacing almost immediately would be things like what producers call b-roll shots of a television show or an interview or a commercial where it's just background shots that don't require dialogue or any of the characters involved. I think ethically, all of this depends on the degree to which these restrictions and guardrails are enforceable. Based on the way chat GPT has been used to do all sorts of things that you and I would both consider unethical, I'm not holding my breath on the ability of the technology to stay ahead of the fallen creativity of human beings to be able to use this and to get around any kind of restrictions that are made. Making deep fakes, this could be the way you make porn videos at home. I'm just not super optimistic about that.

Sean: That makes sense and that reflects I think a biblical anthropology. I think you've said this before, Scott, that any technology, there's positive and there's negative. That's how as Christians we need to look at it. There's the positive use that can save time, of course, and a range of business efforts, but what's the negative that's going to arise from it? Now, I have one, kind of as I've been thinking about this biblically, I think you're right. The genie is out of the bottle. It's only so long that Open AI is going to be able to hang on to this and it's going to get in the hands of anybody for any purpose. This always happens. There are attempts to block pornography, child abuse, etc. It's going to be used for that. That's a fact. I don't know how that possibly can be avoided, but one kind of philosophical thought that came to my mind is I give a talk on Gen Z and one of the points that I make, kind of eight data points about Gen Z, of course, there's higher mental illness and suffering with this generation. I think they're the first digitally native generation and one of the things that I say is that I use a term blurry for this generation. Things that were once fixed have now become more and more blurry things. This is in part what technology does is that technology has broken down what is my public self versus my private self, my work versus home. My identity has become blurry. The nature of family has shifted over the past decade or two and a lot of this is because of technology. My question is, is this going to encourage clarity on what truth is or is it going to bring greater distinction and blurriness between fact and fiction? Even just with blogs and with YouTube and with Photoshop, we've moved towards the blurring of fact versus fiction. Now everybody has the tools. You don't even have to know how to use Photoshop. You just got to be able to type something out and makes a video that itself blurs fact and fiction in people's minds. Now with that said, you and I just did a review we haven't posted yet on Jordan Peterson's book "We Who Wrestle With God" and we'll post that in the next week or two. He goes through these biblical stories and he talks about the story of the Tower of Babel. He's a psychologist but offers some really interesting takes on this story. Here's one thing that he says, right to start off the chapter, this is chapter five. He says, "The Bible's first builders of cities, fabrications of musical instruments, and weapons of war. The individuals who pursue technological solutions are significantly the children of Cain." He said, "We read this directly in the text and it's true thematically. Insofar as the pursuit of technology engaged by these builders constitutes a substitute for proper ethical striving and a form of worship of the intellect." I couldn't help but think of the Tower of Babel as we're reading this. And what happens is you get this incredible confidence in technology to achieve God-like things. And in some ways, this technology is this way. We're in the hands of just a spoken word like God speaks reality into existence and then something is “created” in quotation marks, not really created. Now given so much confidence in technology, what does God do? He confuses their language. He confuses their language, which breaks down their ability to communicate with one another, breaks down and makes things more and more blurry so they can't communicate together. I look at this technology and I can't help but think it's blurring things and going to confuse our access of reality and have very significant implications. And so again, there's so much positive I think that can come from this technology. But the warning in Genesis chapter 11, that one came screaming out to me with this technology and even a huge reviewer online with 19 million YouTube subscribers, he said, "This technology is inspiring and it's horrifying." And I think he's right about that. Now I could keep going, but that biblical passage about putting too much confidence in technology early in Genesis, I think is one we ought to think about very profoundly with this new technology that's out.

Scott: Well, Sean, that's a really good insight, I think particularly relevant with the Tower of Babel story. I just have one more comment on this. We've talked in the past when we've talked about AI, we've made reference to the late Neil Postman who back in the 1980s wrote this, it's still one of the five best books I've ever read called “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”

Sean: That’s right.

Scott: Which was about television. This was before the internet, before AI. I can't imagine what he would say about something like this. I'm not sure he even would have categories to address this, but I think we've taken that ability to amuse ourselves to death. Maybe we've put that on steroids with the way AI has done. Now lots of positive things that can come out of this. I think what we're learning from ChatGPT and other initial AI applications is that the more it's tried, the more it's used, the clearer we get about profitable uses and uses we ought to avoid. The question I have is, do human beings have the level of virtue necessary to avoid the things we ought to avoid? Do parents, do tech companies, do they have the stomach to enforce the guardrails that everybody thinks is a good idea? I think the jury is still out on both of those things.

Scott: I think you're right about that. It does get back to virtue and character and how we use this technology. And yet you and I think we both agree that technology is not neutral in terms of how it affects us.

Scott: Not at all.

Sean: And that's a question I'll somewhat leave this question with people. How will a technology in which we can type things in and invent videos just with words shape us, our understanding to the self, our relationships with other people, our understanding of reality? That's a question worth sinking in. Before we jump to the next story, I want to read this point from Peterson to make sure it's not lost, is he's talking about what holds a society together is that there's common language and there's a shared understanding about what is real. There has to be something that unifies us. And he argues, this is a separate point, but I want people to see this interrelated. He actually watched this through in his book. He says, "We're even today debating on issues that have sex, like is male and female real or is this also something that's blurry and that distinction is broken down?" He says, "If there's anything that's most essential and built into the fabric of reality began in Genesis is male and female." And then he says this, he says, "The capacity to distinguish edible from inedible, up from down, day from night, death from life are vital for society. Nonetheless, sexual distinction is so basic that life itself seizes in its absence." So what further clear distinctions in the Bible between fact and fiction, human and animal, whatever it is, might be broken down with this technology? I don't want to be doomsdayer, but that's a question to ask and be aware of as this technology comes out, biblically speaking. Anything else on that, Scott, or you want to move on to this next crazy story as well?

Scott: (Laughing) Let's move on to the next one.

Sean: All right. So you sent me this one, which I think is also really interesting about designer babies that are now teenagers and according to this piece, need therapy. So here's some things from this article. It says, "For years now, aspiring parents have been designing their children." Now when they say designing their children, here's what they mean by it. So for example, screening embryos for disease through IVF. So that's not really manipulating a particular child, but weeding out certain children with the potential of disease from being born in the first place. That falls in the category of what they're calling designing. They said, let me see here, "Selecting their future baby sex, picking egg and sperm donors to influence their child's trait." So we've been doing this allegedly for decades. It says, "A lot of these designer babies are now kids or teenagers. And some families are discovering that as hard as you try, things don't always work out as planned. The kids feel like walking science experiments. The parents are disappointed in how their progeny turned out. Fertility businesses are selling better chance of domestic bliss and these families feel cheated." Now, a couple of other things in this that might help. Just so, they said, “In light of how many disappointed people there are, now controversial new technologies promise parents even more control over their embryos and what that might look like.” Now this psychologist based on the West Coast, interestingly enough, that Wired Magazine spoke to and remains anonymous, says, "I worked at an adolescent treatment center and I kept coming across teens who were in distress about the way they had been created. Their parents wanted a child who was musical or athletic or tall, so they found egg donors with the traits they wanted, created embryos with a husband's sperm and then implanted them, often in surrogates." Usually these couples didn't even have fertility issues, which I find really interesting, Scott. So for the past 10 to 15 years, this author has counseled about 10 to 15, 10 to 15 years, counseled dozens of families. And she said, "It's like, this is what our family is going to look like. We're going to pick a kid and this is how we're going to put it together. Mom’s going to be in charge of the whole thing. It's like a building project or putting furniture together." And then she points out, they said, "In Silicon Valley, there's many distant parents, usually fathers which is interesting and sad, who hardly know their children. Sometimes the mom and child don't bond either. There's a lot of men who are successful and want things a certain way. And what happens when they engineer their child?" She says, "It's disaster because these kids are created and it sends a message” according to her, “You're not good enough. You need to achieve, you're not accepted for who you are." Now the article goes on and on about different kinds of hurt that's arranged and confusion in families. Now with 23andMe, some of these people that have been generated can find their half siblings and some people that they're biologically related to. How does that relate to who you are and your family and Thanksgiving? It's like we have this massive mess now that some would say was unanticipated. What do you make of this, Scott?

Scott: Well Sean, I'm not super surprised at this. This comes from Wired Magazine, which I think has typically been a champion of a lot of these technologies.

Sean: Oh.

Scott: I think for them to have a note of skepticism about that is significant. I think for about the last 15 years or so, we've been able to do what I would call crude, unsophisticated ways of designing children. Choosing sperm and egg donors, that's a crap shoot at best because there is such a thing as recessive genes that can combine. If you have an egg donor and you use a husband's sperm, you may get an ideal egg donor and the husband's DNA could completely screw up what you paid so much money for. So none of these are super reliable. Microsort is a little bit better for choosing the sex of your child. That gives you about an 85% likelihood of getting the sex that you want. My first reaction to this is that this has the potential to keep these therapists in business for a long time because now with the technology of gene editing, this has the potential I think to go on steroids. Although to be fair, most countries in the West have serious restrictions on using gene editing for anything else than curing disease. Some of the technologies that are used to ensure that they have children without a genetic disease, as long as they're not sacrificing embryos along the way, I think are totally appropriate. Selecting the sex of your child, for example, if you are using that technology to do an end run around a sex-linked genetic disease, like hemophilia is sex-linked.

Sean: Gotcha.

Scott: I think that's totally appropriate, it seems to me, and part of the goals of medicine to correct some of the implications of the general entrance of sin into the world. Here, the technologies I think matter, but I think the better question I think is what are the expectations of parents that are driving so much money being spent on these designer options? That's where I think we have to really be careful because this is the child's life, not the parents.

Sean: That's right.

Scott: I think that's part of what it means when the scripture talks about children being a gift. Open-handedly, gratefully, and I think specifically, you accept gifts without specifications attached. I think to say, "Sean, I'm so grateful that you're going to buy a car for me, but this is exactly the car I want you to give me." You would say, "Well, that's undermining the idea of a gift." I know couples have wedding registries and kids have Christmas lists and things like that, but that's because we assume that parents and friends don't know exactly what we want or need, but God, the ultimate gift giver, is not like that. God knows exactly what we need. Putting specifications on gifts that we receive from God, I think, is almost presumptuous. I want to be really careful with that. The other moral principle that comes as a result of this, and I don't know any place where the scripture explicitly describes this, but we've talked about this before. In fact, Eric and I mentioned this a little bit last week. It's called the child's right to an open future, where the children have the right to flourish in the ways that God's created them to flourish. God's role is not to dictate how they will flourish specifically, but to give them the support and the tools that they need to flourish in the way that God's created them. Our youngest son is a theater guy. He's an actor. We learned early on that team sports was not going to be his thing. I remember the first time my wife took him to a theater class. It was like he'd come home. After he said, "Mom, thank you so much for bringing me here." We knew that this was something we were going to need to nurture and support. Had we tried to fit him into a mold that he wasn't wired for, that would have been disastrous. He would have been one of these kids needing therapy in the first place. The other part of this, as children being a gift that I think is getting lost in this, is that parents' unconditional acceptance of kids is the most important thing for their flourishing. There's no substitute for that. The way kids feel like being science experiments, being tailored to their parents' expectations, they come away feeling like their parents are saying, "I will love you and accept you once you meet all of my specifications." I get why kids need a therapist for that. I think what kids need to know is not only do their parents love them, but do they like them? That's really important. I know sometimes adolescents can be challenging going through teenage years because they're trying to figure out how to separate from their parents. Parents haven't done this before either. I think maybe just a newsflash for parents who have these kind of expectations for their kids, newsflash that you won't meet your own kids' expectations either. You're going to disappoint your kids from time to time. Even the best-intentioned parents are not going to be perfect on this. I think that what the scripture indicates is that parents have the obligation to always act in the best interest of their child, to allow them to flourish in the way God has made them. That's what's meant by a child's right to an open future. I want to put some restrictions on that because I don't want my son to grow up in a faith that's different than mine, if I can help it. There are certain things I want to preclude for my kids. But for the most part, I think the scripture supports that idea that parents' obligation is to enable kids to flourish in the way that God has created them. Sorry, I get a little charged up about that one.

Scott: No, you should. Since you opened the story with your son, let's play this out a little bit. What if he also found out, "Oh, my dad naturally loves basketball. You and I have talked about that and would have loved if I played hoops." But you learned to nurture him being in a play. You've told me just his love for that has opened up and unlocked amazing things for you and you get a joy seeing him succeed.

Scott: Never saw that coming.

Sean: Absolutely. That's one of the blessings of being a parent, right? It stretches us as well. What if you had just decided to use this technology and tried to somehow get a child who was taller to play in the NBA? That's a whole other level of saying to your son, "Oh, my goodness. You like play. We want to nurture this. Great. This is new for us." Versus, "Yeah, we did put in this technology. We really hoped that you'd be six foot 10, but we want to lean into your play anyways. I promise you we really mean it." You could never really take that back. It's literally built into his body that you had different expectations for him. That's something you cannot shake. That's why I think what they said in this article is so telling where this author says, "The child grows up feeling different knowing that they were an experiment, but not getting the proper support or acceptance they need to thrive because there's not a caregiver who's like, 'I get you. I understand you.'" The power of the Christian faith is we have a God who steps into human race and says, "I get you. I understand you." Well, if you're a parent and you have different expectations for your kid and work it into their bodies, can you really do that biblically speaking? No. There's a disappointment built into the process that's going to alienate that relationship. It's hard enough for parents. I think we all learn this. We have expectations for our kids. I want my kid to be A, B, and C. I think part of parenting is just shedding ourselves of that anyways, but you add using technology to manipulate your child. That is just adding on that difficulty and just paying for that child. She writes in here, she says, "In my work, I help parents accept this is the child that you have." Like you said- Yeah, go ahead.

Scott: That's not to say that parents aren't involved in moral and spiritual formation of their kids.

Sean: Exactly. That's right.

Scott: Obviously, parents have got to be involved in that. That's the stuff that has to do with character, not the kinds of expectations that this article is describing, that they want their kids to have this high IQ or be well-equipped for a specific type of career, that they're squeezing them into that mold as opposed to letting that be nurtured and develop. One other comment on this.

Sean: Yeah.

Scott: The article mentions that a lot of these kids who are born of these donor type of arrangements are seeking out their step siblings. That is a well-established practice. I would encourage our listeners to go on a site called the Donor Sibling Registry. Sean, there are thousands of kids in this registry. They're seeking their bio-parents mainly, but they're also finding that they are seeking out their step siblings. What they discovered is that the average kid who goes on the registry has 10 step siblings that they are searching for. Probably roughly half the kids probably will never make that connection with their bio-parent. They're looking for a relationship and it may be that the bio-parent has ... They probably donated sperm or eggs when they were college students. They've gone on, they've got their own ... They're married, they've got their own families, they're living their own lives. The idea of having a child with who they are genetically related enter their life when they've got their own family going on. It's not a big surprise that oftentimes the bio-parents are not open to having those kinds of relationships.

Sean: One quick thought on this. It is interesting how many of these kids want to find their siblings. In part, why? Because our origin story helps us understand who we are. Where did we come from? Why am I here? That's why my sister, when she was a student at 911������, she's my adopted sister, wanted to find at least her birth mom. That would help understand in part her personality and her story and where she's from. That's a human age. If they wanted to find the Old Testament, they would repeat things like Passover to remember what God had done. Of course, the ideal in the scripture is that a kid would come from a mom and dad who love each other and cherish them uniquely for who they are. That's God's design. The further we move away from that because we live in God's world, the more people get hurt. My heart goes out to these kids whose parents might say they had good intentions but failed to do what Katie Fowl said when we interviewed her recently, put them before us, which is exactly what love is. It's sacrificing ourself for the best of the others. Using this technology in 99% of the cases here to make a designer baby is not thinking about what's best for the baby. It's thinking about what's best for us, the opposite of what parents are supposed to do.

Scott: Shall we answer some questions here?

Sean: Yeah. Do you want to comment briefly on this story since we kind of at the front said it was coming? Give your quick thoughts on this.

Scott: Okay.

Sean: Let me sum this one up fast because Hal Lindsey is one of the most influential writers in the past few decades. She wrote late great planet Earth, my dad knew him and did a lot of speaking with him at crew for years. The discussion is over. We don't get lost in the weeds but pre-millennialism that Jesus comes back before the millennium, post-millennialism that Jesus comes after this thousand year reign. Those who are pre-millennial tend to say the world's not going to get better first. Jesus is going to come back and judge. And then we have peace. Post-millennials kind of had this more confident era that this peaceful reign is coming that we can work for towards social good and then Jesus will come after that. In this article in the LA Times, they argued the death of Hal Lindsey whose writings were just mega New York bestselling, had had this rapture coming to save us from how bad things would get on the world first caused a kind of mindset amongst evangelicalists shift from like the 19th to the 20th, now 21st century where we care less about social good and caring for people and just wanting to save their souls. That's how this goes. Now it is interesting separate note that in the past few weeks, both Tony Campolo and Hal Lindsey, two massive evangelical figures have passed away and Tony leaned into kind of this social gospel, how Lindsey had more of the pre-millennial kind of approach. Your take on this, I'm really curious.

Scott: Well just a couple things. I was a student at Dallas Seminary when Hal Lindsey was at his peak. And I took the same class that he took that he got all of that stuff from the late great planet earth from.

Sean: Oh interesting.

Scott: It was one class on eschatology. And I remember prophecy conferences were a thing.

Sean: Yes, they still are.

Scott: Well, not nearly like it is today.

Sean: I agree.

Scott: Like it was. But I think a couple things I think that this article misses that are important. One is I think that the social concerns of the late 1800s, early 1900s, I think largely were generated by theological shifts. They have nothing to do with post or pre-millennialism or the end times. They were brought about by what I would call theological liberalism. And the main reason social concerns took center stage is because many of the mainline denominations had begun to give up the essentials of the faith that made evangelism, that made actually made the person of Jesus worth following. And social concerns were basically all they had left of their mission that they were on originally. Now, the second item that I think is missed is that one thing that I was taught is that the church is a parenthesis in the story of God's kingdom. And the kingdom, of course, has a social and an individual component to it. And so if the kingdom is on hold during the church age, then the social concerns are sort of like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We ought to just pluck as many people off a sinking ship in terms of evangelism as we can. But I think when the kingdom was prophesied, it was both an individual and social component. Jesus inaugurated the kingdom when he came in his first coming. And I think we have responsibilities prior to his return when he will consummate his kingdom in all its fullness to give attention to both the individual and the social components. Both of those are a part of serving God's kingdom today. And I think more and more premillennialists are accepting that. Charles Colson, for example, started prison fellowship…

Sean: That’s right.

Scott: …for a lot more than just evangelism in the 1980s. And there are all sorts. Gary Haugen started the International Justice Mission. All sorts of evangelical, premillennial organizations that are serving the poor. Now it's not quite like the social gospel around the turn of the 20th century. But I think to say that the social concerns have disappeared, I don't think is quite accurate.

Sean: I think there's something to the fact that conservatives early in the 20th century maybe abandoned things like Hollywood, the university, media. We made things like camps a lot of that time, which I'm 100% for camps, but somewhat represents separating yourself from culture to find God, have spiritual renewal. There's something to be said for that. But I think the story that's told that evangelicals abandoned caring for the poor because of premillennialism, not sure I totally buy it.

Scott: I just don't think that's true.

Sean: I heard Greg Koukl, our friend from Stand to Reason was interviewed by US News and World Report a few years ago. And they asked him why this is the case. And he goes, "Look, I speak at evangelical churches and everywhere they go, they have some care for people who are in addiction, care for the poor. This is what churches do." And they didn't publish his comments. I mean, I think about my dad who works for Campus Crusade. I mean, that's an evangelist organization that cares about saving souls. And they went into Russia in the early 90s. I was in eighth grade in high school when the walls fell down. We brought in millions of copies of More Than a Carpenter. And also just, I don't even know how much humanitarian aid of food and shoes and clothing to care for material and for spiritual needs. So I think this story, although there's some truth to it, I think it's overstated to fit a certain narrative and doesn't match up. A lot more could be said, but we have some great questions here, Scott. Let's jump into some of these. And this first one I think is really interesting. This person writes in, it says a lot of positive things about the podcast, which is great, but says, "I'd like to challenge the way you speak about foster care." We summed up the comments. "Recently, you used the language that implies that the goal of foster care is adoption. And two, returning to birth parents is never in the children's best interest. You use the word unsafe. These attitudes are incorrect and harmful to children. The goal of foster care is reunification. Foster parents don't serve the children in their care, but they have an incredible opportunity to love and miss the birth parents as well. Done well, birth parents give the support they need and children to turn to their parents. Yes, foster parents absorb a lot of heartbreak because we have loved the children as if they were our own, but we know the goal is reunification." Now again, I summed up these comments, which we appreciate, but tell me your thoughts.

Scott: Well, this is the conversation that Erik Thoennes and I had last week on the weekly cultural update. And so I forwarded the email from this listener to Eric and asked him if he wanted to respond. And I think probably just reading his response, he gave me permission to do that, I think would be the best way to do this. He said, "Here are my quick thoughts. I agree with a lot of what he says. However, birth parents who lose their kids sometimes are seen in too negative a light and I realize the goal of foster care is reunification. But sometimes that goal is not what is best for the child, it gets in the way of the health and safety for the child. Having a baby does not necessarily make you a parent, being a parent does. I'm confident that both of my girls would have been sex trafficked and my boys would be dead if their birth families had not given up. I realized that God gives grace for what He calls us to do and God gave us the grace and the perspective to do the adoption and the fostering that they have done.” He goes on to put it like this, he said, "Living out the rescue of the gospel through earthly adoption is a pretty special thing. I would add that I know of many amazing relationships between adoptive parents and birth parents in open adoptions and also foster parents who stay in the child's life after reunification in wonderfully self-sacrificial ways. So much depends on each child and on his or her situation." We did not intend to apply that returning to the birth parents is never in the child's best interest. That's clearly not what we hold. The goal of foster care is reunification, but that sometimes the interests of the children need to take precedence over the genetic rights of the biological parents. I think that was the point that Erik was making and I agree with that. I think if we implied something different, maybe we weren't quite as clear as we could have been.

Scott: Fair enough. I think that's a helpful, gracious response. We appreciate the pushback and the listening. I think it was well received and that was a great response. One more question just really quickly to comment. This comes from somebody who leads a women's Bible study and studying Greek and Hebrew and says, "How do you go about studying the Bible when you want to learn the meaning of a passage to preach or teach on?" I preach at my local church quarterly and whatever passage they give me, typically I'll start reading that book in its entirety as a whole if I can, unless it's Psalms and it's 150 chapters. I'll read the book a few times to get the big picture and then I'll read the surrounding chapters a few times. This is over a few days leading into it. Then I read the particular passage over and over again. I look for the context. I look for what's repeated. I look for what's emphasized. My principle is if I don't understand something there, I look in the context of that book first before I go outside. I only use tools and Greek and Hebrew because I can't read it Greek and Hebrew in the original clearly enough. I'm not a scholar now, otherwise I would. But I'll use those tools after I've read it and tried to understand it myself first because words are equivocal. They can mean different things and it's often the context that helps reveal what it is. That's kind of my process as I work through things. Anything you'd add or tweak to that? That's really helpful, Sean. I think it puts it in a way that's practical and doable. I would add one thing that the goal of getting to the meaning of the passage is not what does this text mean to me.

Sean: Amen.

Scott: The goal is to discern what did this text mean to the original audience who was the recipient of it? What did the original author try to communicate to his original audience? What's the meaning of a passage? What it means to me is the application of it. And hopefully our application will be consistent with actually the meaning of the text. Well said. And I love Logos Bible Software, I use it pretty much daily. And my idea is I work from the big picture down to the particulars. I'll look at a few commentaries after I've assessed it myself. And then I will also use the Greek and Hebrew to try to nuance meanings maybe lost in English. But that usually comes after I've read and thought about something for a while. Scott good stuff, man. These are fascinating stories I did not see coming.

Scott: Me either.

Sean: But as always, really enjoyed. I'm looking forward to next week with you.

Scott: Hear, hear.

Sean: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, 911������ University. We've got master's programs online and in person in Old Testament, Church History, Marriage and Family, Apologetics, Philosophy, Ethics, and more. I know I missed some. Please keep your comments and questions coming. You can email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. We'd kindly ask you to consider giving us a rating on your podcast app. Each one really helps grow the reach to train more people to think biblically. Regardless, we appreciate you listening. And we'll see you Tuesday when our regular podcast episode airs in which we have an interesting conversation with a scholar of Dietrich Bonhoeffer about his life legacy and the new film about his life that's fascinating. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.