0:13

You guys are listening to the

0:15

Confronting Christianity podcast and I am

0:17

here with Dr. Jeremy Meeks. Jeremy

0:19

is the director and lead instructor

0:21

of the Chicago Course on Preaching.

0:23

He's also a resident pastor for ministry

0:25

apprenticeships at Christchurch, Chicago. And

0:28

before moving to Chicago to work full -time

0:30

for the Charles Simeon Trust, he

0:32

was lead pastor at Hope Community Church

0:34

in Nashville, Tennessee. Fun fact, the

0:36

church that I go to in Cambridge,

0:38

Massachusetts runs like little sub -courses of

0:40

the Simeon Trust course, both for

0:43

for men and for women in our

0:45

community, and a lot of people have

0:47

found them super helpful. So if somebody's

0:49

looking for more training in Bible teaching,

0:51

then Simeon Trust is a wonderful place

0:53

to go. Jeremy served as the director

0:55

of Spanish language initiatives for the Charles

0:57

Simeon Trust in his previous capacity. Before

0:59

that, he and his wife were church

1:02

planting missionaries in Nicaragua. Jeremy did his undergrad

1:04

work at Liberty University and an MA

1:06

in bioethics from Trinity Graduate School. His thesis

1:08

was on the distinction between robots and

1:10

human bodies. And he went on to complete

1:12

a PhD in Theological Ethics from the

1:14

University of Aberdeen, Scotland. There,

1:16

his dissertation utilised the rhetoric of

1:18

Augustine, a fourth -century church father

1:20

and theologian, to reorient human

1:22

desires for happiness, which many believe

1:24

they will find in, and

1:27

I quote, sex with robots. I

1:29

love how Jeremy, your bio, then immediately

1:31

says, he is married to Marjorie and

1:33

they have two children, Alexis and Jake.

1:36

So Jeremy, today I have invited

1:38

you to talk with me. about

1:40

sex robots or sex bots as

1:42

they're commonly known. But before

1:44

that, I was just chatting with

1:46

Jeremy before we came online and

1:48

I said I'd googled him to

1:50

look up a detail of his

1:52

bio and discover that there is

1:54

in fact another Jeremy Meeks who

1:56

has, let's say, a rather different

1:58

background and life history. So do

2:00

you want to, you said you had some funny

2:02

stories to tell of the confusion that people sometimes

2:05

have between you and the other Jeremy Meeks. So

2:07

tell us one. Oh, many. Well, Rebecca first, thanks

2:09

for having me on. It's fun to be here

2:11

and always fun to talk about sex robots. But

2:13

yeah, I get confused with, so

2:15

that Jeremy Meeks that's more popular

2:17

than me is commonly referred to

2:19

as the hot felon. Yeah,

2:23

that's a good point. So yeah, his

2:25

little moniker is the hot felon. So

2:27

his mugshot got him famous, went all

2:29

over the world, and he got a

2:31

modeling contract out of it and all

2:33

kinds of crazy stuff. Well, I

2:35

was at a workshop in Mexico and I

2:38

had a guy walk up to me and

2:40

he goes, oh, I'm so glad it's you.

2:42

And I was like, oh, I guess I'm

2:44

glad it's me too, but like, what do

2:46

you mean you're glad that it's me? And

2:48

he goes, so my wife showed me a

2:50

picture and she goes, is this the Jeremy

2:52

Meeks who's gonna be at this workshop that

2:54

you're going to? And he goes, well, I

2:56

don't know. She goes, well, if he looks

2:59

like this, you need to run away because

3:01

this is a very bad man. He goes,

3:03

but it's not you. So I'm very happy

3:05

that you are you and you're not him.

3:07

I said, oh, thank you. This also happened.

3:09

I was a keynote speaker at a conference

3:11

one time and I got introduced to a

3:13

bunch of like very like kind and godly

3:15

rural pastors as this is Jeremy Meeks. He

3:18

is, he was never part of

3:20

the gang of the Crips and

3:22

he's never been to jail, but

3:24

he's really into sex robots. Let's

3:27

welcome him. I was preaching. Yeah,

3:29

I was preaching on Psalm 19.

3:31

Nope, that's not the intro. So

3:33

I had to lean in and

3:35

say, I was in a gang,

3:38

I've been to prison, and I'll talk to you

3:40

about sex robots on the last day. So it

3:42

was a, yeah, it was a rather awkward start

3:44

to a conference, but we got there. I now

3:46

have so many questions. So you were in a

3:48

gang and you have been to prison. No, no,

3:50

no, that's not true. But it's like, you know,

3:53

two eyes a truth. Sometimes.

3:56

Sometimes pastors come from, you know, interesting

3:58

backgrounds. Gosh, I'd assume that other Jeremy

4:00

Meeks was a model and actor and

4:02

then became a felon, but in fact,

4:04

he was the other way around. The

4:07

other way around, yeah. That

4:09

is amazing. I do have

4:11

a rather checkered past, but thankfully I

4:13

never got sent to prison, though I probably

4:15

should. have gone a few times. So

4:18

the first time I became aware

4:20

of you Jeremy was when our mutual

4:22

friend Rachel Gilson was reading your

4:24

PhD dissertation on Augustine and Sex with

4:26

Robots and she kept sending me

4:28

quotes and sort of thoughts and you

4:30

know Rachel is in the best

4:32

sense a highly critical reader. And so

4:34

she will sometimes send me quotes

4:36

from people's books that are not positive.

4:38

Let's put it that way, where

4:40

she'll say, look at the sentence somebody

4:42

wrote and will think, oh my

4:45

goodness, how did that sentence get published?

4:47

But in your case, she was

4:49

sending me sentences saying, oh, this is

4:51

a really interesting thought. Huh, that's

4:53

a really interesting observation. Hmm, I'd never

4:55

thought about that. And so I

4:57

thought, I sort of stored that away

4:59

in my little brain and thought,

5:01

huh, this would be an interesting thing

5:03

to talk about because as listeners

5:05

may know if they've listened to me

5:07

rambling on other topics. I'm keenly

5:09

interested in sexual ethics and in the

5:11

interplay between a biblical understanding of

5:14

the purpose of sex and marriage and

5:16

the various ways in which different

5:18

cultures have tried to understand the purpose

5:20

of our bodies, the purpose of

5:22

sex, the purpose of marriage. I'm currently

5:24

working on a bit of sort

5:26

of looking at the first sexual revolution

5:28

that happened in the Greco -Roman Empire

5:30

when Christianity first sort of... up

5:32

and started changing how people were at

5:34

that time thinking about sex and

5:36

then looking at the second sexual revolution

5:38

and some of the sundry revolutions

5:41

that have happened since then in the

5:43

West. It's fair to say

5:45

this is the first time I have ever

5:47

had a conversation with anybody about the

5:49

question of sex with robots. But funny as

5:51

it sounds, it's actually far

5:53

closer to where we are culturally

5:55

today than perhaps many people listening

5:57

to this podcast might like to

6:00

think. First, like, an

6:02

insight into why did you start exploring

6:04

this topic in the first place and

6:06

how is it relevant to conversations today? Yeah,

6:09

that's the question I often

6:11

get. So the reason why is,

6:13

I mean, the dirty secret

6:15

of writing a dissertation is write

6:17

on something that people haven't

6:19

written about. And the more untouched

6:22

the topic, the wider the

6:24

scope can be. And due mainly

6:26

to my bioethics work, I

6:28

was kind of fascinated by why

6:30

humans are fascinated by robots,

6:32

especially humanoid robots, but just

6:34

robots in general and technology

6:36

in general. And then as one

6:38

who trains preachers for a

6:40

living, mainly interested in like the

6:42

persuasive nature of technology, and

6:44

there's a lot of fraught debate

6:46

about sex robots, like any

6:48

kind of emerging technology, because all

6:50

the emerging technology is something

6:52

that's kind of like, we

6:54

can see it coming, but it's

6:56

not quite here. And so all you

6:58

have are moral arguments for or

7:01

against these things. And so there's a

7:03

lot of arguments out there, both

7:05

pro and con, and yet the debate

7:07

seems incredibly like at an impasse,

7:09

right? So the question that

7:11

I wanted to kind of answer was,

7:13

well, how might a Christian kind of

7:15

split the difference? And not just kind

7:17

of either orism, but kind of say

7:19

yes to what the pro side wants

7:21

and the con side wants when it

7:23

comes to sexual robots. but orient them

7:26

towards something that would actually be truly

7:28

satisfying. So, you know, instead of just

7:30

saying, well, here's everything that's wrong with

7:32

sex robots, although for the sake of

7:34

the listener, I do conclude that they're

7:36

not appropriate for human use. I did

7:38

want to lean in as hard as

7:41

I could to give as much, to

7:43

concede as much as I could, both

7:45

about the struggles of human sexuality and

7:47

the potential hypothetical benefits that sex robots

7:49

might provide. and to say yes to

7:51

everything I could possibly say yes to

7:53

and simply take the desires which I

7:56

don't think are bad all the time

7:58

and reorient them towards something positive and

8:00

it just so happens that Augustine was

8:02

a good person to use mainly because

8:04

of the time in which he lived.

8:06

You're talking about the first sexual revolution

8:08

while Augustine was all wrapped up in

8:11

that because he talked a lot about

8:13

sex and he had, you know, as

8:15

a pastor he was dealing with people

8:17

who Del was sexual stuff all the

8:19

time and as a public intellectual, he

8:21

was dealing with the cultural mores of

8:23

his day. And so he thought a

8:26

lot about it and wrote a lot

8:28

about it and preached a lot about

8:30

it. So he's actually incredibly helpful in

8:32

kind of getting to the heart of

8:34

what we're looking for in sex and

8:36

how those desires are often corrupted and

8:38

how to be trained towards something ultimate

8:41

and satisfying. Okay, interesting.

8:43

So I'm someone who finds

8:45

Augustine in many ways exceedingly

8:47

helpful and in some ways

8:49

quite unhelpful. I think

8:51

sometimes people, and I'm not saying that you

8:53

take this, sometimes people take the view that

8:55

if Augustine said it, it must therefore be

8:57

true. Kyle Harper's book

8:59

from Shame to Sin, which looks

9:01

at the way in which Christianity changed

9:04

how people thought about sex in

9:06

there. kind of Greco -Roman Empire, one

9:08

of the comments he makes is that

9:10

Augustine thought that prostitution was a

9:12

necessary evil, which is one of the

9:14

points where I would sort of

9:17

take issue with our elder brother in

9:19

the faith. But I'm sort of

9:21

curious for the cliffnotes of your thinking

9:23

as you pluck somebody who's been

9:25

incredibly influential and in many ways incredibly

9:27

helpful to Christian thinking sort of

9:30

historically from the fourth century and sort

9:32

of applied some of his thinking

9:34

to our current conversations now. Yeah, give

9:36

us a little taste of what

9:38

that conversation looked like in your thesis

9:40

and where you landed and why.

9:43

So here's the Cliff Notes version. So

9:45

Augustine was incredibly wrapped up in

9:47

the fraught debates about the use of

9:49

rhetoric. The kind of philosophers of

9:52

his day were opposed to it mainly

9:54

because they thought that the truth

9:56

content of something didn't matter. It's only

9:58

how you said something. So there

10:00

are professional public speakers who are essentially

10:02

just gaming the system to get

10:04

people on their side. And he was

10:07

like, okay, that's clearly wrong, but

10:09

people are persuaded and persuasive. And so

10:11

how do you use something to

10:13

good ends? So, and if

10:15

you're thinking about the arguments for anything,

10:17

well, people are trying to persuade you

10:19

to get on their side. And so

10:21

really kind of the, all the arguments

10:23

when it comes down to like the

10:25

use of or the avoidance of the

10:27

use. of sex or robots for the

10:29

purposes of sexual gratification, you can kind

10:31

of, I lumped them into kind of

10:33

three categories. So just very briefly, you've

10:36

got the argument for human freedom. So

10:38

sexual robots are beneficial because you can do

10:40

with them what you will and you own

10:42

them. So you have kind of an ontological

10:44

security, right? They're never going to go away.

10:46

You get it kind of, they're with you

10:48

forever. And so you're not like with a

10:50

human relationship, scared they're ever going to go

10:52

away and you can do anything you want

10:55

with them. And the con side says, well,

10:57

I thought that like owning humans was bad

10:59

and consent was a good thing. So maybe

11:01

these robots are going to train us to

11:03

go in terrible directions. And Augustine comes along

11:05

and goes, oh, human freedom is awesome. It's

11:07

one of the best of all possible things.

11:09

But what freedom looks like is the ability

11:11

to do what God wants us to do

11:13

because that's the way towards human flourishing. So

11:16

yeah, humans should be maximally free and

11:18

all that kind of stuff. And yet what

11:20

freedom looks like is not simply what

11:22

we want to do, but what God wants

11:24

to do. which guards the goods of

11:26

like, you know, slavery, bad idea, consent, real

11:29

good thing. But yeah, freedom is important.

11:31

Oh, well, I sort of do just because

11:33

it's triggering so many things that I've

11:35

been recently looking at. But hold your... I

11:37

want to explore the number two and

11:39

number three as well, but let's have a

11:41

little interaction around number one first. Yeah,

11:44

sort of fascinating because... of

11:46

the pretty gruesome and horrific

11:48

realities of the sexual

11:50

norms in the Greco -Roman

11:52

empire prior to the rise

11:55

of Christianity was that

11:57

people not only owned slaves,

12:00

but that it was seen as

12:02

perfectly normal, reasonable, natural, not

12:04

a moral problem for a master

12:06

to use his either male or female

12:08

slaves for sex. And it's one

12:10

of, again, I mean, in this bit,

12:12

in case some of our listeners

12:14

don't is sort of one of the

12:16

ways in which it's really hard

12:18

for us to wrap our minds around

12:20

how people were thinking in the

12:22

sort of cracker in an empire, the

12:24

rise of Christianity is like, A,

12:26

the idea that it would not be

12:28

morally problematic to have sex with

12:30

one of the people who you sort

12:32

of... owned and the idea that

12:35

it would be kind of beside the

12:37

point whether they were male or

12:39

female, which was, you know, very much

12:41

the case in the in the

12:43

Greco -Roman Empire and the idea like

12:45

our notions of consent are ones that

12:47

actually have come out of Christianity.

12:49

So prior to Christianity or at least

12:51

our notions of consent for everyone

12:53

because the Greeks and the Romans had

12:55

a notion of consent for like

12:57

a freeborn woman. who's,

12:59

you know, chastity was her prized

13:01

possession, essentially, and say, you know,

13:03

you could have a conversation about

13:05

whether a woman was or was

13:07

not consenting to sex outside of

13:09

marriage. But you wouldn't even be

13:11

asking the question whether an enslaved

13:13

person was consenting, because they were,

13:15

I mean, I think Karl Harper

13:17

puts it, that they were kind

13:19

of like furniture, essentially. So some

13:21

of what you're saying... There's an

13:24

eerie correspondence actually between how human

13:26

beings were being used in the

13:28

ancient world and tragically in many

13:30

parts around the world today through

13:32

the global sex industry, but an

13:34

eerie correspondence between that and how

13:36

sex robots are being conceived of

13:38

today. It's just interesting how contemporary

13:40

some of those conversations are. Yeah,

13:42

and the argument that the kind

13:44

of pro -side uses is, I

13:47

mean, well, we'll just play the

13:49

game. Rebecca, are you a fan

13:51

of the current challenges facing sex

13:53

workers today? Are you a fan

13:55

of like, they're just like ignoring

13:57

that and just leaning in and

13:59

saying, yeah, no, we should use

14:02

sex workers. No, I'm for sure

14:04

not a fan of using sex

14:06

workers. Yes. That's good. Okay, good.

14:08

So wouldn't you think that it

14:10

would be a better world if

14:12

we had less sexual trafficking and

14:14

less prostitution? Yes. Great. Then sex

14:16

robots are potentially a way towards

14:18

freeing those people because human desires

14:20

are not going away. And

14:22

so perhaps if we have sex

14:24

robots, then we will

14:27

lessen the burden on

14:29

sex work providers. That's the

14:31

way the argument goes. Now, of

14:33

course, because no humans are actually being

14:35

harmed in this. Just human -like things. And

14:37

there is good reason. to believe that

14:39

humans would find sex with robots satisfying,

14:41

especially the more human -human -ish they are,

14:43

the more they look like us and

14:45

act like us and talk like us,

14:47

move like us and stuff like that.

14:49

But of course the concept comes along

14:51

and goes, you do know there's like

14:54

knock -on effects, right? Because while they're

14:56

not people, what we know from

14:58

human -robot interaction in general is that we

15:00

tend to treat them as people. We tend

15:02

to treat them as moral sentient agents

15:04

even if they're not so you can just

15:06

think of like AI and how everybody's

15:08

freaked out about like oh look is this

15:10

thing really thinking or whatever this isn't

15:12

a problem just for some like you know

15:14

chump that doesn't know how to use

15:16

computers that's running into this for the first

15:18

time even developers get weirded out by

15:20

this kind of stuff because of like how

15:22

good and accurate some of the technology

15:24

is and so that this is why you

15:26

have debates about like you know should

15:28

you make your children say please and thank

15:30

you to Alexa it's not because people

15:32

think that Alexa's a person necessarily speaking to

15:34

them through a speaker. But it's

15:36

like, but if we train them to

15:38

not speak in those ways, then what's

15:41

going to happen when they run into

15:43

human interactions? Which is an interesting question.

15:45

But the same thing applies to like, well,

15:47

if you took that technology and put

15:49

it into a human looking body, then

15:51

how is that going to affect human

15:53

relationships? And the answer is like, we

15:55

don't know because they don't exactly exist

15:57

on a large market level yet. But do

15:59

you really want to screw up society

16:01

and screw up humans just to figure

16:03

out if these things work or not?

16:05

Because while it's not involving humans, the

16:08

only reason it's pleasurable or potential

16:10

substitute is because of how human

16:12

the thing is. Yeah, and actually

16:14

it is involving humans because the

16:16

person having sex with the robot

16:18

is, in fact, I would argue,

16:20

harming themselves. Let's

16:22

look at point two and three

16:24

because I stopped you after point

16:26

one because I got too excited.

16:29

Oh, yeah. It's great. So point

16:31

two is about human companionship. So

16:33

the pro side is like, look,

16:35

a lot of people have trouble

16:37

accessing sexual gratification. Lots of different

16:39

groups of people, right? Like people

16:41

who are disabled. Okay. There's one

16:43

or the elderly, right? Who's,

16:45

they, how, how do they access

16:47

sexual gratification? Or you can think

16:49

of like incels. Right? So involuntary

16:51

celibates, ordinarily males who feel that

16:54

the society has formed perceptions of

16:56

men and women that they don't

16:58

fit into, so no women want

17:00

them and it's the culture's fault. Somebody,

17:03

you know, they have real

17:05

trouble accessing sexual gratification. Or,

17:07

you know, the kind of case in point

17:09

that we really don't want to think about is

17:11

like pedophiles, or those who are attracted to

17:13

minors but don't act on those inclinations. What

17:16

about them? People who are

17:18

involved in the BDSM community who

17:20

think that artifacts are necessary

17:22

for their sexual gratification or people

17:24

with autism that have real

17:26

trouble interacting with other human beings.

17:28

One argument is a way

17:30

to provide companionship for them is

17:32

to give them sex robots

17:34

because they can be tailored to

17:36

people's needs and desires and

17:38

they don't feel awkward about interacting

17:40

with a real person. As

17:42

the con side comes along and

17:44

goes, Hey, friendship, companionship is

17:46

incredibly important, but human problems need to

17:48

be solved with human solutions. So it's

17:50

not exactly charitable to get somebody who

17:52

has trouble with other humans and go,

17:54

well, here's a robot and go off

17:56

into the corner and be gone. Augustine

17:58

comes along and says, friendship is one

18:01

of the greatest of all things, but

18:03

what friendship looks like is doing good

18:05

for the other. not simply doing what

18:07

the other wants and so I get

18:09

into the complicated notions of like how

18:11

do you love people who are very

18:13

hard to love and Augustine has a

18:15

lot to say about loving enemies. Now

18:17

I don't think that like incels and

18:19

minor attracted persons are necessarily my enemy

18:22

but if you think about what it

18:24

looks like to love an enemy and

18:26

then if that's the greater and you

18:28

work it down to the lesser then

18:30

we can learn stuff about like how

18:32

to love people who are incredibly challenging

18:34

to love but providing for them real

18:36

companionship and what that looks like in

18:38

the church and all kinds of stuff

18:40

is what I get into but Augustine

18:43

kind of provides a path to love

18:45

people who are hard to love which

18:47

the pro side argues for but they

18:49

don't have a lot of grounds for

18:51

it. Yeah, yeah, I would argue less

18:53

articulately than Augustine that human beings do

18:55

need love and human beings do not

18:57

need sexual gratification. I think it's one

18:59

of the great and harmful myths of

19:01

our modern world and not to say

19:04

that it's only on our modern world,

19:06

but the idea that you cannot in

19:08

fact live without sexual satisfaction is untrue

19:10

and has caused all sorts of troubles.

19:12

Yep, it has caused all kinds of troubles.

19:15

And this is anything new, like you

19:17

said, this has been going on for a

19:19

very long time. And so I think

19:21

that like one place that people can need

19:23

to begin is even just admitting that

19:25

like, hey, I don't even, I can't even

19:27

begin to imagine the Struggles that you

19:29

might have because I don't have those same

19:31

kind of struggles before you're just like,

19:33

oh, you don't need that. Uh, especially if

19:35

you have it, you know, it's always,

19:37

it's one of those things where it's like,

19:40

well, if you're happily married and you're

19:42

telling somebody who isn't like, oh, just, you

19:44

should just be happy as you are.

19:46

People are like, well, that's easy for you

19:48

to say because you've got what I'm

19:50

looking for. Now, I think that, uh, it's

19:52

not a defeater of just like, well,

19:54

if you've got it, then everybody should have

19:56

it because there's all kinds of things

19:58

that people have that other people don't have.

20:00

And just because, like you said, the

20:02

key is that if you base your life

20:05

around contentment being in what you have,

20:07

then you're essentially setting yourself up for perpetual

20:09

discontent because you're never going to have

20:11

everything everybody has. I think

20:13

there are so many different

20:15

ways in which the directions of

20:17

this conversation could go in.

20:19

One the things that I've thought

20:21

quite a bit about from

20:23

the perspective of Christian sexual ethics,

20:25

which says, And we should

20:27

come back to this, but like sex only

20:29

belongs in male -female marriage. And I

20:31

will often have people say to me,

20:33

you know, when I'm speaking about talking about

20:35

Christian sexual ethics with respect to people

20:37

who like me are attracted to folks of

20:39

their same sex. And people will say,

20:41

well, how can you expect somebody who maybe

20:44

is only ever attracted to somebody of

20:46

their same sex to be lonely for the

20:48

rest of their lives? And I think

20:50

that question often comes up. And the underlying

20:52

assumption is, if you are not in

20:54

a sexual romantic relationship, you are therefore lonely.

20:57

And I think the New Testament takes

20:59

a massive wrecking ball and smashes

21:01

that whole house down. And in fact,

21:04

those who've listened to me rant

21:06

on this podcast before will not

21:08

be unfamiliar with this, but I

21:10

think there are ways in which

21:12

much of our Western sort of

21:14

church community, you know, many,

21:16

I'm not wanting to speak for... I

21:18

haven't been part of, but I

21:20

think it's fair to say that the

21:22

average church in the modern West has

21:25

cottoned on to the fact that

21:27

the Bible has a vision, a

21:29

beautiful and good vision for male

21:31

-female marriage and for parenting, and

21:33

has completely missed the fact that

21:35

this is actually a small subset

21:37

within the larger kind of framework

21:39

of love that the New Testament

21:41

calls us to, which is sort

21:43

of basic heartbeat of the Christian

21:45

life. It's actually brotherly and sisterly

21:48

love. It's the family community love.

21:50

not something that has a sexual

21:52

romantic kind of core to it

21:54

in the way that Christian marriage

21:56

does. You can even take it

21:58

further, because while that's a burden

22:00

that like us, you know, non -married

22:02

people are often putting on themselves,

22:04

I've often responded to such people

22:06

by saying, do you really think

22:08

that married people are happy? And

22:11

don't put that burden

22:13

on married people, because a

22:15

lot of discontent married

22:17

people got married thinking that marriage was

22:20

gonna make them happy and that now

22:22

I have like the ability to have

22:24

a fulfilling life and it's like well

22:26

your marriage can't bear the weight of

22:28

happiness so you know everybody's like oh

22:30

you know you're happy because you're married

22:32

you're like well it depends on the

22:34

day but like I'm not gonna say

22:36

I'm always perpetually dissatisfied but I can

22:38

introduce you to a whole bunch of

22:40

people who are married and are not

22:42

happy and are not satisfied. And I

22:44

don't even mean like non -Christian people,

22:46

Christian, non -Christian alike. So the idea that

22:48

like marriage is going to solve your

22:50

loneliness problem is a complete farce. And

22:52

if you put that on your marriage,

22:54

then guess what? You're going to set

22:56

yourself up once again for dissatisfaction because

22:58

you're putting a burden on marriage that

23:00

it can't bear. I don't think that

23:02

marriage is a bad thing. I'm married.

23:04

I think it's great. But it is

23:06

a real bummer how many married people

23:08

are like, oh, I'm so sad. Sorry

23:11

for you. I'll bet you you're so

23:13

lonely. And it's like, I know non

23:15

-married people who are lonely, and I

23:17

know married people who are lonely, and

23:19

I know non -married people who are incredibly

23:21

happy in their singleness, and married people

23:23

who are incredibly happy in their marriage.

23:26

The state doesn't actually change

23:28

the thing. Yeah, I would say

23:30

yes and no. On the

23:32

one hand, I'm a strong

23:34

advocate for a Christian vision

23:36

for both marriage and singleness

23:38

being good things. In

23:41

the context of Christian community, both those

23:43

appropriate ways of living as a Christian thrive.

23:45

However, again, I'm working this book at

23:47

the moment and one of the things that

23:49

I'm looking at is the data on

23:51

the relative happiness of people who are married

23:53

versus people who are not married in

23:55

the West today. And there's a massive happiness

23:57

differential between people who are married and

24:00

people who are not. Now, I actually think

24:02

that's not only because of marriage. I

24:04

think that's because of the ways in which

24:06

communities have dissent. The fact

24:08

that often people who are not married are lonely. which

24:10

is not to say that many people who are

24:13

married could not be lonely as well, but I

24:15

think there are more systemic problems. I didn't think

24:17

it's just a, because you're

24:19

not married, therefore, kind of scenario. At

24:21

the same time, I think sometimes

24:23

people overstate the extent to which marriage

24:25

is... I think people can make

24:27

the error on both sides, as it

24:29

were. People can say, make marriage

24:31

out to be the Beall Endall, which,

24:33

like, biblically, it's not, and experientially

24:35

and data -wise, it's not. And on

24:37

the other side, people can say, oh,

24:39

well... difference, you know, some people

24:41

are unhappily married, some people are happily

24:43

single, and therefore there's like, in

24:46

our current moment, kind of culturally, no

24:48

differential there, and actually there's a

24:50

sort of meaningful differential there. Are we

24:52

still on point two? I forget.

24:54

We are, yeah. So like, if companionship

24:56

is a good thing, then we

24:58

need to learn how to embrace all

25:00

different kinds of people. Yeah.

25:02

And until the church

25:05

can legitimately Find

25:07

ways to love people who are incredibly hard

25:09

to love then they're gonna have a

25:11

real hard time arguing against sex robots One

25:13

of the things that I bring up

25:15

is that like it's not sufficient for the

25:17

church to simply say that's gross Don't

25:19

touch that you know This is like the

25:22

whole like expulsive powers of a new

25:24

affection kind of thing like you got to

25:26

have something else to put in its

25:28

place Now I think that what goes in

25:30

its place as Christian community, but if

25:32

you don't actually promote a multifaceted vision of

25:34

Christian community, then you've got no room

25:37

to speak. If everybody needs to look like

25:39

you and vote like you and have

25:41

your same kind of status and whatever when

25:43

it comes to money, race, age, or

25:45

whatever, then it's like it's totally illegitimate. So

25:47

Christian community is really easy when everybody's

25:49

just like you. But when there's people who

25:51

are very different than you in all

25:54

kinds of ways, and this way in particular,

25:56

like sexual orientation and desires and all

25:58

kinds of stuff like that, then you actually

26:00

can't be claiming to follow the commands

26:02

of Christ loving your neighbor unless you're seeking

26:04

to love all of them. Yeah, so

26:06

companionship is great and Augustine provides a way

26:09

for providing for the deepest needs of

26:11

what the pro sex bot community is arguing

26:13

for and it helps bolster the kind

26:15

of con side that goes I get it

26:17

But like what about like human solutions,

26:19

but they don't really have a basis for

26:21

giving those human solutions the third realm

26:23

in which sex robots come up is the

26:26

whole transhumanism thing essentially that the sex

26:28

robots are an inevitable part of human progress

26:30

so sex robots are kind of experimenting

26:32

with the kinds of bodies we will one

26:34

day be able to inhabit if we

26:36

so desire. Because the transhumanists really argue for

26:38

a utopian vision of society on the

26:41

basis of like a couple of different problems

26:43

that we're facing. So sickness

26:45

and death, that's one, and fairness.

26:47

So the biggest problem with humans is

26:50

that we get sick and die

26:52

and also like it's just really unfair

26:54

that Rebecca you can dunk a

26:56

basketball and I can't. And so like

26:58

through kind of the improvement. Me

27:00

too. So through the improvement of our

27:02

bodies, we'll achieve like this, you know,

27:04

moment of kind of equilibrium where we

27:07

don't have to die and everybody's the

27:09

same. The con side comes along. This

27:11

is actually where Karl Marx is really

27:13

helpful. And he goes, okay, the people

27:15

who are borrowing some of his arguments

27:17

to go, okay, cool. So let's see

27:19

if we got this right. In order

27:21

to achieve an ideal human future, everybody

27:23

has to have the same things. and

27:25

look the same. Well, guess what? Who's

27:27

gonna build those things? And also, what's

27:29

the vision of the future? The vision

27:31

of the future is often like, you

27:33

know, middle -aged white men. That's the

27:35

kind of, like, idealized future.

27:37

And we're never gonna get sick and

27:39

die? That sounds like the most conservative

27:41

argument on the face of the planet.

27:43

And who's gonna make those things? Mostly

27:45

women, mostly poor. And what they're gonna

27:47

build are bodies that don't look like

27:49

them for people that they don't know,

27:51

and it's gonna be something that they

27:53

can never access. And even if they

27:55

could access it, what they're accessing is

27:57

something not like them. So they have

27:59

to become like something else in order

28:01

to be truly accepted. Cool. That doesn't

28:03

seem to be all that kind of

28:05

progressive. In fact, it's actually rather retrograde

28:07

old school kind of thinking. Augustine comes

28:09

along and goes, guess what? Getting sick

28:11

and dying is a Huge problem and

28:13

kind of fairness is also a huge

28:15

problem. Have you ever heard of the

28:17

resurrection and the new heavens and the

28:19

new earth? Which solves for a lot

28:22

of our problems and the cool thing

28:24

about Augustine is he's like He doesn't

28:26

make people have to become something else

28:28

in order to be truly what they

28:30

are He has space for people who

28:32

like actually carry their disabilities with them

28:34

into the new heaven, into the new

28:36

earth. Because he's like, well, the problem

28:38

is not our disabilities. It's how our

28:40

disabilities hinder us from experiencing true happiness.

28:42

So he's like, whatever our bodies are

28:44

going to be. And he's like, perfectly

28:46

willing to grant these totally hypothesizing because

28:48

he doesn't really know. Like, you don't

28:50

know. And I don't know exactly what

28:52

those bodies are going to be like.

28:54

He goes, what we need are not

28:56

like idealized bodies. What we need are

28:58

bodies fit for the experience of happiness

29:00

forever. And that's the kind of bodies

29:02

we're going to have. So essentially, our

29:04

disabilities aren't going to hinder us. from

29:06

experiencing all the pleasures of life in

29:08

the New Heavens of New Earth. And

29:10

on that level, it will be fully

29:12

fair, no sickness, no death. And the

29:14

problem with the robots in a world

29:16

like that is that it trains us

29:18

for a happiness of our own making.

29:20

It's also really highly suspect. Is that

29:22

actually what we're going to be like?

29:24

And is that really the ideal world?

29:26

Still being here in this messed up

29:28

world is able to inhabit bodies when

29:30

we want to and how we want

29:32

to? Is that as high as the

29:34

vision goes? Essentially, the vision isn't high

29:36

enough. So at the end of the

29:38

dissertation, I'm essentially arguing for heterosexual marriage

29:40

and Godward committed singleness as a profound

29:42

statement against sex robots providing a better

29:44

vision for the world. So ironically, I

29:47

end up arguing for the most conservative

29:49

thing in the world, but doing it

29:51

the most backward way humanly possible. Well,

29:53

so I would argue that you are

29:55

and you are not arguing for the

29:57

most conservative thing in the world because

29:59

I... Again, having sort of spent the

30:01

last several months with my head sort

30:03

of stuck in the scriptures on these

30:05

questions in the nicest possible way. And

30:07

just reflecting more and more like, what

30:09

is marriage and what is sex from

30:11

a biblical perspective? And what

30:13

is the Christian vision for marriage? And

30:15

I think a lot of people

30:17

who would be sort of categorized as

30:19

conservative on these questions would say,

30:22

well, the vision for marriage

30:24

is that marriage is primarily about

30:26

having children. And that it's fulfilling this

30:28

great commission that we're giving at

30:30

the beginning of the Bible when God

30:32

says to the first man and

30:34

woman who are made in His image,

30:36

be fruitful and multiply and fill

30:38

the earth and subdue it. And that

30:40

marriage is the highest calling for

30:42

a Christian man or woman. And people

30:44

will often talk in those terms,

30:46

women who would say, my husband and

30:49

my children are my highest priority.

30:51

This is my greatest calling and a

30:53

man saying likewise. I actually think

30:55

the Bible is telling us something that

30:57

from a distance can look like

30:59

that, but actually when you look more

31:01

closely isn't. Because in fact, what

31:03

the Bible is telling us from the

31:05

beginning to the end, literally from

31:07

Genesis to Revelation, we see this sort

31:09

of arc being, you know, the

31:11

sort of followed, is that marriage is

31:14

a one flesh union between one

31:16

man and one woman as we see

31:18

at the end of Genesis 2.

31:20

And it's like a really kind of

31:22

weird thing that gets said at

31:24

the end of... creation account in Genesis

31:26

2 where God says, the

31:28

text says, therefore a man will leave his father

31:30

and his mother, be united to his wife, and

31:32

they should become one flesh. And they're like, well,

31:34

it's a funny, it's just sort of funny thing

31:36

to say to people becoming one flesh. And then

31:38

you see this metaphor building through the Old Testament

31:40

of God as a husband and Israel as an

31:42

unfaithful wife. And you start thinking, okay,

31:44

so I'm seeing kind of on the ground,

31:46

I'm seeing all these violations of the one

31:49

flesh, one man and one woman, everything from

31:51

prostitution to... to incest, to

31:53

polygamy, to, you name it, to

31:55

rape. And then you see Jesus

31:57

coming and saying, he's the bridegroom.

31:59

And, you know, one of the ways

32:01

in which he's stepping into the shoes of

32:03

the Creator, the God revealed in the Old Testament

32:05

is he's saying like, I'm the husband, I've

32:07

come to claim God's people for myself. And you

32:10

see here Paul, the apostle Paul explaining in

32:12

one of his letters, letter to church in Ephesus

32:14

that from the very beginning, from when that

32:16

first statement was made, therefore, a man will leave

32:18

his father, his mother, his wife, they should

32:20

become flesh. That was always about Jesus' relationship with

32:22

his people. And then in

32:24

Revelation at the very end of the

32:26

Bible, we see this picture of

32:28

the wedding of the lamb. I was

32:30

talking in a previous episode with

32:32

Jen Wilkin about Revelation, about this whole

32:34

idea of Jesus as the sacrificial

32:37

lamb, who was also the husband of

32:39

God's people. And you see a

32:41

very penultimate chapter of the Bible. and

32:43

the new Jerusalem coming down like

32:45

a bride prepared for her husband. So

32:47

what is marriage about, first and

32:49

foremost from a Christian perspective, it's about

32:51

picturing Jesus as love for his

32:53

people. And this one flesh union is

32:55

a whole different, it gives

32:57

a whole different meaning to sex than

32:59

the other meanings that are ascribed

33:01

to it. Like, you know, the sex

33:03

spot vision is based on the

33:05

idea that the purpose of sex is

33:07

pleasure, presumably. I mean, that's sort

33:09

of giving you giving you sort of

33:11

pleasure with somebody else. And it's

33:13

not the pleasure is absent from a

33:15

Christian vision, but it's actually about

33:17

a joining. It's like a one fleshing

33:19

of two people, which means that

33:21

it cannot be substituted by something that

33:23

is, you know, with a non -person,

33:25

like a robot. And it also

33:27

means that it's something that doesn't actually

33:29

work if it's with like a

33:31

series of people, which is, you know,

33:33

often kind of cultural context. a

33:36

sense of sort of sex without commitment being perhaps

33:38

the best form of sex because, you know, you're

33:40

really just kind of looking, you're

33:42

maximizing your gratification, as it were, or

33:44

like maximizing the attractiveness to your

33:46

partner or whatever it is. And I'm

33:48

sort of thinking, well, no, this

33:50

is massively missing the point of what

33:52

sex is about, which is in

33:54

fact, being part of this permanent one

33:56

flesh union of two people, and

33:58

that there is something so much more

34:00

beautiful and real about that. I

34:02

was reading a an article a few

34:04

years ago, which the title of

34:06

the article was something like, if I

34:08

met my husband now, like at

34:10

a bar, would I would I find

34:12

him attractive? Like, is he the

34:14

one who I do? I just saw

34:16

the title. I thought, what a

34:18

ridiculous, like how utterly beside the point

34:20

because I don't walking, you know,

34:22

I don't walk around thinking, oh, well,

34:24

you know, let me evaluate my

34:26

husband's relative attractiveness to every other sort

34:28

of man that I might see.

34:30

He's, he's mine. He's mine. And like

34:32

what, you know, kind of almost

34:34

like I look at my children and

34:36

the reason that I I want

34:39

these particular children, not just like any

34:41

other children out there who might

34:43

theoretically have, I don't know, better qualities

34:45

than them in various ways. They're

34:47

not mine. These are my children. That

34:49

there's a complete failure to understand

34:51

the mind -ness that is at the

34:53

heart of a Christian vision for sex

34:55

within marriage and the union that

34:57

is, yeah, that it's about bringing two

34:59

particular people together. in a permanent

35:01

love relationship that reflects Jesus' love for

35:03

his people. Like it's so much

35:05

more beautiful than we often realize even

35:07

within the church and therefore we

35:09

shouldn't put a weight on it that

35:11

it's not designed to bear because

35:13

it's pointing to something so much greater

35:15

than itself. So I just like

35:17

went up on my soapbox there. No,

35:19

that's great. Get on that soapbox.

35:21

It's a good soapbox to be on.

35:23

And like, yeah, that's why so

35:25

I say something that you know, gets

35:27

me in trouble, but whatever I

35:29

deal with sex robots, all I do

35:31

is deal in trouble. But like,

35:33

I think the church should thank God

35:35

for sex robots. In this sense,

35:38

I wish I lived in a different kind

35:40

of world. But this is exactly the kind of

35:42

world I've been given. Which means if God's

35:44

actually a charge of things, and this is

35:46

the kind of world that God wants right now.

35:48

And because God has designed the fashions of

35:50

fashion the time and place in which I

35:52

live and you live and we live in

35:54

a world of sex robots then I've got to

35:56

find a way to both begrudge the fact

35:58

that this thing exists but also thank God

36:00

for it and one of the reasons we can

36:03

thank God for it is because it actually

36:05

causes us to ask unique kinds of questions

36:07

and give unique kinds of answers and in

36:09

living in the way that the Bibles always called

36:11

us live all a sudden it becomes incredibly

36:13

subversive which is actually a lot of fun.

36:15

And so like you have to rethink a lot

36:17

of things, not to necessarily change your mind,

36:19

but come to it in a lot of

36:21

ways, firmer conclusions on things that maybe you always

36:23

believed as a result of being forced to

36:25

think about something that you'd rather not think

36:27

about. But by thinking about those things, you

36:29

come to a greater appreciation of and delight in

36:32

the way actually God made the world. And

36:34

so if we can do that and to

36:36

go like, oh, okay, well, maybe I wish these

36:38

things didn't exist, but they do. So let

36:40

me find a way to appreciate at least

36:42

how I'm I'm being trained to think and

36:44

appreciate the way that God has shaped human beings

36:46

to live. And then, having understood that, didn't

36:48

fully embrace the way that God calls human

36:50

beings to live and delight in it possibly even

36:52

more than I ever have as a result

36:54

of having to think about something I wish

36:57

didn't exist. Yeah, I like what you did there.

37:00

Yeah, it's so interesting as

37:02

people think about artificial intelligence

37:04

and creating sort of robots

37:06

that not only look like

37:08

humans but feel like humans

37:10

and can act like humans, it

37:13

presses us to ask, okay, well, what is

37:15

the secret source of being a human? And

37:17

it's not in any one capacity,

37:19

because any one capacity you want

37:21

to pick, they're going to be

37:23

humans who do not have that

37:25

capacity. And if we go

37:27

back to, again, to the very

37:29

beginning of the Bible, the two first

37:31

things that we are told about

37:33

human beings are number one, that we

37:35

are made in the image of

37:37

God and number two, that we are

37:39

made male and female. And The

37:42

fact that human beings are made in

37:44

the image of God is extraordinary

37:46

and mysterious because we don't know exactly

37:48

what that means. But we do

37:50

have a sense of what that means

37:52

in that as I interact with

37:54

you, as somebody who is made in

37:56

the image of God, I can

37:58

see something of God because I'm interacting

38:00

with you. There is a way

38:02

in which you're embodied reality even as

38:04

you're on a video call from

38:06

Chicago hundreds of miles away. I'm interacting

38:08

with somebody else who bears at

38:10

their most fundamental level the image of

38:13

the Creator God of all the

38:15

universe. And if you and I

38:17

are designed, in fact, for a relationship

38:19

with the Creator God of all the

38:21

universe, then the best and most loving

38:23

relationships we can have with one another

38:25

are giving us a kind of little

38:27

taste of that, a little foretaste of

38:29

what it's going to be like if

38:31

we've trusted in Jesus to live with

38:33

Jesus forever and with his people together.

38:35

And there's no way, even theoretically, A

38:38

robot could take the place of somebody

38:40

who's made in the image of God, because

38:42

a robot isn't. At best, we can

38:44

make robots in our image, and that's the

38:46

most massive downgrade imaginable from being made

38:48

in the image of God. Yeah, and the

38:50

thing is, you get to the whole

38:52

capacities thing, and one of the terrifying things

38:54

about robots or whatever is like, oh,

38:56

well, they're going to take our jobs and

38:58

all that kind of stuff. And while

39:00

it is incredibly complicated to figure out what

39:02

a human being is, Cause like you

39:04

said, like even the image of God stuff

39:06

in male and female, uh, those are

39:08

fundamental foundational categories. And you're like, I don't

39:10

know exactly what that means, but like

39:12

Robert Spayman's got this great book on persons

39:14

where he's like, even if we don't

39:16

exactly know like what a person is, the

39:18

weird thing is we can always recognize

39:20

it. And when it comes to robots, like

39:22

we can be deceived. You can be

39:24

deceived by both like chatbot agents and all

39:26

that kind of stuff. And it's, we're

39:28

not at the level yet of being able

39:30

to be deceived when it comes to

39:32

like humanoid robots yet, but that day's probably

39:34

coming. But at the same time, there's

39:36

just something about humans that is always going

39:38

to be forever distinct. Even if we're

39:40

convinced that something is a human, it's still

39:42

not a human. Even if, like, as

39:44

we go, like, oh, yeah, what is a

39:46

human? That those questions are incredibly complicated.

39:49

You're just like, yeah, but there's something not

39:51

about that. And the nice thing about

39:53

the Bible, as it comes along, goes, yeah,

39:55

no, no matter how much it looks

39:57

like or whatever a human, it's not. If

39:59

it's not a human, create an image

40:01

of God. And you go, oh, man, like,

40:03

you could. trip out about that for

40:05

a while but it's also why like when

40:07

we see like monkeys or dolphins doing

40:09

things that have like certain traits of like

40:11

humans you go like oh yeah those

40:13

are like those are human -ish kinds of

40:15

things but you never look at dolphin go

40:17

like well that's a human because there's

40:19

something about humans where you're like I don't

40:21

even know what it is but I

40:23

know that's a person it makes us so

40:25

like infinitely fascinating and diverse and unique

40:27

yeah and I think why even you know

40:29

imagine the the billionaire with his perfectly

40:31

designed, you know, futuristic, humanoid sex partner. I

40:33

feel desperately sorry for that guy.

40:35

Right. And I do say guy because

40:37

I think it's far more something.

40:39

Often, yeah. There's more men than women.

40:42

There are women who are wrapped

40:44

up in this, but yet far more

40:46

often men. Yeah. Well, Jeremy, I'm

40:48

sure we've raised more questions than we've

40:50

answered, but that's always a goal.

40:52

That's always a good episode of the

40:54

Confident Christianity podcast. Thank

40:56

you so much for joining me. I'm

40:58

really glad you're not the felon. Me

41:01

too. And I appreciate

41:03

this conversation. I'm hoping

41:05

that at some point in the not

41:07

too distant future, you'll write a book about

41:09

this that we can all read and

41:11

dig into. You'll make both. More detail. So

41:13

stay tuned for that, dear listener. I'll

41:16

definitely have Jeremy back to talk when

41:18

he's turned his PhD into a book. You

41:20

guys have been listening to the Confronting

41:22

Christianity podcast. You can follow

41:24

us on X or Twitter. I was nearly

41:26

said Facebook. You can't on Facebook because nothing's

41:28

happening on Facebook to do with this podcast.

41:30

Instagram is what I meant to say. You

41:32

could leave a review on iTunes saying how

41:34

much you disagreed with everything that Jeremy said

41:36

and how much you agreed with everywhere that

41:38

I set the net, Jigs. Yeah, I love

41:41

it. You could read a

41:43

review and I read. You could write

41:45

a review on iTunes, suggesting if

41:47

you would like a future topic to

41:49

be discussed and explored on this

41:51

podcast. And between now and

41:53

next time I talk into

41:55

your earphones or airpods, maybe reflect

41:57

on What means for somebody

41:59

to be made in the image

42:01

of God and how utterly,

42:03

utterly irreplaceable we are as

42:05

embodied beings in one another's lives in

42:07

all sorts of ways, not only in

42:10

the area of sort of sexual or

42:12

romantic relationships but in every possible area

42:14

of life. and is nothing more precious

42:16

than for us to be engaging with

42:18

the God of all the universe and

42:20

to be connecting with people made in

42:22

His precious image. you