What's Trending? Assassination Attempt, Olympics, and Embryo Ethics

You know Scripture , matthew 24 , 12, . Because of the increase of wickedness or lawlessness , the love of most will go cold . It's getting worse , not better , and it's going to keep getting worse and we have to recognize that .

So if I trust you to make decisions for yourself without an objective guideline , that opens up a Pandora's box Because you might be well-grounded ethically into some objective guideline in your own life that's consistent with Scripture and the person next to you isn't .

I think since we last recorded one of these current event episodes , I want to maybe start with the assassination attempt and just get some of your thoughts on that and especially to then you know what we as Christians can kind of take away from that .

God that he was not successful with that .

We pray to God for the families of the man who was killed and the others who were injured as a result , and we certainly pray for healing for the nation at large , for everyone who is more directly affected by this , and particularly , I'd say , for the families of those left behind , not just the victims , but even the family of the young man who was responsible

that we can only imagine what they must be dealing with right now , and they could certainly use the Lord's blessing in trying to come out on top of that in a God-pleasing way .

We still don't know , as of this recording , what the motive was . They're still kind of digging around . And he obviously was curious . I guess he had researched JFK's assassination and how far you can be away to fire and successfully kill someone . But the point is is that people they get worked up and they get .

We had a situation in Milwaukee where a police officer you know off-duty police officer got worked up and in the process of getting worked up he killed somebody at a house party . Now you would think a police officer knows better than that . But the problem is that people just get worked up .

I recently wrote a piece for LifeWire in which I talked about the disciple Peter . You know , you get into the garden at Gethsemane . He gets worked up , gets agitated over what's happening . He immediately takes out a sword and goes for the ear . I think all of us have been troubled over the escalating rhetoric and the passion of people .

You know , if it's just the three of us talking about something we feel strongly in , it's much easier for the three of us to moderate each other . If I get too worked up , you can say , well , settle down , you know , and so forth . The problem is that as you begin to widen the audience , you lose control of how that rhetoric is translated for other people .

And both sides of the presidential campaign say things that can be very aggravating , and you know you count on people being good judgment , but time and time again people are demonstrating they are not good judgment . The man who tried to kill President Reagan was infatuated with Jodie Foster .

Now I still haven't figured out how that translated into an assassination attempt on a president .

I'm not sure that success would have meant Jodie Foster would have been impressed , but that's kind of the way minds that are not steady think , and so I do think everybody owes it to those who are not as well thought out in their life to be careful how they use rhetoric , because you might think you're rallying the crowd , you might think you're identifying dangers

to democracy or whatever , but in the process of doing that , the unstable are going to do unstable things .

I mean , we have the biblical example of Saul in the Bible , king Saul , that he was very impressed with himself and when he started seeing young David as a threat to him and his kingship , well , he decided that you know , I don't know if assassination would technically be the correct term , but he was willing to kill him , whereas David , given many opportunities ,

was absolutely unwilling to kill the Lord's anointed . But Saul was so impressed with himself that everything in terms of what was right , what was proper , was predicated on okay , what's best for me .

But the flip side of that is people like this young man who tried to take out Donald Trump , like pretty much every other assassin in history , they had this sense of if I just take out this guy , if I kill him , then that's going to fix everything . That I think is wrong .

It will perhaps change things if you're successful with an assassination , but you're certainly not going to fix things and you've got to have some perspective , and that's something , as Christians , that we should have much better because we recognize that God's in control of the world . We recognize that prayer can change things .

We recognize that if things are going bad today , god may very well fix things tomorrow without our input whatsoever . And we just have to take that step back and not get worked up about it and recognize that , okay , the campaigns may be telling me that this is the most important election of our lifetime .

Then , if that guy gets in office , then everything's going to fall apart . And the other campaign is saying that the only way to save our nation or the world is if this guy gets in .

We just need to take a breath , step back and say God is in charge today , he was in charge yesterday , he'll be in charge tomorrow and ultimately it's not going to matter that much whether it's this guy or that guy . I'm still going to do what is my responsibility as a Christian citizen , but I'm not going to lose perspective .

I mean , I'm obviously passionate for the protection of human life , I'm passionate for following the things of God and so forth , but it also can drift into being irrational , if not dangerous .

You know , over the years there's been people who have tried and succeeded sometimes , of killing abortionists or bombing clinics or bombing a pro-life clinic or anything like that , and what it is is it's passion that has somehow slipped past a line . Now , what I find interesting is , for example , you get this person who's an assassin or would-be assassin .

We got all sorts of other things in Scripture that talks about being passionate . Speak up for those who can't speak for themselves . You should be passionate . He didn't speak up for anybody . We live in a republic . You know we were a representative from a government , he could have made a big difference by running for office himself .

But see , everybody wants to take a shortcut . And if they could take a shortcut , and shortcuts come in various flavors . Sometimes it comes at the end of a bullet , sometimes a shortcut comes with a lot of dollars . We had a politician that was convicted of accepting briberies .

People are always looking for shortcuts , and yet we have very honest , very biblically acceptable ways to effect change . Probably at the top of that list would be the freedom to talk about Jesus or the freedom to share Jesus .

If , for biblical reasons , this man thought President Trump former President Trump was wrong , then he should have invoked Jesus , talked to him about Jesus and so forth . But the thing is , is that's not where they come from . You know , they come from another place , another place that acts like this is all that there is in life is what we have here .

And then they have to be wild and crazy . But how many times in private conversations didn't we feel like something like this was going to happen ? I mean , because the rhetoric had been so cranked up . It just really was shocking for me .

And another one that's going to be going on and hasn't from the time that we're recording , but will be when we're listening to this or when our listeners are listening is the Olympics , and so I did just want to talk a little bit about the Olympics and athletes and the good and maybe also the bad with some of that too .

From a life perspective , this is something that we can point to as Christians , and we look at these wonderfully fit athletes , we look at what they are able to achieve , and not just in terms of their physical achievements , but the cooperative achievements of teams that are playing and the precision of a relay race and all sorts of things like that .

Can we look at all that and we are reminded of what the psalmist said in Psalm 139 to the Lord I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made , what an impressive thing the human body is and what it can achieve . And many of us who have never been terribly athletic , we see some of these things and we say I could never do that .

I could train for 20 years and I could never do that . I could never have done that when I was 21 . But at the same time , we recognize but I still have a human body , just as that person has a human body , and that's what the human body is capable of . And we praise God .

We are all fearfully and wonderfully made , even something that usually comes right after the Olympics the Paralympics , with various disabled people competing in various ways . Even that gives testimony to the wonders of the human body , because they are still able to overcome whatever that disability is in order to perform at a very high level .

The sad reality is is that a lot of times we find ourselves more earnest in perfecting a human race you know , a sprint or marathon or developing some display skill , than our knowledge of Scripture , which you know , and I hate to be one of those guys . You know .

I remember as a kid when my pastor used to always drive me crazy when he would go and get biblical on me . But the reality is is that this is what life's all about . Life is not all about the race or life is not all about the Olympic competitions . Now , I say that as one who actually enjoys watching them .

Like Jeff said , you spend a lot of your time envious when you watch various summer or winter Olympics . I always think of the ice skating thing First of all , as a guy who couldn't dance period . Just seeing the poise and discipline and timing and all that kind of stuff in many of these athletic competitions makes you somewhat envious in a positive sense .

You really do admire the discipline and the focus that it takes . But , as we know , when we dig in deeper stories , some people go way too far on some of this .

But yes , I mean , as you've said too , bud , there are different stories that come out and different things . You know , it's kind of like at what cost , with some of these athletes , are these experiences being met ?

immediately , it seems , they decide well , the only choice I have is to abort this child because it will get in the way . You know , I can't have a baby and continue to train . I can't compete in this next major event if I'm pregnant or have just given birth .

And they are clearly placing their athletic career and ambitions ahead of another human life and that's a really tragic , tragic decision they make . That's a really tragic , tragic decision they make .

And even just you know and we've kind of talked around it a bit , you know there's this idolizing of human achievement and human bodies that can happen as a result of this as well , that instead of the idea that this gives glory to God , it's all about wow , look how great I am , or look how great she is , and it becomes an idolization rather than a proper

perspective on it , seeing it as something that's wow , this is a wonder . It's a gift of God , it's a blessing , isn't he wonderful ?

In the end , it's not God who ends up on the top pedestal , it's a human , and God doesn't get the medal . It's a human that gets the medal , and I think sometimes it does happen that you lose yourself in the part .

But you know what maybe is something to just kind of keep in mind with some of that stuff that we've been talking about .

We've already had some people dropped from the Olympics various teams from various countries for Cheating or unfairness and things like that and doping and things like that , because people have this tremendous desire to win , to achieve , and goes beyond the individual . Everybody knew they were gaming the system .

Everyone knew they were cheating , whether it was giving steroids to their athletes or making sure that their judges gave higher scores to their athletes or whatever it was and it was done for national pride .

But just recognize that the results that you may see as okay this is what it should be may not always match up as okay this is what it should be , may not always match up , and it's simply because sinful human nature is at work in all this as well . So I guess it's mainly don't be too disappointed when humans show up at a human event .

We had editing equipment and so forth and we had a gold medalist from the Olympics who was coming in . He was working on a commercial project , but a strong Christian and we were helping him out and just in your conversation with him it just was pleasant . He didn't lose himself in the part .

It's possible to do these things and still point to the one who gave you the ability and he was that kind of a person . Still point to the one who gave you the ability and he was that kind of a person .

But the human nature is always there and , as a result , it's going to show up in oftentimes ugly , but most often disappointing ways , because you'll see people that you're really pulling for something and then you find out that they were doping or they were doing something that they shouldn't have been doing and it hurts their chances .

And so you know , enjoy it , but enjoy it for what it is .

Very into eugenics , very this idea that the Aryans are better than everybody else . And we're going to demonstrate this by winning everything . And God's sense of humor had the winner of some of the most prominent events be a black American named Jesse Owens .

And there has always been this kind of eugenic sense of well , we're going to take , we're going to breed , we're going to train the best of the best and if we don't get rid of the worst , we're at least going to push them to the side . That's a negative that has shown up more than once with the Olympics .

But another historic thing is , 100 years ago at the 1924 Paris Olympics , a story immortalized in the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire , and I suspect that some of our listeners may remember that , if nothing else , they remember the theme song from the movie . But one of the two main characters in that is a Scottish runner and he is the son .

He was born in China but he was the son of missionaries there Very , very strong Christian faith and he sees running as a way to give glory to God , and even though he's pressured not to , because you should be going to your prayer meetings instead of training , you should be giving your attention to becoming a missionary , giving your attention to becoming a

missionary . And he said no , this is a way that I give glory to God . And the conflict comes when they're on their way to the Olympics and he finds out that some of his events are scheduled for a Sunday and he believes that as a Christian he can't compete on the Lord's Day , a day of rest .

Lutherans , we'd have an issue with his theology there , but still it was a matter of principle for him . I won't give away the ending of the movie if you haven't seen it , because it's worth seeing , especially during this Olympic season .

But the whole point is that he saw this as a way to give glory to God , but he would not cross the line when it got to a point where he thought continuing to do this is going to no longer give glory to God . And it's just a really wonderful and inspiring example and story for us of how somebody can compete and compete and try and try for good reasons .

We can take that as a model for our own lives , especially in our spiritual life , as Bob was talking about , as Paul mentions in his epistles , but even in other things , as well , we'll do another current event , one that you had brought to our attention , bob , with the British Guidelines for Embryo Research

.

And then with the advent of stem cell research , where they nurture an embryo to the blastocyst stage and then they remove embryonic stem cells , and then people are always saying , well , if we can go a little bit longer in the development , if we could let it develop a little bit longer , then we could do better research .

And the problem is that it's fundamentally flawed from the very beginning because we recognize life begins at conception . Now , whether you want to conceive life in a woman's abdomen or you want to conceive life in a petri dish , it is still human life .

And this talk about when it's ethical to do embryo research has to do , on the one hand , with a lot of interest in being competitive with other countries who don't hold to these ethical guidelines . China , for one , has always been a problem . There have been all sorts of stories that have percolated through the bioethics research on experiments that were done .

I remember a number of years ago that they used combining . You know where you get in the xenotransplantation , combining human and animal DNA and so forth , to try to create things . And so Great Britain felt the need to step in and draft some guidelines . What's interesting about the guidelines is that they expanded it .

You know they allowed it's a little bit looser than it was before . And give us another 10 years and it'll be a little bit looser than it was before . And give us another 10 years and it'll be a little bit looser than it is now , because once you determine that it's expendable .

But a lot of times what ethics has become today is not what is right or wrong , but where the level of comfortability is .

I always think of when Derek Humphrey was arguing for assisted suicide , of when Derek Humphrey was arguing for assisted suicide he said back in the 90s , early 90s he was arguing that we just got to get people used to talking about it and then in time they'll become accepting of death with dignity .

And I can tell you as the guy who's been around through all those ethical issues for a few decades , people are far more accepting of things today than they were back then , like abortion , the recoil that we saw from the Dobbs ruling . If the Dobbs ruling had occurred in 1983 , instead of when it did occur , there wouldn't be this recoil .

There would be people upset , but society has softened and it's because that's become the standard . I was right or wrong . So when Great Britain keeps modifying the guidelines for operating or experimenting on embryos , they're just making it up as they go , and that's really all they're doing .

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes and that's basically what this is codifying . It's like well , yeah , do it to the point that you're comfortable with and fine , so long as you stick to your own rules , it's great . And that is a recipe for ethical disaster .

But even that's a little bit of an illusion , because , but the way you've got to remember that's a little bit of an illusion , because , but the way you got to remember that as a society we have bought in hook line and sinker into the idea of evolution . And the idea is that we're getting a little bit better than we used to be .

You know we'll be even better tomorrow than we are today , but biblically speaking , we actually get what I've heard referred to as devolution , which is society is devolving . Scripture Matthew 24 , 12, . Because of the increase of wickedness or lawlessness , the love of most will go cold .

It's getting worse , not better , and it's going to keep getting worse and we have to recognize that . So if I trust you to make decisions for yourself without an objective guideline , that opens up a Pandora's box because you might be well-grounded ethically into some objective guideline in your own life that's consistent with Scripture and the person next to you isn't .

I don't see how they can stand together next to you , isn't ?

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