Breakpoint (Colson Center)

Scripture points to friendship as an important and different type of wellbeing for the soul.

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To RSVP for Lighthouse Voices with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett go to colsoncenter.org/lighthouse.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Trans rights are becoming the latest state-by-state issue dividing America. The Vatican releases a very pointed condemnation of surrogacy. And the Biden White House declares abortion is the number one issue in the upcoming presidential campaign. 

Recommendations

Shadow of the Almighty by Elisabeth Elliot

Being Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn

A Quiet Mind to Suffer With by John Andrew Bryant

Segment 1: States vs. the Feds on Trans Policy

Segment 2: The Pope Condemns Surrogacy

Segment 3: Biden Campaign Says Abortion #1 Issue

Biden’s Top Priority for a second term: abortion rights

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Pleas for tolerance and inclusion are often pretext for intolerance and exclusion. For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet. This is the Point.  

“If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get one.” Remember that one? These days it ought to say, “If you don’t like gay marriage, kiss your job goodbye.”  

At least that’s what happened to U.K. mayoral candidate Maureen Martin last month. Martin published a campaign leaflet describing her views, including that “natural marriage between a man and a woman” is the “building block for a successful society, and the safest environment for raising children.” 

LGBTQ activists swiftly complained that this was “hate speech” and got Martin fired from her day job at a housing association. Notice, she said nothing about gay people or same-sex marriage. All she did was state fundamental truths about the importance of man-woman marriage to society—truths central to her Christian faith and shared by millions.  

Still, like Martin, Christians must speak the truths that get us in trouble and show any way we can that God’s idea of family is the best idea. 

One of the more helpful analogies to explain the personal and cultural damage wrought by the sexual revolution is that sex is like fire. When a fire is in the fireplace, it brings light, warmth, and ambience. It can even preserve life. When, however, a fire jumps out of the fireplace onto the curtains, it brings destruction, even death. A similar analogy compares sex to water. Our bodies need water to live, but we need water in the right place. When water gets in the lungs, it can be deadly. 

One point of these analogies is that, like fire and water, sex is good. It has a design and purpose. The sexual revolution wanted sex to be “good,” but forfeited the “design and purpose” part. In fact, proponents of the sexual revolution argued that sex is only good if it is set “free” from all restraint, responsibility, and consequences.  

This kind of fundamental error, like all bad ideas, is bound to have victims. With each day that passes, we meet more of them. Consider a piece published several months ago at Vice that announced a hip new way to find sexual satisfaction: “radical monogamy.” Don’t call it marriage (that’s for dinosaurs), but man, there’s something really fulfilling and safe (apparently) about sexual fidelity between two committed people. Or consider the recent book by Washington Post columnist Christine Emba. In Rethinking Sex, Emba argues that using the often vague ideal of consent as our only moral guidepost governing sexual activity has left a lot of people hurt, lonely, and frustrated. 

All of this is pointing to an opportunity for the Church to offer something better. However, to do that, we must be careful and clear. If sex is designed, it is under the authority of the One who designed it. If it is, indeed, under God’s authority, and God is good, then rightly ordered sex is a good gift.  

In other words, the full antidote to the toxic sexuality of the sexual revolution isn’t just to return it to the safety of the fireplace. The sexual morality we rightly talk about from Scripture isn’t the whole story of this beautiful gift. Keeping sex within the confines of a lifelong marriage between one man and one woman is a moral good, but just as loving our neighbors is much more than not actively hating them, respecting God’s design for sex is much more than not transgressing certain boundaries. 

In His kindness, God has called us to the lifelong cultivation of being properly sexual. This is the virtue of chastity, something often mistaken by Christians and non-Christians alike for prudishness. Instead, the call to be properly sexual with one another is a calling for all of us, married and single, to pursue all our lives, before, during, and after marriage.  

The Scriptures describe this well. Husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church. Christ laid down his life for His Church. And so, we give our bodies generously to our spouses, but not with degradation or violence. 

Sex within marriage can still demean, degrade, and victimize. When sex is seen as nothing more than an act of mere pleasure seeking, or when sex is demanded or withheld out of anger or contempt, or when sex is pursued in body or in mind with someone who is not given to us in marriage, chastity is abdicated, and we are sinning against God, our spouse, and ourselves. 

Wedding rings are not some “license to practice” in any and every way that comes into our minds. That’s reductionistic. Sex is allowed in marriage, but it is also still designed. 

Often we think of biblical exhortations like the call to “love our neighbor” or to “seek the good of the other” as applying only to our actual neighbors, friends, or coworkers. But these verses also apply to our sexual relationships with our spouses. Practicing the virtue of chastity means to approach sex as an act of generosity. It’s not something to treat lightly or selfishly, even in marriage. 

The sexual revolution sent the fire screaming out of the fireplace and then poured gasoline on the whole disaster. As more and more people are burned in its wake, the Church has a wonderful gift to offer, a gift that goes beyond the rules of the fireplace. When ordered rightly, the whole world will be blessed by its warmth, its light, and its life. 

Christians should protect play because it is part of our Lord’s joyful heart. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

John and Shane field important conversations downstream from worldview. A scientist asks how to frame gender identity. Another listener asks how to engage fundamental worldview questions in the classroom.

John references the need for building a theology of getting fired. He notes that we must continually ask fundamental questions in building a worldview.

John and Shane help listeners consider some survival tactics of consciousness of self-interest. The encourage listeners to hold self-preservation in engaging worldview battles hand-in-hand with truth. John rests his thought on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's work on Live Not By Lies. 

Shane closes with a question about Bible translations. The two wrestle the question while also driving listeners to simply read the Bible. They provide recommendations on strong translations. They also build confidence that the Bible is reliable.

Resources:

Solzhenitzyns Live not by lies

Colson Center - Worldviews and cultural fluency

Tactics - Greg Koukl

What if the church became the new go-to source for singles to find a date, instead of an app? For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet. This is BreakPoint. 

Years ago, would-be couples met at a dance, at church potlucks, or around a friend’s dinner table. Even further back, due to the gender imbalance in Roman society because of selective infanticide, many young men found their spouses at church. Today, many singles (including Christian singles) search for a relationship online, scouring profiles in dating apps, debating whether to swipe right, swipe left, or just give up. 

Dating apps have re-conditioned how singles think about dating and relationships. Long gone are the times when a single young man  walked into a community, noticed a young lady, and was forced to overcome his nerves to take a risk. On one hand, many dating apps have taken the first impression beyond appearances to other important relational factors such as interests, hobbies, and shared views on essential issues. On the other hand, apps enable relationships to be even further isolated from real community. That’s often not healthy. 

It may also be that apps are another way our lives are being disembodied. Recent studies reveal that many young people are “explori-dating,” interacting with someone from a different country, background, or faith, ditching these leading indicators of long-term relational stability in order to just explore. Some are now “hesidating,” a term coined by the online dating site Plenty of Fish to describe mostly single females who struggle to choose whether to date seriously or casually because of how uncertain life feels. Tonight, in fact, many young people will choose to celebrate “Gal-entine's” or “Pal-entine’s” Day instead of Valentine’s Day, an indication of how difficult it is for so many to date and commit.  

And of course,  

there’s the uglier side of dating apps: a world of sexting, secret connections, ghosting, and targeting. Online anonymity can lead singles to go farther than they wanted to, stay longer than they intended, and pay more than they were hoping.  

To be clear, dating apps have diversified and improved. Many young people find love online , and enter long-term committed relationships culminating in marriage. In one sense, apps now fill the significant relational gaps in our changing culture. Some suggest that given how difficult it is to date these days, apps have changed things in “positive ways.”  

Helen Fischer, an anthropologist who's studied dating trends for over forty years, and is a scientific adviser to one of the largest dating apps, believes these opportunities create “historic turnarounds with singles. They are looking for committed relationships.” 

What if the church has a role to play in creating contexts for relational connections, even romantic ones? What if the current relationship dearth being filled by apps could be filled by Christian matchmaking communities instead? 

Since it is Valentine’s Day, it’s worth reflecting on the day’s namesake. Valentinus of Rome was a 3rd-century martyr, and though the specifics around his life are somewhat cloudy, the most widely accepted version of his martyrdom is that he ran afoul of emperor Claudius II for encouraging romantic love and marriage in his community.  

Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families. So, he banned it. But Valentinus believed marriage was an essential part of human life, or like we say around the Colson Center, like gravity. So, he reportedly married couples in secret despite the edict from Rome and was caught and executed for his deeds. 

Today, to follow Valentinus’ example by creating contexts for singles to meet, within a larger healthy community, is to offer the world something it needs but doesn’t have. To celebrate marriage not just in word but indeed is to declare that committed romantic relationships are possible and good. To place these relationships, as the Christian worldview does, in the larger context of our God-given identity and purpose is to point young people to love for the good of others, as opposed to love as mere self-expression. 

As C.S. Lewis outlined in The Four Loves, a Christian view of passionate love, “eros,” differs from mere sentimentality or sexual desire. Eros, when rightly ordered, causes us to toss “personal happiness aside as a triviality and [plant] the interests of another in the center of our being.” Where else will young adults hear that definition of love? 

The Church has much to offer a lonely world on Valentine’s Day and the rest of the year. The Church, of course, is to be a people that cultivate a community together. It may be that we should become a bit more intentional about cultivating marriages too. 

God isn’t a happy pill; He is the one who makes us holy.

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To support the ongoing production of Breakpoint, visit breakpoint.org/give.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In a prolife world, recent reports about rape rates would be a shocking story about crime and not about access to abortion.

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For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Is the growing belief in the supernatural an a la carte counterfeit? 

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Register for the 2025 Colson Center National Conference at colsonconference.org. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment visit Breakpoint.org. 

Obeying the call of God even when the fruits are far out of sight. 

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Can We Help the Next Generation Find True Happiness? Register for the upcoming Lighthouse Voices event featuring Dr. Jeff Myers at colsoncenter.org/lighthouse. 

Making home ownership a Christian cause. 

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Find more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment at Breakpoint.org. 

As Kate Shellnut with Christianity Today writes, “Evangelicals under 40 are twice as likely as their seniors to want more substance from the pulpit.”   She’s referring to a new survey on church satisfaction from Grey Matter research group. Not only do 3 in 10 evangelicals want more in-depth teaching, but the strong majority are happy with how their church handles even tougher topics like giving or politics.  

It correlates with a 2017 Gallup poll, which showed that 83% of Protestants consider learning about Scripture as the main reason they attend church. That outpaces other worthy things like kids’ programming, musical worship, or social opportunities.  

Of course, making churchgoers happy isn’t the ultimate metric of the Christian faithfulness … but that might be exactly the point. Strategies to make church relevant and interesting have to be grounded in the main thing: the truth of God’s word.  

Watering it down isn’t just unfruitful or unwise: It’s a bad retention strategy.  

To repeat something said on Breakpoint last month, kids deserve better books than the ones currently being written for them. Too many children’s books today are activist books, not really written to kids (and certainly not for them) but to and for grown-ups who want to be the kind of parents who would give this kind of book to their kids. 

I must admit, however, that I recently received an “activist” kid book that I really like, and so does my son. It’s age appropriate, written to kids, and designed to help them think well about something that they, sadly, need to understand. 

Pro-Life Kids is authored by Bethany Bomberger. She and her husband Ryan, who recently spoke at the 2022 Wilberforce Weekend, are committed pro-lifers, creatives, and Christians. An experienced educator and mom, Bethany understands where kids are developmentally. Pro-Life Kids teaches them what’s most true about themselves and others, that every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and introduces them to an issue that’s really difficult to talk about—abortion—in an appropriate and engaging way. And, of course, it rhymes! Here’s a sample: 

Sadly, there are those who don’t understand 

… that life has purpose whether planned or unplanned.  

Throughout history many believed a lie.  

“You’re not a person!” 

“No way!” they cried.  

Today many think that lie is still true— 

that babies in wombs aren’t people too. 

Abortion is when some say it’s okay  

to take that baby’s precious life away.* 

The illustrations are instructive, but also appropriate. For example, the image on the page that introduces abortion is of an ambulance leaving an abortion clinic. And, my favorite page spread shows the value of every human life with a charming set of illustrations sharing the stages of development from baby to elderly, including people of multiple races, male and female, abled and disabled. Near the end is an elderly woman with gray hair and a walker.  

After the book’s main text, there are tips on how kids can stand for life at any age, contained in 15 colorful text blocks. Suggestions include everything from loving their adoptive siblings, to praying outside abortion centers, to marching in D.C., to writing an essay about being pro-life, to showing their friends this book.  

Bethany Bomberger and her husband Ryan lead the Radiance Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to “create a culture that believes every human life has purpose.” They’ve raised millions for pregnancy resource centers, and they have a special stake in their cause. 

Ryan was conceived through rape, but his mom was courageous enough to proceed with his pregnancy. He was adopted into a loving, diverse family of 15. Bethany was a single mom who chose to have her baby after seeing an ultrasound of her daughter and encountering Psalm 34:5: “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.” That verse has been the basis of the Radiance Foundation since its founding.  

Ryan and Bethany have also adopted two children. In fact, one of the most compelling illustrations in Pro-Life Kids is of their own diverse family.  

Bethany’s story will be featured on the Colson Center’s Strong Women podcast in August, and Ryan’s message from our “Life Redeemed” Wilberforce Weekend can be heard online right now. In it, Ryan calls himself a “factivist,” instead of an activist. According to Ryan, many people act without facts, but factivists act with facts. They know that truth is unchanging because God is eternal. His message includes how to identify the lies of secularism “when it comes to human value.”  

Bethany has a baby book version coming out soon and is launching an initiative called Put It on the Shelf, aimed at getting her book on library shelves to counter the “massive influx of books with destructive ideologies.” In fact, when you order a copy of Pro-Life Kids, pick up an extra copy to donate to the library. It’s a way of living out something the book says quite clearly, “Like many before us who stood for what’s right, we’ll never give up as we fight for life.” 

To hear Ryan’s message, and also messages of others, such as Os Guinness, Nancy Guthrie, and Rachel Gilson, go to WilberforceWeekend.org. And check out Bethany’s book Pro-Life Kids. I believe it’s another way, paraphrasing Psalm 145:4, for one generation to commend God’s works to another. 

*Excerpt used with permission. 

There is beauty everywhere, even amidst the filth and rancor online. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The lifelong power of lasting connections. 

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For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment go to Breakpoint.org. 

Now that abortion rights are left to the states, it’s more important than ever we tell the truth about preborn life.

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To get your copy of the second edition of The Case for Life, go to colsoncenter.org/February.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In 1996, American political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote a book called The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. In it, he proposed a remarkable thesis, that while in the past, especially in the 20th century, global conflicts had been primarily between nations, countries, and kingdoms, in the future, especially in the 21st century, global conflicts would increasingly be not between nation-states but between cultures, between civilizations. 

These cultural fault lines, as he called them, sometimes existed within a country or existed across regions. It didn’t take very long into the 21st century to prove his theory correct. In fact, in The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington went on to predict that the hottest of these conflicts would be between religious and non-religious cultures, specifically, that what you might call the hottest of the hot would be between Islam and the West. In the time since 9/11, his predictions have largely played out. 

But there has been another story dealing with Islam that has played out at almost the same time. In fact, just over the last three decades or so, we have seen a remarkable number of Muslims coming to Christ. Individuals from the Islamic world are reporting conversions—sometimes through dreams, sometimes through missions, sometimes through other means. Regardless of the manner, it has been what one missiologist called a remarkable movement of the Holy Spirit. 

The reports are so numerous, in fact, that a foundation recruited a friend of mine, a scholar named Dr. David Garrison, to investigate. They sent him for several months to visit various corners of the Muslim world and to figure out where these stories were coming from. They wanted to know how legitimate these reports were. Garrison put together his findings in a book called A Wind in the House of Islam. 

You see, in the whole history of the Islamic faith, there have been few reports of large movements of Muslims becoming Christians—very few in fact. About 80 percent of all such movements in history have taken place in just the last three decades. 

There’s something else that’s taken place over the last three decades: Each and every year for the last 29 years, during the season of Ramadan, the most holy period for the Islamic calendar, a group of Christians led by a prayer guide have together prayed for Christ to draw Muslims to Himself. Ramadan is a very good time to keep our Muslim neighbors and Muslims around the world in prayer. 

Since 1993 to be precise, the 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World prayer guide has been equipping Christians to pray for Muslims during this season of Ramadan. It is an international movement that calls on “the church to make a deliberate but respectful effort to learn about, to pray for, and to reach out to our Muslim neighbors.” There is even a 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World prayer guide for kids which I have used with my own family. 

The 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World is available both in a print booklet and as a digital download. You can find it by going to 30DaysPrayer.com, or come to BreakPoint.org, and we’ll tell you how to pick up a copy. 

The Book of James tells us that “the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” This has been a movement of prayer of hundreds of thousands of Christians for decades. Let’s be a part of it. 

Last week’s leak of a draft opinion in the Dobbs case reignited comparisons of abortion restrictions with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. This isn’t new, of course, but it is silly and misguided. 

Atwood’s dystopian novel is about a fictional theocratic successor to the United States, the “Republic of Gilead.” In Gilead, select women are forced to become concubines for the sole purpose of breeding. Of course, not killing a child is not the same thing as forcing a woman to bear a child, especially in a culture like ours bent on rejecting sexual morality. 

In fact, the closest thing to Gilead in our world is commercial surrogacy, particularly those nations where women are kept in surrogacy “farms” and barely paid to remain pregnant in order to bear children for wealthy Westerners, especially same-sex couples. Advocates of so-called “universal parentage” laws are bringing that to America, not pro-lifers. 

Despite the promises, abortion doesn’t bring freedom to women, only a false promise. As Frederica Mathewes-Green and others have observed, abortion untethers men from their responsibilities, and women are on the receiving end of that bad deal. Abortion promises women freedom, but instead delivers abandonment.  

Let’s pray abortion becomes as unthinkable today as those handmade outfits are.

Why is there something instead of nothing? This is a question that has long haunted scientists, beyond the what to the why. For a long time, the widely accepted answer from astrophysicists, astronomers, and others was that the universe always existed. 

This so-called “steady-state theory” was a favorite of materialists because it sidestepped any need for a Creator. However, in the 20th century, the collective evidence became overwhelming, forcing scientists to accept that space, matter, energy, and even time had a beginning. Ergo, the cosmos is not eternal. 

The “Big Bang” theory, which replaced the steady-state theory, wasn’t as much an explanation for how the universe came to be as it was a description of the immediate aftermath of its beginning. The initial first cause, i.e. whatever it was that set off the Big Bang and provided the fine-tuning necessary to produce a life-friendly universe, remained a mystery. At least, it was a mystery for those unwilling to accept God as the first cause.

That’s not to say there were no suggestions. For example, among the attempts to explain the Big Bang and account for our shockingly life-friendly cosmos were complicated ideas with fancy names such as vacuum fluctuation, cyclic contraction and expansion, the anthropic principle, string theory, and the multiverse. However, as philosopher of science Stephen Meyer argues, each of these explanations comes with significant baggage. In his book, The Return of the God Hypothesis,  Meyer shows how these theories either require prior mathematical fine-tuning, or involve serious category errors, or else undermine the reliability of science. In other words, these “solutions” tend to complicate the initial problem they attempt to address.

Perhaps this is why, in lieu of these choices, some are now offering another explanation. Writing in Scientific American this month, former Harvard astronomy chair Avi Loeb proposed that our universe may have been created by an intelligent designer… just not God. 

What if, as the Harvard scientist (not a late-night radio host) suggests, our universe was “created in a laboratory of an advanced technological civilization… Since our universe has a flat geometry with a zero net energy, an advanced civilization could have developed a technology that created a baby universe out of nothing through quantum tunneling.” Such an idea, he concludes, “unifies the religious notion of a creator with the secular notion of quantum gravity.”

Loeb doesn’t speculate on the identity of our universe’s engineer(s), or the location of the “laboratory” where it came to be. But if his proposal sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Specifically, he’s proposing a form of intelligent design, only one with an infinite number of extra steps. 

A question children and atheists often ask is, “If God made the universe, who made God?” The answer, given by classical theists, is “nobody.” God is, by definition, self-existent and eternal, the very Ground of being. He who caused the universe to exist requires no cause. He is, as Thomas Aquinas put it, the “unmoved Mover.” The very existence of something implies the existence of an unmoved Mover, an uncaused first cause. Because, as Freuline Maria sang in The Sound of Music: “Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.”

Loeb’s version of intelligent design fails to offer an answer to this fundamental question. If the universe were cooked up through quantum tunneling in a cosmic laboratory by alien scientists, who made the alien scientists who created the universe?

Loeb certainly tries to answer that question by suggesting that there may be countless baby universes, all engineered by “advanced civilizations,” which in turn create more life-sustaining universes, but which are not self-existing or eternal. The process, he writes, may proceed along Darwinian lines, ensuring a selection advantage for life-sustaining universes since they can, in a manner of speaking, “reproduce.”

He’s envisioning an infinite regress of universes and designers, creating one another back into eternity. It’s like the old story about the tribe that believed the Earth rested on the back of a giant turtle. When asked what the turtle rested on, the tribesmen replied, “It’s turtles all the way down.” According to this Scientific American article, it’s alien designers all the way down. 

This is Ockham’s Razor on a cosmic scale. As Meyer concludes in his book, the “God hypothesis” is still the most scientifically reasonable explanation for the universe, one that does not “unnecessarily multiply explanatory entities.” While it’s an improvement that some modern astronomers and physicists are willing to consider intelligent design, given a choice between a transcendent God and an infinite number of immanent alien designers (or turtles?), the answer is obvious.

Today, on the ninth anniversary of his death, I want you to hear from Chuck Colson about his birth. His new birth, that is. For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet. This is BreakPoint.

Chuck Colson was one of the great evangelical leaders of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. He had an enormous influence on so many different organizations, so many different Christians leaders, and, of course, so many individual people.

I can’t tell you how many times I meet someone who tells me, “Chuck Colson was my mentor,” even if they had never met him. They then go on to identify a book that Colson had written or a talk that he had given at some particular event. One of the striking things about it is that when someone names a book, it’s almost inevitably a different book each time.

Make no mistake: Colson’s influence came about because of how Jesus Christ had changed his life. He was an incredibly gifted person. You have to be incredibly gifted to find your place just down the hall from the most important man on the planet some time in your thirties. Yet, this giftedness accompanied by what he would often admit was his pride, led Colson to an incredible fall, one that was public and in front of the entire world.

But, he came to Christ, and that changed the trajectory of his entire life. He founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, and he also founded the Colson Center. So, today, on the ninth anniversary of his passing, I want you to hear Chuck Colson describe his own conversion, as he did on a BreakPoint that was on the thirtieth anniversary of that conversion.

Here’s Chuck Colson:

Thirty years ago today, I visited Tom Phillips, president of the Raytheon Company, at his home outside of Boston. I had represented Raytheon before going to the White House, and I was about to start again.

But I visited him for another reason as well. I knew Tom had become a Christian, and he seemed so different. I wanted to ask him what had happened.

That night he read to me from Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, particularly a chapter about the great sin that is pride. A proud man is always walking through life looking down on other people and other things, said Lewis. As a result, he cannot see something above himself immeasurably superior — God.

Tom, that night, told me about encountering Christ in his own life. He didn’t realize it, but I was in the depths of deep despair over Watergate, watching the President I had helped for four years flounder in office. I had also heard that I might become a target of the investigation as well. In short, my world was collapsing.

That night, as Tom was telling me about Jesus, I listened attentively, but didn’t let on about my need. When he offered to pray, I thanked him but said, no, I would see him sometime after I had read C. S. Lewis’s book. But when I got in the car that night, I couldn’t drive it out of the driveway. Ex-Marine captain, White House tough guy, I was crying too hard, calling out to God. I didn’t know what to say; I just knew I needed Jesus, and He came into my life.

That was thirty years ago.

I’ve been reflecting of late on the things God has done over that time. As I think about my life, the beginning of the prison ministry, our work in the justice area, our international ministry that reaches one hundred countries, and the work of the Wilberforce Forum and BreakPoint, I have come to appreciate the doctrine of providence. It’s not the world’s idea of fate or luck, but the reality of God’s divine intervention. He orchestrates the lives of His children to accomplish His good purposes.

God has certainly ordered my steps. I couldn’t have imagined when I was in prison that I would someday go back to the White House with ex-offenders as I did on June 18 — or that we would be running prisons that have an 8 percent recidivism rate — or that BreakPoint would be heard daily on a thousand radio outlets across the United States and on the Internet.

The truth that is uppermost in my mind today is that God isn’t finished. As long as we’re alive, He’s at work in our lives. We can live lives of obedience in any field because God providentially arranges the circumstances of our lives to achieve His objectives.

And that leads to the greatest joy I’ve found in life. As I look back on my life, it’s not having been to Buckingham Palace to receive the Templeton Prize, or getting honorary degrees, or writing books. The greatest joy is to see how God has used my life to touch the lives of others, people hurting and in need.

It has been a long time since the dark days of Watergate. I’m still astounded that God would take someone who was infamous in the Watergate scandal, and soon to be a convicted felon, and take him into His family and then order his steps in the way He has with me. God touched me at that moment in Tom Phillip’s driveway, and thirty years later, His love and kindness touch and astound me still.

RZIM’s Abdu Murray speaks about his latest book, co-authored by the late Ravi Zacharias.  “Seeing Jesus from the East: A Fresh Look at History’s Most Influential Figure” is the Colson Center’s featured resource for the month of July.

New gruesome photos of babies aborted late-term in Washington, D.C, are a reminder of what abortion really is.  

For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet. This is BreakPoint. 

Last week, D.C. police collected the bodies of five babies that were reportedly aborted late-term. A pro-life activist claims the bodies were given to her by a “whistleblower” from an abortion clinic. The clinic conducts abortions until week 27, but experts contacted by Live Action News believe that one of the babies looks to be between 28 and 32 weeks.  

I’ve seen the photos. They are absolutely horrific. The older baby is simply indistinguishable from a newborn. 

With the Supreme Court soon to announce a decision in the Dobbs case, the abortion industry continues to dig in its heels. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is about the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that limits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The fact that such a law would be fought, especially at the highest legal levels, is evidence that America’s abortion laws are not where people, science, and the rest of the world are when it comes to abortion.  

Of course, Christians have additional, sacred reasons for opposing abortion at any age in any circumstance. Even so, despite the alarmism presented in the media and from abortion advocates about any abortion restriction, Americans don’t want late-term abortions. A Wall Street Journal poll published last week found that a majority, although slim by 5%, were against abortion after 15 weeks. Another poll conducted last year by Associated Press and the NORC Center at the University of Chicago found that 65% of Americans don’t want abortion after the first trimester, ending after week 12 or 13.  Additional research shows that millennials lean more pro-life than Gen X. 

A major reason public opinion continues to trend toward more abortion restrictions instead of less is due to what we have learned from both natural and social science. Abortion is not the elimination of unformed masses but the killing of babies who, at 15 weeks, are developing eyebrows and eyelashes and can thumb suck and yawn. A survey conducted by pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List found that when people know the science they are more uncomfortable with abortions past 15 weeks.  

For example, 55% of survey takers informed that at 15 weeks a pre-born baby feels pain were “more likely” in support of a 15-week limit. And 53% indicated “more likely” support for a 15-week limit when informed that “by 15 weeks an unborn child has a beating heart, can move around in the womb, can close his or her fingers, can start to make sucking motions and hiccup, and senses stimulation from outside the womb.” Also, 52% responded in “more likely” favor of a 15-week restriction when they learned that “abortion carries signific physical and psychological risks to the mother, and these risks increase with late abortions.”  

This science appears to be convincing much of the rest of the world to restrict abortions closer to the first trimester. Even Chief Justice John Roberts in his exchange with abortion industry counsel during discussion on the Dobbs case noted that, except for China and North Korea, the U.S. seems to be out of step globally regarding the “viability standard.” Viability outside of the womb is often thought now to begin at 24 weeks, and some high-tech NICUs’ have made is as potentially low as 22 weeks of gestation. Sharing a standard with two of the nations known least for respecting life is not commendable. In fact, a report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute finds that the U.S. is only 1 of 7 nations that allow voluntary abortion past 20 weeks. 

As Patrick Kelly of the Knights of Columbus wrote in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago, up to 4,000 pregnancy resource centers are available for expectant mothers in the United States. Despite the criticisms of the abortion industry, Charlotte Lozier Institute in its research of 2,700 centers found that 25% of their paid staff were medically trained. The institute has shared that “consistently high client satisfaction rates reported to pregnancy centers reflect that women, men, and youth who visit centers feel respected, valued, and well cared for.” When we advocate for life, we are not advocating for just the life of the baby but also for the life of the parents. They and the baby are both made in the image of God.  

If you are interested in “Preparing for a Post-Roe Future,” consider attending a special evening event on Thursday, May 12, in Orlando, Florida, before our annual Wilberforce Weekend. This event features Tim Tebow, Stephanie Gray Connors of Love Unleashes Life, Jim Daly of Focus on the Family, Erin Hawley of Alliance Defending Freedom, and Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life.  Join us to learn more about advocating for the pre-born, and continuing the struggle to abortion unthinkable.

In his remarkable autobiography, Confessions, St. Augustine famously wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Solomon talked of God “putting eternity in our hearts.” In other words, as John Calvin observed, humans are “incurably religious creatures.”

         Though millions of Americans have given up on organized religion and a growing number now declare themselves as “nones” (in other words, no spiritual affiliation), these observations by Solomon, John Calvin, and St. Augustine remain true. In fact, our religious impulse is so strong, even the New York Times has noticed some new places where it is showing up. The vast majority of those who have fled the church, argued millennial author Leigh Stein in an article last week, haven’t become less-religious at all. Rather, many (especially women) have embraced new belief systems, often led by self-appointed social media gurus who preach self-care, left-wing activism, and New Age spirituality, maybe with a side of herbal supplements.

Instagram “Influencers” such as Glennon Doyle and Gwyneth Paltrow have won millions of followers with their personal growth advice and positive thinking. Though the packaging is updated, Stein pointed out, they’re using the same old formula as televangelists. These “Instavangelists” (her word, not mine) don’t talk as much about God, but they employ the same me-centric business model.

It was in 2017, Stein claims, that she “began noticing how many wellness products and programs were marketed to women in pain,” and how the social media industry would stoke moral outrage but fail to offer a worldview big enough to handle it. This, in turn, became a business opportunity for the internet gurus. Some specialized in call-out culture and others in self-help cures, but all insisted that the answers to our problems lie within us if only, like little gods, we assert our desires and moral intuitions as absolute.

Self-worship in any form, however, is a recipe for spiritual restlessness. After all, we make terrible gods, and we know it, especially in our more honest moments.

The women that millions have chosen as moral leaders, Stein argues, “aren’t challenging us to ask the fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with for thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood?”

“We’re looking,” she continues, “for guidance in the wrong places, instead of helping us to engage with our most important questions, our screens might be distracting us from them. Maybe,” she finishes, “we actually need to go to something like a church?”

For those of us who do go to church, this may seem obvious. But, for a writer who admits to seldom praying to God, this is a remarkable realization. As St. Augustine himself would attest, no one is more vulnerable to the truth than when they’ve seen all that the world has to offer and ask, “Is this it?”

At the same time, a very different self-help guru seems to have come to that realization, recently. In a podcast with Orthodox iconographer Jonathan Pageau, clinical psychologist and bestselling author Jordan Peterson all but admitted, in remarkable and tearful words describing the limits of his intellectual capacity to understand, that God is breaking down the door of his heart.

As a disciple of Carl Jung, Peterson has long treated Christianity as a useful myth in which people can find meaning. Yet, through personal struggles and dialogue with Christians, he admits to wanting to believe (and maybe in some sense to actually believe) that this Jesus story is true. “I probably believe (in Christ),” Peterson said, “but I’m amazed at my own belief and I don’t understand it.”

Both the trajectory (outward not inward) and posture (teachable not entitled) of Peterson’s search stands in stark contrast to Instavangelism, and it raises tough questions for those leaving organized religion behind. With what will you replace it? What’s big enough to fill the God-shaped hole in your heart? If Christianity isn’t the true story of the world, is there an alternative?

If Stein and Peterson and, for that matter, Augustine are right, these alternative religions will never satisfy the human impulse to worship. At least not for very long.

Facebook announced a "rebrand" this week. In the announcement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented a vision for social media in the future. Reacting to this news, Maria asks John is this is something we should withdraw from in fear, or whether there is a silver lining to the dystopian vision Mark Zuckerberg offers.

Recently, a boy (who identifies as female) was convicted for having molested two teenage girls in two different schools. According to John, this real-world, and painful, situation is a consequence of ideological shifts about sex. These shifts embody the sexual revolution and is encapsulated in a White House statement on gender equity.

To close, John recommends a new film coming out this week to theatres across the nation. The Most Reluctant Convert is a dynamic look at the coming to faith of C.S. Lewis.

-- Recommendations --

The Most Reluctant Convert
Max McLean | Fellowship for the Performing Arts

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas, Shane Morris invites Dr. Alastair Roberts to explain the stunning symmetry in the Gospel narratives between Jesus’ birth and His crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.  Dr. Roberts also explains how reading the Bible typologically can help us see the amazing parallels between the Old Testament and the life of Jesus—much as Jesus must have explained to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, where Jesus, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”

With the “Stop WOKE Act” and unfairly labeled “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the Florida legislature is ordering state-run schools to adjust their curriculum, and respond to the will of parents.  

The U.S. Secretary of Education, in a strong response, threatened the state to follow federal interpretations of Title IX and civil rights laws or risk federal funding. It’s not the first time the White House has used federal funds as leverage to get what it wants from Florida. 

The fundamental question here is whose job is it to educate? Increasingly, the state has not only claimed that task, it’s also sought to actively keep parents out of it, especially when it comes to controversial social issues like race or sexuality.  

That state does have a place and purpose that was ordained by God. So does the church and so does the family. But the family isn’t designed to be the church, the church isn’t designed to be the state, and the state shouldn’t be teaching its worldview to our kids.

John and Maria discuss the fatal shooting of Dante Wright in Minneapolis. Maria shares how a compassionate response is effective to step forward in love as a community. 

Maria then introduces a new take on the saga in transgender athletes in collegiate athletics. New actions by the NCAA are putting states in a challenging position to say what isn't true and redesign women's athletics.

John and Maria close the program reflecting on the Supreme Court's decision regarding a case out California. Pastor Jeremy Wong and California resident Karen Busch sued the state after being barred from holding Bible studies and prayer meetings in their home. The court upheld lower court rulings, allowing the pair to continue prayer meetings, in a 5-4 decision by the High Court.

Recommendations

Michael Shellenberger's website

The Picture Bible

Segment 1: WPATH Scandal

The WPATH Files 

Secret Files Show how international group pushes shocking experimental gender surgery for minors 

Segment 2: Planned Parenthood Profiting from Fetal Body Parts

Center for Medical Progress  

Documents show Planned Parenthood Exchanges Baby Body Parts for Intellectual Property Rights 

Segment 3: Investigating Debanking

Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government 

De-Banking: Cancel Culture’s Newest Threat 

__________

Get your copy of Deconstruction of Christianity with your gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month at colsoncenter.org/march. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Commitment to a gospel faith is going to cost us something; let’s prepare.  

__________

Reserve your spot for the Lighthouse Voices event with Brad Wilcox at colsoncenter.org/lighthouse. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Faithfulness, not success. That was a phrase that circled around Chuck Colson. However, as John Stonestreet points out to Shane Morris, that was something Chuck learned through real life consequences. 

John and Shane think through the power of celebrity, drawing listeners to recognize the power of social media to build an idol of success. They make the statement that social media is the most powerful force to engage and reveal a worldview since the printing press.

John and Shane also explore the worldview of former Vice-President Joe Biden as he begins making placements for his cabinet. 

The presidential debate left more questions than answers. John and Maria discuss the implications. Proponents of using chemicals and surgery on gender-confused kids are changing their terminology. And we look at how different denominations are handling the question of women in the pulpit.

Recommendations

Maria Baer on Substack

Great Lakes Symposium (join in person or online!)

Segment 1 - Presidential Debate

Watch the first 2024 presidential debate between Biden and Trump

Breakpoint: Trump Announces His Position on Life Post-Roe

Breakpoint: The War on Pregnancy Resource Centers

The Good Life by Chuck Colson 

Segment 2 - The Language of Transgender Politics

The gaslighting has begun by Maria Baer on WORLD

Segment 3 - Women's Ordination

__________

Learn more about the Colson Fellows program and apply for the upcoming class at colsonfellows.org.

Support the ongoing production of Breakpoint at colsoncenter.org/june.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The time has never been better to help people consume the Word, not just have it on their shelves.  

__________

Sign up for the self-paced Colson Educators course, Worldview Formation, at colsoneducators.org. 

When it comes to finding true happiness, do the opposite of what culture says. 

__________

Register for the Identity Project websinar on Tuesday, March 11 featuring Dr. Kathy Koch at colsoncenter.org/identity. 

The science for medical gender transitions for children and teenagers is far from settled, and we should have no patience for those who say otherwise. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Babies are on the brain for a generation raised in an anti-kid culture.  

Related Resource

What Would You Say?: Save the Planet. Don't Have Kids.

___________

Sign up for the Hope Always course at colsoneducators.org. 

As the intentional handiwork of a Creator, we have a foundation to discover the meaning our culture has lost.

Last week, I shared the story of a man and his wife who decided not to pursue in vitro fertilization, despite being told by their doctor that it could be successful in their case.  “A little boy or girl created with our own genetic material,” he wrote, “is not morally worth the many inevitable deaths of his or her embryonic brothers and sisters.”

The moral clarity and moral courage of this couple is impressive and, as I said in the commentary, too rare. More than a few people wrote to ask us if the problems raised by IVF, particularly the issue of so-called “excess embryos,” could be solved by what’s called “snowflake adoption.”

Snowflake adoptions involve adopting and implanting frozen embryos “left over” after IVF. Like pregnancy care centers that offer redemptive ways for people to confront the issue of abortion, embryo adoption is an amazing and redemptive response to a pre-existing brokenness. It’s not accurate, however, to call it a “solution.” Here’s why.

While the numbers are hard to pin down, it’s estimated that only one in four viable embryos created by IVF will be implanted. And, only about 40 percent of implantations result in a successful pregnancy. Once a successful pregnancy is achieved, any excess embryos created by the process are either discarded, donated for scientific research, or frozen. By most estimates there are more than one million frozen embryos in storage, just in the United States.

In other words, to “solve” just the current crisis would require one million couples willing and able to undergo the expense of embryo transplantation. And, it’s important to know that at least 60 percent of the “adoptions” would not result in a successful pregnancy.

But, of course, the number of frozen embryos continues to grow. The cultural factors that currently drive IVF are still in play. There is still an utter lack of ethical consideration surrounding artificial reproductive technologies. We still operate, as a culture, from a utilitarian “ends-justifies-the-means” mindset, where people often use technology to postpone childbirth and in which same-sex couples, who have intentionally chosen a sterile union but who nonetheless demand children.

That’s why “snowflake adoption” is better seen as a wonderful, redemptive response, but not a solution to the problem. Another response would be organizations who perform IVF without creating excess embryos. However, they are the exception, not the rule. For the most part, we have accepted the destruction of countless lives so that some infertile couples can have a child of their own genetic making. For the most part, many Christians have also accepted this.

Back in March, I spoke with Hannah Strege, America’s first “snowflake” baby and her family on the BreakPoint Podcast. Her parents adopted her from a freezer, and they courageously gave her a chance at life. During the interview, Hannah told me that she wished to devote her life, in part, to opposing in vitro fertilization.

“Snowflake adoption” is an amazing response to the brokenness, but we have to stop adding to the brokenness. Christians must stop participating in any technology that creates excess embryos. Pastors need to know enough about IVF and be brave enough to counsel couples to make the right decision.

And Christians must live counter-culturally when it comes to those factors that drive the use of IVF, such as delayed parenting and same-sex marriage.

God bless any couple willing to adopt and bring a snowflake baby to term. And God give us the kind of moral courage we need to live in this cultural moment, the kind of courage displayed by the young couple who wrote me.

Before I leave you today, I want to remind you that BreakPoint is a listener-supported ministry of the Colson Center. The Colson Center is equipping you and countless others, not only through our BreakPoint podcast, but also through our short courses, our What Would You Say? videos and a host of other programs. You can show your support for BreakPoint and these other ministries by making a year-end gift at Breakpoint.org/December2020.

Thank you!

For over four decades, William Wilberforce fought against the inhumane practice of slavery. He also worked for what he called the “reformation of manners.” In the words of one biographer, he “made goodness, compassion and integrity fashionable.” 

Wilberforce’s work highlights the challenging reality Christians face in every cultural moment: the deep brokenness of this fallen world. Wilberforce engaged the culture of his time by highlighting the inherent dignity of humanity, most notably by fighting against slavery. His work in the “reformation of manners” was a major contributor to not only making slavery illegal, but also, eventually, unthinkable.   

The Colson Center’s annual conference is named in Wilberforce’s honor. At this year’s Wilberforce Weekend, we’ll explore the effects of Christ’s redemptive work across every area of life from a variety of angles.  

The conference will be held at the stunning Rose and Shingle Creek in Orlando, May 13-15, and will feature Jim Daly, Os Guinness, Ryan Bomberger, Nancy Guthrie, Monique Duson, and many more. The weekend features compelling talks, panel discussions, live podcast recordings, and a screening of The Most Reluctant Convert, a film about the redemption of C.S. Lewis. 

For more information, visit www.wilberforceweekend.org

Each Wednesday morning until the day after the November election, the Colson Center is hosting a virtual prayer gathering for the Church and for our nation. Not only are we praying together weekly, but I’ve asked a select group of leaders to help direct our prayers for the coming week. This past Wednesday morning, Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life, offered a few critical reminders for Christians in this time of, as he called it, “virus and violence.”

First in times of tension and transition, like ours, the Church has always found unique opportunities to point people to Jesus. In the second and third centuries, even as plagues swept the Roman Empire, Christians ran toward the sick and suffering as pagans ran away. Through Christian love and hospitality, the faith grew. Not only did many people ultimately embrace Christ, but the world was ultimately blessed with hospitals, the name ultimately given to those places that showed this kind of Christian hospitality.

Though in our day, entire health care systems exist to deal with pandemics, illnesses, injuries, and diseases, only the Church is uniquely called and empowered to address what Pastor Rick called the dis-ease that people have, including the fears, tensions, emotional, spiritual, and certain physical needs.

In a terrific, practical example of this, Pastor Rick described that when many food banks and pantries shut down across Southern California during the pandemic, Saddleback Church stepped up and established pop up food distribution centers. Since the beginning of the pandemic, they’ve reached a quarter of a million families with 2.5 million pounds of food. Even better, through this effort, over 9,000 people have professed faith in Christ for the first time, and over 1,000 new members of the Body of Christ have been baptized… in, he assured us, a COVID-safe manner.

The next opportunity for the church to, as Chuck Colson often said, “be the church,” is to parents and children as the school year starts. “The Church that figures out how to care for kids and parents,” Pastor Rick argued, “will have the ear of America.” I think he’s right, and even more, I needed to be reminded that despite all the chaos of this culture moment, the work of the Church cannot be stopped. The Church has out-survived movements and philosophies and nations and leaders and empires. It’s going to survive November also.

After all, as Pastor Rick prayed, our Hope is not found in who we put in the White House, but in Who we put on the cross. As far as election results, the safest and most sure prayer is the one Jesus taught us to pray: “Thy Will Be Done.” Because we know it will, even if we don’t necessarily like it.

As much as I hope for certain results in November and will work toward them on a national level and a local level, this week especially I will pray that God would strengthen, protect, and use His Church during this time, and that we, as His people, would place trust, not in horses or chariots or polls or strategies, but in Christ.

Next Wednesday, we will gather again, virtually. Os Guinness will guide our time and shape our prayers, reminding us of other things we must not forget as we appeal to the God of heaven and earth for forgiveness, for healing, and for mercy.

Due to limitation on our audience capacity, we are asking folks to register each week to join us live via Zoom. We will, however, send a link to the recording of each prayer time and a prayer guide for the week, to anyone who registers. You can also join us on the Colson Center Facebook page or the BreakPoint Facebook page. In fact, come to BreakPoint.org and click on this commentary to get the recording of last week’s session with Pastor Rick Warren, as well as the prayer guide.

I will close with the prayer I prayed at the end of session Wednesday:

“ALMIGHTY God, who hast promised to hear the petitions of those who ask in thy Son’s Name; We beseech thee mercifully to incline thine ears to us who have now made our prayers and supplications unto thee; and grant that those things which we have faithfully asked according to thy will, may effectually be obtained, to the relief of our necessity, and to the setting forth of thy glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Wickedness and loss seem to hide God’s presence, but even when we cannot see or feel Him, the Lord is risen and is with us.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Truth, Love, Together. That’s the theme of the Colson Center’s 4-week long virtual event featuring 20 of the leading Christian worldview thinkers.

We’re now into module 4, “Telling the Truth in Love.” And today on the BreakPoint Podcast we have an outstanding presentation by cold-case detective and apologist extraordinaire, J. Warner Wallace entitled, “The Case for Speaking Unpopular Truths.”

Resources:

In Truth Changes Everything, Jeff Myers’ skill to teach through stories is on full display. Ultimately, he demonstrates that these amazing stories happened because of what is true about the world and how followers of Christ oriented their lives to that truth.

Big marijuana promised not to market to children. They are. For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet with The Point.  

Legal recreational marijuana sales officially began this week in New Jersey. That’s the same state where, on Christmas Day in 2020, a 3-year-old was admitted to a hospital ICU after he ate a dangerous amount of cannabis edibles. They were in a bag that looked like a package of Nerds candy. 

According to CNN, knockoff candy bags that actually contain THC edibles are a big problem. The New Jersey Poison Control Center reported that the number of kids poisoned with cannabis was six times higher in 2020 than just two years earlier. There are similar reports across the country. 

Marijuana lobbyists promise they don’t market to kids, and that it’s just a few bad apples selling edibles in kid-friendly packages. But making THC edible at all is a step towards marketing to kids, a genie that can’t be out back into the bottle. 

As the nationwide march toward legalizing marijuana continues, the consequences of our culture’s worst ideas will be paid by the most common victim: the kids. 

John and Maria start the show discussing the disillusionment of millennial evangelicals. They ask if the way we've done church has led to the rise in Evangelical evacuation in young people. John asks if this is because we have a bigotry in low expectations.

Maria then asks John for further explanation in his recent commentary on Isaiah 6. The commentary was sparked from President Biden's speech last week where he took Isaiah 6 out of context.

John then offers an explanation on the new heartbeat bill in Texas that significantly restricts abortion. The law faced last minute challenges from pro-choice advocates, but the courts didn't vote to pause the law. Maria asks John for further context on what this specific law means and if its framework is extrapolated how that could impact religious freedom with other laws.

To close, Maria asks John to comment on litigation many states have taken up against the Biden administration. The concern is how LGBTQ and sex discrimination protections that are expanding and having an impact into schools. Maria then brings up a recent piece done by ESPN that highlights gradeschool and junior high athletes who identify as transgender in states that have restricted policies to protect sports from blurring lines in who an can compete based on gender identity.

-- Story References -- 

BreakPoint Recap

The Disillusion of Millennial Evangelicals

Though Gen Z-ers have all but replaced Millennials as the dazzling object of scrutiny and cultural analysis, it’s not because Millennials are no longer struggling. Rates of addiction, depression, burnout, and loneliness are all disproportionately high among the demographic born between 1981 and 1996. Since 2013, in fact, Millennials have seen a 47 percent increase in major depression diagnoses.

BreakPoint>>

President Biden and Isaiah 6: It’s Not Really About ‘Here Am I, Send Me’

President Biden certainly isn’t the first President to misquote Scripture for political ends, only the most recent. Last week, in a speech responding to the terrorist attack on the airport in Kabul, Biden quoted from Isaiah 6:8, when the prophet answered the Lord’s call by saying, ‘Here am I send me!”

It was odd. It was out of place. And, it was inappropriate. Even worse than blurring the line between America and the Kingdom of God, the President used Holy Scripture to deflect from his own responsibility for this disaster.

BreakPoint>>

Supreme Court Hears Texas Heartbeat Bill Case and Let’s it Stand

Supreme Court Upholds New Texas Abortion Law, For Now

The U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday night refused to block a Texas law that amounts to a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 5-4, with three Trump-appointed justices joining two other conservative justices. Dissenting were conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's three liberal justices.

NPR>>

Media fear the worst after Texas abortion law: 'Who is gonna invade Texas to liberate women and girls'

The media meltdown over a Texas law banning abortions after six weeks stretched into its second day with no end in sight Thursday, with analysts comparing the measure to slavery, terrorism, and the end times.

FoxNews>>

Psaki shuts down male reporter's abortion questions: 'You've never faced those choices'

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday responded to a male reporter who pressed her on President Biden’s support for abortion by saying the reporter has “never faced those choices.”

The Hill>>

Transgender Athletes Debate Hits New Level

20 states, including Tennessee, sue over Biden administration school, work LGBTQ protections.

Attorneys general from 20 states sued President Joe Biden’s administration Monday seeking to halt directives that extend federal sex discrimination protections to LGBTQ people, ranging from transgender girls participating in school sports to the use of school and workplace bathrooms that align with a person’s gender identity.

The Tennessean>

ESPN Makes Claim That Young transgender athletes are caught in middle of states' debates

Julie has been to legislators' offices. She sat across from elected officials, arguing on behalf of her daughter. Stephanie usually wants to come, but Julie thinks she's too young. In one official's office, Julie noticed a photo on his wall of his kids playing soccer at a park where she has often watched Stephanie play. "You know, there's a good chance your daughter has played against my daughter in soccer," she said to him. "You would have no idea. She's just like any other little girl."

ESPN>>

-- In Show Recommendations --

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Podcast
Christianity Today | 2021

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and What Justice Gorsuch Hath Wrought
John Stonestreet & Shane Morris | BreakPoint This Week | June 19, 2020

Why Asking Kids to Announce Their Pronouns is a Big Deal
John Stonestreet & Maria Baer | The Point | August 30, 2021

Rescuing the Victims of the Sexual Revolution
John Stonestreet | BreakPoint | March 8, 2021

-- Recommendations --

Adventures in Odyssey>>

In the 22nd week of surrogate Brittney Pearson’s pregnancy, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Because the necessary treatment could harm the baby, her doctors recommended inducing labor early and allowing the baby to be cared for in neonatal intensive care while she started chemo. However, the gay couple paying Brittney Pearson to serve as their surrogate did not want a premature baby with potential developmental or health problems. They wanted her instead to have an abortion. 

Pearson offered to put the baby up for adoption, but the men refused because, according to Pearson, they did not want a child who was genetically related to one of them somewhere “out there.” According to Pearson, the men threatened both her and her doctors with a lawsuit if she did not abort her child. Because of California’s radical surrogacy laws, which allow financiers of a surrogacy arrangement to be granted legal parental rights of the baby before he or she is born, they likely would have prevailed.  

In an interview with Jennifer Lahl of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Pearson told her story. Her son was born at 25 weeks of pregnancy, a gestational age that, thanks to advances in maternal medicine, children have survived. Though she has not publicly stated whether her son was killed before or after delivery, or whether he was given or denied the medical treatment a premature baby needs, she has confirmed that her son died the day he was born, which was Father’s Day. 

Though, of course, not every surrogacy contract ends this way, Pearson is not the first surrogate mom pressured to kill her baby by those paying for it. However, it would be a profound mistake to think of hers as a case of “surrogacy gone wrong,” as advocates of the practice claim about stories like hers. Each and every moral violation that occurred along the way was not exclusive to Pearson’s unique circumstances. Rather, they are violations endemic to surrogacy itself, a practice that denies children the right to their mother and, at times, their father, and denies a mother the right to her own child. Children are treated as products to be purchased and arranged, subject to property laws and other legal realities long used to dehumanize certain individuals. 

It’s jarring to hear these men talk of Brittney Pearson’s baby as if he were a lamp ordered off Amazon that was delivered broken. However, it is the surrogacy contracts signed ahead of time that treat human babies as commodities. If it seems like an obvious violation of human rights and God’s moral order for two men to demand that a woman have her baby killed, what should we make of the legal contract governing the baby’s creation, gestation, and delivery in the first place? If babies are treated like products and pregnancy like the means of production at the beginning of the surrogacy process, ought we not to expect things to be different at the end? 

Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Thus, they should never be treated like any other thing.  

Like the social research that shows how extended exposure to violent video games and media can desensitize people to actual violence, surrogacy is among those cultural realities that reveal how much our view of children has been desensitized by all that constantly reduces them to “things.” As one gay man who sued his employer last year for refusing to pay for him and his husband to hire a surrogate put it, children are just one of the modern “trappings” of “marriage,” like a “house, children, [and] 401k.” 

The willful death of Brittney Pearson’s son is a tragic, but logical, escalation of the moral errors fundamental to surrogacy. As marriage and family are increasingly deconstructed, reimagined, and replaced in law, the demand for surrogacy will only increase, and more babies will face the same kind of danger as Pearson’s baby. If we don’t stand up for them, who will? And if we do, it will require standing against this practice, which is fundamentally disordered and always wrong, and not merely against selective cases. 

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Last week the LA Times reported that, facing soaring rates of D’s and F’s, more schools are simply doing away with grades entirely. Instead, teachers are encouraged to give students little to no homework, move deadlines, and have fewer outcome-driven measurements of achievement. 

What’s the rationale behind the move?

“By continuing to use century-old grading practices,” wrote L.A. Unified’s chief academic administrator, “we inadvertently perpetuate achievement and opportunity gaps, rewarding our most privileged students and punishing those who are not.” In other words, standardized grades are racist. 

But isn’t suggesting that poor or minority kids can’t get good grades itself a racist belief?

A major reason for merit-based grading is that if we don’t evaluate students based on their achievements, we’ll evaluate them on something else; in this case, an administrator’s preconceived ideas about their ability to succeed, based entirely on ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Even more, by doing away with grades, educators keep students from the potential to succeed, no matter how hard they work. It’s a different kind of tyranny, but no less destructive: the tyranny of low expectations.

The most common refrain in Genesis about God’s creation of the world is that it was good. Down through the centuries, many people both inside and outside the Church have tried to say that the material world is less valuable or important than intangible inner truths. This has been one of the main talking points for the new sexual orthodoxy: telling hurting souls that their bodies are somehow wrong.

Kathy Koch has worked for years to undermine this demeaning perception. In her talk at our recent Wilberforce Weekend, she reminded us about the wonderful intentionality in the way God “knitted” us together as male and female. For today’s BreakPoint, here’s a portion of Kathy’s talk.

I'm Kathy Koch of Celebrate Kids here in Fort Worth, and I want to talk with you about how God made us good. I think God is good and God is a good Creator. And if children, teens, or adults don't know that, then it doesn't matter to them that they're created in His image. In Psalm 139, verses 13 and 14 declare that we have been formed by God in our inward parts. It says in Psalm 139:13 that Father God knitted us together in our mother's womb. Knitting is a precise skill; the knitter knows before starting what he is making, or he’d better not start. Otherwise he’d have a mittens-scarf-hat-afghan sweater thing with no purpose at all.

The size of the stitch and the needle, the color of the yarn, and the design of the creation is known before the knitter begins.

Do we praise God? Because we're fearfully made?

Do we stand in awe of ourselves now?

We're not God.

Fear in the Old Testament is fear of God. That we would have this awesome respect for the creation of who we are. The verse that revolutionized my understanding of God's creative intent is the end of Psalm 139:14 where David writes on behalf of God: My soul knows very well that I am a wonderful work of the creative intent of God. A fearfully and wonderfully creation made in His image.

I have tremendous empathy for young people who live in confusion in a chaotic, messy culture. I believe that if I was young today being called “sir,” I might wonder if I was supposed to be a boy. I have empathy for these kinds of teenagers and young adults. We are privileged at Celebrate Kids to talk with those who do not believe they were created good. They do not believe in a good Creator. They don't understand the image of God and it is not their fault. Generations of young people are trying to change what they should not try to change.

And they're unwilling to work on the things they could work on because frankly, the adults around them are weak. God is good. Therefore he made me good because I’m in His image and He is fully good! So there's gotta be something here and I choose to not see it as wrong. I don't see it as a mistake. It is a challenge.

I'm surrounded by great people and I'm loved well by God, and by people who love me deeply; without that I would question so much. So I'm not a too-tall-Kathy-with-a-low-voice-who-can't-spell-all-that-well mess of a person. I am who I am, created in the image of God, and He is good.

What's your story? And what story are we helping young people who we love live?

Kathy Koch is founder and president of Celebrate Kids, reminding the Church and the world of the goodness of our Creator and the enduring beauty of His creation. In her words, we see a path forward to loving—truly loving—our neighbors who struggle with gender dysphoria.

As she argued, the new sexual orthodoxy encourages hurting young people to change what shouldn’t be changed and discourages them from working on the things that they can work on. While giving lip service to the claim that people are perfect just as they are, our culture’s fascination with expressive sexual identities leads proponents to argue that the only way we can be truly ourselves is through a radical rejection of our physicality.

John and Maria discuss DJ Daniel, Disability Awareness Month, and Christian history. Also, the idea that being “unencumbered" by responsibilities and dependents is the way to happiness is just wrong. And a new study puts another nail in the coffin of those pushing surgical mutilation for gender confusion.

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Segment 1 - Disability Awareness Month

FOX: Boy honored by Trump says cancer won't slow him down until 'God calls' him home

AP: Transcript of President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress

Breakpoint: Chris Nikic (who has Down Syndrome) Completes Ironman

Joni & Friends

Dancing with Max: A Mother and Son Who Broke Free by Emily Colson

Lighthouse Voices with Joni Eareckson Tada

Segment 2 - The Key to Happiness

Institute for Family Studies: Ladies, Miranda July Is Not Your Friend

ET: Kieran Culkin SHOCKS Wife With 'Fourth Kid' Reminder During Oscars Speech

Oscars: Mikey Madison Wins Best Actress for 'Anora' | 97th Oscars Speech (2025)

Segment 3 - New Study on Trans Surgery

Oxford Academic: Examining gender-specific mental health risks after gender-affirming surgery: a national database study

FOX: Trans surgeries increase risk of mental health conditions, suicidal ideations: study

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Use code BREAKPOINT25 at checkout for a discount on registration for Summit Ministries worldview training camp at summit.org/breakpoint. 

Learn more about the Colson Fellows Program at colsonfellows.org.

Shane Morris visits with Dr. Thomas Price about Athanasius' On The Incarnation. The pair discuss the significance of Jesus being man and how Advent is an important time for the Christian, and not only to celebrate the birth of Christ.

This is a portion of an extended conversation Shane has with Dr. Price on the Upstream podcast. To receive the full conversation register for the Advent resources organized by BreakPoint at www.breakpoint.org/advent.

Ramped up legislation throughout the U.S. seeks to attack pro-life care.

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To make a gift to the Colson Center, visit colsoncenter.org/june.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Shane Morris invites Colson Center Director of Equipping and Mobilization, Michael Craven to answer a host of questions about the church. 

A number of listeners have written in to ask how the church can engage this cultural moment. One listener asks what things we can celebrate inside the church, rather than simply critiquing what is happening in the church. 

In June, a Google employee who claimed the company had created a sentient artificial intelligence bot was placed on administrative leave. Blake Lemoine, part of Google’s Responsible AI (“artificial intelligence”) program, had been interacting with a language AI known as “Language Model for Dialogue Applications,” or LaMDA. When the algorithm began talking about rights and personhood, Lemoine decided his superiors and eventually the public needed to know. To him, it was clear the program had become “sentient,” with the ability to feel, think, and experience life like a human.  

Google denied the claim (which is exactly what they would do, isn’t it?). “There was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it),”  said a spokesperson.  The Atlantic’s Stephen Marche agreed: “The fact that LaMDA in particular has been the center of attention is, frankly, a little quaint…. Convincing chatbots are far from groundbreaking tech at this point.”  

True, but they are the plot of a thousand science fiction novels. So, the question remains, is a truly “sentient” AI even possible? How could code develop the capacity for feelings, experiences, or intentionality? Even if our best algorithms can one day perfectly mirror the behavior of people, would they be conscious?  

How one answers such questions depends on one’s anthropology. What are people? Are we merely “computers made of flesh?” Or is there something more to us than the sum of our parts, a true ghost in the machine? A true ghost in the shell?  

These kinds of questions about humans and the things that humans make reflect what philosopher David Chalmers has called “the hard problem of consciousness.” In every age, even if strictly material evidence for the soul remains elusive, people have sensed that personhood, willpower, and first-person subjective experiences mean something. Christians are among those who believe that we are more than the “stuff” of our bodies, though Christians, unlike others, would be quick to add, but not less. There is something to us and the world that goes beyond the physical because there is a non-material, eternal God behind it all. 

Christians also hold that there are qualitative differences between people and algorithms, between life and non-living things like rocks and stars, between image bearers and other living creatures. Though much about sentience and consciousness remains a mystery, personhood rests on the solid metaphysical ground of a personal and powerful Creator. 

Materialists have a much harder problem declaring such distinctions. By denying the existence of anything other than the physical “stuff” of the universe, they don’t merely erase the substance of certain aspects of the human experience such as good, evil, purpose, and free will: There’s no real grounding for thinking of a “person” as unique, different, or valuable.  

According to philosopher Thomas Metzinger, for example, in a conversation with Sam Harris, none of us “ever was or had a self.” Take brain surgery, Metzinger says. You peel back the skull and realize that there is only tissue, tissue made of the exact same components as everything else in the universe. Thus, he concludes, the concept of an individual “person” is meaningless, a purely linguistic construct designed to make sense of phenomena that aren’t there.  

That kind of straightforward claim, though shocking to most people, is consistent within a purely materialist worldview. What quickly becomes inconsistent are claims of ethical norms or proper authority in a world without “persons.” In a world without a why or an ought, there’s only is, which tends to be the prerogative of the powerful, a fact that Harris and Metzinger candidly acknowledge.  

In a materialist world, any computational program could potentially become “sentient” simply by sufficiently mirroring (and even surpassing) human neurology. After all, in this worldview, there’s no qualitative difference between people and robots, only degrees of complexity. This line of thinking, however, quickly collapses into dissonance. Are we really prepared to look at the ones and zeros of our computer programs the same way we look at a newborn baby? Are we prepared to extend human rights and privileges to our machines and programs? 

In Marvel’s 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron, lightning from Thor’s hammer hits a synthetic body programmed with an AI algorithm. A new hero, Vision, comes to life and helps save the day. It’s one of the more entertaining movie scenes to wrestle with questions of life and consciousness. 

Even in the Marvel universe, no one would believe that a mere AI algorithm, even one designed by Tony Stark, could be sentient, no matter how sophisticated it was. In order to get to consciousness, there needed to be a “secret sauce,” in this case lightning from a Nordic hammer or power from an Infinity Stone. In the same way, as stunning as advances in artificial intelligence are, a consciousness that is truly human requires a spark of the Divine.  

For the disbelieving youth, remembrance is more important than ever. 

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For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment visit Breakpoint.org. 

What are the fruits when we focus in and not up?

John and Shane answer a listener who asks how we get past the erroneous "new" definition of racism (prejudice + power), and address old racism (prejudice based on pigmentation), when anti-racism and CRT doesn't allow "whites" to participate to the discussion?

The pair also discusses how the unity and differences in the definitions of a Christian and biblical worldview before answering a challenge to population control in impoverished or resource-scarce countries.

Though it’s not always clear when a movement is over, there are many indicators that suggest this is the case of the “New Atheism,” a cultural wave that rose in the 2000s and aggressively attacked religion in the guise of scientific rationalism. Despite the name, the New Atheism wasn’t really new, at least not in the sense of presenting new arguments. Instead, leveraging the global shock of 9/11, New Atheists pushed an anti-religious mood along with a vision of a society free from the cobwebs of religion, defined by scientific inquiry, free speech, and a morality not built on God or religious traditions. 

In 1996, prominent New Atheist Richard Dawkins articulated this mood in his acceptance speech for the “Humanist of the Year” Award: “I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils,” he said, “comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.” There was a commercial aspect to the New Atheism, with bumper stickers and T-shirts carrying well-worn slogans, such as one coined by Victor Stenger: “Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”  

Though, at the time, it grew into somewhat of a cultural force and platformed a group of minor celebrities, the New Atheism now seems to have run out of steam. Divided by progressive politics and haunted by the obnoxious tone of many of its own founders, the movement is being devoured by other ideologies. Concepts like freedom of expression, scientific realism, and morality without God have all met their antitheses, often in clashes featuring the New Atheists themselves.  

One watershed moment was a conflict over the role of science. Just last year, the American Humanist Association revoked Richard Dawkins’ “Humanist of the Year” award for his long history of offensive tweets. For example, Dawkins told women who experience sexual harassment to “stop whining” and parents of babies with Down syndrome to “abort it and try again.” These tweets were among the cringeworthy, but the one that completed Dawkins’ long transformation from champion of free thought to persona non grata, at least for the American Humanist Association, questioned gender ideology: “In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.”  

The New Atheist commitment to seeking truth via the objectivity of science has collided with a new ideology that deifies the subjective sense of self. Ironically, this is the kind of religious dogmatism Dawkins and other New Atheists always accused organized religions of promoting, only less scientific. 

New Atheism has been further undermined by a cultural shift in censorship and tolerance for freedom of expression. Organized religion, New Atheists claimed, suppressed dissent. Only by enthroning secularism could we remove the fear of speaking or hearing the truth, even when truth is shocking and offensive. As it turned out, religion’s retreat only left a secular progressivism to censor and suppress at will.  

In 2017, for example, The End of Faith author Sam Harris ignited a firestorm when he interviewed political scientist Charles Murray. Just a month earlier, a violent mob had shouted Murray down at Middlebury College, injuring moderator Dr. Allison Stanger as the two tried to reach the exit. Harris defended Murray, arguing his research was unfairly maligned as racist and he should be allowed to speak. In retaliation, Ezra Klein published a piece in Vox that landed Harris on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hatewatch Headlines,” while in Salon Émile P. Torres accused Harris and the New Atheists of “merging with the far right.”  

That same year, Richard Dawkins was barred from speaking at UC Berkeley for his comments about radical Islam, not by Christians or Muslims but by progressives. Turns out that freedom of expression wasn’t faring as predicted in a post-religious world. 

In addition to their own jarring polemics and personal misfires, the New Atheists failed to realize that religion, especially Christianity, was the proverbial branch upon which they were sitting. For example, the freedom of expression depends on a number of assumptions, that there is objective truth, that it can be discovered, that it is accessible to people regardless of race or class, that belief should be free instead of coerced, that people have innate value, and that because of this value they should not be silenced. Every one of these ideas assumes the kind of world described in the Bible and mediated across centuries of Christian thought. Not one of these assumptions can be grounded in a purposeless world that is the product of only natural causes and processes.  

Maybe that’s what led Dawkins, just a few years ago, to warn against celebrating the decline of Christianity across the world. Turns out that all of the efforts that he and the other New Atheists extended to root out organized religion have left him with “a fear of finding something worse.”  

Today’s Breakpoint was coauthored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to colsoncenter.org. 

The United States just passed a grim milestone: over 100,000 deaths from opioid overdoses in the past year. Most of these deaths were due to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. Though sometimes prescribed as a painkiller, fentanyl is also a street drug that is often combined with heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamines. 

America’s battle with opioids is now 25 years old. Dopesick, a new streaming series on HULU based on a book by the same name, tells how Purdue pharma sold opioids to the public as non-addictive miracle cures for pain. The series also describes the Federal Drug Administration’s complicity in creating what’s been called “the worst drug overdose epidemic in (US) history,”  

Statistically, fentanyl or other opioids are prescribed for pain for women at a higher rate than for men. Therefore, women are far more likely to become addicted after a prescription, while men are much more likely to become addicted to recreational drugs. In fact, over twice as many men die of opioid overdoses than women. Non-Hispanic whites die at a rate five times that of Blacks and seven times that of Hispanics. 

The states that have seen the most significant increase in opioid death rates are “rust belt” states, specifically Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. These states have experienced a 300% to 500% increase in deaths over the last ten years.

Though abuse of prescription medications or addictions originating in prescriptions may not be the most significant factor of the opioid crisis, they are still a major concern, especially for women. This is partly due to an inordinate faith in medical experts. In 2014, properly prescribed medicines were the third leading cause of death in the US and Europe, according to the National Institutes of Health. This raises important questions about the role that pharmaceutical marketing practices and incentives for doctors play in prescribing these drugs, as well as the responsibility of major pharmaceutical corporations for practices that lead to addictions. 

There are also questions about the pharmacies that distribute the drugs. Recently, a federal jury in Ohio found that CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart had contributed to the overdoses and deaths in two counties by overselling benefits and downplaying the negatives of opioid drugs. Though this does not absolve individuals from responsibility for choices that led to their addiction, medical, pharmaceutical, and regulatory entities failed in their roles as so-called “trusted experts.”

That failure also contributed to the other side of the opioid epidemic, addiction from “recreational” use. So much so that addiction has become an aspect, perhaps the darkest aspect, of the crisis of meaning among young men in America. Factor opioid addiction into what’s been aptly called “the war on boys” and our culture’s consistent portrayal of men as dolts and masculinity as toxic, and we’ve got a systemic problem of epic proportions on our hands. This is particularly acute in the rust belt, where a sharp and years-long decline in both marriage and employment upend men’s sense of purpose and direction.

This all is a complicating factor in the increasing social isolation men face in American culture, something documented many years ago by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone. Many men have few, if any, close friends has significant implications for the opioid crisis. Soldiers who used heroin and other drugs in Vietnam sometimes came home as addicts, but a surprising number were able to drop their drug use on their return. The difference was often made by whether the veteran returned to a rich social network, a job, and a family. 

What was true then is only more pronounced today. The lack of jobs and a clear sense of purpose, along with diminished or vanishing friendships and social networks create a vacuum that too many fill with drugs. Covid lockdowns only made the situation worse, leading to the spike in what are being called “deaths of despair.” The 100k plus opioid deaths are a dark chapter in this larger story.

So how can the church help in this crisis? Before we talk about how, we need to discuss why we must. It’s not clear that any other institution, particularly those that lost so much public trust in the last 25 years, has anything much to offer. They are largely exhausted. 

The Gospel is not. It offers a clear sense of who we are, a source for meaning and purpose that goes beyond our age’s radical individualism, and a potential source of the kind of social support men need. It also offers a call: to run into the brokenness, not away from it. To go where people are, into broken communities and families, often to those beyond our comfort zones, and be part of the solution. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost; can we, who claim him as Lord, do less in the face of this challenge?

Last Saturday, the country was left grappling with another reminder of human depravity. An 18-year-old gunman entered a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 and injuring three more. The victims, who were predominantly black, included Heyward Patterson, a local church deacon; Pearl Young, a retired school teacher; and Aaron Salter, a retired police officer.  

Mass shootings are too familiar, but no less overwhelming: friends and family in agony, communities left to pick up the pieces, collective rage over the brutal violence, a longing for justice, and a rush to explain why. 

For many news outlets, the narrative is a cut-and-dried example of right-wing extremism. The shooter’s manifesto pointed to an embrace of “replacement theory,” the idea that white Americans are being systematically edged out of society by minorities. “That idea,” claim Isaac Stanley-Becker and Drew Harwell of The Washington Post,  

once relegated to the fringe, has gained currency on popular right-wing television programs and in the halls of Congress. The apocalyptic vision has accumulated followers during the coronavirus pandemic, which has deepened political polarization and accelerated the online flow of racist ideology.  

The shooter’s 180-page document confirms that he was indeed motivated by replacement ideology and outright racism. In it he described his plan to deliberately attack a black supermarket, as well as his support for antisemitic and neo-Nazi causes. “I will carry out an attack against the replacers,” he wrote, “and will even livestream the attack.”  

In a sort of guilt by association, blame was leveled at Republicans, especially those who hold conservative views on immigration, whether or not they harbor any ill will towards minority groups or immigrant neighbors. Ignored was the shooter’s description of his own ideals, which includes outright rejections of conservatism as “corporatism in disguise.”  

“Are you right wing?” he asks rhetorically. “Depending on the definition, sure. Are you left wing? Depending on the definition, sure. Are you a socialist? Depending on the definition.”  

As Kyle Smith at the National Review summed up:  

The manifesto, while certainly political, is ideologically all over the map, as was the Unabomber’s. Whoever your ideological boogeyman of today’s discourse is, this person doesn’t link up to him very easily. 

How do we make sense of this? Human beings are meaning-making creatures. The fact that we have an instinctive need to know why bad things happen says something about the kind of creatures we are and the moral kind of universe we inhabit. But we are also prone to misdiagnose the problem, and therefore mis-prescribe a solution, because of our allegiance to false ideologies that become a hammer looking for nails. 

People are more than many ideologies can explain. This is why Communist and Fascist dictatorships end up looking like each other over time. As my colleague Tim Padgett put it recently, “Sometimes worldviews simply give shape to the evil already within individuals.” 

And that’s what the Christian worldview says: That evil is already within individuals. The more the social bonds of a culture unravel, the more that people are pushed to their ideological extremes. This is especially the case in a world where digital technologies both radicalize and incentivize bad behaviors. 

In such a world, politicized theories dominating our discourse are proving to be inadequate to explain violence on this level. Racism, while not what it was a few decades ago, is far from extinct. In its most diabolical forms, entire groups of people are seen as the enemy, as evident by the shooter’s manifesto. At the same time, the current analysis of nearly everything, including these incidents, is being dramatically hampered by what I call a “critical theory mood.”  

While most Americans, including the pundits, have not read the academic source material behind the various expressions of formal critical theory, there is a predisposed commitment, on both the right and the left, to divide the world by tribes, people groups, and political parties and, in doing so, to pre-determine who’s right and wrong, good and evil, if by nothing else but association. The dramatically different ways that clearly racially motivated acts are treated and described—compare this event with the Waukesha tragedy a few months ago—based on these people groupings simply demonstrate that we have no clue how to distinguish between good and evil.  

 Critical theory in its formal form or as a cultural mood is short-sighted and inadequate. The Christian vision of the cosmos, people, morality, and human history offers an adequate understanding of good and evil on every level: both societal and individual.  

As a young man, Tom Tarrants, was injured in a shootout with FBI agents and sent to prison. “If anyone deserved to die, it was certainly me,” this former member of the Ku Klux Klan, once filled with racial hatred, wrote recently in Christianity Today. But God worked a miracle, even in solitary confinement: repentance and even reconciliation with some of those he tried to kill.  

Only the Gospel can do that.  

As we grieve, we pray for justice and for healing to God who reigns over everything, even Buffalo, New York, last Saturday. In Him, we have hope, understanding, and a way forward. 

To put all the weight of our humanness on consciousness is an erroneous idea that will have disastrous consequences 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

We’re certainly in a moment, and the faithful should be the guiding lights. 

Register for the upcoming Lighthouse Voices: The Christian’s Guide to this 'Civilizational Moment’ at colsoncenter.org/lighthouse. 

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Learn more about Sovereign Private Wealth and how to manage your money with a team that takes good stewardship to heart at sovereignpw.com. 

We’re seeing protests in China over Covid lockdowns not seen since the days of Tiananmen Square. And a new phrase has been introduced into civil debate: Stochastic Terrorism. What is it and where did it come from?

Many of us recognize how important religious freedom is in the world, but some think advocating for religious liberty compromises our Christian witness.

We're excited to partner with our friends at the Alliance Defending Freedom in a six part series on religious liberty. It's part of our What Would You Say? video project. Here's the audio from the most recent video that was released just this morning.

You're in a conversation and someone says, “Standing up for religious liberty is bad for Christian witness. After all, aren't Christians supposed to turn the other cheek?”

What would you say?

Sometimes people think that Christians who advocate for religious liberty do so at the cost of their Christian witness. They assume that defending religious freedom is motivated by fear, and distracts from the gospel. Since Christians are supposed to be fearless and self-sacrificial, doesn't defending religious liberty compromise our Christian witness? No, and here are three reasons why.

Number one, religious freedom is not a social construct. It reflects what is true about us as humans. Religious liberty isn't an invention of America's Founding Fathers. It's a pre-political God-given right. All people have the right given by God to peaceably live according to our convictions without fear of unjust punishment and restrictions from kings, presidents and city councils.

To be sure, governments don't always recognize religious freedom, but their failure to do so only highlights that religious liberty is a natural right given by God, not a privilege given to the people by a benevolent ruler. This is part of what it means to be made in God's image and to have the law of God written on our hearts.

We know intrinsically that to be free to worship God according to our own convictions, our neighbors need to be allowed to do the same. Even if we think they're wrong. Standing up for religious liberty is part of our Christian witness. Religious freedom is rooted in the truth about who we are as image bearers. Telling the truth about how we were made will never get in the way of the Gospel.

Number two, religious freedom is an ancient and central part of Christian teaching, from the Apostle Paul to the Catholic catechism to the Westminster Confession, Christianity has long taught that everyone should be free to worship and share their beliefs. In fact, religious freedom shows up in the earliest teachings of the Christian church.

A third century church father wrote, “It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion.” The early fourth-century edict of Milan, issued by Christian Emperor Constantine, opened the door to statewide religious freedom by ensuring that the government could no longer demand religious conformity. These early Christian teachings are based in the words of Christ Himself, who insisted that all His followers must choose Him freely, from the bottom of their hearts. Sometimes Christian communities have failed to respect religious freedom, but that does not change the reality that religious freedom is interwoven with the basic teachings of the church. These early Christians understood that they had a sacred responsibility to uphold their neighbors’ religious freedom, and that responsibility carries over to us today.

Number three, standing up for religious liberty is a way to love our neighbor. Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor. If Christians truly love our neighbors, we should work to create the best society we can, where the government honors God-given rights and respects the God-ordained dignity of every person.

Study after study has shown a direct correlation between societies that are healthy, prosperous and respect human rights, and societies that respect religious freedom. In 2018, Pew Research Center found that the nations with the most religious freedom also tend to protect free speech and freedom of conscience. Nations that restrict religious freedom like Iran and Chinarestrict other basic rights as well. Religious freedom leads to greater prosperity, too. A study found that in the U.S. alone, religious individuals and organizations contribute more than $1.2 trillion dollars to the economy. Economist Arthur Brooks found that religious people who practice their faith, that is people who say that their faith is a significant part of their lives, are 25% more likely to donate to charity than secularists or people who rarely attend church. And they are 23% more likely to volunteer their time serving others. Standing up for religious freedom is about upholding the common good

according to God's word. It is quite simply a way for us to love our neighbor as Christ commanded us.

So the next time someone says that standing up for religious liberty is bad for our Christian witness, remember these three things:

Number one, religious freedom is not a social construct. It reflects what is true about us as humans.

Number two, religious freedom is an ancient and central part of Christian teaching.

Number three, standing up for religious liberty is a way to love our neighbor.

Our What Would You Say? team continues to put out incredible content answering some of the most critical questions of our cultural moment from a Christian worldview. What you just read  was part of a partnership with our friends at the Alliance Defending Freedom. To watch the whole video, and to share it, visit YouTube’s What Would You Say? Colson Center video channel.

A couple of weeks ago, the British left-leaning magazine The Guardian breathlessly proclaimed, “[E]xperts are warning the US is facing a wave of rightwing ‘Christian nationalist’ legislation in 2021, as the religious right aims to thrust Christianity into everyday American life.”

And what nefarious legislation will “thrust Christianity in everyday life”? Prolife laws designed to protect the unborn, religious liberty protections for Christian organizations, and other things advocated by Christians long before anyone had ever heard of Christian Nationalism.

That this term, “Christian Nationalism,” has become a one-size-fits-all label for whole swaths of the country, especially since the violence in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, shouldn’t surprise anyone. As images from that day reveal, there were plenty of Christians flags and symbols flying alongside Old Glory and pro-Trump banners. The “symbology” was heavy and indicative, as Andrew Walker told me on a recent BreakPoint Podcast, of a fusion of Christianity and the nation.

For many on the right, the connection seems obvious, especially those who think of America as God’s primary agent in the world. And, for many on the left, it seems just as obvious: Christianity is bigoted, dangerous, and outdated in modern society.

In a sense, this kind of conflict isn't unusual. Throughout history, nations have tied their faith, secular or religious, to their flag. Ancient kings draped their wars in divine sanction, medieval monarchs cried “God wills it!” and 20^th century dictators claimed that an overarching “History” or “Science” was on their side. America isn’t even the only Western nation whose founding documents and hymns are full of Biblical references and appeals to God for protection.

Even so, much of the American story makes our own experience distinctive. From the “City on a Hill” language of the first Puritan colonists (an idea often misunderstood by both Christians and antagonists), to the revolutionary fervor of 1776, to the religious revivals in both camps during the Civil War, to the world wars of the 20th century and our overtly atheistic foe of the Cold War, to American Christianity’s focus on the End Times, to the strong sense of Divine destiny, America’s history is very religious.

All together, this history has left America with a civil religion, something profoundly helpful for social cohesion but not always good for theological orthodoxy. Whenever the truth of the gospel is watered down for the sake of political or national unity, it isn’t long before politics and nationality are all that matters.

Let's be clear: no nation, no party, and no politician is indispensable for the advance or well-being of Kingdom of God. God works through individuals and nations, but His plans endure regardless of the success of nations and worldly kingdoms.

This leaves Christians with a two-fold problem. First is the often well-meaning but always-misguided tendency to conflate our nation and our faith. Any time the good of our country is the ends and the Kingdom of God is the means, we are guilty of idolatry. Especially in an age such as ours, Christians must check and recheck (and re-recheck) our hearts and words to make sure we only render to Caesar what belongs to him, and always reserve for God what is His.

Our second problem is when the scare label "Christian Nationalism," is used to dismiss any policy or person more conservative than whoever is using the term. As seen in the The Guardian, we’re all but guaranteed for the near future that anything vaguely traditional or moral, and any appeal to anything higher than the latest cultural fad, will be smeared with this label. It’s silly. Even more, it’s dangerous.

Even so, Christians must not abandon the public square just because people say mean things about us. Our God-given call to be faithful to Him above our nation also means He’s called us to be faithful to Him in our nation, at this time and in this place. Neither the excesses in the name of Christ or those who attempt to ban His people from public life remove this calling from us.

Also, and this will be tougher, we mustn’t let the animosity leave us embittered or in despair. As Richard John Neuhaus said, Christians “have not the right to despair, for despair is a sin. And we have not the reason to despair, quite simply because Christ is risen.”

“There’s already a revolution in abortions happening,” wrote Christina Cauterucci in Slate magazine recently, “and the Supreme Court can’t touch it.”   She’s referring to so-called “medical” abortions, when pills are used to terminate a child’s life at home. As of 2020, this kind of abortion was already the most common, and with the Supreme Court preparing to dismantle Roe v. Wade, it will only become more common. 

One impact of this will be to drive abortion even farther into the shadows, away from even medical supervision. In fact, during COVID, the FDA allowed abortion pills to be prescribed without a doctor’s visit. Now the pandemic is over, but the policy remains. 

The toll this will have on America’s unborn children, their parents, and our national conscience will be significant. Hidden evil always flourishes. That’s why we need pro-life legislation that extends to the abortion pill, but passing it won’t be easy. 

The Church will need to be out there, making the case for the dignity of all life, making the path of forgiveness known, offering hope and healing in Christ.  

And, we’ll need courageous lawmakers to take the next step in putting an end to abortion, including by mail. 

There’s an old Chinese curse which supposedly goes “May you live in interesting times.” It’s a version of what’s My favorite Facebook meme for 2020 so far is, “God please give us precedented times.” I think we’ve all had enough of the unprecedented times.

In truth, of course, there’s nothing new under the sun. We aren’t the first followers of Christ forced to navigate a dizzying array of global, political, cultural, and health challenges. Not only are we part of, with centuries of the faithful before us, what Hebrews calls “the great cloud of witnesses,” we have much to learn from their examples and their failures as we, too, journey to what Scripture calls that “better city.”

Not only is it helpful to know what the faithful before us believed, we need to know how they behaved. Specifically, it is helpful to know how Christians in the past navigated the cultural storms of their day. Our next Colson Center Short Course looks at four such Christians: the great Church father St. Augustine of Hippo, Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the novelist Flannery O’Connor, and Martin Luther King Jr. The course is titled “How Four Christians from History Confronted Cultural Chaos,” and begins next Tuesday, October 20th and continues each Tuesday (except for election night) through November 17th.

Each of these individuals we will deal with in this course dealt themselves with particular cultural challenges that, in many ways, mirror ours. Each week, a stellar instructor will explore how these Christian forebears understood and responded to the cultural crisis of their times.

Augustine of Hippo, for example, lived in the midst of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. After the Goths sacked Rome in 410 A.D., his native North Africa was conquered by the Vandals. Geneva College President Dr. Calvin Troup will examine Augustine’s question, “Who is a Christian to be” when the pillars of civilization seem to be crumbling and when human government fails? The relevance for us today is obvious. 

Author and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously said that “the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.” Dr. Bill Brown, Senior Fellow of Worldview and Culture at the Colson Center will wrestle with Solzhenitsyn’s understanding of human nature in the face of grave political and cultural evils, and why the world is both broken and eminently worthy of redemption.

Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson of the University of Dallas will discuss how novelist Flannery O’Connor, through her storytelling, confronted the cultural imagination and prejudices of the “God-haunted South,” where Christianity was a cultural phenomenon but pretty much neutered in its effectiveness and power, as well as the cultural imagination of the elites of her time, who were inclined to dismiss anything distinctly Christian or southern.

The final session of our Short Course will be taught by Rev. Derek McCoy and will focus on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, specifically his approach to justice work and his work for reconciliation. Rev. McCoy has years of experience building urban coalitions to promote human flourishing. It’s fitting that this short course begins with Augustine and ends with Dr. King, who famously cited Augustine in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail that “an unjust law is no law at all.” And it was that appeal to that eternal truths of the universe to ground his cause that makes Dr. King’s work so different from the activism we see today.

By design, this short course will begin before the election and end after it. The temptation to be locked in to the chaos of the cultural moment, captivated by the minute-by-minute, ever-changing headlines of the day. Instead, our perspective must be tempered by the knowledge of the larger Story that Christians are part of, and how Christians in the past calibrated their understanding of what was true and good accordingly. What is true on October 20, when we begin the course, will still be every bit as true on November 17^th, no matter how the election turns out: Christ is risen! Christ is Lord! Christ is making all things new.

Please join us, starting Tuesday October 20, for our next short course on “Augustine, Solzhenitsyn, O’Connor and MLK: How Four Christians from History Confronted Cultural Chaos.” The course is offered live via Zoom, with a time for instruction, followed by a time for questions and answers. All who register will receive a link to the recording and resources of each session, so if you must miss a live session, you won’t miss any of the content.

Come to BreakPoint.org to register today.

In a YouTube video produced by a friend who leads the Christian youth organization, Link Year, dozens of students line up for a foot race to win a $100 bill. Before they begin, the leader informs them they won’t each start from the same place. He then reads a series of statements, telling everyone to whom those statements apply to take two steps forward.

The very first statement was, “Your mom and dad are still married.” The second statement was, “You grew up with a father figure in the home.” Then there are many others.

By the time he’s finished, some students in the group are mere feet from the finish line.  Others remain haven’t moved at all, still at the starting line, looking frustrated and hopeless.  The message is clear and profound. Everyone runs the race of life, but some people have more help than others.

We are currently in a cultural moment where all of the emphasis is on white privilege, and as a white man, I fully admit that while I have worked hard to be where I am, I have enjoyed more than a few helping hands and “get out of jail free” cards that others have not. Often, our culture has a backwards way of addressing inequality, as Dr. Glenn Sunshine recently pointed out on the Theology Pugcast. Opportunities should not be removed from those who have them, they should be given it to those who don’t have it.

At the same time, this video reveals what we know to be true from mountains of research. The most powerful head starts any child can have is being raised in a home with married mom and dad. That remains the single, most consistent and accurate indicator of a child’s long-term success.

Rob Kenney didn’t have that head start. This newly-minted YouTube celebrity with three grown children of his own, had a father who walked out on him when he was fourteen. Unsure of where to go, Kenney moved in with his older brother, and slowly learned the skills his dad wasn’t there to teach him.

Realizing now what all he missed, Kenney started a YouTube channel to teach skills to young people without dads in their life. As my Tennessee friend might put it, he’s not teaching rocket surgery. The videos are about things dads typically teach their sons and daughters: how to tie a tie, how to change a tire, how to unclog a sink, how to shave, and how to hang a shelf.

Kenney named his YouTube channel, “Dad, how do I?”  When his son, apparently aware of and willing to share the blessings he’s enjoyed with such a great father, posted a link to his dad’s channel on the photo sharing site Imgur, it exploded. In just two months, the channel has over 2 million subscribers.

According to Kenney, the response to his channel has been overwhelming, and not just from the huge number of clicks and eyeballs. The comments people are leaving on his videos, thanking him for the channel, are heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.

Both young men and young women have told him that his videos were filling a void their absent fathers left behind, and not just the how-to tips. They thank Kenney for his understanding and his affirmation. They thank him for the way he frequently tells viewers words they have never heard, “I’m proud of you.” They even thank him for the corny dad jokes.

“Thank you for being the dad I never had,” wrote one. “God bless you, sir,” wrote another, adding how he had learned that “just because you don’t have a good dad, doesn’t mean YOU cannot be one! Someone has to break the pattern.”  Another observed: “Sir, you’ve unwittingly adopted the entire Internet.”

Kenney is blown away, but still humble. “I didn’t always do everything right with my kids,” he admits but he recognizes, as Intellectual Takeout did when they broke the story about his channel, America has a devastating fatherless ache. “The pain is pretty real in our world,” said Kenney. “Hopefully this will help alleviate some of it.”

Of course, I hope Kenney’s idea goes viral well beyond YouTube and well beyond the Internet. I pray this story of a dad making how-to videos reminds us of the central, irreplaceable value of fathers, and inspires other men to act as fathers to the fatherless.

After all, our response to the head start kids with loving dads shouldn’t be, “Hey, that’s not fair!” Instead we should say: “Everybody should have that.” If the Church today is to be effective in binding up the wounds of a broken culture, it will have to model and pass on the love of our Heavenly Father for the fatherless.

Maybe it’s as simple as just being there to answer a question like, “Dad, how do I…?”

John and Shane field a question from a listener whose workplace is hostile to the Christian faith. Hear how John encourages the committed Christian to live not by lies.

Another listener writes-in to ask for resources for the elders of his church. He is looking to help his church respond with truth and love to culture issues, helping the church leadership understand immediate social challenges.

To close, John fields a critique on a BreakPoint commentary related to Jack Phillips. The listener seeks to help frame the issue without falling into traps set inside legal structures. John provides a response to help Christians respond without compromising on Biblical truth.

When lawmakers and politicians redefine the legal meaning of “marriage” and “family,” they do not make lies true. They create additional tragedy.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and to a critical theorist everything looks like oppression. But what if that's not a big enough answer?

I often paraphrase one of my favorite lines from G. K. Chesterton. He observed that there are a lot of ways to fall down but only one way to stand up straight. It's a lesson that many of us who want to better understand the world and to have a better world should learn. One of the commonest defenses of critical race theory (CRT) from its advocates is that people have misunderstood it. It's just not what people think it is; CRT is just a tool to understand the American legal system, they say. It's just an academic analysis of cultural trends. It's just an attempt to look at our nation's morally fraught racial history.

But to say that CRT is just any of those things is like saying Disney is just a cartoon company. It certainly started that way. And it's kind of true. But today it's rather a meaningless way to describe this behemoth of a company. You can't travel anywhere in the world without encountering the power of the Mouse and his minions. In the same way, CRT has now extended beyond the academic realm into education, into corporate HR departments, into the Church, and, more influentially, into the cultural imagination.

This framework of seeing all of life in terms of oppressor and oppressed is a deep part of the cultural mood. Racial identity and power dynamics — these are seen as the issues of the day. Whatever the formal source of CRT was, now functions practically as a theory of everything. It demands conformity in many areas of our life to the very specific political ends that it advocates.

To many minds there is simply no way to ask questions about injustice, much less to offer answers unless they are aligned with critical race theory. And strangely enough, this seems to be the place where both critical theorists and their critics agree: that it's either all or nothing. The CRT crowd is quick to identify their favorite philosophy with any quest for racial justice. On the other hand, many of the foes of CRT write off any discussion of race at all, including that of America's history, as CRT nonsense.

To be clear, racism is not the defining characteristic of American identity that CRT folks often make it out to be. At the same time, racism has been the defining wound of our past and its residue continues today. For 250 years in America, human beings were sold like cattle but with far less care. Sure, slavery was a feature in almost all cultures, but in American history, it took a more diabolical turn. Along with the sheer fact of enslavement, beatings, sexual abuse, and the intentional severing of families were all part of this American nightmare.

For a century after slavery, Americans of African descent continued to be treated as inherently less than. Their political rights were denied, their businesses destroyed, their education hamstrung. On top of all this was the ever-present threat of lynchings.

In fact, in the decades after the Civil War, over 3,000 African Americans were lynched for the so-called crime of refusing to act inferior. These are the well-known details. And then there were the Tulsa race riots, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the redlining of African Americans housing opportunities.

Of course, today real improvements have been made. Yet at the same time, there are disparities in incarceration rates, in poverty rates, and in health and mortality rates. Something is clearly not right in our land. While racism is certainly not enough to explain all of those disparities, it's also not true that tens of millions of people are coincidentally of a particular people group, making the same choices that lead to these outcomes.

That’s one of the problems with critical race theory. The reasons for these enduring problems are complicated, more complicated than the simplistic solutions that CRT offers. All the same, that these theories are wrong about the sources of poverty and oppression doesn't mean that poverty and oppression don't exist. We should do what we can to deal with them.

To put it another way, just because someone is asking good questions doesn't mean that they are providing good answers. And, just because they are offering bad answers doesn't mean that the questions themselves are bad. What we don't want to do, like Chesterton's quote suggests, is to fall down in another wrong direction.

The only way for us not to fall in the wrong direction is to join in the story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. This is the grand narrative of Christ redeeming His creation, using His people throughout the ages to work for the well-being of others and to change society. Until Christ comes again, the hurting will always be with us. But that doesn't mean we should tolerate it.

Until Christ comes again, we are called to work with Him to restore all things in whatever time and whatever place He has put us. Our job is to work with Him to restore all things and whatever times and whatever places He has put us, offering better answers to better questions than the world and other worldviews can never provide.

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Its message is more needed today than ever. 

Lent is a 40-day period of time (Sundays aren’t included in the count), set aside in the Church calendar to reflect and to prepare. In a sense, the Season of Lent is for Easter what the Season of Advent is for Christmas, but even more counter-cultural in its assessment of the human condition. Plus, as a holiday, Easter is not nearly as popular as Christmas, and can come and go before we know it. 

Even so, for most Christians, all that’s left of this season is the idea of “giving up something for Lent.” The original idea of disciplining the body, repenting of sins, and preparing to remember Jesus’ passion and death in order to celebrate His resurrection has been whittled down to an annual Christian weight-loss plan. It’s a loss far greater than mere tradition. 

Implied in the disciplines of Lent, whether fasting from some indulgence or embracing some new habit of life and godliness, is the inherent connection between body and soul. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, when ashes are imposed by the clergy on the forehead in the shape of a cross, we are reminded of who we are with these words, “Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The ashes remind us that we are not less than physical beings, made from the dust of the earth, and therefore mortal. We will one day die.  All of the above is easily forgotten in a society like ours, which suffers from a split personality.  

On one hand, tremendous emphasis is placed on physical appearance and meeting physical desire. We idolize sex, obsess over diet and how our bodies look, and rearrange the entire world in order to guard our physical health. On the other hand, we deny that our bodies have any say about who we are, instead demanding biological workarounds that will accommodate whatever it is we want.  

This is just the latest incarnation of an ancient heresy that will not die. Gnosticism arose at roughly the same time as Christianity. The name comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. Gnostics believed that through the acquisition of secret knowledge, one could escape the confines of the physical world. According to Gnostic cosmology, the invisible and immaterial are superior to the physical. Thus, the soul or spirit is superior to the body. At best, the body is irrelevant. At worst, the body is an evil, an hindrance to the spirit and thus to salvation.  

So, some Gnostics gave themselves over to hedonistic expressions of drinking, gluttony, and sexual abandonment since the body could not affect the spirit. Others turned to strict asceticism, rejecting sex, wine, meat, and other foods, denying the body to strengthen the spirit. Some even went so far as to starve themselves to death. 

Gnosticism as a formal religion largely died out by the end of the third-century A.D.  Gnostic ideas, however, continue to show up in both conservative and progressive Christianity. Some Christians confuse the Bible’s condemnations of the world and the flesh as a rejection of the physical world and the significance of our bodies. This shows up in forms of false asceticism, which in the words of Paul’s letter to the Colossians “are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”  

Alternately, many progressive Christians embrace new cultural orthodoxies and deny that our bodies have meaning. Rejecting the natural purposes of God’s good design, they deny sexual difference and that our reproductive systems are designed for procreation; they deny the inherent good and rights of children, the permanence of marriage, the morality that best protects sexual relationships, and other ordered goods of the human body.  

In particular, transgenderism is an explicit neo-gnostic rejection of human bodies, treating them as largely irrelevant to our identities. Instead, who we really are is determined by some non-observable, non-objective, non-empirical secret knowledge known only to ourselves, but to which everyone else and reality itself must adapt.  

Ash Wednesday and Lent directly challenge this way of thinking, reminding us that our bodies and souls are inextricably linked, that we are more but not less than physical beings, and that God’s creation was, indeed, good. We will die, one day, a fact of life that so many in our culture perpetually try to distract themselves from. And, corrupted by our own sin, we are in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness.  

Whether or not you receive the imposition of ashes today or participate in a Lenten fast, don’t let Easter sneak up on you just yet.  Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Embrace the significance of the body and its inseparable union with our spirits. This knowledge is revealed by God, and not kept in secret. Use it to draw near to God, who took on a human body, lived, died, and rose again so that we might rise with Him.

Salvation won’t arrive on Air Force One, and a perfect world won’t come through the ballot box. But a better world is possible if all our actions, political and otherwise, flow downstream from our Christian convictions, and not the other way around.

With access to 1.4 billion consumers at stake, corporations like Nike and the NBA, and most  Hollywood studios have bowed to China’s demands, apologizin profusely for any perceived offense. Ahead of the Olympics, house speaker Nancy Pelosi warned athletes not to speak up against human rights abuses while in China.  

Clearly, those with the most money to lose are wiling to stay silent on human rights abuses. human dignity  

Which makes China’s evils not just a “them” problem. It’s an “us” problem, too. Freedom of speech is only as good as what it is used for.  

Let’s hope we start using it for something better: speaking the truth.

It’s good to want babies. 

Related Resources

What Would You Say?: Should We Panic About Overpopulation?

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Register for the upcoming Breakpoint Forum: A New Sexual Revolution at colsoncenter.org/greenville. 

John Stonestreet and Maria Baer recount the challenging aspects of what happened in America this week.

After recalling the details of the events surrounding the Derek Chauvin verdict following the death of George Floyd, John and Maria discuss a recent shooting in Ohio.

They close with the challenging situation Planned Parenthood finds itself in as the organization works to distance from racist roots and the current reality that their abortion services overwhelmingly impact people of color.

On Friday, according to the Catholic News Agency, “San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone instructed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to present herself for Holy Communion until she publicly repudiates her support for abortion.” 

On Monday, Whoopi Goldberg told the archbishop via her audience on The View, “This is not your job, dude. That is not up to you to make that decision.” 

It is, of course, the archbishop’s job to oversee the proper administration of the sacraments in that geographic region of the church. It is exactly his job, in fact. Other than playing a nun in the Sister Act movies, it’s not clear what qualifies Goldberg to tell an archbishop what his job is. 

Years ago, Dr. Frank Beckwith taught a group of students how to respond to someone dismissive of their arguments: “If anyone ever says to you, ‘Who are to say what’s right?’ just ask back ‘Who are you to say, “Who are you to say?”’” 

This isn’t about Whoopi, of course. Skeptics, secularists, and non-believers will often ask, “Who are you to speak for Jesus?” while speaking for Jesus.  

A good response is, “Well, who are you to ask?”

Holocaust-era movie eerily resembles the expansive loosening of euthanasia laws in the name of human dignity. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The motley crew assembled at the nativity reminds us that Jesus came for everyone. 

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Find more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment at breakpoint.org.

A colleague of mine, while looking for Civil War artifacts near his home, once found a brass button from a Union Army uniform. What made his discovery even more amazing was the bright blue jacket thread still attached to the button, even after 150 years. That’s pretty impressive.

What about finding threads dating back 3,000 years? But imagine these are not connected with an event everyone believes happened, like the Civil War, but with events secular scholars often doubt. Even better! That’s the latest chapter in the ever-growing saga of “Super Cool Discoveries from Israel.”

Recently, researchers in Israel’s Timna Valley, while exploring a copper smelting camp site at a place known as “Slaves’ Hill,” unexpectedly found “three pristine fabric samples dyed true purple.” The color is commonly called “royal purple” because it was worn almost exclusivity by royalty. The researchers were surprised, and not only because they were looking for metal and not fabric.

Though, previous to this, no textiles predating the Romans had ever been found in the region, radiocarbon dating suggests that these fibers could be “tightly dated” to the late 11th and early 10th centuries before Christ, placing it during the reigns of David and Solomon. Making this story even more significant, is that further tests indicate that the dye from these textile samples were produced from a particular Mediterranean mollusk known as a murex. In the ancient world, dye made from this mollusk, because it came from “hundreds of miles away in the Mediterranean [around Italy] and was extremely valuable,” was the kind used to produce royal purple.

Just finding 3000-year-old purple-dyed textiles would be the discovery of a lifetime for most archeologists, or at least “very exciting and important,” as Naama Sukenik of the Israel Antiquities Authority put it. But the date of this find and its “mollusk connection,” point to the existence of the United Monarchy described in the Bible. These ancient fabrics are evidence that the sophisticated and hierarchical society described in the Old Testament actually existed, a society wealthy enough to import luxuries from the other side of the Mediterranean.

Or, as the online magazine Inverse put it, the findings could be evidence that “the United Monarchy in Jerusalem is not necessarily just ‘literary fiction.’” Keep in mind that, until recently, many scholars remained unconvinced that figures like David and Solomon even existed. However, archeological finds over the past three decades have all but rendered that position untenable.

Even so, prominent scholars continue to insist that many of the Old Testament stories, from books such as Samuel or Kings, are embellished tales, similar to the nationalized propaganda found in Greek and Indian epics. Sure, there may have been a “David” and a “Solomon,” these scholars concede, but they were more Iron Age tribal chieftains than rulers of the kind of expansive and elaborate state described in the Bible. However, neither the dye used in these fabrics unearthed in the Timna Valley, nor the ancient, sophisticated copper production operation where they were found, suggests just “local tribal chieftains.”

A few more discoveries like this one from the Timna Valley will render these skeptical views as untenable as doubting David’s existence. In fact, other discoveries in the area, like a 3,000 year old house, also support the Biblical account of how advanced the United Monarchy was, as opposed to the impoverished imaginations of the skeptics.

The pace at which archeological findings from Israel are now coming in and the picture they paint of that part of the ancient world is stunning but also familiar to anyone who has read the biblical text. On the other hand, those who insist that the biblical accounts are “literary fiction” are increasingly being forced to rethink their own stories.

Fifty years ago, on January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court fabricated a so-called “right to abortion” out of thin air. Today, many will march in Washington, D.C., again committing to the great moral cause of our day.  

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Shane invites historian and BreakPoint writer Dr. Glenn Sunshine to explain why we celebrate Christmas even though the first century Christians likely didn't. 

Then, Shane brings a question from a listener who recently ready Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letters from a Birmingham Jail and wonders if they still apply in the current culture climate that focuses so much on race. 

To close, Dr. Sunshine helps a reader seeking resources to better understand Irish history and how it impacted Western civilization

The little-known human rights crisis of our day.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In the book River Out of Eden, Oxford biologist and atheist superstar Richard Dawkins famously wrote:

“The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

Dawkins and other “new atheists” have long insisted that science has excluded the possibility of a creator or has, at least, rendered it unnecessary. Turns out this belief may be scientifically out of date. According to a new book, the biggest discoveries of the last century challenge a materialistic worldview and call science back to its theistic roots.  

Cambridge-educated philosopher of science Stephen Meyer wrote two books, Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt, that both argue against materialist accounts of biology. His latest book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, makes an even more ambitious claim.

Three key twentieth century discoveries, argue Meyer, challenge materialist assumptions and point, not just to an intelligent designer, but to a transcendent God. He recently joined my colleague Shane Morris on the Upstream podcast to talk about the book.

Not only were most of the founders of modern science devout Christians, the scientific method itself emerged from assumptions found only in a Christian worldview, such as the intelligibility of nature and the need to constantly test our fallen intuitions against the facts. Tracing science from its theistic beginnings, Meyer shows how it gradually lost its way and became tethered to materialism.

Famed scientists like Laplace, Hume, and Darwin came to believe that the “God hypothesis” was no longer necessary to explain the natural world, that the universe required no cause beyond itself. Given the opportunity and enough time, living things could arise and evolve on their own. Since the conditions for life were simple and the universe had existed from eternity, here we are.

These assumptions went largely unchallenged until the twentieth century. However, breakthroughs in astronomy, physics, and biology began to undermine materialism.  For example, telescopes began to challenge the proponents (Einstein being one) of a steady-state universe. More and more evidence mounted that the universe was, in fact, not eternal, as many scientists had long assumed. If instead the universe came into being at some point in time, it must have had a cause outside of itself, To be clear, there must be a cause outside of space, time, matter, and energy.

Another discovery was how finely tuned the universe is. The very laws that govern the cosmos, such as gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, and the cosmological constant, are precisely calibrated in such a way that makes life possible. There’s not a compelling way to explain this “Goldilocks universe,” one “just right” that could have been otherwise, within a naturalistic worldview. As English astronomer and former atheist Fred Hoyle put it, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics…”

And then, there’s the discovery Meyer has already devoted two other books to exploring: Materialists long thought that Darwin’s theory was a silver bullet against design arguments. Darwin, however, knew nothing about DNA, the inner structure of the cell, or the crucial role information plays in the existence and propagation of life. The more we learn about them, the more outdated this “God is no longer necessary” hypothesis seems to be.

Simply put, Dawkins got it wrong. The universe we live in has properties one would expect if it were, in fact, designed by a God who had us in mind when He made the place.

As Myer’s book shows, this assumption was an original conviction of many who launched and drove the scientific revolution. It’s the conviction of a growing number of scientists today who are willing to challenge the powers that be and admit the design they see in the heavens, the laws of nature, and under the microscope. As Meyer puts it, “The evidence is crying out for a God hypothesis.”

Come to BreakPoint.org and we’ll tell you how to get a copy of Stephen Meyer’s The Return of the God Hypothesis. We’ll also link you to his conversation with Shane Morris on the Upstream podcast.

Young men aren’t forming social bonds with real, live people, even the kinds of bonds that have historically captured their attention. 

This Breakpoint was originally published on October 5, 2022.

The littlest known Christian holiday with major significance. 

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Register for the 2025 Colson Center National Conference at colsonconference.org. 

What looks like good news for a nation in the midst of a demographic crisis isn’t really. Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that “U.S. births increased last year for the first time in seven years.”  In 2020, the U.S. fertility rate dipped to 1.64—the lowest “since the government began tracking it in the 1930s.” In 2021, the rate increased for the first time since 2014, to 1.66.  

Though that sounds like good news, that’s a lower spike than we’d historically expect during something that keeps everyone at home, such as a pandemic. One economist has called it a “minor blip” that “still leaves us on a long-term trajectory towards lower births.” That’s because the replacement rate is at least 2.1, and some scholars think 1.7 is the threshold of no return. 

Nations that fail to replace their population face economic stagnation and social instability. A society committed to adult happiness over the future and the well-being of children will be a nation that fails to replace its population.  

In other words, birth rates are more than statistics and historic predictors. They reflect a nation’s priorities, values, and worldview.  

Preference for pets over humans is spilling into actual policy. 

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The Trump administration is arming parents to take back rights, but it can’t start and stop at the Oval.\

Related Resource

What Would You Say?: Churches Shouldn't Get Involved with Political Issues

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Register for the upcoming Identity Project webinar with Dr. Kathy Koch: How is Identity Formed and What Makes it Healthy at colsoncenter.org/identity. 

“Religion, not gender,” the Economist reports, “is the best predictor of views on abortion.” The editors continue: 

Shocked by a draft Supreme Court opinion that would allow states to ban abortion…. some [activists] hope that women enraged by the loss of Roe v Wade will vote en masse for Democrats in November. 

But, they argue, that hope is misplaced. Whereas the gap between men and women on abortion restrictions is just 6%, religion—combined with race—accounts for a 65% difference.  

Among both men and women, for example, 92% of atheists favor pro-abortion policies. Likewise, according to Gallup, 75% of those who attend religious services weekly identify as “pro-life.”  

In other words, abortion is not an issue of women against men.  It’s an issue of worldview. Women are, of course, most affected by issues surrounding pregnancy, but not always the way that we are led to believe. 

The real question is what is the pre-born? Are they, abortion advocates suggest, just disposable tissue or “lives worth sacrificing?” Or are they, in the words of Scripture, “fearfully and wonderfully made” in the image of God? 

It’s been more than a week, and the revival at Asbury University is still going strong. The "He Gets Us" campaign spent 20 million dollars on Super Bowl ads—was it worth it? And some frightening findings on teen girls and mental health from the CDC. 

— Recommendations — 

Seven by Brooke Ligertwood

A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories That Stretch and Stir by Colin Hanson and John Woodbridge

Segment 1 - The Revival at Asbury/ He Gets Us  

"Asbury Professor: We’re Witnessing a ‘Surprising Work of God’"

Christianity Today

"A nonstop Kentucky prayer 'revival' is going viral on TikTok, and people are traveling thousands of miles to take part"

NBC News

"A $100m campaign aims to fix Jesus’ brand from followers’ damage"

The Washington Post

Segment 2 - The Mental Health Crisis Among Teen Girls

"These Staggering Statistics And Charts Reveal How Deeply Troubled Our Teen Girls Really Are"

The Daily Wire

"CDC report shows concerning increases in sadness and exposure to violence among teen girls and LGBQ+ youth"

CDC

Segment 3 - Why You so Cranky?

Segment 4 - Stories of the Week

"Valentine’s Day and True (Sacrificial) Love"

Breakpoint

"Jalen Hurts’ Best Performance"

The Point

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Parents, educators, the church, and the state all play essential roles within a society, but when the state goes bad, it can take down every other sphere with it. For example, according to a recent article in The Economist, “A struggle is underway for the hearts and minds of Hong Kong’s children.” 

In August, the city’s pro-democracy teacher’s union disbanded, following a government crackdown that had called it “a malignant tumor.” Since then, the curriculum now “educates” children solely on the virtues of the Chinese Communist Party. Speaking out against these changes could lead to life in prison. 

As a result, some parents have stopped talking about politics at home, fearing their young children will say the wrong thing at school. Others continue to teach their kids democratic ideas, at risk of government retaliation to themselves or relatives. As a result, tens of thousands of residents are leaving the city altogether. 

It’s good that parents are aware enough to be concerned. Unfortunately, too many parents here fail to take seriously the ideas that threaten the hearts and minds in our schools.

Teen mental health has never been this bad.  

As New York Times journalists Michael Barbaro and Matt Richtel discussed last week on The Daily podcast, we’re facing an unprecedented crisis in teen mental health. Mere decades ago, the major threats to the health and well-being of young people in the West were nearly all external, such as illness, car accidents, risky sexual behavior, alcohol, or smoking. Today, the greatest threats to the health and well-being of young people are internal. As Richtel reported, in 2019, 13% of all adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60% increase from 2007. Teen suicide rates, which had been stable for nearly a decade prior to 2007, “leapt nearly 60% by 2018.” In 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced,  “Mental health disorders have surpassed physical conditions as the most common reasons children have impairments and limitations.”  

The factors behind this tsunami of depression, anxiety, and self-harm are many, one of which is the internet. In 2017, Dr. Jean Twenge of San Diego State University noted that the spike in adolescent mental health problems reached a crescendo in 2012. That year, the percentage of Americans who owned smartphones surpassed 50%. Exposing developing brains to an overwhelming amount of social information, she argued, was contributing to a massive, unprecedented uptick in mental health issues.  

On one hand, social media has brought the near constant experience of social comparison to the developing minds of 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds.  On the other hand, the sheer amount of panicked, hyperbolized, and truly frightening headlines a student must navigate is unprecedented in human history. We might forgive students who are convinced the world is completely out of control. 

Richtel and Barbaro also noted other factors in the podcast. For example, the average age for the onset of puberty has become earlier and earlier since the 1980s, especially for girls. Experts are unsure as to exactly why this is the case, but there are plenty of correlations having to do with early exposure to sexually explicit material, fatherlessness, and family breakdown. Whatever the cause, the impact is real.  

In the face of this exploding mental health crisis among young people, the demand for care is outpacing the number of trained counselors and psychologists. Pediatricians and emergency rooms have become first responders. As Richtel observed, “Every night, in emergency rooms across the country, there are at least 1,000 young people spending the night waiting in a room to get to the next level of care where they can be helped.”  

More and more frequently, medication is seen as the only answer. While an important tool, Ritchie notes why that is far from adequate. “We are prescribing medications in the absence of dealing with… fundamental structural changes that we have not addressed as a society.” 

In every generation, followers of Christ have seen protecting and caring for vulnerable children as a crucial part of their calling. Today, children are vulnerable to radically changing social conditions, harmful ideas about their minds and bodies, the loss of institutions crucial to their health and well-being, and a barrage of bad news.  

 The first step in fulfilling our calling is, in the words of my friend Dr. Matthew Sleeth, to Hope Always. Children need the truth about life and the world, about themselves and God, and we can give it to them. Of course, parents must limit and help guide children in their digital interactions, as nearly all experts recognize. But this is not merely a crisis of media: It’s a crisis of meaninglessness. That’s one reason a Harvard psychologist writing in Scientific American argued that “Psychiatry needs to get right with God.”  

To that end, we’ve developed a new Colson Center Educators course taught by Dr. Matthew Sleeth to equip parents, pastors, and educators, with the tools to meet the current crisis.  

Also, tonight, is the latest in our Lighthouse Voices series. “Despair, Mental Health, and the Crisis of Meaning: How Christians Can Speak Life to a Lost Culture” is a live event featuring Dr. Ryan Burkhart of Colorado Christian University. To register for the live event in Holland, Michigan, or the livestream, visit Colsoncenter.org. 

Christians have an obligation to care. When we see the brokenness of the world around us, we are to imitate the work of Christ. In His name, we can be a force for good in our lifetimes, and, God willing, reverse the tide.  

We've all encountered the term "Artificial Intelligence" in science fiction movies and books, but what does  it mean, exactly? And what does it mean for our world? What is a Christian worldview perspective on Artificial Intelligence.

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, Shane Morris welcomes Jason Thacker, an associate research fellow at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and author of The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity.

Resources:

As NBCNews reported via Twitter, the Chinese Communist Party chose a member of the Uyghur minority to complete the torch relay and deliver the Olympic flame to the opening ceremonies of  the winter Olympics.  

The Uyghurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic minority in China’s western regions that have been targeted in Chairman Xi Jinping’s nationalistic and totalitarian agenda. Uyghur are being sent to concentration camps, subjected to systematic rape, forced abortions, and sterilization. By every measure, it’s genocide.  

Going into the games, the world already knew that the Uyghurs were being subjected to the same sort of atrocities that defined evil in the last century. The Chinese Communist Party also employs the same sort of propaganda. As CNN’s Jake Tapper put it, it’s “hard to imagine a more cynical move.”  

We can’t keep tyrants from being tyrannical, but we can refuse to pretend that what they’re doing is normal. And, we can call on our leaders to do the same. Anything less would be, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, to live by lies. Something we must never do. 

A new poll, commissioned by Summit Ministries with national survey firm McLaughlin & Associates, suggests that there is a gap between what people believe and what they’re willing to say.  

Some 64% of those polled believe that “transgenderism is not a healthy human condition.” However, while 30% indicated they are willing to speak out on the issue, another 34% say they stay silent on the issue so as “to not offend others.” 

Measuring public opinion is notoriously tricky. At the same time, it’s important to know that despite headlines and popular perception, the triumph of trans ideology is not inevitable. In reality, most Americans do understand the categories of biological sex and feel uncomfortable foisting harmful ideology on children.  

This means that what we say and do on this issue matters.  

Os Guinness made this point on a recent episode of the Upstream podcast. Americans like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, but we’re more susceptible to the whims of the most vocal popular opinion than we realize. 

The loudest voices often cow people into silence, but Christians, with courage and gentleness, must speak up. Along the way, we may just win some people over.