This week we speak with church pastor and author Ed Shaw about John’s book on friendship, and in particular how it intersects with those who are same-sex attracted like him. How has the church unintentionally colluded with the sexual revolution in prioritising and idealising marriage, relegating friendship in the process? Why is it so important for celibate, single leaders like Ed to cultivate and sustain an array of deep friendships in church? And how can we ensure this is being done sensibly and accountably, avoiding the potential for abuse and harm that we’ve seen in so many recent evangelical scandals?

Ed is also ministry director of Living Out - https://www.livingout.org/

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

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

Yoga and mindfulness are everywhere in popular Western culture: in school PE lessons, in company retreats, prescribed by doctors, and even sometimes endorsed by churches. Are these harmless or even quasi-Christian practices we can all enjoy, or pagan-derived movements which believers should steer clear of? And is there such a thing as ‘Christian meditation’ we should all be leaning into instead?

Richard Foster – Celebration of Discipline https://www.eden.co.uk/christian-books/spiritual-growth/the-spiritual-disciplines/celebration-of-discipline/

John Mark Comer – Practising the Way https://www.practicingtheway.org/

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

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

Harrowing testimony from healthcare staff at the UK’s national covid inquiry has reminded us of the horrendous sacrifices made by doctors and nurses during the pandemic, just a few years ago. And yet the inquiry has drawn hardly any media attention, with most of us happy to move on with our lives and never think about those long months in lockdown again. But is this a wise, or even a Christian, way of dealing with trauma in the past? And is covid even something in the past anyway, with new variants spiking and some public health experts baffled at our society’s ‘capitulation’ in the face of a resurgent virus? What damage may be being done to us as we wilfully ignore covid, and should Christians be among those trying to draw more people’s attention?

Some of our previous episodes on covid:

• Covid reconsidered 1:Pandemic amnesia, ‘Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives’, lingering Long Covid, and 13.47 billion vaccine doses https://www.johnwyatt.com/covid-reconsidered-1/

• Covid reconsidered 2: Empty Nightingale hospitals, difficult triage decisions, a failure of Christian leadership, and reconsidering lockdown https://www.johnwyatt.com/covid-reconsidered-2/

• The origins of covid: Gain of function research, zoonosis, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and truth over tribe https://www.johnwyatt.com/origins-of-covid/

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

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

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

The new British government has been crystal clear that in their view, the National Health Service – a state-run socialised system which is quasi-worshipped by most Britons – is in long-term crisis. Services from family doctors to cancer treatment to A&E in hospitals are struggling and failing to hit targets, and constantly underfunded. In this episode we discuss the reasons why healthcare services across the developing world and especially in the UK are buckling under the pressures of keeping our older and sicker populations healthy. Is the fabled ‘free at the point of use’ taxpayer-funded NHS really the best system to be facing the challenges of the 21st century? Will modern technology from overseas inevitably begin to take over, and will that be a good thing? And should we be enthusiastic about the new class of anti-obesity medication which seems to be having remarkable success in tackling the chronic conditions which bedevil Western societies and cripple our healthcare services? Or is the idea we can make people more virtuous and less addicted simply by mass prescribing new pills a foolish delusion?

Our previous episode going into more depth on Ozempic and the new GLP-1 anti-obesity drugs can be found here: https://www.premier.plus/matters-of-life-and-death/podcasts/episodes/new-obesity-drugs-the-morality-of-food-and-has-neuroscience-killed-off-free-will

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

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

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

Today we pick up a number of stories and updates in the conversation around assisted suicide. Long since legal in a growing number of states in the US, a new report has detailed how things are liberalising further. Some states now permit non-residents to cross state lines solely to die, creating a new market in euthanasia tourism for those living in less liberal parts of America. Meanwhile, there are new attempts by activists to legalise assisted suicide in England, and the new Labour government has pledged to allow a free conscience vote by all MPs on the issue soon. How should believers respond to this, and is there any real prospect of Christian healthcare workers winning the right to not only opt out of assisted dying procedures, but to set up their own independent euthanasia-free clinics, hospitals and hospices?

Find out more about a new book on assisted dying John has contributed a chapter to here: https://www.mheducation.co.uk/the-reality-of-assisted-dying-understanding-the-issues-9780335253173-emea-group#tab-label-product-description-title

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

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

If and when autonomous and intelligent robots come into existence, should they be granted rights, or even personhood? A growing number of technologists argue governments must lay out what status conscious and rational machines would have before they actually have been invented. But how can we decide what is and isn’t a person, and what rights and responsibilities such a thing should have? And how could this philosophical and technical debate affect our Christian beliefs on human uniqueness? We then explore three Christian responses to calls for robot personhood, spanning the spectrum of hostility to optimism about the development. What Biblical truths and doctrines can we turn to as we wrestle with what is a fundamentally brand new dilemma? And how would our theology and practice as believers change should conscious, intelligent, autonomous robots come to live among us?

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

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

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

We covered the case of Lucy Letby – a neonatal nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven more – last year. Since then, there has been a growing campaign claiming she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, as Letby herself appeals the judgement. In this episode we look at why some people have become convinced of her innocence, how well-suited our criminal justice system is at getting to the truth, and how as Christians we can live with the unknown and grey areas implicit in this fallen world.

• The Appeal Court judgement rejecting Letby's appeal: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/R-v-Letby-Final-Judgment-20240702.pdf

• The New Yorker article which makes the case for Letby's innocence: https://web.archive.org/web/20240702001406/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/20/lucy-letby-was-found-guilty-of-killing-seven-babies-did-she-do-it

• A Guardian article which also explores some of those who are unconvinced by the prosecution case: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/09/lucy-letby-evidence-experts-question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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