We did a recent episode where I talked about how Trump voters saw the new trans Aslan as gay and retarded and that failing to create content that appealed to half the country was why this was the reason Netflix stock was down. But I also said that I thought that the trans Aslan was gay and retarded.
I have been chided on AuthorMedia.social for using a politically incorrect word. No one seems offended that I said that creating a trans Aslan was gay but some people think Christians should not use the word retarded even when referring to ideas and actions. It’s offensive and Christians shouldn’t be offensive.
At first I didn’t understand why retarded was a naughty word, it literally means slow and was the gentle medical word until five minutes ago. But the nature of politically correct language is that it is always in flux to show who the insiders are. Colored People is now incorrect, People of Color is now correct. Get it mixed up and you get shunned and canceled.
But what matters more, the words themselves or the heart behind the words?
After looking into it, I think the issue may come from the worldview that means if someone is retarded, you can and should kill them as long as you did it in the womb. For instance, Iceland recently celebrated eliminating Down Syndrome because they killed all the babies with Down Syndrome. Leftists are ok killing retarded babies but they don’t say the word retarded because retarded is a mean word. But killing the baby is the mothers choice and a noble act, or so they say. That looks like some weird pharisaical legalism to me.
The taboo seems to be particularly strong in public school environments where calling someone retarded is a common insult that means “Your mom should have aborted you.” This is why the word has such a slap to it, even though people wielding it may not realize it.
I wholeheartedly reject the world view that people’s value is dependent on their intellect. I refuse to go along with the politically correct word games attached to that world view. Abortion is murder and I’m tired of people using pretty words to describe horrible acts. I’m pro-life.
I also don’t have a lot of respect for people who police each other’s language for political correctness. This is an old Marxist tactic and one we must resist at all times and in all places if we want to stay free. I understand avoiding cussing and swearing, and I try to do that. But banning a normal word because the concept that word is attached to is uncomfortable or offensive is disordered. I roll my eyes whenever someone says “we don’t say that word anymore.” These thin skinned people use getting offended as a weapon to gain political power over the kind hearted.
We must beware of a shallow Veggie Tales Hallmark theology built around being nice, not judging, and loving your neighbor. When taken to its extreme it can become an antichristian religion that puts our love of our neighbor above our love for God.
Fighting this antichristian religion is a key motivation for my life.
If you read the whole Bible you will learn that loving our neighbor is not the greatest commandment. The greatest commandment is to love the God of the Bible, a God who hates a lying tongue (Proverbs 6:16-19). So if you love God, don’t lie, even if you think lying is a form of kindness to your neighbor.
A world full of euphemisms obscures the truth so I am mindful of this and try to avoid euphemisms. Particularly when those euphemisms are to avoid thinking about the truth. It is one thing to talk over the head of a child. It is another to hide the truth from yourself with candied words.
Last week when I talked about my grandmother dying I used the word dead, instead of passed away or some other pretty word for an ugly thing. I find these kinds of euphemisms distasteful. And they are often used to push people away from the truth and toward sin. For example, it is a lot easier to get someone to commit murder if you come up with a pretty name for it like “End of Life Care” or “Abortion.”
I distrust anyone whose mouth is full of euphemistic language.
On Author Update we try not to use candied words. We look at reality with clear eyes. This often means looking at unpleasant realities unflinchingly. A common comment is that this show is “sobering” or “left me a little sad.” Because we don’t ignore things that are uncomfortable just because they are uncomfortable. If you have thin skin or itching ears, Author Update is not for you. My other show Novel Marketing has a different more pastoral tone. Author Update is more prophetic and won’t always be appropriate for children.
On Author Update we don’t just describe what is happening, we comment on it. Or if you want to put it in religious language we judge what is happening. Antichristians love talking about when Jesus said not to judge, often while judging people for being judgemental. But if you read the whole Bible you will see Jesus commanded his followers to judge and when judging to judge with righteous judgement (John 7:24).
That said, we don’t have a habit of passing judgement on specific people. It’s spiritually risky because if you answer a fool according to his folly you can become like him. And you will be held to the standard you judge others by.
So instead I try to judge ideas, memes, and organizations. As for individuals, my policy is and has always been, “you are an adult and it is a free country.” I may think what you are doing is stupid, I may even see you as my enemy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you with Christian love.
I try not to insult people as a general rule. There is a big difference between calling an idea retarded and calling a person retarded. I know Aslan seems like a real person, but he is a fictional character. I don’t think insulting fictional characters violates Christian principles.
So is my judgement that making Aslan some kind of gender fluid bisexual is both gay and retarded a righteous judgement? I’ll find out when I stand before God on judgement day and give an account for my actions and whether they be good or evil.
I should say, I’m not a very good Christian and I don’t hold myself out as some kind of an example. I know I will have a lot I have to answer for.
But it is very telling that while people are saying I’m using politically incorrect words, no one is saying I’m wrong. People are more offended about how I pointed out that Netflix has made Aslan gay and retarded than they are at Netflix for making Aslan gay and retarded.
So am I going to call individual people retarded? No, because that would be a retarded thing for me to do. But will I keep using the word retarded? Yes. Because sometimes, ideas are so bad the word stupid just isn’t enough.
Gal 3:1 “"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?"”
Commentary
Jonathan: Let's get into the single dumbest thing we have to do today.
Thomas: Of all the things I said in that episode, this was not the thing I thought I would get killed or canceled for.
Jonathan: I thought "pedophile prophet" was going to get you. But apparently this is what triggered people.
Thomas: That worldview says you can kill someone who is retarded as long as you do it in the womb, or in Canada, with Medical Assistance in Dying.
The kids who use the word as an insult is basically saying, "Your mom should have aborted you." And that is why the word has such a slap to it, even though the people wielding the word may not realize it. It's got a slap that it didn't used to have.
It's no longer the gentle medical term it was historically.
Fighting this anti-Christian religion is a key motivation for my life in this season. I'm starting to see it in lots of places, and I am doing my best to fight against it.
Euphemisms are great for talking over the head of a child. But it's a lot easier to get someone to commit murder if you call it choice. You're not killing a baby, you're making a choice.
People will sometimes recommend an episode, but they still say, "It made me sad."
There's a reason Jonathan's wife doesn't watch this show, and my wife watches it on headphones. We try to be family-friendly, but we'll talk about war, and we'll talk about it in detail. We don't use candied words. It's really up to a parent whether a child is ready for the kinds of topics we cover on this show.
If anyone says, "Judge not," just respond, "Judge rightly." Being held to the same standard you judge others by is very scary for me personally.
When I say I judge memes, I don't mean the graphics. I mean an idea that spreads from person to person. And I don't think insulting a fictional character, or even insulting the way a fictional character has been abused, violates Christian principles.
I've never said, "Follow me as I follow Christ," because I don't follow Christ very well.
Jonathan: I'm going to steelman the opposing argument, and then I'm going to present the other side.
Part of being a fighter is playing scenarios through in your head and making your opponent as strong as you can, so your response is as strong as it can be.
The most targeted and relatable part of scripture on using the word retarded is not "Judge not, that ye be not judged." That's taken way out of context, and it's not used in the spirit or intent Christ used it in.
The one that comes really close is where Jesus tells his people not to call someone "thou fool." There's a list of three, and I use the King James, so I'll probably recite scripture in a way you're not familiar with. Look it up yourself.
In Matthew 5, Jesus says if you call someone "raca," you can be taken to the judgment. But if you call someone "thou fool," you'll be in danger of hell fire. Then you're really in trouble.
I did a study on this because I call people stupid all the time. That's a major part of my personality, which doesn't mean it's a good thing. My road rage is crazy. I hate other drivers, I think they're all morons, and I tell them so. My wife has told me several times, "Stop talking, the kids are in the car," because I'm calling someone an idiot for stopping for a right-hand turn, and that bothers me in my soul.
So why is it wrong to call that person an idiot, a moron, or a retard? Because you are devaluing a person who is made in the image of God.
This matters because Jesus also said, "If you hate your brother, you've committed murder." People say, "That just means God's standard is really high." No, it's actually as if you were committing murder, because right and wrong are based on God's standard of right and wrong, which also includes His capacity.
A lot of people think they're good people because they can't hurt other people, either for fear of consequences or because they don't have the ability. If I hate Elon Musk, I can say he should die all day long because I can't get through his security detail to kill him, and I don't want to go to jail for it. That's a problem of capacity.
What Jesus is saying is that the words themselves are a problem according to God's standard, because God can do anything He wants. If God said, "I hate Elon Musk, and I'm going to kill him," Elon Musk would be dead. That's God's capacity matched with God's standard.
When we translate that to what Jesus says the standard should be, also consider the context He was speaking in. Israel was occupied by a brutal military force. When Jesus said, "Love thy enemy," He was not speaking in a combat context. There are plenty of times in scripture when God said, "Kill them all" in combat.
Jesus was speaking of an occupying force when He said, "Love your enemies. Do good to them that hate you. Pray for them which despitefully use you." That's part of making the world a better place outside of a combat scenario. When you live in hatred, you will kill them whenever you can, and that invites retribution, especially when the power scales are so disparate.
Rome proved this when it came back in AD 70 under Titus, burned Jerusalem to the ground, and lined the roads with crosses. The power imbalance was severe, and they kept poking the bear. Don't poke the bear. Very few people have a problem with loving your enemy. But keep poking the bear in hatred, and the bear will eventually turn on you.
Bringing this back to the way we devalue people made in the image of God: Thomas mentioned that kids effectively say, "You should have been aborted." This is common language in video game chat rooms. It's why voice chat has been disabled in a number of video games, and it's why suicides related to cyberbullying, much of which comes through video games, are up. We've allowed our children to be infected with the idea that your value is based on your intellect or what you contribute.
One of the major excuses for MAID is, "They're not contributing to society anymore. Why should we keep them alive? Their experience of life isn't as important as putting these resources toward more valuable people." That's the complete antithesis of how God says a soul is valued.
A soul has value because God values us. God loves us, and that's why our soul has value. So why is it wrong to murder? Because I'm attacking the image of God. I'm attacking another soul that God has determined has value.
If I devalue them by calling them anything, fool, stupid, retarded, moronic, I am devaluing that person to the point of saying they shouldn't be alive.
Have you ever said old people shouldn't drive? I've said it in the Costco parking lot. A lot. I've said certain races shouldn't have access to certain parts of the internet or certain music. These are things we say to ourselves. But if our capacity were increased, what would we actually do?
Now, Thomas said this gay Aslan thing was gay and retarded, and people were more insulted by, and more emotionally engaged with, the word retarded than anything else he said. Which is really retarded to me.
I come from the Marine Corps, an environment that thrived on strength, and we did our best to offend each other. A day did not go by when I didn't yell slurs at somebody. "Hey, Mexican, go take care of this." Or, "Hey, retard, I told you not to do that."
That Marine knew I would die for him. That Marine knew I did paperwork every day to make his life better. He knew I was taking care of him. I have so many stories I cannot tell on YouTube of hilarious interactions we had, because Marines are hysterical. Despite all of that, I never devalued them to the point of saying, "I hate you. You should die."
Someone in the chat touched on this, but if you knew your Bible better, this is the passage you would have brought up: eating meat that offends a weaker Christian.
Paul wrote an entire chapter about going into a temple and buying meat that had been sacrificed to idols. It was the clearance aisle back in the day. The Jews gave sacrificed meat to their priests, but these temples didn't get rid of it. They put it in the marketplace, and it got sold as used meat. It was cheaper, and poor people bought it because they needed nutrition.
Then there was a whole big deal where some people said, "You shouldn't buy meat that has been sacrificed to idols, because now you've invited Satan into your home."
Paul said, "Look, I know and you know that anything sacrificed to idols doesn't mean anything." The idols aren't real. Burning meat in front of a pillar doesn't mean anything. There's no danger. We're not being possessed, attacked, or oppressed.
However, he does say that if there's a weaker brother who lived his entire life dominated by that idol, and you tell him, "This meat was sacrificed to the idol you were enslaved to your whole life, and now you're free," that is where the word offensive applies, because now it's a stumbling block.
That brother is going to think, "I can't touch that. I'm trying to follow this guy, but I can't do that. Am I a bad person? Is he a bad person?" That's what the passage was intended for. Paul is saying there are some people who can't get over some stuff.
If you call a mentally disabled person a retard as a slur, you are in violation of this passage. If they're walking by and you say, "Hey, retard," and start making fun of them over problems they can't fix, you are in violation of this passage, and I will happily turn your face into hamburger.
But by using the term retarded, which means slowed down, or even the term disabled, you may be describing something factual. If it's not used as a slur, it's being used as intended, and refusing to use it is being weak intentionally when we are commanded to be strong. I'm not talking about someone who lived his life in slavery to a particular god, concept, idea, or ideology.
There were people who converted in our church who had issues walking past certain symbols of the religion they had converted from, because they were used to genuflecting or bowing. We removed those symbols because they were stumbling blocks.
That is the spirit of these passages and of Christian teaching on these things. It doesn't mean don't hurt anybody's feelings. Read Jesus. He burned whole cities to ash. He swallowed a dude with a fish. He took places out. It's not about feelings. It's about properly valuing human life and speaking factually.
Thomas: The issue is the heart, not the word. In Galatians, Paul says, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth?" That's King James for you, but the word foolish is in all the translations.
Paul is using Jesus' naughty word. It wasn't that the word fool can't come out of our mouths. If that were the case, we couldn't read the Book of Proverbs, because you'll say fool every three verses.
Jonathan: Jesus literally said it. He would say, "Oh, fool, and hard of heart," to his disciples.
Thomas: So the issue is not the word, and we give the word too much power. The way you fight a word that gets too much power is to use it.
A good example is the slur the British had for the Americans during the Revolutionary War: Yankee. We took that slur on as a badge of pride. Well, some of us did, in the top half of the country. In the South, not so much. By doing that, we took all the power away from the word.
If a word has that slap to it and you want to take the slap away, the very worst thing you can do is make the word forbidden, because that makes the slap even stronger. The way you take the slap out of a word is to use it so often it has no more slap.
Another example is the word queer. It used to be a slur, and the LGBT community embraced it. I don't think anybody considers it a slur anymore. I may be wrong, but I see it used quite commonly. In fact, I think genderqueer is in the extended version of the alphabet.
Jonathan: Mary Grace has a great point in the chat. She says, “The word Christian was also a slur.” We called ourselves followers of the Way when we first started, and they called us Christians, which means little Christs. It was meant as a slur: "Hey, little Christ, remember what happened to him?" And everyone said, "That's an honor. Do you really think I'm like him?"
Thomas: The same goes for the symbol of the cross. It was a humiliating way to die. A Roman citizen couldn't be killed on a cross, which is why Paul wasn't crucified. But when Peter was to be crucified, he considered it so much of an honor to be crucified like Jesus that he was crucified upside down.
There's a meme of people showing an upside-down cross as a way of offending Christians, and Catholics look at it and say, "Hello, Peter."
I know many people are trying to judge my heart. I'm a public figure, and if you want to cast judgment on me, you're welcome to.
But if you think your judgment of me will change my behavior, you need a different argument. You need to show me that I'm wrong. I may be. I've been wrong before, and I will be wrong again.
Jonathan: My favorite story about this kind of thing is from boot camp. Boot camp is hard, and they say things that hurt your feelings. I tell people now when they review my books, "It's okay. I've had my feelings hurt by professionals. You can't hurt me. You're not even good at it."
By the way, boot is a slur too. It means you're new, and it travels with you your whole life, because every time you change stations, you're the boot at the new station. So if I ever call you a boot, you know it's a slur. Boot camp is a camp for boots.
After boot camp, you get 10 days of boot leave. I was standing in line to buy my ticket home, and I saw a sign. God bless whoever put it up. I know their heart was good.
But I had just spent 13 weeks being obliterated as a person. I had been humiliated, tortured, and called all kinds of names. I had been held to the highest standard of performance and behavior I've ever had to meet, before or since. I was exhausted, and I wasn't sure I wanted to do this anymore.
And here's this sign, just a piece of paper printed from an inkjet printer, in big, bold letters: "Congratulations, Marnies." It was a typo. Someone had just left the old piece of paper there.
I started laughing in line because it was just the last blow. I was going to be a brand-new Marnie in the United States Marnie Corps. I've carried that with me my whole career. Any time we had to do something stupid or something hard, or we were just exhausted, I'd say, "Come on, Marnies, let's do this," and we would go do it.
Why It Matters for Authors
Thomas: Word choice affects all authors. As a writer, you always have a choice between gentler, more oblique language and more direct language, and I would say there's a role for both.
In my experience writing nonfiction, the writing that spreads farthest and has the greatest impact has been the more direct, clearer, more controversial writing. My most controversial blog post had people wishing for my death and ruffled a lot of feathers, and it went viral. The angry people spread the post, and so did the positive people. I'd say one in 10 people were angry, some number were in the middle, and probably 50% were passionately in favor.
After it got about a million views and 800 or 900 comments, many of them very angry, I softened the post a little and took out some of the sentences with the most slap. Basically overnight, traffic to that post dropped to zero.
It was a great learning experience. Being a writer requires courage, and you can't please everyone. You can't always even please your Timothy. You're writing for your Timothy, but sometimes people need to hear a hard word.
Jonathan comes from the military world. The reason they train with hard words, insulting each other and saying things that would be very offensive in other contexts, is partly to grow emotional strength. But it's also to get people used to it, because there are times when you must obey immediately or you will die.
When I first became a literary agent, Steve Laube, who ran the literary agency, had me write some blog posts about my philosophy as an agent. I wrote three posts, which you can still read, and I turned them into episodes of Christian Publishing Show. They covered the three things I was looking for in the authors I wanted to sign and represent.
The first was resonance. I didn't use the word zeitgeist, but it was the same concept: you understand where readers are going and where culture is going, and you can push the swing as it's moving away from you.
My two-year-old really wanted to push my four-year-old on the swing at church on Sunday, and she did not get the resonance down. Wham. To her credit, she kept getting back up and trying again, but she didn't have the rhythm of when to push.
Some authors are like that. They can't get a sense of the vibe of the culture, and they're always out of sync.
That same book would have been great five years ago, or it will be great in 10 or 20 years. It's just not where readers are right now.
Another was courage, and part of courage is being willing to speak clearly. In my statement, I talk about euphemisms, but there are many ways to talk around a difficult thing. You can be so vague and so high on the ladder of abstraction that no one knows what you're saying, so no one can take offense.
That kind of fiction or nonfiction doesn't work, because no one knows what you're saying, and the whole point of writing is for people to know what you're saying. Be so clear that readers know, sometimes immediately, whether they agree, disagree, or need to wrestle with it.
Jonathan: When my publisher got my first draft of Semper Di, he sent it back to me. He's an Army guy, and he said, "You need to cut down the Marine Corps jargon, because the reader won't understand a lot of it. There are other ways to say it." I told him no. I said, "This is the draft you are getting, because it's true to the Marines, and Marines will know exactly what it's saying."
If you read the reviews, people sometimes say, "I didn't understand some of the jargon, but I got the idea of what was going on, so it was fine." Other Marines said they felt like they were back. They got to spend time with Marines again, even fictional ones, and that was the whole goal.
I stood up and said, "No, I'm not going to water this down for people I don't know. I'm going to keep it clear, direct, and true to what we said and what we did." What's really funny is that I did it without profanity, which so many people think is necessary for writing military characters and making them sound authentic.
Thomas: The third thing was hustle: you're willing to do the hard work in the writing, the marketing, and building the platform, and you're not seeking shortcuts. One thing I've found is that shortcut seekers don't make it and don't become professionals, because all of those shortcuts add up over time.
There's a difference between taking a shortcut and taking the best path. People ask about our course, The Five-Year Plan, "Can't you make this shorter?" This is the shorter way. Most people take 10 years because they take wrong turns and have to correct.
It takes most authors about 10 years to find their voice, their platform, and their reader. It takes a lot of hustle. Some can do it faster, and for some it takes longer. I know authors who took 15 or 18 years before they figured out how to write the kind of book people wanted to buy and read.
Hustle is really important, but it's only one leg of the stool. It doesn't make up for a lack of courage. You can work as hard as you want, but if you're still afraid, a lack of courage hurts your willingness to be known, to be famous, and to take criticism. The more famous you are, the more criticism you get.
God blesses some people by cursing their book, because they couldn't have handled the notoriety, all of that public critique and public adulation. Both can be toxic for your soul, and I think the adulation is possibly more dangerous.
Jonathan: No one is designed to deal with that much worship. We're not designed to receive it.
Thomas: My mom was a professional musician, and she taught me a technique I've found really useful. She gave big concerts and performed at churches, and she was also an actress. After a concert or a show, people would come up to her with all these compliments.
She pictured it as people giving her crowns. At the end of the day, she would pray and lay those crowns at Jesus' feet, sometimes with a physical act. She wouldn't say, "Oh, no, I didn't do a good job." She didn't deny anyone the opportunity to tell her she did a good job. She would just say thank you, receive the crown of praise in the spirit in which it was given, and hand it to God at the end of the day.
For those of you who are Christians, that can help keep you normal. Having a family also helps keep you normal, because your kids do not care how famous you are, and their dirty diapers really do not care how famous you are.
Jonathan: My kids would say, "What? You're famous, Dad? But you're not even cool!"
