And I would say it's not a matter of belief. It's a matter of reality. Men cannot get pregnant. Whether you believe it or not. It's not a belief. There's something that's real.
Hi, friends, welcome back to another episode, or if this is your first time joining us, welcome to Ideas Have Consequences. On this podcast we talk about how as Christians our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. But our mission also includes transforming the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of our mission and today, Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Well, welcome again to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm Scott Allen, president of the Disciple Nations Alliance, along with my good friends, Darrow Miller, Tim Williams, and Luke Allen. And we've got a great episode here for you today. We're going to be talking about a video clip that went viral here, I think it was about two weeks ago, it was an exchange between Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, and a professor from Berkeley University. And they were discussing the issue of male and female and pregnancy and really the transgender ideology, if you will. And to me, as I watched that clip, I was really struck—I'm sure many people were struck, and I'm sure many of you who are listening have seen that clip—we're struck by just the amount of worldview assumptions that were kind of unstated, but laid the foundation for that discussion. Very different worldviews between the professor and and Senator Hawley. But I wanted to kind of try to lay bare, with my friends here, some of those assumptions. What what was unsaid that led to them saying the things that they said, try to understand their worldviews. And then where did they go? What are the consequences of those worldviews. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, trying to understand what's happening in our culture around this issue, right now.
Before we get into that, though, I do want to just do a quick announcement that we do at the Disciple Nations Alliance have every two years, a really special family time together. It's called the Global Forum. And we haven't had one of these gatherings of the DNA family since before the COVID pandemic. And so we're really excited to be able to get back together in person, this October in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a gathering for people who have been part of the DNA family in the sense that they've gone through our trainings and they have deeply adopted the teachings and are out there sharing those teachings or working to develop those teachings in and through their ministry in various creative ways. It's an opportunity for us just to get together, to learn from one another, to encourage each other, and really listen to the Lord together about what he has for us as a global movement in this particular season and time. Really special that we're getting back together again in Africa, it's been several years since we've been on the continent of Africa. Wonderful place. We do try to go around the world to make it easy for people from different parts of the globe to attend. And so we're excited, really excited about being back in Africa. Luke, do you want to share any more about how people maybe can know who's invited and how people can learn more about this?
Yeah, definitely. Well, actually, Tim, you have the right there. There'll be a link down in the description for this episode, to get to this page that Tim is about to mention. So if you guys want you can go check that out right now, right below this episode. But yeah, Tim, where is that on the website?
Sure, if anyone would visit disciplenations.org. There's a banner at the very top of the page that links them to a landing page that will share all about the Global Forum. I'm really excited about it. Of course, you know, the theme this year is foundational principles for the flourishing of nations. And it's always a thrill to hear from people all around the world who come together and just give testimony as to how they have taken this biblical worldview content and seen transformation in their communities. And so I'm excited to be there this October.
Great. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Luke. If we're ready, let's go ahead and get into our topic today. We're going to be doing a bit of a worldview analysis of a clip that I thought really captured the heart of this discussion. And it's deeper than transgenderism. We're really talking about two very different views of reality, although they show up on this issue of male and female and transgenderism. And I want to get to the deeper issues. But let's start with the clip. If we could, Luke, can you play that? We'll discuss that clip and then we'll get into our discussion.
Professor Bridges, you said several times, you've used a phrase, I want to make sure I understand what you mean by it. You've referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy... would that be women?
Many women, cis women, have the capacity for pregnancy. Many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as non binary people who are capable of pregnancy.
So this isn't really a women's rights issue. It's...
We can recognize that this impacts women while also recognizing that it impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.
Oh, so your view is, is that the core of this, this right then is about what?
So I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic. And it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing that,
Oh, you're saying that I'm opening up people to violence by asking whether or not women are the folks who are can have pregnancies.
I want to note that one out of five transgender persons have attempted suicide. So I think it's important
Because of my line of questioning? We can't talk about it?
Because denying that trans people exist and pretending not to know that they exist.
I'm denying that trans people exist by asking you—
Are you? Are you?
—if you are talking about woman having pregnancies?
You believe that men can get pregnant?
No, I don't think
So you are denying that trans people exist.
And that leads to violence. Is this how you run your classroom? Are students allowed to question you? Or are they also treated like this, where they're opening up people to violence.
We have a good time in my class, you should join. You might learn a lot.
Well, I would learn a lot. I've learned a lot in this exchange. Extraordinary.
All right, guys, I thought that was such a fascinating exchange when I watched that. And I'd like to hear your first reactions to that. But when I first saw that clip, you know, it reminded me of other times in my life where I've seen people that have... they're having a discussion about a particular topic, but they've got a lot of assumptions behind what they're saying that are unstated, that give rise to the way that they're seeing the world and the way they're talking about the world. But they're trying to have a discussion with each other without laying those assumptions on the table. And so it just leads to this kind of like—it's almost like they just can't talk to each other. They talk past each other. And I thought it would be just helpful to, again, I'd love to hear your thoughts or reactions to that clip, but just to kind of tease out what are these assumptions that are leading to this heated exchange on the topic of can a man get pregnant? I guess that's the key question here. That they're exploring. She says yes, he says no. But just any quick first reactions, as you saw that, what are your thoughts?
Well, really quick reaction for me is—well, first off, I'm just glad we're having this discussion today. Because I know, for myself and you guys alike, when you hear something like that, a lot of times our reaction is, that's crazy. You know, she asks, well, can a man give birth? And then you know, blah, blah, blah, immediately when you hear a question like that, you want to just brush it off and be like, I could totally win this debate or so forth. And then you move along. But that's not the reality that a lot of people are living in. And it's their worldview, it's the way they see the world and everything in it, and it's the lens through which they make decisions in life. So it's not something that I think we should brush off and we should take this seriously and be very caring and careful about how we approach something like this.
I've listened to it a few times now and I think probably my first reaction the first time that I heard it had to do with this idea of frustration that I feel like we can't have honest conversations anymore. The professor represented a law instructor from Berkeley. And it just bothers me—I'm somebody that I think we're gonna get at truth when we ask honest questions, and when we have honest discussion and dialogue, and I feel like we're increasingly losing that opportunity in our higher education institutions. And so that bothers me and concerns me. By nature, I'm not a confrontational person. But I want to get at truth. And I believe at the bottom of all of it, that truth is what is going to help somebody who is struggling so much that they're considering suicide, not living in a reality that doesn't match their physical existence.
Thanks, Tim. Darrow, what about you? What are your first thoughts as you listen to that?
A couple just jumped off. One is, everybody has a right to their own assumptions. So we can't deny a person their assumptions, we have to let them begin with their own assumptions. And at the same time, we should ask them to examine or expose those assumptions so that we know what is driving their conversation. So that was one of the first things. The second thing was, for years, I've used a series of words that take us from ideas to consequences. And these are four words all beginning with the letter P. Practice, Policy, Principle, and Paradigm. And most of the time our discussions are taking place around practice and public policy, or medical policy or some policy level. But we seldom go back and ask the question, what are the principles that are enlivening these policies in this practice? And what's the paradigm behind the principles? So Hawley and this Berkeley professor were largely talking about practice. The practice, as it were, of pregnancy. Can a man be pregnant? Can a woman be pregnant? And they were having that discussion. And of course, we in the United States and other nations around the world today, we are changing definitions of marriage, of what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, on a policy level in governments all over the world. So yes, people are creating laws now that say men can be pregnant. But who's asking what is the principle that's behind that idea and what is the paradigm behind that idea? And I think that's the level at which we need to begin to have the discussion. So this Berkeley professor, yes, she has a right to her assumptions. But we need to explore those assumptions publicly. And then we need to ask where will those ideas lead? What are the consequences of those ideas? What will they produce in society? And is that the kind of society we want to live in?
Yeah, you had very similar reaction, Tim, to that, that I did as well. Darrow and I kind of left feeling like, Oh, I wish that Senator Hawley had probed deeper on her assumptions with his questioning, but he didn't. He kept it as you say, at the level of, maybe policy or practice, but didn't probe on the assumptions. So that's what I'd like to do here a little bit is to drill down on some of those assumptions and see if we can understand the way that that she and he both are seeing the world. They clearly have very different ways of seeing the world. They've got very different worldview assumptions. To me the key clip, the key part of that discussion happens when the professor says to Senator Hawley, "So you don't believe that men can get pregnant." And Senator Holly says, "No, I don't believe men can get pregnant." She responds by saying, "So you are denying that trans people exist." And there's so many assumptions behind what she's saying. To me, this is the way I would articulate that, that if a woman believes that she is a man, then she can publicly declare herself to be a man. And that public declaration, that belief that she has and the public declaration of that makes her a man. That's what I hear her saying, that then she becomes a man. And we know that she's thinking that because she goes on, and this is what she was saying in so many words, that's why men can get pregnant. Right? Because she now is a man and men can get pregnant.
I would want to jump in here for a moment, Scott. Yeah, Hawley said, "I believe." And I would say it's not a matter of belief. It's a matter of reality. Men cannot get pregnant, whether you believe it or not. So this Berkeley professor and people like her believe that men can be pregnant. It's not a belief. There's something that's real. Men are incapable of getting pregnant. And we need to say it categorically. And we need to not couch it as, "Well, my belief is that they can get pregnant." "My belief is they can't get pregnant." Because then it's a matter of belief and you're out of the realm of reality.
Hi, friends, I just wanted to highlight one particular resource today that can assist you in further study of this topic if you'd like to go deeper after this episode. And that is our newest free online training course called "The Grand Design, Rediscovering Male and Female," which is a seven lesson video course that lays out God's beautiful framework for men, women, and families, one that leads to joy and flourishing. To learn more about this course, visit this episode's landing page, which is linked down in the description below. If you enjoy listening to Ideas Have Consequences and want to help us share it, please consider sending your favorite episode to a friend. And while you're at it, go ahead and leave us a rating and review on Apple podcast or wherever you're listening.
And you're getting right to the core of the worldview heart of this discussion, Darrow, and this is really where I wanted to go, which is—the way you just articulated that, Darrow, you're speaking very much from the biblical worldview. Which is, God exists, God created the world, and therefore the world has an objective reality to it. That isn't open for us changing it based on our subjective beliefs about it. I mean, it's got an objective reality to it. There's an objective reality to the world. There's an objective moral reality because God also declared a moral law, the 10 commandments, and so these things aren't open to our interpretation. She's not starting from that standpoint, though. She never talks about the fact that she denies that there's a God that exists, but it seems very clear that to get to where she is, you have to start from the fact that there isn't a God out there that created things. That we live in a godless universe or world and therefore, we, human beings are free to establish what is real, what is true, right? Because that's what she's doing here, it seems to me.
So let me go back to her clip. If a woman believes she's a man, and that she's assuming that there is no objective reality to these things, that there's no created reality to these things, that she then gets to decide, or the person gets to decide, whether they're a male or a female or whatever. So therefore men can get pregnant. Basically there's isn't an objective reality to male and female beyond a subjective belief. And then Josh Hawley, he's basically countering that by saying, "No, there is an objective reality. Men cannot get pregnant." This seems to me, this different understanding of reality and truth seem to be at the at the worldview root of this discussion. And again, is this is what wasn't discussed in that exchange. And I wanted to get into that a little bit to me. What makes this clip kind of interesting is it's a picture a window into what post modernism looks like when it's brought into the level of policy and practice, but she's starting with this postmodern set of assumptions.
But let me expand on this Scott... Beginning with God, beginning with a theistic assumption that God exists, as you've said, he has created a universe that exists, that's an objective universe. It's real, it's reality. And he has provided a moral universe. There is a moral code that is derived from his character. These things are objective. And when you begin as a theist recognizing God's existence, you recognize there is an objective reality. There is an objective moral code. There is a particular human anthropology. We are made in the image of God. God declares that. This is who we are. That is objectively true.
And that includes male and female, right? That's sort of his objective created order. He created exactly right, male and female, and you're one or the other.
Yeah. Now, if you begin there, with these things, based on God's existence, then there are certain things that follow in terms of principles. One of the principles is the dignity of human life. That's an inherent principle from this worldview, that should be translated into governmental policies. In other words, the right to life should be translated into governmental policies and that should be translated into behavior in the society, the way we live out our lives. But if you begin as this woman does and as all atheist do, by assuming there is no God, they also, in the postmodern world, assume that reason does not exist. Objective reality does not exist. And now, what is a human being? Who am I? And I could be born with a certain package and declare myself to be a woman, or be born with a different package and still declare myself a man.
You're talking about a set of genitals and things like this, Darrow, is that what you're talking about? When you say package?
Yeah. Package. It's the package.
Gotcha. Okay.
I remember when my daughter was born, I delivered her with the doctor standing in back of me, he was telling me what to do. But he allowed me to deliver her. But I was so convinced this baby was going to be a boy, that when she came out of the womb, and I held her up, and I proudly said, "It's a boy." And the nurse looked at said, "Well, if it's a boy, she doesn't have the right equipment." I looked again, and I saw she didn't have the right equipment. So that's what we're talking about, the package.
And that's the objective reality that we're talking about too, that's God given. And we don't have the right to assert that it's other than what it is.
That's right. But this Berkeley professor was saying, "No. It's what you think you are, not what you are."
Exactly Darrow. That's the deepest level of the worldview that she's operating from. Reality is a construction of the human mind. It's what you think, regardless of what you said, your packages or your genitals or anything else. Would you agree with me? I mean, that's really her basic starting point, reality is what you say it is.
And notice what she said, back to Josh Hawley. She said, "You mean, you think a man cannot get pregnant?" And he said, "Yes, I believe a man cannot get pregnant." And then she said, "You are transphobic."
Transphobic, right. Yeah. You're denying the reality.
You're denying the reality of the transgender, and that is hateful. And just to deny it is violent speech.
That's right. That's the consequence of her belief system. Right? That's where it goes.
The consequence of her belief system? There's not a level playing field where we can say—where we can reason together about what is real. No, it's just becomes a power thing. Oh, you're being violent.
I want to talk a little bit about that, Darrow, I think you're touching on something really important there. From a biblical worldview, which is true. There is a God and he did create the world. And he created male and female. But when you start with the biblical view, you start with the idea that truth exists. It's an objective thing. And we don't create it. We don't create it in our minds. Rather, we discover it. And it's outside of us. It's separate from us, and we discover it. And if that's the case, well then how do you discover it? You discover it through, well, there's lots of ways. Through science and reason and debate and discussion. But we can work together collectively, to discuss and to discover the truth.
Now, if your starting point is different, and if truth isn't out there to be discovered, but rather, it's something that—as the woman believes here, clearly—it's something that you create. Not discover, you create it based on what you say, what you believe. That creates a different kind of dynamic, right? Because then the question is, well, what if we have different beliefs about what's true, right? Who in a society, who gets to say what's true? Right? Well, then we can't discuss or debate. It kind of devolves into power plays, right?
It's the power struggle.
It's a power struggle, right. Yeah. And that's where I see her going with her comments like, Okay, if you deny my truth, you are a bigot. You're violent and a bigot. And what that goes to next, Tim, is you need to be shut up. Because that's that's what's happening in our society, right now. In her worldview, people who won't affirm my truth need to be shut up. They need to be censored, silenced, etc. Tim, at the beginning of our discussion. You said, I just want to get at the truth and I want to have open discussion. Well, even you're wanting that is coming out of a biblical worldview, right? Yeah. Where truth is something that we can collectively discover and debate and discuss. But she's not starting from that standpoint. She's saying, No, I determined the truth or you determine the truth. And you have a positive responsibility to affirm my truth. Right? That's kind of where she was coming from. So there isn't really a place in that for discussion or debate. Yeah,
I've always found it interesting, this concept of tolerance, which probably we could look at, I don't know, the definition 20 years ago, 10 years ago, today. But it used to be, tolerance was everybody had an opportunity to speak as we sought out what was reasonable. And I think today, tolerance, when we use that word, it has transformed into every one can speak, unless they are Christian, whites, malem upper class. And we keep adding the labels on. Cis, you know, whatever it may be, there's no tolerance for this claim that there is objective truth, or that even everybody should come to the table anymore.
Yeah, I think that's key. The new tolerance is you tolerate every idea. You even tolerate evil. But the one thing you can't tolerate is an objective truth, or an objective moral framework. So anyone who speaks from that position of objective truth, or objective moral framework is intolerant, and cannot have a place at the table. And they need to be shut up.
Let me, guys, as we're on this part of our discussion, I want to read to you a quote that has meant a lot to me. It's really clarified things for me, related to this kind of discussion. This is a quote from George Orwell's famous book "1984." This is a book about totalitarianism and in that book, Orwell puts forward the party, this powerful group of oligarchs that are trying to control society. And they're trying to control society by controlling what is real, what is true. The hero of the book is this man named Winston, who is starting to feel like he's being manipulated. And he's on a quest for the truth. He's starting to question this party line, right? The line of the powerful people, and that makes him a threat to what they're trying to accomplish. And so they essentially put him in prison, they torture him to try to coerce him into believing in the party line here—not believing in it, but assenting to it. And there's this exchange that happens during this torture, for people that have read this book, that's really powerful. Let me read it to you. This is the torturer, the representative of the party, speaking to Winston in this exchange, he says, "But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else." So just pause there for a second, he's saying exactly what this woman believes. There isn't an external reality out there. It's only in the human mind. It's nowhere else. But then he goes on and he says, "But it's not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes. It is only in the mind of the party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the party holds to be the truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except through the eyes of the party. That is the fact that you have got to learn. You've got to relearn, Winston." And I share that because this idea is unworkable, right? The the woman is saying, there isn't an objective reality out there. There isn't an objective reality to male and female. You create reality. So if you are a woman, and you believe your reality is that you're a man, you can assert that reality. And that makes it true. You are now a man and men can get pregnant. But the problem with that view is that we all are then creative, raw, empowered to be creators of reality. Right? And what happens when my view of reality clashes with your view of reality? Like who gets to say what's true? This is what Orwell is probing in his book by saying, ultimately, it's the powerful, right? If you go with that assumption, it's going to be those that have power that are going to basically determine what's true, then you got to get in line with that. And that's where this woman was going. Right?
They are not determining what's true.
Yeah, let me say small "t" true. Okay, it has to be a small "t" true.
What they're determining is who has the most power?
Exactly. It's how it's all powered.
Exactly. Power. It's not about large "T" Truth.
Right. Because that doesn't exist except in the human mind.
If I could just address the elephant in the room real quick. A lot of you guys listening have probably watched the recent documentary, what is a woman? And a lot of what we're talking about so far in this discussion, sounds very similar to things that were covered in that documentary. I just watched it yesterday, twice. Well made, I really enjoyed it. I do think it's a great starting point for this discussion, but they didn't have enough time in that to really delve into the worldview like we're trying to do today. But if you want to go watch that as an introductory to this discussion, yeah, highly recommend. But it does, in the four P's of culture that Mr. Miller, you mentioned earlier on in the episode, where an idea starts as as a paradigm, and then it goes to a principle, and then a policy, and then a practice, in that in that film, they're mostly talking about the policy and the practice level of things. Whereas today, we want to go all the way back to the paradigm, and then talk about the consequences. One thing that they mentioned in that was just the whole discussion around sex and gender, as if those are two different things. In the simple definition that I've found for gender, today, the most popular definition is, "The sense of self. Of who one is in the world that we live in. It is who you are inside." And that's exactly going off of Orwell here, the same worldview, who you are inside and who you decide reality is to you is what is actually lowercase true. So then when someone pushes against that, they're shaking the very reality that you stand on. And that's why this can be such a difficult discussion, because we're talking about identity here. This discussion is people trying to push against God's framework for reality. So in a way, it's a sin. Just like saying an alcoholic is a sinner or that it is a sin to be an alcoholic. But you don't hear an alcoholic walking around saying, Oh, my identity is I'm an alcoholic. So then when you question that, you're questioning their entire identity. No one labels himself that. But with this discussion, I am a blah, blah, blah. So it makes it makes it a stickier discussion.
Let me take a... Go ahead, Darrow.
I just think recently, and some of the listeners to the podcast will remember this, we just had the confirmation of a new US Supreme Court justice. And during the confirmation hearing, she was speaking about the same way this Berkeley Law professor was, because this is how postmodern lawyers think and postmodern people think. And she was asked, during the course of her testimony before the Senate committee, for her to define a woman. "How would you define a woman," and she said, "I can't. I'm not a biologist. I can't define a woman." Well, she was a woman. And she was a wife and the mother of three children? How can someone who is smart enough to be in the Supreme Court of the United States not know that she herself is a woman? How can that be? Because it's ideological. Biology says she's a woman. You look at her body, you do her genetics, you see the babies that have come from her body. She's a woman. That's reality. But she cannot say that. And she cannot define what a woman is. Because of her postmodern woke ideology.
I think it might be helpful, Darrow and team, to go back and just look at some of these... We're talking about people that are operating consistently, and really, I think authentically out of a set of postmodern assumptions, and they may not even know where these ideas came from. But they've grown up with them, they've shaped the way they see reality. And now they're trying to live in a way that's consistent with this postmodern view of of reality, and I thought it might be kind of helpful if I just go do just a really quick little tutorial by going back. We talked about ideas having consequences, that's the name of this podcast, but ideas also have antecedents. In other words, they come from somewhere, right? There's a history to them. And I wouldn't mind just doing a quick little history of the postmodern view of reality that these people are living in and trying to function in.
First of all, these aren't new ideas. They go all the way back to the enlightenment during the late 1700s, early 1800s, Europe and the United States. You could think for example of a philosopher such as Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, very famous. Nancy Pearcey, speaking about Kant, said this "Kant's innovation was to suggest that the mind does not merely reflect the structure of the world, but instead, it actively imposes a structure or an order on to the world." In other words, for Kant, reality is largely a construction of the human mind. So Kant, all the way back in the late 1700s, early 1800s, was beginning to think about what is a world apart from God? Well, it's largely a construction of the human mind.
That takes you then to the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and one of his most famous quotes the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, "There are no facts, there are only interpretations." So these are the people that set the predicate for this worldview of post modernism, where there isn't an objective reality that we can know. Rather, it's our minds that impose order upon reality. Iif I had to define postmodernism in one sentence, it would be something like this, there are no publicly authoritative facts or truths that transcend groups or cultures. There's only perspective. There's only interpretations. There's only your truth or my truth. I'm talking small "t" truth here. There's no longer the Truth, capital "T" Truth, objective Truth. Postmodernism, if I had to go on, I would say it's a rejection of capital "T" truth beyond the individual mind. There's no God. There's no transcendent source of meaning or purpose or morality. There's no single story. The transforming story that you talk about, Darrow, there's no transforming story. There's only countless stories or narratives. And then here's the key thing, truth is not discovered in this worldview. Truth is created. And Nancy Pearcey, again talking about this worldview, she says postmodernism, what it does is it deifies the mind. The mind is granted godlike creative powers. And then she goes on, this is Nancy Pearcey. I find these quotes very helpful. She says, truth has been redefined as a social construction. So that every community has its own truth based on its own perspective. And then Pearcey goes on and says and that cannot be judged by anyone outside the community if there's no objective or universal truth, then any claim to have such a truth, a universal or objective capital "T" truth will be treated as nothing more than an attempt by one community to impose its own limited perspective on everyone else. In other words, it will be an act of oppression. It'll be a power grab.
One more quote, because I think this one really gets us to the present. This is from John Zmirak. He's an essayist, that writes at The Stream. And I really love this, he says, this postmodernism, he's talking about here, he says, "We have embarked on a strange and perilous project to transform ourselves into entirely new creatures, not bound by the rules of mortal or biological life, or by the God who created us. We have no gender but that which we choose. No morals but those which we embrace. No debt that we owe to the future in repayment for all the gifts we received from the past. Our choices are sacrosanct, they are beyond any criticism." That's postmodernism, I think, in a nutshell. Andthat's the worldview that this Berkeley professor is operating from. Again, whether she's aware of that or not, she's assuming that that's true. That is the world that she sees. Josh Hawley is not. He's assuming the older biblical idea that truth isn't something you create. You can't just assert that you're a man and be a man. There's an objective reality to being a man and a woman and you don't have a right to assert that and make that true. So that's the deeper worldview discussion that seems like they're having. Go ahead Darrow. And then I'd like to hear your thoughts on just my little exposay on post modernism there. But I'd like to talk about the consequences too, of these worldviews and where they go and why it matters. Why they're quite serious.
Sorry, could I cut you off right there. When you're talking about the history of postmodernism, and how we've got this place, I thought it was interesting. The documentary again, I'm bringing it back to that, they mentioned two, one was a biologist, one was a psychologist, in the mid 1900s, Alfred Kinsey and John Money, both of these guys took these ideas of Kant and Nietzsche. And they, they brought them from that principle level and, or a paradigm level and put them a lot more into the principal and the practice level. John Money, actually, in the thinkers in the 1950s, coined the terms of gender identity and gender roles. And he did a bunch of studies on babies and so forth, you know, claiming that they didn't have a gender and it was a society that put that label upon them. I think that's so interesting, because those words were invented less than 100 years ago, coined less than 100 years ago.
It was really new. That's right, totally.
So when we bring the discussion today, and people form their worldviews off of this identity of gender, I think it's important to realize how new that idea is. Yes, you need for a lie or worldview to work, you need some truth for it to be based off of. The true fact is that sex and biological sex is binary, there's only two. It's always been that way. But now, guys like John Money like to take this different path and say, "Well, there's gender, though." And gender, again, is a sense of self, of who one is in the world that we live in.
That you determine.
That you determine. However, there is a little bit of an area to grasp there. Because Jordan Peterson actually in the documentary points this out. We shouldn't use the word gender, we should use the word temperament and personality. Temperament and personality cross the binary sexual divide. You can have more feminized boys and more masculine girls. Now people are using the word gender to explain personality. So when they have this inner confusion of who am I? They say, Oh, well, it's my gender dysphoria. No, that's you trying to decide your personality and your temperament. So I think it's so interesting, if we were going to take gender out of this entire discussion, and put the word temperament or personality in there it would make a lot more sense. And also, no wonder kids are having a hard time with this stuff. It's a confusing time of life to understand your personality and who you are. So yeah, John Money made a huge step, I think, in the history of postmodern. A sad step. But we need to recognize how recent that is and how many people just kind of jumped on that ship without even recognizing where it started or where it came from.
Just quickly, I want to hear from Darrow. But just quickly to your how recent this is, Luke. Darrow you were talking about the birth of one of your children, and how excited you were that they be a boy. And the nurse said, no, they're not a boy, it's a girl, because of her genitals, right? And that wasn't that long ago, right? That I mean it in the big sweep of things. But now, if you go into many of these birthing rooms, they won't make a proclamation about it's a boy or a girl, even regardless of the genitals, because what they'll say is, we've got to wait and see what that person declares themselves to be later, wholly apart from the genitals, right? They're empowered. that individual is empowered to determine this, as of wholly apart from their bodily makeup. So that's pretty new. Darrow, go ahead. You were gonna say something earlier.
Well, you triggered me, Luke, with the word, the "gender" word.
You're triggered? I'm sorry. [laughs]
That's where my conversations coming from now, as you use the word, "I'm sorry." We have to be careful what words we use. Because if we accept the words that our postmodern culture is putting out, yeah, if we accept those words as valid, and we use those words, then we are affirming not only the concept, but the worldview behind the concept. And this is something that is great as Christians we should be careful of. We should always choose to use words that are Biblical words and words that come from reality, and not succumb to the temptation, in order to be nice to use the words of postmodernism.
Yeah, Darrow, just quickly on that too, back... Go ahead. I'm sorry.
To just talk about transgenderism is to affirm that the concept exists? And at what point do we not do that? And when someone like this judge, says she doesn't know how to define woman. We need to state clearly at that point, you are a woman. We need to reinforce reality and use words that are Biblical words and words of reality, rather than words of illusion.
Yes, absolutely. And I'm not denying that the word gender exists. That word existed before John Money in the 1950s. But it was mostly—actually I think it was entirely in the realm of linguistics, it was for masculine or feminine words, like in French or Spanish. A lot of other languages have masculine/feminine words. That's where the word gender resided, and it was pulled out and extremely popularized. And now use to just describe whatever you want it to be. However, people still use the word gender to describe two Biblical words, male and female. And yet, they can't even define those anymore. Because they're using their post modernism to describe something that's actually objectively true. And what you're gonna get there's is a conflict of interests and a lot of times just circular arguments where you define your words using your same words and things like that.
Or, when you move away from the word sex to the word gender. Gender is a word that can be structured socially, however you want it to be. Sex has a biological meaning. And so again, what word or words do we use?
Darrow to your point about speaking the truth, though, I thought it's interesting to go back to the exchange here, between the Senator Hawley and the professor from Berkeley, because she went on and she said, "You need to affirm, it's important that we affirm people's subjective beliefs about their truth. And that if you don't do that, then you're essentially a hateful and a bigoted person who's engaging in violence." And she referenced the fact that many transgender people, I think she said, one out of five transgender people have attempted suicide, which I think it's probably true. I don't know the exact statistics.
That is not the fault of people who believe in objective reality.
Yeah, so in fact, we would look at that reality of one in one out of five transgendered people attempting suicide, and we, who believe in objective reality would say, that's a very tragic thing and the reason that's happening, likely, it's that idea that you don't break God's law, you break yourself against it, so to speak. In other words, if you try to become something that you're objectively not, you're only going to harm yourself. You're just going to have this internal struggle with that and it's going to make you miserable. Whereas she was saying, "No, this high rate of suicide and the fact that people are miserable, it's because they're not being positively affirmed by other people." But my point is that, it's a tactic that she's using, it's a power tactic. You have to affirm me or you're a bigot. And I just fear that a lot of Christians fall for that by going, "Oh, okay. I want to be nice, and I don't want to offend you. So, yeah, I don't believe what you believe. But I'll affirm that." In other words, they're being manipulated into speaking lies. This is your point, Darrow, that we just can't allow ourselves to do that, because it's dangerous to do that. Lies have consequences. They're destructive. And this is where I want to go, I want to look at consequences as we wrap this up, because that, you know, we've been talking kind of philosophically but these ideas give rise to a real world that we're experiencing around us right now that's quite destructive. And I want us to kind of get to that level here.
Let me say something else before we go there, Scott.
Yeah, go ahead.
What the Berkeley lawyer was saying is that you're not affirming. That means you're hateful.
You're hateful. That's right. You're evil. They're evil. It's a definition of good and evil there basically, yeah.
As Christians, we understand that all human beings are made in the image of God. And every human being is unique. We affirm two things. So we can affirm the dignity of every human being. We should not come across as being hateful of people who are different than us. We can affirm people who see themselves subjectively as female, if they're a male, we can affirm them—not in how they see themselves, but in their dignity as a human being. And I think we need to be conscious of that because when a woman like this Berkeley lawyer speaks, I'm not doing that. I can affirm these people, because they're made in the image of God. And we should consciously think that way and consciously do that.
So we have to affirm them as human beings created in God's image, who God loves and has died to redeem. But that doesn't extend to affirming their ideas if they're not true, okay. And this is where I think a lot of Christians get confused. Yeah. And why? Because those ideas have consequences and they can be very deadly consequences. And then again, I want to get there.
But just one last thing about lies Darrow, I'm very fond of this famous quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was living at a time when there was a lot of lies that were in his culture, the Soviet Union, and a lot of pressure to affirm the lies. And he said this, "Let the lie come into the world. Let it even triumph, but not through me." Okay. The simple step of a courageous individual is never to take part in a lie. And I just thought that's what you're saying here, Darrow. I'm not going to affirm this, and I'm not going to affirm it because I love people. And because I see that exact nature of lies.
Exactly.
And so let's talk about that. One of the consequences, and there's many—but let's put ourselves back into the shoes of the professor from Berkeley, if I am a woman, and I declare myself to be a man, I am a man. You not only have a positive right to affirm that, but I have a right to do whatever I want to become a man in terms of surgical procedures. And we're seeing that, like literally, we're seeing society say, we have to pay for and allow these people to have their breasts removed, or to have a chemical castration, even if they're very young, because they have a right to be whatever they want to be. We have to affirm that all the way up to the point of paying for them to have their bodies surgically destroyed in many respects. So I look at that and I go, this is just horrible. It's just horribly destructive. But the society based on that set of worldview assumptions is saying, Yeah, you have to do that. We have to do that, at the level of policy.
And that is not loving.
No, it's destructive,
It's destructive. And this is part of what we must say, as Christians, because even within the church, I've been told when I've spoken on these things in a church setting, well, Darrow what you're saying is not loving. Well, love and truth are not to be separated. They're two different things. But they're not to be separated. You can't understand truth without love. And you can understand love without truth. And so we need to love but to love is at times to set boundaries and to speak the truth. And to encourage somebody who is confused, whatever word you want to use, and thinks that they want to transition to something else. It's not loving, to encourage them to do that. The loving thing is to gently try and help them understand what it is they're doing and caution them, call them away from that.
Yeah, that's exactly right. Darrow, when you're operating from the standpoint of a biblical worldview, you want to call people to who they are, who God's created them to be, and that includes their sex, but the other side sees that as violence. That's what she said. So we're kind of at this lager heads. But right now, it's interesting too, she's representing... She's a professor at Berkeley, which is very influential school in a very influential state. And she's representing not a fringe opinion, but really, I would say the opinion of the most powerful people in our society today. Not that Josh Hawley is not powerful, but he's representing kind of middle America, the older ideas of the middle America here. I do think his point of view, our point of view, here on this definitely I would definitely consider the true point of view here. It is the true point of view. It is still I think, the majority view, but her perspective is very powerful, because it's the perspective of people in power in elite institutions like Berkeley.
There's something that I think we've done today that hopefully models for the people listening to this podcast. Josh Hawley and this woman, this lawyer from Berkeley, were talking on one level, they were talking on the level of practice and policy. And there is a place to have that discussion. But the more important place is to have a discussion where are those policies and that practice coming from? What are the principles that are feeding those policies and practice? And ultimately, what is the worldview that is behind those principles? That's where the discussion needs to take place and I hope that what we've done today is model that in some small way. And as we are Christians see something like that in the news, or on television, or in a movie, that we take time to sit down with our friends, and say, Okay, well, here's what we saw. This was what was taking place in practice. Here's the policy that was promoting that. But what are the principles behind it? And what is the worldview behind that? So we begin to see this is really not an issue of policy or program. The issue is a worldview issue. And we need to see the practicality of worldview. So often, when people talk about worldview, they talk about it in an academic and abstract way. No. Worldview is absolutely practical. We just don't draw the lines between what we hear and see on television and the movies and discussions. We don't draw the lines between that and where these ideas are coming from.
And again, where they're going, Darrow, and to me, that's the part of worldview that is really the most powerful because the worldviews the ideas, the ideologies that we have, whether we're conscious of them or not produce real tangible physical things in the world for good or bad. And true ideas produce beauty and goodness, and false ideas are very destructive. Ine of the things too, I just want to go back to her core assumption on this question of what is a man, what is a woman, you decide, right? That's really her assertion, you decide, and everyone has a right, a positive right to affirm that. They have a responsibility to affirm that exactly.
And if you don't affirm it, you are a hater. You are violent.
One of the things I learned from you many years ago, Darrow is that's a worldview assumption. And we always are asking the question, is it true? Is that true? And one of the ways you test for truth, Darrow, this is something I learned from you, it's very helpful, is you go, is it liveable? Is it consistent? Can we live consistently with that idea that truth is something that you create, that you affirm and people have a responsibility to affirm that? And on this one, I would say it is not livable. It's not workable. And use you see this, for example, there was a terrific video about five years ago that came out of the Washington State Family Policy Institute. And in that video, there was a young man that went on to the campus at the University of Washington, in Seattle. And he had a microphone was doing interviews of students, and he said, to the students, the first question was, I think, hey, "if I said to you, I was a woman, how would you respond?" Andthe students, you know, were very much like the professor here from Berkeley, they were all kind of shaped in this postmodern way of thinking, and so their response was very quick. "It was, that's fine. That's fine. You know, I positively affirm that." Because I have a responsibility to positively affirm that.
But here's where it got unworkable, because he kept pushing and he said, okay, if I can declare that on this issue of male-female, what about race? And so then he brought the race and the ethnicity into it. He says, "Okay, what if I said I was a Chinese woman." Now he was caucasian, he's European. "What if I said it was a Chinese woman?" And then you saw them struggling. Like, hmm... In other words, if I can declare that I'm a woman because that's what I have the postmodern right to do, if you will, to declare truth in that level, can I declare it on another level, the level of ethnicity? And you can see the students struggling with that. No, I don't think you can do that. And then he went on. And he added another complexity said, "What if I said, I was a six foot four Chinese woman?" And then almost none of the students could affirm that. It's like they they said, like, "Well, I mean..." but you saw him struggling, because they were struggling with the inconsistency of their worldview beliefs. They were like, "No... I just don't think I can affirm that you're a six foot four Chinese woman." In other words, my point in all that is that, this is not livable. Because if you can affirm, if you can declare the truth to be whatever you believe it is, whatever you say it is, you have to apply that in every area. And people aren't willing to do that. We're not willing to go there. Because we all know deep down that there is an Objective World that we live in. So I just want to throw that out there too. This unworkable illness of this idea.
When you think of someone who has transitioned from male to female or female to male, the suicide rate of people who have transitioned is well above the suicide rate for the LGBT community, and way above the rate of the average human being. The average population. It's not livable, they've done the transit, they did what their heart told them to do.
They were consistent with their worldview.
They were consistent with their worldview. And they ended up being miserable and killing themselves. The other are those people who've transitioned too, have realized, this is not who I am. And they have detransitioned. And there's a growing number of people who have detransitioned. And they are forming support networks and they are speaking out. They're doing blogs and podcasts. And the general LGBT community and press are silencing those people. They don't want their message made public. Because they have an agenda. They do not care about people. They have an agenda. And they're grooming people to be part of the LGBT community. They're grooming them. And that's what's important, not the people themselves. And we certainly do not want people who have detransitioned to be able to have a voice.
Luke, what are you going to say?
I mean, right here at the end, I'd like to play devil's advocate for a little bit. I've been watching some videos of people that claim this worldview and actually stand by it. And so I have a little bit of the talking points, like for what you were just saying, Mr. Miller. I saw an article yesterday that actually said the suicide rate went down after people went through with the surgery versus before when they were in the transitioning period. So with that, I'm not really sure on the numbers there. But in the the landing page for this episode on the website, we'll definitely have a few articles pointing towards some of those numbers. I think that'd be really helpful.
To think about that Luke, is there would be an objective thing that you could look at.
Exactly. We'll find that for you guys. Yep. Dad with your point about the University of Washington interview. At that time, that sounded crazy. Today, four or five years later, that's not crazy anymore. People claim to be wolves. People claim to be different races and so forth. We're getting there quick. The more you separate yourself from reality, the more you can, "Your truth, my truth. I can be whatever I want to be." And what a lot of people would say to you there is, "I can be whoever I want to be as long as it's not affecting anyone, right?" That's kind of the question there. I can be a six foot four Chinese woman if I want to be, why do you care? What would you say to that?
Well, I think... you say we're changing even on issues of race and actual, I'm six foot four when I'm actually five foot three. We're talking about basic truths of, I don't know what you want to call it, physics. But back to the ethnicity one, I don't think, I think there's still a bit of a taboo against that. And like, for example, I remember Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, she got a lot of flack. And she said, Hey, I'm Native American. And people looked at her and said, you definitely aren't. And there was a real, she got a lot of benefit from that claim. She was a faculty at Harvard and if she's a Native American, she's treated as a minority. And she's given kind of preferential treatment as a minority in Harvard for that. And people felt like that was dishonest, and that it was unjust, that she claimed that identity and got those benefits when she wasn't that. So I'm not quite sure, I think race is so hotly contested. I think that people are like, No, I don't have the right to claim I'm a black person, right? Because then I can claim to be, you know, yeah. Anyways.
Anyways.
Do not stand alone. You're part of a larger community. You can't say as long as it doesn't affect somebody else. Because it does. You're not closeted in a room by yourself with no other human interaction. And you look at this male swimmer named Thomas, I think his name's William Thomas, who declared himself a woman and started swimming on a woman's swim team at the University of Pennsylvania. Did that harm people? That most certainly did. It harmed women who were swimming against him and losing because he was a man who declared himself a woman.
And the scholarships and the etc, that come along with winning and sports.
Okay, so he actually was kind of pushing into that. Let's say someone transition and just doesn't, it doesn't affect anyone. They just stay at home. They're quiet about it. What would you say to someone like that if you happen to meet them on the street in a discussion? Would you confront them on that? If they didn't push you on the point? Or would you just ignore it? Say I'm just a quiet person who doesn't really know anybody, and I transition and call myself a female, and you meet me one day on the street. Would you try to clarify my confusion? Or what would you do?
Get to know them. Find out what's making them click? But even if you had this same person, quiet in the room, totally not telling people what they had done. If this person got sick, and went to the doctor, what are they going to tell the doctor?
Claimed to be a female.
Yeah. And I think too, or, what restroom would they use, Luke? Would that affect other people in that restroom or locker room?
So you're saying at that point, that's when "the lie will not pass through me" in a way. Now you're acting upon that. That's not going to work.
In a public way?
And I think God's designed for no one is to stay at home in their room. Right? So I mean, there's a beauty and a flourishing for every single human life and so that person is suffering and it hurts my heart that they are not living in the fullness that God has for them. So as Darrow said, not that there's going to be a confrontation in the street, but that there would be an opportunity to build a relationship and to speak truth at appropriate times.
Yeah, and then at the point where they attempt to enforce their, quote, unquote, "belief" upon you, that's when you would bring up the issue more. So before that point, you would get to know them. So we're saying. Like, there's a point at which live and let live applies here. But then once it's enforced upon me, that's when you should take the stand and not cave at that point. I'm just trying to get as practical as we can with this.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that as Christians, we have to go around and find transgendered people in our neighborhood or community and confront them in a challenging way. But I do think that when the issue does come up, when we're confronted with it, we do have a positive right to speak truthfully about it.
Yeah, 'cause again, it's always key to keep in mind their true identity is a child of God. And we should treat them that should be the first thing we see about them, until they want to force some other title upon themselves, upon us. We should continue to see them in that light, first and foremost, always.
Yeah. Well, guys, I think we need to wrap up. I think for me, if I could just share one last consequence that concerns me the most about where this idea goes. I'm concerned for our society. And there's many I could pick from and we've already talked about many of them; the high suicide rates, and the whole issue of just women's sports, and locker rooms and restrooms, and there's just many, many things you could talk about. But I think one of the consequences for me that I'm worried about the most is, and we talked about it earlier, it's just that if you start with this postmodern assumption that there isn't an objective truth that's out there that we discover, that truth, small "t" truth is whatever I believe it to be and you have a positive responsibility to affirm that, then Tim it's back to your starting point in our whole discussion. We are no longer able to have this—we're no longer able to search for the truth. That's completely taken off the table. And all that you have is just accusations like she was doing with Senator Hawley, accusations of violence and following those accusations of violence and bigotry—censorship. And that's what we're seeing increasingly in our society today.
And behind that censorship, if I speak the way I'm speaking right now—and this very well could happen on this very podcast where it gets censored, because I'm saying something that goes against, that's going to be interpreted by people with a postmodern worldview is as bigoted and violent towards transgendered people—if we keep going in that direction, we're going to end up in Orwell's 1984, where only those people that have power are going to be able to speak and everyone else is going to be silenced, cowed, and coerced. It's not the kind of place you want to live in or I want to live in and we're heading there very quickly. So we have to challenge the worldview assumptions, know truth isn't something you create or the powerful that get to determine what everyone else believes it is, truth exists outside of what you believe. Because God exists. And we discover it, and all of us can debate and learn and grow and discover truth and have discussions and respect each other in a pursuit of truth. That's the kind of society we want to live in. So those would be just a couple of my concluding thoughts and worries as we move forward with these postmodern assumptions. I'll give you guys a chance for some final thoughts to here. Go ahead. Darrow. Yeah.
As you said, Scott, we're moving in this direction. And we will continue to move in this direction until we the people move against this direction. If we assume we can just be on the sideline and ignore this or watch it happen, keep our heads down. Or we pray and say, "Well, all we need to do is pray. It's God's job." And we are basically disengaged, it will happen. And we need to know that and we need to do as Vaclav Havel said, we need to walk in truth. And then those little places, we need to use biblical language and not postmodern language. We need to lovingly confront people. And is that easy? No. Can it be painful? Yes. Could we be put in prison? Yes.
Would it cost us? Yes.
Will it cost us? Yes. Are we willing to do it because these things are important? That's the question each of us needs to answer.
I just think of the quote by C.S. Lewis, it's pretty famous one, "When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind." I think C.S. Lewis, if he was here with us today would add to that, if you're running away from the cliff, what's the most loving thing to do? Just keep running, or try to grab someone by the arm and save him from running off that cliff? Even though it sounds harsh, and at the moment, they might be pretty mad at you. We shouldn't just be running away from the cliff ourselves. That's not the most loving thing to do. We're called to love as much as we can, in whatever that looks like, try to grab someone by the arm and point them that they're going to run off a cliff if they keep going the direction they're going. The most loving thing to do is try to point them back towards God.
It's so good. Luke. I like that. Yeah.
Yeah, trying to divert them from danger or harm. Yeah, just blindly following the masses. I think probably, if there was one thought that was stirring in my mind, still, it's I think that so many of us maybe have had our heads down or just kind of thought, "oh, I don't know what's going on," but now, so many people are waking up as it's getting into their young children's schools. And they're shocked and they're upset. Why is this confusion being put on my children? Why am I not a part of this? Why? And I think that it's just the reality that these people are being very honest to their worldview. This is what they believe. This is what makes sense to them. And so for them, why wouldn't they integrate it into every age and every level? And so I think, for those of us who care about children and wanting children to grow up, not in a sense of confusion and disillusionment, trying to create their own truth. It's time that we figure out how to communicate lovingly and clearly about truth.
Guys, great discussion today. This is one we need to continue to have. Because this is very much defining the particular moment that we're in right now in the West. Postmodernism has gone from Kant and Nietzsche, these thought leaders of 200 plus years ago. It's gone into the institutions. It's gone through the arts and into the institutions. And now it's down on the street level, at the level of the common man shaping all of society. It doesn't have to continue to be that way. And one of the great things about promoting the truth is that it is true. There's an objective reality to it. It's workable, it's livable, it's good. And that's on our side. So let's continue to push for the truth. Let's live out the truth and be courageous conveyors of truth in our society. Thanks for joining us. Take care.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Ideas Have Consequences brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. As I mentioned last week, make sure to take a minute to check out our landing page for this episode that I've linked in the description below. Again, that page has everything you need to know to continue to study each episode in further detail, including episode overviews, chapter summaries, the transcript, key quotes, and links to additional resources on the topic. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click on that link below.
