Psalm 139 is one of the most famous and most quoted chapters of the whole Bible. Some indeed have even constructed an entire Christian ethic of the unborn child from its famous central verses. But what do we think David is trying to say in this beautiful and mysterious poem? What can it teach us about how we should view fetuses in the womb, and have some gone too far in trying to use this psalm as the lynchpin of the anti-abortion movement? And, as we approach Christmas, does it shed fresh light on the marvel and mystery of the incarnation too?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

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• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

There’s been a flurry of news stories and even scientific papers exploring the concept of ‘AI psychosis’ – the idea that people can become psychotic and mentally ill having spent too much time locked in hours of conversation with an AI chatbot such as ChatGPT. There’s also been a handful of cases where the family of someone who has killed themselves has accused the chatbot they were using of encouraging or facilitating the suicide. To try and unpick if any of this is real and what impact our rapidly-advancing AI technology can have on our minds, we are joined again by Christian psychiatrist Daniel Maughan. Should we be concerned about the way AI can interfere with our brain? Or is this just another round of moral panic and hysteria which has accompanied many previous technological breakthroughs in the past? And how can the church continue to model the value of real life incarnational human-to-human relationships to a society increasingly adrift in the digital space?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Here in the UK, parliament continues to debate a bill to legalise assisted suicide. As we wait to see whether Britain follows the lead of many other Western nations in introducing a form of assisted dying, we thought we would share as this week’s podcast a lecture John gave recently to the Church of Ireland in Belfast. It’s entitled Autonomy, Suffering and Human Dignity: Theological and Medical Responses to Assisted Dying, and in it he reflects on the current moves towards assisted dying and in particular what we as Christians believe about the ethical and spiritual dimensions to suffering. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments, both from autonomy and compassion, used by those in favour of legalising medically-assisted suicide? And what richer, deeper story about human dependence and dignity can Christians tell in response to this?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A listener in the United States has written in pondering the, ahem, sensitive issue of circumcision. In America it’s been commonplace as a medical procedure for newborn boys for generations, while in the rest of the world it’s almost exclusively a Jewish or Muslim religious rite of initiation. Does circumcision actually offer any real medical benefits? Following the growing pressure to stamp out female genital mutilation, once known as female circumcision and largely tolerated across North Africa and the Middle East, some are now looking at male circumcision with fresh eyes. Should we be much more sceptical about religious minorities performing this ritualised and irreversible procedure on non-consenting babies by non-medically trained community leaders? Or is defending the rights of Jews and Muslims on circumcision one plank in a broader effort to protect our religious liberty to continue with practices and teachings wider society now reviles?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Perhaps the most contentious political, medical and social issue of the day is how to treat and care for young people who are questioning or experiencing distress around their sex and gender. We are both away for half-term this week, so we’re bringing you an episode from 2023 when we spoke with Christian community paediatrician Julie Maxwell about the rise in children reporting gender dysphoria, the evidence base behind controversial treatments such as puberty-blockers, and how we as followers of Jesus can speak compassionately and faithfully into the maelstrom of invective and opinion on this important topic.

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

In the first part of this episode we talk through a startling new scientific breakthrough: researchers claim they can insert genetic material from an ordinary skin cell into a human egg cell, and then use that to fertilise and grow an embryo. This means an infertile couple or a same-sex couple could theoretically have a child who was genetically related to both parents for the first time. But just because we can, should we be doing this?

Then we respond to a listener’s question on our recent episode about miraculous faith healing. What did Jesus mean when he told his disciples they would do even greater things than his amazing works? Does this not mean we should expect to surpass Christ’s own miraculous healing ministry?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Of all orthodox Christian doctrines, the trinity is perhaps the one which most languishes understudied and underappreciated. Many of us see it as a baffling paradox, a riddle without an answer. Only of interest to egg-headed nerds and without any practical application to day-to-day Christian life. But have we been getting this wrong all along? Could reflecting on what it means to say we believe in one God in three persons actually unlock a whole raft of insight and appreciation for not just who our God – Father, Son and Spirit – but also lots of other elements of Christian belief and practice?

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

It has been hard to miss the ways that right-wing political movements have become marked by Christian rhetoric and language in recent years. Clearly, something about the unstable and fractious era we live in has seen people yearning to turn Western nations back to an imagined Christian past. But is this a mirage, or even an idolatrous worship of the nation state? How should Christians engage in politics in democracies? Is it helpful to think about trying to make a country ‘more Christian’? And what might the gospel have to say beyond our shores to a world where the liberal international rules-based order is collapsing and might makes right once more? This week we discuss all this and more with John Heathershaw, a Christian professor of international relations and former aid worker.

Find more of John’s writing and his latest book Security After Christendom on his Substack blog: https://johnheathershaw.substack.com

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have caused untold misery, suffering and death over the centuries. Some, like the infamous Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in 1755, have even been held up as prompting turns away from belief in God entirely. How can believers account for the apparent brokenness and destructiveness of the earth, and yet continue to believe it was made by a good God who declared his creation to be good? Are these deep geological forces actually as bad as many have thought? What about cancer, or other genetic diseases which cause deep suffering and have no human cause? Are they still, mysteriously, somehow caused by human sinfulness? Is it right to think of anything in creation as inherently ‘evil’ at all? Helping us think through these big questions this week is Prof Bob White, a world-renowned geo-physicist who has spent his career trying to better understand place tectonics which cause volcanoes and earthquakes. He’s also emeritus director of the Faraday Institute, a Cambridge-based think tank aiming to bolster the interface between science and Christian faith.

Find out more about the Faraday Institute, including their long list of resources - https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical Friend: https://tswyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Christians often find themselves disagreeing about what posture to adopt in our increasingly secular and faith-hostile culture. Should we stand apart from society, keeping ourselves unsullied by its godlessness, so we can prophetically call out evil and witness to Christ? Or should we seek to engage deeply in our context, seeing our calling as to shape creation in a kingdom direction, acting incarnationally and incrementally for good? Are we most faithful to the way of Jesus by remaining prophetic outsiders or incarnational insiders? In this episode we discuss this tension and what we might learn from an often overlooked Old Testament passage where two of Yahweh’s followers – each espousing a very different mode of witness – bump into each other unexpectedly in the Judaean desert.

• You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to [email protected]

• kSubscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com