John Stonestreet – Page 30

Guest Column: Tiny Forests

Oct 2, 2023John StonestreetEthicsEthics

According to Cara Buckley with The New York Times, a growing number of “tiny forests” are appearing across urban areas in the U.S.

In addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, reducing water runoff, and providing homes for wildlife, “[T]iny forests can help lower temperatures in places where pavement, buildings and concrete surfaces absorb and retain heat from the sun.”

The concept was pioneered by Japanese ecologist Akira Miyawaki and suggests that people are the best stewards of nature. What the world needs is not some return to vast, unspoiled “wilderness” by massively reducing the human population, as so many suggest. Instead, we need more of this: creating space for people to use their ingenuity, resources, and innovation to increase creation’s fruitfulness.

Our screens and concrete jungles disconnect us from God’s creation, while bad ideas about “nature” and the environment treat humans as its biggest problem. But humans were created to care for the rest of creation. In fact, only humans can.

“Egg Producers” or Moms?

Sep 11, 2023John StonestreetTransgenderTransgender

According to The Daily Mail, the Biden administration’s health secretary recently endorsed a gender clinic in Alaska. The secretary is a man who identifies as a woman. The clinic advocates for replacing the term “mother” with “egg producer.”

Somehow “Happy Egg Producer Day!” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Mother’s Day.” As a colleague of mine noted when she heard the story, “That really is The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Language matters. Especially from people who occupy positions of cultural power, from the media who call this man a “she,” to politicians who claim he is a powerful woman, to a clinic obscuring reality. When they detach from reality, incoherent and dangerous ideas like this are the result.

Reality, however, has hard edges, and neither our bad ideas nor our bad language can change that. The farther afield from reason and science our cultural elites wander, the more revolutionary it will be to say what is true.

Guest Column: Marijuana and Teen Suicide

Sep 4, 2023John StonestreetMarijuanaMarijuana

By John Stonestreet

A feature of life in Colorado is the prevalence of pot. There are dispensaries on virtually every corner, and everywhere I travel I hear a pot joke. Something else my adopted state is becoming known for is the harmful aftereffects of legalized marijuana. According to state statistics, the drug was found in the system of some 42% of teen suicides, a rate nearly twice as much as with alcohol and four times of any other substances.

Of course, correlation doesn’t mean causation, but it can mean connection. If nearly half of stroke victims were taking the same medicine, would we wonder if there was a link? Why the reluctance to connect the dots here?

Marijuana might not cause suicide, but numbers don’t lie. It encourages or exacerbates problems that lead down that deadly road, especially for a group at high risk. The link is there for those willing to see it. Since suicide rates have risen every year that it has been legal, we’re far past giving the benefit of the doubt.