Your Mother Is Still Carrying Part of You | Dr. Kristin Collier

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Doctor Kristen Collier, thank you for joining me on Commitment
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to Reality.
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Thanks Dave, thanks for having me on your show.
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All right, Well, one thing that I really don't like
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to do is introduce somebody by going down their list
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of laudits and yours are many. But if you could
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you just begin by telling me what your story is.
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Sure I like that you asked me about my story.
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I'm a big fan of Austar McIntyre, the late Alista McIntyre,
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who said, right, I can only answer the question of
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what I am to do if I can understand the
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answers the question of like, what story or stories am
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I apart? So briefly, my story is that I'm a
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Christian wife and mother and physician. I came to the
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Lord in twenty sixteen with my four boys in Christian Baptism.
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I am very thankful to be able to be a
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physician taking care of the image bearer of God. I'm
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a Michigander. As part of my story, I've spent fifty
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years in the beautiful peninsula of the state of Michigan.
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I live up behind my mom and dad and my
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childhood home. I can see them from here. Part of
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my story is I've been with my husband for thirty
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some years. We've met in high school and his parents
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live right around the corner. So I'm a deeply rooted
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person in the state of Michigan with my family, trying
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to live, support my parents and Tim's parents as I
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get older, trying to be a mom and doing the
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work of that. I feel like I've been called to
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do in the work of medicine. That's my story in
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a nutshell.
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In a nutshell, So you mentioned your conversion, How did
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that happen? And you said, you know, you and your
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husband have been together for a long time. Who started it?
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So I would say this, conversions are always probably started
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by the Lord. I would say, we're called by him,
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but sometimes we just don't answer for a long time.
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So I was raised with my husband. I were raised
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in suburban Detroit, and we had a very similar upbringing.
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And I would say I would say I was raised
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as probably a secular humanist. My parents made it very
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clear that religion was for people who couldn't think very
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clearly or otherwise were very small minded. So because of that,
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like we didn't have a Bible in our home, never
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went to church. I didn't know who Jesus was. And
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then I think, as people do, we sort of sort
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ourselves into groups of people like ourselves. And so I
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came to the University of Michigan. From my undergraduate work
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in the nineteen nineties, knew I wanted to study science
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and medicine, and surrounded myself with other people who had
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views like mine that religion was for people who couldn't
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think very clearly. Otherwise we're small minded. My anti religious
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bias grew, I would say, but then in it was
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in medical school. So I stayed at Michigan for the
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University of Michigan Medical School and was able to stay
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on for medical residency, and was joining that time that
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I really, I would say, started struggling and wrestling with God.
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Our hospitals at Michigan Medicine have a very high acuity,
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and some of our ICUs have upwards of like a
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twenty pc mortality, And I saw things in my medical training.
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I would say that most people are like mostly people
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right are not prepared to see, you know, babies born
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dead and mothers of five being brought in with catastrophic
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brain injuries. And so during that time, you know, I
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wasn't ignorant of God, like I knew. I had heard
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that God exists and that he's all good and he's
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all powerful. I'm like, well, if that's true, why is
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like this like allowed to happen. And so I became
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very angry with God about the suffering that I saw that,
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you know, in my mind, I had judged as unfair
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and unjust and really became a very I would say,
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bitter person. And I get I really get now. I
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think why a lot of physicians have a lot of
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bad personal outcomes, why they drink too much, like why
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they have a high rate of divorce, because they see
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a lot of suffering, and without a coherent worldview to
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try to make sense of that in some way can
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really destroy your person, you know. So I continued in
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that way, and then through the sacrament of marriage, my
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world became to be shaped in a different way. So
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my husband, Tim, like I said, had a similar upbringing
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as did I. But then we started having children. We
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were gifted children by the Lord, and it was during
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that time that my husband had his own existential I
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would say suffering. He was like, we thought he was
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losing his father. At the time, he was a newly
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married person, and he was like, what does it mean
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to be a dad? What does it mean to lose
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my own father? What does it mean to be a
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married person? And so he actually was invited to church
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by his uncle during that time, and he went and
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he became a confessing believer. And this was like, I'm
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not sure I am fully down for this, Like I'm
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not sure I signed up to marry a Christian person,
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Like I don't know what kind of culture part of
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but I'm not sure that I really understand it or
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want to be part of it, to be honest. And
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my husband Tim was really patient. He took the kids
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to church by himself, and I just didn't go. And
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now the fourth child, Isaac, was born. He was born
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a little bit early, not technically premature, but early enough
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so if he had failure to thrive. And so I
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was like, it's so exhausted, right when you have four
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little kids, Like I didn't know my name, right, I
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had like a five year old and a four year
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old and two year old and a baby, And I
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was like, what is it even going on? And I
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was really struggling to feed him. And so one night
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in October when he was a baby. I out of
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desperation when on the internet and I was like trying
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to find electation consultant who could come to the home
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to help me with Isaac. And this one lady called
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me back and her name was brand and she came
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to the house and she helped me with Isaac. We
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got through that time. A year later, Isaac turned one.
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I emailed Brandy and said, thank you so much for
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you know, coming to the home and helping with Isaac
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all those months, because you're the reason we made it.
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And she's like, why did I tell you at the time,
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But I'm a pastor's wife. Do you want to come
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to my lady's Bible study? And I was thinking, like, no,
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I do not want to come to your lady's Bible study.
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But because you've been so helpful to me, I felt
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sort of like out of a sense of obligation to go,
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and so I went. And I was in my mid
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thirties at the time, and so I wasn't sure what
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I was expecting, but I was like, this really lovely
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group of ladies talking about women in the box and
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what I heard that evening. Finally I would say, you know,
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broke open my cold heart, you know, and people are like, well,
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what did you hear? And I think, as a physician,
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what I heard that I hadn't heard before was that,
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you know, someone who sees broken bodies and broken people
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all the time in medicine, you know, to hear like this,
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this isn't the way things are supposed to be, and
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that you know one day there will be like a
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resurrection of bodies, you know, to hear that as a doctor,
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and that you know, God took on flesh and Jesus
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Christ and came to die in my place, and that
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someday like Jesus would take his hand and like wipe
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every tear away like that. I had never heard anything
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like that. Like to me, that was more beautiful and
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stunning and amazing, like than anything I'd ever heard in
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medical school, right, and it just made sense like that this, this,
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this was true. And so after that I started thank
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goodness because the Lord brought so many people into our lives.
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Just started like listening to Christian radio and reading and
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talking and people prayed for me. And then a few
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years later I was driving in my car on the
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Detroit Highways to work and I just had like this
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overwhelming sense of shame. You know, that i'd been living
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my life totally is like a nightmare. And all these
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things that I sort of took a lot of pride in,
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like my memory and my medical degree and all these things,
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they are all just gifts from God, you know who.
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I felt just horrible about the way that I've been
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viewing myself and everyone around me. And so I, you know,
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was like I want to be baptized. And then the
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four boys and I were baptized in twenty sixteen into
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the Christian Church.
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Yeah.
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But I think it just shows like the power of
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an invitation, you know, and the rippol effective invitation. So
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Brandy the lactation consultants, like I think all the times
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that would probably all of us have opportunities to invite
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people to see things in a radically different way, and
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we don't do it because it's easier not to. And
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I would imagine that Brandy probably knew that I probably
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would have said no, and it's you know, people don't
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want to be told no or be embarrassed, right, But
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she took this little active courage and she invited me,
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and and you know, my goodness, like the ripple of
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fact that invitation has had has been profound. So I'm
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so thankful for the Lord to be you know that
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you can work through us and have us be part
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of the invitation to people to be invited to him.
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But that sort of how things went down interesting.
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There's so many different directions that I want to go
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in just based on what you said, but usually we
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just take the last one we get to. And you
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said courage, and it took the courage right now. I
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told you that I became aware of you a couple
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of years ago. Can you guess how I became aware
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of you?
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I can guess to want me to try to give
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you my answer to the let's do it so a
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couple of years ago, I was part of a situation
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where I was asked to give a big talk at
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the University of Michigan Medical School and there was a
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walk out during my talk at Hill Editorian in Arbor
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by some members of the audience, And there was someone
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planted in the audience who recorded the walkout, and that
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video went somewhat viral on social media and the story
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made the national news. So I bet that that's the
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reason that you heard about me and the work that
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I do Bengo.
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Yeah, okay, And you know, one, it showed a lot
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of courage on your part. But two, and this is
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really interesting. I don't know if you follow the news
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and the World Cup and everything in the branding, but
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there's a big story that came out a couple of
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days ago about Levi's and branding. Have you seen this?
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I have done. So.
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The World Cup has very tight sponsorship agreements and they
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try to block out anything that doesn't fall under those
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to protect them. Right. Sure, But what often happens when
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you try to do that is something you know, if
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you're clever, the message gets out and it gets amplified
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to a degree that you would not have expected or wanted.
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So what Levi's did is they put a tarp over
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their logo on the on the stadium I think it's
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in California, maybe San Francisco. Instead of it being Levi's stadium,
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it's San Francisco Bay Area stadium. For the work, Well,
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they cut out a perfect cloth to fit right over
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the very recognizable Levi's logo. Interesting, and the message got out,
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Oh you want to censor me, Well, here you go.
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The message gets amplified when you do that, and that's
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what happened with you. I mean, I think a lot
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more people saw your speech and were impacted by your
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speech and your story than would have been had people
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not tried to silence you.
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I think that's I think that's true. It's interesting that
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when we when I'm sure you've had this experience, when
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you're putting together a really high stakes presentation or high
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stakes talk, though, and something like this happens. I wonder
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if anyone actually like the content of my talk. I mean,
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I agree like me and the story made the news,
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but I was like, oh my goodness, I spent all
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this time working on this talk. I'm not sure anybody
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actually heard it, because the talk itself, I thought was
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really lovely and it was sort of buried into the noise.
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But yes, I think the attention that was brought to
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the really real topic of viewpoint diversity and moral diversity
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within medicine and free speech and academic freedom, I'm I'm
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happy to sacrifice my talk sort of on sort of
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the platform of having us talk about bigger, transcendent things
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like that. And I agree there was a lot of
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attention brought to those questions in the academy because of
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what happened.
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Well, I did hear it, and I do want to
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talk about your talk. Oh that's so exciting and I
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remember it.
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Oh that's really kind. I'm so all these I'm so glad,
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thank you.
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But you talk about viewpoint diversity, and I don't even
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know what the truth is. I was sitting on the
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couch this morning talking to my wife and I said,
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I feel like most doctors don't are not believers. So
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I got up my phone and I googled, Well, that
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doesn't seem true. It said that, you know, whatever the
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number is, let's say sixty five to seventy five percent
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of doctors have some form of faith. Yeah, that doesn't
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feel like what I think. So then I did the inverse.
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You know what field has the highest percentage of atheists?
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And it was biologists academic. It is so okay, maybe
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they're both true at the same time. I don't know.
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But what is your experience, because you know, you kind
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of described your upbringing and if you were truly a
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serious thinking person, faith was not on the table, and
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I grew up in a very Christian home. We talked
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a little bit about my family and my my dad's
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radio show, and I grew up with every opportunity, and
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yet even I had falled prey to the culture about well,
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if you want to be a serious thinker, God is
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not part of the equation. What are your thoughts on that?
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Yeah, I think it's one of those things that part
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of it is that is a hard scientist that I
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did not see a role for faith to be part
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of my purview, and I thought it sort of would
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work against what I was trying to do, and I
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think I did have I think part of this conversation
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right gets the idea that many of us have spiritual
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blinders on that even if the truth would be presented
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to us, we just can't see it for many reasons.
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There's this quote, I think it's from Saint John Paul
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the Second, and he says something like, you know, faith
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and reason are like two wings on which the human
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spirit rises with the contemplation of truth. And I heard
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Robbie George talking about that quote recently in a plenary talk,
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and he said he thinks about this idea of those
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being the wings on which people contemplate truth, and he
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said his probably George grew up in West Virginia and
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he used to hunt and he said sometimes when they
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would shoot for sport and a bird would fall and
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one of its wings were damaged, that the other wing
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would just keep flapping right and as hard as it could,
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but the bird on the ground would just sort of
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spin around in circles. It couldn't move because it didn't
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have the other wing right. And I love that analogy
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because I do think now that I have thank goodness
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because of the faith that's been gifted to me, a
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fuller understanding of my own vocation in medicine, and I'm
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able to contemplate truth. And I would say, if this
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were something that I were writing out to you, I
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would have put truth at the capital tea, because you
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believe truth would be a person in Jesus Christ. So
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I do think that part of this. You know, Yes,
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I was educated. I went to probably some of the
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best schools, I would say, around, but because I didn't
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have the gift of Fai, my education is impoverished. It's interesting.
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I think about medicine a lot because it's my vocation
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and I love it dearly, and I do think it's
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under somewhat of an attack, a spiritual attack. I would say,
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he's thinking worth doing or that's beautiful. I think that
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God's designed, I think that it will be attacked. But
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I don't know the data precisely, but we do know
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actually that a lot of there was a stot. Even
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Kristen Robinson a few years ago at the same time
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as I will use in papers, and she did a
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survey of physicians, and I would agree with you that
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physicians are a type of scientist. But physicians actually have
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different religious sort of identification than most scientists do, and
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that a lot of actually, as you saw, a lot
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of physicians will identify as having a religious faith or
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some type of spiritual practice. Although most physicians are most
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are more religiously diverse than the US public, they have
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a probably a similar amount of like religious identification that
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Kristin Robinson said that when her survey about a third
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of people in healthcare actually come into medicine because of
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their faith commitments, like it's the thing that drives them
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into medicine. And then once they get into the academy,
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medicine because of its you know, bias or because of
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its imminent frame of materialism, makes it seem like you
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have to like check your faith at the door to
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be considered a legitimate person. And then that again is
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really not good. We don't expect other people to empty
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their identities when they come in to medicine. And actually
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we know, actually people's faith identities are a pathway for
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which people can seek meaning. And we know actually that
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having a sustained animation of a sense of meaning is
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a protective thing for you to not get burnt out
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in medicine. So why are we asking Christian people to
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empty themselves? I wrote a piece about this and the
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Who's in public discourse a couple of years ago. It's
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called the dark canosis of medical education. Thinking about pinosis
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means to empty yourself, and think about the kinnosis of
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in Philippines too that but in medicine is a dark pronouncis,
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it's a dark empty and that we're asked, specifically of
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Christian people to empty themselves. So getting back to this
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question around viewpoint diversity and just diversity, I think we've
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done a really nice job of about thinking about the
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diversity and the academy, but now as much attention to
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religious diversity or viewpoint diversity. And again, if we're going
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to have in the spirit of university, with a spirit
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of open pluralism a way to discuss important matters that
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where life literally is at stake, we should be all
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at We should be able to sort of sit with
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people who have viewsed different from our own and be
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able to welcome people in the fullness of who they are.
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And I think that this white coat walk out that
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happened to me a few years ago shows that we
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don't do a good job of being able to sit
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with people who have viewpoints that are different than our own.
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We don't tolerate right ethical dissent in medicine, and that's
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too bad because it's to our own detriment, because these
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conversations actually need us talking about them more and not
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lesson to sort of put it out into the open,
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because we haven't set it explicitly. The reason that the
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walkout happened was because I consider myself to be a
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pro life person. So the issue specifically was around the
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students and some of the academy feeling that my pro
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life views that in part flow out of my Christian
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faith delegitimized me as being able to talk. And at
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the top I wasn't even talking about abortion. I just
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like welcome to medical school. So again it made it
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seem like if you are a pro life or someone
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who identifies as much, don't, you can't talk about anything
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in the academy. So I think that's that's the interesting
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struggle that I think we're still wrestling within the academy
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is how do we tolerate peopoint diversity. Are there limits
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around that? And how do we sit with each other
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as people of goodwill who made disagree about contested topics
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to be able to make sure that the best arguments
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rise to the top and we know what we're doing here.
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You talked about viewpoint diversity and you said check your
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worldview or your religion at the door, right, But I
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think that's a faulty premise because it assumes that there's
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such a thing as in the public square, And what
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really ends up happening is check your religion at the door,
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while our religion stays inside, which is materialism ultimately, right,
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And there's an idol of that, right? Do you think
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that we've made an idol of medicine and science in
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a way. You talk about their atheist or no religion,
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but I think the religion really is the science in
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a sense.
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I yes, I think a couple of things. First of all,
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I agree with you that sometimes when religious people are
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meant to say, people sometimes to say to religious people, well,
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you are uniquely awkward, and we don't want religious people
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at the table and committees in policy to inform the
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public square. And my friend Charlie Kmosi always reminds me
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that there is no view from nowhere. Right as you said,
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everyone's coming to the table at a physical table with
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their first you know, principles, with their faith claims, with
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their view of the good. Religion people and non religious
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people and everyone. We say everyone's religious in someone because
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they believe it's something of ultimate meaning included. And people
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would say, well, you're you know, you are uniquely awkward
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because you have faith claims, and so your faith claims
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are the reason that you can't be sort of a
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serious person. But you know, everyone has faith claims. Yes,
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we have as Christians, we have faith in the resurrection
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of bodies and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But
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guess why, Like everyone has faith in something. People have
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faith in science, or faith in progress, or faith in
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mankind or faith in politics. So again, right, there's this
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idea that like while everything else is like this common
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shared morality or that there's a sort of neutrality, and
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that's just not true. Someone or some view is going
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to inform the situation, and we should be allowed to
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sort of have to make sure, because it's hypocrisy not
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to to make sure that people who have religious or
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faith commandments are allowed to sort of have a seat
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at the table. Your question about idolatry is super interesting
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to me. I didn't really know what that term was. Again,
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I have the literacy to understand what that term meant
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before my Christian baptism. But now I do realize, looking
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back on my life, that I agree that I had
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made medicine into an idol. And I'm sure I'm not
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alone in that, you know, I think medicine is is.
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Who was it that said that we're all like sort
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of idol making factories, one of the Protestant theologians, But
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it's true, right, I think that medicine is an easy
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thing to make into an idol. It's very glittery, it
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does a lot of good, it holds a lot of promise,
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so it's easy to sort of worship it as like
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the thing that can save us, you know. And I
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remember when I was in my twenties, and I was
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in the midst of, like, you know, sort of thinking
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about Jacob wrestling with God. I was a medical resident
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and one of my chief residents, Jake, who was the
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year above me, developed a really bad, serious illness, and
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it still shocks me actually to this day that he
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died under our watch. You know, we had like all
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the best things, we had, like a worldwide expert in
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his disease. We have all the shiny equipments, all the medication,
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all the NIHS research funding, and yet he died. And
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I remember at that time being so angry about that,
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like it seems so unfair and so unshust and like, again,
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if God really did exist and he was good, how
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could he take Jake from us, you know? And I
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realized at that point, which was really hard to learn,
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but I'm so glad that I realized that at that
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point we thought I had created medicine into an idol.
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And at that point I realized that, you know, medicine
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has limits, and I need to understand from who I
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now now now know from whom are all our health
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flows is the Lord. And medicine for sure can be
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used in pursuit and service of mankind. But it has
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to be properly ordered, because once our idols come crashing down,
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which is very painful for me, I think the right
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order of things shines out of that darkness. And it
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took several years for me to see that. But I
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do think I made medicine to an idol, and I
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think a lot of people still have medicine as an idol. Medicine.
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I think sometimes there's this, like, you know, underlying assumption
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that if we just and I think I carry this,
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you know, it's part of the Baconian project, like that
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if we just have enough time or enough science or
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enough research, that we're going to be able meda through biomedicine, right,
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we are going to be able to overcome the biggest
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human finitude that there is, which is death. And you
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know that makes a false It makes up any suparity
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of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Medicine is not
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gonna be our savior. Medicine has good goodness to it,
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and I don't want to discount how amazing medicine has
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been in the lives of so many people. But it
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has to be properly ordered, so we don't make it
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into an idol.
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Yeah, well yeah, I said, make an idol of medicine, but.
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Also health, oh for sure.
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And that's kind of that. That's at the the you know,
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the longevity or everything like that. But you said that
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one of the things that you struggled with the most,
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and the reason that you think that, you know, doctors
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struggle with addiction or just the struggle in general, maybe
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being angry at God or not believing that God exists
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because you know, why would it God allow this? What
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I see, well, something that I think a lot about
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is that we do not face the reality of death
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the way that our ancestors did. Just as you're talking,
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I started thinking it may be true that doctors are
482
00:24:39.759 --> 00:24:46.920
bearing an unnatural burden for society that society wants held together. Now.
483
00:24:47.119 --> 00:24:50.559
I say that because generally speaking, in our modern world,
484
00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:56.359
death is isolated to a sterilized environment, you know, and
485
00:24:56.400 --> 00:25:00.039
instead of you know what I imagine to be the
486
00:25:00.079 --> 00:25:03.000
case in the past, where you died at home and
487
00:25:03.039 --> 00:25:05.759
you had to be surrounded by the body. I mean,
488
00:25:05.839 --> 00:25:08.039
not to be graphic, but you smelled the body. I mean,
489
00:25:08.079 --> 00:25:13.799
you experienced death on a daily basis in its reality,
490
00:25:13.880 --> 00:25:17.799
not in a sanitized sense, whereas now I feel like
491
00:25:19.079 --> 00:25:23.720
doctors and nurses and everybody in your industry is kind
492
00:25:23.720 --> 00:25:29.880
of holding the weight of that reality for society.
493
00:25:30.079 --> 00:25:33.759
I may agree, I agree, there's so much there. I
494
00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:37.160
guess at first I would say that thinking about, you know,
495
00:25:37.359 --> 00:25:42.119
health as an idol, I do think again, our health
496
00:25:42.519 --> 00:25:46.000
that has realized for our bodies is a gift from God,
497
00:25:46.119 --> 00:25:50.400
and we should obviously are the body. I'm writing a
498
00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:52.240
piece right now about the bodies, but thinking a lot
499
00:25:52.240 --> 00:25:54.319
about it. But the body, obviously, I think, in our
500
00:25:54.759 --> 00:25:58.079
orality is not incidental to the Christian faith, by the
501
00:25:58.079 --> 00:26:02.160
body is obviously incredibly central to the narrative. Jesus Christ
502
00:26:02.200 --> 00:26:04.119
had a body, He has a body. Central to our
503
00:26:04.119 --> 00:26:06.759
faith is resturctive bodies, and health is something that we
504
00:26:06.799 --> 00:26:10.319
should shepherd. But once we start putting again health as
505
00:26:10.319 --> 00:26:12.640
an idol, then we start to subvert all these other
506
00:26:12.720 --> 00:26:17.680
goods right that we shouldn't. So, you know, nowhere in
507
00:26:17.720 --> 00:26:20.839
the scriptures do I find actually Jesus preserving his life
508
00:26:20.880 --> 00:26:24.200
at all costs, or the martyrs, like we know, actually right,
509
00:26:24.279 --> 00:26:26.799
like we have the perfect example as Christian physicians that
510
00:26:27.240 --> 00:26:29.119
you know, health should not be the highest good and
511
00:26:29.119 --> 00:26:31.880
We have people all the time who choose to subvert
512
00:26:31.880 --> 00:26:35.400
their health for higher goods. You know, recently saw in
513
00:26:35.480 --> 00:26:38.759
clinic a woman who is pregnant and she has a
514
00:26:38.799 --> 00:26:42.359
high risk medical condition, and she is choosing to continue
515
00:26:42.799 --> 00:26:45.599
her pregnancy and carry her baby even though her life
516
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:49.440
is very well, maybe a risk. Right. I have a
517
00:26:49.440 --> 00:26:52.400
patient who's a firefighter who subverts his health all the
518
00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:56.440
time by running into burning buildings to like rescue animals
519
00:26:56.480 --> 00:26:59.720
and babies and older people. Right, he subverts his health. Right.
520
00:27:00.039 --> 00:27:02.359
We subvert our health all the time, even as parents,
521
00:27:02.359 --> 00:27:04.079
I would say, we subvert a health in some way.
522
00:27:04.200 --> 00:27:07.759
So we can't make health into an idol. And also
523
00:27:07.799 --> 00:27:10.720
I think we could fall into the other trap where
524
00:27:10.759 --> 00:27:13.960
we really are sort of not we're so we're so
525
00:27:14.039 --> 00:27:17.119
focused on like this gnosticism, like oh as christions, like
526
00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:19.680
it's really our spirit and our soul, and that's the
527
00:27:19.759 --> 00:27:22.079
thing that goes to the Lord, and that we think
528
00:27:22.119 --> 00:27:24.400
that our body doesn't matter, right, and that we don't
529
00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:27.039
take care of it. So I think trying to sort
530
00:27:27.079 --> 00:27:31.079
of think about that ordering properly. The question of death
531
00:27:31.160 --> 00:27:33.759
is so important. There's a great book that I read
532
00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:36.759
from my friend Jeff Bishop when I was starting on
533
00:27:36.839 --> 00:27:42.319
my philosophical understanding of medicine, and it's called the Interspatory Corpse.
534
00:27:42.920 --> 00:27:45.880
So Jeff says that which is true that you know,
535
00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:49.920
a couple hundred years ago, in medicine's attempt to become
536
00:27:49.960 --> 00:27:53.799
a hard science, it tried to. It can't fully, but
537
00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:57.200
it tried to distance itself from the Church, and doing
538
00:27:57.279 --> 00:28:01.400
so try to sort of leave behind all transcend it
539
00:28:01.599 --> 00:28:05.720
in metaphysical goods, and in that framework then of materialism.
540
00:28:05.960 --> 00:28:10.200
Then basically, Jeff says, because there's no escaton or there's
541
00:28:10.240 --> 00:28:13.480
nothing that happens after death, that death is like the
542
00:28:13.599 --> 00:28:17.119
end of medicine. And he said that we're all just
543
00:28:17.119 --> 00:28:19.359
innticipatory corpses. So the title of the book is Into
544
00:28:19.400 --> 00:28:22.119
History Corpse. And he says that the dead body then
545
00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:24.839
becomes normative in medicine. And he says that this is
546
00:28:24.880 --> 00:28:28.319
played out because the first patient that you get in
547
00:28:28.359 --> 00:28:30.839
medical school is a dead one. It's the cadaver in
548
00:28:30.880 --> 00:28:34.319
the gross lab. And so he says, if that's true,
549
00:28:35.279 --> 00:28:38.240
and if that's the framework by which most people are operating,
550
00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:41.160
then medicine is like a nihilistic practice, like what are
551
00:28:41.160 --> 00:28:43.640
we doing to take care of anticipatory corpses, you know,
552
00:28:43.839 --> 00:28:46.640
and then you start to see yourself as inspiratory corpse
553
00:28:47.039 --> 00:28:50.920
at best, right, the worst case scenario is that even
554
00:28:51.079 --> 00:28:53.680
within that you starts seeing life is just in people.
555
00:28:53.680 --> 00:28:56.000
It's just bags of blood and bones or molecules in motion,
556
00:28:56.200 --> 00:29:01.079
and medicine becomes a nihilistic practice. So medicine has a
557
00:29:01.160 --> 00:29:05.319
you know, I think unique relationship with death. Society does
558
00:29:05.319 --> 00:29:07.440
in particular. I mean, I think medicine does have a
559
00:29:07.480 --> 00:29:09.319
front row seat to the reality of death. We see
560
00:29:09.359 --> 00:29:11.480
death all the time, you know, as you said, I
561
00:29:11.519 --> 00:29:15.880
can still remember the smell in my nostrils of the
562
00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:18.759
cadaver that I dissected in gross lab like twenty five
563
00:29:18.839 --> 00:29:21.000
years ago. But we've seen death up close, and you
564
00:29:21.039 --> 00:29:25.160
know how horrific it is. That should provide us space
565
00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:29.119
for productively wondering about our own mortality and about the
566
00:29:29.160 --> 00:29:33.000
meaning of death. But because we it's uncomfortable, and because
567
00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:35.240
we're busy, we push it away. And I think again
568
00:29:35.279 --> 00:29:38.640
that causes distress in healthcare providers and the feeling from
569
00:29:38.680 --> 00:29:42.319
the public that we can overcome death. There's an interesting
570
00:29:42.359 --> 00:29:44.319
piece that I read a few years ago that says
571
00:29:44.359 --> 00:29:48.160
that oftentimes, like because death is considered to be the
572
00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:50.799
ultimate enemy because again there's nothing after that, and we
573
00:29:50.880 --> 00:29:54.160
need to sort of you know, try to fight it
574
00:29:54.200 --> 00:29:57.480
at all cost. This leads to this right idea of like,
575
00:29:57.559 --> 00:30:00.680
you know, people being on machines when they should at
576
00:30:00.680 --> 00:30:04.599
home without the burdensome you know, ventilator or ecmol or hymandialysis.
577
00:30:04.920 --> 00:30:07.720
But also about sometimes how when we when medicine does
578
00:30:07.839 --> 00:30:10.720
like a code, when someone codes, and you know it's
579
00:30:10.759 --> 00:30:13.200
someone really who should be allowed to have their natural
580
00:30:13.200 --> 00:30:15.960
because they've died at that point, most of them, right,
581
00:30:16.319 --> 00:30:18.960
that we basically like do this big show where medicine
582
00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:22.119
has this resuscitation and and like this whole sort of
583
00:30:22.279 --> 00:30:26.240
like sort of ritual around that because because death is like,
584
00:30:26.519 --> 00:30:28.480
to some of us, the biggest affront that there is,
585
00:30:29.079 --> 00:30:32.240
because it's a failure of us. And again, like it's
586
00:30:32.319 --> 00:30:34.200
that idea that you said of like this burden, like
587
00:30:34.240 --> 00:30:38.599
we are carrying the like right survival of humanity on
588
00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:40.920
our shoulders, and like it's up to us to like
589
00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:43.240
overcome death and if we can't, we have to put
590
00:30:43.240 --> 00:30:47.000
on this show. And like you know, so it's really
591
00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:50.359
really complicated. And when medicine doesn't think about death properly
592
00:30:50.480 --> 00:30:53.079
and our health properly, and or the vocation properly. What
593
00:30:53.200 --> 00:30:56.559
happens is people suffer. So yeah, I think death is
594
00:30:56.599 --> 00:30:58.359
really something that we should be talking about more. And
595
00:30:58.400 --> 00:31:00.359
I think the general public isn't have a good death
596
00:31:00.359 --> 00:31:03.640
that you said, because it's something that happens to other
597
00:31:03.680 --> 00:31:05.559
people or when it happens to people in our family,
598
00:31:05.599 --> 00:31:08.240
it's so walled away that we really don't have experience
599
00:31:08.279 --> 00:31:11.480
with it, as you said, until someone like you know
600
00:31:11.640 --> 00:31:13.559
a lot of my I'm I'm a gen xer. Right
601
00:31:13.599 --> 00:31:15.319
the first time sometimes some of my friends have seen
602
00:31:15.359 --> 00:31:18.200
death is you know, when their parents are approaching death.
603
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:20.039
And right if you said two hundred years ago, we
604
00:31:20.039 --> 00:31:22.119
would have lived, you know, in a place where our animals,
605
00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:24.039
we would have seen our animals eye at home. And
606
00:31:24.039 --> 00:31:25.599
again not to say this is a good thing, but
607
00:31:25.720 --> 00:31:28.599
like people would have you know, lost siblings and birth
608
00:31:28.720 --> 00:31:32.079
and you would have seen, right, your family and there'll
609
00:31:32.119 --> 00:31:34.920
be death and we would have more of attention to
610
00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:37.759
like what that looks like and not those opportunities are hard.
611
00:31:38.319 --> 00:31:40.480
And I'm not saying that we shouldn't like try to, like,
612
00:31:40.640 --> 00:31:43.480
you know, help people live, but it's just the proper
613
00:31:43.599 --> 00:31:45.480
ordering of these things that I think is important. As
614
00:31:45.480 --> 00:31:46.960
you said, so we don't create an idol or that
615
00:31:47.000 --> 00:31:48.519
we don't sort of think about these things in a
616
00:31:48.519 --> 00:31:50.440
way that's so low that we are have a disregard
617
00:31:50.440 --> 00:31:53.119
for the body or for our lives either or we
618
00:31:53.119 --> 00:31:55.240
don't think about them at all, right, or we just
619
00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:57.759
don't think about them. And that's that's really one of
620
00:31:57.839 --> 00:32:01.400
the things that I'm getting at is when you sanitize death,
621
00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:05.200
it becomes almost fictitious until it hits home, like you said,
622
00:32:05.240 --> 00:32:08.440
when a parent or a grandparent, or God forbid a
623
00:32:08.480 --> 00:32:13.519
sibling or a child. And so we don't see death,
624
00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:16.039
and then when we do, I don't know that we
625
00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:18.279
approach dying well.
626
00:32:19.039 --> 00:32:21.920
As something that we should learn to do. It's some
627
00:32:22.079 --> 00:32:24.400
death is something that we avoid, but dying well is
628
00:32:24.440 --> 00:32:26.279
something that we should learn to do. And you say
629
00:32:26.279 --> 00:32:30.960
that that Christians have a unique thing to offer society
630
00:32:30.960 --> 00:32:32.880
when it comes to learning to die, well, could you
631
00:32:32.920 --> 00:32:33.440
explain that?
632
00:32:33.599 --> 00:32:36.599
Yeah, sure, so I think of I think it's in
633
00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:39.839
the Letter to the Thessalonians, and it's Saint Paul who
634
00:32:39.839 --> 00:32:45.039
says something like we do not grieve or laments like
635
00:32:45.039 --> 00:32:48.839
people who have no hope, right, And so again I
636
00:32:49.640 --> 00:32:52.240
think about I think about how hard it is. I
637
00:32:52.279 --> 00:32:54.400
had to have a really tough conversation in clinic yesterday
638
00:32:54.480 --> 00:32:57.640
with somebody who's dying, and it's so hard, and I
639
00:32:57.720 --> 00:33:00.599
absolutely a grieve when that person pass. It is as
640
00:33:00.599 --> 00:33:02.839
I think I should as a physician. I think of
641
00:33:03.720 --> 00:33:06.799
the great physician himself, Jesus Christ, as my role model.
642
00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:10.279
And I think about Jesus weeping right at the loss
643
00:33:10.319 --> 00:33:13.119
of Lazarus. And if the divine physician can weep and
644
00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:15.279
cry and more in death, you know, so can I,
645
00:33:15.319 --> 00:33:17.000
you know. And I think of all the identities of
646
00:33:17.079 --> 00:33:21.519
Jesus that I relate to the most as a physician, it's,
647
00:33:22.680 --> 00:33:26.599
you know, the the image of Jesus Christ, as you know,
648
00:33:26.599 --> 00:33:29.720
the suffering servan acquainted with grief like I am acquainted
649
00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:34.319
with grief, like physicians are acquainted with grief. But as
650
00:33:34.319 --> 00:33:37.000
Paul says, we're not left in that grief, right, We're
651
00:33:37.039 --> 00:33:38.960
not left into the grief of like people who have
652
00:33:39.039 --> 00:33:42.839
no hope. And what our hope is and what particularly
653
00:33:42.920 --> 00:33:45.519
that hope refers to, I believe is the hope and
654
00:33:45.559 --> 00:33:49.240
the resurrection. So yes, I can lament and I can
655
00:33:49.319 --> 00:33:52.640
work hard to take care of my patients. But I'm
656
00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:55.720
not left in that despair. I can look forward to
657
00:33:55.839 --> 00:33:59.160
this to the day right in the New Jerusalem when
658
00:33:59.519 --> 00:34:02.799
the reseruction of the bodies, and as C. S. Lewis said,
659
00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:07.319
someday everything sad will become untrue. That's where my hope lies.
660
00:34:07.480 --> 00:34:07.640
You know.
661
00:34:07.720 --> 00:34:09.519
If I didn't have that, I'd be like left in
662
00:34:09.559 --> 00:34:12.440
the despair. And I might try to like try to
663
00:34:12.440 --> 00:34:15.880
have a half or work around for these things and
664
00:34:15.920 --> 00:34:19.159
start believing in transhumanism, or try to think medicine can
665
00:34:19.199 --> 00:34:21.400
be the savior and try to you know, become like
666
00:34:21.599 --> 00:34:23.840
the tech the tech bros. Right, And I think that's
667
00:34:23.840 --> 00:34:26.719
where my hope lies. And that's how our hope lies.
668
00:34:26.719 --> 00:34:29.440
That's a false hope, right, and that could be costly
669
00:34:29.519 --> 00:34:32.400
in all the ways, Thank goodness, because I think, you know,
670
00:34:32.440 --> 00:34:34.800
without hope, right, we are we are left in despair,
671
00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:36.280
and so we have to have some hope. So where's
672
00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:37.840
your hope going to be? Is it going to be
673
00:34:37.880 --> 00:34:40.039
in the truth or is it going to be in
674
00:34:40.119 --> 00:34:44.159
your digitized consciousness with the tech bros. You choose, you choose.
675
00:34:44.840 --> 00:34:47.079
So we've talked about death. What is health? I mean,
676
00:34:47.199 --> 00:34:49.639
I think you have a unique perspective on at least
677
00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:50.719
how you define it.
678
00:34:52.280 --> 00:34:55.559
Yeah, this is something that I also have realized that
679
00:34:55.599 --> 00:34:58.280
I had a very impoverished idea about. It's interesting, you know,
680
00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:02.159
medicine has the these assumptions that it works under that
681
00:35:02.199 --> 00:35:04.039
we just all sort of assume we know what health is,
682
00:35:04.159 --> 00:35:07.639
or that we assume we know what a person is.
683
00:35:08.440 --> 00:35:11.280
I sometimes we'll ask my students across the country or
684
00:35:11.320 --> 00:35:13.840
students that I run into, Yeah, Sharon, medicine. Do you
685
00:35:13.880 --> 00:35:17.280
remember ever having a medical school class on like what
686
00:35:17.400 --> 00:35:19.320
is a human being or what is a person? And
687
00:35:19.360 --> 00:35:22.440
they're like, no, I do you think about that when
688
00:35:22.559 --> 00:35:24.599
like that's what we do is we take care of
689
00:35:24.960 --> 00:35:27.400
human beings, like in persons, Like are those who are
690
00:35:27.440 --> 00:35:29.400
those terms the same? And maybe people don't think those
691
00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:31.760
terms are the same, Like what are the consequences of that?
692
00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:34.400
So it's interesting, but like we don't engage these questions
693
00:35:34.400 --> 00:35:37.559
of death, personhood, health, right, we just sort of we
694
00:35:37.599 --> 00:35:39.239
assume we sort of know what those things are. This's
695
00:35:39.239 --> 00:35:41.960
actually wildly different ideas out there about what those terms mean.
696
00:35:42.840 --> 00:35:45.480
So again, after my Christian baptism, I realized I had
697
00:35:45.480 --> 00:35:47.159
a very thin view of health and I need to
698
00:35:47.400 --> 00:35:50.000
understand what that means. It's interesting, you know, there are
699
00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:52.079
many good definitions of health out there. There are many
700
00:35:52.119 --> 00:35:56.559
bad ones. Lehne Cass, who's you know, is head of
701
00:35:56.599 --> 00:35:59.559
the President's Council Bioethics under George Bush, and as a
702
00:35:59.559 --> 00:36:03.320
physician and about athesists, his definition is interesting and his
703
00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:06.039
definition is health is like the well working of the
704
00:36:06.159 --> 00:36:11.119
organism as a whole. I'm constantly in a debate about
705
00:36:11.119 --> 00:36:14.480
people with thought definition. I think that's an interesting definition,
706
00:36:15.159 --> 00:36:17.280
although I still think it's a little bit too narrow.
707
00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:20.480
So what is not a good definition of health is
708
00:36:20.480 --> 00:36:22.800
sometimes when I ask students like about the definition of health,
709
00:36:22.800 --> 00:36:25.239
people will say, what health is the actuence of disease.
710
00:36:26.159 --> 00:36:27.920
I don't think that's a good definition of health. It's
711
00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:31.000
very impoverished as really no positive view of human flourishing
712
00:36:31.079 --> 00:36:34.360
at all. So one time I was asking this question
713
00:36:35.400 --> 00:36:38.039
to students and a medical student raised her hand and
714
00:36:38.079 --> 00:36:41.880
said that she had been an anthropology major at the
715
00:36:41.960 --> 00:36:44.400
University of Iowa before coming to med school, and her
716
00:36:44.440 --> 00:36:48.760
senior project was asking farmers in Iowa what is health?
717
00:36:49.480 --> 00:36:53.719
And she said her survey found that time and time again,
718
00:36:53.800 --> 00:36:56.679
the farmers would say stuff like I don't consider myself
719
00:36:56.679 --> 00:36:59.679
healthy unless like the soil on my farm is healthy,
720
00:37:00.400 --> 00:37:04.480
my crops are healthy, and my animals are healthy, and
721
00:37:04.519 --> 00:37:07.440
my neighbors are healthy. And it was like this beautiful
722
00:37:08.360 --> 00:37:12.760
vision really of like health is like Shalom. I was
723
00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:17.119
not taught health at Shaloman Medical School at all, and
724
00:37:17.760 --> 00:37:22.039
I have since that time come to start to understand,
725
00:37:22.119 --> 00:37:26.440
actually health is right relationship. Health like none of us
726
00:37:26.480 --> 00:37:29.519
are fully live by ourselves. I'm convinced of that, and
727
00:37:29.519 --> 00:37:32.639
I'm convinced that like health has to be realized in relationship,
728
00:37:32.719 --> 00:37:35.559
not just like on the horizontal level of like health
729
00:37:35.719 --> 00:37:39.760
with our bodies, with creation, with our neighbor, but actually
730
00:37:40.400 --> 00:37:43.679
on the vertical plane as well. We have to be
731
00:37:43.800 --> 00:37:45.880
in right relationship with the Lord from whom all our
732
00:37:45.920 --> 00:37:49.480
health flows. So I've started to think about health's right relationships.
733
00:37:49.480 --> 00:37:52.280
Some of my critics think about it's too broad of
734
00:37:52.280 --> 00:37:54.320
a vision of health, where I think that while working
735
00:37:54.360 --> 00:37:56.119
at the organism of a whole is too narrow, So
736
00:37:56.159 --> 00:38:00.159
maybe the sweet spot is somewhere in between. But I've
737
00:38:00.159 --> 00:38:02.800
started to like use that as my framework to think
738
00:38:02.840 --> 00:38:05.000
about to think about health, and I think actually even
739
00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:07.800
without like theological commitments. I think there's a lot of
740
00:38:07.840 --> 00:38:10.559
social science out there that show is that actually health
741
00:38:10.599 --> 00:38:12.599
is best realized in a relationship. There's a lot of
742
00:38:12.679 --> 00:38:15.000
studies that show that, like loneliness is just a big
743
00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:17.079
of a risk factor for bad health outcomes, as like
744
00:38:17.119 --> 00:38:21.800
smoking is or you know, hypertension. There are many studies
745
00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:26.480
that show that, like your relationships dramatically affect your physical
746
00:38:26.480 --> 00:38:28.920
and mental health. There's a really interesting studies synames I show.
747
00:38:29.480 --> 00:38:31.440
There's a talk that I give about health is Relationship,
748
00:38:31.679 --> 00:38:34.320
and there's a slide from the Journal of Clinical Oncology,
749
00:38:34.360 --> 00:38:36.920
which is like one of the top academic journals in cancer,
750
00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:40.119
and it shows that having a protective marriage is just
751
00:38:40.159 --> 00:38:43.039
as protective for you against bad cancer outcomes as like
752
00:38:43.039 --> 00:38:46.239
traditional chemotherapy. And people use like scientists are like that
753
00:38:46.280 --> 00:38:49.840
can't be real, and I'm like, it's real. So it's
754
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:53.039
really interesting to think about our relationships and how they
755
00:38:53.079 --> 00:38:55.599
affect our health, and so what can we do to
756
00:38:55.679 --> 00:38:59.760
be relationally oriented towards one another. Again, I mentioned mcntyre
757
00:38:59.800 --> 00:39:03.119
at the game, and I think about McIntyre here and
758
00:39:03.159 --> 00:39:05.119
sort of this view of health I think that is
759
00:39:05.119 --> 00:39:08.119
being pedled. What would McIntire say about this current view
760
00:39:08.159 --> 00:39:09.920
of health, I think that's being pedals. So health is relationship.
761
00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:11.559
I don't think is the view of health that might
762
00:39:11.639 --> 00:39:15.239
many people are operationally working under. I think what's currently
763
00:39:15.519 --> 00:39:18.639
especially in I would say the academy or secular society
764
00:39:18.679 --> 00:39:21.320
being would say sold because it's not their view of health.
765
00:39:21.320 --> 00:39:24.800
Of health is that you are most healthy or most
766
00:39:24.920 --> 00:39:30.000
flourishing as a radically autonomous, self sufficient person, free from
767
00:39:30.039 --> 00:39:33.960
any un chosen obligations, free to like self author your
768
00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:36.480
life and your body from moment to moment, you know,
769
00:39:37.079 --> 00:39:39.719
and first of all, like, none of us are fully autonomous.
770
00:39:39.800 --> 00:39:41.360
Autonomous a myth, and even if we could be, like,
771
00:39:41.400 --> 00:39:43.000
why would we want to be so insud I think
772
00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:45.360
a McIntyre who would say, actually, you're not, you know,
773
00:39:45.559 --> 00:39:48.880
most healthy as some pivo solo automaton like seeking to
774
00:39:48.920 --> 00:39:52.119
create your own reality. But instead your most healthy is
775
00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:56.480
is McIntyre would say, in these networks of uncalculated giving
776
00:39:56.480 --> 00:39:59.400
and graceful receiving, he would say, and I just love that. Again,
777
00:39:59.400 --> 00:40:02.039
there's this relationality there, and he would say, like, we're
778
00:40:02.039 --> 00:40:04.840
all on a scale of disability and actually you should
779
00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:08.000
be live, you know, in gratitude for the people who
780
00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:09.559
take care of you when you were a dependent infant,
781
00:40:09.559 --> 00:40:11.559
and we should live with antistary gratitude for the people
782
00:40:11.559 --> 00:40:13.320
who will take care of us when we do develop
783
00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:16.199
chronic illness for advanced stage. So again there's us relationality
784
00:40:16.239 --> 00:40:18.360
built into that definition of what it means to be
785
00:40:18.440 --> 00:40:21.159
human and to be flourishing. That I really think is
786
00:40:21.199 --> 00:40:25.440
like missing in our current discourse, but needed again if
787
00:40:25.480 --> 00:40:30.199
we are going to have a type of cultural response
788
00:40:31.239 --> 00:40:36.320
and answer to the disembodiment, to the loneliness, to the suicide,
789
00:40:36.920 --> 00:40:39.360
and to some of these healthcare which I say are
790
00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:42.440
not healthcare in my farmwork practices of things likthin asia,
791
00:40:42.519 --> 00:40:44.960
physicianist suicide. The last thing I'll say about that, just
792
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:47.719
because we're talking about like death and relationship and how
793
00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:51.440
to die and productive wondering. One of my favorite authors,
794
00:40:51.559 --> 00:40:53.760
leylah Bresco Sargent. She wrote a book this year called
795
00:40:53.800 --> 00:40:56.639
The Dignity of Dependence, which again talks about relationality and
796
00:40:56.960 --> 00:40:59.599
how dependence is actually integral to the human experience and
797
00:40:59.639 --> 00:41:01.920
not something that's a temporary embarrassment that we should try
798
00:41:01.960 --> 00:41:04.360
to like, you know, get rid of or hide. She
799
00:41:04.519 --> 00:41:07.079
says that like in the culture. When there is a
800
00:41:07.159 --> 00:41:09.639
type of error that we see about how we're living,
801
00:41:09.760 --> 00:41:12.880
let's say the adoption of physician assistant suicide or some
802
00:41:12.960 --> 00:41:18.199
other practice, she said, oftentimes the culture will hear Christians
803
00:41:18.280 --> 00:41:22.320
pointing out their no to that practice, and they'll hear
804
00:41:22.320 --> 00:41:23.760
them no much lotter than our yes. So they don't
805
00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:26.159
we say no what abortion, or no a physician assistant suicide,
806
00:41:26.239 --> 00:41:28.119
or no to youth in Asia. But they're not true.
807
00:41:28.159 --> 00:41:30.840
We're saying yes to so again, I think as Christian people,
808
00:41:30.840 --> 00:41:33.400
we have something radical to say, as you said, about
809
00:41:33.400 --> 00:41:35.239
what a good death looks like, and we should be
810
00:41:35.239 --> 00:41:38.800
able to inform the narrative a bit and also live
811
00:41:38.840 --> 00:41:42.559
that out in Christian community, for people to have their
812
00:41:42.599 --> 00:41:45.119
moral imagination shaped about what a good death can look
813
00:41:45.199 --> 00:41:47.239
like and also how to live. If the last thing
814
00:41:47.239 --> 00:41:49.360
I'll say about that, my friend Charliekimosi wrote a book
815
00:41:49.400 --> 00:41:53.239
this year. It's called Living and Dying Well. It's a
816
00:41:53.239 --> 00:41:56.400
Catholic response to physician assistant killing is the subtitle, and
817
00:41:56.440 --> 00:41:59.360
he talks about, right, this isn't just a choice of
818
00:41:59.480 --> 00:42:02.360
like how to live. We shouldn't obviously have a goal
819
00:42:02.400 --> 00:42:03.960
of how to live well. But he says there is
820
00:42:04.000 --> 00:42:08.440
like this you know work or this practice of like
821
00:42:08.559 --> 00:42:10.599
dying well, that also should be something that we should
822
00:42:10.679 --> 00:42:12.719
understand how to do. We shouldn't just think about it
823
00:42:12.719 --> 00:42:14.320
at the moment we're like in the units or the
824
00:42:14.519 --> 00:42:16.880
ICU with like a dying person. That is not the
825
00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:20.159
time to get your like education on the fly, when
826
00:42:20.199 --> 00:42:22.199
you're all tired and emotional. This is something we all
827
00:42:22.199 --> 00:42:24.480
should be pondering. It's not easy to do. We need
828
00:42:24.519 --> 00:42:26.360
to do it in the moral community and with discertainment,
829
00:42:26.639 --> 00:42:28.000
but it's something that we have to do if we're
830
00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:29.840
going to be able to sort of think about dying well,
831
00:42:29.920 --> 00:42:33.000
not only in our own bodies, but with the people
832
00:42:33.079 --> 00:42:34.480
around us whom we love dearly.
833
00:42:34.760 --> 00:42:38.239
You know, absolutely. I mean there's so much there. There's
834
00:42:38.280 --> 00:42:41.760
so much there. But I told you that your speech
835
00:42:41.800 --> 00:42:46.559
did matter, that people were listening. Thank you, And you
836
00:42:46.639 --> 00:42:50.320
started it by saying, we are not machines, and I
837
00:42:50.519 --> 00:42:58.239
stopped though. Amen. You also just said that studies show
838
00:42:58.840 --> 00:43:01.280
that having a good mayorge or something I'm going to
839
00:43:01.320 --> 00:43:06.199
paraphrase like marital support or familial support is a huge
840
00:43:06.239 --> 00:43:10.119
factor in cancer. I have two examples. One, as soon
841
00:43:10.159 --> 00:43:13.679
as you said we are not machines. I immediately went
842
00:43:13.719 --> 00:43:17.280
to hearing a phone call that my dad was on.
843
00:43:17.840 --> 00:43:22.480
So my dad was diagnosed about eight years ago with
844
00:43:23.000 --> 00:43:27.000
stage four mantle cell amfoma. What you hear stage four,
845
00:43:27.039 --> 00:43:32.880
you think that's death, which it didn't. Was not the case.
846
00:43:32.920 --> 00:43:37.320
He's in remission, Gloria God. I remember him getting on
847
00:43:37.440 --> 00:43:41.039
the phone with a very well respected doctor that was
848
00:43:41.119 --> 00:43:43.639
a friend of a friend, and he said, Hank, you're
849
00:43:43.639 --> 00:43:46.639
going to be okay. There's really good treatment for this,
850
00:43:47.559 --> 00:43:53.480
but you need two things. Do not get a body mechanic.
851
00:43:54.199 --> 00:43:58.639
Get a healer. So the importance of a healer and
852
00:43:58.679 --> 00:44:03.480
your home. You can go anywhere in the world for treatment,
853
00:44:05.800 --> 00:44:09.199
do your best to stay close to home and your
854
00:44:09.239 --> 00:44:12.880
support network, because that is worth way more than whatever
855
00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:16.599
added advantage you might get by going to Texas or
856
00:44:17.000 --> 00:44:21.920
you know, Singapore or wherever it might have been. So
857
00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:24.840
I saw that in him, and it was true, And
858
00:44:25.159 --> 00:44:28.079
I mean there are so many different ways that that
859
00:44:28.519 --> 00:44:32.280
I think that is true. And the nurses and doctors
860
00:44:32.320 --> 00:44:35.639
all said, you have no idea how big of a
861
00:44:35.639 --> 00:44:39.239
difference you are all making in his treatment by coming
862
00:44:39.360 --> 00:44:42.280
here every day, by being here with him, and the
863
00:44:42.360 --> 00:44:44.480
same thing a couple of years ago, my wife was
864
00:44:44.519 --> 00:44:48.960
diagnosed with breast cancer, and I really think that our
865
00:44:49.320 --> 00:44:54.440
relationship together going through that, Absolutely it's a huge part
866
00:44:54.480 --> 00:44:58.199
in her healing. Butlutly, and this is something that I've
867
00:44:58.239 --> 00:45:00.079
been thinking about a lot. Just you've been talking. I
868
00:45:00.119 --> 00:45:02.079
do want to get to that we are not machines,
869
00:45:03.480 --> 00:45:08.159
but getting back to the idol of health, you know sometimes,
870
00:45:08.239 --> 00:45:10.320
and I've been thinking about it the whole time we've
871
00:45:10.320 --> 00:45:12.360
been talking. And I'll send you the book. There's a
872
00:45:12.360 --> 00:45:16.280
book called The Theology of Illness by Jean Claude Larch
873
00:45:17.760 --> 00:45:20.719
and he talks so he talks about in that book,
874
00:45:21.039 --> 00:45:22.880
and I'll paraphrase once again. I need to memorize it
875
00:45:22.880 --> 00:45:25.039
because I talk about it all the time. That I
876
00:45:25.039 --> 00:45:27.239
remember reading and thinking that how could that be true?
877
00:45:27.719 --> 00:45:30.880
That good health can actually be evil if it keeps
878
00:45:30.920 --> 00:45:34.480
you from right relationship with God. Yeah, And so that
879
00:45:34.639 --> 00:45:38.199
idol of health can actually be an impediment in so
880
00:45:38.360 --> 00:45:41.960
many ways. And that I bring that in the context
881
00:45:41.960 --> 00:45:46.880
of my wife that cancer. You know, somebody the other
882
00:45:46.960 --> 00:45:50.760
day and they asked, in response to a video that
883
00:45:50.800 --> 00:45:54.199
I put out there, They said, is cancer beautiful? And
884
00:45:54.239 --> 00:45:57.119
I said it can be and I don't say that
885
00:45:57.159 --> 00:46:00.960
to be cute, because I have real in the game.
886
00:46:01.079 --> 00:46:05.880
I mean, do Yeah. I don't know if I could
887
00:46:05.920 --> 00:46:09.840
just make wave a magic wand and get rid of cancer.
888
00:46:09.880 --> 00:46:12.199
I don't know, but I saw the impact that it
889
00:46:12.239 --> 00:46:15.719
had on my wife for the positive, and so many
890
00:46:15.800 --> 00:46:18.599
of the older people in our church came up and said, cancer,
891
00:46:19.280 --> 00:46:22.920
this is good, brings you closer to God because and
892
00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:27.480
this is also what I'm getting at, and I'm out loud.
893
00:46:28.159 --> 00:46:31.599
That's what I mean about ignoring health and how when
894
00:46:31.599 --> 00:46:35.320
we don't see it, it becomes mythical in a sense.
895
00:46:35.400 --> 00:46:38.079
Oh that's not going to happen to me, and so
896
00:46:38.119 --> 00:46:40.960
we cease to ask the big questions. I think in
897
00:46:41.280 --> 00:46:44.159
our modern era we're not asking the questions that have
898
00:46:44.199 --> 00:46:47.159
been age old, like even do I believe in a God?
899
00:46:47.199 --> 00:46:49.920
I think some people aren't. Even they might think about
900
00:46:49.920 --> 00:46:52.039
it for two seconds and the answer is I don't
901
00:46:52.079 --> 00:46:53.400
want to believe in a god because that I'd have
902
00:46:53.440 --> 00:46:56.440
to live differently, something along those lines, right, But I
903
00:46:56.480 --> 00:46:59.440
said a lot, tell me what comes to ye.
904
00:46:59.559 --> 00:47:02.800
I don't thinking about that. The wise person who told
905
00:47:02.840 --> 00:47:06.079
your dad, you know, don't go see like a technician
906
00:47:06.199 --> 00:47:08.800
or a body mechanic. It's one of my favorite lines
907
00:47:08.800 --> 00:47:10.960
that I'll tell our students is like, you know, you
908
00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:13.440
are not a technician taking care of a complex machine.
909
00:47:14.159 --> 00:47:15.920
You know, you are a human being taking care of
910
00:47:15.960 --> 00:47:18.760
the image bearer of God. You know. And that's a
911
00:47:18.800 --> 00:47:23.079
wildly different framework. And it reminds me of a quote
912
00:47:23.119 --> 00:47:26.880
by Abraham Heshel, the Jewish, thelogian. He said he gave
913
00:47:26.920 --> 00:47:29.559
an address to the American Medical Association, I think it
914
00:47:29.599 --> 00:47:33.159
was in the seventies. It was called patientist person. He
915
00:47:33.199 --> 00:47:35.840
said something like, you know, medicine shouldn't just be some
916
00:47:35.960 --> 00:47:40.920
kind of impersonal practice on sick bodies, but it should
917
00:47:40.920 --> 00:47:44.679
be a personal vocation on ill persons. And that's like
918
00:47:44.760 --> 00:47:46.840
such a different framework if you see your patient as
919
00:47:46.880 --> 00:47:50.880
a sick body versus an ill person. I think that's
920
00:47:50.920 --> 00:47:55.679
really fascinating and I really lament sort of. I have
921
00:47:55.719 --> 00:47:57.920
an interested narrative medicine, which is the use of language
922
00:47:57.920 --> 00:48:00.000
and stories in medicine. I think a lot about language,
923
00:48:00.199 --> 00:48:04.559
and I think a lot of particularly about language that
924
00:48:04.880 --> 00:48:10.000
depersonalizes or dehumanizes certain members of population who staging to
925
00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:13.400
be finding convenient. Like I'm very very interested in language
926
00:48:13.440 --> 00:48:17.039
or on abortion discourse, in particular. But it's one of
927
00:48:17.039 --> 00:48:20.920
those things that I think sometimes this mechanistic view of
928
00:48:20.960 --> 00:48:25.239
ourselves and our patients comes into medicine and it's really
929
00:48:25.280 --> 00:48:27.440
to the detriment of like what we're trying to do,
930
00:48:27.880 --> 00:48:30.480
and it's impossible to see your patient as a person
931
00:48:30.599 --> 00:48:33.239
with a mechanistic framework. So I think the way that
932
00:48:33.280 --> 00:48:36.639
this happens, which I've talked about before, is that you know,
933
00:48:37.119 --> 00:48:38.719
I get how that happens. I think a lot of
934
00:48:38.920 --> 00:48:42.039
young people, which is right, they come into medicine and
935
00:48:42.199 --> 00:48:44.159
they do want to take care of people, like they say,
936
00:48:44.199 --> 00:48:46.519
I want to take care of people. People matter. I
937
00:48:46.559 --> 00:48:48.559
guess saw my grandma got sick, I saw how she
938
00:48:48.639 --> 00:48:50.880
was treated. I want to do things differently, right, And
939
00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:53.400
they're very idealistic, which is good. And then they come
940
00:48:53.440 --> 00:48:58.320
into medicine and there is so much science to learn
941
00:48:58.599 --> 00:49:03.119
your receptors. You're from acology, right, like your histology, and
942
00:49:03.199 --> 00:49:06.679
what happens is you know, I always I always tell students,
943
00:49:06.679 --> 00:49:08.039
you know, think about the first time you look at
944
00:49:08.079 --> 00:49:11.159
something under the microscope, maybe when you were a kid,
945
00:49:11.159 --> 00:49:13.039
like an old fashioned microscope when you have to close
946
00:49:13.039 --> 00:49:15.000
one eye, and I say, you know, we'll wonder what
947
00:49:15.079 --> 00:49:16.639
you looked at. Maybe it was a slice of an
948
00:49:16.679 --> 00:49:19.039
onion off your mom's counter, or a drop of pond
949
00:49:19.039 --> 00:49:21.440
water or a splash of blood. You know what has to
950
00:49:21.440 --> 00:49:22.960
happen for you to look into the microscope, Well, you
951
00:49:23.039 --> 00:49:25.360
have to close one eye right, and that one open
952
00:49:25.400 --> 00:49:29.320
eye becomes like a scientific or technical or mechanic lens.
953
00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:33.000
And what you see under that microscope is totally beautiful.
954
00:49:33.880 --> 00:49:36.440
But now I always tell them, now what you pick yourself?
955
00:49:36.480 --> 00:49:40.320
Like looking up and gazing at a patient like lying
956
00:49:40.320 --> 00:49:41.880
in the bed in front of you, who's like saying
957
00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:45.119
to you, as a doctor, please help me, Like what
958
00:49:45.159 --> 00:49:47.400
do you have to do to take care of him? Well,
959
00:49:47.679 --> 00:49:49.480
you actually have to see him with both eyes open.
960
00:49:49.960 --> 00:49:51.960
Medicine has to be a both eyes open type of
961
00:49:52.039 --> 00:49:55.920
vocation to see the person in the bed as actually
962
00:49:55.960 --> 00:49:59.079
a person, not just like a bag of receptors. And
963
00:49:59.119 --> 00:50:01.960
that other eye, I would say, is your antidote to
964
00:50:02.000 --> 00:50:04.719
the mechanic eye. If she a scientific eye, it's the
965
00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:08.360
I would say, the moral eye, your religious eye, your
966
00:50:08.400 --> 00:50:11.239
ethical eye, your spiritual eye. But what happens I get it.
967
00:50:11.239 --> 00:50:13.480
You're so busy in med school because it takes so
968
00:50:13.559 --> 00:50:16.519
much time honing that scientific or technical lens, that the
969
00:50:16.559 --> 00:50:20.719
other eye becomes like atrophied or sometimes God forbid, you're
970
00:50:20.760 --> 00:50:22.719
told you better not open that eye and his work
971
00:50:22.840 --> 00:50:25.800
because that eye is nonsense, it's mythology, it's nonsense. It's
972
00:50:26.440 --> 00:50:27.920
going to get in the way of what you need
973
00:50:27.960 --> 00:50:30.440
to do. Right. So, then, but you're not going to
974
00:50:30.519 --> 00:50:32.719
see with that one eye. You're not going to see.
975
00:50:32.800 --> 00:50:35.400
You can't see that person as an image bearer of
976
00:50:35.440 --> 00:50:38.400
God with your scientific eye. You need the other eye
977
00:50:38.440 --> 00:50:40.920
to give that binocular vision to this person in front
978
00:50:40.920 --> 00:50:42.800
of you. So that person lying in the bed isn't
979
00:50:42.840 --> 00:50:47.199
just a messy organism. But you know, a person, someone's mother, sister,
980
00:50:47.400 --> 00:50:50.639
like love, her best friend like that. That's what people
981
00:50:50.679 --> 00:50:52.239
deserve to be seen in the fullness if they are,
982
00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:54.280
and you need both, like you need your scientific eye.
983
00:50:54.280 --> 00:50:55.719
I need to have my scientific eye to be a
984
00:50:55.719 --> 00:50:59.480
medicine physician, right, but I also in the fullness of
985
00:50:59.519 --> 00:51:01.480
what I do, so for me to maintain meaning in
986
00:51:01.519 --> 00:51:03.239
the work that I do, so I don't become a
987
00:51:03.280 --> 00:51:05.719
burnt out machine, and so the person isn't seen as
988
00:51:05.719 --> 00:51:07.960
a machine. I knew that second. I and medicine just
989
00:51:08.000 --> 00:51:10.599
doesn't do a good job honing that eye because I
990
00:51:10.599 --> 00:51:14.880
invoke some you know, spicy questions of meaning and right
991
00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:18.880
worldview and transcending goods and the divine that medicine doesn't
992
00:51:18.880 --> 00:51:22.360
have a lot of literacy around. But yes, I have
993
00:51:22.440 --> 00:51:24.639
a very big interest in language, and I think this
994
00:51:24.760 --> 00:51:30.039
machine language is bad and it's a threat to our anthropology,
995
00:51:30.079 --> 00:51:32.320
especially as Christians that people are made in God. And
996
00:51:32.320 --> 00:51:34.119
what last thing to say about that is, I think,
997
00:51:34.159 --> 00:51:36.599
you know, there's more and more adoption of machines into
998
00:51:36.599 --> 00:51:39.760
our daily lives of some way, and I think the
999
00:51:39.800 --> 00:51:41.679
threat isn't that we're going to start to see the
1000
00:51:41.719 --> 00:51:43.760
machines as human beings, but we're going to start to
1001
00:51:43.760 --> 00:51:47.840
see ourselves as machines. Right, That's the anthropological crisis that
1002
00:51:47.920 --> 00:51:50.000
I see. So someone who cares about and writes a
1003
00:51:50.039 --> 00:51:53.800
lot about lately, like Christian anthropology, that to me is
1004
00:51:53.840 --> 00:51:56.079
the biggest thing. And I was just starting to understand
1005
00:51:56.079 --> 00:51:58.199
what that meant when I wrote that white Coat talk
1006
00:51:58.559 --> 00:52:00.960
about we are not machines. As I was coming out
1007
00:52:00.960 --> 00:52:03.400
of this idea, I've seeing myself as a machine and
1008
00:52:03.440 --> 00:52:06.360
seeing my patients as a machine, and like the way
1009
00:52:06.400 --> 00:52:09.119
that that was leading me down a bad path, not
1010
00:52:09.159 --> 00:52:11.360
only did the patients deserve to be seen not as machines,
1011
00:52:11.400 --> 00:52:13.800
but when I started to see myself as a machine, right,
1012
00:52:14.760 --> 00:52:18.119
that's that's that's a that's a disregards my own dignity.
1013
00:52:18.159 --> 00:52:21.639
Also, yeah, and you talk about how you know, task
1014
00:52:21.679 --> 00:52:27.280
completion is not care and I experienced that intimately because
1015
00:52:27.320 --> 00:52:29.440
as I got older, you know, our bodies are noisy,
1016
00:52:30.119 --> 00:52:34.519
and I'm a very totally tuned person, so you notice everything.
1017
00:52:34.559 --> 00:52:36.159
And then as I got older, I started to get
1018
00:52:36.480 --> 00:52:39.199
to become a hypochondriac. And then I said, you know,
1019
00:52:39.239 --> 00:52:42.519
the enemy is the doctor, right, and that can be
1020
00:52:42.599 --> 00:52:46.639
true because some of you in your profession are a
1021
00:52:46.679 --> 00:52:49.400
little too you know, this is it. And they failed
1022
00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:51.920
to see me as a person who I hay, these
1023
00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:56.760
problems are whatever. And I finally found a doctor who
1024
00:52:58.119 --> 00:53:00.920
he opened with. You know, I told him my whole story,
1025
00:53:01.079 --> 00:53:03.199
and I've developed type of chondria. As I get older,
1026
00:53:03.239 --> 00:53:06.559
you know, I get white coat. And he just he
1027
00:53:06.679 --> 00:53:09.320
started by saying, I'm glad you're here. And he told
1028
00:53:09.360 --> 00:53:14.800
me a fear that he has like that. I thought, really,
1029
00:53:15.039 --> 00:53:17.960
you've got that. And then you think, well, okay, somebody
1030
00:53:18.000 --> 00:53:20.519
might think that it's ridiculous. That I'm scared of X. Well,
1031
00:53:20.559 --> 00:53:22.039
he just told me that he's scared of why and
1032
00:53:22.079 --> 00:53:24.800
I thought, yeah, I'm not. Well, that's it. And and
1033
00:53:25.159 --> 00:53:27.679
we both saw each other and he just kept saying,
1034
00:53:28.079 --> 00:53:32.480
I'm glad you're here. We put too many labels on things,
1035
00:53:32.719 --> 00:53:35.599
and we went through and I still don't like going
1036
00:53:35.639 --> 00:53:40.920
to the doctor. Sure, But while some people are different,
1037
00:53:40.960 --> 00:53:42.760
my wife she's a champer. I mean, she she went
1038
00:53:42.800 --> 00:53:45.679
through everything and and and she just she always says,
1039
00:53:45.719 --> 00:53:47.639
I'm I hope that I die before you because I
1040
00:53:47.639 --> 00:53:49.400
don't want to take care of you if you're ever seen.
1041
00:53:52.280 --> 00:53:57.079
But I really, really I'm glad that you're out there
1042
00:53:57.119 --> 00:54:00.280
putting that into the universe, that the task completion is
1043
00:54:00.320 --> 00:54:03.239
not care. We are more than lab work.
1044
00:54:04.159 --> 00:54:06.639
That's right, That's right. Like I so someone I said,
1045
00:54:06.639 --> 00:54:10.039
it was very interesting. In narrative medicine, we had a
1046
00:54:10.079 --> 00:54:13.000
session with our medical students this week and it was
1047
00:54:13.039 --> 00:54:16.039
about care of veteran patients and we talked about the
1048
00:54:16.199 --> 00:54:22.519
high rate of PTSD AMONGST veterans MST, which is military
1049
00:54:22.559 --> 00:54:26.880
sexual trauma for women veterans. We talked about high risks
1050
00:54:26.920 --> 00:54:30.039
of you know, suicidality, especially the first year back we
1051
00:54:30.119 --> 00:54:34.880
talked about how there is no like lab test for trauma, right,
1052
00:54:34.920 --> 00:54:37.239
there is no scan that I can run on somebody
1053
00:54:37.280 --> 00:54:39.440
to like understand who they are or like what they've
1054
00:54:39.480 --> 00:54:42.639
been through. And so the most important I think, especially
1055
00:54:42.639 --> 00:54:44.679
in our age of like we have we have a
1056
00:54:44.880 --> 00:54:47.760
you know, pet CT and an MRI and a full
1057
00:54:47.800 --> 00:54:51.119
body scan, and we have all these like biological markers
1058
00:54:51.159 --> 00:54:53.360
like those can be helpful if we understand how to
1059
00:54:53.480 --> 00:54:58.599
use them. But still the most important tool that I
1060
00:54:58.760 --> 00:55:02.039
have for liken nderstanding what's going on with my patient
1061
00:55:02.239 --> 00:55:06.920
actually is story. You know, and read a share on
1062
00:55:06.920 --> 00:55:09.079
Who's the Mother narrative us and says right that like
1063
00:55:10.159 --> 00:55:15.000
medicine should be centered around story. It's the only way
1064
00:55:15.039 --> 00:55:18.280
that I can like take you know, when a patient
1065
00:55:18.360 --> 00:55:20.480
has a symptom or a concern or a fear, they
1066
00:55:20.480 --> 00:55:23.079
often come to see me about just being able to
1067
00:55:23.199 --> 00:55:27.360
like offload that burden and for me to absorb it
1068
00:55:27.400 --> 00:55:29.840
in story and to carry it like again, help share
1069
00:55:29.880 --> 00:55:31.960
this burden of this worry and then we can process
1070
00:55:31.960 --> 00:55:34.840
it together. But for many of these things, the only
1071
00:55:34.840 --> 00:55:36.679
way I can uncover what's happening with them and know
1072
00:55:36.840 --> 00:55:39.119
who they are and then understanding because I know who
1073
00:55:39.159 --> 00:55:40.559
they are. I mean, I've had my patience for twenty
1074
00:55:40.559 --> 00:55:42.000
five years, so I do know who they are, and
1075
00:55:42.079 --> 00:55:43.639
I know what their their goals are and what we
1076
00:55:43.679 --> 00:55:46.800
struggled with, and then I can understand like what ares
1077
00:55:46.840 --> 00:55:48.960
most to them and how we should proceed, and like
1078
00:55:49.239 --> 00:55:51.239
there's no algorithm that can tell me that, there's no
1079
00:55:51.440 --> 00:55:54.000
chat GBT that can tell me what to do, there's nothing,
1080
00:55:54.320 --> 00:55:57.119
there's no scan that tells me right, it's through stories.
1081
00:55:57.159 --> 00:56:01.639
So we cannot marginalize the importance of how medicine you
1082
00:56:02.280 --> 00:56:05.800
should be considered as like two moral agents coming together
1083
00:56:05.960 --> 00:56:09.679
in this covenant of sorts, exchanging stories and seeing each
1084
00:56:09.719 --> 00:56:13.480
other as two persons, and that if we need to
1085
00:56:13.599 --> 00:56:17.880
use some machines right as a scan or something, that's fine,
1086
00:56:17.920 --> 00:56:20.360
but they should not ever come in the way of
1087
00:56:20.440 --> 00:56:23.280
those two people coming together. So I saw I speak
1088
00:56:23.320 --> 00:56:26.079
a lot about AI lately, and there was a diagram
1089
00:56:26.119 --> 00:56:28.159
that I'll show, which I think is so disturbing. Actually
1090
00:56:28.239 --> 00:56:32.280
it's from a prestigious journal, and it shows AI as
1091
00:56:32.320 --> 00:56:34.559
like a partner in healthcare, and instead of just the
1092
00:56:34.599 --> 00:56:37.559
patient and the physician, there's like a triangle and it's
1093
00:56:37.599 --> 00:56:40.559
like the AI, the patient and the physician and it's
1094
00:56:40.599 --> 00:56:44.280
like this triangle and I was like, no, no, no, no, Like,
1095
00:56:44.639 --> 00:56:50.079
anytime you put something into that sacred dynamic, we should
1096
00:56:50.119 --> 00:56:53.639
be really sure we understand, like what is happening there,
1097
00:56:53.679 --> 00:56:56.199
because that is probably one of the most sacred dynamics
1098
00:56:56.480 --> 00:56:58.719
that there are. I would say, I mean husband and wife,
1099
00:56:58.800 --> 00:57:03.079
obviously mom and baby, but physician location is pretty sacred too,
1100
00:57:03.119 --> 00:57:04.920
and I think we need to be really careful about
1101
00:57:05.039 --> 00:57:07.920
who or what gets in the way of that because
1102
00:57:08.039 --> 00:57:11.920
that is something that is precious and we should safeguard that,
1103
00:57:12.079 --> 00:57:14.719
just like we safeguard marriage. Right. So yeah, I'm very
1104
00:57:14.760 --> 00:57:18.280
worried about, you know, sort of like. There's this piece
1105
00:57:18.320 --> 00:57:20.039
and First Things I think a few years ago that
1106
00:57:20.119 --> 00:57:24.559
I love, and it talks about the machine apocalypse, and
1107
00:57:24.599 --> 00:57:27.599
the writer talks about how, you know, I think, you know,
1108
00:57:27.679 --> 00:57:29.320
my day when we grew up and there were movies
1109
00:57:29.360 --> 00:57:34.800
about the apocalypse, it was like this big fiery, you know, explosion.
1110
00:57:34.840 --> 00:57:37.000
One day, everything just blit up right and blew up.
1111
00:57:37.400 --> 00:57:39.599
And he says something like, but what if actually the
1112
00:57:39.679 --> 00:57:44.199
apocalypse comes so slowly that we don't notice it, and
1113
00:57:44.199 --> 00:57:46.800
then it's like this chip chip chip chipping away of
1114
00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:50.239
our anthropology, and I was like, yep, that's what it is, right.
1115
00:57:50.280 --> 00:57:52.920
It starts with the machine language, and then it starts
1116
00:57:52.920 --> 00:57:56.039
by like making us have affection for machines by anthromorphizing
1117
00:57:56.079 --> 00:57:58.679
them in like movies. Then it comes with like starting
1118
00:57:58.679 --> 00:58:02.519
to see ourselves in our neighbor's machine, and then glorifying machines,
1119
00:58:02.599 --> 00:58:05.639
and the language changes and the anthropology changes, and all
1120
00:58:05.639 --> 00:58:08.280
of a sudden we have paved the way for like
1121
00:58:08.320 --> 00:58:11.440
a post human future, right, and the techno grows like
1122
00:58:11.840 --> 00:58:15.480
are winning? Right? It just becomes like the slow chipping
1123
00:58:15.480 --> 00:58:17.320
away of like what is a human person? What does
1124
00:58:17.360 --> 00:58:20.880
it need to be human? And this machine ideology is
1125
00:58:20.920 --> 00:58:24.079
I think the way that that that's happening, and I
1126
00:58:24.119 --> 00:58:26.079
think we should be very thoughtful to God against that,
1127
00:58:26.239 --> 00:58:30.679
because again, image bearers of gods are not machines, and
1128
00:58:30.719 --> 00:58:31.880
they never will be right.
1129
00:58:31.960 --> 00:58:32.840
We're not machines.
1130
00:58:33.119 --> 00:58:33.960
We're not machines.
1131
00:58:34.320 --> 00:58:38.880
So I became aware of you through your walkout, your
1132
00:58:38.880 --> 00:58:43.239
white coat walkout, and that stuck with me, and I
1133
00:58:43.519 --> 00:58:47.039
told you it's a beautiful speech. Anybody YouTube it whatever,
1134
00:58:47.599 --> 00:58:52.800
It's well worth twenty minutes, you know. I had it
1135
00:58:52.800 --> 00:58:55.039
in my head and then I I actually listened to
1136
00:58:55.039 --> 00:58:58.119
it after I contact you, I remember why I liked
1137
00:58:58.159 --> 00:59:02.159
this so much with me, but a couple of months ago,
1138
00:59:02.960 --> 00:59:04.840
you know, it just popped into my head and I thought,
1139
00:59:05.159 --> 00:59:07.639
what's she too? And I am not in your field
1140
00:59:08.400 --> 00:59:10.800
and I'm not I told you my first d was
1141
00:59:10.800 --> 00:59:14.519
in high school biology. It's not something that I generally
1142
00:59:14.800 --> 00:59:18.440
look into for fun. And I looked at it and
1143
00:59:18.480 --> 00:59:23.039
I thought, wow, that is fascinating. And I actually got
1144
00:59:23.039 --> 00:59:25.480
into science for you know, as deep as I could get,
1145
00:59:25.480 --> 00:59:27.760
which you do a good job at bringing the cookies
1146
00:59:27.760 --> 00:59:30.320
down to the bottom shelf. But I started to read
1147
00:59:30.360 --> 00:59:35.400
into your work on relational biology and it floored me.
1148
00:59:35.480 --> 00:59:39.480
I meant, this is interesting on so many different levels.
1149
00:59:39.719 --> 00:59:42.199
Could you just explain, as if you're talking to me
1150
00:59:42.280 --> 00:59:46.440
and my family here, young kids, what relational biology is?
1151
00:59:47.320 --> 00:59:49.840
Sure? And before I say that, also, just because I
1152
00:59:49.920 --> 00:59:53.159
was so lucky after the white cut walkout, that Public
1153
00:59:53.199 --> 00:59:55.960
Discourse reached out to me and offered to write up
1154
00:59:56.039 --> 00:59:59.199
my kind of written version of my talk in the
1155
00:59:59.199 --> 01:00:02.679
public domain. Is also it's also on public discourse for
1156
01:00:02.760 --> 01:00:04.679
people who are more of a reader and not a
1157
01:00:04.719 --> 01:00:07.800
listener to YouTube, and I talk is there too, Yeah,
1158
01:00:07.960 --> 01:00:13.199
So I am fascinated with relational biology, and it's it's
1159
01:00:13.239 --> 01:00:16.159
around this idea again that we are not fully alive
1160
01:00:16.239 --> 01:00:22.239
by ourselves, and that God in his own relationality. If
1161
01:00:22.239 --> 01:00:25.440
we think about trinitarian theology, but also the fact that
1162
01:00:25.719 --> 01:00:28.079
we are only known because we are sons and daughters
1163
01:00:28.079 --> 01:00:30.480
of God, and we are creative by God's purchased into relation.
1164
01:00:31.119 --> 01:00:34.360
That if God himself is relational in his person, which
1165
01:00:34.400 --> 01:00:38.079
he is number one, and if He is the creator
1166
01:00:38.159 --> 01:00:41.719
of all of our science, including our biology, then we
1167
01:00:41.760 --> 01:00:44.719
shouldn't be a surprised, I guess to say and to
1168
01:00:44.880 --> 01:00:47.760
understand that we are relational even on to the level
1169
01:00:47.800 --> 01:00:52.639
of ourselves. And I think that's so beautiful. And relational
1170
01:00:52.679 --> 01:00:57.760
biology is definitely manifest in many ways. The ways that
1171
01:00:57.800 --> 01:01:00.519
I have written about it. The most I'm most in it,
1172
01:01:00.639 --> 01:01:06.159
especially as a mother, is around the maternal fetal medicine
1173
01:01:06.280 --> 01:01:10.920
and maternal fetal biology. So the the paradigmatic example of
1174
01:01:10.960 --> 01:01:14.079
relational biology is between mom and baby and their relationship.
1175
01:01:14.119 --> 01:01:17.159
So briefly, what happens in a relation of biological constructor
1176
01:01:17.199 --> 01:01:21.920
there is that we know that early on in pregnancy
1177
01:01:23.159 --> 01:01:27.920
that baby and mom share each other's cells. So, for example,
1178
01:01:28.079 --> 01:01:31.880
the baby will send some of their cells across the
1179
01:01:31.880 --> 01:01:38.400
placenta and go into maternal circulation, and those cells insert
1180
01:01:38.840 --> 01:01:43.280
into mothers various organs and tissues and they start acting
1181
01:01:43.400 --> 01:01:47.719
like the cells around them, and like any good relationship,
1182
01:01:47.880 --> 01:01:50.480
some of the mom cells across across the placenta and
1183
01:01:50.519 --> 01:01:53.840
go into the baby. And what happens is that, you know,
1184
01:01:53.840 --> 01:01:56.119
those cells are like you know, if you think about
1185
01:01:56.119 --> 01:01:58.079
the baby cells that go into the mom, Yeah, they
1186
01:01:58.079 --> 01:02:00.760
are half mom, but they are like but also from
1187
01:02:00.800 --> 01:02:05.440
a distinct person. Yeah, the mother's immune system doesn't attack
1188
01:02:05.519 --> 01:02:08.199
those cells and actually allows those cells to integrate into
1189
01:02:08.199 --> 01:02:11.079
tissues and those cells start working like the cells around them.
1190
01:02:11.559 --> 01:02:15.760
That is like radical mutuality at like a cellular level,
1191
01:02:16.000 --> 01:02:19.360
you know. And it's one thing I think for me
1192
01:02:19.440 --> 01:02:21.400
to think about boy, you know, as a mom, I
1193
01:02:21.519 --> 01:02:24.119
if I'm out and traveling or I'm met with my boys,
1194
01:02:24.960 --> 01:02:27.239
to think about like that I have cells for my
1195
01:02:27.320 --> 01:02:30.920
boys and my body. But the fact that those cells
1196
01:02:31.679 --> 01:02:35.760
are like active and working inside me is like such
1197
01:02:35.760 --> 01:02:39.199
a beautiful like relational gift from God. So for example,
1198
01:02:39.239 --> 01:02:42.679
we know that you know, these cells have different ways
1199
01:02:42.679 --> 01:02:45.840
that they work. So for example, it's been shown for example,
1200
01:02:45.880 --> 01:02:50.360
if a woman has a cesarean section, that those cells
1201
01:02:50.360 --> 01:02:53.000
from the baby will migrate to that side of injury
1202
01:02:53.480 --> 01:02:57.800
and start making collagen with the mother's body to help
1203
01:02:57.840 --> 01:03:00.360
her heal from her wound from her sea section. Like
1204
01:03:00.440 --> 01:03:04.840
it's just amazing, you know, And you know, I think
1205
01:03:04.880 --> 01:03:07.000
again getting back to my definition of health that I
1206
01:03:07.000 --> 01:03:09.360
think is being sold that I told you about earlier,
1207
01:03:09.480 --> 01:03:13.920
that like, we are these radical automatons, radically autonomous people
1208
01:03:14.960 --> 01:03:20.239
who are solo and unencumbered. This science of what's called
1209
01:03:20.360 --> 01:03:25.239
maternal fetal microchimerism migochimerism is the presence of a distinct
1210
01:03:25.280 --> 01:03:28.360
amount of cells of a different person in someone else's body.
1211
01:03:28.639 --> 01:03:32.519
So this maternal feal microchimerism that it's called really throws
1212
01:03:32.559 --> 01:03:35.960
that radically autonomous view of ourselves and our biology up
1213
01:03:36.000 --> 01:03:39.320
on its head because in reality, actually we are not solo,
1214
01:03:39.440 --> 01:03:43.760
radical people walking around fully autonomous. But the reality of
1215
01:03:44.000 --> 01:03:46.840
biology shows us that actually many human beings are walking
1216
01:03:46.880 --> 01:03:49.280
around with fromants of other human beings in their bodies,
1217
01:03:49.599 --> 01:03:53.119
and that's radical. My favorite example of it actually is
1218
01:03:54.159 --> 01:03:57.800
there's a book called mom Genes g. E. N E. S.
1219
01:03:58.599 --> 01:04:01.559
And the book, the author talks about how there was
1220
01:04:01.599 --> 01:04:06.239
a story of a woman who's one lobe of her liver,
1221
01:04:06.480 --> 01:04:09.760
which was damn wage, was totally rebuilt by these fetal
1222
01:04:09.840 --> 01:04:13.360
cells in her body. And the story was made even
1223
01:04:13.360 --> 01:04:16.920
more poignant because the baby had been killed through an abortion.
1224
01:04:18.000 --> 01:04:21.159
And again, like it's this idea that like, you know,
1225
01:04:21.559 --> 01:04:25.280
none of us are biologically like we think of ourselves
1226
01:04:25.360 --> 01:04:28.400
these these biologically separate people, but so many of us
1227
01:04:28.480 --> 01:04:30.760
have cells in our bodies from other people. And it's
1228
01:04:30.800 --> 01:04:35.320
just a beautiful, beautiful, I think picture of the relationality
1229
01:04:35.360 --> 01:04:38.440
of God and how he designed our bodies and created
1230
01:04:38.480 --> 01:04:42.400
ourselves to be relational, not just the macro level like
1231
01:04:42.440 --> 01:04:45.559
we talked about in relationships and marriage and cancer outcomes,
1232
01:04:45.639 --> 01:04:47.679
or there have been really cool studies that show actually
1233
01:04:47.719 --> 01:04:49.960
that the most important thing that can product a person
1234
01:04:50.039 --> 01:04:53.119
from getting delirious in the hospital when they're sick, it's
1235
01:04:53.159 --> 01:04:55.280
actually a presence of a loved one at the bedside
1236
01:04:55.280 --> 01:04:58.079
more than an iPad. And technologies like the body we
1237
01:04:58.119 --> 01:05:01.920
ourselves are gift and relationally therapeutic agents in our own selves.
1238
01:05:02.119 --> 01:05:04.199
And also the level of the cell through the mom
1239
01:05:04.280 --> 01:05:06.760
and babies exchange of cells, and we think that those
1240
01:05:06.800 --> 01:05:11.599
cells actually influence later, our mother's risk of reduced to
1241
01:05:11.679 --> 01:05:14.800
risk of cancer. It's certain the brain, right, and we
1242
01:05:14.840 --> 01:05:17.840
know women's brains are changed after pregnancy. And like any
1243
01:05:17.880 --> 01:05:21.039
good relationship, the cells from the mother come into the baby,
1244
01:05:21.199 --> 01:05:23.000
and we think that these cells can be responsible for
1245
01:05:23.039 --> 01:05:26.280
spacing out of future siblings, can actually be the signal
1246
01:05:26.320 --> 01:05:29.400
for like lactation. And because the cells go back and
1247
01:05:29.440 --> 01:05:32.480
forth like that second, if the mother were to get
1248
01:05:32.480 --> 01:05:36.760
pregnant again, right, some of the cells from the baby,
1249
01:05:36.960 --> 01:05:40.559
first child, right, go back across the placenta, so siblings
1250
01:05:40.559 --> 01:05:44.679
can share cells. And you know, it creates these like
1251
01:05:44.719 --> 01:05:50.159
intergenerational cellular sharing. It's so cool to me. And when
1252
01:05:50.199 --> 01:05:52.559
I first read about this, because there's many there are
1253
01:05:52.559 --> 01:05:54.960
many articles I've written about this topic for Notre Dame's
1254
01:05:55.000 --> 01:05:56.880
Church Life Journal, but there's a lot of like PubMed
1255
01:05:57.000 --> 01:06:00.440
our scientific articles on the hard signs of beautifultural micro Marizona.
1256
01:06:00.440 --> 01:06:02.840
But there's a lot of it in like late publications
1257
01:06:02.880 --> 01:06:06.079
like The Atlantic and such. And when I started researching
1258
01:06:06.119 --> 01:06:09.840
this topic, I was like, you know, I've had I'm
1259
01:06:09.840 --> 01:06:13.440
a scientist, right, I'm a doctor. I study biology. I've
1260
01:06:13.480 --> 01:06:18.599
had four children. I never once heard about this topic
1261
01:06:18.679 --> 01:06:22.559
ever in any of my pregnancies and MOBI visits and
1262
01:06:22.639 --> 01:06:26.960
any of my scientific study. Why is that? You know?
1263
01:06:28.000 --> 01:06:30.920
And I can guess why that is, but like, that's
1264
01:06:31.000 --> 01:06:34.960
just a shame, you know, because again, thinking about stat.
1265
01:06:35.119 --> 01:06:37.480
I want to know why is that? Because when I
1266
01:06:37.519 --> 01:06:39.960
came into it, I thought, why have I never heard.
1267
01:06:39.880 --> 01:06:42.079
You hadn't heard about it either, Yeah, And I.
1268
01:06:42.039 --> 01:06:44.039
Was floored by it. I mean, there's so many different
1269
01:06:44.039 --> 01:06:47.159
directions that it can go in in terms of that's interesting,
1270
01:06:47.280 --> 01:06:52.280
that's interesting, that's very interesting, very interesting.
1271
01:06:52.920 --> 01:06:54.760
It's very interesting. I think probably the reason well, I
1272
01:06:54.800 --> 01:06:57.239
mean so I sometimes we'll give a talk to on
1273
01:06:57.239 --> 01:07:01.119
this topic, and it's probably the most don't because I'm
1274
01:07:01.119 --> 01:07:02.559
not a pastor. I want to use this to criminally,
1275
01:07:02.559 --> 01:07:05.360
but it's probably the most pastorally therapeutic talk that I
1276
01:07:05.400 --> 01:07:07.440
give because usually there's someone in the audience who comes
1277
01:07:07.480 --> 01:07:09.079
up with me after and be like, oh my gosh,
1278
01:07:09.159 --> 01:07:12.079
like I lost my baby or I lost my child,
1279
01:07:12.119 --> 01:07:14.360
and I always sense them I maybe was still with me,
1280
01:07:14.440 --> 01:07:16.800
but now I know from biology from science that they are,
1281
01:07:17.119 --> 01:07:21.280
you know. And I think that if we I think
1282
01:07:21.320 --> 01:07:24.119
we really truly in the public narrative and in the
1283
01:07:24.159 --> 01:07:27.400
scientific narrative fully acknowledged the beautiful reality of the mother
1284
01:07:27.480 --> 01:07:33.360
baby relationship. It would make it would make practices like
1285
01:07:33.440 --> 01:07:37.079
abortion harder to accept. I think the more that we
1286
01:07:37.119 --> 01:07:41.480
can marginalize the dignity of our prenatal sisters and brothers,
1287
01:07:42.119 --> 01:07:44.400
the easier it is for us to discard them as
1288
01:07:44.440 --> 01:07:46.679
part of throwaway culture. So I think the narrative is
1289
01:07:46.679 --> 01:07:50.719
just inconvenient to the academy to highlight and what happens
1290
01:07:50.719 --> 01:07:56.400
then is amazing things like pregnancy, and amazing you know,
1291
01:07:56.519 --> 01:07:59.599
other realms of our science become disenchanted, you know. I
1292
01:07:59.639 --> 01:08:01.480
know Mac Swevera is sort of the person I think
1293
01:08:01.480 --> 01:08:03.880
about when I think about this enchantment. But it's true.
1294
01:08:03.880 --> 01:08:07.159
If we start disenchanting some of the most enchanting experiences
1295
01:08:07.199 --> 01:08:10.519
of our lives, like pregnancy, that's just a real shame,
1296
01:08:10.679 --> 01:08:13.719
you know. And moms deserve to understand really what's happening,
1297
01:08:14.519 --> 01:08:16.880
you know, in their person and their bodies with pregnancy
1298
01:08:16.920 --> 01:08:20.640
and feedo. Maternal mega chimerasm is such a beautiful thing,
1299
01:08:21.319 --> 01:08:23.840
you know. So I'm glad more people are writing about it.
1300
01:08:24.279 --> 01:08:27.399
I'm glad that it's getting out there a bit, but
1301
01:08:27.479 --> 01:08:29.520
as yeah, it's it's it's again I think if we
1302
01:08:30.039 --> 01:08:32.600
if we think about though, from where this comes. It
1303
01:08:32.640 --> 01:08:34.800
comes from the Lord who designed us to be in relationship,
1304
01:08:34.880 --> 01:08:36.560
not just again at the level of our bodies, but
1305
01:08:36.640 --> 01:08:39.359
the level of ourselves. And this feedom maternal mega chimerasm
1306
01:08:39.439 --> 01:08:40.960
is just one example of that. I mean, there are
1307
01:08:40.960 --> 01:08:42.760
many of them, but I think that's such a beautiful one.
1308
01:08:43.600 --> 01:08:47.560
When it's just majestic. I mean, it really is, like
1309
01:08:47.600 --> 01:08:51.439
I said it was, it was such a treat because
1310
01:08:52.600 --> 01:08:57.319
oh ah, and then I started reading it, I almost
1311
01:08:57.439 --> 01:08:58.319
didn't believe it.
1312
01:08:58.479 --> 01:09:01.840
I think, no, I know, people think that's I made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
1313
01:09:01.920 --> 01:09:03.159
I get you, yeah.
1314
01:09:04.960 --> 01:09:10.439
Right, pregnancy and the child, and I just I was
1315
01:09:10.439 --> 01:09:14.000
in awe. And it's It's what I say every time
1316
01:09:14.039 --> 01:09:18.520
I see an infant, you know, yeah, with her infantry.
1317
01:09:18.960 --> 01:09:24.079
I always tell them this should never become normal. We
1318
01:09:24.079 --> 01:09:28.039
should this should never become commonplace in our conception, like oh,
1319
01:09:28.199 --> 01:09:32.760
just every baby is a miracle, and in this relationship,
1320
01:09:32.840 --> 01:09:35.600
this synergy that you're talking about. Another thing that i'd
1321
01:09:35.600 --> 01:09:38.079
never heard of before I knew and I was talking
1322
01:09:38.119 --> 01:09:39.640
to my wife and she was I didn't know that either,
1323
01:09:40.600 --> 01:09:42.640
is that the placenta is the only organ in the
1324
01:09:42.720 --> 01:09:45.479
human body that's created by both by two people.
1325
01:09:47.479 --> 01:09:51.560
Yeah. Yeah, So the placenta is what's called a FETO
1326
01:09:51.680 --> 01:09:55.439
maternal organ because it's the only organ that is created
1327
01:09:55.439 --> 01:09:59.720
by two people and shared by two people. And again,
1328
01:09:59.880 --> 01:10:02.880
like with when I think about divine providence is also
1329
01:10:02.920 --> 01:10:05.920
obviously created by the Lord, but thinking about the two
1330
01:10:06.680 --> 01:10:09.239
people of the mother and baby, it's a shared organ.
1331
01:10:09.279 --> 01:10:11.319
It's the only organ that's made by two people in
1332
01:10:11.359 --> 01:10:14.399
cooperation and shared by two people. Yeah, And I sometimes
1333
01:10:14.399 --> 01:10:17.159
when I talk about I talk I like talking about
1334
01:10:17.159 --> 01:10:21.039
those Santa which is a very very like nerd niche thing.
1335
01:10:21.119 --> 01:10:24.680
But sometimes when I when I when I'm talking about it,
1336
01:10:24.720 --> 01:10:29.000
I'll use the slide of the Sistine Chapel ceiling of
1337
01:10:29.039 --> 01:10:31.680
like man reaching out for God, right and their fingers
1338
01:10:31.680 --> 01:10:34.800
are touching. That's what happens in early pregnancy actually, is
1339
01:10:34.840 --> 01:10:37.079
the mom and baby are like reaching out for each other,
1340
01:10:37.319 --> 01:10:39.680
and they're like making this placenta, which is this shared
1341
01:10:39.800 --> 01:10:42.840
organ through which they interface and belongs to both of them.
1342
01:10:43.079 --> 01:10:46.560
It's really beautiful. Again, that's part of the relational biology.
1343
01:10:46.600 --> 01:10:49.880
So sometimes I'll talk about that in conjunction with FETO
1344
01:10:49.920 --> 01:10:52.000
material microplimism. Yeah, it's really cool.
1345
01:10:52.520 --> 01:10:54.800
Well, it's cool, and it's interesting, and it's it's like
1346
01:10:54.840 --> 01:10:59.079
I said, it's majestic, and the whole concept of you know,
1347
01:10:59.159 --> 01:11:05.600
we recently experienced the miscarriage, and so I had a
1348
01:11:05.680 --> 01:11:09.479
talk about it. We actually did a podcast on it,
1349
01:11:09.479 --> 01:11:12.800
because I think that we don't talk enough about it,
1350
01:11:13.560 --> 01:11:17.239
and like and when we don't talk about it, similar
1351
01:11:17.239 --> 01:11:21.119
to the way that we don't talk about death, it
1352
01:11:21.159 --> 01:11:24.000
becomes mythological in a lot of ways, where like, you know,
1353
01:11:24.199 --> 01:11:26.520
I think you and I would both agree that at
1354
01:11:26.520 --> 01:11:30.800
the moment of conception, that's an eternal soul. And if
1355
01:11:30.840 --> 01:11:34.800
your child died two years after you gave birth to it,
1356
01:11:35.960 --> 01:11:39.399
you you you wouldn't. Oh well there goes like I'm
1357
01:11:39.439 --> 01:11:41.880
not going to tell anybody. And even to the point
1358
01:11:41.880 --> 01:11:46.119
where I mean, this was controversial for some people. My
1359
01:11:46.279 --> 01:11:50.439
parents always counted the miscarriage for sure, always well, you know, so,
1360
01:11:50.479 --> 01:11:52.880
how many kids do you have? Nine to the point
1361
01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:55.880
where when and I never did count it as a
1362
01:11:55.880 --> 01:12:00.399
sibling because I felt uncomfortable cultural my wife. It's like,
1363
01:12:00.720 --> 01:12:03.479
your parents keep saying they have this amount of kids,
1364
01:12:03.479 --> 01:12:05.800
but I'm doing the math and I don't. There's one
1365
01:12:05.840 --> 01:12:09.520
missing woman now, and I think that the way that
1366
01:12:09.560 --> 01:12:15.760
we talk about things matters and totally anthropologically what we believe.
1367
01:12:16.079 --> 01:12:20.199
Acknowledging that that child is a child, and then the
1368
01:12:20.279 --> 01:12:25.159
story that you told about boarded child healing the mother, right,
1369
01:12:25.239 --> 01:12:27.760
I think only further elucidates that reality.
1370
01:12:28.479 --> 01:12:31.239
Yeah, yeah, I mean so much there. Yes, I'm sorry
1371
01:12:31.319 --> 01:12:33.800
about the loss of your child, and I agree that
1372
01:12:34.000 --> 01:12:37.399
is one of those things about how we think about.
1373
01:12:37.920 --> 01:12:39.560
One of my main questions in medicine that I have
1374
01:12:39.720 --> 01:12:42.359
is like who do we count within our moral sphere
1375
01:12:42.399 --> 01:12:45.279
of concern? Like who is in our who is on ours?
1376
01:12:45.800 --> 01:12:47.520
You know, the group of the we, and what are
1377
01:12:47.520 --> 01:12:50.359
we based on on? And I do think so. I've
1378
01:12:50.359 --> 01:12:53.000
heard from so many women. Layelabresko, sergeant I mentioned before,
1379
01:12:53.039 --> 01:12:54.720
has talked about this and written about this, that she's
1380
01:12:54.760 --> 01:13:00.119
had several miscarriages and she does not feel like to
1381
01:13:00.159 --> 01:13:04.000
send in particular sort of counts the loss of those
1382
01:13:04.079 --> 01:13:06.319
human beings. When sometime she goes into visits and she
1383
01:13:06.359 --> 01:13:10.279
talks about her miscarriage history is anything like significant because
1384
01:13:10.279 --> 01:13:13.279
Madison oftentimes really sort of has this paradigm, well that's
1385
01:13:13.319 --> 01:13:16.000
just a clump of cells, or it's a potential person.
1386
01:13:16.079 --> 01:13:19.079
Really wasn't a full person yet or wasn't just like
1387
01:13:19.079 --> 01:13:22.479
a heavy period or you know, and actually, like so
1388
01:13:22.600 --> 01:13:27.840
many moms know that thoughts that's their baby that they lost,
1389
01:13:27.880 --> 01:13:29.439
just and said, just like if they were to lost
1390
01:13:29.479 --> 01:13:33.439
a baby two weeks postpartum. And before I was a Christian,
1391
01:13:33.479 --> 01:13:36.159
I remember hearing people say, and I've asked them sometimes
1392
01:13:36.159 --> 01:13:38.520
how many children you have? And someone we would say, well,
1393
01:13:38.960 --> 01:13:41.920
I have nine, and you know five five with me
1394
01:13:42.199 --> 01:13:43.800
and five are with the Lord. And I was like,
1395
01:13:43.840 --> 01:13:45.960
what does that mean? Like, you know, I was like,
1396
01:13:46.079 --> 01:13:48.760
that's crazy to me, right, But now I know that
1397
01:13:48.760 --> 01:13:52.720
that's true again, and again why this matters? It matters
1398
01:13:52.720 --> 01:13:56.479
a lot, right because again thinking about mourning the loss
1399
01:13:56.479 --> 01:14:00.479
of our prenatal children or postnatal children and community and
1400
01:14:00.479 --> 01:14:03.680
not having to go through that alone and normalizing these
1401
01:14:03.680 --> 01:14:05.920
topics right that are really hard, and being able to
1402
01:14:06.119 --> 01:14:09.880
shoulder the burden of infertility or pregnancy loss or miscarriage
1403
01:14:10.680 --> 01:14:14.760
with others and understanding again like there are ways to
1404
01:14:14.800 --> 01:14:18.640
do that well. But also, as you said, the spillover
1405
01:14:18.840 --> 01:14:23.159
about yes, how do we see, right a two hour
1406
01:14:23.239 --> 01:14:25.680
old member of Homo sapiens who was created in a
1407
01:14:25.800 --> 01:14:29.039
lab through IVF or how do we think about an
1408
01:14:29.079 --> 01:14:33.880
early stage miscarriage. Right. So again, if we believe that
1409
01:14:34.159 --> 01:14:37.800
which was not a religious claim, actually there's a scientific
1410
01:14:37.840 --> 01:14:40.720
claim that it's true that a new member of Homo
1411
01:14:40.800 --> 01:14:45.159
sapiens begins at fertilization, you know, then that gives a
1412
01:14:45.199 --> 01:14:47.640
lot of clarity to give us a lot of clarity
1413
01:14:48.000 --> 01:14:52.039
about ethical topics like not just miscarriage an abortion, but
1414
01:14:52.479 --> 01:14:55.720
IVF and a sister reductive technologies. So yes, the way
1415
01:14:55.760 --> 01:14:57.920
we think about things matter, and Lessie I'll say about
1416
01:14:58.199 --> 01:15:05.359
thinking about abortion and relationship in particular is that I
1417
01:15:05.800 --> 01:15:09.079
started putting that practice as someone who was militantly pro
1418
01:15:09.159 --> 01:15:13.039
choice for forty some years, and now I think about
1419
01:15:13.079 --> 01:15:15.720
abortion in a different way. But about you know, is
1420
01:15:16.600 --> 01:15:19.399
abortion health care? You know? And again putting it through
1421
01:15:19.399 --> 01:15:22.279
the frame of a right relationship, I would say, I mean,
1422
01:15:22.279 --> 01:15:23.800
there's a lot of reasons I could say that abortion
1423
01:15:23.840 --> 01:15:26.560
does not health care, but through right relationship, it's a
1424
01:15:26.560 --> 01:15:30.840
destroyer of relationships. Abortion destroys the most valued relationships that
1425
01:15:30.880 --> 01:15:34.439
there are between mother and baby, father and baby, grandparents
1426
01:15:34.439 --> 01:15:36.840
and baby society, baby, and actually the right relationship between
1427
01:15:36.880 --> 01:15:39.800
health care provider and baby in nocoherent model of health care,
1428
01:15:40.199 --> 01:15:42.600
would I say that myself, as a physician, should aim
1429
01:15:42.640 --> 01:15:44.239
directly at the life of one of those patients in
1430
01:15:44.279 --> 01:15:46.960
the room and call that healthcare. I once heard thinking
1431
01:15:46.960 --> 01:15:49.399
about health as relationship and pregnancy and abortion, that the
1432
01:15:49.439 --> 01:15:55.199
reason that society sometimes feels off and lonely sometimes is
1433
01:15:55.239 --> 01:15:57.920
that we're literally missing millions of people who should have
1434
01:15:57.960 --> 01:16:00.119
been here, but they're not because they've been aborted, and
1435
01:16:00.199 --> 01:16:02.720
we feel our absence from time to time. Again, that's
1436
01:16:02.720 --> 01:16:05.640
that health is relationship, right, So yeah, I do think
1437
01:16:05.680 --> 01:16:09.520
the way we think about, talk about, and acknowledge our
1438
01:16:09.560 --> 01:16:12.319
prenatal children matters.
1439
01:16:12.800 --> 01:16:19.600
Yes, so my mom had seven children, naturally, she's adopted others,
1440
01:16:20.199 --> 01:16:23.960
and she had one miscarriage that we know of, so
1441
01:16:24.079 --> 01:16:29.079
eighty would you say that it's true that my mother
1442
01:16:29.279 --> 01:16:33.680
still has cells from all eight of us in her.
1443
01:16:33.720 --> 01:16:36.840
Yeah, science would support that she has cells from all
1444
01:16:36.880 --> 01:16:39.319
of you guys that she carried in her body. Yeah,
1445
01:16:39.439 --> 01:16:42.840
lost or not. Yeah, miscarriage or brought to life birth
1446
01:16:43.239 --> 01:16:45.960
is not beautiful.
1447
01:16:44.680 --> 01:16:50.039
That's what I thought. This can't be true. This feels
1448
01:16:50.159 --> 01:16:54.359
like I didn't like it seems like mythology. Yeah, well yeah,
1449
01:16:54.840 --> 01:16:56.920
haven't we heard this. I mean, like I said, I
1450
01:16:56.960 --> 01:17:00.119
am not scientifically minded. So the fact that something scientific
1451
01:17:00.359 --> 01:17:02.520
like really grabs you grabbed me.
1452
01:17:02.720 --> 01:17:05.520
It's such a topic that grabs so many people, men
1453
01:17:05.560 --> 01:17:08.680
and women alike. And again for people who want to
1454
01:17:08.680 --> 01:17:10.439
read about it, I wrote about it Interurch Life Journal
1455
01:17:10.640 --> 01:17:12.560
that I love. I didn't give the top the title
1456
01:17:12.600 --> 01:17:14.800
to the topic. The editor does, but the topic the
1457
01:17:14.840 --> 01:17:19.800
piece is called you know, there are human beings carrying
1458
01:17:19.800 --> 01:17:22.319
remitts of other human beings in their bodies and specifically
1459
01:17:22.399 --> 01:17:24.680
about this topic. But yeah, it's a beautiful topic. And
1460
01:17:24.720 --> 01:17:26.560
I love what you keep saying. The word awe, I
1461
01:17:26.600 --> 01:17:29.079
think right, and I think right when we have a
1462
01:17:29.119 --> 01:17:32.039
sense of awe and wonder like that, it really is
1463
01:17:32.039 --> 01:17:34.239
a type of worship. Right, we should like be falling
1464
01:17:34.239 --> 01:17:36.399
to our knees about how beautiful that this, that this
1465
01:17:36.720 --> 01:17:40.560
is because it didn't you know, God doesn't didn't have
1466
01:17:40.600 --> 01:17:43.079
to create things this way, but he did, and we
1467
01:17:43.119 --> 01:17:46.119
should like have on wonder and beauty about how beautiful
1468
01:17:46.199 --> 01:17:49.359
these topics are. I you know, after my Christian baptism,
1469
01:17:50.359 --> 01:17:52.239
I obviously saw things in a different way. And I
1470
01:17:52.239 --> 01:17:55.079
remember going after early on after baptism, went to Grand Rounds,
1471
01:17:55.079 --> 01:17:58.319
which is our scientific conference in the Department of Medicine
1472
01:17:58.319 --> 01:18:03.680
every Friday, and it's usually a pretty dry basic science talk,
1473
01:18:04.720 --> 01:18:07.439
and uh, you know, people, you know, depending on your
1474
01:18:07.520 --> 01:18:12.079
level of interest in hard science, people's interests in these
1475
01:18:12.119 --> 01:18:14.600
topics vary, of course. But I remember going to one
1476
01:18:14.640 --> 01:18:16.079
of the topics and it was a it was a
1477
01:18:16.119 --> 01:18:19.079
basic science researcher who studied the adrenal gland and the
1478
01:18:19.159 --> 01:18:21.039
dream glands are these glands that sit on top of
1479
01:18:21.079 --> 01:18:25.039
the kidney, and his lifetime of research actually was just
1480
01:18:25.079 --> 01:18:28.760
on this one receptor on the adrenal land. And he
1481
01:18:28.960 --> 01:18:32.520
showed it like a like a picture of what the
1482
01:18:32.560 --> 01:18:35.199
sort of schematic of this receptor looked like and all
1483
01:18:35.199 --> 01:18:37.840
these other things that had to like intersect with the
1484
01:18:37.920 --> 01:18:40.880
receptor and what that receptor turned on, and that this
1485
01:18:40.880 --> 01:18:43.199
this protein that was made and this this sort of
1486
01:18:43.640 --> 01:18:48.199
sort of you know, scaffolding of like cellular sort of
1487
01:18:48.239 --> 01:18:51.560
activation that happened as a result of this receptor. And
1488
01:18:51.640 --> 01:18:54.399
it was just like this one receptor on this one
1489
01:18:54.399 --> 01:18:57.600
gland that nobody thinks about. And I honestly, someone started
1490
01:18:57.640 --> 01:18:59.720
crying in the audience, you know, and I'm like, I
1491
01:18:59.760 --> 01:19:02.840
have through so many talks like this as a Zionis
1492
01:19:03.000 --> 01:19:06.960
and just been like whatever, but this is like I
1493
01:19:06.960 --> 01:19:09.079
feel like worshipping right now. It's so beautiful and that's
1494
01:19:09.119 --> 01:19:11.560
just one receptor and you have never heard of and
1495
01:19:11.560 --> 01:19:13.439
you don't even think about and you will never know
1496
01:19:13.479 --> 01:19:15.439
if I talk about it, like what it even does.
1497
01:19:15.960 --> 01:19:20.239
And it's crazy. And I was like, oh my god, literally,
1498
01:19:20.279 --> 01:19:24.159
oh my god. You know. Yeah, so again this enchanting
1499
01:19:24.199 --> 01:19:26.520
people like, well, doesn't your faith take away I'm like, no, no,
1500
01:19:26.880 --> 01:19:29.560
that my faith has caused me to see my scientific
1501
01:19:29.640 --> 01:19:33.159
work in like technicolor. You know. Thank God. Right now
1502
01:19:33.159 --> 01:19:34.479
I have the two wings, so I'm not just the
1503
01:19:34.479 --> 01:19:37.239
one winged person put myself around in a circle.
1504
01:19:37.399 --> 01:19:40.279
Yeah, glory to God and and and so I told
1505
01:19:40.319 --> 01:19:45.319
you this is very interesting on its own. But then
1506
01:19:45.399 --> 01:19:49.399
I started thinking, wait a minute, if this is true,
1507
01:19:50.199 --> 01:19:54.640
then it gets even more interesting when you think about
1508
01:19:54.960 --> 01:19:58.520
Jesus and the relationship that he has r with his mother.
1509
01:19:59.000 --> 01:19:59.479
That's right.
1510
01:20:01.640 --> 01:20:07.239
I mean you used the word theotokos. Yeah, where did
1511
01:20:07.239 --> 01:20:08.560
that language come from for you?
1512
01:20:09.920 --> 01:20:13.359
So when I I think it was twenty seventeen or eighteen,
1513
01:20:13.399 --> 01:20:15.319
so a couple of years after my Christian baptism, I
1514
01:20:15.399 --> 01:20:17.439
was invited to be part of a group at Notre
1515
01:20:17.560 --> 01:20:21.439
Dame about their life and like human Dignity program, and
1516
01:20:21.520 --> 01:20:24.439
they at the time they would get felt like life
1517
01:20:24.439 --> 01:20:27.319
fellows together. And these were scholars from different fields, and
1518
01:20:27.359 --> 01:20:29.560
they were like I think eight of us in that cohort.
1519
01:20:29.800 --> 01:20:32.479
We came down to North Dame several times a year
1520
01:20:32.720 --> 01:20:34.399
and we just had to like work on a project
1521
01:20:34.399 --> 01:20:36.560
that affirmed life issues. And so my project was feedo
1522
01:20:36.600 --> 01:20:39.920
Maternal microcrimeras. And that's how I worked on that, you know,
1523
01:20:40.199 --> 01:20:42.119
project for like a year and was able to develop
1524
01:20:42.159 --> 01:20:45.319
it and write about it and such. It was the
1525
01:20:45.319 --> 01:20:47.079
only I think I was the only medical doctor. They
1526
01:20:47.079 --> 01:20:51.680
were like theologians and philosophers and humanitarian professors and priests
1527
01:20:51.720 --> 01:20:55.880
and people from different fields. So anyway, so I, you know,
1528
01:20:56.000 --> 01:20:58.600
had just my baptized. My theological doledge was very poor.
1529
01:20:58.960 --> 01:21:00.760
I knew a lot about science, and I was like
1530
01:21:00.840 --> 01:21:03.600
writing up this piece, and as part of our work,
1531
01:21:03.600 --> 01:21:06.199
we had like workshop the piece, you know, with the group,
1532
01:21:07.199 --> 01:21:12.760
and so I was pitching my talk and I still remember,
1533
01:21:12.800 --> 01:21:14.359
I still can remember where he was standing because it
1534
01:21:14.399 --> 01:21:15.760
also hit me like a ton of bricks. It was
1535
01:21:15.800 --> 01:21:20.119
Bill Madison, who's a theologian and he was at Notre Dame,
1536
01:21:20.159 --> 01:21:23.600
and Bill was like, Kristin, Wow, He's like, can you
1537
01:21:23.600 --> 01:21:28.039
think about the implications that this would have for right,
1538
01:21:28.399 --> 01:21:31.600
for Jesus and the Blessed Mother. And I was like, oh,
1539
01:21:31.600 --> 01:21:36.640
my goodness, right, rights, how beautiful? Right, and really again,
1540
01:21:37.000 --> 01:21:39.760
as a non Catholic person even thinking about this idea
1541
01:21:39.800 --> 01:21:43.079
of like the importance it would hold for Catholics around,
1542
01:21:43.439 --> 01:21:46.520
you know, taking in the Eucharist and the thinking about
1543
01:21:46.520 --> 01:21:50.640
the Body of Christ and thinking about the relationship between
1544
01:21:51.119 --> 01:21:54.720
the Blessed mothers, someone who's highly exalted as she should be,
1545
01:21:55.520 --> 01:21:59.560
and her son. It's really beautiful. So yeah, so you know,
1546
01:21:59.600 --> 01:22:02.760
then started thinking about this the god Bearer and the Theotokis,
1547
01:22:02.880 --> 01:22:06.640
and I was asked to write a piece specifically on
1548
01:22:06.680 --> 01:22:09.960
the theological implications is a Nobulo Jenio was like, you know,
1549
01:22:10.159 --> 01:22:11.880
sort of like with all humility, tried to do the
1550
01:22:11.880 --> 01:22:14.520
best I could with it. But by the theological implications
1551
01:22:14.520 --> 01:22:17.159
of the god Bearer or the Theotokis carrying the souls of
1552
01:22:17.239 --> 01:22:21.439
Jesus with her forever and ever, and that was written up.
1553
01:22:21.520 --> 01:22:23.319
It was so cool. It was written up actually for
1554
01:22:23.439 --> 01:22:27.479
a Christmas edition of a magazine in Spain. A couple
1555
01:22:27.520 --> 01:22:30.319
of years ago, and it was so fun to work
1556
01:22:30.359 --> 01:22:33.479
on because I really got to explore that specific dimension
1557
01:22:33.680 --> 01:22:37.000
of the blessed mother having the cels of the you know,
1558
01:22:37.239 --> 01:22:40.640
of the incarnate son Lord Jesus Christ in her body.
1559
01:22:40.720 --> 01:22:44.520
I mean, it's it's it's it's beautiful, it's amazing. And again,
1560
01:22:44.600 --> 01:22:49.880
thinking of my pre Christian bias that Christianity was a faith,
1561
01:22:49.920 --> 01:22:53.399
I used to think that was anti woman. Now understanding
1562
01:22:53.439 --> 01:22:56.640
actually that the role of women in the Bible and
1563
01:22:56.840 --> 01:22:58.560
the fact that like God didn't have to do it
1564
01:22:58.600 --> 01:23:01.359
this way, but he chose a woman to like carry
1565
01:23:01.560 --> 01:23:04.640
you know, the incarnate logos and to be born at
1566
01:23:04.680 --> 01:23:06.960
the person of Jesus Christ through through a woman. And
1567
01:23:07.039 --> 01:23:09.960
actually again as a scientist, hopefully I'm not embarrassing you,
1568
01:23:10.000 --> 01:23:12.319
but also so like through the uterus, like the Uterus
1569
01:23:12.359 --> 01:23:14.840
is like a redeemed space like held the son of God, right,
1570
01:23:14.960 --> 01:23:18.560
Like that's amazing, and like like wow, like so cool,
1571
01:23:18.760 --> 01:23:21.199
so cool. So yeah, so that's such a cool topic.
1572
01:23:21.399 --> 01:23:26.159
There is your reverent language used to describe and you say,
1573
01:23:26.520 --> 01:23:30.359
I think it's a response to uh, Catholicism a lot
1574
01:23:30.359 --> 01:23:34.079
of the time. Is this kind of anti Mary bias? Yeah,
1575
01:23:34.199 --> 01:23:37.359
she was merely a vessel. Yeah, well, yeah, I think
1576
01:23:37.359 --> 01:23:42.680
your science I mean outside of the I think I
1577
01:23:42.760 --> 01:23:48.079
anytime I watch my wife pregnant or anyone pregnant, right right,
1578
01:23:48.319 --> 01:23:53.479
there's no vessel this scenario. I mean, that's intimate, no
1579
01:23:53.520 --> 01:23:56.880
matter what I mean, no matter how how reptilian you
1580
01:23:56.960 --> 01:23:59.239
might think you are, that is an intimate and as
1581
01:23:59.279 --> 01:24:03.399
you're ey, a synergistic relationship. But then, what are the
1582
01:24:03.640 --> 01:24:06.239
theological implications? I mean, what did you say?
1583
01:24:07.039 --> 01:24:09.239
Yeah, well before before I forget on that, the thinking
1584
01:24:09.239 --> 01:24:12.199
about the vessel. I think this also is very relevant
1585
01:24:12.199 --> 01:24:15.359
to modern datascourses a bioethicist, because I've been talking out
1586
01:24:15.439 --> 01:24:19.000
lately about commercial circucy and IVF in particular. I just
1587
01:24:19.039 --> 01:24:21.760
sid to Peace published on my quarterly last month about IVF.
1588
01:24:21.840 --> 01:24:26.560
But about sometimes in those conversations you'll hear, for example,
1589
01:24:26.600 --> 01:24:30.479
if a woman is carrying a baby for another person,
1590
01:24:31.359 --> 01:24:35.000
sometimes those languages used, well, it's it's her bond, it's
1591
01:24:35.079 --> 01:24:37.600
my oven, if you've heard that before. So basically, the
1592
01:24:37.600 --> 01:24:40.159
baby is the bond the universe of the oven. Okay,
1593
01:24:40.319 --> 01:24:44.800
and again like that's not scientifically true. There actually is
1594
01:24:44.880 --> 01:24:48.000
this like crossover of the baby's cells and your cells
1595
01:24:48.039 --> 01:24:50.680
like this isn't just some like metal lead box and
1596
01:24:50.720 --> 01:24:52.640
there's like this thing in there that then you just
1597
01:24:53.159 --> 01:24:55.920
you're carrying as a vessel. Right, there's actually this interchange
1598
01:24:55.960 --> 01:24:59.439
of we're not machines there, you know. So again like again,
1599
01:24:59.680 --> 01:25:02.800
how I'm verydercenting this topic theologically but also you know,
1600
01:25:03.039 --> 01:25:06.760
biothically and practically. Like again, like this idea of this
1601
01:25:06.880 --> 01:25:09.560
sharing of cells I think really comes into our discourse
1602
01:25:09.640 --> 01:25:18.760
around IVF, surrogacy, pregnancy, but even around pregnancy, sometimes abortion discourse,
1603
01:25:18.760 --> 01:25:23.039
people will say, well, actually abortion is healthcare because you know,
1604
01:25:23.119 --> 01:25:26.880
it restores the woman's body to back what it was before.
1605
01:25:27.479 --> 01:25:29.199
And I was I actually, like, we think those those
1606
01:25:29.239 --> 01:25:31.560
cells actually you're never your body actually, thank god, is
1607
01:25:31.600 --> 01:25:33.960
never the same after pregnancy because we think these cells
1608
01:25:33.960 --> 01:25:38.000
cross very early. But getting back to your question about theology,
1609
01:25:38.359 --> 01:25:40.359
I mean, I think I just you know, there are
1610
01:25:40.399 --> 01:25:44.800
many implications for this theology. I just think again about
1611
01:25:45.039 --> 01:25:49.479
you know, the idea. Again I'm very interested and again
1612
01:25:49.520 --> 01:25:52.239
writing this piece right now about sort of the idea
1613
01:25:52.279 --> 01:25:55.399
of like thinking about Protestant theology of the body and
1614
01:25:55.399 --> 01:25:57.520
thinking about the role of the body and the body
1615
01:25:57.560 --> 01:26:00.239
is not incidental at all to Christian doc drin and
1616
01:26:00.680 --> 01:26:03.520
is central to the body. And in our current discourse
1617
01:26:03.640 --> 01:26:05.000
we have a low view of the body and we
1618
01:26:05.079 --> 01:26:07.279
privilege the mind is like the seed of the self
1619
01:26:07.359 --> 01:26:10.760
and all the implications of that whatever. But thinking about
1620
01:26:10.960 --> 01:26:16.720
Jesus's body, you know, and and and and part of
1621
01:26:16.840 --> 01:26:22.159
him being in his mother, you know is Protestants obviously
1622
01:26:22.239 --> 01:26:24.479
we don't. We don't have the same theology of Mary
1623
01:26:24.520 --> 01:26:27.319
as the Catholics do. But again, if we think about
1624
01:26:27.479 --> 01:26:29.760
from Catholic theology, which I'm not a Catholic, soy you
1625
01:26:29.800 --> 01:26:33.600
tread into this space with humility and lightly that you
1626
01:26:33.640 --> 01:26:36.720
know she is forever the theotokis like she is forever
1627
01:26:36.960 --> 01:26:39.920
the God Bearer, because you know in Christian theology she is,
1628
01:26:40.239 --> 01:26:43.319
she is alive and can interest we can you know, Christians,
1629
01:26:43.359 --> 01:26:46.880
can you know go to Mary with intercessory prayer and
1630
01:26:46.920 --> 01:26:50.880
sash and she still is carrying him. For Protestants, we
1631
01:26:50.880 --> 01:26:53.520
don't have that same theology. We shouldn't be afraid to
1632
01:26:53.600 --> 01:26:57.560
exalt the Mother of God. She is. Without her, we
1633
01:26:57.560 --> 01:26:59.640
wouldn't have our Savior in the way that we know
1634
01:26:59.720 --> 01:27:02.199
him to be, is Jesus Christ. But to think again
1635
01:27:02.319 --> 01:27:04.800
that like you know, I think every mother can relate
1636
01:27:04.840 --> 01:27:08.239
to the story and the gospel accounts of a mother
1637
01:27:08.279 --> 01:27:15.720
losing her son and about how Mary obviously did lose
1638
01:27:15.720 --> 01:27:18.720
her son in a way obviously he was resurrected and
1639
01:27:18.760 --> 01:27:21.439
overcame death. But even when you went to go to
1640
01:27:21.479 --> 01:27:23.680
a son to be with the father, that he still
1641
01:27:23.800 --> 01:27:26.119
is with her in this bodily way. And again, like
1642
01:27:26.560 --> 01:27:30.560
there's so much I think the stories of scriptures are
1643
01:27:30.600 --> 01:27:33.439
so meaningful to me just because they remind me Like
1644
01:27:33.439 --> 01:27:36.119
if I read the Psalms, I'm reading stories that people
1645
01:27:36.119 --> 01:27:39.119
have prayed over and cried over for like thousands of years.
1646
01:27:39.159 --> 01:27:43.319
That gives me this historic continuity with grief. And you know,
1647
01:27:43.399 --> 01:27:45.880
I think about women who have lost babies, are people
1648
01:27:45.920 --> 01:27:48.439
who feel distant from their children, even estrange from their
1649
01:27:48.439 --> 01:27:52.520
living children. And I think about there is nothing that
1650
01:27:52.640 --> 01:27:57.319
like the Lord doesn't understand, and that like we, we
1651
01:27:57.359 --> 01:27:59.640
are told so many stories of people who understand in
1652
01:27:59.680 --> 01:28:02.720
the scriptures, and like the blessed mother Mary, like she
1653
01:28:02.800 --> 01:28:07.720
gets maternal grief, she gets maternal separation, and also like
1654
01:28:08.039 --> 01:28:10.760
it's a beautiful reality that she, like us as a
1655
01:28:10.800 --> 01:28:13.800
human being, like had her baby with her like in
1656
01:28:13.840 --> 01:28:16.640
her body. I don't know, I just think about that
1657
01:28:16.760 --> 01:28:18.199
and just think about how it didn't have to be
1658
01:28:18.279 --> 01:28:20.560
that way, and it just helps me. Like, you know,
1659
01:28:20.600 --> 01:28:22.520
I have a high view of Mary even as a Protestant,
1660
01:28:22.560 --> 01:28:24.760
but it just again makes me think about her in
1661
01:28:24.800 --> 01:28:27.439
this way too. That just is like even I don't know,
1662
01:28:27.800 --> 01:28:30.199
more exalted And I hope as a Protestant that's okay to.
1663
01:28:30.199 --> 01:28:34.439
Say, well, that's why I asked you about the language,
1664
01:28:34.520 --> 01:28:39.479
because I tell me, I.
1665
01:28:39.399 --> 01:28:41.560
Can tell somebody who cares about language too, you might
1666
01:28:41.600 --> 01:28:45.199
have an issue with the beotokis I do, Well, that's
1667
01:28:45.359 --> 01:28:45.800
so okay.
1668
01:28:46.119 --> 01:28:49.880
You don't know my story. I grew up in a
1669
01:28:49.920 --> 01:28:55.680
Protestant family and a couple, so I think it's a
1670
01:28:55.680 --> 01:28:58.199
couple of days before my dad was diagnosed with the
1671
01:28:58.199 --> 01:29:02.119
stage fur mantle cellm FOMA. Yeah, he was chrismated into
1672
01:29:02.119 --> 01:29:07.199
the Orthodox Church. So they happened almost together, and so
1673
01:29:08.479 --> 01:29:13.399
I I subsequently have become Orthodox. And when I saw
1674
01:29:13.439 --> 01:29:16.720
that in your writing, I thought, that's not normal.
1675
01:29:17.319 --> 01:29:23.359
That's not normal. I've not and then I started, you know, googling.
1676
01:29:23.399 --> 01:29:27.159
I'm like, what is her you know, denominational background or
1677
01:29:27.199 --> 01:29:31.239
like oh yeah, like a yeah, because that's not normal
1678
01:29:31.359 --> 01:29:36.640
and I think the way that you've been discussing it
1679
01:29:36.680 --> 01:29:37.399
is refreshing.
1680
01:29:38.039 --> 01:29:41.600
Okay, hopefully it's not heretical when somebody's refreshing as the
1681
01:29:41.640 --> 01:29:46.600
code for like heresy as a non thelogian. Please, I'm
1682
01:29:46.600 --> 01:29:48.520
open to correction. If you feel like I haven't talked
1683
01:29:48.520 --> 01:29:50.920
about this properly in a theological sense.
1684
01:29:50.960 --> 01:29:54.119
Well, I'm not a theologian. I think we're all in progress,
1685
01:29:54.199 --> 01:29:57.640
because I still think that to some degree, I'm recalibrating
1686
01:29:57.680 --> 01:30:02.640
my sense of right reverence for the Theotokus or the
1687
01:30:02.640 --> 01:30:07.800
Mother of God, whatever name, because I did come from
1688
01:30:08.159 --> 01:30:14.399
a very uh let's say that she's just merely a vessel, right,
1689
01:30:14.600 --> 01:30:19.960
a center like the rest of us, nothing special and theologically,
1690
01:30:20.079 --> 01:30:23.439
and now as you're kind of explained biologically, I think
1691
01:30:23.479 --> 01:30:27.720
that that argument gets a lot more difficult to make
1692
01:30:27.960 --> 01:30:31.279
pack deserve and so that I guess that just was
1693
01:30:31.359 --> 01:30:33.680
My question is did this science change the way that
1694
01:30:33.720 --> 01:30:38.199
you thought about the Mother of God?
1695
01:30:39.520 --> 01:30:41.840
Yeah? I know, yeah, I should have actually noticed. I
1696
01:30:42.119 --> 01:30:44.319
wondered about that. I think there's an icon behind you
1697
01:30:44.359 --> 01:30:46.840
that I wondered, actually, after talking to you for a
1698
01:30:46.840 --> 01:30:49.680
few minutes, if you were orthodox, given that beautiful picture
1699
01:30:49.760 --> 01:30:53.920
behind you there's actually an Orthodox icon that is I
1700
01:30:54.039 --> 01:30:55.720
use before I get to your question, that I that
1701
01:30:55.760 --> 01:30:57.279
someone shared with me a few years ago, that I
1702
01:30:57.359 --> 01:30:59.720
use a lot in my talks is actually an Orthodox
1703
01:30:59.720 --> 01:31:04.680
eyded on. It shows actually Jesus Christ portrayed is the
1704
01:31:04.680 --> 01:31:08.359
good Samaritan, and he's literally carrying us on his shoulders.
1705
01:31:09.239 --> 01:31:13.279
And I talk about usually use that that image as
1706
01:31:13.279 --> 01:31:16.279
a way to talk about carrying burdens and how oftentimes
1707
01:31:16.359 --> 01:31:20.319
like carrying burdens in the scriptures is nowhere portrayed as
1708
01:31:20.359 --> 01:31:22.720
something pathetic or something that we should avoid, and instead
1709
01:31:22.720 --> 01:31:25.199
I think of the of Simon of Cyrene carrying the
1710
01:31:25.239 --> 01:31:27.680
cross of Jesus Christ, and then I talk about sort
1711
01:31:27.680 --> 01:31:30.039
of carrying burdens in society and how that's going to
1712
01:31:30.319 --> 01:31:31.720
have to be done if we're going to think about
1713
01:31:31.760 --> 01:31:34.960
having a cultural resistance to things like euthanasia and suicide
1714
01:31:35.000 --> 01:31:38.279
and all of this. Yes, I mean, I think, you
1715
01:31:38.319 --> 01:31:41.640
know the progressive revelation that you know we all are
1716
01:31:41.720 --> 01:31:43.760
given and that I think you know, I love the
1717
01:31:43.760 --> 01:31:47.439
story in the Gospels about how you know, faith comes
1718
01:31:47.439 --> 01:31:50.920
in these stages of sight that we sort of see. Yes,
1719
01:31:51.039 --> 01:31:55.119
I'm so thrilled that you know, because of my thank God,
1720
01:31:55.319 --> 01:32:00.600
interactions with Catholic people and Orthodox brothers and sos, and
1721
01:32:00.640 --> 01:32:03.720
my Catholic brothers and sisters, and people of different traditions
1722
01:32:03.760 --> 01:32:06.600
and scholars that have taken the time to over time
1723
01:32:06.720 --> 01:32:08.640
sort of unfold the ribbon of the faith to me,
1724
01:32:09.800 --> 01:32:12.399
and also people who have been able to help me
1725
01:32:12.520 --> 01:32:16.239
see scientific realities in the work that I do. My
1726
01:32:16.399 --> 01:32:20.279
reverence for sure of the Blessed Mother of the Theotokis
1727
01:32:20.600 --> 01:32:24.199
has only continued to increase. And I, you know, as
1728
01:32:24.199 --> 01:32:29.159
someone who has my feet in some different spaces, I
1729
01:32:29.159 --> 01:32:34.239
don't think, like you know, any tradition like owns this language,
1730
01:32:34.600 --> 01:32:37.359
you know, I think these are concepts hopefully that we
1731
01:32:37.439 --> 01:32:40.760
all can sort of speak about and with humility and
1732
01:32:41.159 --> 01:32:43.439
be able to talk about because they're beautiful. So yes,
1733
01:32:43.520 --> 01:32:47.119
to answer your question, Yes, the theology informs the science,
1734
01:32:47.159 --> 01:32:49.039
and the science to me informs of theology, and they
1735
01:32:49.079 --> 01:32:52.439
are these integrated whole of my binocular vision that's helped
1736
01:32:52.439 --> 01:32:55.640
me to see things, everything, including the Mother of God
1737
01:32:55.680 --> 01:32:58.600
in more technic color. Isn't that great and isn't that beautiful?
1738
01:32:58.640 --> 01:33:02.000
That's the way I think reference and worship shed maybe
1739
01:33:02.039 --> 01:33:06.039
should should progress right to have this continually distantensive enchantment,
1740
01:33:06.199 --> 01:33:09.399
and to not be progressively disenchanted, which I think so many,
1741
01:33:09.640 --> 01:33:11.239
so many people sadly are in that state.
1742
01:33:11.680 --> 01:33:14.199
Mm hmm. Well, and it it all, you know, it
1743
01:33:14.319 --> 01:33:18.239
happens you use the word gnostic, and I think that
1744
01:33:18.680 --> 01:33:21.560
whether it's theology or you know, whether it's somebody who's
1745
01:33:21.600 --> 01:33:25.560
actively practicing theology or pursuing it in terms of like
1746
01:33:26.039 --> 01:33:30.039
a discipline. Right, but even that, like, you know, my
1747
01:33:30.119 --> 01:33:32.800
dad was often referred to and is still referred to
1748
01:33:32.840 --> 01:33:36.600
as a theologian. And when he joined the church, a
1749
01:33:36.640 --> 01:33:39.880
good friend of ours said, you know, in the West,
1750
01:33:39.880 --> 01:33:42.720
the theologian is somebody who knows a lot about God.
1751
01:33:43.520 --> 01:33:45.800
In the East, we consider a theologian to be somebody
1752
01:33:45.840 --> 01:33:49.520
who knows God. And that's a small distinction with a bigness.
1753
01:33:49.479 --> 01:33:50.920
That's interesting.
1754
01:33:51.520 --> 01:33:55.039
And you know, I think that we can all fall
1755
01:33:55.079 --> 01:33:58.640
prey to this gnostic paradigm where we're just heads on
1756
01:33:58.720 --> 01:34:02.079
sticks and we're just a cue emulating information. And the
1757
01:34:02.439 --> 01:34:06.119
synergy that you're talking about the two wings is really
1758
01:34:06.159 --> 01:34:10.119
important because otherwise we are disenchanted, and we live in
1759
01:34:10.119 --> 01:34:11.000
an enchanted world.
1760
01:34:11.760 --> 01:34:15.000
I mean, totally totally. There's one of my favorite writers
1761
01:34:15.119 --> 01:34:18.079
right now is Mary Harrington. She wrote the book Feminism
1762
01:34:18.119 --> 01:34:22.199
Against Progress, and she talks about how medicine in particular
1763
01:34:22.319 --> 01:34:24.520
has adopted it a sort of an ideology of a
1764
01:34:24.600 --> 01:34:27.239
meat lego gnosticism. She calls it, where our bodies are
1765
01:34:27.239 --> 01:34:29.039
just meat legos and we just move around these legos
1766
01:34:29.039 --> 01:34:31.479
of meat and doesn't have to mind me, like there's
1767
01:34:31.479 --> 01:34:33.439
no man need to move around legos of meat, you know,
1768
01:34:34.000 --> 01:34:35.920
because medicine has this s low view of the body,
1769
01:34:36.000 --> 01:34:38.640
and I think society has becoming a low view of
1770
01:34:38.680 --> 01:34:41.279
the low vy of the body, and how that influences
1771
01:34:41.279 --> 01:34:44.880
our visions of healthcare, our visions of different biotleupal issues,
1772
01:34:45.119 --> 01:34:47.720
our care for ourselves, what we may engage in or
1773
01:34:47.760 --> 01:34:50.800
may not engage in. Yeah, I think nacissism is like
1774
01:34:50.840 --> 01:34:53.279
the worst form of dualism, and that dualism is infected.
1775
01:34:53.359 --> 01:34:56.279
I think some Christians way of thinking about the mind, body,
1776
01:34:56.319 --> 01:35:01.159
soul medicine obviously, and the consequences of that are real,
1777
01:35:02.000 --> 01:35:05.279
as people who encounter each other as living and dying bodies.
1778
01:35:06.039 --> 01:35:08.079
That has a real consequence. This is again, this isn't
1779
01:35:08.119 --> 01:35:10.039
just some idea, but I also I like that distinction
1780
01:35:10.119 --> 01:35:12.399
a ton that I think sometimes our faith can become
1781
01:35:12.479 --> 01:35:16.199
so intellectualized or we're so sort of like in our
1782
01:35:16.279 --> 01:35:18.199
heads that we forget to like, as the young people say,
1783
01:35:18.279 --> 01:35:20.479
gotten like touch grass, like have you stood barefoot on
1784
01:35:20.520 --> 01:35:23.159
your grass today or this week or this month? And
1785
01:35:23.159 --> 01:35:24.800
many of us would be like no, and our ancestors
1786
01:35:24.800 --> 01:35:28.359
wouldn't have even fathomed and that like many of us
1787
01:35:28.439 --> 01:35:31.560
haven't been outside for like weeks, what does that even mean? Right? So,
1788
01:35:31.600 --> 01:35:35.159
I think part of the enchantment that I think, to me,
1789
01:35:35.319 --> 01:35:37.159
I would say, I can't speak for everybody part of
1790
01:35:37.239 --> 01:35:40.000
I'm just looking out and to the creation right now,
1791
01:35:40.000 --> 01:35:42.479
and I'm like, you know, my goodness, Like part of
1792
01:35:42.520 --> 01:35:45.600
the way to protect ourselves from becoming disenchanted is like
1793
01:35:46.119 --> 01:35:48.560
getting out into creation and like putting our feet in
1794
01:35:48.560 --> 01:35:50.960
the grass and like, yeah, as someone who's talking with
1795
01:35:51.000 --> 01:35:55.079
like a lot of books by me, you know, getting
1796
01:35:55.079 --> 01:35:58.039
outside is like to God's creative order, being with his
1797
01:35:58.159 --> 01:36:01.840
people's that's where theologies at, you know, that's how we've
1798
01:36:01.880 --> 01:36:03.840
done like understand, that's how we get to that, as
1799
01:36:03.840 --> 01:36:05.840
you say, not us to know about God, but know him.
1800
01:36:06.079 --> 01:36:11.920
You know, orthodoxy small oh only exists for orthopraxy the
1801
01:36:12.000 --> 01:36:15.279
math is not the territory, and and we mistake it
1802
01:36:15.359 --> 01:36:17.520
for such way too often, like I said, even in
1803
01:36:19.359 --> 01:36:19.760
the faith.
1804
01:36:20.399 --> 01:36:22.760
Yeah, that's so true. So we have to keep ourselves
1805
01:36:22.800 --> 01:36:24.920
accountable as Christian brothers and sisters to these things.
1806
01:36:25.000 --> 01:36:29.319
Yeah that's good. So I have a couple of big questions. Yeah, yeah,
1807
01:36:30.800 --> 01:36:34.359
this is commitment to reality. Where are we most eager
1808
01:36:34.520 --> 01:36:36.920
to ignore reality?
1809
01:36:37.439 --> 01:36:39.880
I didn't even recognize that that was any of the
1810
01:36:39.880 --> 01:36:42.039
podcast until I was like logging on. I was like,
1811
01:36:42.079 --> 01:36:46.439
that's such an interesting name. You know, a commitment to reality.
1812
01:36:47.560 --> 01:36:50.680
I think that. So to get to your question, I
1813
01:36:50.720 --> 01:36:53.560
think I talk a lot about physician and conscience protection
1814
01:36:54.760 --> 01:36:57.439
and how you know, we all have a conscience that
1815
01:36:57.439 --> 01:37:00.359
we should be able to hone in sobriety, and so
1816
01:37:00.520 --> 01:37:03.159
sometimes I think there's a false idea of what conscience is.
1817
01:37:03.319 --> 01:37:06.039
That's just like this vibe that you have and it's
1818
01:37:06.079 --> 01:37:07.840
just like this you know, whim that you would have,
1819
01:37:07.960 --> 01:37:10.479
or preference like you would have for pistachio ice cream.
1820
01:37:10.520 --> 01:37:13.680
And what I say is actually your conscience. The goal
1821
01:37:13.720 --> 01:37:16.560
of your conscience is that you align your way of
1822
01:37:16.600 --> 01:37:19.079
thinking with the moral structure of reality, is what I
1823
01:37:19.159 --> 01:37:23.640
usually say. And people are like, what does that even mean?
1824
01:37:24.000 --> 01:37:25.920
You know, what is what is Kylie you're talking about?
1825
01:37:25.920 --> 01:37:29.079
That's just like some weird thing. Because why it's weird
1826
01:37:29.319 --> 01:37:33.479
right some people is some people would say that doesn't exist,
1827
01:37:33.520 --> 01:37:36.720
there is no moral structure of reality, right, because that
1828
01:37:37.119 --> 01:37:41.000
sort of assumes that there is like truth, right, that
1829
01:37:41.039 --> 01:37:48.199
there is actually some like non subjective reality and it's bizarre.
1830
01:37:48.239 --> 01:37:50.560
But there are so many people that believe that there
1831
01:37:50.640 --> 01:37:54.399
is no right, objective truth and that reality is like
1832
01:37:54.439 --> 01:37:55.800
whatever you want it to be.
1833
01:37:56.439 --> 01:37:59.640
That's the reason for the season, that's why. That's why
1834
01:37:59.680 --> 01:38:03.319
it's because I thought, I'm looking around me and there
1835
01:38:03.319 --> 01:38:05.479
are so many people that are living out of concert
1836
01:38:05.479 --> 01:38:08.279
with reality, and there's no wonder why we're seeing what
1837
01:38:08.319 --> 01:38:09.319
we're seeing in society.
1838
01:38:10.199 --> 01:38:12.239
Yeah, I mean before I answer, can I ask you
1839
01:38:12.520 --> 01:38:14.399
there must have been something in particular that you thought
1840
01:38:14.439 --> 01:38:16.560
we were like out of touch with the reality. Like
1841
01:38:16.600 --> 01:38:18.359
what when you when you thought about the title the
1842
01:38:18.359 --> 01:38:21.319
momentary reality? Like where did you think people where did
1843
01:38:21.319 --> 01:38:23.199
you think people are most out of touch with reality
1844
01:38:23.199 --> 01:38:29.920
in your space? Well, so this is the title you shows?
1845
01:38:30.520 --> 01:38:36.359
Yes, No, I mean in so many places, I guess
1846
01:38:36.760 --> 01:38:39.399
you know, I alluded to it earlier when I said that,
1847
01:38:39.520 --> 01:38:42.760
I feel like we don't. We aren't forced to ask
1848
01:38:44.079 --> 01:38:48.680
the big existential questions, right that have existed for the attorney,
1849
01:38:48.720 --> 01:38:52.079
that everybody is kind of stared in bed or laid
1850
01:38:52.119 --> 01:38:53.880
out in the field and stared up at the sky
1851
01:38:53.960 --> 01:38:57.439
and wondered why am I here? Who am I? What
1852
01:38:57.640 --> 01:39:00.439
is this? I feel like we're all just kind of
1853
01:39:01.279 --> 01:39:05.279
entertaining ourselves to death thoroughly. We're not. I mean, you
1854
01:39:05.319 --> 01:39:10.560
talk about like the concept of a concrete reality that exists,
1855
01:39:10.840 --> 01:39:14.600
whether you accept it or not, is anathema in our society,
1856
01:39:15.039 --> 01:39:17.439
you know, where it's like no, no, no, no, Dave, you
1857
01:39:17.560 --> 01:39:20.720
have your truth and Kristen has her truth and you
1858
01:39:20.840 --> 01:39:25.520
are not allowed to question it, right, And so I
1859
01:39:25.600 --> 01:39:29.680
mean the reason I stuttered, I probably shouldn't, but it
1860
01:39:29.880 --> 01:39:32.119
just one of the main things that comes to my
1861
01:39:32.279 --> 01:39:37.760
mind is the gender situation where you're forced to say, well,
1862
01:39:37.840 --> 01:39:41.840
now this is now you know, you know, my son
1863
01:39:41.960 --> 01:39:46.279
packs is now Patricia or whatever, and I have to
1864
01:39:46.319 --> 01:39:51.600
acknowledge that and not just like they can live that reality,
1865
01:39:51.640 --> 01:39:54.399
but you have to subscribe to that reality, right, right,
1866
01:39:54.439 --> 01:39:57.920
And there's this kind of strange dance that happens. But
1867
01:39:58.039 --> 01:40:00.920
really more than anything. That's where my mind initially went.
1868
01:40:01.039 --> 01:40:03.000
And I know that that's what, but that that that
1869
01:40:03.159 --> 01:40:07.720
is also I think my hesitance on this podcast says
1870
01:40:07.720 --> 01:40:12.600
a lot of because I'm thinking, well, oh, what happens
1871
01:40:12.600 --> 01:40:15.159
when this person listens to it. This person listens to
1872
01:40:15.439 --> 01:40:17.319
like I always knew you were a bigot, and now
1873
01:40:17.319 --> 01:40:21.600
you confirmed it. And and just this this inability to
1874
01:40:21.640 --> 01:40:25.600
discuss hard ideas or reality or the big ideas right
1875
01:40:25.720 --> 01:40:28.920
because it's offensive. Well you you use the phrase the
1876
01:40:28.920 --> 01:40:33.760
cream rises at the top, right, or like somebody, uh
1877
01:40:34.199 --> 01:40:37.319
said something about science to me the other day, well,
1878
01:40:37.319 --> 01:40:40.279
this is why people don't believe science, and I kind
1879
01:40:40.279 --> 01:40:42.479
of well, I said, well, and he'll see you're doing it.
1880
01:40:43.239 --> 01:40:48.600
And I thought, well, historically speaking science, science, great scientific
1881
01:40:48.640 --> 01:40:51.720
achievements have always occurred because someone said, wait a minute,
1882
01:40:52.039 --> 01:40:56.239
you know there there always took one person to challenge
1883
01:40:56.600 --> 01:41:02.560
the norm and then things change, right, And so all
1884
01:41:02.600 --> 01:41:07.600
that to say I just commitment to reality to me
1885
01:41:07.800 --> 01:41:10.119
really just means like you talk about touching grass, it's
1886
01:41:10.119 --> 01:41:13.800
like grabbing something that will not float away. Because I
1887
01:41:13.840 --> 01:41:16.680
think I just imagine that with all these you know,
1888
01:41:17.279 --> 01:41:21.840
ideas and kind of the creation of identity in any way.
1889
01:41:22.399 --> 01:41:25.159
I just see people floating off into the ether. And
1890
01:41:25.439 --> 01:41:27.640
and I want to live in alignment with reality because
1891
01:41:27.680 --> 01:41:31.640
really another word for reality is truth, and you use
1892
01:41:31.960 --> 01:41:35.039
the term capital T truth. So I want to live
1893
01:41:35.079 --> 01:41:37.039
in alignment with Christ. So this is really I mean,
1894
01:41:37.159 --> 01:41:38.079
it's commitment to Christ.
1895
01:41:38.680 --> 01:41:42.000
But I like that. I like that. I think it's
1896
01:41:42.039 --> 01:41:45.239
really like, yes, I so much. I'll say there, I
1897
01:41:45.239 --> 01:41:48.279
think you know about you were talking about sort of
1898
01:41:48.319 --> 01:41:51.159
feelings and if you sort of have this idea about
1899
01:41:51.359 --> 01:41:54.159
your feelings or a guid enough truth and no one
1900
01:41:54.159 --> 01:41:56.439
can say anything. You know. Again, it just heard Robbie
1901
01:41:56.439 --> 01:42:02.239
George who's at Princeton. He's a professor of constitutional law
1902
01:42:02.319 --> 01:42:04.840
jurisprudence there. And you know, Robbie is the one who
1903
01:42:04.880 --> 01:42:08.600
taught me the phrase like we need to be as Christians,
1904
01:42:08.600 --> 01:42:10.359
but everyone should have this goal right. We have to
1905
01:42:10.399 --> 01:42:14.359
be truth seekers and truth speakers right, not just seeking
1906
01:42:14.399 --> 01:42:17.520
it right, but also speaking it And as someone once said,
1907
01:42:17.600 --> 01:42:20.439
like telling the truth is a revolutionary act nowadays, you know.
1908
01:42:20.800 --> 01:42:22.279
And he talks about how this I listened to just
1909
01:42:22.279 --> 01:42:23.880
listen to this podcast or was an interview that was
1910
01:42:23.880 --> 01:42:25.880
done with him at a plog for our plenary. It's
1911
01:42:25.880 --> 01:42:27.840
on Spotify. But he said, like, you know, which is true.
1912
01:42:27.880 --> 01:42:29.520
I just haven't heard it in this very clear way
1913
01:42:30.880 --> 01:42:34.960
that we used to live in. You know, again this
1914
01:42:35.000 --> 01:42:37.159
is a little bit simplified, but just for our categories
1915
01:42:37.239 --> 01:42:39.600
or epochs, right that like you know, the medieval time
1916
01:42:39.680 --> 01:42:41.840
there was this sort of this age of faith, right,
1917
01:42:41.880 --> 01:42:43.760
and then the Enlightenment there was the age of reason.
1918
01:42:43.800 --> 01:42:45.359
And now he said, we're in the age of feelings,
1919
01:42:45.760 --> 01:42:48.239
and the feelings really is the way that we sort
1920
01:42:48.239 --> 01:42:51.159
of discover truth. And then there because like any sort
1921
01:42:51.199 --> 01:42:54.640
of like you know, challenge to our feelings is like
1922
01:42:54.760 --> 01:42:58.560
not had and like where that's gotten us? So interesting? There? Yeah,
1923
01:42:58.600 --> 01:43:01.760
I do think my current I mean, there's so many
1924
01:43:01.760 --> 01:43:03.079
ways in which people are And I like that you
1925
01:43:03.119 --> 01:43:05.640
said too, which I agree with. I think someone once said,
1926
01:43:05.720 --> 01:43:09.399
right that like wonder is the path to wisdom. It's
1927
01:43:09.399 --> 01:43:12.000
because we have time to sort of like have this
1928
01:43:12.199 --> 01:43:15.520
time to be like I wonder why you know I exist?
1929
01:43:15.720 --> 01:43:18.439
Or I wonder why like you know this? Or that
1930
01:43:19.039 --> 01:43:21.479
we don't have time to wonder because we're so distracted.
1931
01:43:21.520 --> 01:43:23.560
So I'm so glad you talked about like entertaining yourself
1932
01:43:23.640 --> 01:43:26.199
to death, and which gets into is all these other issues.
1933
01:43:26.199 --> 01:43:28.319
But we don't make time to productively the wonder about
1934
01:43:28.359 --> 01:43:30.920
these big topics to our own detriment. So I think
1935
01:43:30.920 --> 01:43:35.319
in my own space of medicine and bioethics, I think
1936
01:43:35.359 --> 01:43:38.079
the thing where we are most detached from reality. It's
1937
01:43:38.079 --> 01:43:41.800
a hard question, is and it sort of maybe gets
1938
01:43:41.800 --> 01:43:45.600
to a little bit to your answer, is that the
1939
01:43:45.600 --> 01:43:49.119
fact that there is human nature is something that is
1940
01:43:49.159 --> 01:43:52.520
created as such and that we've lost sense of. I
1941
01:43:52.520 --> 01:43:56.239
would say teleology. You know, that like we were created
1942
01:43:56.399 --> 01:43:59.239
sort of with this purpose or end in mind, and
1943
01:43:59.279 --> 01:44:03.159
that human nature is a thing. Mary Harrington gave a
1944
01:44:03.199 --> 01:44:06.880
talk for Hillsdale DC at hills LDC. It was the
1945
01:44:06.920 --> 01:44:08.960
First Things lecture she gave. It was on YouTube a
1946
01:44:08.960 --> 01:44:11.920
few months ago and it was published in First Things.
1947
01:44:12.199 --> 01:44:15.800
The piece is called Timophobia about how she talks about
1948
01:44:15.800 --> 01:44:18.680
how there's this phobia around Thomas Aquinas and some of
1949
01:44:18.720 --> 01:44:22.760
these thinkers in certain circles because of various biases. But
1950
01:44:22.840 --> 01:44:24.439
she talks about right, which I think is such a
1951
01:44:24.439 --> 01:44:27.319
cool phrase. She says something like human beings are not
1952
01:44:27.439 --> 01:44:32.560
just you know, Adams arranged human wise, and she talks
1953
01:44:32.600 --> 01:44:35.960
about again this idea of human nature and sort of gnosticism,
1954
01:44:36.159 --> 01:44:40.560
and so people really think it's a radically bizarre statements
1955
01:44:40.640 --> 01:44:43.439
even and can be controversial in some circles to say
1956
01:44:43.439 --> 01:44:45.840
that actually there is such a thing as human nature
1957
01:44:46.039 --> 01:44:48.840
and the givenness of our bodies. So I think thos
1958
01:44:48.880 --> 01:44:52.279
we're most out of touch with reality. And again, you know,
1959
01:44:52.399 --> 01:44:55.600
since you brought up the topic of gender, you know
1960
01:44:55.800 --> 01:44:58.000
there is just like on the topic we've tocolate today,
1961
01:44:58.000 --> 01:45:01.600
we talked about so many difficult challenges, but you know,
1962
01:45:02.479 --> 01:45:08.000
miscarriage and abortion, and we briefly touched on you know,
1963
01:45:08.000 --> 01:45:11.520
I mentioned euth in asia and sort of gender dysphoria.
1964
01:45:11.600 --> 01:45:16.359
There is so much trauma in these spaces, right, and
1965
01:45:16.760 --> 01:45:18.880
we have to have a response to the trauma. And
1966
01:45:18.920 --> 01:45:21.479
the question is like, what does a compassionate response to
1967
01:45:21.520 --> 01:45:23.680
suffering look like in these space It's not that we
1968
01:45:23.840 --> 01:45:26.319
shouldn't think this trauma is real or that well we
1969
01:45:26.359 --> 01:45:28.600
shouldn't like address these people who are hurting, because there
1970
01:45:28.640 --> 01:45:32.000
are people hurting in these spaces, and so there is
1971
01:45:32.439 --> 01:45:35.079
you know, different ways that we can do that. But
1972
01:45:35.199 --> 01:45:38.000
especially in my vocation, when our commitment is should be
1973
01:45:38.079 --> 01:45:41.119
to do no harm, I need to understand like, who
1974
01:45:41.199 --> 01:45:43.720
are what I am treating to whom I am accountable
1975
01:45:43.760 --> 01:45:46.119
and have to hone my conscience in order to align
1976
01:45:46.199 --> 01:45:48.920
itself with the moral structure of reality. So I think
1977
01:45:48.920 --> 01:45:52.680
in my situation how this comes to play in biomedicine is,
1978
01:45:53.319 --> 01:45:55.680
you know, there is not a commitment to reality, and
1979
01:45:55.720 --> 01:45:58.399
when we think about a commitment that human nature is
1980
01:45:58.479 --> 01:46:00.840
actually a thing that is given, there's a loss of
1981
01:46:00.880 --> 01:46:04.880
teleology and even this idea of conscience again just being
1982
01:46:04.920 --> 01:46:06.800
some vibe or some feeling, I think, is what is
1983
01:46:06.880 --> 01:46:08.640
risen to the top and we lose sight of the
1984
01:46:08.680 --> 01:46:11.319
fact that there is actually a moral structured reality or
1985
01:46:11.359 --> 01:46:13.520
actually there are some things that we should not be
1986
01:46:13.560 --> 01:46:16.920
engaged in because of the created nature of the world
1987
01:46:17.000 --> 01:46:19.279
in God's law, and there are some things that are
1988
01:46:19.279 --> 01:46:21.720
illicted for us. Those are the things to me, as
1989
01:46:21.760 --> 01:46:25.800
a bioethicis and a doctor that we have unhooked ourselves
1990
01:46:25.840 --> 01:46:28.279
from that have the biggest consequence in terms of divorcing
1991
01:46:28.319 --> 01:46:32.000
ourselves from the reality of the truth. And there are
1992
01:46:32.199 --> 01:46:34.800
many multifold reasons of how that comes to bear, but
1993
01:46:35.279 --> 01:46:37.319
that to me is the current concern I have.
1994
01:46:37.960 --> 01:46:42.640
Yeah, well, and you talked about doing a lot of
1995
01:46:42.680 --> 01:46:45.960
work in the sphere of AI and that was also
1996
01:46:46.079 --> 01:46:49.600
a big motivating factors that the world's changing very quickly.
1997
01:46:50.239 --> 01:46:53.520
I reference the book Future Shock. All the time they
1998
01:46:53.560 --> 01:46:55.880
thought that was future shock, and then what the seventies
1999
01:46:55.960 --> 01:47:00.840
or whatever, like we are just and so the world
2000
01:47:01.119 --> 01:47:05.199
is feeling increasingly different or unreal. So in a world
2001
01:47:05.199 --> 01:47:08.760
that's feeling increasingly unreal, what feels most real to you?
2002
01:47:09.640 --> 01:47:10.800
I think there are a lot of things that feel
2003
01:47:10.840 --> 01:47:12.880
really real to me right now. I think the thing
2004
01:47:12.920 --> 01:47:16.680
that feels most real to me there are two things.
2005
01:47:16.760 --> 01:47:22.079
One is my relationships with my husband and my boys.
2006
01:47:22.960 --> 01:47:24.960
As someone who spend a lot of time who can
2007
01:47:25.000 --> 01:47:27.560
easily become lost in her own ideas in her head,
2008
01:47:27.600 --> 01:47:29.399
I think as I get older and I'm more aware
2009
01:47:29.439 --> 01:47:31.399
of my body, I can no longer forget how real
2010
01:47:31.439 --> 01:47:33.640
it is because I feel it every day and my
2011
01:47:33.720 --> 01:47:36.319
aches and pains, my various things. And so I am
2012
01:47:36.319 --> 01:47:39.880
no longer under the illusion that I am disembodied, and
2013
01:47:39.920 --> 01:47:42.359
nor should I ever want to think that I'm disembodied,
2014
01:47:42.439 --> 01:47:45.600
as we just talked about, So I really am very
2015
01:47:45.720 --> 01:47:49.479
feeling the fact that you know, as I would believe,
2016
01:47:49.520 --> 01:47:51.880
we don't just have bodies, but we are bodies, and
2017
01:47:51.960 --> 01:47:56.479
in my embodied person, I feel really close in a
2018
01:47:56.520 --> 01:47:59.399
really good way to the reality, the tangible reality of
2019
01:48:00.119 --> 01:48:02.880
my people, my mom and dad and my husband who
2020
01:48:02.880 --> 01:48:06.880
I've known for thirty years, and my sweet boys. I
2021
01:48:06.960 --> 01:48:13.119
also feel really you know, God's God's you know, sovereignty
2022
01:48:13.159 --> 01:48:17.039
and his protection and his love feel really real to
2023
01:48:17.119 --> 01:48:20.319
me too. I you know, as we talked about earlier
2024
01:48:20.319 --> 01:48:22.399
in the show, I went through something really challenging professionally
2025
01:48:22.439 --> 01:48:25.159
a couple of years ago, and I've had some tough
2026
01:48:25.239 --> 01:48:31.079
professional challenges since that time. And I'm reminded that, you know,
2027
01:48:31.439 --> 01:48:33.600
you know, just thinking about privileging our health and our
2028
01:48:33.640 --> 01:48:36.159
safety that you know, safety, you know, isn't the absence
2029
01:48:36.159 --> 01:48:38.399
of danger, but the presence of the Lord. And I
2030
01:48:38.479 --> 01:48:42.479
really feel God and in a way that you know
2031
01:48:42.600 --> 01:48:44.880
is very real to me. I'm very thankful for that.
2032
01:48:44.920 --> 01:48:47.479
I know that that period is you know, can can
2033
01:48:47.520 --> 01:48:49.880
wax and wane from any of us, but right now
2034
01:48:50.319 --> 01:48:53.319
very thankful that that He feels really real to me.
2035
01:48:53.439 --> 01:48:55.880
So I'm so thankful for both of those, both of
2036
01:48:55.920 --> 01:48:58.720
those spaces beautiful.
2037
01:48:58.760 --> 01:49:01.760
Well, thank you so much for your time, doctor Kristen.
2038
01:49:01.800 --> 01:49:04.920
I really, I mean, we've gone over so many different things,
2039
01:49:05.399 --> 01:49:07.920
and it's just been a true pleasure. And I thank
2040
01:49:07.960 --> 01:49:09.439
God that people try to cancel you.
2041
01:49:10.680 --> 01:49:12.920
No, I'm so happy that, like you know, I think
2042
01:49:12.960 --> 01:49:18.239
of right the script overs that you know, sometimes people
2043
01:49:18.279 --> 01:49:21.000
don't mean things for like the best intentions, but God
2044
01:49:21.039 --> 01:49:23.840
will use them for good or even think about Ramsey
2045
01:49:23.960 --> 01:49:28.079
twenty eight. So I am thankful for whatever. You know,
2046
01:49:28.119 --> 01:49:31.840
the Lord has prepared for the future and I trust
2047
01:49:31.840 --> 01:49:34.359
in him. And I'm very thankful that somehow our paths,
2048
01:49:34.880 --> 01:49:37.359
you know, collided so that we could have this conversation today.
2049
01:49:37.359 --> 01:49:39.199
I hope our paths crossed in real life and in
2050
01:49:39.640 --> 01:49:42.840
a real way, that way, in body way, you know,
2051
01:49:42.960 --> 01:49:44.640
sometime in the future, and I thought that will happen.
2052
01:49:44.720 --> 01:49:48.359
So thanks forather, Wow. Thank once again, thank you for
2053
01:49:48.439 --> 01:49:49.880
joining me on commitment to reality.
2054
01:49:50.159 --> 01:49:50.560
Thank you