Speaker 1: Doctor Kristen Collier, thank you for joining me on Commitment
Speaker 1: to Reality.
Speaker 2: Thanks Dave, thanks for having me on your show.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, one thing that I really don't like
Speaker 1: to do is introduce somebody by going down their list
Speaker 1: of laudits and yours are many. But if you could
Speaker 1: you just begin by telling me what your story is.
Speaker 2: Sure I like that you asked me about my story.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of Austar McIntyre, the late Alista McIntyre,
Speaker 2: who said, right, I can only answer the question of
Speaker 2: what I am to do if I can understand the
Speaker 2: answers the question of like, what story or stories am
Speaker 2: I apart? So briefly, my story is that I'm a
Speaker 2: Christian wife and mother and physician. I came to the
Speaker 2: Lord in twenty sixteen with my four boys in Christian Baptism.
Speaker 2: I am very thankful to be able to be a
Speaker 2: physician taking care of the image bearer of God. I'm
Speaker 2: a Michigander. As part of my story, I've spent fifty
Speaker 2: years in the beautiful peninsula of the state of Michigan.
Speaker 2: I live up behind my mom and dad and my
Speaker 2: childhood home. I can see them from here. Part of
Speaker 2: my story is I've been with my husband for thirty
Speaker 2: some years. We've met in high school and his parents
Speaker 2: live right around the corner. So I'm a deeply rooted
Speaker 2: person in the state of Michigan with my family, trying
Speaker 2: to live, support my parents and Tim's parents as I
Speaker 2: get older, trying to be a mom and doing the
Speaker 2: work of that. I feel like I've been called to
Speaker 2: do in the work of medicine. That's my story in
Speaker 2: a nutshell.
Speaker 1: In a nutshell, So you mentioned your conversion, How did
Speaker 1: that happen? And you said, you know, you and your
Speaker 1: husband have been together for a long time. Who started it?
Speaker 2: So I would say this, conversions are always probably started
Speaker 2: by the Lord. I would say, we're called by him,
Speaker 2: but sometimes we just don't answer for a long time.
Speaker 2: So I was raised with my husband. I were raised
Speaker 2: in suburban Detroit, and we had a very similar upbringing.
Speaker 2: And I would say I would say I was raised
Speaker 2: as probably a secular humanist. My parents made it very
Speaker 2: clear that religion was for people who couldn't think very
Speaker 2: clearly or otherwise were very small minded. So because of that,
Speaker 2: like we didn't have a Bible in our home, never
Speaker 2: went to church. I didn't know who Jesus was. And
Speaker 2: then I think, as people do, we sort of sort
Speaker 2: ourselves into groups of people like ourselves. And so I
Speaker 2: came to the University of Michigan. From my undergraduate work
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties, knew I wanted to study science
Speaker 2: and medicine, and surrounded myself with other people who had
Speaker 2: views like mine that religion was for people who couldn't
Speaker 2: think very clearly. Otherwise we're small minded. My anti religious
Speaker 2: bias grew, I would say, but then in it was
Speaker 2: in medical school. So I stayed at Michigan for the
Speaker 2: University of Michigan Medical School and was able to stay
Speaker 2: on for medical residency, and was joining that time that
Speaker 2: I really, I would say, started struggling and wrestling with God.
Speaker 2: Our hospitals at Michigan Medicine have a very high acuity,
Speaker 2: and some of our ICUs have upwards of like a
Speaker 2: twenty pc mortality, And I saw things in my medical training.
Speaker 2: I would say that most people are like mostly people
Speaker 2: right are not prepared to see, you know, babies born
Speaker 2: dead and mothers of five being brought in with catastrophic
Speaker 2: brain injuries. And so during that time, you know, I
Speaker 2: wasn't ignorant of God, like I knew. I had heard
Speaker 2: that God exists and that he's all good and he's
Speaker 2: all powerful. I'm like, well, if that's true, why is
Speaker 2: like this like allowed to happen. And so I became
Speaker 2: very angry with God about the suffering that I saw that,
Speaker 2: you know, in my mind, I had judged as unfair
Speaker 2: and unjust and really became a very I would say,
Speaker 2: bitter person. And I get I really get now. I
Speaker 2: think why a lot of physicians have a lot of
Speaker 2: bad personal outcomes, why they drink too much, like why
Speaker 2: they have a high rate of divorce, because they see
Speaker 2: a lot of suffering, and without a coherent worldview to
Speaker 2: try to make sense of that in some way can
Speaker 2: really destroy your person, you know. So I continued in
Speaker 2: that way, and then through the sacrament of marriage, my
Speaker 2: world became to be shaped in a different way. So
Speaker 2: my husband, Tim, like I said, had a similar upbringing
Speaker 2: as did I. But then we started having children. We
Speaker 2: were gifted children by the Lord, and it was during
Speaker 2: that time that my husband had his own existential I
Speaker 2: would say suffering. He was like, we thought he was
Speaker 2: losing his father. At the time, he was a newly
Speaker 2: married person, and he was like, what does it mean
Speaker 2: to be a dad? What does it mean to lose
Speaker 2: my own father? What does it mean to be a
Speaker 2: married person? And so he actually was invited to church
Speaker 2: by his uncle during that time, and he went and
Speaker 2: he became a confessing believer. And this was like, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure I am fully down for this, Like I'm
Speaker 2: not sure I signed up to marry a Christian person,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know what kind of culture part of
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure that I really understand it or
Speaker 2: want to be part of it, to be honest. And
Speaker 2: my husband Tim was really patient. He took the kids
Speaker 2: to church by himself, and I just didn't go. And
Speaker 2: now the fourth child, Isaac, was born. He was born
Speaker 2: a little bit early, not technically premature, but early enough
Speaker 2: so if he had failure to thrive. And so I
Speaker 2: was like, it's so exhausted, right when you have four
Speaker 2: little kids, Like I didn't know my name, right, I
Speaker 2: had like a five year old and a four year
Speaker 2: old and two year old and a baby, And I
Speaker 2: was like, what is it even going on? And I
Speaker 2: was really struggling to feed him. And so one night
Speaker 2: in October when he was a baby. I out of
Speaker 2: desperation when on the internet and I was like trying
Speaker 2: to find electation consultant who could come to the home
Speaker 2: to help me with Isaac. And this one lady called
Speaker 2: me back and her name was brand and she came
Speaker 2: to the house and she helped me with Isaac. We
Speaker 2: got through that time. A year later, Isaac turned one.
Speaker 2: I emailed Brandy and said, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: you know, coming to the home and helping with Isaac
Speaker 2: all those months, because you're the reason we made it.
Speaker 2: And she's like, why did I tell you at the time,
Speaker 2: But I'm a pastor's wife. Do you want to come
Speaker 2: to my lady's Bible study? And I was thinking, like, no,
Speaker 2: I do not want to come to your lady's Bible study.
Speaker 2: But because you've been so helpful to me, I felt
Speaker 2: sort of like out of a sense of obligation to go,
Speaker 2: and so I went. And I was in my mid
Speaker 2: thirties at the time, and so I wasn't sure what
Speaker 2: I was expecting, but I was like, this really lovely
Speaker 2: group of ladies talking about women in the box and
Speaker 2: what I heard that evening. Finally I would say, you know,
Speaker 2: broke open my cold heart, you know, and people are like, well,
Speaker 2: what did you hear? And I think, as a physician,
Speaker 2: what I heard that I hadn't heard before was that,
Speaker 2: you know, someone who sees broken bodies and broken people
Speaker 2: all the time in medicine, you know, to hear like this,
Speaker 2: this isn't the way things are supposed to be, and
Speaker 2: that you know one day there will be like a
Speaker 2: resurrection of bodies, you know, to hear that as a doctor,
Speaker 2: and that you know, God took on flesh and Jesus
Speaker 2: Christ and came to die in my place, and that
Speaker 2: someday like Jesus would take his hand and like wipe
Speaker 2: every tear away like that. I had never heard anything
Speaker 2: like that. Like to me, that was more beautiful and
Speaker 2: stunning and amazing, like than anything I'd ever heard in
Speaker 2: medical school, right, and it just made sense like that this, this,
Speaker 2: this was true. And so after that I started thank
Speaker 2: goodness because the Lord brought so many people into our lives.
Speaker 2: Just started like listening to Christian radio and reading and
Speaker 2: talking and people prayed for me. And then a few
Speaker 2: years later I was driving in my car on the
Speaker 2: Detroit Highways to work and I just had like this
Speaker 2: overwhelming sense of shame. You know, that i'd been living
Speaker 2: my life totally is like a nightmare. And all these
Speaker 2: things that I sort of took a lot of pride in,
Speaker 2: like my memory and my medical degree and all these things,
Speaker 2: they are all just gifts from God, you know who.
Speaker 2: I felt just horrible about the way that I've been
Speaker 2: viewing myself and everyone around me. And so I, you know,
Speaker 2: was like I want to be baptized. And then the
Speaker 2: four boys and I were baptized in twenty sixteen into
Speaker 2: the Christian Church.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I think it just shows like the power of
Speaker 2: an invitation, you know, and the rippol effective invitation. So
Speaker 2: Brandy the lactation consultants, like I think all the times
Speaker 2: that would probably all of us have opportunities to invite
Speaker 2: people to see things in a radically different way, and
Speaker 2: we don't do it because it's easier not to. And
Speaker 2: I would imagine that Brandy probably knew that I probably
Speaker 2: would have said no, and it's you know, people don't
Speaker 2: want to be told no or be embarrassed, right, But
Speaker 2: she took this little active courage and she invited me,
Speaker 2: and and you know, my goodness, like the ripple of
Speaker 2: fact that invitation has had has been profound. So I'm
Speaker 2: so thankful for the Lord to be you know that
Speaker 2: you can work through us and have us be part
Speaker 2: of the invitation to people to be invited to him.
Speaker 2: But that sort of how things went down interesting.
Speaker 1: There's so many different directions that I want to go
Speaker 1: in just based on what you said, but usually we
Speaker 1: just take the last one we get to. And you
Speaker 1: said courage, and it took the courage right now. I
Speaker 1: told you that I became aware of you a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. Can you guess how I became aware
Speaker 1: of you?
Speaker 2: I can guess to want me to try to give
Speaker 2: you my answer to the let's do it so a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, I was part of a situation
Speaker 2: where I was asked to give a big talk at
Speaker 2: the University of Michigan Medical School and there was a
Speaker 2: walk out during my talk at Hill Editorian in Arbor
Speaker 2: by some members of the audience, And there was someone
Speaker 2: planted in the audience who recorded the walkout, and that
Speaker 2: video went somewhat viral on social media and the story
Speaker 2: made the national news. So I bet that that's the
Speaker 2: reason that you heard about me and the work that
Speaker 2: I do Bengo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, And you know, one, it showed a lot
Speaker 1: of courage on your part. But two, and this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. I don't know if you follow the news
Speaker 1: and the World Cup and everything in the branding, but
Speaker 1: there's a big story that came out a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago about Levi's and branding. Have you seen this?
Speaker 2: I have done. So.
Speaker 1: The World Cup has very tight sponsorship agreements and they
Speaker 1: try to block out anything that doesn't fall under those
Speaker 1: to protect them. Right. Sure, But what often happens when
Speaker 1: you try to do that is something you know, if
Speaker 1: you're clever, the message gets out and it gets amplified
Speaker 1: to a degree that you would not have expected or wanted.
Speaker 1: So what Levi's did is they put a tarp over
Speaker 1: their logo on the on the stadium I think it's
Speaker 1: in California, maybe San Francisco. Instead of it being Levi's stadium,
Speaker 1: it's San Francisco Bay Area stadium. For the work, Well,
Speaker 1: they cut out a perfect cloth to fit right over
Speaker 1: the very recognizable Levi's logo. Interesting, and the message got out,
Speaker 1: Oh you want to censor me, Well, here you go.
Speaker 1: The message gets amplified when you do that, and that's
Speaker 1: what happened with you. I mean, I think a lot
Speaker 1: more people saw your speech and were impacted by your
Speaker 1: speech and your story than would have been had people
Speaker 1: not tried to silence you.
Speaker 2: I think that's I think that's true. It's interesting that
Speaker 2: when we when I'm sure you've had this experience, when
Speaker 2: you're putting together a really high stakes presentation or high
Speaker 2: stakes talk, though, and something like this happens. I wonder
Speaker 2: if anyone actually like the content of my talk. I mean,
Speaker 2: I agree like me and the story made the news,
Speaker 2: but I was like, oh my goodness, I spent all
Speaker 2: this time working on this talk. I'm not sure anybody
Speaker 2: actually heard it, because the talk itself, I thought was
Speaker 2: really lovely and it was sort of buried into the noise.
Speaker 2: But yes, I think the attention that was brought to
Speaker 2: the really real topic of viewpoint diversity and moral diversity
Speaker 2: within medicine and free speech and academic freedom, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: happy to sacrifice my talk sort of on sort of
Speaker 2: the platform of having us talk about bigger, transcendent things
Speaker 2: like that. And I agree there was a lot of
Speaker 2: attention brought to those questions in the academy because of
Speaker 2: what happened.
Speaker 1: Well, I did hear it, and I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about your talk. Oh that's so exciting and I
Speaker 1: remember it.
Speaker 2: Oh that's really kind. I'm so all these I'm so glad,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: But you talk about viewpoint diversity, and I don't even
Speaker 1: know what the truth is. I was sitting on the
Speaker 1: couch this morning talking to my wife and I said,
Speaker 1: I feel like most doctors don't are not believers. So
Speaker 1: I got up my phone and I googled, Well, that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem true. It said that, you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: number is, let's say sixty five to seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of doctors have some form of faith. Yeah, that doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like what I think. So then I did the inverse.
Speaker 1: You know what field has the highest percentage of atheists?
Speaker 1: And it was biologists academic. It is so okay, maybe
Speaker 1: they're both true at the same time. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But what is your experience, because you know, you kind
Speaker 1: of described your upbringing and if you were truly a
Speaker 1: serious thinking person, faith was not on the table, and
Speaker 1: I grew up in a very Christian home. We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about my family and my my dad's
Speaker 1: radio show, and I grew up with every opportunity, and
Speaker 1: yet even I had falled prey to the culture about well,
Speaker 1: if you want to be a serious thinker, God is
Speaker 1: not part of the equation. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's one of those things that part
Speaker 2: of it is that is a hard scientist that I
Speaker 2: did not see a role for faith to be part
Speaker 2: of my purview, and I thought it sort of would
Speaker 2: work against what I was trying to do, and I
Speaker 2: think I did have I think part of this conversation
Speaker 2: right gets the idea that many of us have spiritual
Speaker 2: blinders on that even if the truth would be presented
Speaker 2: to us, we just can't see it for many reasons.
Speaker 2: There's this quote, I think it's from Saint John Paul
Speaker 2: the Second, and he says something like, you know, faith
Speaker 2: and reason are like two wings on which the human
Speaker 2: spirit rises with the contemplation of truth. And I heard
Speaker 2: Robbie George talking about that quote recently in a plenary talk,
Speaker 2: and he said he thinks about this idea of those
Speaker 2: being the wings on which people contemplate truth, and he
Speaker 2: said his probably George grew up in West Virginia and
Speaker 2: he used to hunt and he said sometimes when they
Speaker 2: would shoot for sport and a bird would fall and
Speaker 2: one of its wings were damaged, that the other wing
Speaker 2: would just keep flapping right and as hard as it could,
Speaker 2: but the bird on the ground would just sort of
Speaker 2: spin around in circles. It couldn't move because it didn't
Speaker 2: have the other wing right. And I love that analogy
Speaker 2: because I do think now that I have thank goodness
Speaker 2: because of the faith that's been gifted to me, a
Speaker 2: fuller understanding of my own vocation in medicine, and I'm
Speaker 2: able to contemplate truth. And I would say, if this
Speaker 2: were something that I were writing out to you, I
Speaker 2: would have put truth at the capital tea, because you
Speaker 2: believe truth would be a person in Jesus Christ. So
Speaker 2: I do think that part of this. You know, Yes,
Speaker 2: I was educated. I went to probably some of the
Speaker 2: best schools, I would say, around, but because I didn't
Speaker 2: have the gift of Fai, my education is impoverished. It's interesting.
Speaker 2: I think about medicine a lot because it's my vocation
Speaker 2: and I love it dearly, and I do think it's
Speaker 2: under somewhat of an attack, a spiritual attack. I would say,
Speaker 2: he's thinking worth doing or that's beautiful. I think that
Speaker 2: God's designed, I think that it will be attacked. But
Speaker 2: I don't know the data precisely, but we do know
Speaker 2: actually that a lot of there was a stot. Even
Speaker 2: Kristen Robinson a few years ago at the same time
Speaker 2: as I will use in papers, and she did a
Speaker 2: survey of physicians, and I would agree with you that
Speaker 2: physicians are a type of scientist. But physicians actually have
Speaker 2: different religious sort of identification than most scientists do, and
Speaker 2: that a lot of actually, as you saw, a lot
Speaker 2: of physicians will identify as having a religious faith or
Speaker 2: some type of spiritual practice. Although most physicians are most
Speaker 2: are more religiously diverse than the US public, they have
Speaker 2: a probably a similar amount of like religious identification that
Speaker 2: Kristin Robinson said that when her survey about a third
Speaker 2: of people in healthcare actually come into medicine because of
Speaker 2: their faith commitments, like it's the thing that drives them
Speaker 2: into medicine. And then once they get into the academy,
Speaker 2: medicine because of its you know, bias or because of
Speaker 2: its imminent frame of materialism, makes it seem like you
Speaker 2: have to like check your faith at the door to
Speaker 2: be considered a legitimate person. And then that again is
Speaker 2: really not good. We don't expect other people to empty
Speaker 2: their identities when they come in to medicine. And actually
Speaker 2: we know, actually people's faith identities are a pathway for
Speaker 2: which people can seek meaning. And we know actually that
Speaker 2: having a sustained animation of a sense of meaning is
Speaker 2: a protective thing for you to not get burnt out
Speaker 2: in medicine. So why are we asking Christian people to
Speaker 2: empty themselves? I wrote a piece about this and the
Speaker 2: Who's in public discourse a couple of years ago. It's
Speaker 2: called the dark canosis of medical education. Thinking about pinosis
Speaker 2: means to empty yourself, and think about the kinnosis of
Speaker 2: in Philippines too that but in medicine is a dark pronouncis,
Speaker 2: it's a dark empty and that we're asked, specifically of
Speaker 2: Christian people to empty themselves. So getting back to this
Speaker 2: question around viewpoint diversity and just diversity, I think we've
Speaker 2: done a really nice job of about thinking about the
Speaker 2: diversity and the academy, but now as much attention to
Speaker 2: religious diversity or viewpoint diversity. And again, if we're going
Speaker 2: to have in the spirit of university, with a spirit
Speaker 2: of open pluralism a way to discuss important matters that
Speaker 2: where life literally is at stake, we should be all
Speaker 2: at We should be able to sort of sit with
Speaker 2: people who have viewsed different from our own and be
Speaker 2: able to welcome people in the fullness of who they are.
Speaker 2: And I think that this white coat walk out that
Speaker 2: happened to me a few years ago shows that we
Speaker 2: don't do a good job of being able to sit
Speaker 2: with people who have viewpoints that are different than our own.
Speaker 2: We don't tolerate right ethical dissent in medicine, and that's
Speaker 2: too bad because it's to our own detriment, because these
Speaker 2: conversations actually need us talking about them more and not
Speaker 2: lesson to sort of put it out into the open,
Speaker 2: because we haven't set it explicitly. The reason that the
Speaker 2: walkout happened was because I consider myself to be a
Speaker 2: pro life person. So the issue specifically was around the
Speaker 2: students and some of the academy feeling that my pro
Speaker 2: life views that in part flow out of my Christian
Speaker 2: faith delegitimized me as being able to talk. And at
Speaker 2: the top I wasn't even talking about abortion. I just
Speaker 2: like welcome to medical school. So again it made it
Speaker 2: seem like if you are a pro life or someone
Speaker 2: who identifies as much, don't, you can't talk about anything
Speaker 2: in the academy. So I think that's that's the interesting
Speaker 2: struggle that I think we're still wrestling within the academy
Speaker 2: is how do we tolerate peopoint diversity. Are there limits
Speaker 2: around that? And how do we sit with each other
Speaker 2: as people of goodwill who made disagree about contested topics
Speaker 2: to be able to make sure that the best arguments
Speaker 2: rise to the top and we know what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: You talked about viewpoint diversity and you said check your
Speaker 1: worldview or your religion at the door, right, But I
Speaker 1: think that's a faulty premise because it assumes that there's
Speaker 1: such a thing as in the public square, And what
Speaker 1: really ends up happening is check your religion at the door,
Speaker 1: while our religion stays inside, which is materialism ultimately, right,
Speaker 1: And there's an idol of that, right? Do you think
Speaker 1: that we've made an idol of medicine and science in
Speaker 1: a way. You talk about their atheist or no religion,
Speaker 1: but I think the religion really is the science in
Speaker 1: a sense.
Speaker 2: I yes, I think a couple of things. First of all,
Speaker 2: I agree with you that sometimes when religious people are
Speaker 2: meant to say, people sometimes to say to religious people, well,
Speaker 2: you are uniquely awkward, and we don't want religious people
Speaker 2: at the table and committees in policy to inform the
Speaker 2: public square. And my friend Charlie Kmosi always reminds me
Speaker 2: that there is no view from nowhere. Right as you said,
Speaker 2: everyone's coming to the table at a physical table with
Speaker 2: their first you know, principles, with their faith claims, with
Speaker 2: their view of the good. Religion people and non religious
Speaker 2: people and everyone. We say everyone's religious in someone because
Speaker 2: they believe it's something of ultimate meaning included. And people
Speaker 2: would say, well, you're you know, you are uniquely awkward
Speaker 2: because you have faith claims, and so your faith claims
Speaker 2: are the reason that you can't be sort of a
Speaker 2: serious person. But you know, everyone has faith claims. Yes,
Speaker 2: we have as Christians, we have faith in the resurrection
Speaker 2: of bodies and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But
Speaker 2: guess why, Like everyone has faith in something. People have
Speaker 2: faith in science, or faith in progress, or faith in
Speaker 2: mankind or faith in politics. So again, right, there's this
Speaker 2: idea that like while everything else is like this common
Speaker 2: shared morality or that there's a sort of neutrality, and
Speaker 2: that's just not true. Someone or some view is going
Speaker 2: to inform the situation, and we should be allowed to
Speaker 2: sort of have to make sure, because it's hypocrisy not
Speaker 2: to to make sure that people who have religious or
Speaker 2: faith commandments are allowed to sort of have a seat
Speaker 2: at the table. Your question about idolatry is super interesting
Speaker 2: to me. I didn't really know what that term was. Again,
Speaker 2: I have the literacy to understand what that term meant
Speaker 2: before my Christian baptism. But now I do realize, looking
Speaker 2: back on my life, that I agree that I had
Speaker 2: made medicine into an idol. And I'm sure I'm not
Speaker 2: alone in that, you know, I think medicine is is.
Speaker 2: Who was it that said that we're all like sort
Speaker 2: of idol making factories, one of the Protestant theologians, But
Speaker 2: it's true, right, I think that medicine is an easy
Speaker 2: thing to make into an idol. It's very glittery, it
Speaker 2: does a lot of good, it holds a lot of promise,
Speaker 2: so it's easy to sort of worship it as like
Speaker 2: the thing that can save us, you know. And I
Speaker 2: remember when I was in my twenties, and I was
Speaker 2: in the midst of, like, you know, sort of thinking
Speaker 2: about Jacob wrestling with God. I was a medical resident
Speaker 2: and one of my chief residents, Jake, who was the
Speaker 2: year above me, developed a really bad, serious illness, and
Speaker 2: it still shocks me actually to this day that he
Speaker 2: died under our watch. You know, we had like all
Speaker 2: the best things, we had, like a worldwide expert in
Speaker 2: his disease. We have all the shiny equipments, all the medication,
Speaker 2: all the NIHS research funding, and yet he died. And
Speaker 2: I remember at that time being so angry about that,
Speaker 2: like it seems so unfair and so unshust and like, again,
Speaker 2: if God really did exist and he was good, how
Speaker 2: could he take Jake from us, you know? And I
Speaker 2: realized at that point, which was really hard to learn,
Speaker 2: but I'm so glad that I realized that at that
Speaker 2: point we thought I had created medicine into an idol.
Speaker 2: And at that point I realized that, you know, medicine
Speaker 2: has limits, and I need to understand from who I
Speaker 2: now now now know from whom are all our health
Speaker 2: flows is the Lord. And medicine for sure can be
Speaker 2: used in pursuit and service of mankind. But it has
Speaker 2: to be properly ordered, because once our idols come crashing down,
Speaker 2: which is very painful for me, I think the right
Speaker 2: order of things shines out of that darkness. And it
Speaker 2: took several years for me to see that. But I
Speaker 2: do think I made medicine to an idol, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people still have medicine as an idol. Medicine.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes there's this, like, you know, underlying assumption
Speaker 2: that if we just and I think I carry this,
Speaker 2: you know, it's part of the Baconian project, like that
Speaker 2: if we just have enough time or enough science or
Speaker 2: enough research, that we're going to be able meda through biomedicine, right,
Speaker 2: we are going to be able to overcome the biggest
Speaker 2: human finitude that there is, which is death. And you
Speaker 2: know that makes a false It makes up any suparity
Speaker 2: of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Medicine is not
Speaker 2: gonna be our savior. Medicine has good goodness to it,
Speaker 2: and I don't want to discount how amazing medicine has
Speaker 2: been in the lives of so many people. But it
Speaker 2: has to be properly ordered, so we don't make it
Speaker 2: into an idol.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, I said, make an idol of medicine, but.
Speaker 2: Also health, oh for sure.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of that. That's at the the you know,
Speaker 1: the longevity or everything like that. But you said that
Speaker 1: one of the things that you struggled with the most,
Speaker 1: and the reason that you think that, you know, doctors
Speaker 1: struggle with addiction or just the struggle in general, maybe
Speaker 1: being angry at God or not believing that God exists
Speaker 1: because you know, why would it God allow this? What
Speaker 1: I see, well, something that I think a lot about
Speaker 1: is that we do not face the reality of death
Speaker 1: the way that our ancestors did. Just as you're talking,
Speaker 1: I started thinking it may be true that doctors are
Speaker 1: bearing an unnatural burden for society that society wants held together. Now.
Speaker 1: I say that because generally speaking, in our modern world,
Speaker 1: death is isolated to a sterilized environment, you know, and
Speaker 1: instead of you know what I imagine to be the
Speaker 1: case in the past, where you died at home and
Speaker 1: you had to be surrounded by the body. I mean,
Speaker 1: not to be graphic, but you smelled the body. I mean,
Speaker 1: you experienced death on a daily basis in its reality,
Speaker 1: not in a sanitized sense, whereas now I feel like
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses and everybody in your industry is kind
Speaker 1: of holding the weight of that reality for society.
Speaker 2: I may agree, I agree, there's so much there. I
Speaker 2: guess at first I would say that thinking about, you know,
Speaker 2: health as an idol, I do think again, our health
Speaker 2: that has realized for our bodies is a gift from God,
Speaker 2: and we should obviously are the body. I'm writing a
Speaker 2: piece right now about the bodies, but thinking a lot
Speaker 2: about it. But the body, obviously, I think, in our
Speaker 2: orality is not incidental to the Christian faith, by the
Speaker 2: body is obviously incredibly central to the narrative. Jesus Christ
Speaker 2: had a body, He has a body. Central to our
Speaker 2: faith is resturctive bodies, and health is something that we
Speaker 2: should shepherd. But once we start putting again health as
Speaker 2: an idol, then we start to subvert all these other
Speaker 2: goods right that we shouldn't. So, you know, nowhere in
Speaker 2: the scriptures do I find actually Jesus preserving his life
Speaker 2: at all costs, or the martyrs, like we know, actually right,
Speaker 2: like we have the perfect example as Christian physicians that
Speaker 2: you know, health should not be the highest good and
Speaker 2: We have people all the time who choose to subvert
Speaker 2: their health for higher goods. You know, recently saw in
Speaker 2: clinic a woman who is pregnant and she has a
Speaker 2: high risk medical condition, and she is choosing to continue
Speaker 2: her pregnancy and carry her baby even though her life
Speaker 2: is very well, maybe a risk. Right. I have a
Speaker 2: patient who's a firefighter who subverts his health all the
Speaker 2: time by running into burning buildings to like rescue animals
Speaker 2: and babies and older people. Right, he subverts his health. Right.
Speaker 2: We subvert our health all the time, even as parents,
Speaker 2: I would say, we subvert a health in some way.
Speaker 2: So we can't make health into an idol. And also
Speaker 2: I think we could fall into the other trap where
Speaker 2: we really are sort of not we're so we're so
Speaker 2: focused on like this gnosticism, like oh as christions, like
Speaker 2: it's really our spirit and our soul, and that's the
Speaker 2: thing that goes to the Lord, and that we think
Speaker 2: that our body doesn't matter, right, and that we don't
Speaker 2: take care of it. So I think trying to sort
Speaker 2: of think about that ordering properly. The question of death
Speaker 2: is so important. There's a great book that I read
Speaker 2: from my friend Jeff Bishop when I was starting on
Speaker 2: my philosophical understanding of medicine, and it's called the Interspatory Corpse.
Speaker 2: So Jeff says that which is true that you know,
Speaker 2: a couple hundred years ago, in medicine's attempt to become
Speaker 2: a hard science, it tried to. It can't fully, but
Speaker 2: it tried to distance itself from the Church, and doing
Speaker 2: so try to sort of leave behind all transcend it
Speaker 2: in metaphysical goods, and in that framework then of materialism.
Speaker 2: Then basically, Jeff says, because there's no escaton or there's
Speaker 2: nothing that happens after death, that death is like the
Speaker 2: end of medicine. And he said that we're all just
Speaker 2: innticipatory corpses. So the title of the book is Into
Speaker 2: History Corpse. And he says that the dead body then
Speaker 2: becomes normative in medicine. And he says that this is
Speaker 2: played out because the first patient that you get in
Speaker 2: medical school is a dead one. It's the cadaver in
Speaker 2: the gross lab. And so he says, if that's true,
Speaker 2: and if that's the framework by which most people are operating,
Speaker 2: then medicine is like a nihilistic practice, like what are
Speaker 2: we doing to take care of anticipatory corpses, you know,
Speaker 2: and then you start to see yourself as inspiratory corpse
Speaker 2: at best, right, the worst case scenario is that even
Speaker 2: within that you starts seeing life is just in people.
Speaker 2: It's just bags of blood and bones or molecules in motion,
Speaker 2: and medicine becomes a nihilistic practice. So medicine has a
Speaker 2: you know, I think unique relationship with death. Society does
Speaker 2: in particular. I mean, I think medicine does have a
Speaker 2: front row seat to the reality of death. We see
Speaker 2: death all the time, you know, as you said, I
Speaker 2: can still remember the smell in my nostrils of the
Speaker 2: cadaver that I dissected in gross lab like twenty five
Speaker 2: years ago. But we've seen death up close, and you
Speaker 2: know how horrific it is. That should provide us space
Speaker 2: for productively wondering about our own mortality and about the
Speaker 2: meaning of death. But because we it's uncomfortable, and because
Speaker 2: we're busy, we push it away. And I think again
Speaker 2: that causes distress in healthcare providers and the feeling from
Speaker 2: the public that we can overcome death. There's an interesting
Speaker 2: piece that I read a few years ago that says
Speaker 2: that oftentimes, like because death is considered to be the
Speaker 2: ultimate enemy because again there's nothing after that, and we
Speaker 2: need to sort of you know, try to fight it
Speaker 2: at all cost. This leads to this right idea of like,
Speaker 2: you know, people being on machines when they should at
Speaker 2: home without the burdensome you know, ventilator or ecmol or hymandialysis.
Speaker 2: But also about sometimes how when we when medicine does
Speaker 2: like a code, when someone codes, and you know it's
Speaker 2: someone really who should be allowed to have their natural
Speaker 2: because they've died at that point, most of them, right,
Speaker 2: that we basically like do this big show where medicine
Speaker 2: has this resuscitation and and like this whole sort of
Speaker 2: like sort of ritual around that because because death is like,
Speaker 2: to some of us, the biggest affront that there is,
Speaker 2: because it's a failure of us. And again, like it's
Speaker 2: that idea that you said of like this burden, like
Speaker 2: we are carrying the like right survival of humanity on
Speaker 2: our shoulders, and like it's up to us to like
Speaker 2: overcome death and if we can't, we have to put
Speaker 2: on this show. And like you know, so it's really
Speaker 2: really complicated. And when medicine doesn't think about death properly
Speaker 2: and our health properly, and or the vocation properly. What
Speaker 2: happens is people suffer. So yeah, I think death is
Speaker 2: really something that we should be talking about more. And
Speaker 2: I think the general public isn't have a good death
Speaker 2: that you said, because it's something that happens to other
Speaker 2: people or when it happens to people in our family,
Speaker 2: it's so walled away that we really don't have experience
Speaker 2: with it, as you said, until someone like you know
Speaker 2: a lot of my I'm I'm a gen xer. Right
Speaker 2: the first time sometimes some of my friends have seen
Speaker 2: death is you know, when their parents are approaching death.
Speaker 2: And right if you said two hundred years ago, we
Speaker 2: would have lived, you know, in a place where our animals,
Speaker 2: we would have seen our animals eye at home. And
Speaker 2: again not to say this is a good thing, but
Speaker 2: like people would have you know, lost siblings and birth
Speaker 2: and you would have seen, right, your family and there'll
Speaker 2: be death and we would have more of attention to
Speaker 2: like what that looks like and not those opportunities are hard.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that we shouldn't like try to, like,
Speaker 2: you know, help people live, but it's just the proper
Speaker 2: ordering of these things that I think is important. As
Speaker 2: you said, so we don't create an idol or that
Speaker 2: we don't sort of think about these things in a
Speaker 2: way that's so low that we are have a disregard
Speaker 2: for the body or for our lives either or we
Speaker 2: don't think about them at all, right, or we just
Speaker 2: don't think about them. And that's that's really one of
Speaker 2: the things that I'm getting at is when you sanitize death,
Speaker 2: it becomes almost fictitious until it hits home, like you said,
Speaker 2: when a parent or a grandparent, or God forbid a
Speaker 2: sibling or a child. And so we don't see death,
Speaker 2: and then when we do, I don't know that we
Speaker 2: approach dying well.
Speaker 1: As something that we should learn to do. It's some
Speaker 1: death is something that we avoid, but dying well is
Speaker 1: something that we should learn to do. And you say
Speaker 1: that that Christians have a unique thing to offer society
Speaker 1: when it comes to learning to die, well, could you
Speaker 1: explain that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, so I think of I think it's in
Speaker 2: the Letter to the Thessalonians, and it's Saint Paul who
Speaker 2: says something like we do not grieve or laments like
Speaker 2: people who have no hope, right, And so again I
Speaker 2: think about I think about how hard it is. I
Speaker 2: had to have a really tough conversation in clinic yesterday
Speaker 2: with somebody who's dying, and it's so hard, and I
Speaker 2: absolutely a grieve when that person pass. It is as
Speaker 2: I think I should as a physician. I think of
Speaker 2: the great physician himself, Jesus Christ, as my role model.
Speaker 2: And I think about Jesus weeping right at the loss
Speaker 2: of Lazarus. And if the divine physician can weep and
Speaker 2: cry and more in death, you know, so can I,
Speaker 2: you know. And I think of all the identities of
Speaker 2: Jesus that I relate to the most as a physician, it's,
Speaker 2: you know, the the image of Jesus Christ, as you know,
Speaker 2: the suffering servan acquainted with grief like I am acquainted
Speaker 2: with grief, like physicians are acquainted with grief. But as
Speaker 2: Paul says, we're not left in that grief, right, We're
Speaker 2: not left into the grief of like people who have
Speaker 2: no hope. And what our hope is and what particularly
Speaker 2: that hope refers to, I believe is the hope and
Speaker 2: the resurrection. So yes, I can lament and I can
Speaker 2: work hard to take care of my patients. But I'm
Speaker 2: not left in that despair. I can look forward to
Speaker 2: this to the day right in the New Jerusalem when
Speaker 2: the reseruction of the bodies, and as C. S. Lewis said,
Speaker 2: someday everything sad will become untrue. That's where my hope lies.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: If I didn't have that, I'd be like left in
Speaker 2: the despair. And I might try to like try to
Speaker 2: have a half or work around for these things and
Speaker 2: start believing in transhumanism, or try to think medicine can
Speaker 2: be the savior and try to you know, become like
Speaker 2: the tech the tech bros. Right, And I think that's
Speaker 2: where my hope lies. And that's how our hope lies.
Speaker 2: That's a false hope, right, and that could be costly
Speaker 2: in all the ways, Thank goodness, because I think, you know,
Speaker 2: without hope, right, we are we are left in despair,
Speaker 2: and so we have to have some hope. So where's
Speaker 2: your hope going to be? Is it going to be
Speaker 2: in the truth or is it going to be in
Speaker 2: your digitized consciousness with the tech bros. You choose, you choose.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about death. What is health? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you have a unique perspective on at least
Speaker 1: how you define it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is something that I also have realized that
Speaker 2: I had a very impoverished idea about. It's interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: medicine has the these assumptions that it works under that
Speaker 2: we just all sort of assume we know what health is,
Speaker 2: or that we assume we know what a person is.
Speaker 2: I sometimes we'll ask my students across the country or
Speaker 2: students that I run into, Yeah, Sharon, medicine. Do you
Speaker 2: remember ever having a medical school class on like what
Speaker 2: is a human being or what is a person? And
Speaker 2: they're like, no, I do you think about that when
Speaker 2: like that's what we do is we take care of
Speaker 2: human beings, like in persons, Like are those who are
Speaker 2: those terms the same? And maybe people don't think those
Speaker 2: terms are the same, Like what are the consequences of that?
Speaker 2: So it's interesting, but like we don't engage these questions
Speaker 2: of death, personhood, health, right, we just sort of we
Speaker 2: assume we sort of know what those things are. This's
Speaker 2: actually wildly different ideas out there about what those terms mean.
Speaker 2: So again, after my Christian baptism, I realized I had
Speaker 2: a very thin view of health and I need to
Speaker 2: understand what that means. It's interesting, you know, there are
Speaker 2: many good definitions of health out there. There are many
Speaker 2: bad ones. Lehne Cass, who's you know, is head of
Speaker 2: the President's Council Bioethics under George Bush, and as a
Speaker 2: physician and about athesists, his definition is interesting and his
Speaker 2: definition is health is like the well working of the
Speaker 2: organism as a whole. I'm constantly in a debate about
Speaker 2: people with thought definition. I think that's an interesting definition,
Speaker 2: although I still think it's a little bit too narrow.
Speaker 2: So what is not a good definition of health is
Speaker 2: sometimes when I ask students like about the definition of health,
Speaker 2: people will say, what health is the actuence of disease.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's a good definition of health. It's
Speaker 2: very impoverished as really no positive view of human flourishing
Speaker 2: at all. So one time I was asking this question
Speaker 2: to students and a medical student raised her hand and
Speaker 2: said that she had been an anthropology major at the
Speaker 2: University of Iowa before coming to med school, and her
Speaker 2: senior project was asking farmers in Iowa what is health?
Speaker 2: And she said her survey found that time and time again,
Speaker 2: the farmers would say stuff like I don't consider myself
Speaker 2: healthy unless like the soil on my farm is healthy,
Speaker 2: my crops are healthy, and my animals are healthy, and
Speaker 2: my neighbors are healthy. And it was like this beautiful
Speaker 2: vision really of like health is like Shalom. I was
Speaker 2: not taught health at Shaloman Medical School at all, and
Speaker 2: I have since that time come to start to understand,
Speaker 2: actually health is right relationship. Health like none of us
Speaker 2: are fully live by ourselves. I'm convinced of that, and
Speaker 2: I'm convinced that like health has to be realized in relationship,
Speaker 2: not just like on the horizontal level of like health
Speaker 2: with our bodies, with creation, with our neighbor, but actually
Speaker 2: on the vertical plane as well. We have to be
Speaker 2: in right relationship with the Lord from whom all our
Speaker 2: health flows. So I've started to think about health's right relationships.
Speaker 2: Some of my critics think about it's too broad of
Speaker 2: a vision of health, where I think that while working
Speaker 2: at the organism of a whole is too narrow, So
Speaker 2: maybe the sweet spot is somewhere in between. But I've
Speaker 2: started to like use that as my framework to think
Speaker 2: about to think about health, and I think actually even
Speaker 2: without like theological commitments. I think there's a lot of
Speaker 2: social science out there that show is that actually health
Speaker 2: is best realized in a relationship. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: studies that show that, like loneliness is just a big
Speaker 2: of a risk factor for bad health outcomes, as like
Speaker 2: smoking is or you know, hypertension. There are many studies
Speaker 2: that show that, like your relationships dramatically affect your physical
Speaker 2: and mental health. There's a really interesting studies synames I show.
Speaker 2: There's a talk that I give about health is Relationship,
Speaker 2: and there's a slide from the Journal of Clinical Oncology,
Speaker 2: which is like one of the top academic journals in cancer,
Speaker 2: and it shows that having a protective marriage is just
Speaker 2: as protective for you against bad cancer outcomes as like
Speaker 2: traditional chemotherapy. And people use like scientists are like that
Speaker 2: can't be real, and I'm like, it's real. So it's
Speaker 2: really interesting to think about our relationships and how they
Speaker 2: affect our health, and so what can we do to
Speaker 2: be relationally oriented towards one another. Again, I mentioned mcntyre
Speaker 2: at the game, and I think about McIntyre here and
Speaker 2: sort of this view of health I think that is
Speaker 2: being pedled. What would McIntire say about this current view
Speaker 2: of health, I think that's being pedals. So health is relationship.
Speaker 2: I don't think is the view of health that might
Speaker 2: many people are operationally working under. I think what's currently
Speaker 2: especially in I would say the academy or secular society
Speaker 2: being would say sold because it's not their view of health.
Speaker 2: Of health is that you are most healthy or most
Speaker 2: flourishing as a radically autonomous, self sufficient person, free from
Speaker 2: any un chosen obligations, free to like self author your
Speaker 2: life and your body from moment to moment, you know,
Speaker 2: and first of all, like, none of us are fully autonomous.
Speaker 2: Autonomous a myth, and even if we could be, like,
Speaker 2: why would we want to be so insud I think
Speaker 2: a McIntyre who would say, actually, you're not, you know,
Speaker 2: most healthy as some pivo solo automaton like seeking to
Speaker 2: create your own reality. But instead your most healthy is
Speaker 2: is McIntyre would say, in these networks of uncalculated giving
Speaker 2: and graceful receiving, he would say, and I just love that. Again,
Speaker 2: there's this relationality there, and he would say, like, we're
Speaker 2: all on a scale of disability and actually you should
Speaker 2: be live, you know, in gratitude for the people who
Speaker 2: take care of you when you were a dependent infant,
Speaker 2: and we should live with antistary gratitude for the people
Speaker 2: who will take care of us when we do develop
Speaker 2: chronic illness for advanced stage. So again there's us relationality
Speaker 2: built into that definition of what it means to be
Speaker 2: human and to be flourishing. That I really think is
Speaker 2: like missing in our current discourse, but needed again if
Speaker 2: we are going to have a type of cultural response
Speaker 2: and answer to the disembodiment, to the loneliness, to the suicide,
Speaker 2: and to some of these healthcare which I say are
Speaker 2: not healthcare in my farmwork practices of things likthin asia,
Speaker 2: physicianist suicide. The last thing I'll say about that, just
Speaker 2: because we're talking about like death and relationship and how
Speaker 2: to die and productive wondering. One of my favorite authors,
Speaker 2: leylah Bresco Sargent. She wrote a book this year called
Speaker 2: The Dignity of Dependence, which again talks about relationality and
Speaker 2: how dependence is actually integral to the human experience and
Speaker 2: not something that's a temporary embarrassment that we should try
Speaker 2: to like, you know, get rid of or hide. She
Speaker 2: says that like in the culture. When there is a
Speaker 2: type of error that we see about how we're living,
Speaker 2: let's say the adoption of physician assistant suicide or some
Speaker 2: other practice, she said, oftentimes the culture will hear Christians
Speaker 2: pointing out their no to that practice, and they'll hear
Speaker 2: them no much lotter than our yes. So they don't
Speaker 2: we say no what abortion, or no a physician assistant suicide,
Speaker 2: or no to youth in Asia. But they're not true.
Speaker 2: We're saying yes to so again, I think as Christian people,
Speaker 2: we have something radical to say, as you said, about
Speaker 2: what a good death looks like, and we should be
Speaker 2: able to inform the narrative a bit and also live
Speaker 2: that out in Christian community, for people to have their
Speaker 2: moral imagination shaped about what a good death can look
Speaker 2: like and also how to live. If the last thing
Speaker 2: I'll say about that, my friend Charliekimosi wrote a book
Speaker 2: this year. It's called Living and Dying Well. It's a
Speaker 2: Catholic response to physician assistant killing is the subtitle, and
Speaker 2: he talks about, right, this isn't just a choice of
Speaker 2: like how to live. We shouldn't obviously have a goal
Speaker 2: of how to live well. But he says there is
Speaker 2: like this you know work or this practice of like
Speaker 2: dying well, that also should be something that we should
Speaker 2: understand how to do. We shouldn't just think about it
Speaker 2: at the moment we're like in the units or the
Speaker 2: ICU with like a dying person. That is not the
Speaker 2: time to get your like education on the fly, when
Speaker 2: you're all tired and emotional. This is something we all
Speaker 2: should be pondering. It's not easy to do. We need
Speaker 2: to do it in the moral community and with discertainment,
Speaker 2: but it's something that we have to do if we're
Speaker 2: going to be able to sort of think about dying well,
Speaker 2: not only in our own bodies, but with the people
Speaker 2: around us whom we love dearly.
Speaker 1: You know, absolutely. I mean there's so much there. There's
Speaker 1: so much there. But I told you that your speech
Speaker 1: did matter, that people were listening. Thank you, And you
Speaker 1: started it by saying, we are not machines, and I
Speaker 1: stopped though. Amen. You also just said that studies show
Speaker 1: that having a good mayorge or something I'm going to
Speaker 1: paraphrase like marital support or familial support is a huge
Speaker 1: factor in cancer. I have two examples. One, as soon
Speaker 1: as you said we are not machines. I immediately went
Speaker 1: to hearing a phone call that my dad was on.
Speaker 1: So my dad was diagnosed about eight years ago with
Speaker 1: stage four mantle cell amfoma. What you hear stage four,
Speaker 1: you think that's death, which it didn't. Was not the case.
Speaker 1: He's in remission, Gloria God. I remember him getting on
Speaker 1: the phone with a very well respected doctor that was
Speaker 1: a friend of a friend, and he said, Hank, you're
Speaker 1: going to be okay. There's really good treatment for this,
Speaker 1: but you need two things. Do not get a body mechanic.
Speaker 1: Get a healer. So the importance of a healer and
Speaker 1: your home. You can go anywhere in the world for treatment,
Speaker 1: do your best to stay close to home and your
Speaker 1: support network, because that is worth way more than whatever
Speaker 1: added advantage you might get by going to Texas or
Speaker 1: you know, Singapore or wherever it might have been. So
Speaker 1: I saw that in him, and it was true, And
Speaker 1: I mean there are so many different ways that that
Speaker 1: I think that is true. And the nurses and doctors
Speaker 1: all said, you have no idea how big of a
Speaker 1: difference you are all making in his treatment by coming
Speaker 1: here every day, by being here with him, and the
Speaker 1: same thing a couple of years ago, my wife was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with breast cancer, and I really think that our
Speaker 1: relationship together going through that, Absolutely it's a huge part
Speaker 1: in her healing. Butlutly, and this is something that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about a lot. Just you've been talking. I
Speaker 1: do want to get to that we are not machines,
Speaker 1: but getting back to the idol of health, you know sometimes,
Speaker 1: and I've been thinking about it the whole time we've
Speaker 1: been talking. And I'll send you the book. There's a
Speaker 1: book called The Theology of Illness by Jean Claude Larch
Speaker 1: and he talks so he talks about in that book,
Speaker 1: and I'll paraphrase once again. I need to memorize it
Speaker 1: because I talk about it all the time. That I
Speaker 1: remember reading and thinking that how could that be true?
Speaker 1: That good health can actually be evil if it keeps
Speaker 1: you from right relationship with God. Yeah, And so that
Speaker 1: idol of health can actually be an impediment in so
Speaker 1: many ways. And that I bring that in the context
Speaker 1: of my wife that cancer. You know, somebody the other
Speaker 1: day and they asked, in response to a video that
Speaker 1: I put out there, They said, is cancer beautiful? And
Speaker 1: I said it can be and I don't say that
Speaker 1: to be cute, because I have real in the game.
Speaker 1: I mean, do Yeah. I don't know if I could
Speaker 1: just make wave a magic wand and get rid of cancer.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I saw the impact that it
Speaker 1: had on my wife for the positive, and so many
Speaker 1: of the older people in our church came up and said, cancer,
Speaker 1: this is good, brings you closer to God because and
Speaker 1: this is also what I'm getting at, and I'm out loud.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean about ignoring health and how when
Speaker 1: we don't see it, it becomes mythical in a sense.
Speaker 1: Oh that's not going to happen to me, and so
Speaker 1: we cease to ask the big questions. I think in
Speaker 1: our modern era we're not asking the questions that have
Speaker 1: been age old, like even do I believe in a God?
Speaker 1: I think some people aren't. Even they might think about
Speaker 1: it for two seconds and the answer is I don't
Speaker 1: want to believe in a god because that I'd have
Speaker 1: to live differently, something along those lines, right, But I
Speaker 1: said a lot, tell me what comes to ye.
Speaker 2: I don't thinking about that. The wise person who told
Speaker 2: your dad, you know, don't go see like a technician
Speaker 2: or a body mechanic. It's one of my favorite lines
Speaker 2: that I'll tell our students is like, you know, you
Speaker 2: are not a technician taking care of a complex machine.
Speaker 2: You know, you are a human being taking care of
Speaker 2: the image bearer of God. You know. And that's a
Speaker 2: wildly different framework. And it reminds me of a quote
Speaker 2: by Abraham Heshel, the Jewish, thelogian. He said he gave
Speaker 2: an address to the American Medical Association, I think it
Speaker 2: was in the seventies. It was called patientist person. He
Speaker 2: said something like, you know, medicine shouldn't just be some
Speaker 2: kind of impersonal practice on sick bodies, but it should
Speaker 2: be a personal vocation on ill persons. And that's like
Speaker 2: such a different framework if you see your patient as
Speaker 2: a sick body versus an ill person. I think that's
Speaker 2: really fascinating and I really lament sort of. I have
Speaker 2: an interested narrative medicine, which is the use of language
Speaker 2: and stories in medicine. I think a lot about language,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of particularly about language that
Speaker 2: depersonalizes or dehumanizes certain members of population who staging to
Speaker 2: be finding convenient. Like I'm very very interested in language
Speaker 2: or on abortion discourse, in particular. But it's one of
Speaker 2: those things that I think sometimes this mechanistic view of
Speaker 2: ourselves and our patients comes into medicine and it's really
Speaker 2: to the detriment of like what we're trying to do,
Speaker 2: and it's impossible to see your patient as a person
Speaker 2: with a mechanistic framework. So I think the way that
Speaker 2: this happens, which I've talked about before, is that you know,
Speaker 2: I get how that happens. I think a lot of
Speaker 2: young people, which is right, they come into medicine and
Speaker 2: they do want to take care of people, like they say,
Speaker 2: I want to take care of people. People matter. I
Speaker 2: guess saw my grandma got sick, I saw how she
Speaker 2: was treated. I want to do things differently, right, And
Speaker 2: they're very idealistic, which is good. And then they come
Speaker 2: into medicine and there is so much science to learn
Speaker 2: your receptors. You're from acology, right, like your histology, and
Speaker 2: what happens is you know, I always I always tell students,
Speaker 2: you know, think about the first time you look at
Speaker 2: something under the microscope, maybe when you were a kid,
Speaker 2: like an old fashioned microscope when you have to close
Speaker 2: one eye, and I say, you know, we'll wonder what
Speaker 2: you looked at. Maybe it was a slice of an
Speaker 2: onion off your mom's counter, or a drop of pond
Speaker 2: water or a splash of blood. You know what has to
Speaker 2: happen for you to look into the microscope, Well, you
Speaker 2: have to close one eye right, and that one open
Speaker 2: eye becomes like a scientific or technical or mechanic lens.
Speaker 2: And what you see under that microscope is totally beautiful.
Speaker 2: But now I always tell them, now what you pick yourself?
Speaker 2: Like looking up and gazing at a patient like lying
Speaker 2: in the bed in front of you, who's like saying
Speaker 2: to you, as a doctor, please help me, Like what
Speaker 2: do you have to do to take care of him? Well,
Speaker 2: you actually have to see him with both eyes open.
Speaker 2: Medicine has to be a both eyes open type of
Speaker 2: vocation to see the person in the bed as actually
Speaker 2: a person, not just like a bag of receptors. And
Speaker 2: that other eye, I would say, is your antidote to
Speaker 2: the mechanic eye. If she a scientific eye, it's the
Speaker 2: I would say, the moral eye, your religious eye, your
Speaker 2: ethical eye, your spiritual eye. But what happens I get it.
Speaker 2: You're so busy in med school because it takes so
Speaker 2: much time honing that scientific or technical lens, that the
Speaker 2: other eye becomes like atrophied or sometimes God forbid, you're
Speaker 2: told you better not open that eye and his work
Speaker 2: because that eye is nonsense, it's mythology, it's nonsense. It's
Speaker 2: going to get in the way of what you need
Speaker 2: to do. Right. So, then, but you're not going to
Speaker 2: see with that one eye. You're not going to see.
Speaker 2: You can't see that person as an image bearer of
Speaker 2: God with your scientific eye. You need the other eye
Speaker 2: to give that binocular vision to this person in front
Speaker 2: of you. So that person lying in the bed isn't
Speaker 2: just a messy organism. But you know, a person, someone's mother, sister,
Speaker 2: like love, her best friend like that. That's what people
Speaker 2: deserve to be seen in the fullness if they are,
Speaker 2: and you need both, like you need your scientific eye.
Speaker 2: I need to have my scientific eye to be a
Speaker 2: medicine physician, right, but I also in the fullness of
Speaker 2: what I do, so for me to maintain meaning in
Speaker 2: the work that I do, so I don't become a
Speaker 2: burnt out machine, and so the person isn't seen as
Speaker 2: a machine. I knew that second. I and medicine just
Speaker 2: doesn't do a good job honing that eye because I
Speaker 2: invoke some you know, spicy questions of meaning and right
Speaker 2: worldview and transcending goods and the divine that medicine doesn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of literacy around. But yes, I have
Speaker 2: a very big interest in language, and I think this
Speaker 2: machine language is bad and it's a threat to our anthropology,
Speaker 2: especially as Christians that people are made in God. And
Speaker 2: what last thing to say about that is, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, there's more and more adoption of machines into
Speaker 2: our daily lives of some way, and I think the
Speaker 2: threat isn't that we're going to start to see the
Speaker 2: machines as human beings, but we're going to start to
Speaker 2: see ourselves as machines. Right, That's the anthropological crisis that
Speaker 2: I see. So someone who cares about and writes a
Speaker 2: lot about lately, like Christian anthropology, that to me is
Speaker 2: the biggest thing. And I was just starting to understand
Speaker 2: what that meant when I wrote that white Coat talk
Speaker 2: about we are not machines. As I was coming out
Speaker 2: of this idea, I've seeing myself as a machine and
Speaker 2: seeing my patients as a machine, and like the way
Speaker 2: that that was leading me down a bad path, not
Speaker 2: only did the patients deserve to be seen not as machines,
Speaker 2: but when I started to see myself as a machine, right,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's a that's a disregards my own dignity.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, and you talk about how you know, task
Speaker 1: completion is not care and I experienced that intimately because
Speaker 1: as I got older, you know, our bodies are noisy,
Speaker 1: and I'm a very totally tuned person, so you notice everything.
Speaker 1: And then as I got older, I started to get
Speaker 1: to become a hypochondriac. And then I said, you know,
Speaker 1: the enemy is the doctor, right, and that can be
Speaker 1: true because some of you in your profession are a
Speaker 1: little too you know, this is it. And they failed
Speaker 1: to see me as a person who I hay, these
Speaker 1: problems are whatever. And I finally found a doctor who
Speaker 1: he opened with. You know, I told him my whole story,
Speaker 1: and I've developed type of chondria. As I get older,
Speaker 1: you know, I get white coat. And he just he
Speaker 1: started by saying, I'm glad you're here. And he told
Speaker 1: me a fear that he has like that. I thought, really,
Speaker 1: you've got that. And then you think, well, okay, somebody
Speaker 1: might think that it's ridiculous. That I'm scared of X. Well,
Speaker 1: he just told me that he's scared of why and
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, I'm not. Well, that's it. And and
Speaker 1: we both saw each other and he just kept saying,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're here. We put too many labels on things,
Speaker 1: and we went through and I still don't like going
Speaker 1: to the doctor. Sure, But while some people are different,
Speaker 1: my wife she's a champer. I mean, she she went
Speaker 1: through everything and and and she just she always says,
Speaker 1: I'm I hope that I die before you because I
Speaker 1: don't want to take care of you if you're ever seen.
Speaker 1: But I really, really I'm glad that you're out there
Speaker 1: putting that into the universe, that the task completion is
Speaker 1: not care. We are more than lab work.
Speaker 2: That's right, That's right. Like I so someone I said,
Speaker 2: it was very interesting. In narrative medicine, we had a
Speaker 2: session with our medical students this week and it was
Speaker 2: about care of veteran patients and we talked about the
Speaker 2: high rate of PTSD AMONGST veterans MST, which is military
Speaker 2: sexual trauma for women veterans. We talked about high risks
Speaker 2: of you know, suicidality, especially the first year back we
Speaker 2: talked about how there is no like lab test for trauma, right,
Speaker 2: there is no scan that I can run on somebody
Speaker 2: to like understand who they are or like what they've
Speaker 2: been through. And so the most important I think, especially
Speaker 2: in our age of like we have we have a
Speaker 2: you know, pet CT and an MRI and a full
Speaker 2: body scan, and we have all these like biological markers
Speaker 2: like those can be helpful if we understand how to
Speaker 2: use them. But still the most important tool that I
Speaker 2: have for liken nderstanding what's going on with my patient
Speaker 2: actually is story. You know, and read a share on
Speaker 2: Who's the Mother narrative us and says right that like
Speaker 2: medicine should be centered around story. It's the only way
Speaker 2: that I can like take you know, when a patient
Speaker 2: has a symptom or a concern or a fear, they
Speaker 2: often come to see me about just being able to
Speaker 2: like offload that burden and for me to absorb it
Speaker 2: in story and to carry it like again, help share
Speaker 2: this burden of this worry and then we can process
Speaker 2: it together. But for many of these things, the only
Speaker 2: way I can uncover what's happening with them and know
Speaker 2: who they are and then understanding because I know who
Speaker 2: they are. I mean, I've had my patience for twenty
Speaker 2: five years, so I do know who they are, and
Speaker 2: I know what their their goals are and what we
Speaker 2: struggled with, and then I can understand like what ares
Speaker 2: most to them and how we should proceed, and like
Speaker 2: there's no algorithm that can tell me that, there's no
Speaker 2: chat GBT that can tell me what to do, there's nothing,
Speaker 2: there's no scan that tells me right, it's through stories.
Speaker 2: So we cannot marginalize the importance of how medicine you
Speaker 2: should be considered as like two moral agents coming together
Speaker 2: in this covenant of sorts, exchanging stories and seeing each
Speaker 2: other as two persons, and that if we need to
Speaker 2: use some machines right as a scan or something, that's fine,
Speaker 2: but they should not ever come in the way of
Speaker 2: those two people coming together. So I saw I speak
Speaker 2: a lot about AI lately, and there was a diagram
Speaker 2: that I'll show, which I think is so disturbing. Actually
Speaker 2: it's from a prestigious journal, and it shows AI as
Speaker 2: like a partner in healthcare, and instead of just the
Speaker 2: patient and the physician, there's like a triangle and it's
Speaker 2: like the AI, the patient and the physician and it's
Speaker 2: like this triangle and I was like, no, no, no, no, Like,
Speaker 2: anytime you put something into that sacred dynamic, we should
Speaker 2: be really sure we understand, like what is happening there,
Speaker 2: because that is probably one of the most sacred dynamics
Speaker 2: that there are. I would say, I mean husband and wife,
Speaker 2: obviously mom and baby, but physician location is pretty sacred too,
Speaker 2: and I think we need to be really careful about
Speaker 2: who or what gets in the way of that because
Speaker 2: that is something that is precious and we should safeguard that,
Speaker 2: just like we safeguard marriage. Right. So yeah, I'm very
Speaker 2: worried about, you know, sort of like. There's this piece
Speaker 2: and First Things I think a few years ago that
Speaker 2: I love, and it talks about the machine apocalypse, and
Speaker 2: the writer talks about how, you know, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: my day when we grew up and there were movies
Speaker 2: about the apocalypse, it was like this big fiery, you know, explosion.
Speaker 2: One day, everything just blit up right and blew up.
Speaker 2: And he says something like, but what if actually the
Speaker 2: apocalypse comes so slowly that we don't notice it, and
Speaker 2: then it's like this chip chip chip chipping away of
Speaker 2: our anthropology, and I was like, yep, that's what it is, right.
Speaker 2: It starts with the machine language, and then it starts
Speaker 2: by like making us have affection for machines by anthromorphizing
Speaker 2: them in like movies. Then it comes with like starting
Speaker 2: to see ourselves in our neighbor's machine, and then glorifying machines,
Speaker 2: and the language changes and the anthropology changes, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden we have paved the way for like
Speaker 2: a post human future, right, and the techno grows like
Speaker 2: are winning? Right? It just becomes like the slow chipping
Speaker 2: away of like what is a human person? What does
Speaker 2: it need to be human? And this machine ideology is
Speaker 2: I think the way that that that's happening, and I
Speaker 2: think we should be very thoughtful to God against that,
Speaker 2: because again, image bearers of gods are not machines, and
Speaker 2: they never will be right.
Speaker 1: We're not machines.
Speaker 2: We're not machines.
Speaker 1: So I became aware of you through your walkout, your
Speaker 1: white coat walkout, and that stuck with me, and I
Speaker 1: told you it's a beautiful speech. Anybody YouTube it whatever,
Speaker 1: It's well worth twenty minutes, you know. I had it
Speaker 1: in my head and then I I actually listened to
Speaker 1: it after I contact you, I remember why I liked
Speaker 1: this so much with me, but a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: you know, it just popped into my head and I thought,
Speaker 1: what's she too? And I am not in your field
Speaker 1: and I'm not I told you my first d was
Speaker 1: in high school biology. It's not something that I generally
Speaker 1: look into for fun. And I looked at it and
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, that is fascinating. And I actually got
Speaker 1: into science for you know, as deep as I could get,
Speaker 1: which you do a good job at bringing the cookies
Speaker 1: down to the bottom shelf. But I started to read
Speaker 1: into your work on relational biology and it floored me.
Speaker 1: I meant, this is interesting on so many different levels.
Speaker 1: Could you just explain, as if you're talking to me
Speaker 1: and my family here, young kids, what relational biology is?
Speaker 2: Sure? And before I say that, also, just because I
Speaker 2: was so lucky after the white cut walkout, that Public
Speaker 2: Discourse reached out to me and offered to write up
Speaker 2: my kind of written version of my talk in the
Speaker 2: public domain. Is also it's also on public discourse for
Speaker 2: people who are more of a reader and not a
Speaker 2: listener to YouTube, and I talk is there too, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I am fascinated with relational biology, and it's it's
Speaker 2: around this idea again that we are not fully alive
Speaker 2: by ourselves, and that God in his own relationality. If
Speaker 2: we think about trinitarian theology, but also the fact that
Speaker 2: we are only known because we are sons and daughters
Speaker 2: of God, and we are creative by God's purchased into relation.
Speaker 2: That if God himself is relational in his person, which
Speaker 2: he is number one, and if He is the creator
Speaker 2: of all of our science, including our biology, then we
Speaker 2: shouldn't be a surprised, I guess to say and to
Speaker 2: understand that we are relational even on to the level
Speaker 2: of ourselves. And I think that's so beautiful. And relational
Speaker 2: biology is definitely manifest in many ways. The ways that
Speaker 2: I have written about it. The most I'm most in it,
Speaker 2: especially as a mother, is around the maternal fetal medicine
Speaker 2: and maternal fetal biology. So the the paradigmatic example of
Speaker 2: relational biology is between mom and baby and their relationship.
Speaker 2: So briefly, what happens in a relation of biological constructor
Speaker 2: there is that we know that early on in pregnancy
Speaker 2: that baby and mom share each other's cells. So, for example,
Speaker 2: the baby will send some of their cells across the
Speaker 2: placenta and go into maternal circulation, and those cells insert
Speaker 2: into mothers various organs and tissues and they start acting
Speaker 2: like the cells around them, and like any good relationship,
Speaker 2: some of the mom cells across across the placenta and
Speaker 2: go into the baby. And what happens is that, you know,
Speaker 2: those cells are like you know, if you think about
Speaker 2: the baby cells that go into the mom, Yeah, they
Speaker 2: are half mom, but they are like but also from
Speaker 2: a distinct person. Yeah, the mother's immune system doesn't attack
Speaker 2: those cells and actually allows those cells to integrate into
Speaker 2: tissues and those cells start working like the cells around them.
Speaker 2: That is like radical mutuality at like a cellular level,
Speaker 2: you know. And it's one thing I think for me
Speaker 2: to think about boy, you know, as a mom, I
Speaker 2: if I'm out and traveling or I'm met with my boys,
Speaker 2: to think about like that I have cells for my
Speaker 2: boys and my body. But the fact that those cells
Speaker 2: are like active and working inside me is like such
Speaker 2: a beautiful like relational gift from God. So for example,
Speaker 2: we know that you know, these cells have different ways
Speaker 2: that they work. So for example, it's been shown for example,
Speaker 2: if a woman has a cesarean section, that those cells
Speaker 2: from the baby will migrate to that side of injury
Speaker 2: and start making collagen with the mother's body to help
Speaker 2: her heal from her wound from her sea section. Like
Speaker 2: it's just amazing, you know, And you know, I think
Speaker 2: again getting back to my definition of health that I
Speaker 2: think is being sold that I told you about earlier,
Speaker 2: that like, we are these radical automatons, radically autonomous people
Speaker 2: who are solo and unencumbered. This science of what's called
Speaker 2: maternal fetal microchimerism migochimerism is the presence of a distinct
Speaker 2: amount of cells of a different person in someone else's body.
Speaker 2: So this maternal feal microchimerism that it's called really throws
Speaker 2: that radically autonomous view of ourselves and our biology up
Speaker 2: on its head because in reality, actually we are not solo,
Speaker 2: radical people walking around fully autonomous. But the reality of
Speaker 2: biology shows us that actually many human beings are walking
Speaker 2: around with fromants of other human beings in their bodies,
Speaker 2: and that's radical. My favorite example of it actually is
Speaker 2: there's a book called mom Genes g. E. N E. S.
Speaker 2: And the book, the author talks about how there was
Speaker 2: a story of a woman who's one lobe of her liver,
Speaker 2: which was damn wage, was totally rebuilt by these fetal
Speaker 2: cells in her body. And the story was made even
Speaker 2: more poignant because the baby had been killed through an abortion.
Speaker 2: And again, like it's this idea that like, you know,
Speaker 2: none of us are biologically like we think of ourselves
Speaker 2: these these biologically separate people, but so many of us
Speaker 2: have cells in our bodies from other people. And it's
Speaker 2: just a beautiful, beautiful, I think picture of the relationality
Speaker 2: of God and how he designed our bodies and created
Speaker 2: ourselves to be relational, not just the macro level like
Speaker 2: we talked about in relationships and marriage and cancer outcomes,
Speaker 2: or there have been really cool studies that show actually
Speaker 2: that the most important thing that can product a person
Speaker 2: from getting delirious in the hospital when they're sick, it's
Speaker 2: actually a presence of a loved one at the bedside
Speaker 2: more than an iPad. And technologies like the body we
Speaker 2: ourselves are gift and relationally therapeutic agents in our own selves.
Speaker 2: And also the level of the cell through the mom
Speaker 2: and babies exchange of cells, and we think that those
Speaker 2: cells actually influence later, our mother's risk of reduced to
Speaker 2: risk of cancer. It's certain the brain, right, and we
Speaker 2: know women's brains are changed after pregnancy. And like any
Speaker 2: good relationship, the cells from the mother come into the baby,
Speaker 2: and we think that these cells can be responsible for
Speaker 2: spacing out of future siblings, can actually be the signal
Speaker 2: for like lactation. And because the cells go back and
Speaker 2: forth like that second, if the mother were to get
Speaker 2: pregnant again, right, some of the cells from the baby,
Speaker 2: first child, right, go back across the placenta, so siblings
Speaker 2: can share cells. And you know, it creates these like
Speaker 2: intergenerational cellular sharing. It's so cool to me. And when
Speaker 2: I first read about this, because there's many there are
Speaker 2: many articles I've written about this topic for Notre Dame's
Speaker 2: Church Life Journal, but there's a lot of like PubMed
Speaker 2: our scientific articles on the hard signs of beautifultural micro Marizona.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of it in like late publications
Speaker 2: like The Atlantic and such. And when I started researching
Speaker 2: this topic, I was like, you know, I've had I'm
Speaker 2: a scientist, right, I'm a doctor. I study biology. I've
Speaker 2: had four children. I never once heard about this topic
Speaker 2: ever in any of my pregnancies and MOBI visits and
Speaker 2: any of my scientific study. Why is that? You know?
Speaker 2: And I can guess why that is, but like, that's
Speaker 2: just a shame, you know, because again, thinking about stat.
Speaker 1: I want to know why is that? Because when I
Speaker 1: came into it, I thought, why have I never heard.
Speaker 2: You hadn't heard about it either, Yeah, And I.
Speaker 1: Was floored by it. I mean, there's so many different
Speaker 1: directions that it can go in in terms of that's interesting,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, that's very interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting. I think probably the reason well, I
Speaker 2: mean so I sometimes we'll give a talk to on
Speaker 2: this topic, and it's probably the most don't because I'm
Speaker 2: not a pastor. I want to use this to criminally,
Speaker 2: but it's probably the most pastorally therapeutic talk that I
Speaker 2: give because usually there's someone in the audience who comes
Speaker 2: up with me after and be like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: like I lost my baby or I lost my child,
Speaker 2: and I always sense them I maybe was still with me,
Speaker 2: but now I know from biology from science that they are,
Speaker 2: you know. And I think that if we I think
Speaker 2: we really truly in the public narrative and in the
Speaker 2: scientific narrative fully acknowledged the beautiful reality of the mother
Speaker 2: baby relationship. It would make it would make practices like
Speaker 2: abortion harder to accept. I think the more that we
Speaker 2: can marginalize the dignity of our prenatal sisters and brothers,
Speaker 2: the easier it is for us to discard them as
Speaker 2: part of throwaway culture. So I think the narrative is
Speaker 2: just inconvenient to the academy to highlight and what happens
Speaker 2: then is amazing things like pregnancy, and amazing you know,
Speaker 2: other realms of our science become disenchanted, you know. I
Speaker 2: know Mac Swevera is sort of the person I think
Speaker 2: about when I think about this enchantment. But it's true.
Speaker 2: If we start disenchanting some of the most enchanting experiences
Speaker 2: of our lives, like pregnancy, that's just a real shame,
Speaker 2: you know. And moms deserve to understand really what's happening,
Speaker 2: you know, in their person and their bodies with pregnancy
Speaker 2: and feedo. Maternal mega chimerasm is such a beautiful thing,
Speaker 2: you know. So I'm glad more people are writing about it.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that it's getting out there a bit, but
Speaker 2: as yeah, it's it's it's again I think if we
Speaker 2: if we think about though, from where this comes. It
Speaker 2: comes from the Lord who designed us to be in relationship,
Speaker 2: not just again at the level of our bodies, but
Speaker 2: the level of ourselves. And this feedom maternal mega chimerasm
Speaker 2: is just one example of that. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: many of them, but I think that's such a beautiful one.
Speaker 1: When it's just majestic. I mean, it really is, like
Speaker 1: I said it was, it was such a treat because
Speaker 1: oh ah, and then I started reading it, I almost
Speaker 1: didn't believe it.
Speaker 2: I think, no, I know, people think that's I made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I get you, yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, pregnancy and the child, and I just I was
Speaker 1: in awe. And it's It's what I say every time
Speaker 1: I see an infant, you know, yeah, with her infantry.
Speaker 1: I always tell them this should never become normal. We
Speaker 1: should this should never become commonplace in our conception, like oh,
Speaker 1: just every baby is a miracle, and in this relationship,
Speaker 1: this synergy that you're talking about. Another thing that i'd
Speaker 1: never heard of before I knew and I was talking
Speaker 1: to my wife and she was I didn't know that either,
Speaker 1: is that the placenta is the only organ in the
Speaker 1: human body that's created by both by two people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So the placenta is what's called a FETO
Speaker 2: maternal organ because it's the only organ that is created
Speaker 2: by two people and shared by two people. And again,
Speaker 2: like with when I think about divine providence is also
Speaker 2: obviously created by the Lord, but thinking about the two
Speaker 2: people of the mother and baby, it's a shared organ.
Speaker 2: It's the only organ that's made by two people in
Speaker 2: cooperation and shared by two people. Yeah, And I sometimes
Speaker 2: when I talk about I talk I like talking about
Speaker 2: those Santa which is a very very like nerd niche thing.
Speaker 2: But sometimes when I when I when I'm talking about it,
Speaker 2: I'll use the slide of the Sistine Chapel ceiling of
Speaker 2: like man reaching out for God, right and their fingers
Speaker 2: are touching. That's what happens in early pregnancy actually, is
Speaker 2: the mom and baby are like reaching out for each other,
Speaker 2: and they're like making this placenta, which is this shared
Speaker 2: organ through which they interface and belongs to both of them.
Speaker 2: It's really beautiful. Again, that's part of the relational biology.
Speaker 2: So sometimes I'll talk about that in conjunction with FETO
Speaker 2: material microplimism. Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 1: Well, it's cool, and it's interesting, and it's it's like
Speaker 1: I said, it's majestic, and the whole concept of you know,
Speaker 1: we recently experienced the miscarriage, and so I had a
Speaker 1: talk about it. We actually did a podcast on it,
Speaker 1: because I think that we don't talk enough about it,
Speaker 1: and like and when we don't talk about it, similar
Speaker 1: to the way that we don't talk about death, it
Speaker 1: becomes mythological in a lot of ways, where like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you and I would both agree that at
Speaker 1: the moment of conception, that's an eternal soul. And if
Speaker 1: your child died two years after you gave birth to it,
Speaker 1: you you you wouldn't. Oh well there goes like I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell anybody. And even to the point
Speaker 1: where I mean, this was controversial for some people. My
Speaker 1: parents always counted the miscarriage for sure, always well, you know, so,
Speaker 1: how many kids do you have? Nine to the point
Speaker 1: where when and I never did count it as a
Speaker 1: sibling because I felt uncomfortable cultural my wife. It's like,
Speaker 1: your parents keep saying they have this amount of kids,
Speaker 1: but I'm doing the math and I don't. There's one
Speaker 1: missing woman now, and I think that the way that
Speaker 1: we talk about things matters and totally anthropologically what we believe.
Speaker 1: Acknowledging that that child is a child, and then the
Speaker 1: story that you told about boarded child healing the mother, right,
Speaker 1: I think only further elucidates that reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean so much there. Yes, I'm sorry
Speaker 2: about the loss of your child, and I agree that
Speaker 2: is one of those things about how we think about.
Speaker 2: One of my main questions in medicine that I have
Speaker 2: is like who do we count within our moral sphere
Speaker 2: of concern? Like who is in our who is on ours?
Speaker 2: You know, the group of the we, and what are
Speaker 2: we based on on? And I do think so. I've
Speaker 2: heard from so many women. Layelabresko, sergeant I mentioned before,
Speaker 2: has talked about this and written about this, that she's
Speaker 2: had several miscarriages and she does not feel like to
Speaker 2: send in particular sort of counts the loss of those
Speaker 2: human beings. When sometime she goes into visits and she
Speaker 2: talks about her miscarriage history is anything like significant because
Speaker 2: Madison oftentimes really sort of has this paradigm, well that's
Speaker 2: just a clump of cells, or it's a potential person.
Speaker 2: Really wasn't a full person yet or wasn't just like
Speaker 2: a heavy period or you know, and actually, like so
Speaker 2: many moms know that thoughts that's their baby that they lost,
Speaker 2: just and said, just like if they were to lost
Speaker 2: a baby two weeks postpartum. And before I was a Christian,
Speaker 2: I remember hearing people say, and I've asked them sometimes
Speaker 2: how many children you have? And someone we would say, well,
Speaker 2: I have nine, and you know five five with me
Speaker 2: and five are with the Lord. And I was like,
Speaker 2: what does that mean? Like, you know, I was like,
Speaker 2: that's crazy to me, right, But now I know that
Speaker 2: that's true again, and again why this matters? It matters
Speaker 2: a lot, right because again thinking about mourning the loss
Speaker 2: of our prenatal children or postnatal children and community and
Speaker 2: not having to go through that alone and normalizing these
Speaker 2: topics right that are really hard, and being able to
Speaker 2: shoulder the burden of infertility or pregnancy loss or miscarriage
Speaker 2: with others and understanding again like there are ways to
Speaker 2: do that well. But also, as you said, the spillover
Speaker 2: about yes, how do we see, right a two hour
Speaker 2: old member of Homo sapiens who was created in a
Speaker 2: lab through IVF or how do we think about an
Speaker 2: early stage miscarriage. Right. So again, if we believe that
Speaker 2: which was not a religious claim, actually there's a scientific
Speaker 2: claim that it's true that a new member of Homo
Speaker 2: sapiens begins at fertilization, you know, then that gives a
Speaker 2: lot of clarity to give us a lot of clarity
Speaker 2: about ethical topics like not just miscarriage an abortion, but
Speaker 2: IVF and a sister reductive technologies. So yes, the way
Speaker 2: we think about things matter, and Lessie I'll say about
Speaker 2: thinking about abortion and relationship in particular is that I
Speaker 2: started putting that practice as someone who was militantly pro
Speaker 2: choice for forty some years, and now I think about
Speaker 2: abortion in a different way. But about you know, is
Speaker 2: abortion health care? You know? And again putting it through
Speaker 2: the frame of a right relationship, I would say, I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of reasons I could say that abortion
Speaker 2: does not health care, but through right relationship, it's a
Speaker 2: destroyer of relationships. Abortion destroys the most valued relationships that
Speaker 2: there are between mother and baby, father and baby, grandparents
Speaker 2: and baby society, baby, and actually the right relationship between
Speaker 2: health care provider and baby in nocoherent model of health care,
Speaker 2: would I say that myself, as a physician, should aim
Speaker 2: directly at the life of one of those patients in
Speaker 2: the room and call that healthcare. I once heard thinking
Speaker 2: about health as relationship and pregnancy and abortion, that the
Speaker 2: reason that society sometimes feels off and lonely sometimes is
Speaker 2: that we're literally missing millions of people who should have
Speaker 2: been here, but they're not because they've been aborted, and
Speaker 2: we feel our absence from time to time. Again, that's
Speaker 2: that health is relationship, right, So yeah, I do think
Speaker 2: the way we think about, talk about, and acknowledge our
Speaker 2: prenatal children matters.
Speaker 1: Yes, so my mom had seven children, naturally, she's adopted others,
Speaker 1: and she had one miscarriage that we know of, so
Speaker 1: eighty would you say that it's true that my mother
Speaker 1: still has cells from all eight of us in her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, science would support that she has cells from all
Speaker 2: of you guys that she carried in her body. Yeah,
Speaker 2: lost or not. Yeah, miscarriage or brought to life birth
Speaker 2: is not beautiful.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. This can't be true. This feels
Speaker 1: like I didn't like it seems like mythology. Yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 1: haven't we heard this. I mean, like I said, I
Speaker 1: am not scientifically minded. So the fact that something scientific
Speaker 1: like really grabs you grabbed me.
Speaker 2: It's such a topic that grabs so many people, men
Speaker 2: and women alike. And again for people who want to
Speaker 2: read about it, I wrote about it Interurch Life Journal
Speaker 2: that I love. I didn't give the top the title
Speaker 2: to the topic. The editor does, but the topic the
Speaker 2: piece is called you know, there are human beings carrying
Speaker 2: remitts of other human beings in their bodies and specifically
Speaker 2: about this topic. But yeah, it's a beautiful topic. And
Speaker 2: I love what you keep saying. The word awe, I
Speaker 2: think right, and I think right when we have a
Speaker 2: sense of awe and wonder like that, it really is
Speaker 2: a type of worship. Right, we should like be falling
Speaker 2: to our knees about how beautiful that this, that this
Speaker 2: is because it didn't you know, God doesn't didn't have
Speaker 2: to create things this way, but he did, and we
Speaker 2: should like have on wonder and beauty about how beautiful
Speaker 2: these topics are. I you know, after my Christian baptism,
Speaker 2: I obviously saw things in a different way. And I
Speaker 2: remember going after early on after baptism, went to Grand Rounds,
Speaker 2: which is our scientific conference in the Department of Medicine
Speaker 2: every Friday, and it's usually a pretty dry basic science talk,
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, people, you know, depending on your
Speaker 2: level of interest in hard science, people's interests in these
Speaker 2: topics vary, of course. But I remember going to one
Speaker 2: of the topics and it was a it was a
Speaker 2: basic science researcher who studied the adrenal gland and the
Speaker 2: dream glands are these glands that sit on top of
Speaker 2: the kidney, and his lifetime of research actually was just
Speaker 2: on this one receptor on the adrenal land. And he
Speaker 2: showed it like a like a picture of what the
Speaker 2: sort of schematic of this receptor looked like and all
Speaker 2: these other things that had to like intersect with the
Speaker 2: receptor and what that receptor turned on, and that this
Speaker 2: this protein that was made and this this sort of
Speaker 2: sort of you know, scaffolding of like cellular sort of
Speaker 2: activation that happened as a result of this receptor. And
Speaker 2: it was just like this one receptor on this one
Speaker 2: gland that nobody thinks about. And I honestly, someone started
Speaker 2: crying in the audience, you know, and I'm like, I
Speaker 2: have through so many talks like this as a Zionis
Speaker 2: and just been like whatever, but this is like I
Speaker 2: feel like worshipping right now. It's so beautiful and that's
Speaker 2: just one receptor and you have never heard of and
Speaker 2: you don't even think about and you will never know
Speaker 2: if I talk about it, like what it even does.
Speaker 2: And it's crazy. And I was like, oh my god, literally,
Speaker 2: oh my god. You know. Yeah, so again this enchanting
Speaker 2: people like, well, doesn't your faith take away I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 2: that my faith has caused me to see my scientific
Speaker 2: work in like technicolor. You know. Thank God. Right now
Speaker 2: I have the two wings, so I'm not just the
Speaker 2: one winged person put myself around in a circle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, glory to God and and and so I told
Speaker 1: you this is very interesting on its own. But then
Speaker 1: I started thinking, wait a minute, if this is true,
Speaker 1: then it gets even more interesting when you think about
Speaker 1: Jesus and the relationship that he has r with his mother.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean you used the word theotokos. Yeah, where did
Speaker 1: that language come from for you?
Speaker 2: So when I I think it was twenty seventeen or eighteen,
Speaker 2: so a couple of years after my Christian baptism, I
Speaker 2: was invited to be part of a group at Notre
Speaker 2: Dame about their life and like human Dignity program, and
Speaker 2: they at the time they would get felt like life
Speaker 2: fellows together. And these were scholars from different fields, and
Speaker 2: they were like I think eight of us in that cohort.
Speaker 2: We came down to North Dame several times a year
Speaker 2: and we just had to like work on a project
Speaker 2: that affirmed life issues. And so my project was feedo
Speaker 2: Maternal microcrimeras. And that's how I worked on that, you know,
Speaker 2: project for like a year and was able to develop
Speaker 2: it and write about it and such. It was the
Speaker 2: only I think I was the only medical doctor. They
Speaker 2: were like theologians and philosophers and humanitarian professors and priests
Speaker 2: and people from different fields. So anyway, so I, you know,
Speaker 2: had just my baptized. My theological doledge was very poor.
Speaker 2: I knew a lot about science, and I was like
Speaker 2: writing up this piece, and as part of our work,
Speaker 2: we had like workshop the piece, you know, with the group,
Speaker 2: and so I was pitching my talk and I still remember,
Speaker 2: I still can remember where he was standing because it
Speaker 2: also hit me like a ton of bricks. It was
Speaker 2: Bill Madison, who's a theologian and he was at Notre Dame,
Speaker 2: and Bill was like, Kristin, Wow, He's like, can you
Speaker 2: think about the implications that this would have for right,
Speaker 2: for Jesus and the Blessed Mother. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: my goodness, right, rights, how beautiful? Right, and really again,
Speaker 2: as a non Catholic person even thinking about this idea
Speaker 2: of like the importance it would hold for Catholics around,
Speaker 2: you know, taking in the Eucharist and the thinking about
Speaker 2: the Body of Christ and thinking about the relationship between
Speaker 2: the Blessed mothers, someone who's highly exalted as she should be,
Speaker 2: and her son. It's really beautiful. So yeah, so you know,
Speaker 2: then started thinking about this the god Bearer and the Theotokis,
Speaker 2: and I was asked to write a piece specifically on
Speaker 2: the theological implications is a Nobulo Jenio was like, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of like with all humility, tried to do the
Speaker 2: best I could with it. But by the theological implications
Speaker 2: of the god Bearer or the Theotokis carrying the souls of
Speaker 2: Jesus with her forever and ever, and that was written up.
Speaker 2: It was so cool. It was written up actually for
Speaker 2: a Christmas edition of a magazine in Spain. A couple
Speaker 2: of years ago, and it was so fun to work
Speaker 2: on because I really got to explore that specific dimension
Speaker 2: of the blessed mother having the cels of the you know,
Speaker 2: of the incarnate son Lord Jesus Christ in her body.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it's it's beautiful, it's amazing. And again,
Speaker 2: thinking of my pre Christian bias that Christianity was a faith,
Speaker 2: I used to think that was anti woman. Now understanding
Speaker 2: actually that the role of women in the Bible and
Speaker 2: the fact that like God didn't have to do it
Speaker 2: this way, but he chose a woman to like carry
Speaker 2: you know, the incarnate logos and to be born at
Speaker 2: the person of Jesus Christ through through a woman. And
Speaker 2: actually again as a scientist, hopefully I'm not embarrassing you,
Speaker 2: but also so like through the uterus, like the Uterus
Speaker 2: is like a redeemed space like held the son of God, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's amazing, and like like wow, like so cool,
Speaker 2: so cool. So yeah, so that's such a cool topic.
Speaker 1: There is your reverent language used to describe and you say,
Speaker 1: I think it's a response to uh, Catholicism a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. Is this kind of anti Mary bias? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was merely a vessel. Yeah, well, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: your science I mean outside of the I think I
Speaker 1: anytime I watch my wife pregnant or anyone pregnant, right right,
Speaker 1: there's no vessel this scenario. I mean, that's intimate, no
Speaker 1: matter what I mean, no matter how how reptilian you
Speaker 1: might think you are, that is an intimate and as
Speaker 1: you're ey, a synergistic relationship. But then, what are the
Speaker 1: theological implications? I mean, what did you say?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well before before I forget on that, the thinking
Speaker 2: about the vessel. I think this also is very relevant
Speaker 2: to modern datascourses a bioethicist, because I've been talking out
Speaker 2: lately about commercial circucy and IVF in particular. I just
Speaker 2: sid to Peace published on my quarterly last month about IVF.
Speaker 2: But about sometimes in those conversations you'll hear, for example,
Speaker 2: if a woman is carrying a baby for another person,
Speaker 2: sometimes those languages used, well, it's it's her bond, it's
Speaker 2: my oven, if you've heard that before. So basically, the
Speaker 2: baby is the bond the universe of the oven. Okay,
Speaker 2: and again like that's not scientifically true. There actually is
Speaker 2: this like crossover of the baby's cells and your cells
Speaker 2: like this isn't just some like metal lead box and
Speaker 2: there's like this thing in there that then you just
Speaker 2: you're carrying as a vessel. Right, there's actually this interchange
Speaker 2: of we're not machines there, you know. So again like again,
Speaker 2: how I'm verydercenting this topic theologically but also you know,
Speaker 2: biothically and practically. Like again, like this idea of this
Speaker 2: sharing of cells I think really comes into our discourse
Speaker 2: around IVF, surrogacy, pregnancy, but even around pregnancy, sometimes abortion discourse,
Speaker 2: people will say, well, actually abortion is healthcare because you know,
Speaker 2: it restores the woman's body to back what it was before.
Speaker 2: And I was I actually, like, we think those those
Speaker 2: cells actually you're never your body actually, thank god, is
Speaker 2: never the same after pregnancy because we think these cells
Speaker 2: cross very early. But getting back to your question about theology,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I just you know, there are
Speaker 2: many implications for this theology. I just think again about
Speaker 2: you know, the idea. Again I'm very interested and again
Speaker 2: writing this piece right now about sort of the idea
Speaker 2: of like thinking about Protestant theology of the body and
Speaker 2: thinking about the role of the body and the body
Speaker 2: is not incidental at all to Christian doc drin and
Speaker 2: is central to the body. And in our current discourse
Speaker 2: we have a low view of the body and we
Speaker 2: privilege the mind is like the seed of the self
Speaker 2: and all the implications of that whatever. But thinking about
Speaker 2: Jesus's body, you know, and and and and part of
Speaker 2: him being in his mother, you know is Protestants obviously
Speaker 2: we don't. We don't have the same theology of Mary
Speaker 2: as the Catholics do. But again, if we think about
Speaker 2: from Catholic theology, which I'm not a Catholic, soy you
Speaker 2: tread into this space with humility and lightly that you
Speaker 2: know she is forever the theotokis like she is forever
Speaker 2: the God Bearer, because you know in Christian theology she is,
Speaker 2: she is alive and can interest we can you know, Christians,
Speaker 2: can you know go to Mary with intercessory prayer and
Speaker 2: sash and she still is carrying him. For Protestants, we
Speaker 2: don't have that same theology. We shouldn't be afraid to
Speaker 2: exalt the Mother of God. She is. Without her, we
Speaker 2: wouldn't have our Savior in the way that we know
Speaker 2: him to be, is Jesus Christ. But to think again
Speaker 2: that like you know, I think every mother can relate
Speaker 2: to the story and the gospel accounts of a mother
Speaker 2: losing her son and about how Mary obviously did lose
Speaker 2: her son in a way obviously he was resurrected and
Speaker 2: overcame death. But even when you went to go to
Speaker 2: a son to be with the father, that he still
Speaker 2: is with her in this bodily way. And again, like
Speaker 2: there's so much I think the stories of scriptures are
Speaker 2: so meaningful to me just because they remind me Like
Speaker 2: if I read the Psalms, I'm reading stories that people
Speaker 2: have prayed over and cried over for like thousands of years.
Speaker 2: That gives me this historic continuity with grief. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think about women who have lost babies, are people
Speaker 2: who feel distant from their children, even estrange from their
Speaker 2: living children. And I think about there is nothing that
Speaker 2: like the Lord doesn't understand, and that like we, we
Speaker 2: are told so many stories of people who understand in
Speaker 2: the scriptures, and like the blessed mother Mary, like she
Speaker 2: gets maternal grief, she gets maternal separation, and also like
Speaker 2: it's a beautiful reality that she, like us as a
Speaker 2: human being, like had her baby with her like in
Speaker 2: her body. I don't know, I just think about that
Speaker 2: and just think about how it didn't have to be
Speaker 2: that way, and it just helps me. Like, you know,
Speaker 2: I have a high view of Mary even as a Protestant,
Speaker 2: but it just again makes me think about her in
Speaker 2: this way too. That just is like even I don't know,
Speaker 2: more exalted And I hope as a Protestant that's okay to.
Speaker 1: Say, well, that's why I asked you about the language,
Speaker 1: because I tell me, I.
Speaker 2: Can tell somebody who cares about language too, you might
Speaker 2: have an issue with the beotokis I do, Well, that's
Speaker 2: so okay.
Speaker 1: You don't know my story. I grew up in a
Speaker 1: Protestant family and a couple, so I think it's a
Speaker 1: couple of days before my dad was diagnosed with the
Speaker 1: stage fur mantle cellm FOMA. Yeah, he was chrismated into
Speaker 1: the Orthodox Church. So they happened almost together, and so
Speaker 1: I I subsequently have become Orthodox. And when I saw
Speaker 1: that in your writing, I thought, that's not normal.
Speaker 2: That's not normal. I've not and then I started, you know, googling.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is her you know, denominational background or
Speaker 1: like oh yeah, like a yeah, because that's not normal
Speaker 1: and I think the way that you've been discussing it
Speaker 1: is refreshing.
Speaker 2: Okay, hopefully it's not heretical when somebody's refreshing as the
Speaker 2: code for like heresy as a non thelogian. Please, I'm
Speaker 2: open to correction. If you feel like I haven't talked
Speaker 2: about this properly in a theological sense.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not a theologian. I think we're all in progress,
Speaker 1: because I still think that to some degree, I'm recalibrating
Speaker 1: my sense of right reverence for the Theotokus or the
Speaker 1: Mother of God, whatever name, because I did come from
Speaker 1: a very uh let's say that she's just merely a vessel, right,
Speaker 1: a center like the rest of us, nothing special and theologically,
Speaker 1: and now as you're kind of explained biologically, I think
Speaker 1: that that argument gets a lot more difficult to make
Speaker 1: pack deserve and so that I guess that just was
Speaker 1: My question is did this science change the way that
Speaker 1: you thought about the Mother of God?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I know, yeah, I should have actually noticed. I
Speaker 2: wondered about that. I think there's an icon behind you
Speaker 2: that I wondered, actually, after talking to you for a
Speaker 2: few minutes, if you were orthodox, given that beautiful picture
Speaker 2: behind you there's actually an Orthodox icon that is I
Speaker 2: use before I get to your question, that I that
Speaker 2: someone shared with me a few years ago, that I
Speaker 2: use a lot in my talks is actually an Orthodox
Speaker 2: eyded on. It shows actually Jesus Christ portrayed is the
Speaker 2: good Samaritan, and he's literally carrying us on his shoulders.
Speaker 2: And I talk about usually use that that image as
Speaker 2: a way to talk about carrying burdens and how oftentimes
Speaker 2: like carrying burdens in the scriptures is nowhere portrayed as
Speaker 2: something pathetic or something that we should avoid, and instead
Speaker 2: I think of the of Simon of Cyrene carrying the
Speaker 2: cross of Jesus Christ, and then I talk about sort
Speaker 2: of carrying burdens in society and how that's going to
Speaker 2: have to be done if we're going to think about
Speaker 2: having a cultural resistance to things like euthanasia and suicide
Speaker 2: and all of this. Yes, I mean, I think, you
Speaker 2: know the progressive revelation that you know we all are
Speaker 2: given and that I think you know, I love the
Speaker 2: story in the Gospels about how you know, faith comes
Speaker 2: in these stages of sight that we sort of see. Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm so thrilled that you know, because of my thank God,
Speaker 2: interactions with Catholic people and Orthodox brothers and sos, and
Speaker 2: my Catholic brothers and sisters, and people of different traditions
Speaker 2: and scholars that have taken the time to over time
Speaker 2: sort of unfold the ribbon of the faith to me,
Speaker 2: and also people who have been able to help me
Speaker 2: see scientific realities in the work that I do. My
Speaker 2: reverence for sure of the Blessed Mother of the Theotokis
Speaker 2: has only continued to increase. And I, you know, as
Speaker 2: someone who has my feet in some different spaces, I
Speaker 2: don't think, like you know, any tradition like owns this language,
Speaker 2: you know, I think these are concepts hopefully that we
Speaker 2: all can sort of speak about and with humility and
Speaker 2: be able to talk about because they're beautiful. So yes,
Speaker 2: to answer your question, Yes, the theology informs the science,
Speaker 2: and the science to me informs of theology, and they
Speaker 2: are these integrated whole of my binocular vision that's helped
Speaker 2: me to see things, everything, including the Mother of God
Speaker 2: in more technic color. Isn't that great and isn't that beautiful?
Speaker 2: That's the way I think reference and worship shed maybe
Speaker 2: should should progress right to have this continually distantensive enchantment,
Speaker 2: and to not be progressively disenchanted, which I think so many,
Speaker 2: so many people sadly are in that state.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Well, and it it all, you know, it
Speaker 1: happens you use the word gnostic, and I think that
Speaker 1: whether it's theology or you know, whether it's somebody who's
Speaker 1: actively practicing theology or pursuing it in terms of like
Speaker 1: a discipline. Right, but even that, like, you know, my
Speaker 1: dad was often referred to and is still referred to
Speaker 1: as a theologian. And when he joined the church, a
Speaker 1: good friend of ours said, you know, in the West,
Speaker 1: the theologian is somebody who knows a lot about God.
Speaker 1: In the East, we consider a theologian to be somebody
Speaker 1: who knows God. And that's a small distinction with a bigness.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that we can all fall
Speaker 1: prey to this gnostic paradigm where we're just heads on
Speaker 1: sticks and we're just a cue emulating information. And the
Speaker 1: synergy that you're talking about the two wings is really
Speaker 1: important because otherwise we are disenchanted, and we live in
Speaker 1: an enchanted world.
Speaker 2: I mean, totally totally. There's one of my favorite writers
Speaker 2: right now is Mary Harrington. She wrote the book Feminism
Speaker 2: Against Progress, and she talks about how medicine in particular
Speaker 2: has adopted it a sort of an ideology of a
Speaker 2: meat lego gnosticism. She calls it, where our bodies are
Speaker 2: just meat legos and we just move around these legos
Speaker 2: of meat and doesn't have to mind me, like there's
Speaker 2: no man need to move around legos of meat, you know,
Speaker 2: because medicine has this s low view of the body,
Speaker 2: and I think society has becoming a low view of
Speaker 2: the low vy of the body, and how that influences
Speaker 2: our visions of healthcare, our visions of different biotleupal issues,
Speaker 2: our care for ourselves, what we may engage in or
Speaker 2: may not engage in. Yeah, I think nacissism is like
Speaker 2: the worst form of dualism, and that dualism is infected.
Speaker 2: I think some Christians way of thinking about the mind, body,
Speaker 2: soul medicine obviously, and the consequences of that are real,
Speaker 2: as people who encounter each other as living and dying bodies.
Speaker 2: That has a real consequence. This is again, this isn't
Speaker 2: just some idea, but I also I like that distinction
Speaker 2: a ton that I think sometimes our faith can become
Speaker 2: so intellectualized or we're so sort of like in our
Speaker 2: heads that we forget to like, as the young people say,
Speaker 2: gotten like touch grass, like have you stood barefoot on
Speaker 2: your grass today or this week or this month? And
Speaker 2: many of us would be like no, and our ancestors
Speaker 2: wouldn't have even fathomed and that like many of us
Speaker 2: haven't been outside for like weeks, what does that even mean? Right? So,
Speaker 2: I think part of the enchantment that I think, to me,
Speaker 2: I would say, I can't speak for everybody part of
Speaker 2: I'm just looking out and to the creation right now,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, you know, my goodness, Like part of
Speaker 2: the way to protect ourselves from becoming disenchanted is like
Speaker 2: getting out into creation and like putting our feet in
Speaker 2: the grass and like, yeah, as someone who's talking with
Speaker 2: like a lot of books by me, you know, getting
Speaker 2: outside is like to God's creative order, being with his
Speaker 2: people's that's where theologies at, you know, that's how we've
Speaker 2: done like understand, that's how we get to that, as
Speaker 2: you say, not us to know about God, but know him.
Speaker 1: You know, orthodoxy small oh only exists for orthopraxy the
Speaker 1: math is not the territory, and and we mistake it
Speaker 1: for such way too often, like I said, even in
Speaker 1: the faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so true. So we have to keep ourselves
Speaker 2: accountable as Christian brothers and sisters to these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's good. So I have a couple of big questions. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is commitment to reality. Where are we most eager
Speaker 1: to ignore reality?
Speaker 2: I didn't even recognize that that was any of the
Speaker 2: podcast until I was like logging on. I was like,
Speaker 2: that's such an interesting name. You know, a commitment to reality.
Speaker 2: I think that. So to get to your question, I
Speaker 2: think I talk a lot about physician and conscience protection
Speaker 2: and how you know, we all have a conscience that
Speaker 2: we should be able to hone in sobriety, and so
Speaker 2: sometimes I think there's a false idea of what conscience is.
Speaker 2: That's just like this vibe that you have and it's
Speaker 2: just like this you know, whim that you would have,
Speaker 2: or preference like you would have for pistachio ice cream.
Speaker 2: And what I say is actually your conscience. The goal
Speaker 2: of your conscience is that you align your way of
Speaker 2: thinking with the moral structure of reality, is what I
Speaker 2: usually say. And people are like, what does that even mean?
Speaker 2: You know, what is what is Kylie you're talking about?
Speaker 2: That's just like some weird thing. Because why it's weird
Speaker 2: right some people is some people would say that doesn't exist,
Speaker 2: there is no moral structure of reality, right, because that
Speaker 2: sort of assumes that there is like truth, right, that
Speaker 2: there is actually some like non subjective reality and it's bizarre.
Speaker 2: But there are so many people that believe that there
Speaker 2: is no right, objective truth and that reality is like
Speaker 2: whatever you want it to be.
Speaker 1: That's the reason for the season, that's why. That's why
Speaker 1: it's because I thought, I'm looking around me and there
Speaker 1: are so many people that are living out of concert
Speaker 1: with reality, and there's no wonder why we're seeing what
Speaker 1: we're seeing in society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean before I answer, can I ask you
Speaker 2: there must have been something in particular that you thought
Speaker 2: we were like out of touch with the reality. Like
Speaker 2: what when you when you thought about the title the
Speaker 2: momentary reality? Like where did you think people where did
Speaker 2: you think people are most out of touch with reality
Speaker 2: in your space? Well, so this is the title you shows?
Speaker 1: Yes, No, I mean in so many places, I guess
Speaker 1: you know, I alluded to it earlier when I said that,
Speaker 1: I feel like we don't. We aren't forced to ask
Speaker 1: the big existential questions, right that have existed for the attorney,
Speaker 1: that everybody is kind of stared in bed or laid
Speaker 1: out in the field and stared up at the sky
Speaker 1: and wondered why am I here? Who am I? What
Speaker 1: is this? I feel like we're all just kind of
Speaker 1: entertaining ourselves to death thoroughly. We're not. I mean, you
Speaker 1: talk about like the concept of a concrete reality that exists,
Speaker 1: whether you accept it or not, is anathema in our society,
Speaker 1: you know, where it's like no, no, no, no, Dave, you
Speaker 1: have your truth and Kristen has her truth and you
Speaker 1: are not allowed to question it, right, And so I
Speaker 1: mean the reason I stuttered, I probably shouldn't, but it
Speaker 1: just one of the main things that comes to my
Speaker 1: mind is the gender situation where you're forced to say, well,
Speaker 1: now this is now you know, you know, my son
Speaker 1: packs is now Patricia or whatever, and I have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that and not just like they can live that reality,
Speaker 1: but you have to subscribe to that reality, right, right,
Speaker 1: And there's this kind of strange dance that happens. But
Speaker 1: really more than anything. That's where my mind initially went.
Speaker 1: And I know that that's what, but that that that
Speaker 1: is also I think my hesitance on this podcast says
Speaker 1: a lot of because I'm thinking, well, oh, what happens
Speaker 1: when this person listens to it. This person listens to
Speaker 1: like I always knew you were a bigot, and now
Speaker 1: you confirmed it. And and just this this inability to
Speaker 1: discuss hard ideas or reality or the big ideas right
Speaker 1: because it's offensive. Well you you use the phrase the
Speaker 1: cream rises at the top, right, or like somebody, uh
Speaker 1: said something about science to me the other day, well,
Speaker 1: this is why people don't believe science, and I kind
Speaker 1: of well, I said, well, and he'll see you're doing it.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, historically speaking science, science, great scientific
Speaker 1: achievements have always occurred because someone said, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you know there there always took one person to challenge
Speaker 1: the norm and then things change, right, And so all
Speaker 1: that to say I just commitment to reality to me
Speaker 1: really just means like you talk about touching grass, it's
Speaker 1: like grabbing something that will not float away. Because I
Speaker 1: think I just imagine that with all these you know,
Speaker 1: ideas and kind of the creation of identity in any way.
Speaker 1: I just see people floating off into the ether. And
Speaker 1: and I want to live in alignment with reality because
Speaker 1: really another word for reality is truth, and you use
Speaker 1: the term capital T truth. So I want to live
Speaker 1: in alignment with Christ. So this is really I mean,
Speaker 1: it's commitment to Christ.
Speaker 2: But I like that. I like that. I think it's
Speaker 2: really like, yes, I so much. I'll say there, I
Speaker 2: think you know about you were talking about sort of
Speaker 2: feelings and if you sort of have this idea about
Speaker 2: your feelings or a guid enough truth and no one
Speaker 2: can say anything. You know. Again, it just heard Robbie
Speaker 2: George who's at Princeton. He's a professor of constitutional law
Speaker 2: jurisprudence there. And you know, Robbie is the one who
Speaker 2: taught me the phrase like we need to be as Christians,
Speaker 2: but everyone should have this goal right. We have to
Speaker 2: be truth seekers and truth speakers right, not just seeking
Speaker 2: it right, but also speaking it And as someone once said,
Speaker 2: like telling the truth is a revolutionary act nowadays, you know.
Speaker 2: And he talks about how this I listened to just
Speaker 2: listen to this podcast or was an interview that was
Speaker 2: done with him at a plog for our plenary. It's
Speaker 2: on Spotify. But he said, like, you know, which is true.
Speaker 2: I just haven't heard it in this very clear way
Speaker 2: that we used to live in. You know, again this
Speaker 2: is a little bit simplified, but just for our categories
Speaker 2: or epochs, right that like you know, the medieval time
Speaker 2: there was this sort of this age of faith, right,
Speaker 2: and then the Enlightenment there was the age of reason.
Speaker 2: And now he said, we're in the age of feelings,
Speaker 2: and the feelings really is the way that we sort
Speaker 2: of discover truth. And then there because like any sort
Speaker 2: of like you know, challenge to our feelings is like
Speaker 2: not had and like where that's gotten us? So interesting? There? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I do think my current I mean, there's so many
Speaker 2: ways in which people are And I like that you
Speaker 2: said too, which I agree with. I think someone once said,
Speaker 2: right that like wonder is the path to wisdom. It's
Speaker 2: because we have time to sort of like have this
Speaker 2: time to be like I wonder why you know I exist?
Speaker 2: Or I wonder why like you know this? Or that
Speaker 2: we don't have time to wonder because we're so distracted.
Speaker 2: So I'm so glad you talked about like entertaining yourself
Speaker 2: to death, and which gets into is all these other issues.
Speaker 2: But we don't make time to productively the wonder about
Speaker 2: these big topics to our own detriment. So I think
Speaker 2: in my own space of medicine and bioethics, I think
Speaker 2: the thing where we are most detached from reality. It's
Speaker 2: a hard question, is and it sort of maybe gets
Speaker 2: to a little bit to your answer, is that the
Speaker 2: fact that there is human nature is something that is
Speaker 2: created as such and that we've lost sense of. I
Speaker 2: would say teleology. You know, that like we were created
Speaker 2: sort of with this purpose or end in mind, and
Speaker 2: that human nature is a thing. Mary Harrington gave a
Speaker 2: talk for Hillsdale DC at hills LDC. It was the
Speaker 2: First Things lecture she gave. It was on YouTube a
Speaker 2: few months ago and it was published in First Things.
Speaker 2: The piece is called Timophobia about how she talks about
Speaker 2: how there's this phobia around Thomas Aquinas and some of
Speaker 2: these thinkers in certain circles because of various biases. But
Speaker 2: she talks about right, which I think is such a
Speaker 2: cool phrase. She says something like human beings are not
Speaker 2: just you know, Adams arranged human wise, and she talks
Speaker 2: about again this idea of human nature and sort of gnosticism,
Speaker 2: and so people really think it's a radically bizarre statements
Speaker 2: even and can be controversial in some circles to say
Speaker 2: that actually there is such a thing as human nature
Speaker 2: and the givenness of our bodies. So I think thos
Speaker 2: we're most out of touch with reality. And again, you know,
Speaker 2: since you brought up the topic of gender, you know
Speaker 2: there is just like on the topic we've tocolate today,
Speaker 2: we talked about so many difficult challenges, but you know,
Speaker 2: miscarriage and abortion, and we briefly touched on you know,
Speaker 2: I mentioned euth in asia and sort of gender dysphoria.
Speaker 2: There is so much trauma in these spaces, right, and
Speaker 2: we have to have a response to the trauma. And
Speaker 2: the question is like, what does a compassionate response to
Speaker 2: suffering look like in these space It's not that we
Speaker 2: shouldn't think this trauma is real or that well we
Speaker 2: shouldn't like address these people who are hurting, because there
Speaker 2: are people hurting in these spaces, and so there is
Speaker 2: you know, different ways that we can do that. But
Speaker 2: especially in my vocation, when our commitment is should be
Speaker 2: to do no harm, I need to understand like, who
Speaker 2: are what I am treating to whom I am accountable
Speaker 2: and have to hone my conscience in order to align
Speaker 2: itself with the moral structure of reality. So I think
Speaker 2: in my situation how this comes to play in biomedicine is,
Speaker 2: you know, there is not a commitment to reality, and
Speaker 2: when we think about a commitment that human nature is
Speaker 2: actually a thing that is given, there's a loss of
Speaker 2: teleology and even this idea of conscience again just being
Speaker 2: some vibe or some feeling, I think, is what is
Speaker 2: risen to the top and we lose sight of the
Speaker 2: fact that there is actually a moral structured reality or
Speaker 2: actually there are some things that we should not be
Speaker 2: engaged in because of the created nature of the world
Speaker 2: in God's law, and there are some things that are
Speaker 2: illicted for us. Those are the things to me, as
Speaker 2: a bioethicis and a doctor that we have unhooked ourselves
Speaker 2: from that have the biggest consequence in terms of divorcing
Speaker 2: ourselves from the reality of the truth. And there are
Speaker 2: many multifold reasons of how that comes to bear, but
Speaker 2: that to me is the current concern I have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and you talked about doing a lot of
Speaker 1: work in the sphere of AI and that was also
Speaker 1: a big motivating factors that the world's changing very quickly.
Speaker 1: I reference the book Future Shock. All the time they
Speaker 1: thought that was future shock, and then what the seventies
Speaker 1: or whatever, like we are just and so the world
Speaker 1: is feeling increasingly different or unreal. So in a world
Speaker 1: that's feeling increasingly unreal, what feels most real to you?
Speaker 2: I think there are a lot of things that feel
Speaker 2: really real to me right now. I think the thing
Speaker 2: that feels most real to me there are two things.
Speaker 2: One is my relationships with my husband and my boys.
Speaker 2: As someone who spend a lot of time who can
Speaker 2: easily become lost in her own ideas in her head,
Speaker 2: I think as I get older and I'm more aware
Speaker 2: of my body, I can no longer forget how real
Speaker 2: it is because I feel it every day and my
Speaker 2: aches and pains, my various things. And so I am
Speaker 2: no longer under the illusion that I am disembodied, and
Speaker 2: nor should I ever want to think that I'm disembodied,
Speaker 2: as we just talked about, So I really am very
Speaker 2: feeling the fact that you know, as I would believe,
Speaker 2: we don't just have bodies, but we are bodies, and
Speaker 2: in my embodied person, I feel really close in a
Speaker 2: really good way to the reality, the tangible reality of
Speaker 2: my people, my mom and dad and my husband who
Speaker 2: I've known for thirty years, and my sweet boys. I
Speaker 2: also feel really you know, God's God's you know, sovereignty
Speaker 2: and his protection and his love feel really real to
Speaker 2: me too. I you know, as we talked about earlier
Speaker 2: in the show, I went through something really challenging professionally
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, and I've had some tough
Speaker 2: professional challenges since that time. And I'm reminded that, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, just thinking about privileging our health and our
Speaker 2: safety that you know, safety, you know, isn't the absence
Speaker 2: of danger, but the presence of the Lord. And I
Speaker 2: really feel God and in a way that you know
Speaker 2: is very real to me. I'm very thankful for that.
Speaker 2: I know that that period is you know, can can
Speaker 2: wax and wane from any of us, but right now
Speaker 2: very thankful that that He feels really real to me.
Speaker 2: So I'm so thankful for both of those, both of
Speaker 2: those spaces beautiful.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for your time, doctor Kristen.
Speaker 1: I really, I mean, we've gone over so many different things,
Speaker 1: and it's just been a true pleasure. And I thank
Speaker 1: God that people try to cancel you.
Speaker 2: No, I'm so happy that, like you know, I think
Speaker 2: of right the script overs that you know, sometimes people
Speaker 2: don't mean things for like the best intentions, but God
Speaker 2: will use them for good or even think about Ramsey
Speaker 2: twenty eight. So I am thankful for whatever. You know,
Speaker 2: the Lord has prepared for the future and I trust
Speaker 2: in him. And I'm very thankful that somehow our paths,
Speaker 2: you know, collided so that we could have this conversation today.
Speaker 2: I hope our paths crossed in real life and in
Speaker 2: a real way, that way, in body way, you know,
Speaker 2: sometime in the future, and I thought that will happen.
Speaker 1: So thanks forather, Wow. Thank once again, thank you for
Speaker 1: joining me on commitment to reality.
Speaker 2: Thank you