Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

​Why aren’t we wise? One of the greatest paradoxes of the information age—a historic period of unparalleled access to information and knowledge—is that we are woefully unwise. In the face of dizzying distractions we encounter on a daily basis, Christians are called to cultivate wisdom. But, what does wisdom look like? In an effort to help us consume a more balanced, healthy diet of information, our guest Brett McCracken has created the “Wisdom Pyramid.” Inspired by the food pyramid model, the Wisdom Pyramid challenges us to increase our intake of enduring, trustworthy sources (like the Bible) while moderating our consumption of less reliable sources (like the Internet and social media). At a time when so much of our daily media diet is toxic and making us spiritually sick, The Wisdom Pyramid suggests that we become healthy and wise when we reorient our lives around God―the foundation of truth and the eternal source of wisdom. For more information on The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World and how to receive for your partnering gift please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-the-wisdom-pyramid-feeding-your-soul-in-a-post-truth-world/Topics discussed include: The paradox of lacking wisdom during the information age (2:30); the importance of contemplation (4:30); do you know how to read? (8:15); chronological snobbery—is innovation always better? (10:00); the danger of being a digital wanderer (12:45); the problem of algorithm driven, hyper-partisan echo chambers combined with the sorry state of journalism today (15:55); the democratization of information and the death of expertise (20:00); the tension between feelings, reality and the self (25:15); can wisdom exist apart from God? (32:10); what are the biggest challenges for the church in the digital age? (36:30); the connection between embodiment, the church and wisdom (43:00); approaching the Bible with humility and learning to live with tension and paradox (48:35); the rhythms of the church calendar (55:00); the synergy between Christianity and science (56:05); the importance of being involved in your local community (1:03:45); our innate need for nature (1:07:00); the importance of developing the discipline of reading (1:11:00); the synergy of silence and beauty and their relationship to the Sabbath (1:19:25); 5 habits to cultivate wisdom online (1:21:50); what does wisdom look like? (1:27:15). Listen to Hank’s podcast and follow Hank off the grid where he is joined by some of the brightest minds discussing topics you care about. Get equipped to be a cultural change agent.Archived episodes are on our Website and available at the additional channels listed below.You can help spread the word about Hank Unplugged by giving us a rating and review from the other channels we are listed on.

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, is thinking about the recent mid-term elections. We put so much hope in our political system, and certainly political activism plays a necessary role. Yet while the ballot box is necessary, it is insufficient. Consider maladies in Western Civilization such as transgenderism and radical transgender surgery—something you could never have imagined where people are now at young ages having top and bottom surgeries making up maybe a trillion dollar industry for the medical establishment with young people becoming medical patients for life. Radical individualism, wokism, militant egalitarianism, religious pluralism, and so on. All such things are not magically changed or redeemed at the ballot box. Illiberal liberalism is perpetuated and disseminated in so many different ways. Think about educational institutions—so many educators saying the state should have a bigger input into the lives of children than parents. The entertainment industry, which many of us are hooked on. Environmental industries that create, manipulate, and disseminate ideological constructs driving Western civilization in a various dangerous direction. Just a glimpse of the darkness. What are the solutions? The church must awaken from its diabetic coma brought on by a steady diet of fast-food Christianity. Christians must become not only intellectually equipped but equipped internally—by a mysterious Zoetic energy—the energy by which we may yet reclaim the soul of the world against the insistent forces of secularism and paganism. For further reflection, see Hank Hanegraaff, Truth Matters, Life Matters More: The Unexpected Beauty of an Authentic Christian Life https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-truth-matters-life-matters-more/

“The disintegration of rational society started in the drift from the hearth and the family”, wrote G. K. Chesterton in 1933. “The solution must be a drift back.” Today’s guest, lauded as “probably the greatest living authority on the life and work of G.K. Chesterton,” joins Hank to discuss his book The Story of the Family: G.K. Chesterton on the Only State that Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens—a compilation of texts and quotes from G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist, illustrating the glory of the family—the heritage of romance, love, marriage, parenthood, and home. In a world that has lost touch with normality, it takes a pioneer to rediscover the wonders of the normal and Dale Ahlquist represents Chesterton as a prophet from our past that can help us defend the role of the family as the key to a healthy civilization. For further information about receiving The Story of the Family: G.K. Chesterton on the Only State that Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens for your partnering gift, please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-the-story-of-the-family-g-k-chesterton-on-the-only-state-that-creates-and-loves-its-own-citizens/Topics discussed include: Why does how we define the family matter? (5:30); why is G.K. Chesterton important today? (7:25); on natural law (10:45); the growing influence of the government in our lives—especially in public schools (15:00); the paradox of freedom (17:30); the modern attack on the family (18:40); what were G.K. Chesterton’s critiques of capitalism? (21:00); what is the mystical mirror? (24:15); the sacramental idea of sex as a picture of Christ and the Church (27:20); the problem with free love, birth control and divorce (29:20); the connection between eugenics and birth control (32:20); real birth control is self-control (36:15); communism, capitalism and something worse (40:10); the practice of self-control (41:40); is public education undermining the family more than anything else? (43:40); does it make sense for feminists to attack motherhood? (48:00); the value of homemaking—the original work from home (50:25); why bad philosophy is ultimately self-destructing (52:40); the main point of distributism—also known as localism (54:25); how should we read? (1:00:00). Listen to Hank’s podcast and follow Hank off the grid where he is joined by some of the brightest minds discussing topics you care about. Get equipped to be a cultural change agent.Archived episodes are on our Website and available at the additional channels listed below.You can help spread the word about Hank Unplugged by giving us a rating and review from the other channels we are listed on.

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, comments on an article from the World Socialist Web Site by scholar Tom Mackaman, “American Historical Association President Issues Groveling Apology after Racialist Social Media Attack.” Here we have “the president of the American Historical Association, Professor James Sweet of the University of Wisconsin,” making a soft criticism of The 1619 Project and ending up having to publish “a groveling apology.” Sweet had criticized “the dominance of ‘presentism’ in historical writing.” According to Sweet, presentism is the “tendency to view history ‘through the prism of contemporary social justice issues—race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism,’ while minimizing ‘the values and mores of people in their own times.’” Mackaman comments that “the subject is certainly worthy of discussion, not apology and retraction.” Sweet had also suggested that “The 1619 Project’s insinuation that slavery was a uniquely American ‘original sin’” wasn’t quite right. He pointed to “a slaving site he’d recently visited in Ghana, Elmina,” regarding which “‘[l]ess than one percent of the Africans passing through…arrived in North America.’ Most of the other 99 percent, presumably, were bound to destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean.” So, the US was hardly exceptional in this regard. But in the face of social media criticism like, “as a ‘white man’ he has no right to make critical commentary on Black or African History,” Professor Sweet “crumpled in record speed,” as Mackaman put it, tweeting out an apology containing sentiments such as “I take full responsibility;” “I am deeply sorry;” “I sincerely regret;” “I hope to redeem myself.”See Mary Grabar, Debunking The 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America (Regnery History, 2021) https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-awake-not-woke-a-christian-response-to-the-cult-of-progressive-ideology-wa2209fl2/.See also Tom Mackaman, “American Historical Association President Issues Groveling Apology after Racialist Social Media Attack,” World Socialist Web Site, August 23, 2022, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/08/24/ogzj-a24.html; James H. Sweet, “Is History History? Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present,” Perspectives on History, August 17, 2022, https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2022/is-history-history-identity-politics-and-teleologies-of-the-present.

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, has been meditating on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1–7:29). Meditating on the words of this most glorious of magnificent sermons is transformational. In this sermon, Jesus famously asked, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” Hank was thinking about these words when he happened upon an article, “Of Smart Phones and Snakes,” by Grazie Pozo Christie, who writes, “Every time I see a little hand holding a smartphone and childish eyes staring mesmerized at the screen, I remember those Gospel words [from Luke 11:11 and also Matthew 7:9–10] and imagine the phone is a rattlesnake.” In the early stages of their development, we’ve handed impressionable children over to the greed of big tech—“luring them into ‘rabbit holes’ of coarse sexuality and drug use” and transgender traps. Twelve- and thirteen-year-olds—even younger—being groomed for radical hormonal treatments and devastating surgical alterations. While the bottom line for tech giants is quite promising, the resulting top and bottom surgeries, woke ideologies, and cultural confusion wreaks inestimable harm. Older tech addicts fare little better. Our overstimulated constitutions are increasingly devoid of critical thinking. We’ve substituted quick answers for critical thought. Information substituted for reflection and true wisdom. Solutions are not to be found in more screen time, but more Scripture time—meditating, mining, memorizing the wisdom of Scripture for all its substantial worth. Perhaps start by reading a chapter a day of Proverbs. See Grazie Pozo Christie, “Of Smart Phones and Snakes,” Angelus, September 9, 2022, https://angelusnews.com/voices/of-smartphones-and-snakes/

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, reads from a poignant, acutely distressing article by Ritchie Herron, “A Detransitioner’s Perspective: Awakening from the Dream of Gender Utopia,” published by Human Events. Ritchie writes and speaks in a very compelling fashion. “I was 25, an adult,” he explains, “but a vulnerable adult with high traits of autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and substance misuse issues. Like many, I was captured by the idea that I was less than perfect. The solution to my imperfection was to be laid on a path that would lead to a degree of unimaginable self-destruction, through irreversible surgeries that have turned me into a lifelong medical patient, reliant on synthetic hormones, as well as being under constant supervision for ongoing complications related to the deeply invasive surgery. This was all in the name of the promised Gender Utopia, where we were all free to be ourselves, express ourselves without boundaries, and celebrate our individuality in an explosion of liberation and autonomy, yet, at the age of 35, almost a decade after embarking on this deeply destructive journey, I’ve come to realize this is not the Gender Utopia we were promised.” See Ritchie Herron, “A Detransitioner’s Perspective: Awakening from the Dream of Gender Utopia,” Human Events, September 13, 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20220915085236/https:/www.humanevents.com/2022/09/13/a-detransitioner-s-perspective-awakening-from-the-dream-of-gender-utopia

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, reflects on The 1619 Project and what motivated the Nazi Holocaust. Nikole Hannah-Jones, director of The 1619 Project, reimagines America as a ‘slaveocracy’—and says that even Nazi Germany used America as inspiration for its racial policies. But actually Nazi Germany was motivated by Darwinism and its implications. Nazi Germany took eugenics, which was increasingly promoted throughout the West, to its logical conclusion. Namely, to take those that were not well born and exterminate them in order to bring about the uber race. Thus at the heart of the problem is the notion that we’re not created in the image and likeness of God, such that we have intrinsic worth, but rather we are merely molecules in motion—and the goal is always to progress to a higher ideal. The amoeba becomes the ape; and ultimately, the ape becomes the astronaut. For evolution to work, you have to eliminate the weak, otherwise they will pollute the gene pool and render evolutionary progress impossible. The educational system in concert with The 1619 Project is bent on eradicating the God of the Bible—because if we eradicate God, then anything becomes possible. In truth it has always been sin, not skin color, that animates racism. And we know that because slavery has existed throughout all of human history. So if we are to re-imagine America, we must do so based on the communication that, as human beings, we are all created in the image of God.See Mary Grabar, Debunking The 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America (Regnery History, 2021) https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-awake-not-woke-a-christian-response-to-the-cult-of-progressive-ideology-wa2209fl2/; and Richard Weikart, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism (Discovery Institute, 2022), https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-darwinian-racism-how-darwinism-influenced-hitler-nazism-and-white-nationalism/.

Hank Hanegraaff is joined by Dr. Mary Grabar to discuss her book Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America. According to the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” America was not founded in 1776, with a declaration of freedom and independence, but in 1619 with the introduction of African slavery into the New World. According to Grabar, the “1619 Project” is not just bad history, it is a danger to our national life, replacing the idea, goal, and reality of American unity with race-based obsessions that we have seen play out in violence, riots, and the destruction of American monuments—not to mention the wholesale rewriting of America’s historical and cultural past. In this illuminating conversation, Grabar discusses the lies, distortions, and propaganda behind the “1619 Project” and why her book debunking it is essential reading. For more information on how to receive, Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America, for your partnering gift please click here. https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-debunking-the-1619-project-exposing-the-plan-to-divide-america/Topics discussed include: How has Debunking the 1619 Project been received? (5:15); the problem with an apology from the American Historical Association regarding the 1619 Project (8:25); what is the origin of the 1619 Project? (12:55); how do we know which historians to trust? (15:10); who is the founder of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones? (19:30); the rise of idea laundering in academia (23:25); the dangerous decline of investigative journalism (26:30); the problem with the 1619 Project being taught in schools (35:25); the truth about Thomas Jefferson and slavery (43:10); why the abolition of slavery was so historically radical (46:25); did Thomas Jefferson really want to abolish slavery? (52:25); the mistreatment of Abraham Lincoln in the 1619 Project (1:01:00); the Constitution and slavery (1:07:30); the misappropriation and virtue signaling of the Kente cloth (1:14:20); the impact of Karl Marx on the perception of slavery in America (1:18:05); combatting the false narratives of the 1619 Project (1:19:30); the stealth edits and corrections of the 1619 Project (1:25:15). Listen to Hank’s podcast and follow Hank off the grid where he is joined by some of the brightest minds discussing topics you care about. Get equipped to be a cultural change agent.Archived episodes are on our Website and available at the additional channels listed below.You can help spread the word about Hank Unplugged by giving us a rating and review from the other channels we are listed on.

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, comments on an important book he is reading: The Story of the Family: G.K. Chesterton on the Only State That Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens, edited by Dale Ahlquist (Ignatius Press, 2022). In this compilation of texts from Chesterton, he shows that “society is built on the family.” He eloquently explains that one cannot free something from what it is by nature, including marriage and the family. You cannot free a marriage from the union of a man and a woman, the natural end of which is the bearing and rearing of children. There is no other social relation parallel to the natural and “mutual attraction of the sexes,” and by missing this point, the modern world has fallen into countless “vices and follies,” including same-sex sexuality and transgenderism. Chesterton shows that undercutting the “triangle of truisms, of father, mother, and child,” destroys any civilization that once cherished them. Seeking to thwart nature, we succeed only in cutting off the very limb on which we are seated. Ultimately, “the war against the family” is a “war against God and the Church.” The road back is through “the story of the family.”See The Story of the Family: G.K. Chesterton on the Only State That Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens, edited by Dale Ahlquist (Ignatius Press, 2022) https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-the-story-of-the-family-g-k-chesterton-on-the-only-state-that-creates-and-loves-its-own-citizens/