The Livestream examines the theological distinction between pushing back against the curse's hardships versus erasing human finitude, warning that technologies like Neuralink, TRT, and epidurals risk crossing ethical lines by treating biological limits as curses rather than fallenness. While acknowledging legitimate medical interventions for age-related decline or disability, the speakers critique modern innovations such as cloud seeding, pesticides, and gender-altering therapies for potentially playing God and accelerating a Tower of Babel scenario. Ultimately, the episode urges a return to rigorous theological discernment to prevent society from losing guardrails against technologies that seek to transcend inherent creaturely limits rather than heal sin's effects. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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The Original Mission00:15:22
The curse of sin for the rebellion of man pits him in an antithesis with the world he is called to subdue.
While the task is now much more difficult, the original mission and mandate of humanity to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth has not been abrogated or cancelled.
By grace, we resist and war against the world, the flesh, and the devil, but also against the curse.
Join us now as we discuss how Christians should think about pushing back on the curse.
All right.
Well, welcome back to another Wednesday discussion.
Really looking forward to this one.
We'll hit some theological categories that are really important for having an understanding of Reformed theology, understanding man's mission, but then also practically applying it, as the title says, to things like Neuralink.
How do we think about what Elon Musk is doing, putting chips in people's brains that are high powered?
And so to start off with, for a little bit of background, when we talk about the curse, we talk about Adam, we talk about man's mission.
Man is placed in the garden, he's placed upright, and he's given a task.
Adam is not in the garden taking a siesta.
I think growing up, I used to have this idea that, man, it's just five o'clock all the time in Eden.
The sun is shining.
He's got his wife near him.
He's having pina coladas.
No, Adam is put in the garden and he's giving a task.
He's given the mission of probably the whole world around him.
It wasn't full of wickedness, but it was untamed.
It was chaos.
And so Adam is in what would be Ezekiel 28, a mountain garden that is a temple to the living God.
And he said, You are to go out and you're to take all the chaos and the woods and the disorder around.
And you're to constrain them, you're to take dominion over the animals, and you're to fill the earth with the glory of God.
That's Adam's original mission.
Go out and show the waiting cosmos what God is like, imaged in man.
And you do this by ruling judiciously, by ruling well, by being wise, by displaying all these attributes of God that are contained within you.
Adam does this, of course, by his own hard work.
He also has progeny that go out and multiply and fill the earth with God's image, such that Adam would have been maybe in the Middle East, and he would eventually have had descendants that would go and Colonize, constrain, order, and make a society out of America and out of Greenland and out of what we now call India.
So that's man's original mission.
Man sins.
Eve eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
She gives it to Adam, and God curses.
He curses the earth.
He curses Adam.
He curses Eve, and he curses the serpent.
And the curse for man was not that his mission is abrogated.
The curse for man was not that you'll never complete what I told you to now do.
Cursed is the ground because of you.
By the sweat of your brow, you will eat of it.
All The days of your life.
From dust you are taken, from dust to dust you will return.
The curse for Adam is that the ground that he was commanded to cultivate, to make fruitful, to bear fruit, and to display God's goodness would now do so at immense cost, and that he himself would die.
That's important to mention that the curse as it pertains to the man is not work.
The curse as it pertains to Adam is that work would be increasingly more difficult.
Work was always going to be his task, his mission.
And work, probably various degrees of work, would have been harder than others.
There still would have even been hard work in the garden.
But the difference is that now man's work will work against him.
That's the difference.
A man could have worked hard in a prelapsarian world before the fall, before sin entered the world.
It's not just that he was expected to work, he could have even worked hard.
But hard work would have produced an incredible.
Amount of fruitfulness, whereas now there are many cases, not always, but there are many cases where of futility.
Futility is what we're speaking of.
That's the curse.
The curse isn't work itself or even hard work, but it's futility where hard work doesn't always pay off.
That you could work hard and yet, because of certain circumstances, produce very little.
So, Adam, and I like what you also said, Wes, in terms of the whole earth was not a garden.
I take it as that part of Adam's eschaton, speaking of what was.
What was Adam's ultimate end?
What was he working towards?
What would he have achieved in this state of innocence had he never fallen and eventually been able to eat of the tree of life and had resisted the temptation to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
And I think, you know, the eschaton for Adam wouldn't have been that he eventually would have been beamed up and been somewhere else in a heaven outside of earth, but that he would have taken this heavenly mountain garden.
Think like Mount Olympus.
I mean, that's kind of what it was.
Like God himself came down and walked with man.
And his wife in the cool of the day.
It's this, it really was this divine place where God would actually condescend in his mercy and kindness, and that the spiritual presence of God would be with Adam and Eve always because God is omnipresent, but especially in the cool of the day that God is, as it were, walking with Adam.
However, this played out, whether this was a Christophany, the second member of the Trinity.
In a human form, but before the incarnation.
So Christ still being a most pure spirit without body parts and passions at that time preceding the incarnation, but taking upon himself still a physical appearance to literally walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day, in the same way that the angel, the Lord throughout scripture, takes on a physical appearance when appearing to Joshua or the fourth man in the fire with Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego.
So maybe that's how it happened, or whether it was just this palpable sense of the presence of God, although it was not.
Necessarily visible.
However, it happened.
We know that there was a special presence of God, who is omnipresent, so he was always present with Adam and Eve, but there was a special presence of the Lord as though it were him walking with them in the cool of the day, like a Mount Olympus kind of thing.
And I would even argue, you know, some of this gets into Michael Heiser and some of these things, you know, lesser gods, but if you don't even want to go there with a divine counsel and just, you know, be extra safe, like call them angels, whatever you want to do.
But I think it's possible that there were other heavenly beings.
That probably appeared from time to time in the same way that God comes once a day in the cool of the day and walks with Adam and Eve.
There were probably other angels.
Think of like Jacob's ladder, you know, of descending and ascending.
I personally am of the persuasion that that's part of the reason why Eve was not caught off guard when she is deceived by the serpent.
One, the curse for the serpent, as it regards the serpent, is that he would eat dust all the days of his life, crawl in his belly.
So I don't believe that it was just a physical animal, a snake.
I think that it was cursed.
And so before that, I think, well, what did it look like?
Likely, I think that, you know, that the Satan, the Satan, it was likely a dragon and could talk.
And that not all the animals could talk.
It's not as though when sin comes into the world, you know, it's not like it was Narnia and then sin enters and now we have earth.
I don't think all the animals could talk, but I do think that there were potentially, hear me out, but potentially, dragons in Eden.
Not everywhere, but in Eden, and that these were angels, and they had appearance like dragons and spoke.
And one of them decided to turn against God.
So, for me, I see the fall of Satan and the fall of man as potentially one foul swoop actually happening at the same time.
That Satan actually gets cocky and chooses to rebel against God, and Eve then joins in that rebellion, and Adam joins his wife.
So, all that being said, the point is that.
That the Garden of Eden was a phenomenal, magical, divine place, and the rest of the world, back to Wes's point, was not.
And it doesn't mean that the rest of the world was filled with sin because God calls all that He made good.
He says, and it was good.
But we know because the Bible actually tells us this explicitly that Adam was actually formed from the dust of the ground in, not in the garden, but in a separate context, a wilderness.
So there were wildernesses.
So the idea of desolate places, wildernesses, chaotic places, that is clear.
And that's prelapse there.
That's before sin entered the world.
So, Adam was made in one of these such places, a wilderness, desolate type, unruly place.
But then he was placed by God into the garden.
So, I think his eschaton, what was he working towards?
Had they not fallen?
Well, one, finishing this probationary period of actually fulfilling what God had called him to do and not giving in to temptation and sin.
And then, God having held out to him, I think, upon that point.
At the end of a probationary period, who knows how long, I think then God would have held out to him from the tree of life.
He would have eaten of that, and that that would have brought him to an immutable state where he would from then on be not just unfallen, but now unable to ever fall.
And then going forward from there, what would he have done?
I think that he and his posterity and all of them enabled by their wives as helpmates, suitable helpmates, would have expanded the Garden of Eden over the whole face of the earth, eventually eradicating all these wilderness desolate.
Places to where the whole earth would have been filled with the glory of God as the waters, the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.
I think that would have been his eschaton, creating image bearers of the living God, his posterity, and discipling them to worship the triune God, but also expanding this garden kingdom, this garden mountain over the whole face of the earth.
So, all that being said, what would that entail?
A lot of work, a lot of work, and really hard work.
But it would have been work that worked.
Rather than work when the work works against you.
Because in Romans, it talks about how creation is groaning under the curse, right?
And part of that is the creation itself knows it's not supposed to be producing thorns and thistles under the hand and direction of man's work, right?
And so when man plants and the earth produces thistles and inhibits the prosperity and fruitfulness of what man is doing, the earth knows this is not what I'm supposed to be doing.
And there's a sense of where it's groaning and crying out because it itself, there's a sentience almost, like even the rocks cry out, right?
There's a sentience where the earth knows that, and Paul says it is not because of the earth, but in the hope that the newness of life that was promised under this administration of grace, this age of grace, would be extended even to the earth, and it would be freed from that sense where everything that it's doing is twisted and turning.
contrary to the efforts of mankind rather than harmonizing with it.
But one of the things that we don't often think about with the curse is that God told Adam, by the sweat of your brow, you will eat.
And what that means, because death was introduced then, and because in the Garden of Eden, there was abundant food, that meant that all of the work that mankind would do was not gathering enough food to not die.
All of the work that they were doing was to extend the dominion, the garden, the beauty, the glory of the Lord across the earth.
Now, under the curse, both because of death and because of the fact that we eat by the sweat of our brow, I don't know what percentage, let's say 90% of our work has to go to keeping us alive.
And if we're lucky, we have some work left over to extend the dominion of God across the earth.
And that's the source of wars, resource scarcity.
Really, it's just survival.
And so even national efforts of stewarding the land that God gives them and bringing forth from the land that God gives them something that will honor the Lord is turned on its head.
And a nation now focuses on survival, fighting off other nations that want its resources or pillaging other nations for their resources.
And so the curse in a really extreme way has put a major slowdown.
Like we think, how could Adam and Eve have extended the garden?
Across the entire earth, first of all, it wasn't them, they were going to be having kids and lots of kids, and then not dying, dying, so it's in bounds.
And all of their work, all of it, would have been focused on this mission, not just the five or ten percent that maybe, if we're lucky, we have left over after we've kept ourselves and our families alive.
No natural disasters, no wars.
Um, there would have been nations, but no war amongst those nations.
I mean, think of like how much money the trillions, yep, spent on military.
Yep, that's.
And that's all of that.
It's not just, it doesn't just come out of thin air.
I know the government tries to make it, but it's all a percentage of the production, the overall production of the United States, the people, the citizens.
So the citizens of this country produce a finite amount.
It may be large, it may be small, but it's finite.
It's set.
And whatever we produce, a portion of it goes towards this, towards that, towards that.
And you're right, a large portion goes towards what we could call.
Curse oriented, you know, line items on the budget.
Um, so to think that you know that our efforts would be you know double, triple, tenfold had there been no curse, yeah, interesting.
One resource I'll mention here I'm about 80 of the way done with this book at the moment.
So if the last 20 ends up being heretical, I apologize.
But um, it's from Founders Press, who they're pretty reliable.
So it's Getting the Garden Right by Richard Bracellos, yeah, because it's really great if you want to.
Study anymore.
He really lays the case for the fact that Eden was a temple.
It was the first temple.
It was the garden paradise.
But it was not just kind of a little home for a while.
It was the base of operation for spiritual and physical work to extend across the entire planet.
Yep.
A Glorious Vision00:04:32
I like that you said limited there because we're going to get to this as we talk about specific things that affect our limitations now.
Adam, pre fall, no sin ever enters the world would still be limited.
If there were nation systems that had kings, Adam would not have been king over all the earth and all the nations in the same way.
He would have been king, perhaps, of a region, but then a different, distinct geographical region where Adam did not have visibility, did not have line of sight, couldn't hear, relied on some form of news or information transfer to get there.
Someone else would have been king.
And that king would have likely had kings underneath him because individuals can only focus on so much.
So Adam was not this disembodied spirit floating around that had all of this at his disposal, that had, I don't know, the force, so to speak, and that moving and uprooting trees and laying down pathways and putting up walls was just something that was.
Easy for him.
No, he really had to do those things.
Talk about a dragon defending against a dragon.
That was one of the things he should have done.
He failed and he didn't protect his wife.
A lot of the reformers actually held that Adam and his posterity would have killed animals to eat and there would have been danger.
Danger, obviously, from the serpent, the danger of heights, the danger of oxygen.
These were real challenges that human beings, even before sin enters the world, would have had to navigate.
They wouldn't have had to navigate sin.
They wouldn't have had to navigate interpersonal relationships and the difficulty that comes there.
But there was still much that they were up against.
Psalm chapter 8.
I just really want to get across.
This is a glorious vision that God had for man.
This was not a side project.
So, do an ant farm for your kids, set us up an ant farm.
Let's see what happens.
Maybe this will be cool.
Psalm chapter 8, verse 5, speaking of man, yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.
The Septuagint renders it angels in the original text.
It would be God.
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him, that is man, dominion over the works of your hands.
You have put all things under his feet, all sheep in auction, and all the beasts of the field, the birds of heaven, and the fish of the sea.
Which pass along the paths of the seas.
Adam had a glorious mission.
He was the image of God, set out to the waiting virgin cosmos to show what God was like.
And even in the fall, not all of that is lost.
We'll get into the curse, we'll get into what that affects, we'll get into how he pushed back against it.
But Adam was really given a glorious mission.
And the key point is that that's not abrogated.
So this mission for man was not canceled eight days into it.
Adam's given this task, go out and do it.
He trips and falls.
Never mind.
Pack it all up.
Pull the first Adam, put the second Adam in.
God had a plan in it.
He certainly predestined and foreordained for Christ to be the full and true and complete Adam in the second Adam sense.
But that wasn't abrogated.
Man still has this mission.
Psalm chapter 8 is post fall.
David writing post fall that even still, and Christ is cited in Hebrews chapter 1 of this psalm as well.
So mankind, yes, but in a greater sense, Christ, still dominion over the earth, the image of God, and it's a glorious task.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's a psalmate.
The interpretation is both.
Right.
One passage of scripture, especially messianic prophecy, can have two meanings.
No given text of scripture can have two contradictory meanings.
Right.
But scripture can have more than one meaning in terms of layers of meaning that does not, the two meanings, two or more meanings, don't contradict one another.
And we know this because the Apostle Paul tells us this.
He says, you know, when speaking of.
Hagar and Sarah, he says, and this may be understood analogously, allegorically, through the doctrine, the banner of analogy.
And so we know that it meant one thing for Abram and Abraham, but then it also had a higher interpretation, a higher meaning that was revealed at the proper time later.
So, yeah, on its face, Hebrews picks up Psalm 8.
And says that it has its ultimate fulfillment in Christ, and that is absolutely true.
But Hebrews 8 on its face also still has meaning and is also true that mankind is a glorious thing, that God is mindful of man and cares for man, and that He has a glorious mission that's laid before Him.
So let's go ahead and cut to our first commercial break for the day.
Pietism and Power00:13:43
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All right.
So here's the big monkey wrench in the system Pietism.
The origins of Pietism, just to give sixty seconds of it.
So after the Reformation, there was a really big war, it's called the Thirty Years' War.
Resulted in some 8 million deaths.
It was really terrible for all of Europe, and it was between Protestants and Catholics.
So there's a really powerful Catholic family that wanted to maintain control over Protestant Germany, and Protestants that didn't want to have anything to do with it.
And so they fought a 30 years war from 1618 to 1648, left millions dead due to war, famine, starvation.
Whole Protestant towns would be wiped off the face of the map just by being attacked.
And so what happened was Lutheran ministers began to really focus on the intellectual tenets of the faith.
So their sermons would be.
Two hour polemics against or defending justification by faith alone, preaching against Roman Catholicism.
And there's a real emphasis on intellectual assent just to these certain points.
Affirm this, affirm that, from this minute point of doctrine as they battled and pushed back against the Catholic armies.
What came out of that was a reaction Lutheran pietism.
And so Lutheran pietism, Philip Spenner would be kind of the father of this.
As they said, you're losing the emphasis on the new birth, on spiritual living, on godly living.
They cited passages, so I think of 1 Peter 3, where it says that we're sojourners on the earth, strangers.
There's also some passages in Hebrews.
And we've lost that emphasis.
And so, what we need to do is we need to get out of these political, we need to get out of these military, we need to disembody, disconnect ourselves from all these affairs that are taking away our affections for Christ.
And there's certainly some of that.
So, there's an overreaction of just polemical preaching that's all intellectual.
But the pendulum swings this way.
And that's what you have then Lutheran pietism.
Because right to Anabaptists who refuse to engage with the civil magistrate, and that eventually then becomes one of the three components of American evangelicalism it's Scottish Presbyterianism, Lutheran Pietism, and Anglicanism from the UK.
And so those then become American evangelicalism.
And that Pietism aspect of it is the one that's very, very reserved and very hesitant to get involved in earthly affairs.
You hear like Jesus is involved in politics, Jesus is neither a donkey nor an elephant.
That's coming from this Pietistic historical element of American evangelicalism.
And two of the big names that really Took this pietism thing and they put a reform label on it in the 2000s, 2010, even now into our time.
David Van Droenen and Michael Horton.
So, Michael Horton wrote Beyond Culture Wars this idea we need to get out of this culture war business.
It's just back and forth, harms a Christian witness.
We shouldn't have anything to do with it.
And David Van Droenen, he's the academic side, so maybe you haven't heard of him, but I guarantee his thought has been something that you've encountered.
He writes that in the same way, we shouldn't be involved in these things, that the common kingdom isn't our concern, that's governed by natural law.
But also he says, Yes, the common earthly kingdom is governed by natural law.
But he also makes points as this creation mandate, that this dominion mandate has been abrogated.
So he says this, this is in his book, Life in God's Two Kingdoms.
God does not call Christians to take up the original cultural mandate of Genesis 1, but calls them to obey the cultural mandate given in modified form to Noah in Genesis.
The goal of this commission is not to provide a way to earn or attain new creation, but to foster temporary preservation of life and social order until the end of the present world.
The idea being, we don't push back against the curse.
We're just here as sojourners.
We're just here as pilgrims.
We don't strive against it.
He says also this.
He says that common grace preserves nature, and only special redemptive grace consummates it.
That nature's end is not restored and perfected by grace, but that nature's end is merely preserved.
It's merely awaiting the consummation of special grace.
So there's a lot there, but.
Westminster Escondido, that's where Michael Horton and Van Druden and some of these guys are.
But Van Druden, even, he goes so far as to say passages like what you cited earlier, Michael, that creation itself groans with eager expectations, longing, waiting for the sons of God to be revealed.
Van Druden even says of that particular passage of scripture, That creation is groaning, yes, you can't deny that because it's explicit in scripture, but he says that what creation is longing for, so it's groaning under the pains of the curse of sin, but what it's wanting, what it's desirous of, and more importantly, what will be given to it, what God is going to do, is he's going to destroy it.
So creation is not groaning with eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed, because in the revealing of the sons of God, In our redemption, that creation will be redeemed alongside us.
No, Van Druden would say, No, creation is longing for a mercy killing.
It wants the sons of God to be revealed, not because in our redemption, creation will receive its redemption as well.
No, in our redemption, creation will be taken out back behind the woodshed and put down.
And creation is so miserable under the curse and pains of sin that it's like an animal.
That's too far gone, that's been hit by a car, you know, like a deer, and it's just kind of barely moving its head.
And you can tell, you know, it's like the most merciful thing that you can do at this point is if you carry, you know, go ahead and pop it.
If not, then put it in reverse and hit it one more time, you know, and then maybe take it home to the wife and kids and have some, you know, some venison.
But the point is that that's this, you know, retarded Two Kingdom view.
It's R2K, it's, you know, it's radical Two Kingdom.
They've kind of coined it and said, no, it's reformed.
Two kingdoms.
Don't let them have that.
It's not reformed two kingdom.
There is a classical two kingdom view that I actually don't prescribe to.
I prescribe to a lot of it, but I actually would have some differences and be a little bit more Vantillian and some of my thought, a little bit more Kyperian, and I could be wrong.
But I have the utmost sympathies and appreciation and respect because it is worthy of respect.
It is the reformed traditional position of a classical two kingdom position.
That is not the position of Westminster Escondido.
It is not reformed two kingdomism.
That would be classical two kingdom.
Theirs is radical two kingdom.
Or retarded to kingdom.
You could use that word as well, but it is certainly the R does not stand for reformed.
So that is, I mean, and that you just have to understand that is a whole different outlook on creation, on man's responsibility, on our mission, on the world, the universe, all these different things.
The only thing that Van Druden actually believes, the only physical thing in all the created cosmos that will transcend from this life to the next is our physical bodies.
And he affirms that because to not affirm that, you would be a heretic.
You have to.
He looks to, you know, that's his goal.
It's like, you know, what is the absolute bottom line?
And for everything else, it's all going to be burned up with fire, but not as a metaphor and not speaking of an old covenant being done away with and wrapped up as a garment.
He believes a whole, not one covenant being replaced by another, but this whole created physical cosmos in a literal annihilationist type sense will be burned up with fire.
And then the big reason why we're talking about it is okay, so how then shall we live?
What does that cut kind of view?
What kind of impact, what fruit does that bear in the average Christian's life?
And what I would argue is you don't have to look far to find it.
It's the fruit that we, you know, it's the lion's share of fruit that we have in the evangelical church right now, which is what?
This world is not my home, not of this world, you know, bumper sticker.
And there's really not a dang thing that we can do about it.
The world is under a curse, and the curse will have the final say.
But Jesus, He's not going to restore the world.
He's not going to save the world.
But He will come, and He'll pluck us up out of it in the proper time.
It is weird.
It's like you didn't think it could be done, just when you think of covenant theology and you think of the Westminster Confession stuff.
Westminster Escondido has done it.
God bless them.
I didn't think it was possible, but they found a way to achieve the exact fruit of Anabaptist theology while being Presbyterians.
It's a hat trick.
It's quite a thing.
It's impressive.
It is impressive.
I mean, one of the ironies here, Wes, is if I remember my history correctly, it was actually some of the events of the Thirty Years' War.
Maybe it was before that, but there was a massacre of Protestants by Catholics.
which was the turning point.
There had been a concerted effort to get Martin Luther to agree with the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.
And he had resisted and resisted and resisted.
He had said, no, God sets the king in authority.
And there was a massacre of a huge, it was thousands of Protestants who were massacred in one day by this Catholic army.
And I wish I had thought ahead to look up the name of the massacre.
But it was that massacre, which is right in the context of the Thirty Years' War, that finally convinced Luther, you know what, maybe we do sometimes need to look to lower that because by his reasoning, the king of France was, you know, you cannot argue against it because he was the Lord's anointed.
And even though he had massacred all these Protestants, he was nevertheless the Lord's anointed.
And there could be no working in a political sense against him.
And it was that conflict that led Luther to, towards the end, agree With the principle of the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.
And you know, it makes sense in this, you know, in regards to the fact that none of us are doing theology in a vacuum.
We're all a product of place and time.
So when you think about it, just, you know, pan out 30,000 foot view, you don't have to be like a Luther historian, you know, expert on Martin Luther to realize, okay, what was the Leviathan, the prime, there's always a few at any given moment.
It's never as simple as just one.
But what was one of the primary Leviathans, tyrants of Luther's day?
It wasn't necessarily a Caesar in the sphere of the state, but it was the Pope in the sphere of the church.
That was his, you know, he was on the run for his life because of the Pope, the abuses of the church.
So, he was ultimately and predominantly concerned about tyranny and abuses of power within the church.
So, he was all too comfortable early on in his life with combating the abuses of the Pope by finding refuge and protections, you know, by bolstering up, giving even maybe too much power to the state in order to combat this, you know, because there's two Leviathans here.
Well, one wants to eat him and the other one doesn't.
So, what's he going to do?
Well, he's going to, in his theology, he's going to put pen to paper and talk about.
How well this Leviathan is totally fine, um, you know, and you, you know, to go against the state is to go against God, this, that, and the other, um, because it's you know, that's that's who's saving his life and protecting him from Rome, Roman Catholicism.
Um, but you're right, later on he started to see a little bit more clearly, but Luther is not, uh, God bless him forever.
Uh, he was he was no um, he was no trifle, but uh, but he was probably not the best for political theology, right.
I want to get into.
Sorry, one other thing.
A name that people may have heard, and it's been five or six years since I read this book, but I'm pretty sure in Kevin DeYoung's book, What is the Mission of the Church, he's arguing against the social justice push in the church.
But I'm pretty sure in that book, he articulates the same thing, that the church is merely called to watch and wait and to bear witness to the coming Christ.
And he's arguing against social justice, which I'm all for.
Grace vs Finitude00:07:52
I'm pretty sure I remember him going as far as saying the church really has no business establishing true justice on the earth.
And to some degree, he's right.
But Christians certainly do.
Right.
And this idea that it's where we conflate the church and Christians and the mission, what Christians are supposed to do in the world with what the church is supposed to do, we have to be careful with our language here.
Because I wouldn't, in principle, disagree with De Jong on that point.
But to make that point and not to follow it up with, however, God has called Christians to be involved in the total restoration of beating back the curse, which was, I mean, I think of the conversation we had a couple weeks ago about healthcare and how early Christians believed that salvation was a total salvation.
And that when we heal the body, we are pointing forward to the ultimate healing in the body that will happen at the resurrection.
That has been ingrained in the church from very early on, the idea that the gospel has a tangible.
Application in providing healing to people.
And certainly, I think one of the points we want to make in this podcast is that the gospel that Christians carry to the nations has application in beating back many, many of the areas of the curse as well.
Yeah.
I just want to add four quotes and then get into some specifics because this is not retarded two kingdoms.
It's not the Reformed tradition.
So, I mean, this is even Aquinas.
Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.
Herman Visteas, grace supposes nature, which it perfects.
Francis Turreton, grace does not destroy nature but makes it perfect.
Herman Bovink, grace restores nature and takes it to its highest pinnacle.
The Reform view has always been that grace perfects nature.
You mean salvation grace when people become new creations?
Brings nature as God made man to be to its highest pinnacle.
Yep, exactly.
So over and against, all grace does is hold on, get us on the life raft, wait for rescue.
No, grace takes who you are, it doesn't obliterate that, it doesn't destroy it.
It doesn't take you and make you just a weak man that talks in a low, soft tone of voice.
No, grace takes you as a man who you are, makes you the best man that God has called you to be.
So, we push back against the curse.
Grace does not destroy who we are, but helps us take it to its highest pinnacle.
Technology does a lot of good.
So, I think of just healing.
That is an objective good.
Death, injury, these things, they're part of the curse.
God's curse for man is that things like broken bones and death and sickness and diabetes and all of these different things, those wouldn't have been in a prelapsarian world.
So, when we push back against those, we push back against them with innovation.
We push back against them with medicine.
We push back against.
Them against these curses with technology, those are good things, and we can say that.
Here's the double edged sword though a lot of technologies that have improved our earthly standing, the ones that have actually done a really good job of it, also often come with some negatives.
So I think of the internet, for example.
The internet has done a lot of good, it's done a lot of bad.
It's done a lot of bad, sure, in pornography, but also crime, organization.
There are hitmen that can be hired on the dark web, weapons, the transfer of information.
So, one way or another, Pandora's box of the internet has opened.
But technology and seeking to overcome our limitations, I didn't say overcome the curse, but overcome our limitations, oftentimes leads us down paths that were never intended for man in the first place.
It was never in God's intended plan for a man to have access to and view as many women as a man can now on the internet.
It destroys what man was created to do.
And so, we'll talk about a little more, some specific technologies in the next segment.
We have to be really careful are we trying to overcome A limitation of the curse, or are we trying to overcome a limitation of man?
Should you know and have at your fingertips every single morning all the news and all the bombings and all the earthquakes and all the tsunamis and all the crime that is happening in all major countries across the world?
Not even Adam would have probably had that, nor need to be appraised of it.
We're limited geographically with sight, with sound, with information that we can take in, like practically limited in literally how much information can be processed by our brains.
Maybe God designed it that way.
The curse was not that you would be limited.
The curse was not that your vision wouldn't be able to see for 100 miles.
The curse was work and toil and sickness and sin.
But some of these limitations, I think God built in for a reason and in his wisdom when he created man.
Yeah, what you're getting at is the distinction between the two categories of finitude and fallenness.
So, fallenness is something that we want, by the grace of God, to push back on.
We want to do this with the three primary enemies of the Christian, which is the flesh, the world, and the devil.
And we want to start at home.
So, the first arena where the Christian begins to push back on fallenness is by waging war against our own indwelling sin.
That I beat my flesh and make it my slave.
You know, that Paul says in Romans 7 that sin still resides within the members of my being.
I find this a lot at work.
You know, that what I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
So, that the good that I want to do this, I cannot carry out.
Oh, what a wretched man I am.
And so, we're, you know, through the process of sanctification.
We're waging war against the first enemy of the flesh.
But beyond that, we also want to push back on the curse of sin, not just as we find it in our own individual hearts, but as we find the curse of sin in the world around us.
When we see that with our family, and that comes to discipling with our wives and children, but not just the spiritual side, but also the physical side.
There are elements of the curse that happen when a family member is sick, and if as best we can, As much as the Lord allows, we want to make use of certain discoveries and certain means in order to push back sickness and to bring and restore that loved one to health.
And then we do it at a larger level, nationally, in society at large, in the world, doing that with pushing back the curse on food, right?
So, famine, right?
A lot of people throughout time have died because of famine.
And so, okay, so how can we stop that?
How can we stop locusts from eating three fourths of our crop to where this year we just don't have food and most of our people are going to die?
Or how can we actually harvest more?
And so, in doing that, you're pushing back on the curse at every level, you're pushing back on.
The curse that is upon nature.
But there are times where the pushback is going beyond restoring nature and including ourselves at every level physical, spiritual, emotional.
There's a certain level where we're pushing back on the curse that's upon nature, and I'm including ourselves as natural in this category of nature.
There's a certain point where you're pushing back that curse, and then there's a certain point where you're trying to make man something more than man.
There's a difference in I want restored man.
It's different to say, I want to see man restored rather than saying, I want to see man become God.
Man was never intended to be God.
And so, fallenness is a curse.
Finitude is not.
Man was always going to be finite.
Adam, pre sin, was always going to be finite.
He wasn't omniscient, he didn't know all things.
And it's not particularly healthy for us to know everything that's going on.
Like Wes said, everywhere else, like everybody getting upset about, All the Ukraine flags and people's bios on social media.
Restoring Man Not God00:12:08
Now it's like, oh, you know, I support the latest thing.
Now it's the Israel flag.
And here's an idea I don't support terrorists in Hamas.
I also don't support sodomite Israel.
I don't support either of them.
So I also happen to be like thousands of miles away.
I'd like to see the billions of dollars that people work hard to earn in our nation actually go towards our nation.
Like stopping a military aged invasion of our southern border instead of invasions of another country on the other side of the world that is not our greatest ally.
That kind of part of the reason why we're so easily duped is because of the internet.
It is because it's moving past pushing back on the curse, fallenness, and into the realm of trying to somehow defeat not fallenness, but finitude.
Not restoring man, but trying to elevate man to be God.
And that's not.
Yeah, that's helpful with AI.
So AI is going to make the task of discerning real content, real pictures, real videos, real written material.
They're going to make it real hard.
It's going to make it real hard, almost impossible.
And maybe that's because man is not meant to be able to generate a novel based on a dream he had last night, the work done by someone else.
Maybe we shouldn't be able to just create images of, I don't know, a dolphin flipping over a Burger King.
Maybe we shouldn't have just unlimited creativity just at our disposal, but do the hard work of creating.
Actual beautiful images like Christendom of the past made, like these sculptures that are here on the wall.
All AI makes, and I use AI daily and I get the use case, but it just makes a lot of things that are really not material at all.
And so, what we're going to do, we're going to render the internet obsolete because it's going to be so full of just procedurally generated fluff content.
We're going to do it to ourselves in our maddening pursuit for unlimited productivity, which is just making slides.
And writing words and making websites that don't connect to something real.
This ministry connects to something real.
We're in a real building, we have a real conference.
When the advice we give is always to terminate in the practical, it has a real, practical, tangible, physical use.
A real church.
Part of a real church.
Not in the metaverse as a real bread, real water, real word.
Right.
Yeah.
And so we render ourselves obsolete when we try to overcome those limitations and be God.
I will generate a feature length movie just at the whim of a hat, a dream I had last night.
Well, maybe we shouldn't have that ability at our fingertips.
One more thing that I want to add to this, and then we'll go to our last commercial break for the day, but.
So, we want to push back on the curse that represents fallenness and not push back on humanity itself that represents or includes finitude.
We were meant to be finite, we were not meant to be fallen.
Another kind of category distinction when I think of Democrats, you know, and just, you know, liberals, they often try to do, but sadly, I think the right has joined them in many regards in this endeavor.
But what they try to do often.
Is not pushing back on the curse that is on nature, but pushing back on nature itself.
And so that's just another, it's really not another category, it's another way of saying what I just said earlier.
So pushing back on fallenness, but not pushing back on finitude, because finitude being finite is the design for creaturely things.
Creatures are finite.
We weren't created to be the creator who is forever praised, Amen.
We were created to be creatures, and creatures, necessarily, one of their attributes is finitude.
And so We push back on fallenness.
Creatures don't have to be.
Being a creature does not inherently include fallenness, but it does inherently, necessarily include finitude.
Well, likewise, as we're pushing back on fallenness, we need to make sure that we're pushing back on the curse that is upon nature and not pushing back on nature itself.
And technology often crosses that line.
It's one thing to push back on famine, right?
It's one thing to push back on droughts.
But there's a certain point where it's like, okay, I'm pushing back on droughts so that people don't starve, so that we can grow food, or I'm pushing back on locusts, right?
Okay, but what means are you using to push back on that?
Are we spraying toxic chemicals in the sky to accumulate clouds, right?
Which was a conspiracy like 15 minutes ago, and then turns out that one was true too, or these pesticides?
Are we killing bugs so that people don't starve?
But now all these people have autism.
Right.
You know, or whatever it may be.
Or another example, back to Democrats, because I mentioned them, something that, you know, they would be infamous for would be like, instead of health care, you know, on one hand, they'd be like, yeah, we want to push back on cancer.
And assuming that the means are ethical, then great, that's a worthy endeavor.
Let's do it.
Cancer is a part of the curse.
That's a part of fallenness.
That's not finitude, that's fallenness.
Let's push back on cancer.
But then they want to further go and say, you know, we don't want to just stop at pushing back on the curse that's on nature, but we're going to actually push back on nature itself.
We're going to play God.
So we're going to, as included in our healthcare, isn't just cancer treatment, but included in our healthcare is killing unborn children in the womb and turning girls into boys and vice versa.
Well, that's not pushing back on the curse on nature unless you're telling me that children and procreation is a curse.
Which they view it very much as it is, that it is a curse.
Or, unless you're telling me that being born a boy is a curse, or being born a girl is a curse, which they very much view that it is.
So, that's as we're seeking to, right now, we are in an unprecedented time.
There's always been tools, right?
The Tower of Babel, right?
That was a tool, it was a cutting edge innovation.
They just came up with the most cutting edge technology for the time.
What was it?
The brick.
That's what it was.
It was mud and straw, that's what it was.
And they were like, with this technology, we can build a tower to the heavens.
And God doesn't even say that you can't.
He actually stops them from doing it.
So that was their technology of the time.
There's always been tools.
And all AI is, so long as it's narrow AI, because we really don't have open AI, it's not sentient.
And I personally am of the persuasion that that's something that is outside of the bounds that God won't allow to be created.
But regardless of what you think about that, our current status, we have narrow AI.
Which I would argue is also a tool, just like the brick, except a lot more complex.
So it's much more sophisticated, but it is still a tool.
However, I'm willing to concede that there's nothing novel in that sense, that it's just tools.
And different periods of human history have always had tools.
But I am willing to concede and say that we are living in a time where, unlike the Bronze Age or the Stone Age or the Industrial Age and then the Silicon Age, which we're now in and going even further past it, I would argue that although it's just a tool, more sophisticated, but just a tool like any other age of humanity, we have the rate of innovation, the rate of technological advances that are happening in our current generation,
I really do believe are unprecedented.
I don't think it's ever happened in human history.
And so the point is that the likelihood of these tools, they may all be just tools.
But the likelihood of these incredibly powerful, sophisticated tools being used to push back against nature itself, damaging and harming nature rather than the curse that is upon nature, or trying to overcome finitude, make man into God rather than overcoming fallenness.
That likelihood of sophisticated, powerful tools being abused and hurting nature itself rather than the curse, and trying to eradicate finitude itself, which is actually a good thing rather than the fallenness.
I think that's at an all time high, that likelihood.
And so, for us to have this conversation, for Christians to be wary, for them to look at something like Neuralink, which we'll talk about in our final segment after this last commercial, but for them to look at Neuralink and say, man, it could maybe make a guy walk who's a paraplegic.
It could maybe make a guy see who's blind.
And that is a curse on nature.
But also, it's unprecedented.
And it could maybe also take over his brain, or with the power of thought, he could be looking at porn 24 7.
And curating wet dreams at night when he said that should probably also be considered.
Not to even mention that it could be potentially hacked.
What if everybody has Neuralink one day and then Elon just decides, or by that point, let's be honest, the government would have taken it from them.
And they just say, you know what, we'd like a little bit more of a docile population.
And with Neuralink, there's actually the ability to drip a little bit of this one chemical that will make people just a little less ambitious.
There's some protests going on that we'd like to.
Calm, and you know, as far as it's you know, BLM, we're like, Yeah, let's do it, you know.
But then all of a sudden, it's like you know, Christians who are protesting something in a righteous manner, and you know, and so these are not small things.
Well, that's because one of the limitations that we do legitimately have is the limitation of the time that it takes to discern.
And regardless of how discerning you are, and Joel, you're pretty discerning, but it still takes contemplation.
And when we're talking about societal level changes, it takes, number one, a society who's willing to do the work of thinking.
And number two, it does take time to consider, will this technological rollout, this technological innovation, Will it be good?
Will it be bad?
Will it be on the net?
Will it be positive or benefit?
Will it lead to great atrocity?
Can we find a way to limit it so we can turn it towards good?
That's one of the limitations that we have as humanity.
And so the rate of change that you're talking about is something we need to at least reckon with.
And now we're getting multiple within one generation.
Yes.
Right?
And, you know, so I sympathize.
I'm one of the parents who, you know, the kids are going on from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next, and it's very difficult to keep up.
And that's just one of the limitations that God put on us as society that we have to be honest about.
Yep.
All right.
Let's go to our last commercial of the day.
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Human Limitations00:10:36
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Today.
All right, well, welcome back to the final segment.
We're going to go rapid fire Neuralink, epidermals, epidurals, TRT.
One thing you noted though, we're talking about tools.
A tool's ability for misuse is often proportional to how useful it is.
There's candlesticks on the shelf.
There are no crowds worried about the misuse of candlesticks.
It's helpful.
Hold up a candle if you have one.
But the misuse factor is pretty low.
And so we're developing.
This is the game clue.
Right.
It's literally one of the weapons listed that you can use most of this month.
That is true.
Go ahead.
Yep.
So we have these tools.
They're becoming more and more powerful.
I'm going to give it a good example because it emphasizes when used well, pushing back against the curse and not nature.
And that's TRT, which stands for Testosterone Replacement Therapy.
So, if you're a man, you need to be testosterone maxing.
You just testosterone, it's all aspects of a man's quality of health.
It's his energy, it's his drive, it's his recovery, it's his sleep, it's his libido.
Everything that is good about man is good for men to be driven, it's good for men to get good sleep, it's good for men to be strong, it's good for recovery.
All of those things are mediated at some level with other factors by your testosterone level.
Testosterone goes down with age, which increases your propensity to broken bones, your ability to not recover as well, your ability to not build muscle mass.
So, you have men that They have testosterone and it begins to go down as they age.
And now, developed is something called TRT, testosterone replacement therapy, via injection, where they can raise those levels to a level that would be pretty high for someone 40, 50, back to the level of a 20 year old.
And objectively, it does improve your health.
So now, here's the difference a 20 year old man says, I want to be jacked, I just want to be huge.
And he says, I'm going to take this.
My levels are already normal.
I'm not experiencing the decline of age, I'm not nearing death.
My bones are not brittle and broken, but I want to transcend the limit that I should have for being muscle bound.
And so I'm going to take this.
Well, actually, it takes men that do it during their childbearing years and makes them sterile until they get off of it.
So you push back against the nature of man, which is to have kids in pursuit of an end that is not manly.
But if you're 45 and you're truly done having kids, it's impossible now.
And your levels are lower than they would be on average.
It's a result of the curse.
That's a result of sin entering the world.
There's a huge difference between that.
So notice the distinction 20 years old.
I want to overcome the limitations of lifting, weightlifting, recovery, all of that at the cost of what God made me to do.
Versus over here, I'm pushing back not against the way God made me, but against the effects of the curse of sin.
That's a valid category for you to talk with your doctor and say, I've gotten it tested.
I'm here in my 40s.
I no longer am able to have any kids.
I think this would really help me be more productive, be more energetic, sleep better, recover better, and be better able to take care of my body, to be around for my grandkids, to be around for my great-grandkids, et cetera.
No, that's good.
Let's talk about Neuralink.
So, Neuralink.
I have my degree in neuroscience, by the way.
So, I am qualified to talk about this a little bit.
Some of our.
That's your degree?
Neuroscience?
Neuroscience and behavior.
That was my bachelor's.
Where did you do that at?
Columbia University.
Nice.
Small little community college.
No, I have my degree in this.
Sometimes, when it comes to human malfunctions, so walking, vision, sometimes it's literally in the legs.
Your nerves are crushed by an accident.
That's not the problem with the brain sending signals to the legs to tell them to walk.
There is no nerve there, there's no muscle there to innervate and activate.
So sometimes the problem is not the brain, but down here.
But sometimes the problem is the brain because of trauma, because of things that happen, because of birth defects.
Everything's working.
There's a muscle there, there's bone, there's leg, that all can be moved, but the brain itself fails to actually send the signal down the spinal cord.
And so Elon Musk's Neuralink company, himself, he's not the CEO, but he is on the board of it, is aimed at a brain implant that can selectively activate certain regions, stimulate certain regions to produce.
Effects that the brain otherwise can't produce.
So it can't send that signal to the legs to walk.
Very complicated.
They're in their first human trial.
It also enables other things you were talking about earlier.
Individuals can control a cursor on a screen using their brain.
Can some guy just win a Mario Kart game against friends with Neuralink?
Oh, really?
I'm pretty sure, yeah.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Well, it's innovative, it's interesting.
So you have this technology, but Musk has also said that it has the potential that the pleasure that it could induce by being able to selectively target, flood with dopamine certain sections of your brain, its ability to do that could create pleasure that would surpass any drug.
We've talked about the problem of pornography and the internet.
And so you have a tool that can make people walk.
But my goodness, you have a tool, like you mentioned earlier, that can be abused.
And here's my warning.
At what point, as the technology gets more and more integrated with us, are we going to say enough?
Man's goal is not to be replaced by cyborgs.
We are still going to be human.
That is what it means to be human, is to maintain the faculties God has given us.
But first, it was photographs.
Then it was movies.
Then there's a TV in your home, but it was really big and really unmovable.
So you just had it in the living room.
And then we had 24 hour television, and then televisions got smaller.
And then we had the computer, but it wasn't laptops, so it had to stay at a desk.
And then it was laptops, and then it was a cell phone.
And now it's a wearable on your wrist.
And now it's come up to your eyes.
And now it's even wanting to go all the way into your brain.
At what point are Christians going to say, We don't actually need all of these things?
They provide some benefits, they help with some of our finitude, which can be good.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with knowing more things at a certain level.
But at what point are Christians going to say, I don't actually need this to be presented mature in Christ?
Uh, maybe I'm not able to walk as well.
Maybe I'm not able to see as well.
Maybe I'm not able to live to 150, but that's okay.
But I don't necessarily need this.
That's more an open question.
That's something I've been thinking through.
Would I really want to somehow live to 150 just on a concoction of chemicals, mechanical devices, and stimulants?
Would I really want that?
Depends on how I accept right now.
Yeah, it depends on if it's a viable, fruitful life still at that point or if you're Joe Biden, right?
Right.
No, but those are good questions raised, Wes.
That's really thoughtful.
You got anything, Michael, on that?
I don't know.
I think that a couple of months ago, I was having a couple of conversations with some of the guys in our church, and it's actually something that, Lord willing, when I have some time, I'd like to do a deep dive on at some point.
But the question of what is it to be human, right?
And in this case, the question was, are we tripart or two parts, body and spirit or body, soul and spirit?
And this is a question that has been asked before.
The reformers talked about it quite a bit.
Charles Hodge and a lot of the reformers came down on the side that we are two parts, we're body and spirit.
But I think that the question of what it is to be human needs to be asked and answered in our time.
And I'm not saying right now I have the answer to this.
But how are we going to know when we are pushing past legitimate limitations?
And how are we going to know when we are simply Improving on something that God gave us, like glasses, to see further, right?
And even, you know, you could say, well, glasses are corrective.
What about binoculars that help healthy eyes see further?
What about telescopes?
Telescopes, exactly.
And so, really, it goes back to the theme that we've been talking about.
Space is fake and gay.
Telescopes aren't real.
There we go.
It goes back to the question that we've been kind of hovering around for a couple of weeks now of the telos of things.
And in my opinion, the answer to some of the questions that we're asking about neuralink, Or testosterone or AI, these sorts of things really boil down to what does it tell us?
What is it to be a human?
What is the purpose of a human?
What are the good natural limitations that God gave to humans that we ought not cross?
Right.
And I don't think that we're living in a particular moment in history where we necessarily have the most credible and qualified people to answer that question.
That's true.
So, to answer the question of where am I pushing back on fallenness versus finitude, pushing back on the curse on nature versus pushing back on nature itself, you're exactly right.
The only way to answer that question is to know what is man for.
Yes.
So, you have to be able to speak to the actual people.
Purpose of man, which means that the ones who are going to hold in check the innovators and the people in technology are going to be the theologians and the philosophers of which we currently have none.
That's right.
Honesty Is Not Enough00:05:22
Like, I was thinking about this today.
I was just, you know, and I'm not talking about, I wasn't like scrolling through and reading posts by Joe Biden, you know, or Nancy Pelosi.
I was just looking at reformed Twitter and it was just overwhelming.
And I like overwhelming.
And I'm not even trying to, you know, pat myself on the back here.
Because I'm not impressive.
I did not go to Columbia.
Wes is pretty impressive.
Michael, you in your own right, you're pretty impressive.
The reason I seem impressive is because all you need currently in the Reformed evangelical world to stand out is an IQ of about 85 and just a little bit of testosterone if you're a man.
Seriously, the bar is so low.
I was looking at Reformed Twitter and I thought, the Reformed world is bereft.
Of thought.
Yep.
There is no thought.
No one can think.
No one.
And it's like, and there's all these people with voices.
And I understand people will be listening in, like, oh, you know, the pot calling the kettle black.
Like, that's you, Joel.
You're the one who, you know, and that's fine.
If you hate Joel, that's fine.
You know, I don't know why you're watching, you know, but feel free to do something else with your time.
But if, yeah, I understand that this is a barrel that could be pointed right back at me or anybody else.
But there's a lot of people, and I'll just be frank, there's a lot of people who, um, Who had some generally good, it wasn't insightful.
And that's what we have to recognize.
It was not insightful.
It was not intelligent.
It was not impressive.
Nothing.
It was the most obvious, blatant truths, perhaps that are even in existence.
But the world had so lost its mind and the church had so discredited itself that in 2020 with BLM and with COVID, just basic thought put you on the map for being a thought leader.
But now, four years later, Those people still have their platforms and it is becoming painful to watch.
Like, seriously, like I'm, you know, regularly, you know, constantly controlling myself, exercising self control not to embarrass people, especially women.
You know, but there are many Christian women in the public sphere, in the reformed world, who they, you know, it's like, how does this person have a following?
Like, honest to God, how in the world did this happen?
And it's like, well, we know how it happened.
Let's just be honest.
We know how it happened.
It was 2020.
The whole world lost its mind.
The church, 85% of it, capitulated.
And this woman had the courage just to say, hey, we shouldn't be racist in any direction.
And that's it.
Literally, that's all they said.
And that was enough to make a celebrity in 2020.
That's how low the bar was.
But the problem is now that person, right?
So that person was just the little kid.
It would be like the little kid saying the emperor has no clothes, but then making him the emperor.
Right.
That's what happened since 2020 is that the little kid became the emperor when the reality was he was not smarter or more intelligent or more credible or more qualified than anybody else in the kingdom.
He just was more honest.
Right.
And honesty matters.
I'm not trying to downplay honesty, it's an incredibly important virtue, but it is not sufficient in and of itself.
By God's grace, one of the biggest things that we teach our children, their mother and I, is the importance of honesty.
And I think for the most part, we have honest children.
We do.
But they're not qualified to run the country.
And they're also not qualified to be pastors in the church.
And they're not qualified to be theological or philosophical thought leaders for the culture at large.
Right now, the world, and sadly, it's not the world and even, no, the world and especially the Reformed Church is completely bereft of thought.
We're talking about some of the dumbest people imaginable.
Democrats, And reform leaders.
I mean, they're in one respect.
They are neck and neck right now.
Neck and neck in a race for who can prove that they possess the lowest IQ.
And right now, I mean, it's neck and neck.
I couldn't tell you who's going to win that race.
Lowest IQ and lowest testosterone.
And lowest testosterone.
It does affect men's ability to say controversial things.
A low T man cannot assert strong opinions because he could get beat up for it.
So he doesn't.
Right.
So, all that being said, my point is just to say that.
In protecting, as right now we have massive innovation and fast, very fast pace, and a broad, wide breadth of all the different innovations.
And it's all just tools, but they're becoming exponentially more powerful.
And not by generation to generation, not like a thousand years later, then you move from Stone Age to Bronze Age.
No, we're not talking about in a thousand years.
No, we're saying by the day, almost by the hour, you have exponentially growing.
Technology, in terms of its capacity and not just its depth, degree of capacity, but its width in terms of application and all the different variations of it.
Circumventing Pain00:06:22
And yet, that's simultaneously happening in a current culture, a current generation that is bereft of serious thought, especially serious theological or philosophical thought.
And so, then, as you have all this innovation, the danger is.
Acrossing the line from we're no longer pushing back on the curse on nature, but we're pushing back on nature itself, no longer pushing back on fallenness, but pushing back on finitude.
The one thing that we've needed now in all of human history, perhaps more than any other time, is to know the line.
And we have the least amount of people who are able to tell us where that line is.
So we are screwed.
And that's a post millennial.
Just for the record, I am very bullish on the long term.
On the short term, I think we're going to get crushed.
I didn't know it was Black Pill Wednesday.
Yeah, my bad.
But yeah, in the short run, I think we've got a world of hurt coming.
Any thoughts from you guys as we land the plane with this episode?
Just two things, two examples to be practical.
We always think we can interrupt a certain part of a process, but still get the same result.
So, Ozempic, for example, is a glucogen like peptide that is induced when you eat to completion.
And it's been extracted and purified and now injected for the idea that you give this to people and they eat less.
So, we have this brilliant idea where we can just shortcut the process.
By injecting you with this, and what's resulting is we talked about this two weeks ago a lot of side effects.
People that have IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, for life, uh, and even in there, you're like, well, diabetes and uh, and gluttony, those are a result of the curse, right?
Yes, but the means that God gave to mediate them was not an injection.
It was for you to put your body through cardiovascular exertion to lose the weight that was excess deposit.
And you try to shortcut that.
It's not a ton different from hormones to a transgender individual.
Well, we'll just pause puberty.
Oh, we'll induce something different just by this injection.
The monster in Frankenstein is not the monster, it's the scientist who creates this abominable thing.
So that's Ozempic.
Just go take a walk, eat better.
Epidurals.
My wife, she did the research.
She did both of her birth natural.
She didn't do them.
I'm not saying they're wrong to do, but it can have negative effects on the mother because pain releases oxytocin, which is a bonding chemical.
So a lot of times moms will bond better when they haven't had an epidural.
And it can get through to the baby, and the baby actually experienced some of the effects of the anesthesia, struggled to nurse.
So there's some reasons even there.
Well, pain with childbearing is part of the curse.
It actually says in Genesis, I will multiply your pain with childbearing.
It was already going to be a difficult experience.
And again, I'm not saying blanket ban on epidurals.
No Christian should get them.
But you look into it and you look at the effects and you look at studies and you say, well, maybe God did intend there to be some pain and some difficulty with the process of bringing new life into the world that we're completely circumventing.
And we just try to circumvent it, but we realize it has all these downstream effects we never even accounted for.
And so don't think that God created simple machines that a cog can be swapped out of and swapped back in or just needs a little bit of injection to fix something that's been wrong.
He's created us to be integrated, organic, connected creatures.
That requires discernment and how to live well, how to navigate, and how to care for.
Very helpful.
It's funny, though, as you were talking, I completely agree with the overarching principle.
It's just funny, I was thinking about our children and with my wife, she's done natural and she's also done epidural with her deliveries.
And the natural deliveries were by far the hardest with nursing.
The epidurals were the kids that.
Nurse the best.
Yep.
So I don't know if that's exactly where we have to discern and say, okay, I'm going to know these might be the downsides.
That's what you say, like, wrong burgundy.
I don't believe you.
I don't believe you.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
What were you saying?
No, that's exactly where every person has to say, okay, I've done one this way, done one this way.
I know the literature.
I know this is a side effect to potentially expect.
I know what this might result in because discernment is not saying never use Neuralink.
Oh, it's totally okay.
Well, what is it being used for?
Who am I?
What do I need?
What am I pushing back against?
That's actual wisdom, actual decision that I can't give you from this table.
And what does it open the door to?
Not just like reading the literature for what it is today, but what could it be tomorrow?
Because in 1999, to say, hey, I think we're going to have the internet in our home, that's a decision you have to remake and remake.
It's not a one and done kind of thing.
It's like, well, today, the internet in our home will be dialing up deep, enabled.
Okay, but a little bit later on, it's going to have all of these dangers and all of these risks.
And that's the thing with Neuralink.
When you're putting something in your body, it's not just I've read the literature and what it is today.
Well, today it will help me see and overcome blindness, or today it may help me walk.
But it's also what does this technology implanted in my skull allow for guys who maybe don't have such benevolent intentions?
You know, if they ever were to control this, what does it allow?
I mean, it's like the Oppenheimer kind of thing, you know, like wrestling with the ethics of like, did I just save the world or destroy it?
Right.
Well, and one of the things that is concerning is that we as a people are seemingly determined to get rid of any guardrails.
You think about the quote unquote vaccine safety protocol that is supposed to fence in any new vaccine releases.
Well, it was just completely arbitrarily dismissed when we went through COVID.
And so that was theoretically something that's supposed to take, like when the question about the vaccines.
Was being debated initially.
I thought we're not going to have to worry about this because the protocols require that it can't even be mandated for what five, seven years, something like that.
Nope, immediately they're going to be mandated.
And so that's the Constitution protected us from that, right?
Yes.
Thank goodness.
That's to your point, Dan.
Get my conservative governor.
Questioning Safety Protocols00:00:41
We seem less interested in discerning, and it's just production, new, better, faster, more information.
We've spent so much time asking what we can do.
Yeah.
That we're not asking the question what we should do.
And no one wants to ask that question.
What should we do?
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
The men's health clinic would give any 20 year old man who walks in there and complains of this, that, or the other testosterone.