Point of View May 26, 2026 – Hour 2 : The Way of Dante

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View. And now, Liberty McCartney. Welcome back to Point of View for the second hour. What does a medieval poem have to do with your life?

[00:00:26] Well, I'm hoping we can have some fun and answer that question a little bit, accompanied by some very brilliant people, both dead and alive. For our live guests today, we have Richard Hughes Gibson. He is a professor of English at Wheaton College, the author of Forgiveness in Victorian Literature and Paper Electronic Literature,

[00:00:46] the co-author of Charitable Writing, and most recently, author of The Way of Dante, Going Through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven with C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers and Charles Williams. So, Richard, thanks so much for joining us on Point of View today. Thanks for hosting me.

[00:01:05] So, I am not an expert in any of the things that you've written about in this book, but I will say I really enjoyed reading it because I really just felt like I was in on this conversation of three brilliant minds who were, for lack of a better word, geeking out over Dante and his Divine Comedy. And it was really fun just being, reading their letters. And I'm wondering, as you were writing, if you kind of felt like that too,

[00:01:32] and just enjoyed being immersed in their love of this great work of literature. So, first of all, let me thank you for the compliment you just paid me. One of the ambitions I had when I was working on a lecture series that became the book was to try to open up a conversation that I want more people to feel like they're involved in. So, it's exciting to me to hear you say, oh, I really didn't know much about this medieval poem.

[00:01:59] And, you know, maybe I didn't even know very much about Charles Williams or Dorothy Sayers. Everybody has their, you know, their Lewis romance. But to hear that the book invited you in is a very welcome compliment to me, so thank you. Thank you. I really like the way that you began by saying, like, what does this medieval poem have to do with our lives? Like, how does it speak to us now?

[00:02:22] And I'm hoping that the book helps people to see that there's questions that Christians have been asking for millennia, and that we can benefit by looking back a few generations to Lewis's generation, but then also looking back even further to the Middle Ages. Yes, I love that, and I think that's so important for us. There is just so much wisdom that we can glean from the minds of the past and so much beauty as well.

[00:02:48] So, hopefully we can at least cover each part of the Divine Comedy today. I have a lot of questions I know we probably won't have time for, but I will just start by noting that I really identified with Dorothy L. Sayers as I was reading it because I, you know, I think I had to read the Divine Comedy in college, and that was a blur. I don't remember it.

[00:03:09] So, a lot of people might have kind of that cultural familiarity like she kind of talked about, but then you have this encounter with it. And so, one of the things that then you write about that she did, she was very passionate, it seems, about really just making it accessible for the ordinary reader and the ordinary person who may say, I really want to revisit that again or learn more about it.

[00:03:34] So, what is the case for the ordinary reader that Sayers would have made or that you would make to say, yeah, you should dig into the Divine Comedy. You should revisit it. Yeah. Yeah. So, may I tell the story about how Sayers read it? It's just such a great... Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah. So, Dorothy Sayers, by the early 1940s, is one of Britain's best-known novelists. She had actually made a small fortune and established great fame as a writer of mystery.

[00:04:04] And then over the course of the 1930s and early 1940s, had come to take her Christian faith more seriously. She was the child of clergy and had wandered from the faith a bit in her teenage and 20-something years. But she had come to view herself as a Christian public intellectual. And as a result of that status, had gotten interested in a fellow writer named Charles Williams.

[00:04:26] Charles Williams, in 1943, published a book called The Figure of Beatrice that's all about Williams' somewhat esoteric, somewhat kooky understanding of Dante. And Sayers reads the book and says, ah, like, you know, I probably should read Dante all the way through, having had some exposure to Dante earlier in her life. Well, then, in August 11, 1944, she heard the air raid siren. Because World War II is still being battled in Europe.

[00:04:54] She heard the air raid siren summoning her to the shelter that she and her husband had in their backyard. And she grabbed her grandmother's copy of Inferno and ran with it into the air raid shelter. And when she came out, she realized she had to read the entirety of The Divine Common. Wow. So she's 51 years old. So I say this just, you know, so that people don't feel intimidated. You can start with Dante whenever you like.

[00:05:20] And thanks to Sayers and ensuing translators, there's all kinds of resources to help you make your way through. And then, you know, we live in the digital age. So if you want to join a Dante book club, you're not going to struggle to find one. Yeah. And in terms of, like, what Dante offers us and what Sayers would want us to see is that Sayers looked at The Divine Comedy and said, this isn't just a classic work of literature. This is a spiritual classic.

[00:05:48] And she understood something that I think a lot of Dante readers around her own time had shied away from, which is that Dante wants to examine your heart. So he wants you to read The Divine Comedy and have to reckon with your own sinfulness. That's what hell is all about, the inferno. And then he wants you to think about what resources the Christian tradition has given you to act as a pilgrim in this world. That's what Purgatorio is all about.

[00:06:17] And then he wants you to think about what will happen to you once you dwell in God's proximity as a saint, because all Christians have inside of them a saint. And that's what Paradiso is all about. Paradiso is all about what it's like to be glorified. So the first step of The Divine Comedy is spiritual diagnosis. We have to look really hard at our vices and acknowledge that there are sinners within us.

[00:06:41] The second step is to say, okay, well, once we've acknowledged our status as sinners, what do we do about it? And Dante's answer is things like, go to church, sing hymns, read the Bible. And then the last step is, and then what will become of us? Like, what has God promised us? And that's what Paradiso is about. Yeah, yeah. I love that breakdown. That's so helpful. And one of the things, too, I'm just, we're going to go to a break here in a minute, but I'll read this quote,

[00:07:09] is, I think this was from Sayers as well, it would never occur to the medieval reader that he ought to keep his head, his heart, and his religious experience in watertight compartments, or that a poem might not properly appeal to all of them in return. So we got about a minute before the break, but this really does break down our modern understanding of genre and category, doesn't it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So you're exactly right in saying Sayers doesn't think that there's aesthetic experiences and religious experiences and intellectual experiences.

[00:07:39] She looks at Dante and she says it's everything, right? That Dante is asking you to be delighted with beauty and to abhor ugliness. He wants to titillate your intellect. He wants to challenge your mind, but he also wants you to be looking within the whole time. So the Divine Comedy is a total literary experience that's designed to speak to all of you. Yeah, I love that. So we're going to go to a break, but when we come back, let's go through those different parts.

[00:08:05] Let's talk a little bit about hell, purgatory, and heaven, and how Dante deals with all of that. And then our fellow travelers, as you call them, Richard, on the way of Dante, what they thought about that as well. So many interesting things, especially one of the things that I want to ask you about is how he flips the kind of epic theme of glory that we see throughout ancient literature on its head in Paradiso, and how he deals with the problem of glory, the title of one of your chapters, and different things like that, and just what we can learn from it.

[00:08:34] Again, we are talking with Richard Gibson about his recent book, The Way of Dante. I'm going to try to convince you to read this. We'll be right back after this short break. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:04] It should be obvious by now that shortages from supply chain disruptions will be affecting Americans and the rest of the world for the near future. Whether the war continues or ends tomorrow, the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz will continue to affect supplies and prices. At the top of the list is energy. Usually approximately 14 million barrels of oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz every day. That has not happened for months, creating the largest oil shock in the world has ever experienced. Gas prices nationwide are $4 and prices in California are now at $6.

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[00:10:26] That suggests that the inflation costs will be going up in the future. Politicians may not want to talk about this, especially in an election year, but a wise and discerning Christian would take note and make appropriate plans. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net.

[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Okay, we're talking about the Divine Comedy with Richard Gibson. He's written this book, The Way of Dante. You can find links and information at pointofview.net. But let's go through the different parts. And in your chapter, Richard, Hell Within and Without, you talk about how reading about hell isn't really most people's idea of fun.

[00:11:24] And I think our travels, you know, Lewis, Sayers, and Williams, if I remember correctly, you know, you include some of their conversations about this, how, you know, this isn't really what most people want to read about. And that's where it starts. So if we're trying to convince people to read Dante, then they may be like, what, do I have to be a weirdo to enjoy this? So what's the message of Inferno? Why do we need to start there? Yeah.

[00:11:50] Sayers gave a really great lecture in the late 40s called The Meaning of Heaven and Hell. And she says, you know, for a lot of reasons, modern readers, and here I would include even practicing Christian readers, are averse to starting a work called hell. You know, we like worry if people spend too much time fixated on hell. And, you know, maybe those worries are appropriate.

[00:12:16] But if we skip the doctrine of hell, then Sayers would say we skip an experience of self-examination that can be very fruitful for us. And her point is not that we want to, like, rejoice in thinking about people and, you know, kind of eternal torment, but rather that the doctrine of hell has within it a way of thinking about ways that we can go awry spiritually.

[00:12:40] So what Dante does is he takes these big ideas that were available to medieval thinkers that are really about spiritual psychology, and then he breaks them down into a series of circles. So hell and Dante is organized into nine circles, and Dante has the character. So Dante's the author, and he makes himself his main character, but not, I think, in a self-congratulatory way, because he has to go on the trip because he's gone awry so much spiritually.

[00:13:09] And then Dante meditates on things like the nature of lust or the nature of gluttony or the nature of wrath. And then as we get to the bottom of hell, the sins become – Dante becomes more interested in sins that involve our conscious involvement. So the last two circles deal with fraud, particularly fraud at the level of society. And then the very bottom of hell, which is a lake of ice rather than fire, deals with sins of treachery,

[00:13:39] of people betraying those to whom they owe some kind of love, like a person who betrays their country or a person who betrays their host or a person who betrays their friend. So Dante would say, and I think Lewis, Williams, and Sayers would repeat after him, that we need to meditate at times on the vices. And so the poem Inferno, the first stage of the Divine Comedy, is Dante's attempt to bring us into his own meditation on these vices,

[00:14:09] which can then fan out and corrupt our lives in lots of different ways. You know, admittedly, it's not the happiest place to begin, but Sayers in this 1948 lecture says, yeah, but would you rather end there? Like, would you rather start in heaven and then end in hell? No, like we have to start in hell. We have to see the lowest lows of which humanity is capable in order to understand what's possible for us, but also to understand God's forgiveness.

[00:14:36] And so that's what purgatory is all about is. Well, it turns out that God's forgiveness is incredibly generous and that all we have to do is ask for his help, and we end up in purgatory. Now, I am a Protestant. I do not believe in the doctrine of purgatory. And I actually think Dante would have some problems with his own kind of portrayal of purgatory as this island and, you know, the southern seas. But the point he's trying to make in purgatory is actually about the Christian life as we live it now.

[00:15:05] So everything that the souls are doing on Mount Purgatory are things that you could be doing right now and that Dante, the author, wants his reader to be doing right now, like saying the traditional prayers of the church, like singing hymns with other Christians, which is like part of penance on Mount Purgatory is singing songs about God's deliverance. Wow. And then the last step, of course, is to see like, well, so if God has forgiven us

[00:15:32] and we've spiritually prepared ourselves to be in his company, well, what might that look like? And that's what Paradiso is all about. Yeah. So I'm with you, and I'm with, you know, Sayers and imagined readers saying like, oh, I don't really want to read anything about hell. Like I see enough evil around me. But Sayers would say, but have you looked carefully at the evil within you? That's the point, that's the primary point of Inferno. But then, as you know, because you've read the book, as we get deeper down into Inferno,

[00:16:02] Dante gets more interested in the ways that a society as a whole can be corrupted. And the Eighth Circle is all about the ways that sin ripples across communities and destroys the possibility of civic harmony. So Dante believes that both an individual and a society can be redeemed. And then an individual and a society can go awry. Yeah. It's very interesting to read it.

[00:16:29] And just the way, and I think this is, you know, the benefit of art in general, is that it does confront us. And if we allow ourselves to be moved by it as we should, then we will allow ourselves to be confronted. And to really, it's a start of an internal conversation and an external conversation as our friends here show. So also one of the things I appreciated is that they loved the transition from Inferno to Purgatory,

[00:16:57] just because you really experience it. If you're reading Inferno, you're reading about hell and like mentally you're in there and you're like, oh, and then there's just this release and relief and such a contrast. And just for the sake of time, I do want to talk about the problem of glory, because you talked about what Purgatory represents. But then anyone who's ever tried to write fiction or taken a creative writing class, they know that, okay, what's the mark of a good story?

[00:17:25] Well, it starts with you have to have a problem, right? There's got to be something to overcome. And yet when you're in heaven, there's nothing bad. So how did Dante keep the plot moving along? Or do we just get bored? The contrast is like, okay, now I'm in heaven. Okay, do I need to read this? Because everything's fine now. Yeah. So the problem of glory was a phrase that I came up with as I was working on this lecture series.

[00:17:52] And at the time, I had been reading some articles that were about art and evil. And those articles emphasized that without evil, and in these cases, evil is this really broad, big umbrella term that really has to do with any kind of deprivation or suffering. It's not quite how I would define evil necessarily. But I've been reading these articles basically saying that if there's no evil, we can't have art.

[00:18:20] And I just don't believe that that's true. But, you know, so then the Dante lecture became the context in which I had a chance to try out my idea. The idea goes like this. In traditional storytelling, the end of the tale is the overcoming of whatever, you know, evil or, you know, difficult scenario, some kind of hardship produces the conclusion. And then the story has to end because there's no longer a hardship in front of us.

[00:18:49] And what I argue in the book is that actually Dante gets over that hump once he leaves Inferno. So for the last two-thirds of the piece, Dante really is not in any danger from evil. And so I asked the question over the last couple of chapters of my book about, well, what does Dante do?

[00:19:09] So in Purgatorio, the solution is that Dante basically undergoes a process of self-examination but is also exposed to people who are penitent. So people who are outside the realm of evil but who are nonetheless undergoing a process of self-examination in order to be basically beatified but first fully sanctified. So sanctification is a story that we can tell.

[00:19:34] And then in the last leg of the journey, Dante tells the story of glory and his story really centers on investigation. So he shifts gears from the adventure tale where we're trying to overcome some kind of physical evil and then looks at us and says, like, what else is there about humans? Well, it turns out that we humans are really curious species. We want to know about everything. We want to know about everything that there is in the universe. Like, everything is potentially interesting to us.

[00:20:03] And so that's part of the story of Paradiso. Dante is zooming through the universe under the care of this young woman that he had loved when he was a child and who died when he was still a teenager, who directs him around and enlightens him on the deepest questions that we have to ask about the nature of time, about the nature of goodness, and then ultimately about the nature of God.

[00:20:28] And then at the very end of the Divine Comedy, to spoil the ending, Dante actually gets to have a direct encounter with God, which he describes as beyond satisfaction. So I think what Dante picks up on in Paradiso is the fact that there's actually longings that are so deep within us for God that we'll only ever be fully satisfied in God's immediate presence,

[00:20:54] and that that satisfaction will be at the center of our glorification. So the ending of the Divine Comedy is the story of us getting what we most really want, which is to understand creation and to encounter the creator, and to be redeemed and to enjoy the satisfaction of God's own confidence. Wow. What a wonderful way to end. Richard, thanks so much for being with us on Point of View today.

[00:21:21] I hope that encourages people to get their hands on a copy of The Way of Dante and read the Divine Comedy for yourself. We'll be right back after this short break. Have you ever met a child you knew would do great things? They displayed remarkable imagination, understanding, and a zest for learning. Now imagine someone takes that child, and instead of fostering their potential with a real education, they feed them nothing but lies. You know, that scenario isn't so far from reality.

[00:21:51] From a young age, Americans are fed a consistent stream of distorted facts, from the secular indoctrination they receive in many public schools, to the biases presented as fact in many colleges and universities, to the barrage of misinformation from the mainstream media and the lack of moral grounding in our society. It's not that Americans aren't capable of understanding the truth, it's that they aren't exposed to it enough.

[00:22:17] You can expose more Americans to the truth when you give to Point of View, where listeners receive facts, perspective, and biblical truth they don't get from society. As long as we have truth, we have hope. Give today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151. Pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151.

[00:22:48] Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again is Liberty McCartney. All right, let's talk about some news.

[00:23:16] But first, shout out to our guests from today. I enjoyed both interviews so much. And if you missed them at all, please check it out at pointofview.net or check out the Point of View radio talk show podcast, where you can listen anywhere you like to listen to podcasts. And you can always see what we've covered. Rachel Grohl in the first hour. So many wonderful discipleship resources themed around discerning God's voice from Scripture. That was an excellent interview in the first hour. And I just finished talking to Richard Gibson, who wrote The Way of Dante.

[00:23:45] So if you say, you know, I want to get into some more of the great literature of the past. I want to read some of the epic things. And I don't really know where to start. Listen to that interview. Check out the resources at pointofview.net under his name. And I really encourage you to do that. And I think it's important. But let's talk about some news. Obviously, we've been seeing headlines over the weekend the past few days.

[00:24:10] If you've been online at all, maybe you were off for the three day weekend and you weren't actually looking at the headlines. And if so, good for you. But I'll give you the short of it really quick. And we'll probably talk about this more on the Friday edition. But reports say that President Donald Trump is close to making a deal with Iran. And a lot of people have big questions about it. You have detractors who have been against this war from the beginning saying, well, why was it necessary?

[00:24:39] You have people who tend to be, you know, what they say, more hawkish, which I would say more supportive of the war and the original aims, saying we need to be careful that we do not capitulate too soon and make another bad deal. Because guess what? The United States has a history with bad deals in Iran. So I want to go over some of the things that are reported to be in a potential deal, which, again, there's nothing official yet.

[00:25:05] But before we do that, I actually am going to play a clip because I have been I'm not an expert on foreign policy, but I don't think you have to be an expert to understand some of the basic reasons outlined and articulated very well, I think, by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which is we want to keep Iran from getting enough of a nuclear program to be able to create a weapon and to attack the United States, which we know they wanted to do.

[00:25:34] So this is how he articulated the cause for the war on April 1st. So I just want to play that clip before we look at some of the deal today so that we can remember what are the United States aims here as originally stated. So let's go ahead and listen to him. Many Americans are asking, why did the United States have to attack Iran now? Well, let me explain. Iran wants to have nuclear weapons. Of that, there is zero doubt.

[00:26:02] If what they truly wanted, which is what they claim, is nuclear energy, well, they could have nuclear energy like all the other countries in the world have it. And that is you import the fuel and you build reactors above ground. That's not what Iran has done. They build their reactors and their facilities deep in mountains, away from the public glare. And they want to enrich that material. The same equipment that they could use to enrich material for energy, they could use to quickly enrich it to weapons grade.

[00:26:29] So it is clear that they've been offered every opportunity to have a nuclear program that allows them to have energy, not weapons. And every single time they have turned it down. But why the attack now? Well, what was Iran trying to do? Iran was trying to build a conventional shield, in essence, have so many missiles, have so many drones that no one could attack them. And they were well on their way.

[00:26:51] We were on the verge of an Iran that had so many missiles and so many drones that no one could do anything about their nuclear weapons program in the future. That was an intolerable risk. Under no circumstances can a country run by radical Shia clerics with an apocalyptic vision of the future ever possess nuclear weapons. And under no circumstances can they be allowed to hide and protect that program and their ambitions behind a shield of missiles and drones that no one can do anything about.

[00:27:18] This was our last best chance to eliminate that conventional threat, that conventional shield that they were trying to build. And the president made the right decision to wipe it out now. That is the goal of this operation, to destroy their conventional missiles and their drone program so they can't hide behind it and finally have to deal with the world seriously about never, ever having nuclear weapons. Okay, so again, that was Rubio on April 1st.

[00:27:45] And I think those are aims that, again, the average person can understand. And we know from polling that Trump's base has supported the actions in Iran. So you can see on pointofview.net I've posted an article from the Wall Street Journal editorial board. They're very critical of what is being reported from the deal right now. Again, this is just reports. Nothing is official. A lot of things could change. There's a lot of things that we may not know. But they say the job isn't done.

[00:28:14] That's what their argument is. Currently, based on what we know from just reporting in the press, the deal would be for both sides to end their blockades, perhaps for the U.S. to sweeten the pot financially, and talks on nuclear issues continue for 60 days or more. So some of the problems that the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal has with this is that really it's ending the pressure too soon before the nuclear program is fully dismantled.

[00:28:40] And we know that any pledge not to continue that program from Iran would be meaningless because we've seen that play out in the past. And others say that really even some of their other programs, just ballistics in general, really haven't been damaged enough. So, of course, President Trump has said, I don't make bad deals, but he's also going to be feeling pressure from the midterm elections. And the war, while his base does support it, it's unpopular in the nation.

[00:29:11] And people are feeling the effects of the straight-up war moves being blocked and gas prices and oil prices, as you well know. So that's one argument. There is another counterpoint that I wanted to just mention, and I didn't have time to post this on the website. But this is from Michael Duran in the Free Press. He's saying really that what President Trump is dealing with is he's governing between enemies who want him to fail and allies who are demanding impossible victories. That's how he classifies it.

[00:29:40] He talks about Republican allies who have been more supportive of more forceful action, really having unrealistic demands and saying, you know, arguing for things that President Trump may not be able to deliver.

[00:29:56] And his argument here in this article is that we have achieved the basic aims that we set out to achieve, that Tehran went from a near certainty, what we just heard Rubio saying, being very close to being able to build a nuclear weapon, to now having that program disintegrated, facing far longer timelines with lower odds of success.

[00:30:18] Now, me just personally, as somebody who doesn't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon, is far longer timelines with lower odds of success really comforting? Or do we want to just say the program's completely obliterated? Obviously, there are no guarantees with anything, but that's a question that I have. So we also have seen that, you know, they have the strikes have been very effective.

[00:30:44] So the question here from the kind of counterpoint is whether Tehran emerges from the war strategically stronger than before. And the answer is no. That's the argument. So is that consistent with the original aims of the United States that we just heard Marco Rubio articulate? I don't know. That remains to be seen, and we will continue watching it.

[00:31:08] But since it's been in the news, I did want to mention it also just so that you can be praying about it, because this is important. It affects the United States, of course. It affects people in Iran, where the war is actually taking place. It affects allies around the world. It affects the flow of oil and many other things. So there are so many ripple effects here, and I know that it's complicated, which is why we should pray for our leaders to be discerning and to make wise choices.

[00:31:35] In fact, this week's Pray for America is probably going to focus on that. And that's a reminder for you that you can sign up for Pray for America at pointofview.net. Every Thursday, you'll get an email with something happening in the world or in our nation that we need to be praying about. And that's one way that we can all pray together. So before we go to a break, I did want to switch gears and mention something else. I'll be hosting the Friday edition. I look forward to that, and we'll have some great conversations at the end of the week.

[00:32:01] And we'll probably talk a little bit more about this, but just to get you a preview, this is an article you can read and maybe be thinking about it before Friday at pointofview.net. Searching for God in Silicon Valley. This is from the Free Press as well by Avital Balwit. She's actually chief of staff to Dario Amadei, who is the CEO of Anthropix.

[00:32:20] So she's very close to the tech bros, as people say, really the developers of artificial intelligence and a lot of this new technology that we're seeing all around us, that we talk often about at pointofview.

[00:32:33] And what she argues is that even though most of the people who are working on these new technologies and capabilities are materialists, meaning they don't believe in anything outside of the material world, they find themselves really close to the same questions that people have always asked. Like, where did we come from? Where did the universe come from? She says that their lives are full of what typically give people meaning, like full work days doing something that they believe in.

[00:33:03] And yet so many of them, including the author of this article, find themselves unsatisfied and seeking something more. So I think this is something else we can pray about, because while we warn about the dangers of pride and too much technology and some of the directions that artificial intelligence seems to be going, it's really interesting to hear from an insider perspective that some of the people working on those technologies are actually asking questions about God and they are seeking him.

[00:33:33] We should be praying about that and we should be paying attention to what's happening. We'll talk about it more later in the week and we will talk more after this short break. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:34:01] All right, it's time for the Know Why segment here as we close out today's issue of Point of View. And this is where you get a preview of what I will talk about on the Know Why podcast, which comes out tomorrow. Every Wednesday it is released and I encourage you to subscribe because really what we're doing in Know Why podcast as a ministry of Point of View is trying to equip listeners to know why they believe what they believe, whether that is about a theological issue or a current event.

[00:34:28] And so since May is Mental Health Awareness Month, I've had that focus this month with the last several episodes of the Know Why podcast. And I thought it would be perfect to end with a report out of the latest World Happiness Report. And Arthur Brooks, writing for the Free Press, gives us a wonderful way to do that. He wrote a column. And this is what we want to understand over the next few minutes. Why are the saddest countries all English-speaking countries?

[00:34:56] That was a main finding of the World Happiness Report, which surveys over 140 countries. And what it found is that people disproportionately satisfied with life all speak English. So the word kind of used in the article here, you can find it at pointofview.net is the Anglosphere. We're talking about the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom.

[00:35:18] And so between 2006 and 2025, the U.S. saw a 10% average decrease in self-evaluated life satisfaction. UK saw a little less, Canada a little more, but they were similar. And specifically, the drop in happiness came from young adults. The group with the biggest happiness drop were Americans under the age of 25.

[00:35:43] Now, before we dig into some of the reasons why, why do you think it is? What would you guess young adults in English-speaking countries under the age of 25 drop in happiness? Hmm, I wonder why. Well, one of the clear reasons is, you guessed it, social media use.

[00:36:04] Nearly 80% of 15 to 16-year-olds in the Anglosphere use social media more than an hour a day, which is the highest from around the world. So the World Happiness Report, when it was published, it did have a leading essay, as it always does. And the co-authors this year were Jonathan Haidt, who we've referenced multiple times on Point of View, and Zachary Rausch.

[00:36:26] And they write that cutting social media use for just two weeks could reduce the incidence of clinical depression in young adults by a third. So we know, as we've talked about many times and done interviews with experts on this, that social media use is not good for your brain, especially for young people. But, as Arthur Brooks notes, it doesn't fully explain it.

[00:36:50] There's a little bit of nuance here, because while teenagers from the Anglosphere are using social media more than anywhere else in the world, young adults from Asia and Latin America are also using social media for similar rates of time. And yet, their happiness levels, self-reported satisfaction with life, has remained stable. So where does the difference come from?

[00:37:16] There are three hypotheses that Arthur Brooks proposes, and I think that they mesh really well with a lot of things that I've read, talked about on the Know White podcast, talked about on Point of View. So I'm going to kind of go through those. And really, as you may have guessed, it comes down to a couple of things, including how we use these platforms. So this is a great conversation starter for your young adult or your teen in your life,

[00:37:39] or even personally to say, how can I develop a healthier relationship with social media if I'm going to use it at all? So the first difference that Brooks knows is that social media was invented in America for Americans. And American culture is very individualistic. And a lot of the social media platforms, you may have noticed, are very self-promotional in nature.

[00:38:02] They are designed for you to be putting your best digital foot forward and present or curate your online image in a certain way. And that's a very that's a mark of a very individualistic society. I interviewed Leah Labresco Sargent on Point of View in her book, The Dignity of Dependence, which really talks about how humans were created to need each other. But we don't always acknowledge that, especially in our society.

[00:38:28] And that definitely influenced the way that social media was designed. But also there are different kinds of social media. There is a kind that is a platform that is designed really for you to be able to communicate with people that you already know. So some examples of that, I'm going to say old Facebook, because the algorithm has definitely taken over for the most part. But you probably remember when it came out, I don't know, 2011, 2010s era.

[00:38:54] It really was just about connecting with people that you knew in real life and staying in touch. And it's not really that way anymore. But other social media apps that are a lot more popular in other parts of the world are like WhatsApp, which allow people to communicate with people they already know versus TikTok, Instagram with the reels, the short form videos. Those are very bad for your brain.

[00:39:17] They are more individualistic because you're either trying to put an image out there that may not be accurate to who you really are, or you're just consuming a lot of short form attention span destroying content. And you're not actually connecting with other people, which is what social media is supposed to do. So it's important to remember there are different kinds. And around the world, people may be on social media platforms around the same amount of time as American teenagers,

[00:39:45] but they're using different ones and they're using it in different ways. And this, I think, is the most important part. We definitely have decline in embodied communities here in the United States or in the Anglosphere in general, where there's decline in social trust. People aren't we've talked about this. They're not dating as much young people. They're not getting married as much. The number of people who say that they have a good circle of close friends is dwindling.

[00:40:11] So people aren't building those kinds of relationships that humans were designed to need in order to thrive. But in Latin America, for example, tight knit families, extended family communities and friends are still the norm. That is a more normal part of life. So once again, social media use becomes an augment to a real community that already exists or a way to keep in touch with that real community.

[00:40:37] So the how of how you're using social media really does matter. And so Brooks ends his column kind of breaking all of this down, on all of this data from the World Happiness Report by talking about two potential outcomes. Either we continue marching down this lonely trail and eventually Asia and Latin America will catch up or we reverse course and say, no, we don't want to go down this road. We don't want to be using social media so much and in such harmful ways,

[00:41:07] especially with our young people, that our our happiness is just collapsing in on itself. And so here are some ways that we can mitigate that effect. And I would encourage you to implement again. Talk to young adults about this. If you lead youth ministry, if you're a teacher, if you have kids who are asking about social media and phones and all of that, this can be a great way to start a conversation of can we use these tools? Are there some benefits to them? How do we use them? Look at the link at pointofview.net.

[00:41:36] So you can actually read this column for yourself and look at the World Happiness Report and look at the data because we can see now it's been around long enough. We know how it's affecting people. So here are some tips. A lot of people in Generation Z are already doing this, by the way. They're kind of leading that reverse course trend, which I love to see. Use platforms that really do emphasize communication with other people versus just consuming content, which nowadays is normally those short form videos.

[00:42:06] And there's research out that shows that actually it makes you dumber. It destroys your attention span. And a lot of times it makes us kind of feel gross, too, because we're just inundated with too much information at once. Keep your embodied, real, in-person communities strong. Invite somebody over after church. Join a Bible study. Join a book club. Build and foster those in-person relationships because those are so important.

[00:42:35] It goes back to how we were designed. We were made in God's image. He's a relational God. We need relationship with people. And it's beautiful when that is functioning and human beings are thriving, but we see what happens when we don't have that. So you can hear more about that tomorrow. Like I said, I'm going to talk about the same issue on the Know Why podcast, so definitely follow that. And in the meantime, go to pointofview.net. Check out the resources from today's show because there are so many good ones. Again, our guests were wonderful, and I really encourage you to take advantage of those resources.

[00:43:05] But Point of View will be back tomorrow, so enjoy the rest of your Tuesday. And join us again tomorrow right here on Point of View. It was not that long ago that censorship appeared to be almost inevitable. Free speech was being attacked and strangled in many places. And some of us wondered if this was the end. But now, many feel a new sense of hope, a chance for a fresh dawn. Let me caution you. Now is not the time to relax.

[00:43:34] It's a time to press forward, to use this fresh opportunity to proclaim and learn how to apply truth to current issues. By the fact you're here, listening right now, that tells me that you recognize the vital role Point of View plays as a voice of truth. For more than 50 years, we've informed and equipped people who have made a real difference. And when you give to Point of View today,

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[00:44:28] Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries.