Matters of Life and Death

Today we’re sharing an episode of the Faith in Parenting podcast, run by the Faith in Kids team, which we took part in some months ago. We were kindly asked on to chat about being Christians and being parents, and in particular how we handle sometimes tricky questions and issues that come up from the natural world and in science. And Tim got to share the good and the bad bits of being raised by John, and how science and sex and bodies and dinosaurs and everything else got handled in the home. 
 
 You can find out more about Faith in Kids and subscribe to their podcast here - https://www.faithinkids.org/podcasts/ 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

It’s hard to escape the fact that we live in gloomy, despairing times. Whether it is economic stagnation, pandemics, democracy under attack, unending wars or the climate crisis, more and more people feel like things are falling apart. That maybe even the world is coming to a depressing end. How did things get this hopeless, given the relatively recent optimism and energy of the past? Must Christians by default oppose this kind of despair, and what does the Bible have to say about watching the signs of the times? And given apocalypse literally means a time of uncovering and revealing, what should we have our eyes open to in this season of revelation? 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

In the first part of today’s episode we look at some exciting new research into treatments for the degenerative brain condition Parkinsons’s disease. We’ve known since the 1980s that transplants of brain tissue can slow the disease, but the only source was from the brains of embryos created during IVF. Now, scientists have shown they can create stem cells in the lab which can be coached to grow into the right brain tissue by itself before transplant. Could this be an ethical breakthrough, allowing a radical new Parkinson’s treatment without destroying embryos in the process? 
 In the second half, we think about a question sent in by a listener – why do so many doctors seem committed to futile overtreatment of the elderly in their final years and months? How did the medical profession get stuck into a ‘if in doubt, treat, and always follow the protocol’ culture, and what can Christians who want to avoid needless overtreatment as they die do to prevent this? 
 
 Read more on the Parkinson’s research - https://singularityhub.com/2025/04/17/parkinsons-patients-say-their-symptoms-eased-after-receiving-millions-of-new-brain-cells
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Is there an element of the gospel which we’ve forgotten about? That Jesus came not to just to deal with the guilt of our sin and forgive that, but to deal with the shame of being sinners and to cover that too. In this episode we dig into the differences between shame-honour cultures and guilt-forgiveness cultures. So-called honour killings, when family members murder their own kin to end their supposed shaming of the family, baffle and repulse us in the West, and yet Jesus came to a context in first century Judaea which was profoundly honour-based. How can we re-examine the gospel message he brought in this light to see what our profoundly individualistic culture in the West might have missed? And, are things starting to shift in both secular society and the church in recent times, as we drift towards a new form of shame-honour culture driven by cancellation and public shaming via social media? 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Two major Supreme Court rulings here in the UK have given us plenty to chew over in this episode. In the first half we explore a judgement about doctors caught up in controversial and tragic life support legal disputes with the parents of deeply ill children. The judges ruled that there should not be automatic anonymity given to these doctors and that they can be named by parents angry that the hospital staff looking after their kids decided it was not in their interests to keep them on life support. Is this a victory for the conservative Christian campaigners who believe the NHS system is too quick to give up on terminally ill children?
 The same day the Supreme Court also handed down a judgement about the definition of a woman, ruling that sex in the pivotal anti-discrimination law the 2010 Equality Act meant solely biological sex. Therefore, trans women, even those who have been legally recognised by the state as having transitioned gender, do not need to given access to single-sex female spaces such as prisons, changing rooms and women’s refuges. In the second half, we discuss the implications of this ruling – is it a welcome return to embracing the bodies our Creator gave us? 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

‘Granny’s body remains, but she is gone’. The public narrative around dementia often presumes that as our ability to talk, move and think gradually withers away, so does our personhood and sense of self. But if we believe as Christians that our humanity and identity is inextricably bound up in our physical flesh and bones, how should we approach the heart-breaking challenge of caring for someone declining into dementia? In this episode from the podcast vault (we are away over Easter) we speak with vicar and theologian Jess Wyatt (yes, also Tim’s wife and John’s daughter-in-law, it’s a real family affair) about her research into embodiment, personhood and dementia, and think through different ways to care for and attend to those suffering from this increasingly prevalent disease.
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Graham Tomlin has been a vicar, a theologian, a college principal, a bishop and now spearheads a project dedicated to trying to re-enchant the UK with Christian faith. In this episode we reflect with him about his ministry, the current state and status of theology in the church, the struggles of the Church of England where he served as a bishop until recently, and why he’s now focusing on helping non-churchgoers begin to see the world through ‘Christian spectacles’.
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

One fringe explanation for the fall in birthrates we discussed in last week’s episode is the growing popularity of the antinatalist movement. Antinatalists argue not just that people should be free to not have children if they want to, but that having children is in itself a bad idea. Antinatalists can be motived by many things: concerns over climate change, the ecological crisis, fears about overpopulation and lack of resources on our finite Earth, or even more philosophical notions around the inevitability of suffering or the problem of bringing children into the world without first seeking their consent. It’s easy to dismiss antinatalism as foolish or bizarre, but is there any logic or merit to this perspective? Is Christianity fundamentally a pro-natalist religion, or can believers be justified in choosing not to have children? And what about the honoured tradition of celibacy and voluntary childlessness in church history – is that a form of Christian antinatalism we should be getting behind once more?
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

With unerring regularity, birth rates are dropping in almost every country on Earth. What was once assumed to be a rich world problem is now a reality in places as diverse as Chile, Russia, Thailand and the Caribbean. Almost everywhere people are having fewer and fewer children. Many nations, including the UK and the US, are now well below the magic number of 2.1 children per woman, the ‘replacement rate’ needed to maintain a stable population. In this episode we talk through the various theories proposed to explain why this is happening (is it about expensive childcare, birth control or cultural shifts in gender roles?) and also what the implications will be for our societies. And we end by discussing whether Christians should be joining those sounding the alarm about declining birth rates, and what our faith might have to say about the enduring value of having children. 
 
 Several years ago we recorded a couple of episodes exploring the parallel phenomenon of rising numbers of older people https://www.johnwyatt.com/old-people-1/
 
 Some helpful data on global birth rates in decline https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

The non-religious are an ever-increasing segment of the population, in the UK, the United States and across the Western world. But what do they actually believe, and indeed not believe, in? In this classic episode from the MOLAD archive we’re joined by evangelist and author Glen Scrivener to discuss the different spiritualities we encounter, especially among younger generations. Are all non-believers Richard Dawkins style naturalistic atheists, or is there a more complex and contradictory set of belief systems out there for those who don’t call themselves Christians? How should the church’s outreach shift to reflect the contemporary mores of Gen-Z and the pick-and-mix spiritualities they often espouse? And are modern social movements, whether ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ functioning like religions without creeds?
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Somewhat unnoticed by many in the British church, in the last few years the UK has imposed draconian new laws which can in some circumstances curtail fundamental religious liberties. In the name of protecting people from intimidating pro-life protests, 150-metre buffer zones now exist around every clinic and hospital which performs abortions in the UK. Inside these zones you can be arrested for doing anything which is deemed to influence women accessing abortion services – but these vague laws have seen a number of Christian pro-lifers arrested simply for standing in silence praying in their heads, or preaching generic gospel messages unrelated to abortion. How did we get to a place where the freedom to express your religion in public is under threat? Are buffer zones a reasonable provision to clamp down on harmful and aggressive fundamentalists? Or are we sleepwalking into a place where basic religious freedoms are accidentally being eroded, and few in the church seem to notice or care?
 
 Tim’s newsletter The Critical Friend has covered this story a number of times: https://tswyatt.substack.com/p/silent-prayers-inside-the-buffer?utm_source=publication-search and https://tswyatt.substack.com/p/normal-for-norfolk 
 
 The Bournemouth case cited by JD Vance in his infamous speech h https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

An under-reported story of the tumultuous first months of the second Donald Trump administration is how his team are brutally cutting back long-established federal institutions. The National Institutes of Health and the US Agency for International Development have seen huge swathes of staff fired, grants paused, funding slashed and projects reliant on government aid abruptly shuttered. This is already having massive consequences downstream, both in research into devastating diseases and in humanitarian work with some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. Why should Christians care about these federal bureaucracies and what Trump is doing to them? Isn’t this just about trimming away woke excesses and focusing on excellence? And what might be lost, including for the church, if the US government gives up on medical research and international development for good? 
 
 The Washington Post has a good article exploring the destruction and chaos at the NIH: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/03/05/nih-trump-turmoil-grants/ 
 And this New York Times article explains the devastation wrought by the almost total shut-down by USAID https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/health/usaid-clinical-trials-funding-trump.html?searchResultPosition=2 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

AI-driven chatbots are becoming a major industry, with hundreds of millions of people spending hours every day talking to non-human personas. They can be friends, therapists, lovers, work colleagues or fantastical invented characters. Or even an uncanny replica of an actual loved who has died. But should we be worried about the rise of AI chatbots? What does it tell us about human intelligence and personality that it is becoming possible for computers to so accurately mimic us? What might be lost by getting enmeshed in relationships of various kinds with a non-human artificial personality, rather than other embodied, image-bearing human beings? 
 
 John gave the 2024 John Stott London Lecture on this topic, and goes in more detail into some of the ideas we discuss in this episode here: https://www.johnwyatt.com/lecture-authentic-relationships-in-an-artificial-world/
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Can a pro-life Christian anaesthetist take part in surgical abortions, even if they are simply ensuring the mother is safely put under and do not do the actual abortion? What about the nurse checking blood pressure earlier on the ward? Or the porter wheeling the mother into theatre? Or the person who made the scalpel? In this episode, prompted by a question from an anaesthetist listener wrestling with this precise dilemma, we try to think through the theological problem of ‘co-operation with evil’. To what extent, if at all, can believers do things which enmesh them with other people’s wrong deeds? What did Jesus mean by ‘render to Caesar what is Caesar’s’? Is it ever possible to maintain our Christian integrity in our fallen and ever more interconnected world? How can we decide where to draw the lines? 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Due to illness, we weren’t able to record a new episode this week, so instead here’s one from the Matters of Life and Death archive you might enjoy. So-called memecoins – new cryptocurrencies launched solely as tongue-in-cheek speculative online investment assets – have boomed in recent months. Back in 2023 we were joined by Christian tech writer and Baptist minister Chris Goswami to try to unpick how we should feel as believers about cryptocurrencies. What is bitcoin, and is it any different to previous internet-based tech industries we could invest in which have boomed and gone bust over the years? Are they providing financial liberation for some of the poor and excluded communities in the developing world, or simply luring vulnerable under-educated people into shady scams? And how can we grow in wisdom and discernment as believers so that we can pick our way through this wildly accelerating field of technological advancement, avoiding what is harmful while pursuing the good?
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Elon Musk, the mercurial billionaire who owns Twitter, is increasingly wielding his enormous political power via his social media network, interfering in politics in America and far beyond. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook, has tried to align his business with the new regime in Washington by abolishing fact-checking. Should we be alarmed at where social media is going in the 2020s, with populist right-wing movements leveraging their online influence in very real offline consequences? Can Christians continue to use their platforms, or should we join the progressive exodus to alternative sites? And how can we work out who to trust and where to get our news from in this confusing post-truth, post-legacy media world? 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Recent research by the abortion provider BPAS has uncovered a striking increase in the numbers of women who use fertility tracking apps as contraception, rather than the more traditional hormonal pill, coil or implant. And, perhaps most interestingly, there has also been sharp rise in women using no contraception of any kind. In this episode we revisit our last conversation on contraception (linked below) with Dawn McAvoy from the “pro-women pro-life” movement Both Lives, and reconsider why so many women today are turning away from hormonal contraception. Several generations on from the introduction of the Pill, what have been the consequences for society and the church? What are the ethical risks for Christians who believe life begins at conception? Do these fertility-tracking apps actually work, or are they just exploiting ignorance and vague notions of wellness? 
 
 BPAS research on contraception methods: https://srh.bmj.com/content/early/2025/01/01/bmjsrh-2024-202573 
 A BBC News article reporting the study: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c391nlxrv4vo and women’s responses: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93lq2w5n44o 
 Our last episode exploring contraception: https://www.johnwyatt.com/should-christians-abandon-contraception/ 
 
 Dawn leads Both Lives, part of the Evangelical Alliance: https://www.eauk.org/what-we-do/initiatives/both-lives 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A recent Guardian article looked in depth at advances in neonatology – the care of extremely premature babies – and the complex ethical challenges now faced by parents and doctors alike. Modern medicine can now save the lives of babies born at just 21 or 22 weeks old, but does this come at too great a cost? How are we supposed to decide which babies to throw the full weight of neonatal intensive care at, and which ones cannot be saved? Can Christian parents ever countenance not trying to save a premature baby’s life and instead accept their inevitable death? And what are the Christian roots of the revolution in neonatology in recent years, and how might it be under threat from other competing worldviews present in medicine today? 
 
 ‘Look, they’re getting skin!’: are we right to strive to save the world’s tiniest babies? – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/19/look-theyre-getting-skin-the-moral-challenge-of-saving-the-worlds-tiniest-babies The Guardian article which prompted this episode is well worth reading.
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Advances in reproductive medicine in the past half century have meant it is entirely possible for as many as five different adults to be involved in the birth of one child (sperm and egg donors, a surrogate mother who carries the fetus, and the commissioning parents who will raise them, and paid for everyone else). In this maelstrom of competing claims, the state and courts in many countries have been forced to step in and begin to regulate and define identity and kinship for these new children, as procreation gets messily broken down into its constituent parts. In this episode we consider a provocative essay by a legal philosopher who explores the troubling implications of this new reality, and ask as Christians where do we stand on the question: who do children belong to? What is lost when children come into the world not inescapably rooted in one family, but as the result of a commercial transaction? How does adoption, generally held in honour by most believers, differ from surrogacy arrangements increasingly pursued by wider society? 
 
 The essay by Jeff Shafer which prompted this conversation: https://mcrawford.substack.com/p/to-whom-do-children-belong 
 Our previous episode on surrogacy from 2023: https://www.johnwyatt.com/surrogacy/ 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Since 2010 mental health problems among young people have exploded. At precisely the same time, smartphones and social media have become deeply embedded in the lives of children and teenagers. A growing body of evidence suggests these two things are connected. In this episode we consider the argument that a turn away from physical outdoor play towards spending endless hours scrolling and messaging via screens is hugely detrimental to the wellbeing of young people. And if this is true, why has it happened, and what can we do about it? What resources might the church and Christian faith have to bear on this problem? Do we need to radically retool our own church culture to become havens of disconnection and embodied in-person community? Or this just another moral panic at the advent of a new form of technology?
 
 The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt - https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book 
 Haidt’s Substack newsletter After Babel is also worth reading, including his recent post using documents from court cases against TikTok - https://www.afterbabel.com/p/industrial-scale-harm-tiktok 
 Australia is trying to implement a world-first ban on social media for under-16s - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89vjj0lxx9o 
 Some towns are trying out shared pledges from parents to stay smartphone-free - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2r4rxjd9o 
 Our previous episode with Andy Crouch discussing Haidt’s research and Crouch’s own writing on how to cultivate tech-wise Christian households - https://pod.link/1509923173/episode/515cca3cfe50794d7e60d1e0d753f86a 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A movement founded at the University of Oxford in 2009 has now captured the imagination – and the wallets – of some of the brightest and most successful across elite Western academic and business circles. Effective altruism, a 21st-century data-driven take on the philosophy of utilitarianism, claims we must give our time and money only to those causes which can be proven to increase the greatest amount of pleasure to the most people. Why has this eccentric community grown so fast, has it become unmoored from its original intentions, and what perverse incentives arise when we try to distil ethics into an algorithm? We then go on to explore the Christian sub-community within EA and ask whether the movement’s fundamental ideas are compatible with Christian tradition on giving. Is Christian EA a welcome challenge to our increasingly sentimental and selfish modes of charity, or has it actually missed the point on the nature of God?
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Every tap, swipe and click we make on our phones, tablets and laptops is being recorded by big tech firms. This is often called surveillance capitalism – a network of products and services we use every day which sucks up large quantities of data about us and then sells it on to advertisers at huge profits. It’s garnering increasing concern from citizens and regulators around the world, but should we care as Christians? Why have tech companies made their products so addictively hard to put down and stop tapping, swiping and clicking? In this episode we think through more of the implications of living in a non-private digital village in the 21st century, and we also ponder the implications of the more deceptive and destructive aspects of addictive digital technologies. What are some initial efforts believers have made to carve out space for family time and spirituality in our disembodied always-on world.
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

While we are away over the Christmas break, here’s a classic episode from the Matters of Life and Death vault. There has been a flood of highly significant if poorly reported developments in embryo research in recent years, all of which raise new and confusing questions for Christians and non-Christians alike. Is it acceptable to use stem cells to create embryo-like structures to research on? Should we ban all efforts to perfect gene editing, even if that stops us effectively eradicating some horrible conditions? And would it be wise to extend the current rules on embryo research to let scientists go further in the lab, as many would like? In this episode we wrestle with how Christians can handle the dizzying pace and confusion of scientific development in this field, to continue to make good ethical choices even at some personal cost. 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Many evangelical Christians remain uncomfortable about engaging with the Biblical narrative, in both Old and New Testaments, around evil, Satan, spiritual forces and demonic power. And even more so in trying to identify their malign hand behind modern trends. But in this episode we reconsider what scripture says – and doesn’t say – about the nature of evil and ungodly spiritual forces, the powers and principalities of our world. How have theologians connected the “lordless” powers the Bible warns us against with modern institutions, technologies and ideas? Is it naïve to expect an industry as unprecedently wealthy and powerful as Silicon Valley to be immune from the deceitful and manipulative influence of personal evil? Are powerful new technologies like the internet or generative AI really just neutral tools, only as dangerous as the people using them? And, how can the church learn to be more sceptical and thoughtful about power and how it is exercised in our current societies? 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

This week’s episode picks up on our last conversation with paediatrician Julie Maxwell from 2023, and in particular the sweeping changes made to how gender-questioning children are treated in Britain in the last year. A weighty official report by an eminent doctor concluded that the NHS’s sole clinic for gender medicine should be shut down and the practice of treating young people with puberty-blocking medication abandoned entirely. We talk through the implications of the Cass Report, whether a return to evidence-based medicine instead of political ideology is really breaking out, and what the situation is in the education system, where culture wars over trans children continue to rage. How on earth can Christian parents navigate this fast-changing and very divisive issue with compassion and faithfulness? 
 
 Julie’s article for Affinity on ‘Christian parenting in a confusing world of gender identity’: https://www.affinity.org.uk/social-issues/christian-parenting-in-a-confusing-world-of-gender-identity/
 Julie also recommends for Christians interested in this topic: 
 The Gender Revolution, by Patricia Weerakoon https://uk.10ofthose.com/product/9781925424973/the-gender-revolution-paperback 
 Time To Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children, by Hannah Barnes https://amzn.eu/d/77taYWm
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

MPs in the House of Commons passed Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill last week. It will be several years before Britons are able to ask their doctors to help them kill themselves, but it is a totemic moment nonetheless – the first time Parliament has endorsed the concept of assisted suicide. In this episode we discuss what the bill proposes, the campaign that built up to the debate, how MPs discussed and voted on the bill, and what happens now. Is there any scope for damage limitation in the next committee and amendment stages of the legislation, before it comes into effect? And what should the church be doing to prepare Christians for this stark new reality, to disciple believers about why suicide is not the best way to end a life? Or, are some Christians wildly overreacting to what is a disappointing but relatively minor social reform?
 
 Read John’s detailed report on the Leadbeater bill, sent to all MPs before the debate, here: https://www.johnwyatt.com/leadbeaterbill/ 
 Find the rest of his resources on assisted suicide and euthanasia here: https://www.johnwyatt.com/in-focus/assisted-suicide-and-euthanasia/ 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

While most Protestant Christians have been at ease with using contraception for generations, there is a growing movement to re-examine the ethics of this, with more and more evangelicals asking if perhaps their Catholic brothers and sisters may have a point. At the same time, increasing numbers of women in society more broadly are turning away from hormonal contraception, believing its physical and mental side effects to no longer be worth it. In this episode we explore the history of the pill and the church’s evolving thinking on birth control. And we dive into the complicated ethics too. If you believe life begins at conception, can contraception sometimes amount of unintentional abortion? Does it make sense to reject chemical or physical barrier contraception, while still believing the rhythm method is fine? And what does it mean to ensure the procreative and unitive aspects of sex remain central to a Christian marriage?
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Christians normally explain away human-caused suffering by pointing to God giving us free will, and our sinful natures using that to harm ourselves and each other. But what about all the things entirely out of our control which cause so much sadness, from natural disasters to genetic diseases? In this episode we interview apologist and neuroscientist Sharon Dirckx about the origins of evil and how Christians can sensitively respond to objections to faith based in suffering. And, we consider the role of apologetics in general – should we still be doing traditional proclamational evangelism centred on knocking down intellectual objections to faith at all, or is that a 20th-century approach which no longer cuts through?
 
 You can find more about Sharon, including her latest book Broken Planet, at her website: dirckx.org. 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Francis Collins is one of the leading scientists of his generation, a world-renowned geneticist who led the international project to map the human genome. Later he served under three presidents as the director of the National Institute of Health, which led him to play a pivotal role in America’s battle against the covid pandemic. He’s also an evangelical Christian who has often shared his convictions that science and Biblical faith are never in conflict. His experience trying, and often failing, to persuade sceptical American Christians to get vaccinated, while culture wars tore apart churches and communities alike, prompted him to write a book calling for a return to traditional sources of wisdom: science, truth, and faith. In this episode we talk through his experiences in public office as a Christian scientist and discuss how the US evangelical church became so polarised, divided and sceptical of good science, even when presented by faithful believers like him. 
 
 Francis’s book is The Road to Wisdom https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/francis-s-collins/the-road-to-wisdom/9781399822312/
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A couple of inter-connected news stories set us off this week. First, the prominent DNA ancestry company 23andMe is teetering on the brink of collapse and considering selling off its database of 15m people’s genomes. Can someone else own your DNA, and what are the risks if genomes are passed around the economy as any other product? Next, a US start-up has apparently used UK volunteers’ genomic data to pursue its plans to offer couples the chance to screen their embryos for intelligence, beauty, and maybe more, all for a chunky sum of course. So-called ‘liberal eugenics’ is popular in some corners of philosophy and is leaking out into the real world too. Is there really anything wrong with trying to ensure the embryo you end up carrying to term has the best genes possible? What kind of laws or regulations should there be around parents selecting for intelligence, beauty, height or even sex in their own children? And what does a Christian vision for parenthood and the raising of children look like, if it’s not this hyper-controlled and commodified version sold to us by the liberal eugenicists?
 
 Remember That DNA You Gave 23andMe? - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/09/23andme-dna-data-privacy-sale/680057/ 
 US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’ – https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/us-startup-charging-couples-to-screen-embryos-for-iq
 Our previous episode on pre-natal screening - https://www.johnwyatt.com/prenatal-screening-1/ 
 Our previous episode on genetics, featuring an interview with geneticist Melody Redman - https://www.johnwyatt.com/genetics/ 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Once dismissed as quackery or New Age woo, near death experiences are seeing something of a modern revival. A slew of serious scientists and doctors have begun studying the phenomenon, even constructing clinical trials to try and see what, if anything, goes on when someone is on the brink of death but is resuscitated successfully. And there is now an entire Christian industry of books and films about believers who claim to have ‘gone to heaven and come back’ after nearly dying. What are the scientific claims behind these experiences, and what do we know and not know about what happens to the brain as it begins to die? Should believers embrace near death experiences as concrete proof of the afterlife? And how does Jesus and the New Testament encourage the Christian to approach questions and fears about death? 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Pregnant women today are offered a battery of tests and screening for their unborn child, looking for an ever-increasing range of conditions and risks. But is the onward march of technology in this sphere always an unmitigated good thing? With abortion for a disability legal in the UK up to term, women are being given terrible choices previous generations never faced: give birth to a child who probably has a life-limiting or even fatal condition, or end the pregnancy early. In this episode we dig further into the complex ethics of prenatal screening and explore what the Christian tradition makes of seeking to understand the future, and the different arguments for and against aborting children we know will be disabled.
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

This week we speak with church pastor and author Ed Shaw about John’s book on friendship, and in particular how it intersects with those who are same-sex attracted like him. How has the church unintentionally colluded with the sexual revolution in prioritising and idealising marriage, relegating friendship in the process? Why is it so important for celibate, single leaders like Ed to cultivate and sustain an array of deep friendships in church? And how can we ensure this is being done sensibly and accountably, avoiding the potential for abuse and harm that we’ve seen in so many recent evangelical scandals? 
 
 Ed is also ministry director of Living Out - https://www.livingout.org/ 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Yoga and mindfulness are everywhere in popular Western culture: in school PE lessons, in company retreats, prescribed by doctors, and even sometimes endorsed by churches. Are these harmless or even quasi-Christian practices we can all enjoy, or pagan-derived movements which believers should steer clear of? And is there such a thing as ‘Christian meditation’ we should all be leaning into instead? 
 
 Richard Foster – Celebration of Discipline https://www.eden.co.uk/christian-books/spiritual-growth/the-spiritual-disciplines/celebration-of-discipline/
 John Mark Comer – Practising the Way https://www.practicingtheway.org/ 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Harrowing testimony from healthcare staff at the UK’s national covid inquiry has reminded us of the horrendous sacrifices made by doctors and nurses during the pandemic, just a few years ago. And yet the inquiry has drawn hardly any media attention, with most of us happy to move on with our lives and never think about those long months in lockdown again. But is this a wise, or even a Christian, way of dealing with trauma in the past? And is covid even something in the past anyway, with new variants spiking and some public health experts baffled at our society’s ‘capitulation’ in the face of a resurgent virus? What damage may be being done to us as we wilfully ignore covid, and should Christians be among those trying to draw more people’s attention? 
 
 Some of our previous episodes on covid:
 • Covid reconsidered 1:Pandemic amnesia, ‘Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives’, lingering Long Covid, and 13.47 billion vaccine doses https://www.johnwyatt.com/covid-reconsidered-1/ 
 • Covid reconsidered 2: Empty Nightingale hospitals, difficult triage decisions, a failure of Christian leadership, and reconsidering lockdown https://www.johnwyatt.com/covid-reconsidered-2/
 • The origins of covid: Gain of function research, zoonosis, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and truth over tribe https://www.johnwyatt.com/origins-of-covid/ 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

The new British government has been crystal clear that in their view, the National Health Service – a state-run socialised system which is quasi-worshipped by most Britons – is in long-term crisis. Services from family doctors to cancer treatment to A&E in hospitals are struggling and failing to hit targets, and constantly underfunded. In this episode we discuss the reasons why healthcare services across the developing world and especially in the UK are buckling under the pressures of keeping our older and sicker populations healthy. Is the fabled ‘free at the point of use’ taxpayer-funded NHS really the best system to be facing the challenges of the 21st century? Will modern technology from overseas inevitably begin to take over, and will that be a good thing? And should we be enthusiastic about the new class of anti-obesity medication which seems to be having remarkable success in tackling the chronic conditions which bedevil Western societies and cripple our healthcare services? Or is the idea we can make people more virtuous and less addicted simply by mass prescribing new pills a foolish delusion? 
 
 Our previous episode going into more depth on Ozempic and the new GLP-1 anti-obesity drugs can be found here: https://www.premier.plus/matters-of-life-and-death/podcasts/episodes/new-obesity-drugs-the-morality-of-food-and-has-neuroscience-killed-off-free-will 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Tim is away this week so we’re sharing a classic episode from the MOLAD vault. Since the covid pandemic there has been an alarming rise in people presenting with mental health problems. Today we speak with Christian psychiatrist Daniel Maughan to better understand why this might be happening, how our mental healthcare systems are coping (or not), and how his faith intersects with his work diagnosing and treating those with psychosis. What can we do to protect ourselves and especially our younger people from this tsunami of anxiety and depression? And has society over-corrected in its desire to eradicate mental health stigma? Is there a place for the church to gently push back on the medicalisation of ordinary emotions and model a greater sense of mental resilience?

Today we pick up a number of stories and updates in the conversation around assisted suicide. Long since legal in a growing number of states in the US, a new report has detailed how things are liberalising further. Some states now permit non-residents to cross state lines solely to die, creating a new market in euthanasia tourism for those living in less liberal parts of America. Meanwhile, there are new attempts by activists to legalise assisted suicide in England, and the new Labour government has pledged to allow a free conscience vote by all MPs on the issue soon. How should believers respond to this, and is there any real prospect of Christian healthcare workers winning the right to not only opt out of assisted dying procedures, but to set up their own independent euthanasia-free clinics, hospitals and hospices? 
 
 Find out more about a new book on assisted dying John has contributed a chapter to here: https://www.mheducation.co.uk/the-reality-of-assisted-dying-understanding-the-issues-9780335253173-emea-group#tab-label-product-description-title 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

If and when autonomous and intelligent robots come into existence, should they be granted rights, or even personhood? A growing number of technologists argue governments must lay out what status conscious and rational machines would have before they actually have been invented. But how can we decide what is and isn’t a person, and what rights and responsibilities such a thing should have? And how could this philosophical and technical debate affect our Christian beliefs on human uniqueness? We then explore three Christian responses to calls for robot personhood, spanning the spectrum of hostility to optimism about the development. What Biblical truths and doctrines can we turn to as we wrestle with what is a fundamentally brand new dilemma? And how would our theology and practice as believers change should conscious, intelligent, autonomous robots come to live among us?
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

We covered the case of Lucy Letby – a neonatal nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven more – last year. Since then, there has been a growing campaign claiming she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, as Letby herself appeals the judgement. In this episode we look at why some people have become convinced of her innocence, how well-suited our criminal justice system is at getting to the truth, and how as Christians we can live with the unknown and grey areas implicit in this fallen world. 
 
 
 • The Appeal Court judgement rejecting Letby's appeal: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/R-v-Letby-Final-Judgment-20240702.pdf
 • The New Yorker article which makes the case for Letby's innocence: https://web.archive.org/web/20240702001406/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/20/lucy-letby-was-found-guilty-of-killing-seven-babies-did-she-do-it
 • A Guardian article which also explores some of those who are unconvinced by the prosecution case: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/09/lucy-letby-evidence-experts-question
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

‘Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.”’ These famous words from the first chapter of Genesis are the touchstone of the theology of the image of God, or Imago Dei. Christians throw this reference out a lot, but we’re often a bit unclear about it really means to say humans are made in the image of God. Is it about certain things we can do that God also does? Is it about what God is calling us towards as humans? Is it about how our relationships? How can we come up with a definition which does not exclude the disabled, children, or the elderly? It’s worth dwelling on, as the image of God and how we define human distinctiveness as believers is critically important in an era when human uniqueness is under attack from many directions. From artificial intelligence to abortion, the question of personhood and recognising and protecting the humanity of others is something we all have to wrestle with, and getting our foundations right on the image of God is a good place to start. 
 
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 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Thanks to a long overdue public inquiry here in the UK, shocking stories of how NHS doctors recklessly gave patients blood contaminated with viruses including HIV and hepatitis have been emerging in recent years. One of the most painful cases was at a special school for children with haemophilia, where well-meaning but catastrophically misguided doctors wilfully experimented on children without consent using these contaminated blood products, leading to most of the young people’s deaths. In this episode we consider this as the latest in a long history of murky scandals in medical trials, and the profoundly Christian underpinnings of truly ethical medical research. Has healthcare changed today so that such astonishingly reckless and paternalistic care could not happen again? And how as believers can we handle the enormous power given to professionals such as doctors with an appropriate Christlike and cross-shaped humility, knowing as flawed humans we can always be wrong?
 
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 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

This week we look at developments prompted by the war in Ukraine, which has seen the humble drone take a leading role on the frontline. Both sides, and global powers watching on with interest, are now investing in building battle drones which can fly and attack themselves, leading to the chilling possibility that future wars will see autonomous AI drones deciding who is an enemy to attack or a civilian to defend. Should Christians be joining the chorus of alarmed scientists and activists arguing a machine should never be given the power of taking another life without a human in the loop somewhere?
 But first, we look at fresh research which reveals the staggering growth of frozen surplus embryos – created during IVF procedures – being stored in the UK. Each year tens of thousands more embryos are created and frozen indefinitely than are actually thawed out and implanted. Nobody seems to know what their moral status is and what should happen when, eventually, we cannot keep on freezing and storing them. Is embryo adoption the answer? 
 
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 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A landmark court case in the UK recently saw five radical climate activists jailed for up to five years for their role in organising the blocking of a major motorway to protest against fossil fuels. The sentences have been criticised by many, including the UN, as excessive given the peaceful nature of the protest and the cause behind it, but are the result of years of escalation by climate activists which has led the government to pass tougher, harsher laws criminalising disruptive but peaceful protest. But how should Christians approach law-breaking for what is supposedly a good cause? What does Jesus’s famous words about ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s’ mean in our 21st century context? Is it ever right for believers to deliberately break the law? And, should we in the church be concerned about ever more draconian and vaguely-worded laws which allow the police to clamp down more harshly on civil disobedience? 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A recent Netflix documentary, The Man With A 1000 Kids, has shone a light on the often under-discussed topic of sperm donation. It exposes a Dutch man as a prolific and deceptive sperm donor who compulsively fathers children around the world via donated sperm. While an extreme case, it raises important questions about the ethics of bringing children into the world via sperm (or indeed egg) donation. Do we pay enough heed to the feelings and challenges faced by donor-conceived children in our understandable urge to help infertile couples have their miracle baby? Is donating sperm really any different to any other kind of organ donation, or should Christians oppose this kind of reproductive technology? We also consider new research on the enormous numbers of frozen embryos generated via IVF treatment which we in the UK are stockpiling without any clear idea of who or what we think they are, let alone what we will do with them. 
 
 • Who Am I, the book about donor-conceived children https://www.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/content/?context=article&id=2159 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

In recent weeks we have discussed how to keep modern technology at arms-length (smartphones in the home) and our excitement at how humans may be about to untap God’s blessing in creation through technology (the solar energy revolution). Today we ask the question: can we really hold these positions simultaneously? Can we be neo-Luddites when it comes to smartphones and yet boosters when it comes to solar panels? What should an authentically Christian posture to technology be? Generally positive, cautiously hostile, or is it all just a neutral tool to be used for good or ill depending on who is using it? Is humanity accelerating – thanks to our modern mastery of creation – towards God’s ultimate plan to reconcile all things, or is ‘progress’ little more than a pseudo-Christian comforting myth we tell ourselves?

Even sober-minded experts are getting excited about solar power. Respectable estimates suggest the price of energy derived from sunlight will continue to drop spectacularly as the number of panels installed worldwide continues to explode exponentially. In the relatively near future we may move into an era of energy abundance, where we have not just decarbonised our existing energy sources but are also able to cheaply generate ten or even a hundred times more energy. How should Christians feel about a future society with green, clean energy ‘too cheap to meter’? Can we see in this potential bounty God’s extravagant blessing, as we bring forth from his creation huge amounts of resources to tackle poverty, water shortages, climate change and more? Or is this a secular example of an ‘over-realised eschatology’, and foolishness in believing that once again sinful humans can bring about heaven on earth? 
 
 • The Economist: 'The exponential growth of solar power will change the world' https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/06/20/the-exponential-growth-of-solar-power-will-change-the-world
 • Matt Yglesias: 'The case for more energy' https://www.slowboring.com/p/energy-abundance 
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

The controversial hacker and activist (and maybe journalist?) Julian Assange was suddenly freed for five years in a British jail last month, after he reached a surprise deal with the US authorities over classified military files he published online more than ten years ago. Some see this as a victory for free speech and crusading journalism, but others would decry Assange as an irresponsible blowhard and Russian stooge. Is Assange a journalist, and if not how should we define and understand that profession? Is there a specifically Christian case for publishing leaked secret documents? Should we be alarmed at democratic governments using the courts to pursue those who pry into their darker corners? 
 
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Despite reams of research debunking the myth and countless examples of pioneering Christian researchers, many people still believe intuitively that somehow science and religion are in constant conflict. There are even those within the church who, perhaps subconsciously, buy into a narrative that what happens in labs around the world has no relevance for believers. This week we interview Richard Cheetham, a recently retired Church of England bishop, about his lifelong love of science, how it intersected with his own faith, and his passion to inspire more Christian leaders to engage with science in all its truth-seeking, God-curious, theologically challenging glory.
 
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 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Tim’s been away this last week on holiday so we’re bringing you an episode from the Matters of Life and Death vault today. There is a looming ‘demographic timebomb’ – a growing mass of elderly and increasingly chronically ill people in many developed nations, expected to place huge strain on public resources. The policy debates around this issue often emphasise the importance of not ‘being a burden’ on others, with some even suggesting there could be a ‘duty to die’ by assisted suicide for those who become old and infirm. Why does our contemporary culture have such a horror of the idea of becoming dependent on our families or the state? And what does the Christian story have to say about the value of dependence versus autonomy, especially as we near the final seasons of our lives? Secular society is leaning towards technology to solve this problem. But can the smart home or robotics really save us from having to care for our elders ourselves? And if this isn’t the whole answer, what does the church have to bring to the table?
 
 • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 
 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
 • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com