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Science - Environment

Creation stewards in a logging town

My little blue Kia Soul didn’t quite fit in, as I drove through the industrial section of the small forestry town of Houston, BC. Not only are trucks the dominant mode of transport, the industrial lots were filled with massive machines used to cut down and transport trees, some with tires the size of my car.

I pulled into a property that also seemed out of place for this community, let alone the industrial neighborhood: a conservation center and fish hatchery. I stepped inside the Buck Creek Hatchery and Nature Centre, and, in a space about the size of a typical classroom, I was surrounded by God’s amazing creation on display. Animal hides and mounts, rocks, fossils, shells, bird nests, antlers, eggs, and aquariums had me looking in every direction.

Like many other Christians, I have often felt a tension in my heart and mind over our role in ruling over and subduing the earth (Gen. 1:28), while caring for it (Gen. 2:15). I ask my children to not deliberately stomp on an ant, but I also don’t struggle with removing an anthill that is becoming a problem for our home.

As I have grown older, I see many more examples of tension woven through life and the Scriptures. It means we need to take the time to listen, and to act with wisdom. So, I figured that agreeing to an invitation to meet with two Christian environmentalists in a resource-dependent town could be a good way to help me grow in navigating this tension over creation care.

Marjorie Lieuwen and Cindy Verbeek welcomed me to the center and took me into a “hands-on” classroom, meant for teaching students about creation. The two shared how at different times, and through different means, the LORD had guided their steps to serve as nature stewards in the middle of a logging town.

Cindy Verbeek standing in front of the Buck Creek Hatchery’s salmon mural.

A common denominator

As a young adult, Cindy spent a summer doing environmental studies at a field school in Michigan. It was during a time of prayer in the forest there that she was convicted to dedicate her life to this work. She then got involved with A Rocha, a Christian conservation organization that was started in Portugal in the 1980s. Her husband and she volunteered there in 1996, and she has served with the organization through various means since then. The couple moved to Houston in 2002, and Cindy began serving on staff with A Rocha from there.

Promoting environmental care in a town that owes its existence to the development of natural resources, particularly logging, comes with challenges. Cindy explained that she started with efforts like a community garden, recycling committee, and farmers’ market. “But none of the things really fit. It didn’t fit me. It didn’t fit the context.” For example, she noted that people in Houston already had gardens that were larger than the community garden, and they already shared.

Things changed when she got involved with the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation, introducing her to work with salmon. She floated the idea of a salmon hatchery in Houston “and all of a sudden people were coming out of the woodwork.” She explained that,

“…salmon are a common denominator in our valley, in Western BC. We are all connected to salmon somehow. We either fish for them, or we love seeing them. We love eating them…. Everyone just loved salmon, and it took me a long time to understand the language of this community.”

She and Regina Meints started a pilot hatchery in a shed in Regina’s backyard, raising 4,400 coho salmon. The experience made them decide they wanted to do this full-time and long-term, so they started making plans. “It started as a salmon hatchery,” said Cindy. “But I am an environmental educator. I love sharing and teaching people about creation, and so I wanted the nature center aspect added to it as well.”

In 2017 the hatchery was built and in 2021, amidst Covid, the nature center was added on. But that also meant the expectations grew. “I was very quickly realizing that this project was way bigger than myself,” explained Cindy. Providentially, that was also the year that Marjorie Lieuwen landed in northern BC.

From the prairies to the mountains

Marjorie Liewen with quite the coho salmon during a broodstock capture for the hatchery.
Picture credit: Marjorie Liewen

Marjorie grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Although the landscape is nothing like northwest BC, her dad is a birdwatcher, so their family got outside a lot. “Even when I was in Grade Four, I made this plan to start a burrowing owl sanctuary because I heard they were endangered in Manitoba.” That said, Marjorie didn’t expect her love of nature to translate so directly into a career. She completed a degree in biotechnology at the University of Manitoba, followed by a master’s degree at the Health Sciences Center at the same school, focused on finding cures and therapies for Rett Syndrome, a genetic disorder.

Part way through her master’s degree, she made a trip to Houston to attend a wedding. On that trip she met Jason Lieuwen, who grew up in Houston, was a friend of the groom and had recently moved back to Houston after studying forestry in Prince George. Marjorie and Jason started dating long-distance, and then Marjorie decided to move to Prince George in 2021 to do some more schooling. They got married that June. That summer, she saw a job posting for the nature centre in Houston. It was a perfect fit.

Marjorie’s education fits well with her role in overseeing the fish in the hatchery as well as stewarding the salmon in the Upper Bulkley River, which flows through the community. She works with local farmers, First Nations, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and others to monitor salmon numbers and promote a flourishing population, specifically for coho and chinook salmon.

In the 1970s, the salmon numbers plummeted in the Upper Bulkley and the river was closed to fishing. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans started a program that involved releasing coho and chinook hatchery fish, but the coho program was stopped in the early 2000s. “So, for about 10 years or so, there was no coho enhancement being done,” explained Marjorie. That changed when Cindy and other locals decided to start a hatchery.

The Buck Creek hatchery is considered a “stewardship hatchery” because it is small, raising only about 9,000 salmon, and includes a special focus on educating and involving the community. They grow coho specifically because they are more robust and can better tolerate being handled by volunteers. Most hatcheries in the province are much larger, focused less on education and more on getting large numbers of salmon into the rivers and oceans.

A not-so-unlikely pair

Some may find it ironic that Marjorie, a self-described environmentalist, married Jason, a professional forester who worked for Canfor, the local mill in Houston which also happened to be the largest sawmill in the world at one point.

This is a beaver dam after it has been notched to create an opening for salmon spawners to jump through. Picture credit: Marjorie Lieuwen

But those who live in resource-based communities like Houston will testify that many of those involved in trades like forestry and mining care a great deal for the environment, as they see it up close and personally every day, and their lives are dependent on it. In other words, they are very much in touch with God’s creation, unlike the many who claim to be “green” but whose environmental care doesn’t go much further than virtue-signalling with their vote or through social media.

“I think it's been really good for me to have that window into that world and to see how there are a lot of requirements that they have to fulfill,” explained Marjorie.

“I was looking at a map once in Jason's truck, and there were these marks in a logging block. I asked what they were. ‘For critter piles’ he said. So I asked him ‘what are critter piles?’”

Jason proceeded to explain how they make piles of sticks and debris for fishers, squirrels and other critters.

“They aren’t legally required to do this, but this is an example of how forestry professionals implement recommendations from biologists to reduce the impacts of logging to the local ecosystem.”

This also helps explain why the property where the hatchery and nature centre is built is owned by the Canfor sawmill. Canfor pays for the taxes, and charges $1 per year for the lease. Indeed, through its history, the community relied on the economic engine of the sawmills to keep their residents working. And although many in urban areas don’t witness it, the same applies to Canada as a whole. About 20 percent of our country’s GDP, and 1.7 million jobs, come from natural resources development. This development also opened up most of the country, creating the infrastructure (roads, railways, pipelines, hydro), that the rest of the population now depends on for daily living.

But tension can quickly become unhealthy when the two sides (in this case resource development and care for the earth) aren’t united in an underlying ethic of respect. That is being felt in Houston today, as Canfor recently had to shut down the sawmill, unable to remain feasible under a NDP provincial government. Businesses like Canfor see the ever-growing list of red tape in BC and decide that they are better off investing in provinces or states that appreciate them.

In contrast, a Christian ethic allows for civil discussion and listening. Cindy shared that:

“it actually took a long time in this community to convince people that I wasn't going to chain myself to their logging truck. I wasn't going to tell them that they needed to quit their jobs in logging or mining or whatever. I personally think that we can do more good by working within the industry than by alienating the industry.”

She shared that there were plenty of times in the past when she organized something like a bird walk, with nobody coming out. “I feel like I'm on the other side now. We're at a point in the community where I feel like people finally understand what it is that we're doing and embrace it.”

Christian environmental stewardship

Coho salmon are captured for hatchery broodstock using seine nets. Picture credit: Cindy Verbeek

There is no shortage of environmentalists in BC, but so many are radical and secular. These sort vehemently oppose resource development, and sometimes even prioritize nature over humanity. But as Marjorie and Cindy exemplify, creation stewardship can go hand-in-hand with resource development.

“We don't hide that we're Christian,” explained Cindy. “We're scientists. This is who God has called us to be. This is our outworking of our faith in doing conservation and creation care work.”

This aligns with the opening chapters of the Bible, where God gave clear instructions to our first parents about how He wanted us to live on this earth. He called them to:

“fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28).

He also said that this creation was made for humanity, including as a source for food. As Art Carden and Caleb S. Fuller explain in their book Mere Economics,

“that humanity is to ‘fill’ and ‘subdue’ suggests that creation is not a museum where only the daintiest white-glove treatment is permitted. From the beginning, God told people to develop and cultivate creation’s potential.”

In the next chapter of Scripture, we read how “the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). Our dominion over creation is to exemplify cultivation and protection. As Cindy explained,

“There is definitely something different about humans as created in the image of God. We definitely have a different role in creation. But we are also made from the dust, and we also share that with the creatures…. You can't care for people without caring for the creation that supports the people.”

She saw this first-hand in Uganda and Kenya, where creation had been severely degraded, hurting some of the poorest people in the world.

“What they're doing to be able to feed their families is coming back in alignment with how God created that place to work rather than using European farming technology and techniques on a tropical ecosystem. They're going back to how God created that ecosystem to work in that location. Then, they're healing the soil, and they're healing the land, and they're feeding their families.”

Cindy also referenced 2 Chronicles 7:14:

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

The last words of that verse have had a big impact on her, as they convicted her that the healing is not just personal, but also extends to creation. “In Colossians it talks about how creation was created for, and in, and through Jesus, and that His death and resurrection were for the reconciliation of all things. It's all of creation.”

Reflecting on my visit to the hatchery and nature center, I can see how this reconciliation explains why two environmentalists, and a nature center, can fit so well amidst a town devoted to harvesting trees and minerals from the earth. The tension between care and dominion is a healthy tension that God called us to in His very first words to us in Genesis 1 and 2. We can both care and exercise dominion. These can work in harmony when we recognize that God has purposefully put us where we are – be it Houston, or Winnipeg, or Halifax – and calls us to steward our lives and this world for His glory.



News

Saturday Selections – June 28, 2025

The Franz Family and "Somewhere in glory"

If you liked the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, you'll love this but of bluegrass gospel...

Tim Challies with 4 good questions to ask your tech

  1. Why were you created?
  2. What is the problem to which you are the solution, and whose problem is it?
  3. What new problem will you bring?
  4. What are you doing to my heart?

Canada's Tax Freedom Day was June 21

June 21 was, according to the Fraser Institute, the day when – averaged across the country – Canadians stopped working for the government, and the money they earn for the rest of the year is the money they get to keep for their own households.

7 great questions to ask fellow believers

Want to get a deeper conversation started? Some of these could be great to pull out when you have a few couples over, or a group of friends.

How to get people to be friends with machines in 3 easy steps

The author of Digital Liturgies warns how AI "friendships" could be addictive in a way that's even beyond pornography.

Government-mandated small business destruction

With a stroke of a pen a government can destroy a business that the owner might have spent a lifetime building up. The destructive potential for government interference in the marketplace might have you thinking those in power would tread very lightly, using their fearsome powers only when they had to. But, as this latest incident highlights, that isn't always so.

A Quebec language law, if enforced, could cause all sorts of problems for board game stores in that province, since their niche games might not have any French on them at all, or not enough.


Today's Devotional

June 30 - Jesus, our best shepherd

“Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.” - Hebrews 13:20

Scripture reading: Hebrews 13:20-25

Today's Manna Podcast

Manna Podcast banner: Manna Daily Scripture Meditations and open Bible with jar logo

Blessed are the Persecuted: Sermon on the Mount

Serving #889 of Manna, prepared by G.H. VanPopta, is called "Blessed are the Persecuted" (Sermon on the Mount) and is based on Matthew 5:10-12.















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Being the Church

Aged saints can tell you what your peers don’t know or won’t say

In late 1785, the 26-year-old British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce secretly met with 61-year-old John Newton. Wilberforce had very recently encountered the grace of Christ. Deeply convicted about his squandered youth and self-serving ambition, the young MP seriously considered resigning from Parliament to enter the ministry. Uneasy of mind, he visited Newton – the slave-trader-turned-clergyman – under cover of darkness. Newton encouraged Wilberforce to remain in Parliament and continue his parliamentary career as a Christian. Newton would later tell Wilberforce, “It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of His Church and for the good of the nation.” Following the meeting, Wilberforce stated that “when I came away I found my mind in a calm, tranquil state, more humbled, and looking more devoutly up to God.” Two years later, Wilberforce would boldly declare that: “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.” Newton’s prescient advice to his younger brother in the faith shows us what it looks like to live out the biblical mandate for older Christians to mentor younger Christians. The much older Newton had turned to Christ three decades earlier and had much more experience in the Christian life than his newly saved counterpart. In consistency with the example of Scripture, he used his hard-earned wisdom to guide a young believer in need of direction. We need Newton, not Tate Sadly, our age has undermined the mentorship role of the elderly. Popular culture idolizes youthful attractiveness and athletic achievement over the wisdom gained in old age. Worse, the world portrays the outward decay of the elderly as an imposition on those who are still enjoying the fleeting pleasures of youth. As a result, care for the elderly is kept away from the family and offshored to a professional class. This is poignantly exhibited in the rise of euthanasia, now Canada’s 4th leading cause of death. If true life consists in beauty, youth, and health, then life itself must be ended once these qualities have disappeared. However, as with all other attempts to reorder God’s creative design, the removal of the elderly from societal influence has produced dire consequences – an emerging generation whose primary influences are their own peers rather than seasoned mentors. Popular online influencers, such as Andrew Tate, have filled the mentorship gap among young men with a false and sinful masculinity. Speaking to Tate’s growing influence, John Stonestreet writes, “young men, when left to be taught by assertive online influencers eager to avoid the feminist ditch, can be driven straight into the pimp ditch. They must instead be taught through real relationships with fathers, pastors, friends, and mentors who are willing to live out all that is distinctive about God’s design for men.” This problem is not unique to young men – social media is dominated by celebrations of a false femininity that devalues the dignity of godly womanhood and instead encourages young women to pursue licentiousness. Called to speak For the Christian, however, gray hair is not the gutting sign of approaching death, but the hard-won crown of a life spent in service to God (Prov. 16:31). With Heaven as the horizon, there is deep value in a life well-lived – the lessons from which may be shared with those who are young. In this way, the Apostle Paul instructs his own younger disciple in the faith, Titus, about the relationship between older Christians and younger Christians (Titus 2:2-5): “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” The priority of mentorship between old Christians and young Christians is clear. Just as the eye cannot say to the foot “I have no need of you,” so also the young Christian cannot say to the old Christian “I have no need of you.” Rehoboam foolishly listened to the council of his childhood friends rather than the mature instructions of his father’s advisors. We too are susceptible to surrounding ourselves with similarly aged peers who affirm our decisions and never rebuke our errors. But godly young people require godly, aged mentors who are committed to speaking directly and truthfully. Wisdom earned in old age provides the mature Christian with the hard-earned right to speak difficult truths that may not as readily flow from the lips of a young Christian’s peers. The willing reception of this gift, however, is only one part of the equation. The gift must also be offered, which requires diligent instruction on the part of the aged and a refusal to listen to a culture which tells those in their final stage of life to hide away until death comes. Wise, aging Christians have been called to deliver godly exhortations to young believers. With such exhortations, mature believers are paving the way for a new generation of the Christian church and the never-ending proclamation of Christ’s glory. Gray hair truly is a far more noble crown than the fleeting bravado of youth. Keeping the fire flickering After nine years of laboring against the slave trade with very little success, a wearied, 36-year-old William Wilberforce wrote his old friend John Newton and questioned whether he could continue the fight. The now 71-year-old Newton replied: “It is true, that you live in the midst of difficulties and snares, and you need a double guard of watchfulness and prayer. But since you know both your need of help and where to look for it, I may say to you, as Darius to Daniel, Thy God whom Thou servest continually is able to preserve and deliver you.” Wilberforce did not quit and, on March 25, 1807 – some dozen years after Wilberforce’s disheartened letter to Newton – Parliament voted to abolish the slave trade throughout the British Empire. A society that scorns the exhortations of aging and faithful men is a society where young men such as William Wilberforce flicker out in discouragement. But, thankfully, God delights in using aging Christians to encourage young Christians in the faith. Godly old men and women must not relinquish that duty, and young men and women must not despise these lessons. In this way, aging Christian believers can fulfill their integral role in the victorious history of Christ’s Church....

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Animated, Movie Reviews, Watch for free

Free film: The John Newton Story

Animated / Drama 2021 / 30 minutes Rating: 7/10 We know John Newton (1725-1807) as the former slave ship captain who repented and then wrote the amazing hymn Amazing Grace. In this Torchlighters episode, we get to hear the rest of his life story from the man himself. When an anti-slavery bill is brought to the British Parliament, one of the members goes to Newton to ask him to speak out on the issue. In response, an old Newton starts to share his dark history. It is a story of constant rebellion – this was a sailor so salty that the other sailors complained about the filth coming from Newton's mouth. It is also a story of a transformation wrought over many years: when Newton first became a Christian he stayed in the slave trade, going on to captain two slave ships for three voyages, transporting thousands of slaves in shameful conditions. This, it turns out, is why the Member of Parliament (MP) has come to Newton: since Newton captained slave ships as a Christian, the MP thinks he can convince Newton to speak out in favor of slavery. The MP has another reason to think Newton might help his cause: after attending the church that the older Newton now served as a pastor, the MP had never heard Newton preach against slavery. Newton realizes that not only can he never speak for slavery, he must now, finally, begin to speak against it... no matter what it might cost him and his church. His congregation was made up of many who had ties to the slave industry. Cautions While the brightly-colored animation style might have parents thinking this is all-ages viewing, the topic matter means it is not so. The toughest scene is right at the start, where we're shown a happy African village, and then the slavers come to kill and steal. It's brief, lasting only a couple of minutes, serving as the visual background to a parliamentary speech given by Christian politician William Wilberforce on the evils of slavery. Man-stealing – a crime God punishes with death (Ex. 21:16) – is so brutal there's no way to entirely mute the wickedness of it, so parents will need to watch the first few minutes to best judge whether their children will be able to handle it. I wouldn't show this to my under tens. There is one picture of Jesus briefly shown, in a book the Member of Parliament is reading. I'll also note the video leaves viewers with the impression that a young Wilberforce and the older Newton both saw the end of slavery in Britain. They did, together, help end British involvement in the slave trade – that happened in 1807 – but it wasn't until 1833, many years after Newton's death, that the slaves in Britain were finally freed. Conclusion My favorite part was the William Wilberforce speech, which bookends the presentation, beginning and ending it. Would that we could one day hear a Christian politician give such an impassioned speech in Parliament in defense of the unborn! This is one to watch with the family, or with a class, and discuss how we can and must rise to the defense of the unborn, never being afraid to raise their plight in the public square. You can watch The John Newton Story for free at RedeemTV.com though you will have to sign up for an account. It has also been made available for free on YouTube, so you can watch it below. ...

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Drama, Movie Reviews

Freedom

Drama 2014 / 94 minutes Rating: 7/10 Like many a film "inspired by true events," this isn't good history but it is pretty decent cinema. Freedom is really two stories in one, the first loosely based on the life of John Newton. He's the author of the hymn "Amazing Grace" and while the film gets the broad details of his life right – he was the captain of a slave trade ship, he did have an encounter with God on his ship, and he did turn his back on the slave trade – the timeline of those events has been greatly compacted. In real life, his rejection of the slave trade was a gradual shift over years and even decades, while in the film it seems more a matter of weeks. The second story takes place 100 years later, and is a fictional account of a family of slaves fleeing Virginia via the Underground Railroad. Cuba Gooding Jr. stars as the father, Samuel. He has his wife, son, and mother with him, and while his mother trusts in God's faithfulness for everything, Samuel has no interest in God. How, he asks, can any slave think God cares about them? It's unusual for a Christian film to ask difficult questions. While Samuel does come to God before film's end, both he, and we, are left with the realization that God might not give us all the answers we are after, or at least not on this side of Heaven. What connects these two stories is a Bible that John Newton is supposed to have given Samuel's great-grandfather when he was just a boy years ago. Samuel's mother still has it, and we take the leap back in time when she tells the story of how Newton came to give a Bible to a slave. Newton's "Amazing Grace" is the musical centerpiece to the story, but there are lots of other songs too. It isn't a musical, though – in musicals people just randomly start to sing instead of talk. Here most of the songs have a natural fit: characters sing because they are comforting someone, or as part of a performance, or they sing to pass the time. But whatever the reason they are singing, the music is very good! Cautions Freedom received an R rating for the violence that's done to the slaves. While many of the blows happen just offscreen, communicated more by sound than by visuals, it can be brutal. That makes this best suited for older teens and parents. While God's name is used throughout the film it is used appropriately, to either talk about Him, or to Him. There is one use of "damn." Conclusion One secular critic called this "an overly sentimental cinematic history lesson best suited for church and school groups" and while he meant it as a criticism, I'd just say he's nailed the target audience. The slave trade was brutal, and while this is too, it is only so in parts because the filmmakers didn't want to present an unvarnished look – they weren't trying to make a Schindler's List that'd leave everyone mute and depressed afterward. By presenting only some of the horror, they allow families to view and discuss it together with their older teens. Freedom could serve as an instructive introduction to this chapter of history... at least for teens and adults. ...





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Pornography

A church response is needed to stop the porn crisis

Parental controls are not enough ***** Over the past several years, I have spoken in dozens of Christian communities to thousands of students and parents on the issue of digital porn addiction. Ten years ago, many parents thought the warnings about the digital porn threat were well-intentioned, but exaggerated. These days, most people are aware that porn use is swiftly becoming a norm in Christian communities. Not a single Christian high school I have spoken at did not have a significant number of students struggling with pornography. Protecting your home doesn’t protect your kids So, how do parents take steps to effectively porn-proof their homes? Many parents try to do just that. They install internet filters. They monitor the devices their children have or have access to. They use Covenant Eyes, Qustodio, or other accountability software. But time and again, frustrated parents tell me that their children have been exposed to explicit content anyways, because the parents of the friends their children hang out with do not take these precautions. Additionally, parents who actively monitor the internet access of their children by not giving them a smartphone face constant fights with their children if they are among the few who do not have one. The reality is that if Christian communities are going to respond effectively to the crisis of porn addiction among the young, it will take a community response. Yes, it is essential that individual households ensure that internet access is both restricted and closely monitored. But this is clearly not enough. In fact, secular governments are for the most part ahead of church leaders in recognizing this reality, which is why American state legislatures, the UK government, and other governments across Europe are grappling with the problem of how to keep pornography away from children. They recognize that this is a social problem requiring a robust collective solution, and Christian communities must recognize this, as well. Christian communities are, for the most part, lagging behind secular leaders in recognizing this problem and considering collective solutions. This needs to be “all in” In a recent essay in First Things titled “Parents Can’t Fight Porn Alone,” in which they make the case for government restrictions on digital pornography, Clare Morell and Brad Littlejohn explain why communities need to work together: “Pornography’s addictive properties raise the stakes. Not only are children ill equipped to make rational choices about whether to consume a product, but their developing brains are more likely than adult brains to become hooked, with lifelong consequences. Adults may abuse alcohol, tobacco, and porn (indeed, for porn, there is no good “use,” but the law cannot suppress every vice), but they are less likely to become addicted if the first exposure occurs after age eighteen, when their brains are more fully developed. And the addictive qualities of porn make a mockery of parental controls: Once a child has encountered porn for the first time (perhaps through a friend, or on a parent’s device, or before the parents realized they needed to put controls on the child’s device), his or her brain will be programmed to hunt for it again and again, so that any and every loophole or glitch is an opening to ongoing porn consumption. “Too often, portals to porn come in the form of friends. For many American children, the dark journey with pornography begins on the school bus, at recess, or even at youth group. Even when parents set up content-filtering regimes for their own families, they cannot control what other families in their communities are doing. With 95 percent of teens carrying around mini-computers in their pockets, it is all too easy for a peer with an unfiltered smartphone to expose another child to pornography. An Oxford Internet Institute study thus estimated that for a single child to be shielded from online pornography in any given year, at least seventeen households in his or her network (and possibly as many as seventy-seven) would need to be employing filters.” Porn is looking for them Re-read that for a moment: At least seventeen households in the network of a single child need to be monitoring and restricting internet usage in order to protect him or her from online porn for a single year. And as I emphasize in my presentations, it doesn’t matter whether your kids are looking for porn – if they’re online, porn is looking for them. As Morell and Littlejohn put it: “Today, the average home has multiple internet-connected devices: smart TVs, laptops, iPads, gaming consoles, and smartphones for every member of the family, not to mention school-issued devices. Each of these ‘smart’ technologies may have hundreds of individual apps, many with their own in-app internet browsers, which means there may be thousands of points of entry to the internet in a single home. A minor using Snapchat, for instance, can reach Pornhub in just five clicks without ever leaving the app. “The abundance of portals requires several different parental control solutions, few of which are intuitive or wholly reliable. Apple’s Screen Time filter, one of the best, requires seventeen steps to set up properly, has been known to stop working without warning, and even when fully functional can be hacked by tech-savvy teens. Better-designed third-party parental control apps are barred from accessing and regulating many of the most popular – and dangerous – apps, such as Discord, Snapchat, and TikTok. And if a parent, recognizing that no one solution is comprehensive, tries to install more than one external control app on the same device, the apps will often conflict with one another. “Parents thus find themselves losing the arms race against Big Tech and Big Porn. This is dire, since children do not need to go looking for pornography; it finds them on social media. The porn industry has adopted the social media influencer model, with porn performers promoting their content on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, and Instagram, in order to entice users (many of them minors) to click through to their own sites.” Unsurprisingly, many parents despair. Plenty of parents eventually give up, worn down by the begging and badgering of their children and the lack of community support for their decisions about smartphones and internet-capable devices. If all the other kids have them, they can’t be that bad, right? Porn has been around forever, and most people turned out okay, didn’t they? If we are taking this problem more seriously than our community leadership, we’re probably being paranoid or going overboard, aren’t we? It is far easier to cave, cover our eyes, and hope for the best – but this invariably has devastating consequences, many of which I detail in a comprehensive chapter in my recent book How We Got Here: A Guide to Our Anti-Christian Culture. A growing problem If we are to protect our children from being exposed to explicit content and developing porn addictions – and again, I emphasize that this is a significant and growing problem in every Christian community I have visited – we will need to work together. Christian communities should treat pornography addiction with the same level of seriousness we would apply to a wave of addiction to other drugs. Pornography is more insidious because its effects, at first, are less visible – but they are no less destructive. They rewire and fundamentally transform the mind, alter our ability to relate to the opposite sex, and profoundly poison our ability to have healthy relationships. Thus, community leaders should address the pornography crisis head on. Yes, parents should ensure that every internet-capable device is locked down and monitored. But we must also work with other parents and ensure that the networks we are a part of are pulling in the same direction. (As the American psychologist Dr. Leonard Sax put it in a presentation I attended recently, it is the task of parents to find out if the household their child is visiting has unrestricted internet access.) Christian schools should develop and enforce rigid policies on smartphone use at school and, ideally, cultivate a community with a collective standard that recognizes the dangers of giving teenagers smartphones to begin with. We are all in this together, and we cannot protect our children from pornography if other parents are not willing to do the same. Time to catch up Again, secular experts are ahead of most Christian communities on this issue. Intellectuals such as Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness) are driving a new consensus: Giving a child (and that very much includes teenagers) a smartphone (or device with unfiltered internet access) is one of the most damaging decisions a parent can make. Morell and Littlejohn are right: Parents cannot do this alone. But they shouldn’t have to, either. Christian communities are lagging behind secular governments and experts on this issue. It is time we caught up. This is reprinted with permission from TheBridgehead.ca where it was first published under the title “Parental controls are not enough: A community response is needed to stop the porn crisis” and where Jonathon Van Maren blogs and also hosts a regular podcast....

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Entertainment

The case against MMA, boxing, gladiatorial combat, cockfighting, bullbaiting and other blood sports

Violence might sometimes be necessary, but it should never be amusing ***** Under what circumstances are Christians permitted, in good conscience, to view adults deliberately inflicting violence on one another for the purposes of entertainment? This may seem like a strange question, but it isn’t. On social media, Christians regularly post commentary on the latest UFC match – most recently, several prominent accounts posted minute-by-minute updates on the fight between veteran boxer Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. The sight of two adult men inflicting violence on one another for the entertainment of others was enormously popular, which is why Tyson was paid a staggering $20 million, and Paul was paid $40 million. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this issue recently. Last year, I was invited to participate in a long-form discussion on a range of cultural issues with Catholic podcaster Matt Fradd on his podcast Pints with Aquinas. One of the topics that came up was the acceptability for Christians of viewing violence – and combat sports – as entertainment. We both agreed that we found combat sports fascinating, and that we were attracted to them as feats of strength and skill. Yet, we both concluded that watching violence as entertainment should be avoided. Now, I am aware – after years writing on cultural issues – that nothing attracts a backlash like criticizing someone’s preferred entertainment. Tim Challies has observed the same trend, and I think the fierceness with which people defend their entertainment is evidence of how central it has become in so many of our lives. But when considered objectively, it is not difficult to conclude that inherently violent combat sports such as Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) are inappropriate entertainment for Christians. Entertained by what we shouldn’t do? Biblically, we are forbidden to do violence to others and to harm our own bodies outside of specifically justified circumstances, which would include a just war or law enforcement. I want to make clear that I am not making the case against learning or practicing skills such as boxing, mixed martial arts, or other forms of fighting and self-defence. My argument is that violence should not be entertainment, which is defined as “the action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment.” I would apply a similar standard to films that glorify violence, which is distinct from depicting violence. A film about war or genocide that portrays reality would not, I hope we can agree, be “entertaining” as such. There is a distinction between learning to inflict violence in the context of a legitimate vocation (like soldier or police officer) or learning how to do so in self-defence, and watching violence to amuse ourselves. The early Christians were universal in their condemnation of gladiatorial combat, and the difference between gladiatorial battles and UFC fights is one of degree, not kind. We know what the physical effects of combat sports such as UFC and boxing are, and we cannot pretend that the fighters are not doing permanent damage to themselves and others. Violence is inherent to these sports, as the intent is to win by inflicting physical violence on the opponent until he or she is knocked out or submits. The research into the physical damage that fighters inflict on one another is extensive and conclusive. From that perspective, I suspect that we may one day come to see violence in sport the way we now view bullbaiting or cockfighting. Young men should not be sacrificing their bodies and their cognitive abilities for the entertainment of the masses. While it is true that other sports can also result in physical harm – hockey, basketball – violence is an aberration rather than an intrinsic part of these sports. Those who make this point are making a category error. For those who think violence as entertainment is acceptable, I would be interested in hearing their answer to this question: How is sport and entertainment a justifiable exception to the general Christian prohibition on violence? Two defences In order to claim that combat sports such as UFC are justifiable entertainment for Christians, you must defend this thesis: Human beings are morally permitted to inflict violence on one another for money and the entertainment of others. I have yet to see this thesis convincingly defended. In most discussions I have had on this subject, people are remarkably unwilling to apply Christian standards to entertainment combat fighting. Instead, one of two responses is usually offered: “You’re being legalistic” or “I really enjoy watching fights.” The first response is the lazy Christian’s preferred defence of many indefensible things (and misunderstands the term “legalistic” to boot); the second is irrelevant. Many violent combat sports – especially UFC – bring out profoundly unhealthy and unchristian attitudes in the spectators. The bursts of particularly savage violence are not incidental – they are a key reason many enjoy these sports so much. The sight of two men attacking one another and physically damaging one another sends crowds into a frenzy that in many instances can accurately be described as bloodlust. Skilled yes, but brutal still Many fans rightly note that professional fighters display enormous skill, and that fights resemble a game of enormous chess. But surely we can agree that the atmosphere at the fights as well as the attitude towards physical violence being cultivated by the spectator are profoundly unedifying. In short, I believe UFC is to human relations what pornography is to sex. Some lusts should not be stoked. Some things should not be entertaining. ...