John Stonestreet – Page 39

Human Extinction?

Feb 7, 2022John StonestreetEthicsEthics, Life, Sanctity of Human Life

*John Stonestreet, Radio Host and Director of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview*

In a recent essay, Oxford Professor Roger Crisp toyed with the idea that human extinction may not be a bad thing after all. With so much suffering on Earth, he argues, if NASA were to locate a massive asteroid hurtling towards our planet, we would be justified in letting it obliterate us. 

“I am not claiming that extinction would be good;” Crisp clarified, “only that, since it might be, we should devote a lot more attention to thinking about the value of extinction than we have to date.” 

This is an Oxford philosopher of ethics, but he’s wrestling with an idea that long ago left the ivory tower.

Wesley Smith of the Discovery Institute put it this way: “With our supposedly best minds suggesting that human extinction could be desirable, is it any wonder that so many of our young people seem to be despairing?” 

When God is taken out of the moral picture, reason evaporates, as does the rest of our moral logic. Someone tell Bruce Willis and the rest of his team from Armageddon, the mission is off.

Intentionally Empty Churches?

Jan 31, 2022John StonestreetChristianityChristianity, Church, COVID-19

Many churches have shut their doors in the face of Covid, but one large church in Denver hasn’t just shut their doors; they’ve sold them. According to Christianity Today, “The Potter’s House Denver will sell its property in Arapahoe County and continue to worship exclusively online.”

We often hear that because the Church isn’t a building, it doesn’t matter whether it meets in one. But trading in-person worship for an online experience misses what the Church actually is. It isn’t just a place for individual contemplation on “spiritual things.” That’s not the Christianity of the Bible but the pietism of Gnosticism. Embodied worship is an essential part of a Christian worldview.

If our faith is the sort of thing we can live out alone, never needing the presence of others, then are we truly still the Church? The Church is the ecclesia, the called ones, the gathered ones, the community of the saints of God. If we aren’t a “we,” we are not the Church.

Quarantining with Screens Was a Bad Idea

Jan 24, 2022John StonestreetCOVID-19Child Welfare, COVID-19

A horrifying new survey found the number of pre-adolescent children in the U.S. who admit to sharing nude images of themselves more than doubled last year.

Fourteen percent of kids aged 9-12 say they have shared inappropriate pictures of themselves. This is up from just six percent in 2019. Of that number, over a third said they shared those images with someone they believed to be 18 or older.

As WORLD notes, this spike in dangerous behavior coincides with the pandemic, which meant increased screen time for many folks. An obvious takeaway is that preteens are not mature enough to handle all that comes with unsupervised smartphone use. The more time they spend alone with their devices, the more opportunity for pornography and predators.

At the very least, we must take active roles in our kids’ tech use. Quarantining with screens is more dangerous for kids than COVID ever was. It may keep the virus at bay, but for children especially, it lets in things far worse.