Commitment to Reality

How we talk about miscarriage—or don’t talk about it—matters. Miscarriage is one of the most painful experiences a family can endure, yet we rarely speak of it. The silence is deafening, and it creates a culture of isolation for families bearing these lost gifts.

Dave and his wife recently experienced the pain of miscarriage, and he wanted to discuss it publicly with Brittany Lee Allen, author of Lost Gifts: Miscarriage, Grief, and the God of All Comfort.

At the same time, many Christians—and Churches—are not handling miscarriage in a way that reflects the reality of what we believe about life in the womb. If we truly believe that a pre-born child is a person with an eternal soul, then these children should be celebrated—and mourned—communally.

This is a hard conversation, but a necessary one. It is also a reminder of the hope to be found in the God of all comfort.

For more information on receiving   Lost Gifts: Miscarriage, Grief, and the God of All Comfort  please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-lost-gifts-miscarriage-grief-and-the-god-of-all-comfort/

Thank you for joining Commitment to Reality, hosted by Dave Hanegraaff. Follow Commitment to Reality wherever you get your podcasts.

Also discussed on this episode:
Why the Church should break the 12-week rule
The Emotional Prosperity Gospel — and what it costs grieving Christians
What well-meaning Christians say that hurts the most
Praying the Psalms as a school of lament
Why our culture is so eager to look away from death
Suffering as gift — a paradox most of us would rather ignore
The parents who keep counting children no one else sees
“How many kids do you have?” — and the answer miscarriage makes us quietly weigh
(Timestamps below.)
0:00 — Why is it so hard for us to talk about miscarriage?
1:45 — My parents named and buried their miscarried child—and never stopped counting her
6:45 — My first experience with miscarriage
15:30 — The paradox of rainbow babies and our second experience with miscarriage
19:15 — Being happy in your situation, even if you’re not happy with your situation
20:30 — The Emotional Prosperity Gospel
23:00 — The importance of lament in the life of a Christian
26:00 — Why should we break the “12 week rule” for pregnancy announcements
30:40 — The Church needs to be the Church
32:30 — We are called to be the hands and feet of Christ
38:00 — Praying the Psalms
39:15 — Pregnancy after miscarriage is a battleground of fear and anxiety
46:30 — How should we talk about miscarriage? Also—what not to say?
53:00 — The Church needs to lead the way in changing how we discuss miscarriage
57:35 — Discussing infertility
1:00:00 — Becoming a parent is hard, but it is worth it
1:05:40 — Lost Gifts
1:07:30 — Theology of Suffering—Is suffering a gift?
1:11:00 — Why are we so eager to ignore the reality of death?
1:14:25 — How parenting connects us with reality
1:16:50 — How many kids do you have? (Are we answering honestly?)

Faith and family are civilizational cornerstones. Remove them and the structure loses its integrity. American culture—and much of the West—has done exactly that as we’ve become increasingly “family unfriendly.”

Timothy P. Carney wrote Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be because he believes America is failing our families and that this failure is the biggest story of the next 30 years. I couldn’t agree more.

A culture that idolizes individuality does so at the cost of community. We have abandoned our obligations to others—especially to children and parents. Parenting is already hard, and yet our culture seems determined to make it harder. Having kids has become just another lifestyle choice—a far cry from historical norms and biological realities.

What changed? According to Carney, the answer is culture itself. Ours has become less friendly to parenting than it used to be—and should be. He joins Dave Hanegraaff on Commitment to Reality to talk about how we got here, what we’ve lost, and what it would take to build a culture that actually loves children.

To learn more about receiving Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be for your partnering gift please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-family-unfriendly-how-our-culture-made-raising-kids-much-harder-than-it-needs-to-be/

Thank you for joining Commitment to Reality, hosted by Dave Hanegraaff. Follow Commitment to Reality wherever you get your podcasts.

Also discussed on this episode:
Why parenthood is a cheat code for virtue
Helicopter parents vs. free-range parents
Why we owe our children freedom
The myth of “chosen families”
How to win culture wars by building culture 
The Israeli kids waiting at street corners — and what it says about our cultural failures
Why we should have lower expectations for our kids (and higher ambitions)
Where the government should never be neutral
Why “babies everywhere” would be a better world
(Timestamps below.)
0:00 — Do Americans hate children?
6:00 — Why America becoming less family focused is the biggest story of the next 30 years
12:00 — When kids are around, people are better
14:50 — Reintroducing virtue to our society
21:00 — Why we need to depend more on others
25:30 — Helicopter parents vs free range parents
28:30 — The abandonment of social responsibility
33:00 — We owe our children freedom—otherwise we are harming them
35:30 — The problem with life hacks is they often avoid real life
39:25 — The myth of “chosen families”
46:00 — Have lower expectations for your kids (and high ambitions)
50:05 — Cultural institutions need to step
57:00 — You win culture wars by building culture—Friday Night on the Field
1:08:30 — The reality is that families need cultural support
1:12:10 — Where are we most eager to ignore reality?
1:13:10 — In a world that feels increasingly unreal—what feels most real?

The Story of Everything is one of the most important films to hit theaters in years. It's also one of the most beautiful films about science that you might ever see.  

On this episode, Dave Hanegraaff is joined by biologist Doug Axe, one of the film's key figures, to unpack what it argues, why it matters, and what it means when scientists themselves are being confronted by evidence they can't explain away no matter how desperate they might be to disprove the reality of God.   

It's a conversation for skeptics, seekers, and anyone who's ever wondered if the universe is really just blind accident or an intricately woven tapestry that science alone cannot explain—but can illuminate.   
The path to truth leads through beauty.   

The Story of Everything is a film about science that ends with a crescendo of beauty, beauty, beauty.   

Please see related resources by authors featured in the film below: 

Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed by Douglas Ax https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-undeniable-how-biology-confirms-our-intuition-that-life-is-designed-atcr/  

Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe by Stephen Meyer  https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-return-of-the-god-hypothesis-three-scientific-discoveries-that-reveal-the-mind-behind-the-universe-actr/

 The Privileged Planet (20th Anniversary Edition-2024): How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery by Jay Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-the-privileged-planet-20th-anniversary-edition-2024-how-our-place-in-the-cosmos-is-designed-for-discovery-atcr/  

Thank you for joining A Commitment to Reality, hosted by Dave Hanegraaff. Follow A Commitment to Reality wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube for full episodes + clips: https://www.youtube.com/@ACommitmenttoReality
 
(Timestamps below.)  
0:00 — Intro / How Douglas Axe got involved with The Story of Everything film
3:00 — Undeniable—how biology confirms our intuition that life is designed  
7:00 — The two competing stories or narratives about reality
10:00 — The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic into a Catastrophe 15:00 — The price advocates of Intelligent Design have had to pay over the course of their scientific careers
16:30 — Surprising rebirth of the belief in God—is that happening in the sciences? 
19:00 — The key concepts behind The Story of Everything 
21:00— Why does it matter if the universe had a beginning or not? 
22:30 — Why are so many scientists desperate to disprove the reality of God
25:00 — The multiverse theory is evidence of desperation 
28:35 — Materialism and free-will cannot coexist
29:30 — Was there a first cell?
30:50 — What does Darwinian evolution explain well? 
33:15 — Why is the discovery of information such as DNA such a big deal?
35:40— The power of visual representations in a film like The Story of Everything to help non-experts understand science
37:00 — Intellectual honesty and the search for truth
39:55 — What is specified complexity?
41:40 — Why specified complexity infers design
43:00 — The constraints of time for evolutionary theories
45:10 — The hard problem of consciousness
51:30 — The beauty principle—“it’s so beautiful it must be true”
54:50 — Would the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe contradict Christianity?

Sin is a problem. But, one of the great psychological tragedies of the West is a misunderstanding of sin. We turned it into a legal category — a list of infractions — and lost what the word actually means: missing the mark. The ancient Church didn't start with sin. It started with the passions — the disordered desires that pull us off target before we ever act. When we misunderstand the reality of sin, it makes it much harder to overcome the passions—which are the real problem. 

But, make no mistake, we are at war. The Church Fathers knew this. They trained for it. They built entire traditions around it. As St. John Chrysostom put it, “Our warfare does not make the living dead, but rather makes the dead live.” Powerful.  

 And then we forgot. Or worse, we’re ignoring the battle we’re in.  

Like any good father, Justin Marler—former punk guitarist turned Orthodox monk turned author—wants the best for his children. Leaning on the legacy left by the Church Fathers, Justin has provided his children—and us—with a survival guide for life with his book The Art of Unseen Warfare: Ancient Teachers for the Modern Fighter.  

 In this episode of A Commitment to Reality, Justin and Dave cover such issues as why monks are the real punks, why trying actually matters, why the virtues are skills you practice and not feelings you have, why God wants progress and not perfection, why suffering is a gift and not a problem to solve, and what happens when you stop asking "Am I saved?" and start asking "Where am I right now — heaven or hell?"

For more information on receiving Justin's book The Art of Unseen Warfare: Ancient Teachers for the Modern Fighter please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-the-art-of-unseen-warfare-ancient-teachings-for-the-modern-fighter/

Thank you for joining A Commitment to Reality, hosted by Dave Hanegraaff. Follow A Commitment to Reality wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube for full episodes + clips: https://www.youtube.com/@ACommitmenttoReality

(Timestamps below.)  
0:00 — Intro / Unseen Warfare: A Guidebook for Life
1:45 — From a punk to a monk 
5:45 — Life in a monastery
7:55 — The education of everyday monasticism vs “traditional” modern education
10:35 — Practicing detachment while also embracing the beauty of life 
17:00 — Having a healthy discomfort with the world
23:45 — The difference between the passions and sin and the baggage with the way so many people perceive sin
30:45 — The world is soul-sick and the Church is the hospital
33:45 — The purpose of life is to become a saint
36:45 — We need to try in life, to work out our salvation and become what we were created to be 41:20 — Why is it necessary for Christians to have the mindset of a fighter in battle?
45:55 — The modern book of virtue—we don’t talk enough about the virtues
51:30 — Trying to understand the will of God is all about developing a relationship with God
56:30 — The virtues are something we practice like anything else we want to get better at 
1:00:45 — The problem with apologetics
1:08:35 — Should Christians spend time online?
1:10:15 — The reality of the unseen realm
1:12:45 — Suffering is a gift
1:17:40 — The reality of spiritual warfare
1:21:45 — We don’t talk enough about guardian angels
1:32:30 — You don’t earn your salvation, but you do work for it
1:34:45 — Salvation is a living process, you can experience heaven and hell on earth 
1:38:55 — Where are we most eager to look away from reality?
1:40:15 — In a world that feels increasingly unreal, what feels most real?

Re-Enchantment—Everyone is talking about it these days. 

But, you can’t re-enchant something that always was. We are simply realizing the reality of Enchantment.

In this episode of A Commitment to Reality, Fr. Stephen Freeman joins Dave Hanegraaff to remind us that the world has always been Enchanted—we have just been ignoring that reality.

Secularism has caused many modern people—even Christians—to misunderstand the reality of the world we live in. Modern life has flattened our conception of reality into something purely material, neutral, and abstract. Many Christians have even made God an abstraction—something Fr. Stephen Freeman calls Christian Atheism.

But, God as an abstraction is no God at all. God is everywhere, present and filling all things.

 This leads to a myriad of misunderstandings—including something as important as our salvation. Salvation is about being restored to reality itself: to God, to others, and to the world as it truly is.

Glory to God, in all things.

For more information on Fr. Freeman's book Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe please click here.  https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-everywhere-present-christianity-in-a-one-storey-universe/

 Thank you for joining A Commitment to Reality, hosted by Dave Hanegraaff. Follow A Commitment to Reality wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube for full episodes + clips: https://www.youtube.com/@ACommitmenttoReality

(Timestamps below.)
0:00 — Intro / The Story of Fr. Stephen Freeman
6:45 — Enchantment
9:45 — Understanding the “one-storey universe”
16:45 — Reality is a gift. Be thankful for it, in all things
18:45 — The true meaning of secularism
21:30 — There is no neutrality in the public square
24:15 — How Marxist rhetoric is used
26:25 — Secularism is heresy
30:00 — God as an idea is no God at all — Christian atheism
35:40 — The reality of salvation
40:30 — Salvation is not a legal problem, but a problem of communion
49:30 — Total depravity, the imago dei, and the goodness of creation
56:00 — Modernity, materialism, and money
1:00:00 — We have so much to learn from the poor
1:07:25 — Did history end with the Resurrection?
1:10:45 — Become a fool for Chris
t1:13:00 — Technology and progress are not always what they seem
1:18:15 — Literalism is the enemy of reality
1:20:10 — We don’t weep enough
1:23:15 — Who do you hate? Your work starts there
1:31:45 — What happens to a culture that can no longer name what it sees?
1:33:25 — Where are we most eager to look away from reality?
1:34:30 — In a world that feels increasingly unreal, what feels most real to you?
1:38:25 — Glory to God in ALL things