This week's podcast episode starts a new series, "What's Trending." The first episode of Life Challenges each month will feature a review of current events. There are four topics that we are focusing on today...
Discover the delicate dance between faith and government as we explore the complexities faced by Christians in the political sphere. As we address the alarming downturn in birth rates across developed nations, we ponder the societal and economic implications of such a shift and weigh them against the biblical edict to "be fruitful and multiply."
Our discussion then moves on to the cultural firestorm ignited by a politician's candid memoir detailing animal euthanasia. We navigate through the maze of societal values that seemingly place animal lives on a pedestal while grappling with the moral implications of abortion.
The conversation turns to the screens we can't seem to escape, as we dissect the alarming influences of social media giants like TikTok on our children's self-esteem and opinion formation. The episode doesn't shy away from examining the implications of the potential TikTok ban, as we confront the broader issues of data privacy, national security, and the pervasive impact of digital platforms on the fabric of our society. This isn't just a dialogue—it's an invitation to understand the far-reaching consequences of our choices, both online and in the halls of power.
In a pivotal moment for Arizona, we dissect the repeal of an archaic 1864 abortion law, bringing to light the strategic and moral quagmires that permeate both sides of this hotly debated issue.
This week's podcast episode starts a new series, "What's Trending." The first episode of Life Challenges each month will feature a review of current events. There are four topics that we are focusing on today...
Discover the delicate dance between faith and government as we explore the complexities faced by Christians in the political sphere. As we address the alarming downturn in birth rates across developed nations, we ponder the societal and economic implications of such a shift and weigh them against the biblical edict to "be fruitful and multiply."
Our discussion then moves on to the cultural firestorm ignited by a politician's candid memoir detailing animal euthanasia. We navigate through the maze of societal values that seemingly place animal lives on a pedestal while grappling with the moral implications of abortion.
The conversation turns to the screens we can't seem to escape, as we dissect the alarming influences of social media giants like TikTok on our children's self-esteem and opinion formation. The episode doesn't shy away from examining the implications of the potential TikTok ban, as we confront the broader issues of data privacy, national security, and the pervasive impact of digital platforms on the fabric of our society. This isn't just a dialogue—it's an invitation to understand the far-reaching consequences of our choices, both online and in the halls of power.
In a pivotal moment for Arizona, we dissect the repeal of an archaic 1864 abortion law, bringing to light the strategic and moral quagmires that permeate both sides of this hotly debated issue.
JI Packer wrote back in the 1986 issue of Christianity Today a fascinating article about how a Christian can run for political office and how, understanding in our form of government, everything is compromised. Compromise is like a central tenet of serving in a representative form of government, and compromise means that you rarely, if ever, get your way.
Paul Snamiska:
Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Hi and welcome back.
Christa Potratz:
I'm Christa Potratz and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson, and today we are going to try something new here on the podcast and we are going to do a current event episode. The idea behind this episode is to be able to talk about some of the current events going on in the news and to just give our perspective on them and how it relates to life and family issues and also, as Christians too, what we can think about when we hear just different things in the news. So we are hoping maybe to make this something that we can do every month, maybe the first of the month, and if you have feedback later you can give it to us. But with that I mean unless Bob or Jeff have anything else to just add generally to the idea of talking about current events.
Bob Fleischmann:
Well, other than to say everything we're doing is current to some degree but these are developments that you're reading about or listening about in the news or things that you maybe should be hearing about, but you're not.
Jeff Samelson:
Yeah, yeah.
Christa Potratz:
I mean, I will say too, with some of these that we're going to talk about today, some I didn't really know myself, so I'm excited to talk about them and to gain a better perspective. Here, too, I guess we'll go ahead and get started. A better perspective here, too, I guess we'll go ahead and get started. One that you had suggested, bob, that we talk about, was one from the Wall Street, or, sorry, the Washington Post, right on birth rates.
Bob Fleischmann:
Yep, yeah, wall Street Journal and Washington Post both covered it, and that is it's the we've hit the lowest birth rate, fertility rate. What it basically is is understand this that a sustainable birth rate for a developed country like the United States should be for every woman of reproductive age should have 2.1 children. Now, first of all, the two children replace mom and dad when they die, and the 0.1 is for the child that doesn't have children, the child that dies. So you always need that birth rate to sustain a population level. What happens is when you drop below that birth rate, statistically you're shrinking. And of course, we encounter this situation here where in the United States, that birth rate has dropped down to something like 1.62,.
Jeff Samelson:
I think yeah, 1.62. 1.62.
Bob Fleischmann:
And it's supposed to be 2.1. Now it isn't like. This year it went to 1.62 and last year we were 2.1. We've been plummeting since 1973. And it really had been dropping before then, in 1973, and it really had been dropping before then. Just remember baby boomers, the post-World War II soldiers. Come home. There was a big spike. We were over three per family for birth rate and then it started going down with. The Supreme Court ruling was already beginning to infiltrate into the states back in 1969, 1970. So that's what really, but it's big news.
Christa Potratz:
I mean technically we are shrinking, yeah yeah, I mean in reading the article too, it just it talked how there was maybe a little spike, like during COVID or something, but that really wasn't very big. And then it also talked maybe about too, like some of the reasoning behind it now is that maybe people, some people, just maybe more people don't want kids, but maybe some people do, but they're just having them later.
Jeff Samelson:
And so then your options for how many you're going to have are maybe just you can't have as many as you wanted to and the statistics show is that the number of children that women I believe it's 35 to 39, are having is basically the same as the number women 25 to 29 are having. And that's not because, oh wow, all these older women are having more children. It's oh wow, all the younger women who are at prime age for having children are not having them. And that's really the greater cause for curiosity, at least, but more likely concern, because some people would say, well, what's the big deal? What does it matter if the population shrinks? I mean, maybe that's good, that's better for the environment.
Jeff Samelson:
Certainly environmentalists will make that argument. Well, there are all sorts of economic problems with that and political problems. Economically, you get to the situations like well, if your birth rate stays down in a nation and we're seeing this particularly in places like Japan that have gone down this road ahead of us you've got lots of old people and you don't have so many young people who are working to make the money that will be supporting the old people who are no longer working. If nothing else, it's in everybody's self-interest to have more workers out there so that your percentage of what's supporting the older population is lower.
Christa Potratz:
So we've talked about some of the implications that a low birth rate can have on a society. Why, as Christians, though, is this something that we should really care about?
Bob Fleischmann:
Well, I know we've talked about before. You know the instruction we got at the very beginning of time to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
Bob Fleischmann:
Beginning of time to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and Christians, I think. Personally, I think the problem that's going on is that people in affluent societies because that 2.1 figure is for developed countries, so affluent societies are finding that they want to get the most they can in life and they're beginning to see children as a hindrance, a problem. When you follow abortion rights arguments, most abortion rights advocates will recognize that a child, an unborn child, is a human life. They've introduced this discussion of personhood. It's not really a person and in that way they devalue that life so that it becomes expendable. So if you only wanted one child, or you only wanted two children and you find yourself pregnant, you have an out in a society that permits you to terminate the life of its youngest citizens by simply redefining the value you place on personhood, and so that's kind of what's going on. But you're also finding that people have high aspirations for themselves and for their children.
Bob Fleischmann:
And can I give my children the kind of education they want and the kind of life? Because every parent, I think, in our culture would like their children to have a little bit better life than they had. I always remember as a kid, orange juice for us was tang. So I remember when we had our children at home, we splurged and we bought real orange juice, and I would imagine that my children now, for their children, are looking to splurge in different areas. Well, you magnify that into a cultural mentality. Sometimes you just don't want that many children because you're not going to be able to give them everything that you think that you want to give them. And again and I know I've been beating that drum a lot lately, but I think it's people trying to create heaven on earth, they're trying to make it as paradise as you can. And children nowadays, because it's legal to terminate them, because it's legal to control how many you have. Therefore, that's kind of what happens, yeah.
Jeff Samelson:
Yeah, I mean the decision not to have children and we're not talking about people who are unable or are not married or whatever, but the decision to just say, well, I know we can have children, but we're not going to no-transcript be concerned when we see them in society generally or in our people around us. And we're going to be extra concerned when we see these things in the church, because what's in society always ends up in the church at some point, and so this should be a wake-up call on many levels.
Bob Fleischmann:
And the consequences, too, of getting below the replacement rate is that much of our Christian heritage is passed on through our children and through their children, and so forth. And of course, anybody who knows anything about statistics and population knows that while the replacement rate has been going down, the birth rate's been going down. The United States is becoming more populated. So what's going on? Well, you replace it with immigration, legal and illegal immigration, and so you bring in all the new values, all the new attitudes in, all the new values, all the new attitudes, and so, depending on what's coming in, that eventually becomes a prominent force in the lives of your offspring and their offspring.
Christa Potratz:
All right, well, moving right along here with another article, we'll go to one that Jeff suggested. So South Dakota's governor just released a memoir, and in it she talks about how she had to put down or kill, I guess, I think, with a shotgun a 14-month-old puppy or dog. And so, jeff, can you give us a little bit more information on that story?
Jeff Samelson:
Yeah, well, this is interesting. Well, it's on many levels, but it made it into the news because most people, particularly most pet owners, could not possibly imagine putting a pet to death with a shotgun blast. If an animal has to be put down, they take it to the vet. It's done quietly, mercifully, and everything like that. She says that she included this in her memoir as kind of just to show that she's the kind of take charge personality that if something difficult needs to be done she's going to do it. She's trying to present herself that way and I guess it's the humanizing aspect.
Jeff Samelson:
Yeah, we've got a farm, I'm a farm girl and all that kind of stuff, and but of course people are up in arms about this because it's like how could you do that to a puppy, I don't know 14 months old, really puppy or full grown more. But you know, okay, from what she says, the dog had issues. You know there was good reason to put it down. Obviously we can't really judge that too well or whatever. But I think that the interesting thing to me about this is how people on both the left and the right are getting upset about this and criticizing her for this, over what happened to to a dog and someone of the same stature, a female politician, a celebrity admitting to an abortion in the past. Killing an innocent, defenseless baby just doesn't get any attention at all. Nobody's saying, oh how could you do that? And the inconsistency of it and the disconnect there just I find very striking.
Bob Fleischmann:
We do tend to sterilize ourselves in terms of being away from reality. My daughter was recalling a conversation with my parents about this topic, finding out that, you know, my dad, when he was in high school, put down the family dog with a shotgun and it horrified my mother. It was like the first time they'd been married. You know, getting close to 70 years and this is the first time my mom heard it. I'm not so sure she's having second thoughts now, but the point is that there isn't you know, we've so sanitized some realities about how these things were handled, but I think Jeff's alluding to the fact that there's politics going on here. I think Jeff's alluding to the fact that there's politics going on here.
Bob Fleischmann:
Nobody wants to talk about the terminating of a life in the womb because they'd want to keep beating that drum. That it's women's health. Women's health I just heard yesterday a whole series of both sides of the argument on women's health and nobody wants to talk about the right to kill a defenseless unborn child Because, too, this person's being talked about as a potential like VP candidate. Yeah, the media, the liberal media, wants to make a lot of miles out of this, and I think even conservatives who might be disturbed by this. Quite honestly, we need to wake up to reality. I mean, the difference between euthanizing the dog by taking him to the vet and euthanizing the dog with a shotgun blast is methodology. Both, in the end, the same happens the dog was alive, now it's not alive no-transcript.
Christa Potratz:
I do tend to find myself disturbed. I had heard too one time of somebody who had a cat they didn't like and they had given it to the neighbor to shoot. And I just, I mean, I remember just thinking like really, but yeah, I mean, I think that just is such a good take on it.
Jeff Samelson:
Yeah, well, it just reminds me of some things in popular culture as well. I used to watch the TV show NCIS quite regularly because it was something that generally I wasn't offended by the things that were shown on. That was kind of going out. They had this story arc where he just he did something, he overreacted to the situation and he wasn't going to apologize, he wasn't going to go back about this. This was where he was drawing the line and it was over somebody who was abusing dogs and yet all the other storylines about terrorists and serial killers and all those kinds of things. He wasn't going to draw the line on those, but it was.
Jeff Samelson:
It was the, the dog abuse that that really really set him off finally, and that that for me was kind of the beginning of the end with watching that show, but I think probably the what best in pop culture and I'm not going to assume that any of our listeners are familiar with this, but the John wick movies the thing that sets him off is somebody kills his dog. Yeah, no problem with the hundreds of people that he kills in the process of these movies or whatever, or the fact that he was a contract assassin before that, but boy, somebody killed his dog. You know, it's just the the disconnect there and society's generally comfortable with it.
Bob Fleischmann:
Well, and Krista, I'm just like you in terms of I don't think I could do that. When I vickered, we stayed in a—it was a rural congregation stayed in a parsonage, it was like in the middle of a cornfield. One morning I got up and there was a stray cat. This cat ran and jumped and hung on the screen and followed me everywhere and I was afraid to have it around the children, you know, and it didn't seem to be rabid or anything. So I called the police and the police said, well, shoot it. Well, one, I don't have a gun, but two, I don't think I can do that. And they said, well, well, hit it with a shovel. No, I'm not gonna hit it with it. I mean, I was mortified by this and I ended up capturing it, putting it in a box and driving like 10 miles away and releasing it on a farm.
Bob Fleischmann:
Yeah, I mean that's finally somebody else's problem, let it be somebody else's problem and I don't know what they did with it. You know, and part of it is that you grow up that way my father probably in light of this story. We heard about him shooting the family dog. He probably would have, just, you know, shot it or something. And we're very influenced by my mother and my mother has just a tender heart for pets and so forth. I don't think she could ever do that, and the idea of having to take a dog even to the vet to be put down, I think would have had her trembling and crying the whole day.
Christa Potratz:
All right. Well, we're going to move along with another article here. This one is Arizona House votes to repeal a 1864 pro-life law. What was the issue with this?
Jeff Samelson:
People were criticizing it as this is Civil War era law and it's like what does that have to do with anything? But you know, it was the law that was on the books in Arizona that basically banned abortion. Basically, it was scheduled to go back on the books and finally there was a recently there was a Supreme Arizona Supreme Court decision that said yeah, this, this is now the law of the state and so that the ban is in place. And that got a lot of people politically scared on both sides of the issue. Obviously, the people on the progressive, pro-abortion side said how can this be? We can't allow this to continue.
Jeff Samelson:
People on the more pro-life side, generally speaking, the people who are more concerned to the politics of it than the morality of it, are saying well, this is a problem because with a total ban, if they take this to the electorate in a referendum or something, we're probably going to lose and we're going to end up in the situation that's happened in other states where they have, because there was something pretty extreme as far as an abortion ban, the majority of the populace said oh well, we're not quite comfortable with completely banning abortion, so we're going to allow this and basically the end result was a much more permissive law on abortion than there had been before, and so they were afraid of that, and so eventually, what happened is there were a few votes in the Arizona House to basically repeal the law entirely. A few Republicans crossed over, some of whom even identified as pro-life, and they said, yeah, we regret to do this, but we're voting for this repeal because we think the alternative what would happen?
Bob Fleischmann:
if we didn't is even worse, and yeah there's political arguments there, but it's certainly uncomfortable for anybody who wants to see abortion banned. Well, and this really brings to a head what bothers a lot of conservative, pro-life Christians, and that is you have a chance to protect life, you should do it, you should stand for it. Ji Packer wrote back in the 1986 issue of Christianity Today a fascinating article about how a Christian can run for political office and how, understanding in our form of government, everything is compromised. Compromise is like a central tenant of serving in a representative form of government, and compromise means that you rarely, if ever, get your way. And so I think Jeff correctly summarizes the view of those pro-life Republicans that voted for it, and that is, they saw this as we're going to save some lives rather than risk losing all of them. And so I think a lot of times the pro-life community has to recognize, when they want to debate this or fight this out, that we're arguing about technique.
Bob Fleischmann:
Now, is this the right technique to use? And of course, there's going to be as many different people or there's going to be that many different opinions, so I think there's legitimate arguments about is this a technique to use, but it is a fundamental reality that any time the abortion issue has been brought on a referendum, the law gets liberalized. We have to face that OV Wade. Until it was overturned in Dobbs in the 49 years of blanket abortion, there wasa mentality of my peers that well, the pro-abortion people are just going to keep aborting their children and eventually we'll just have the numbers. But what they failed to calculate is that even a lot of pro-life people have been beaten on for 49 years to the point where a lot of them are accepting well, there may be this case and maybe that case, and maybe we should just let people decide for themselves. So, all of a sudden, the presumed majority you would have just is not materializing, and that's horribly sad, but it is the reality. So I do think that there's some legitimate arguments made.
Christa Potratz:
So I do think that there's some legitimate arguments made for compromising where you can to save the lives you can and to ret some and that type of thing. But does it weaken your stance and your argument when you kind of play the game a little bit, when you're just saying, okay, yeah, like we'll try to, you know, do this so that we can save some and we'll try to do a ban at like 15 weeks or something, or six or something. Does that just kind of weaken though your stance on all life is important and everything matters? I think you know?
Jeff Samelson:
yes, it does. The problem, as Bob was pointing out, is there are political calculations that have to be made. What makes this really uncomfortable is because it's unfamiliar. It's approaching it from the opposite direction.
Jeff Samelson:
Prior to Dobbs, when Roe v Wade was still the law of the land, the argument was on the pro-life side okay, should we try to get a complete ban put in, or shall we do these incremental steps where we get a 24-week ban, then we get a 15 week ban, then we go for an eight week ban, and so forth? And that was much more comfortable because you were making progress toward your goal and so those compromises people could swallow that a lot more easily because it was going the right direction. What's difficult about this one is it's having everything that you want, having reached the goal, and now having to make compromises to pull back from that. You are allowing something that previously was banned, previous was not allowed, and, um, that's, that's very unfamiliar and that's that's why it it hurts so much and why, well it's, it's just really drawing attention to the conflict here between what's the politically feasible and what is the moral position.
Bob Fleischmann:
Well, and the argument might be made too that you got to face the reality. You got to take people where they're at. You know they're not. I mean, I love the way Jeff kind of outlined it. We actually are stepping back. We finally got what we wanted and now you have to dial back. But the reality is is that the people are not. You know, and maybe it was a failure on our part to keep educating people on the value of that 1864 law.
Bob Fleischmann:
And because we didn't. The people aren't there, and so now you go for what you can to save the ones you can. Yeah.
Christa Potratz:
All right. Well, I think we have time for one more here. Well, let's end here on talking about TikTok, jeff, can you give us a little bit of information on what's going on with TikTok? And I guess we're talking, you know, mostly about how the government does want to try to control it more, right?
Jeff Samelson:
Yeah. What's brought it into the news most recently is that this is something that had been proposed and attempted for a number of years, finally got through. Both the House and the Senate passed it and President Biden signed it, so it's now the law. It's been called a TikTok ban. That's technically inaccurate what it really is. The law states that ByteD. What it really is the law states that bite dance, which is a chinese-owned company, is required to divest itself of tiktok, meaning sell it. I believe it's uh, they've got nine months to do it. It's a. It's a fairly short, short term, and if they are unable to find a seller for it, then it is banned.
Jeff Samelson:
It is no longer allowed in the United States, and there were two basic reasons for this. The is such an influence on people in society, particularly the young people in our society, and we don't want them having access to all the incredible wealth of information that is developed. By owning this, you can find out all sorts of things about individual people's preferences and things from this data that is developed. By owning this, you can find out all sorts of things about individual people's preferences and things from this data that is there, and so that was the thing that probably politically pushed it forward. There's also been a lot saying we should get rid of this period, you know, because of the incredible negative impact it has on people's health, particularly on children and teenagers, and getting people into their 20s too, although apparently there are some people in their 40s and 50s who have real TikTok problems as well.
Jeff Samelson:
And so that's you know. In that sense, this is part of a much bigger discussion in society going on right now about the dangers of social media, particularly when it comes to kids and teens.
Christa Potratz:
Yeah, well, my kind of question too, like with the second part that you mentioned, is OK, so you eliminate TikTok? There's Instagram reels, there's YouTube now has shorts, it just it just seems OK. Maybe you'd stop TikTok and then something else would come up and emerge, because I think people are really into these short reels that have developed through it.
Jeff Samelson:
TikTok, apparently, was really specifically designed to be the problem, that it is the problem, that it is what happened with some of the other forms of social media and such it seems to be. It was a little less deliberate that these things happen. It was more like oh hey, this is working, let's do more of that With TikTok. It appears that this was designed to be basically socially and psychologically addictive and to influence children, especially in the way that it does, and so it's. You know it's a particularly dangerous one, but you are absolutely correct in that this isn't the only involved, and put laws in place that will make it harder, not impossible, for children and teens to be accessing these things for children and teens to be accessing these things.
Bob Fleischmann:
I always thought it was a bit ironic that people were this upset about China's access to this information, but a lot of times we reveal that stuff on our Facebook accounts or on our LinkedIn accounts or our Instagram accounts. A lot of that information is out there and somebody's got it, somebody's the keeper of it and somebody can use it. And we were talking at a recent CLR board meeting. We were talking about the ability of doing a thing called polygoning, which is creating a digital outline around a building. So every time you walk in and out of that building, we can pick up your IP address and then we can start giving you feeds for CLR or feeds on any issue we want, and it tracks you and it also keeps track of what you're looking at. When I learned about polygoning, it's incredible what we can do to ourselves, even what we can track and so forth. So you know, I think it's, and I know, jeff, some of the notes that we passed around ahead of this taping was Jonathan Haidt's book on the Anxious Generation, which I've got that book and I just started on about page 50 or 60 in it, but he's pointing out you know just how easily opinions are formed and, as right now, while we're recording this, you know we're in the middle of these campus protests between Israel and Hamas and everything, and a lot of those are fueled by social media and gets people and of course, it venerates, social media has this incredible ability of making everybody an expert on their opinion.
Bob Fleischmann:
And because we have so pushed freedom of speech that you can have your opinion about anything you want and you become an opinion. And because we have so pushed freedom of speech that you can have your opinion about anything you want and you become an expert. And all you got to do is get a couple of people to like you and now you really are an expert because other people agree and it creates this whole different kinds of society. And what Haidt points out in his book is how damaging this is on young people, because their entire self-esteem is now built on likes and dislikes and how many people view and how many friends you get and so forth.
Christa Potratz:
And, bob, I think you kind of touched on it a little bit too, but just also kind of wanted to pull it back into life and family issues, and for Christians too. What are the implications for life and family issues, and for Christians too? What are the implications for life and family issues?
Jeff Samelson:
Well, as far as family goes, certainly, if you are a parent, you want to be paying attention to this stuff and you want to have the courage to stand up and say, okay, kids, no, you're not going to have that smartphone or you're not going to be able to take it with you to school, or you, you are not going to get an instagram or facebook account until you reach age 16 or whatever you know. You'd say, you know these, these are real issues. You also need to be aware that, even if you do allow this, how much it is influencing your child?
Jeff Samelson:
We, as parents, like to think that, oh, no, we're the primary influence on our kids, but with with social media, there is so much out there that is so quickly and so effectively influencing kids that I mean you can't police it. You can't be looking over your child's shoulder every minute of the day, so you've got to find some other way to limit that, and that's probably going to be by completely limiting it, and so that's there. And certainly Bob was talking about ways that these things can be used to influence people and the effectiveness of that. Opinions on things you know on life issues. We need to recognize what we're up against with social media and then also realize, well, as long as this is there, how do we make use of it to get the message out that needs to get out?
Bob Fleischmann:
You know, and if you look at young people let's just talk about the abortion issue when I was a child late 60s, early 70s the big issue that was coming out was child abuse. All of a sudden, statistics were showing higher levels. There were all sorts of theories why that was, but I always remember one of the commercials that was being run was it shows a parent sternly yelling at the child, saying you are stupid, you don't know what you're doing. And then, of course, the point of the commercial was you keep telling a child that they're stupid, that they're going to grow up feeling that way.
Bob Fleischmann:
And what happens with social media is that you constantly get told a certain message that might be held by somebody you trust, somebody you hold in high esteem, and the message might be it's all about a woman's choice, don't let other people tell you what to do with your body, protect yourself, protect your rights and so forth. And so pretty soon, this young Christian girl grows up to be an adult woman who believes abortion should be a right based on this idea of choice, totally discounting anything God has to say about it, totally discounting the reality that that choice means the termination of a life, but it has to do with. You become inundated with information and you just start believing it. And it's funny. I play this game. When I do presentations, where I talk to people about issues that they've heard so many times, they begin to believe it. And it's just totally not true, but we begin to believe it because we hear it so often.
Jeff Samelson:
And just related to all that, there's shallowness and hollowness.
Jeff Samelson:
People get comfortable with it. They aren't aware that there's anything else out there. You see the protests and things that are going on right now, with some of the interviews they do with some of the youth who are out there protesting these things. They don't actually know anything about what they're out there for, or they know one thing out of a hundred. They don't have the self-regard to be able to say to themselves oh, I don't know much about this, I should get more informed before I go out and protest. They're not aware of the fact that they're so shallow and that what they're holding on to is so hollow and um, you know, that's certainly something that's been fed by by social media, because you know, when you're watching a 20 second video on something, you don't get deep with something like that and uh, that's something that you know. Again, we, as as as parents, just as people who are concerned about or who love our neighbors, we want to try to encourage a deeper approach to things so that smart decisions are being made.
Christa Potratz:
I agree. I mean, when you get the TikTok information, I mean it's definitely feelings over facts is what you're getting. Well, thank you both for this information and talking about these articles, and we will have some of these articles posted, too, in our show notes for anybody that would like more information on these topics. If you have any questions on any of the things that we've talked about, please reach out to us at lifechallengesus. Thanks a lot and we'll see you back next time. Bye.
Paul Snamiska:
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