Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have casualties.

Ideas have consequences. We're familiar with that phrase. But something I read this last week, and I wish I could remember where so I could cite the source, was that bad ideas have casualties. They actually have human fallout. People get hurt. This isn't that new of a concept, but I think it's just nice and succinctly put.

It's also been said that when words lose their meaning, people lose their lives. That sounds really dramatic, we might think, but it's true. I want to unpack that today.

Behind this is the idea that how we think influences how we live, even when it comes to Christian matters. J.I. Packer has said wrong ideas about God lead to wrong ideas about how to live. What is implicit and even explicit in this statement is that theology and life are not separate spheres. In fact, how we think about God, even if we don't realize it, will directly impact how we live our lives.

But it's not just thinking about God that will impact our lives; it's how we think about everything. A friend of mine who I've had on the podcast, Hunter Levine, made an interesting statement to me recently. He said that most parents, it seems like, are more concerned about the number of F words in a movie or a TV show their children may watch than the actual worldview behind the TV show.

You know what? I think he's right. I'm not saying that foul language and that type of thing isn't a concern, but what I am saying is perhaps what is much more dangerous are the actual ideas that are communicated to us through media and through culture and even through friendly conversations that we aren't aware of, that directly contradict a biblical worldview. Because, remember, these ideas are going to influence us, and bad ideas will have bad effects in our life.

Let's look at some examples of this. There has been a trend in recent years to change how suicide is talked about. It's not okay in some circles now to talk about someone killing themself. That sounds too explicit. That seems to make it seem like they did something wrong. We're softening that. "They ended their life." "They took their own life." In some circles, that's not even okay to say it like that.

What is this trying to do? It's trying to make suicide some more acceptable, when it shouldn't be. It should never be acceptable when someone gets to the place where, for some reason, they believe their best option is to kill themself. It's not okay. We don't do people a service when we make that seem more palatable. No, it should seem extremely unpalatable and we should have extreme concern and compassion for people who ever feel like that is an option for them. That's one small example: softening the language around suicide.

What about euthanasia, the killing of older people? Sometimes this is voluntary, where older people may say, "I don't want to keep living. I'm living in a lot of pain." A doctor will prescribe medicine or some other person will administer medicine that is given with the intent of killing the person. Sometimes it's also involuntary, where the person is killed against their wishes simply because they're old, they're taking too many resources, something like that.

In the middle here sometimes is this idea that dignity, when it comes to death, is "going out on your terms." This is the same idea that's behind the common arguments today for abortion, where it's "a woman's right to chose." We see with euthanasia it's my right to die on my terms. That's also somewhat implicit in the suicide conversation. With abortion: my body, my choice. Now it's not actually her body. It's not her body that's being killed; it's a separate body. That's another conversation for another day.

Behind all of these is the same actual…