ASM084 Purity Culture, Parenting, and Fear in the Media

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purity culture parenting and fear in media all then and more on this week's episode of ask science mike [Applause] [Music] welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life and this week it's a tour week i'm traveling all over and there's not a lot of time to research for the show so i'm treating this kind of like ass science like live i'm answering all these questions off the top of my head so what you see in the show notes may actually conflict my answer which is kind of weird but whatever it could be fun let's get it started [Music] well as most of you probably know i'm on tour right now to support my new book finding god in the waves which by the way thank you for all of the lovely amazon reviews wow they're uh really good really um encouraging you know especially saying that already the book is getting past the podcast audience to new people and that's all you you're you're the people telling others that the book is out there and they may enjoy it so thank you for that and i'd love to see you in person and say thanks so there's going to be a lot of opportunities because i'm traveling the country right now and here's the dates i'll be in the next couple of weeks on tuesday september 27th i'm going to be at eastern university uh that's in wayne pennsylvania which is just outside philadelphia for a new copernican event with my friend john seal who's the guy behind the new copernicus thesis and actually pete ends dr peter ends more properly author of some of my favorite books on the bible is going to be there and we're going to do an event together so really exciting about that if you're in the philly area i'd love to see you on september the 27th on friday september the 30th i'm going to be at the y christian conference in chicago that's sold out so you can't get tickets but if you're going to y christian i'll be doing a breakout session on friday i'd love to see you sunday october the 2nd just announced this last week i think i'm going to be in new york city with trinity grace and tribeca and i'll be both speaking at their sunday morning service and then doing a session in the evening on uh the neuroscience of prayer uh which i think will be a lot of fun tickets on that are moving pretty fast for that so i wouldn't wait too long uh if you're thinking about seeing them in new york to go and secure your ticket friday the 7th i'll be doing ask science mike live in nashville and then friday 14th at science mike live in columbus ohio now here's the thing about my events i announced them and no ticket sale sales really happened very few like a dozen you know 20 25 something like that and then we get like you know 10 or 12 days from the event and all of the sudden tickets start selling really fast so one thing i would say is we're going to have tickets for sale at all these events at the door unless they sell out first the liturgists gathering for example in chicago sold out nashville more than half the tickets are gone already uh in columbus uh it's a lot bigger venue so we're even though it's about the same number of tickets it's less of the capacity of the room uh but i wouldn't wait to get your tickets i'd go ahead and get them ahead of time again we'll sell them at the door if they're available but really since the book has come out there's been a surge in ticket sales at all events uh also a little bit later out of this window of just a couple weeks i'll be in atlanta and uh also chicago again for the liturgical gathering which as i mentioned is completely sold out there's a wait list if the events sell out you can get on a waiting list and if someone decides they don't want their ticket then we contact the first person on the waiting list and offered to them so i'd love to see you on tour of course there's a lot more stops this is just the stops in the next two weeks so if you'd like to know where all i'm going to be and when just go to findinggodinthewaves.com tour which is also where you can go to find links to buy tickets to all of these events so hopefully i'll see you on the road [Music] hi science mike my name is tony i live in bulgaria and i surely appreciate your show i listen to it well i'm driving all the time in bulgaria and my question for you is i've been back in the united states just for a few weeks in minnesota where i live and when i turn on npr or any different news it seems as though all i keep hearing about is murders or how north korea has nukes or uh how we found uh the captor of jacob wetterling uh and uh who was abducted and so as i hear about these things it seems to me that it portrays this message over and over and over that our world is unsafe i was wondering if you've uh would know if there's any studies or research that's been done on the effects of people that listen to media and having this fear message come into them also i'm wondering why we do it uh why do we listen to media that has kind of this fearful message when it doesn't seem to portray the world view that i see on a daily basis as i'm driving around and why are we so captivated by that type of news uh thanks so much for answering my question uh if you have time to i sure appreciate it mike well tony that's a really thoughtful question and uh i wish i had time to look up studies before answering it because i'll just go ahead and admit that off the top of my head i i don't remember reading any studies specifically on the effect of fear-based messaging in media and how that affects people uh it would be i would imagine uh kind of a vicious cycle there's a reason we tend to have these really negative fear-based stories in our media it's not a conspiracy it's human psychology in in the states especially the metric of success for any media is ratings the more people listen and the longer they listen or watch or read or or whatever type of media you're involved in the more successful you are the more funding you get the more employees you can have the larger your organization can grow the more sustainable your organization is this is completely logical from a neuroscience context we've evolved in an environment where we pay special attention to threats threats can take your attention away from everything what can get your nose out of uh you know candy crush if something dangerous is near you uh no i'm not saying you know prehistoric humans had candy crush but it's this idea that we're evolved to look out for things that we're afraid of and then you combine that with a media market in america which is controlled by just a few corporations uh through a process of consolidation primarily most media outlets are owned by one of a handful of companies and those companies don't have a mandate to serve the public good those companies have a mandate to be profitable those companies have a mandate to return value to their shareholders by selling advertising dollars and it seems right now what gets people listening most effectively is messaging about how dangerous and violent our society is of course that's counter to fact uh we'll talk about this a little more in a later question on the show this week but america is a relatively safe place to live right now historically speaking and globally violence is in decline now there are uh certainly terrifying narratives that are completely valid rising violence in chicago which is contrary to the overall rate of violence in the rest of the country for example that's very newsworthy we should be talking about how frightening climate change is because historically speaking that's a that's a very concerning trend and could completely eliminate the gains we've made in uh global peace uh and and fighting global poverty all those things climate change could undermine those efforts so there are things we should be concerned about we're disproportionately concerned about them because media needs ratings to survive even public media by the way more listeners equals more donors right now the the incentive structure's not quite as direct npr uh can be happy with a smaller audience that it wants a an alternative narrative and will pay for it in the form of sponsorships but you know npr's constantly doing pledge drives because they're always worried they're uh not gonna make it right every npr affiliate is just trying to meet a budget meet a quota uh and that's that's economic alignment is what's happening there now what can we do about it i don't know i mean i'm trying to do my part honestly uh with ask science mike in the liturgies podcast we do talk about issues and topics of importance that are concerning but we we do try to avoid uh a dramatic narrative overly dramatizing things we try to avoid uh provoking your amygdala too much and inviting people into thoughtfulness but we're also very very small these podcasts are small and listener numbers compared to uh dominant forms of media very small teams produce them they're delivered directly to you through web hosting so we don't have distribution and network costs like newspapers or magazines or radio stations or television stations have and so we have a completely different economic structure i think some media especially new media functions as an alternative to fear-based messaging that people get fatigued of but you know you kind of also need to have some degree of economic privilege to seek out and enjoy those forms of media so even though the podcast is free you've got to have a data plan you've got to have some device that can play a podcast you have to have the time to consume and contemplate a podcast so all this stuff is quite complex hopefully i'll find a few studies for you to have in the show notes on ask sciencemike.com while greg is editing the episode but i think it really just comes down today to economics which by the way remember there's no such thing as the media that doesn't exist we speak of the media as some monolithic thing ownership of media is more consolidated than it's been i think maybe ever right now uh at least in american history but either way it's not monolithic and execution there's a lot of different people with different perspectives that contribute to media they bring their own biases but i agree that today a common a common element is fear and that really comes down to economics [Music] our next question came in via email and it reads hello mike my name is michael aguilera and i live in lawton oklahoma as most of the questions start out i would like to start by thanking you and your team for the refreshing perspectives you bring to faith and helping people like myself continues to grow into a more genuine faith the past year has been one of deconstruction and reconstruction in many areas of my faith in this process i realized i did not have a healthy relationship with scripture reading the practice of being in the word was done out of obligation and while it often did create a connection with god it also put me in a place of frustration and shame when i found i couldn't practice doing it daily the community i grew up in would preach the mantra of jesus died for you you can at least read his word every day and if you read the bible for 15 minutes a day you would read it in a year think of all the other things you do for 15 minutes a day these perspectives on scripture reading made me feel inadequate and stressed i chose to purposefully take a step away from the bible and return to it when i felt i could do so out of a genuine and yearning heart i am now at a place where i want to color my world with scripture again but i don't really know how i know this is not a one-size-fits-all question but in your experience with the christian faith how might you recommend building a healthy scripture reading practice i no longer want to try to read the bible in a year or something like that i want to learn about understand the character of and build a relationship with the divine i understand that this is a difficult question because everybody has a unique relationship with god and different practices accordingly i guess simply put my question is this how would you mike mccarg approach the bible if you were doing so for the first time where would you start is there an order you would go in how would you distill truth from the human influence on the scriptures and lastly are there any non-christian scriptures you would accompany the bible with i know you are just a nerd on a spiritual journey and not a pastor please don't feel the pressure of prescribing me something that i will follow without question all i want is your insight as i continue to grow as you have been influential in my growth as of late thank you for your time and dedication to the show and the people much love michael aguilera sorry to laugh michael it is a phenomenal question i just love that you said i guess simply stated my question is this and then asked five questions so you'll definitely get your uh you get your your times worth of uh of my answer on this one you're right i get hesitant about answering these questions but you gave me the perfect caveat i will tell you what i would do as a nerd and not as a pastor and this frankly has really been my experience when i came back to faith uh my affection first was for god my fascination my affection my affiliation and then i kind of warmed up to the idea of jesus as a metaphor and then kind of started to mess around with what incarnation could mean uh studying you know writings of some theologians and some mystics and it took a while for me to come to terms with the bible in any meaningful way when i finally did it you know more than anything else it was just two people's work that that tipped me back towards the bible having value now that led to a lot more study after that uh but the books that that kind of brought me back was first uh pete n's book inspiration and incarnation and then rob bell did a series on tumblr called what is the bible that i found very refreshing in its perspective and then pete ends at another book called the bible tells me so which was phenomenal about ways we approach scripture and and that those works kind of took the pressure away from the bible being this thing we have to study to something i enjoyed studying and reframed it as the stories of people of faith and their encounters with god which i found to make it a completely more approachable book this is from that time how i first approached it there were two things i did one i tried to get a historical handle on the bible just something i work on doing all the time i read a lot of popular and academic bible scholars i try to have about an equal mix of people who analyze the bible within the historical christian tradition and people who are secular academics or non-christian academics so that i continue to evaluate the bible critically and get a good historical understanding the best as we can today of what those authors were trying to say to their audiences and my gosh there's there's thousands of authors so i i you know i'd be reticent to even recommend anybody to you specifically uh you know i've talked about some before on the program uh and if you want some i guess if you want somebody really critical like bart ehrman is great controversial but great uh i like it when karen armstrong writes about religious history and biblical history inside the faith tradition i'm really digging nt right lately he makes a lot more supernatural assumptions than i do but he's a very good bible scholar so yeah there's lots of people but that's only half of it and frankly that's not a daily discipline for me it's certainly a weekly discipline but i don't historically evaluate the bible every day but i do read the bible every day and i mainly read the bible through lectio divinia so the historical grounding is to prepare me for the personal encounter with scripture which is the ignatian practice of the lectio divina and i take a small passage of scripture often in conjunction with the lectionary i read it three times and the first time i read the passage i just look for words and phrases that kind of jump out to me and the second time i read it and by the way i'd take time between readings to kind of contemplate this the second time i read it i listened to those words and kind of go deeper into them the ones that jumped out me at me the first time and look for deeper meanings or deeper insights and then the third time i consider what action those words may be calling me toward and it's kind of a mixture of prayer time and bible study time i'm praying over the words of the bible in a really contemplative way and i find it grounding and centering and the amazing thing about reading the bible from that perspective as opposed to like you're studying for some kind of afterlife exam or something is the way you can wrestle with the text and the ways that you can challenge the text you know when you read about you know in the in the torah the the nation of israel moving violently into the promised land you can take a historical lens and consider that as their expression of uh god's blessing and then you know a lot of times i turn that around saying what in what ways do i misinterpret privilege cultural mandate or things like that for god's blessing where you know where can i learn more about my own biases that way and i find that process very illuminating very helpful very calming neurologically speaking it's it's as it's a form of meditation it's very beneficial so but i don't do like the guilt i have to study my bible thing today um i i look forward to and savor those moments with equal relish that i do my first cup of coffee for the day it's just the way i ground and center my life and i would not be very interested in a guilt-driven uh you have to study your bible today i i think some people if if you've been through a deconstruction process and the bible's just too much for a while then the bible's just too much for a while it's okay but it sounds to me from from your question you really are having some yearning some desire to connect with god through the bible and i think i think the lectio divina is a great way to do that and you can google that and i'll try to remember to put a link to that practice in the show notes this week on sciencemike.com [Music] hi science mike i have a two-part question for you and it's set in the context of fear my husband and i are recent deconstructionists and are now acutely aware of the vast amount of fear that surrounds our evangelical friends and family this is particularly bothersome as parents who are trying our best to raise our children to be safe yet independent so my first question is scientifically speaking are we as a society progressing morally in america and worldwide and statistically speaking is crime particularly kidnapping on the decrease the second part of my question relates to parenting in context of this pervasive fear what does science say about children raised by either helicopter parents or conversely those raised free range i'm curious how you handle this with your young daughters who are similar ages to my nine and six year olds for example my kiddos love to ride their bikes around our very small neighborhood with their friends as well as walk to and from friends homes but i have some neighbors and friends who won't allow their similarly aged children to leave the yard out of sight our children's safety is of utmost importance but so is their developing independence what's apparent to do this is a fantastic question one i have studied a lot and also is a potential landmine if i'm not careful uh so first i want to say i'm an expert in raising exactly two children my own and children are so different that i'm always suspicious of people who offer you know kind of blanket statements about parenting that they say apply to all children i think i said before on this program you know i think it's safe to say all children need love and acceptance by their parents all children need some form of consistency and boundaries all children need food safety shelter beyond that i get really hesitant saying what all children need and i also think as parents we tend to judge ourselves very harshly like especially good parents people who are who really want to do a good job parenting tend to be almost neurotic about how they're doing as parents and i have to say i don't worry about that very much because i know i love my kids and i know i'm doing my best let's talk about some things specifically in your question you said are we progressing morally as a society and i would say sometimes in some ways things are getting better in some ways they are getting worse sometimes when i point to encouraging data points like the decline in global violence or the decline in domestic violence in the united states with the decline in global poverty uh some of my friends especially progressive friends would accuse me of painting a western utopian narrative in which moral progress is inevitable no not at all i think it's very clear moral progress is not inevitable we have been on a good trend for a while but experts don't know why let's let's start admitting there we don't no one agrees on why things in many ways have been getting better and it is tenuous i think the rise of donald trump in this country shows how tenuous moral progress is here we have this person who's kind of openly racist sexist xenophobic homophobic and like 42 percent of the country response to this guy is finally right so i'm not painting an inevitable picture of moral progress what i am saying is since world war ii statistically speaking most things have been improving most things still have a long way to go for example our progress in domestic poverty is nowhere near as impressive as our progress in global poverty which for me raises all kind of uh racist and systemic issues since poverty tends to be correlated with race roughly i i can already hear the counter arguments without making a 70-minute episode to take apart that idea are we progressing sometimes by the way apollo i apologize for the thunder this is the only chance i have to record the show so i can't wait out the thunderstorm in tallahassee today now in terms of kidnapping kidnapping via abduction from strangers is very much on the decline and kidnapping by family members is not declining as much and a lot of a lot of things that are reported as kidnappings are effectively like nasty custody disputes what that means for parenting is there tends to be a lot of paranoia in society about unattended children because of kidnapping and that's not a really grounded fear but like there is one reasonable fear if you want to have free range kids you should be afraid that you could be reported to the police by your neighbors for being a negligent parent which has happened there are some reports uh in news media where people have let their kids you know go a mile from the house or whatever two miles and uh people have called the police and in some cases the custody of those children by their own parents is threatened which i think is pretty depressing because i have seen studies that show helicopter parenting does not aid children's development their decision making capacity one thing that amazes me and hopefully i can find this to put in the show notes because i may even be misquoting it but if i recall correctly uh really safe playgrounds that we've built haven't decreased playground accidents like this one really counterintuitive stuff but somehow like when we eliminate risk we eliminate people from developing or eliminate children from developing decision-making capacity so i would probably tend more towards the free range parent side here's how i do it i structure freedom that is developmentally appropriate like when my kids were small like toddlers they didn't play outside without my constant gaze they didn't get too far you know where they could you know get into danger before i could reach them and intervene but as they've grown i've tended to offer them more and more freedom with some accountability trust relationships discussion what i've always tried to tell let my children know is let's talk about it any questions anything you want to try and you want to do let's just talk about it no questions are stigmatized in my home no ideas are stigmatized in my home and i tend to be very honest i give a reason when i give a rule and those those reasons are subject to question and critique and discussion but i also set pretty consistent boundaries for my kids and explain what those boundaries are and explain the criteria under which those boundaries may change i think it's important and i think studies back this up to foster an environment of discussion in your home kind of rambling a little bit because it's such a tough question and it could potentially get very broad but i would say in general giving your kids more freedom is better especially as it's developmentally appropriate how do they demonstrate its development appropriately because they can handle the freedom now my kids are also extremely advantaged i mean my wife my kid's mom is in the home full time when i'm not on tour i'm an author who works out of the home so my kids have like two parents at home to help them with homework they have two parents very frequently available for discussions and for questions that's a luxury many people don't have especially in this economy so that's why i'm always so hesitant to like make a hard stance about you know which one of these is better in general assuming parental availability and resources a little more freedom a little more free range approach appears to develop better decision making capacity and regardless kidnapping is is not what you should worry about with your children car accidents texting and driving those are things to worry about kidnapping just really statistically is not a thing we should concern ourselves about unless you're like divorced separated with a really strange relationship with your partner something like that those are risk factors but like a random person grabbing your child on the street is incredibly unlikely statistically speaking [Music] our last question came in via email and it reads hey mike so i just recently started listening to the show but i've been listening to you on the liturgist podcast for a while my question is a little complicated because it involves a lot of factors and then a two-part question i was raised in a conservative southern baptist church i was taught all of the traditional ideas of sex being evil and bad and had signed all of the purity contracts as a young girl mostly against my will when i went to college i was ready to party because my faith had never been mine i was so dead too and fed up with church and spirituality during this time i was drunk a lot of weekends and had started to drink way too much then on one night of partying i was sexually assaulted by a guy that i was with he was my friend and i am so embarrassed to be one of a statistic of girls who are assaulted and don't press charges but i knew there would be no conviction and more heartbreak if i pressed charges because of all the fault from me being there and lack of any evidence i haven't drank since then and i find myself getting anxious often i don't want to eat i've lost almost 15 pounds and no matter how much i sleep i'm always tired i'm ready to move on i have forgiven the guy and i'm trying to find some kind of peace with the almighty i want so badly to get back to god and peace i try to pray and read the bible but i've had no kind of encounter with the almighty so finally getting to the first part of the question how do you suggest i deal with the grief and shame that comes with the assault and the years in church and purity culture of being shamed for my sexuality and secondly how do you suggest i find some peace about this from the almighty after being so numb and dead to any spiritual experience for so long thanks in advance you find yourself getting anxious you don't want to eat you're always tired these are signs that your body is experiencing the effects of trauma it sounds like you could be suffering from depression from anxiety and those things would of course stem from the result of the trauma you have experienced and the shame that you take on your question provokes in me outrage makes me angry but it doesn't make me angry with you it makes me angry that we as a culture and yes as a church culture have told women that their sexuality is evil and so attractive to men that they are at fault if they are sexually assaulted so the first thing i want you to know no one has any rights to your body but you no matter how much you had to drink no matter what you were wearing no matter what the circumstances were the fact that someone sexually assaulted you is one hundred percent their fault and zero percent your fault it is not your fault that you were sexually assaulted and my heart is broken for you so you have a lot to deal with you have this trauma associated with this shame i would encourage you to seek out a good qualified mental health counselor ideally not a conservative christian counselor but a secular counselor who can talk you through the process of grief and healing related to this horrific experience and i wouldn't worry about feeling numb to from your question it sounds like you feel numb to everything and that's your brain and your body's attempt to deaden the emotional pain and trauma that you're experiencing prayer and meditation you may find helpful in your healing process but don't place pressures or expectations on yourself don't judge yourself for how you feel in relation to god while you are recovering from something like this yes step one is is to see someone and to see them over and over and to talk through this experience you know you've told me you've forgiven the guy um that's probably not something you can do once and be done with it you know i've been hurt much less than this by people and there are people i have to forgive over and over and over because resentment starts to boil back up inside of me so i have forgiven some people but i have to continue to forgive them and for a while you don't have to forgive you never have to forgive them when you forgive them this is a process of of freeing yourself not of freeing them now in terms of not pressing charges you know that's your decision in the world today we don't do a good job in our justice system with sexual assault so your belief that the process may not result in justice is well founded one needs only watch the news for a few minutes to see what typically happens to men who rape and the answer is often not very much so i don't i don't have any uh any advice for you there other than i'm grieved as a man and as a human being that this is our response to sexual violence that we get so upset about so many things but rapists especially white male rapists tend to have very light sentencing and convictions aren't common i'm sorry this happened to you i hope you can hear my voice that my concern is genuine that my grief on your behalf is genuine and that to some degree i'm at a loss for words i don't know what to say other than that i feel pain for you that i wish this never would have happened to you and that i hope in the future that you are loved and supported not only through a process of therapy and healing but that you you find yourself in a community of people of god who will celebrate you as a person and as a woman who will not shame you for being a victim nor shame you for your body or your sexuality we all deserve that and we so rarely receive it we've been so shaped by these puritanical views these victorian views of sexuality and american religion today and they just do harm so i want you to know it's not your fault there's nothing wrong with you you're not dirty you're not evil and you are not impure you are the very light of god in the world