The Point by Colson Center: Recent Episodes
John Stonestreet
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.
“Religion, not gender,” the Economist reports, “is the best predictor of views on abortion.” The editors write:
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?
According to the U.S. Department of Education, since the start of the pandemic, more than 1.5 million students have left traditional public schooling.
Many parents are realizing, some for the first time, that students aren’t learning what their parents thought they were learning. As one former college professor noted, if you haven’t been in education in the past three years, it’s almost unrecognizable to what you experienced growing up.
This has led to incredible growth in the number of home schooling families and record enrollments for nearly every Christian school that I know of.
Part of the Colson Center’s calling as a worldview-equipping institution is to serve Christian educators by equipping them to think and teach from a Christian worldview.
We invite you to partner with us as we serve Christian education in this strategic moment by training Christian educators. To learn more about our work in Christian education, and to support it, visit www.breakpoint.org/september.
According to Wired magazine, “Eighteen months of using front-facing cameras has distorted our self-image.” It’s what health experts are calling “Zoom Dysmorphia.” We’re spending so much time looking at ourselves through cameras, it’s crushing our self-esteem.
Doctors have seen this effect for a long time. Feelings of distress and self-focus rise when people spend too much time looking in the mirror, even people who don’t have a diagnosed body image problem. A safe conclusion is that as humans, we weren’t designed to look at ourselves. We find our best sense of belonging, identity, and self-worth by focusing outwardly, not inwardly.
Consider babies. They’re utterly unselfconscious. They get tremendous joy from just looking at others. It’s only as we get older that we make ourselves miserable with our constant consideration of ourselves.
All of this mirrors a profound spiritual reality that’s communicated to us in the greatest commandment: don’t think too much of yourself, but fix your eyes on God, by loving Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.
Recently, Chinese authorities announced that minors can only play video games for three hours a week, and not on school days.
Of course, this kind of thing would never happen in the West, for all kinds of reasons, not least of which is our worship of individual autonomy. We can’t even pass real restrictions on known dangers like violent pornography and Instagram.
In a communist vision, on the other hand, individuals and their freedom are dispensable. After all, video games are really addicting, and a generation of young men lost in fantasy worlds can’t serve their state. Banning video games is a small step for a nation that already tracks faces, encourages snitching through a social credit system, and sends police right to your location if you violate protocol.
Humans are neither mere parts of a community nor autonomous individuals. The only worldview that sustains freedom recognizes who we are: moral agents, entitled to and responsible for our decisions, and members of a larger community, responsible to and for others whom Jesus called our “neighbors.”
While some studies conclude that “students made little or no progress while learning from home,” the effects of school shutdowns vary depending on additional factors: socio-economic status, the type of distance learning, and especially the involvement of parents.
Though it’s mostly bad news, there is a marked silver lining. For example, one teenager told the New York Times, “… Although living through COVID has been really hard … I am so incredibly lucky to say that I probably gained more than I lost.”
Like most of the damage from this pandemic, the key factors for education were pre-existing conditions. Students already accustomed to facing challenges can grow more resilient in adversity. Students whose education was already more than information transfer were able to build curiosity in new ways. Parents who accepted that their kids’ education was primarily their responsibility made necessary pivots.
In other words, the important lessons to be learned are about far more than crisis management. It’s about what education really is.
According to Dr. Eric Voth in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “There exists clear medical evidence of increased psychiatric difficulties with marijuana use, including violence, psychosis, schizophrenia, manic episodes, worsening depression and suicide.”
These effects are particularly harmful for youth.
Of course, when it comes to public policy, the cat is largely out of the bag, and probably isn’t going back in. One thing, however, is becoming more and more clear with each study, despite what proponents claimed and promised: marijuana is not the harmless thing we were sold by advocates and the state.
For the record, states should not be in the business of promoting distractions to citizens in the first place, especially harmful ones used to self-medicate symptoms of loneliness, pain, or anxiety without actually addressing the root causes. But this is particularly disturbing when they accomplish this by overselling financial windfalls and underselling the social consequences.
The world’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, is reportedly spending a lot of money on immortality. According to MIT’s Technology Review, the Amazon founder has invested heavily in experimental genetic research to reverse the process of aging.
It’s just a new twist on an old story. Sixteenth-century conquistadors sought the fountain of youth. For Indiana Jones, it was the Holy Grail. For 21st century tech gurus, it’s the science of epigenetics, driven by a worldview of transhumanism. People have always looked to escape death, and they will spend a fortune along the way.
And that’s the tragic irony: the only real solution to death is free. Pseudo-science may promise eternal life, but only Jesus can deliver. As He said, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish…” He offers two things all the money in the world can never buy: not just a way to live forever, but also a reason to want to.
For years, urban innovators have dreamt of “15-minute neighborhoods,” where people have everything they need within a short walk. The pandemic is making the employment side of that possible for many. In Britain, for example, 24 percent of workers say they want to work from home permanently.
One of the things that makes the 15-minute neighborhood concept so appealing to many is that many people feel a lack of neighbors. Although they do have neighbors, roughly one-in-four Americans under age 30 say they don’t know any of them. There’s a desire to reinvigorate the idea of neighborhood.
Of course, Jesus raised that bar even higher. Love your neighbors, He said, and as He taught via the parable of the Good Samaritan, our neighborhood often includes those we wish it didn’t. For a generation so quick to cancel others, this neighborhood thing could prove difficult.
But if we obey Christ and truly love our neighbor, it could really be something…
Philipp Dettmer has an amazing YouTube video about the immune system, one of the most complex systems in the human body. The key to how this vast network of specialized cells survives infections is found in the antibodies: the proteins this system creates after the body has been attacked.
In other words, immunity comes through challenge. That’s why it’s important that our immune systems get stronger, which involves being exposed to a wide range of attacks.
The lesson for Christian parents is similar. We can’t protect kids from false ideas by eliminating their exposure to them. Age-appropriate protection is important, but children who are never exposed to bad ideas develop a worldview without the antibodies they need to confront these infectious ideas in real life.
They are like, as the Apostle Paul put it, “infants, tossed back and forth by the waves.” Knowing when to introduce bad ideas to our kids is important, but they must develop the discernment to recognize bad ideas and the wisdom to confront them. The goal is not isolation but inoculation.
When NASA astronaut Mike Massimino first looked at Earth from outer space, he asked, “How can something so beautiful be tolerated by human eyes?"
We’ve been sending people past Earth’s atmosphere for just over 60 years now. Every single time, the reaction has been awe. Astronauts call this sensation the “overview effect.” Something within the human heart reacts to the beauty, size, and overall scope of Creation with a sense of awe. The fact that God made us to respond that way out to tell us something profound.
Jesus said that “God so loved the world that He sent His only Son.” We often talk about how much God loves us, but God loves the rest of His creation, too. He put His image bearers here to care for it, and by restoring us, He restores our work in the world, as well. At the end of time there will be, He promised, a new heavens and a new earth.
We should marvel at the created world, especially in times of chaos and evil. As we gaze upon Creation, we get a peek into the heart of the God who created and loves it all.
Pediatricians in multiple countries are reporting skyrocketing numbers of young girls over the past year with facial or verbal tics similar to Tourette’s Syndrome. These patients have one thing in common: they spend a lot of time on social media.
Neurologists in Canada have concluded these girls aren’t suffering from actual tics, but from “functional tic-like behaviors.” They aren’t faking it. This is what’s called a “mass sociogenic illness.” It’s a reverse-placebo effect. You watch someone with a tic; you begin manifesting a tic.
“Mass sociogenic illness” was not a scientific concept at the time of King Solomon, but he was in the ballpark when he said, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.”
Social media tics aren’t necessarily marks of unrighteousness, but maybe foolishness? The more time we spend meditating on something, the more that something can change us. Better it be the Word of God than social media.
The new heartbeat law in Texas forbids abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat is detectable. Opponents denounce the law as extreme and arbitrary, pointing out that some women don’t even know they’re pregnant by six weeks. But as Marvin Olasky writes at WORLD, the six-week boundary, while not protecting life from conception, does have very ancient roots.
Hippocrates, the Greek physician whose followers gave us the Hippocratic oath, recognized six-week-old pre-born babies as... babies. Through studying miscarriages, he concluded that a baby’s limbs and organs are complete by 40 days after conception. That’s part of why the Hippocratic oath states: “I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.”
Also, the great philosopher Aristotle suggested that human life began at about six weeks.
Of course, life should be protected from conception, but it’s amazing that ancient philosophers, who had none of our technology or knowledge of genetics, could see a human person where so many today do not.
According to a recent article in the Atlantic, a growing number of parents wish they’d never had kids. Citing surveys of parents from America, Germany, and Poland, the article points to various reasons for the regret, but Polish researcher Konrad Piotrowski says that the overriding cause is feelings of inadequacy. Or, as a researcher from Belgium put it, “They don’t want to be a parent, because they are not able to be the perfect parent.”
Parenting on social media is one source of that pressure, along with the fact that for many families, the state has taken the place of core institutions (namely, churches) that once provided essential support to parents.
Theologian Abraham Kuyper suggested that God created various spheres of culture, like government and family, church and education, with specific roles and responsibilities. When one or more of these roles and responsibilities are either abandoned or bloated, it puts undue pressure on the other spheres.
Individuals and families are feeling this pressure, and unsustainable. It’s also an incredible opportunity for the church to take the lead in a better way.
When reading headlines about evolution, look for actual evidence, not just the interpretation of that evidence. Case-in-point: a recent BBC story proclaimed a discovery in Egypt of a so-called “whale with legs,” dated 43 million years old.
Phiomicetus anubis is hailed as Africa’s first “legged whale,” and is similar to other so-called “legged whales” from Asia. As the story goes, these preceded fully-aquatic whales.
What the article neglects to mention is that paleontologists commonly accept that fully-aquatic whales predate this new discovery by millions of years. In fact, a helpful video from the Discovery Institute on whale evolution points out that there’s just no time in the fossil record for these creatures labeled “legged whales” to evolve into true whales. They appear out of the order Darwinism predicts, and therefore cannot represent an evolutionary lineage.
You won’t read that in the headlines, which is why developing a nose for fish stories—or whale stories—is essential.
Researchers in Japan have discovered that humans can develop a “sixth sense.” Hooked to specialized audio receivers, blindfolded people were able to reliably determine whether objects were moving or stationary, even in a completely dark environment. How? By echolocation. You know, like bats. When deprived of input, the human brain adapts to interpret certain audio signals as visual input.
If nothing else, this is pretty cool, and sheds light on how those who lose, or are born without, one sense can adapt by maximizing others. In fact, the human capacity for adaptation is incredible, whether they are adapting to disability, tragedy, changing environments, or even bad ideas.
Some think the human capacity for adaptation is the primary explanation for human survival, while accepting it as a given of humanity. But what explains the ability itself? Where did it come from in a universe absent of purpose or design?
A better explanation would be that we were made by God to live in this world.
Last week, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted a picture of him and his partner lying in a hospital bed holding two newborns. “We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August to our family,” he wrote.
The picture is a metaphor. After all, neither of these men carried a child or went through labor and delivery. A woman did. They didn’t need a hospital bed. She did. But she’s missing… from the photo and the larger picture.
As Katy Faust of Them Before Us observed, if created via egg “donor,” these babies were forced to lose their genetic mother. If delivered by surrogate these children lost a relationship with their birth mother. Many children are adopted at birth by necessity, of course, but this loss was inflicted. And now, these children will be deprived of the maternal love that only women can provide, and that all children crave & need.
This should not be normal. And we shouldn’t just scroll through our news feeds as if it is.
Last week, Richard Hanania, president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and contributor for Newsweek tweeted this: “If red states ban abortion we could see a world where they have five times as many children with Down Syndrome. [They] could be outliers in the whole developed world. There are already negative stereotypes of Americans in these states, one can imagine it getting much more extreme.”
The implication is clear: we should abort children with Down Syndrome, lest our nation has too many of them and become an embarrassment to the world. This is the impulse behind eugenics, the attempt to purify the human race through selective breeding and the elimination of those deemed undesirable. It’s what drove the Nazis’ Final Solution, and the philosophy of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
Hanania’s tweet and much of the hysteria about the new Texas law makes clear that the eugenics impulse is still alive and well. The object of dehumanization may change, but a world without God always dehumanizes.
I trust you’re having a good day off with friends and family. But before you fire up the grill one last time for the summer, please reflect with me on how Chuck Colson described the dignity of work.
Years ago on BreakPoint, Chuck said that “Christians have a special reason to celebrate Labor Day, which honors the fundamental dignity of workers, because we worship a God Who labored to make the world, Who created human beings in His image to be workers. When God made Adam and Eve, He gave them work to do: cultivating and caring for the earth.”
Indeed. In fact, as Chuck pointed out, in the pagan world, manual labor was seen as just for the lower classes and slaves. But Christianity—from the monasteries through the medieval guilds and especially during the Reformation—saw work as edifying. Something we could and should do to God’s glory.
So please, have a good day off. And then head back to the construction site, to the office, to school, wherever, refreshed and ready to work as unto the Lord.
The U.S. Women’s Sitting Volleyball Team has made it to the gold medal match in the past three Paralympics, winning their first-ever gold in 2016.
In a recent interview with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, many members of Team USA pointed to Christ being at the center of their success. For example, Kaleo Kanahele Maclay, a setter for the team, said, “…my relationship with Jesus grounds me...I am praying that people can see God through me at the Games.” And middle blocker Nicky Nieves described how her faith intersects with her sport: “It's a constant reminder of His grace, how much He has blessed me and reminds me that it would be dishonorable not to give it my all every time I play.”
On Friday at 6:30 am Eastern, the team faces Brazil in the semifinal match of this year’s Paralympic competition in Tokyo. Be sure to cheer them on!
In a feat of international coordination, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) evacuated two Paralympic athletes from Afghanistan last week to compete in the Games.
One of these Paralympians, Zakia Khudadadi is competing in Taekwondo in this year’s Paralympics. The 23-year-old Paralympian grew up in a different Afghanistan. Now, Paralympian isn't likely to be a profession available to women in her country anymore.
Khudadadi was trapped in Kabul before her rescue, her scheduled commercial flight grounded when the United States took control of the airport. She stayed with family who didn’t “have enough food to feed their own children.” Khudadadi’s story is one of many we will hear as the changing political landscape in Afghanistan is realized. Pray for the people, and especially the women, of Afghanistan. They will be the victims of the Taliban’s very bad ideas.
According to a friend, the first day of her son’s 8th grade class began with teachers asking students to stand up and declare their pronouns. This was in Ohio, but I’d be willing to bet it happened in most state schools this year.
Set aside for a moment the questionable wisdom of asking hormone-riddled middle-schoolers during the most awkward times of their lives to talk about their bodies in front of their peers…
This would have never happened five, even three years ago. Compared to other ways gender confusion is aggressively advanced in our culture, this one may seem like an innocuous first-day-of-school icebreaker. It’s not. Culture is most powerful not where it's loudest, but where it makes things seem normal, or “common.” Encouraging students to view their identity as chosen, and their physical bodies as wrong isn’t normal. It isn’t true; and it’s harming our kids.
Christians shouldn’t participate. And parents should not let this classroom activity slide by unopposed.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Dr. King’s speech was only to be four minutes, but gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted for King to “share the dream,” and he did. For 17 minutes, he shared the dream.
Dr. King shared a dream of America living its founding creed: of descendants of slaves and descendants of slaveholders sitting together as brothers, of states long defined by injustice transformed into places of freedom, and, in what may be the best measure of progress in race relations, a future in which his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Dr. King’s dream is closer to reality than ever, but it’s also threatened. Dismissal of racism, on one hand, challenges the dream’s validity. On the other hand, theories that elevate the color of skin above anything else cripple the dream’s reality.
In grounding his dream in Scripture, King shows us the way forward. With biblical references, imagery, and mandates, King guides us on a path to pursue in this cultural moment. There’s really no other way forward.
Abortion advocates tell us that killing unborn babies is an essential part of “family planning.”
For instance, Planned Parenthood’s website says that “Deciding to have an abortion doesn’t mean you don’t want or love children. In fact, 6 out of 10 people who get abortions already have kids—and many of them decide to end their pregnancies so they can focus on the children they already have.”
But according to a massive new study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, that’s just not true. A review of almost eight million pregnancies found that abortion among low-income women with children is “exceedingly uncommon, if not rare.”
Less than six percent of Medicaid-enrolled women had both births and abortions. As study lead Dr. James Studnicki remarked: “…abortion is in no way typical of motherhood…the overwhelming number of children are born to mothers who never have an abortion.”
It’s time to debunk the myth that abortion is a family-friendly practice. It turns out that those least likely to “plan parenthood” are parents.
The House votes on a $3.5 trillion budget resolution later this week. That’s a lot of money, which will fund a lot of programs… and every one of them reflects our national values.
Despite bi-partisan requests, the appropriations committee sent this budget bill to the Senate floor without the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funds being used for abortion.
But, in a courageous speech from the floor, Senator James Lankford called colleagues to remember that, “millions of Americans of faith and no faith know that the only difference between a child in the womb and outside the womb is time.” Democrat Joe Manchin cast the deciding vote to include Hyde in the budget.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute estimates that 60,000 pre-born babies are saved every year because of the Hyde Amendment. Budgets have consequences; bad budgets have victims.
Headlines and newsfeeds are full of images and descriptions of overcrowded hospitals, because of a spike in Covid infections.Some states have issued new lockdown and mask mandates to ensure that doctors and nurses aren’t overwhelmed by a new influx of the sick. From the beginning of the pandemic, some medical procedures were postponed to prioritize Covid care.
That’s why it’s so strange that despite all the rationing we’ve been hearing about, there was a notable rise in so-called “gender confirmation surgeries” for women. These are procedures in which otherwise healthy body parts are removed from female patients suffering with gender dysphoria.
Numerous studies show that these surgeries do not deliver what they promise, in terms of inner peace and long-term happiness. Even so, plastic surgeons not only continued performing these unnecessary amputations but increased them during a global pandemic.
This is a movement committed to denying reality.
As more and more haunting images emerge from the airport in Kabul. Parents are passing children through lines of strangers in hopes they will be able to escape the Taliban, Young girls are gripping fences, crying out “The Taliban is coming!”, and we hear more and more reports from the ground that our worst fears about the Taliban are indeed coming true, many of us sit, watching these images, reading these stories on our phones, imagining ourselves and our own families in these same position. We can’t even begin to understand what any of this is like. We feel compelled to do something. We feel that our country has let them down.
I saw a tweet yesterday from a mom that describes many of the same feelings that we have. “Sometimes,” she said, “I’m mad at God that all he lets me do is pray about a situation that is out of my hands. I suppose that says more about me, and my frustration with prayer, than it says about God.”
Many of us ask, “other than prayer, what can I do?” What if it’s true that prayer is doing something, that prayer actually moves the heart of God and can alter human history?
We do have a responsibility for what’s happening in Afghanistan. There’s a lot of things we can’t do, but there’s one thing we can do and we must do, both for the Christians on the ground and for the vulnerable citizens. That is to ask God for mercy and to end their suffering now.
The Taliban has promised that this time, they’ll be different. This time, there will be more freedoms and less oppression of women and religious minorities.
Clearly, Afghan citizens do not believe these promises… they are at the point of desperation, clinging to the wheels of departing American aircraft, some even falling from the sky to their deaths. Poignant scenes show women and girls begging U.S. troops to protect them, crying out, “The Taliban is coming! The Taliban is coming!” Desperate parents plead with Western forces at the airport, holding infants and children high in the air, begging that even if they cannot escape what awaits them, their children may.
And, so far, early indications aren’t encouraging. We hear stories of Taliban targeting Christians, beating women, and reinforcing the same dehumanizing vision of society as before.
It’s a reminder that worldview matters more than words. And from a Christian worldview, there are times when our own words are woefully insufficient. So, let us pray for Afghanistan and hope their days of trouble will soon end.
Earlier this month, former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu was inducted into the NFL’s Hall of Fame. Polamalu was known for his speed, his power, and his hair.
And throughout his impressive football career, Polamalu was outspoken about his Christian faith, which he demonstrated by remaining humble, level-headed and team-oriented — which is unfortunately unusual for a player that talented.
In his Hall of Fame induction speech, Polamalu reminded his fans of the unique way he approached the game. After he showered praise on his wife, he shared this wisdom with his two young sons: “Boys, the best thing I could do for you guys is love your mother.”
There is something special about someone so physically imposing putting others first. Congrats to Troy Polamalu, and thanks for the important truths: humility exalts, marriage and family sustains, and true power is shown in love not on the football field.
As a father, I often think about what a Christian heritage will mean for my children. I want it to be the source of their peace and strength in times of trouble. But what if I knew it would be the source of their persecution as well?
On the Breakpoint Podcast this week, I spoke with Mindy Belz about the new dangers for Christians in Afghanistan. A couple years ago, a number of Christian leaders did something incredibly brave: they changed the official religious affiliation noted on their national identification cards. Because they knew that religious identity is passed down from fathers to children, their hope was that their descendents could be born with a Christian heritage for generations to come.
It was a courageous move, even then. But now, as government records fall under Taliban control, these believers have been uniquely exposed to the threat of violence. Belz told me that she knows of Christians who have received letters from the Taliban stating “We know where you are, and we know what you’re doing.”
This cost of discipleship is not a light one, but the church in Afghanistan is demonstrating exactly what bearing the name of Christ is worth to them. May God strengthen his people in Afghanistan, and give us the same courageous heart.
Haitians desperately need our prayers. The death toll of last week’s earthquake has now topped 1,300 people and continues to rise. Thousands of homes have been leveled. And now the country faces severe tropical weather, with victims still trapped in the rubble. These follow a presidential assassination, ongoing food insecurity, and increasing gang violence, all of which makes delivery of emergency services complicated.
Please support the emergency relief efforts of groups such as Samaritan's Purse. You can give right now at the front page of samaritanspurse.org. Just find their “give” tab.
To be clear, the story of Haiti is more than a story of national bad luck. It’s a story of foreign aid doing more harm than good, and of widespread cultural breakdown because of systemic evils and corruption. The resulting desperation of Haiti’s people is reflected in one woman’s statement: “We only have Jesus now.” May He have mercy on that nation.
Archaeologists recently discovered that the ancient Mayans of Tikal, in what is modern-day Guatemala, had uncovered an incredibly advanced water filtration system. Soil samples show they filled their reservoirs with zeolites: pieces of volcanic material that could filter out big bits of debris and invisible microbes which could cause disease.
One researcher observed that the Mayans probably didn’t understand why the zeolites worked. They just saw that they did; so they used them. Isn’t that a great metaphor for God’s natural law?
For a culture that largely denies the existence of God, we sure have a lot of scientific data showing us that His law works best. Even the most entrenched atheists can’t ignore that stable, monogamous marriages produce the healthiest children, that sexual promiscuity is dangerous, and that virtues like forgiveness and forbearance are essential to healthy communities.
This is an opportunity for Christians to unlock the mystery of why these things work. The way of Jesus is the best way for us; and that’s true because our Creator knows and loves us.
Image Sourced From: chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
LiveAction has produced a beautiful video that pulls back the curtain on the glories within the womb. In its short three minutes, we’re treated to a portrayal of the first nine months of a human life. According to LiveAction, 12 percent of pro-choice people changed their minds after watching, and 37 percent of those already pro-life became “more pro-life.”
It’s this power to persuade which led doctors and lawyers to include “3-D and 4-D ultrasound images of unborn children” in their support of Mississippi’s challenge to Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court. Looking these hidden figures “in the eye” highlights the vanity of the aging pro-abortion talking point about a “blob of cells.”
When abortion became legal in 1973, it was easy to say that fetuses weren’t human. But, as time has gone on and imaging technology has grown clearer, it has become harder to argue that what we see isn’t a fellow human being.
“Imagine” has become a kind of secular national anthem, but it seems like a strange choice.
Last year, a bunch of celebrities tried to make us feel better about a global pandemic by singing “Imagine there’s no heaven.” Really? Facing death, let’s offer a materialistic worldview, with no future after we die and no present source of meaning? And, these millionaire celebrities actually sang to us, “Imagine no possessions?”
Then, during the opening ceremony of the Olympics, this song with the line “no religion, too” was sung, when 84 percent of the world identifies with a religious group. Not to mention, how does “imagine there’s no countries” fit with the Olympics, at a ceremony featuring every nation bearing their respective flags into the stadium?
At best, this song is an ironic choice almost everywhere we hear it, especially for a global celebration of world cultures and athletes. At worst, it pushes a worldview that’s godless, hopeless, unrealistic, and ultimately meaningless.
Last month, the American Medical Association announced it will advocate removing sex designation from public birth certificates. Marking gender on the official document, says the AMA, could lead to discrimination for those who identify as transgender later in life.
“There is no clear standard for defining sex designation,” AMA authors wrote, stating that “gender is a social construct.”
Strangely enough, the AMA still recommends that hospitals accurately record a baby’s sex on the U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth, a document used for government data-keeping.
This brings up important questions. If there is no clear standard for defining sex designation, what standard will be used for government documents? If gender is a mere social construct, why would the government need a record of it? Why would an association of medical professionals weigh in on something so obviously not scientific? How can anyone trust an association that asks the state to tell lies? And if these lies aren’t fit for official government purposes, why should we accept them in any other part of life?
Nightbirde sings in dark times. For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet with The Point.
Jane Marczewski was the front-runner on this year’s season of America’s Got Talent. She was forced to leave the competition last week to focus on fighting cancer. This is the third bout of cancer for the woman who goes by the stage name Nightbirde.
She was diagnosed with cancer in 2017. Shortly afterwards, her husband asked for a divorce. She spiraled into depression, struggling to speak, eat, or leave her bed for several months.
On her blog, Jane wrote about meeting God in those dark places, even on the bathroom floor. She chose the name Nightbirde because she wants to sing in the darkest places, where she found Jesus. “If you listen for it and look for it,” she said, “you’ll see Jesus all over it.”
Jane has what might be called a "big enough" worldview. One able to handle even the hardest challenges. As Jane put it in an interview, “The note that I’ve been given to sing in the orchestra of life is short and insignificant, truly, but I want to sing it well.” May that be true for all of us.
Many feared that the isolation and unemployment from Covid lockdowns would lead to an increase in “deaths from despair.” Those predictions were tragically spot on.
According to new numbers from the CDC, drug overdose deaths in the U.S. skyrocketed by nearly 30 percent in 2020, the greatest increase in decades. According to The Wall Street Journal most of the 93,000-plus fatalities involved fentanyl.
Responding to health crises by focusing only on physical sickness just won't do. Nor can we continue to value pharmaceutical profits over human life.
These numbers expose a second pandemic facing our culture: a radical lack of hope. We're worshiping at the altar of stuff, sex, state, and self, and it cannot satisfy.
We were made for something more. Sharing that with the world is more than a matter of obedience---it's a matter of public health.
A few weeks ago, a self-described “heretic” tweeted out a message befitting that title, saying, “Jesus was Christ. Buddha was Christ. Muhammad was Christ. Christ is a word for the Universe seeing itself. You are Christ. We are the body of Christ.”
To this, someone else retorted, “If you can’t say something Nicaean, then don’t say it at all.” The joke here is that the Nicene Creed of the fourth century clarified Christian beliefs in the midst of controversies over the nature of Christ, drawing a line between God’s self-revelation in the Bible and human speculation.
Despite the joking nature of this reply, it reminds us of something important. Once we stray from the core beliefs held by Christians since the Church’s earliest days, we risk “exploring” our way into outright false beliefs.
In contrast to their reputation for restrictiveness, the creeds of the Church are liberating. Like railings along a cliffside, the creeds give us the freedom to differ and dispute with fellow believers while remaining free from the fear that we’ll stray so far that we’re no longer Christians at all.
Normally when an Olympian wins the gold, we see happy tears. We see families back home cheering. We see the pride in carrying the national flag around the field. It’s such a pure moment. It never gets old. So, when the Fiji men’s rugby team recently won the gold over New Zealand, there was something about this that was even more pure and enjoyable.
This was the second Olympic gold for the Fijians. They got on their knees, they prayed to God in thanksgiving, and sang a hymn of praise. It was so beautiful. It's a traditional tune that contains these words, “We have overcome, by the blood of the lamb, and the word of the Lord, we have overcome.”
It was a wonderful moment, and a wonderful reminder, that whether we win in rugby, or anything else, the most certain thing in the world is what Jesus Christ has done for us, not what we will ever do.
In 2015, then-Washington D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier assured reporters that legalizing marijuana would not have an effect on crime. “They just want to get a bag of chips and to relax,” she said. “Alcohol is a much bigger problem.”
Six years later and DC is dealing with more than the munchies. Current Police Chief Robert Contee recently declared, “Marijuana undoubtedly is connected to violent crimes.” This in a community with a 20 percent increase in violent crime since Covid.
Contee grew-up in D.C., He knew the smell of marijuana because his dad was an addict. His life was turned around by a mom who taught him about consequences and a community that gave him support. Now, he’s trying to convince D.C. residents and lawmakers that bad ideas, including bad laws, have consequences… and victims.
This will be a tough thing to turn around. Christians will have a role to play, along with a shift in thinking about marijuana. One that matches reality.
In 2016, sixteen-year-old American runner Sydney McLaughlin stepped onto the track at Rio De Janeiro as the youngest Olympic track competitor in decades. But after failing to qualify for the 400 meter hurdle finals in Rio, she stepped back from a seven-figure salary as a pro to strap on a bookbag at the University of Kentucky.
After some focused training and maturing, she told The Guardian, “A lot of my life was trying to prove something, which is an endless cycle that will never fulfill you. My gifts are not to glorify myself. When I stand on the podium, I give the glory to God.”
In this she echoes the determination of another Olympian from a century ago. In the classic film “Chariots of Fire,” the great British runner Eric Liddell explained his motivations: “When I run, I feel His pleasure.”
Sydney earned a world record in the Olympic trials in June. She races for gold tonight in Tokyo, at 10:30 p.m. EST. Whatever the result, her statements testify to finding more purpose in God’s story than trying to write her own.
Minnesota State senator Julia Coleman faced a dilemma. Informed by her doctors that severe complications threatened her unborn twin sons, she had to decide whether to end the life of one child to save the life of the other.
For most people, it would only make sense to “remove” the unhealthy son to preserve the other. But as deeply pro-life Christian, Coleman and her husband declared that they “were never going to choose between our kids.” Following weeks in the NICU, sleepless nights, and thousands of prayers, the Colemans gave birth to both sons, and have since brough both boys home.
No family is promised the kind of miracle that the Colemans experienced. Only a vision of life committed to the priceless value of each and every person will have the clarity in a decision that difficult. For Julia and Jacob Coleman the choice was clear, even in the face of such daunting odds. But the stakes are high, even life and death.
Recently, Anthony Bradley shared a conversation he had with a man who decided to be homeless, not because he took a vow of poverty or had some cataclysmic tragedy. This man was healthy, owned a house, and had recently won the lottery. So, why was he choosing to live on the streets in San Francisco? Because “you can live there, get a job, and never worry about paying rent.”
This strange story reveals the inherent contradictions when it comes to how work is viewed in our culture. On one hand, we work ourselves to the bone as though nothing matters more than. On the other hand, the goal of it all is live a life of leisure, free from having to work at all.
The Bible portrays work as a gift, not the end-all and not a necessary evil either. By working, we steward God’s world and His good gifts, in order to glorify Him, find meaning, and love our neighbors too.
Wycliffe Bible Translators just announced that the Bible has now been translated into 700 languages. According to Executive Director James Poole, “5.7 billion people who speak 700 languages now have the Bible in the language that speaks to them best.”
It’s not clear which language was exactly number 700, since several translations went into circulation around the same time, such as the Huichol language Bible in Mexico, or the Ellomwe language Bible in Malawi, and the Tiv Bible language in Nigeria.
700 Bible translations is a significant milestone toward fulfilling Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations” (MT 28:19).
But there is still plenty of work to do. 5.7 million people with access to the Bible means there are about 1.5 billion who don’t. It also means that we should continue to give to and pray for and support all those working to make the Word of God available to all people in their native language.
There’s a tree on the first and last pages of the Bible. Every major character in the Bible is associated with a tree. Trees are the most-mentioned living things in Scripture other than God and people. And a tree was not only the only thing Jesus ever harmed, but the only thing that could harm Him.
Former emergency room doctor Matthew Sleeth chronicles this pattern of trees in Scripture in his outstanding book Reforesting Faith. He joins Shane Morris on the Colson Center’s Upstream Podcast to make the case that understanding and appreciating trees in God’s “book of nature” helps us better understand His book of Scripture.
But seeing the Bible through the trees also motivates us to be better stewards of creation. When God made humanity, He placed us in a garden and told us to tend it. That command was never revoked. Which means part of how we love God and our neighbor is to keep the world filled—and further fill it—with trees.
The Washington Post recently reported that some stuck-at-home teenagers are finding relief during this coronavirus chaos, from the news cycle, by stepping outside without their phones.
“…spaced a careful six feet apart, high school students are discovering a pastime typically enjoyed by older generations.” They’re taking walks.
One California teen described how she’s explored the trails near her home for the first time. “I could have gone through my entire high school and never gone up here,” she said, her normally clean shoes now caked with mud. And she has a rule for herself: No smart phone.
Studies indicate that just being in nature reduces stress. And that shouldn’t surprise us. We were made to marvel at this beautiful world, placed in a Garden by God to enjoy His handiwork. That some young people are rediscovering that handiwork, even in the midst of so much bad news, is a good thing…
Earlier this year, California’s insurance commissioner declared that health insurers must pay for mastectomies for girls and women with gender dysphoria. Maybe this doesn’t seem shocking. California’s gonna do its California thing after all. Sure, some adults are abusing hormones or hurting their bodies in service to transgender ideology. What’s the big deal?
But to brush this off would be a mistake. Just three years ago, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles revealed in a published study that doctors there had performed two double mastectomies on shockingly young girls: one 14 and one 13.
The next time you hear anyone suggest “There’s nothing to see here, this isn’t happening to kids, this isn’t happening at all,” look to California. It’s happening. It’s already happened.
The author of the Book of Jude said he wanted to write to his fellow Christians about the salvation they share, but that instead he felt compelled to warn them. “These ungodly people pollute their own bodies,” he wrote. “But you, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith… save others by snatching them from the fire.”
Recently, the world learned that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh were grafting the scalps of aborted infants onto the flesh of rodents. And now, prolife group Live Action has uncovered that researchers at a California university has been trading in various body parts of aborted children, specifically genitalia, bladders, and kidneys.
Perhaps most unsettling is the indifference of the people involved to what in any other context would be considered barbaric. Emails uncovered included pleasantries about the weekend and hopes for a happy holiday, exchanged between the parties amidst logs of body parts bought and sold.
This is what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” The great crimes of history are often committed, not by monsters, but by ordinary folks in day to day life. And so building a culture of life will involve not only passing laws and attending marches, but exposing the scale of assault on human dignity that passes in the name of science.
My daughters loved the “Little House on the Prairie” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Part of what makes these stories so captivating is what it took for pioneer families to survive the brutal elements as they headed west in the late 1800s.
In fact, in 1900 the infant mortality in the U.S. was at about 10 percent. For every 1,000 babies born, over 100 did not live to their first birthday. Due to incredible medical advances, that rate had plummeted to just point-five percent by 2018.
Before we are tempted to celebrate, however, here’s a tragic caveat. Also in 2018, 1.89 out of every ten reported pregnancies were aborted, according to the CDC.
In other words, the true infant mortality rate today is worse than at the turn of the last century. This isn’t progress. More medical technology cannot address the deadly and dehumanizing worldview that has infected the modern world. Only the idea that every human life bears God’s image will turn these numbers around.
Recently, Christian music legend Amy Grant appeared on the pro-LGBT podcast “Proud Radio.” Asked about gay artists in country music, Grant said that she thinks it’s important to “set a welcome table” for people of all sexual orientations because: “None of us are a surprise to God. Nothing about who we are or what we’ve done.” The host understood these words as an endorsement of his gay lifestyle.
But nothing Grant said is technically wrong. God does love and welcome sinners. He isn’t surprised by who we are or what we’ve done. But in this cultural moment, to speak only the culturally acceptable truths about love and acceptance while keeping silent on the offensive truths about sin and salvation ends up not telling the truth, at all.
We all want to say things that will keep our secular counterparts listening. But if we really believe in the power of God’s love to overcome our sin, the easy and misleading answer won’t do.
Philosopher Blaise Pascal was best known for his so-called “wager” that believing in God is the smartest decision, even if you’re not sure God exists. What many don’t know is that Pascal was a pioneer in the psychology of persuasion.
Heated disagreements are common in social media, writes Olivia Goldhill at “Quartz.” But Pascal suggested centuries ago that if you want to convince someone of your position, you don’t begin by telling them they’re wrong. You understand where they’re coming from, admit ways they’re right, but suggest they maybe haven’t seen the whole picture.
“No one is offended at not seeing everything,’ wrote Pascal. “But [they don’t] like to be mistaken.”
Another tip? Lead people to the answer, but let them discover it on their own. “People are generally better persuaded by reasons they have themselves discovered than by those from the minds of others.”
These are great tips, especially for Christians, who are entrusted with the most important truths there are, and who are to speak those truths in love.
Creators of a new children’s book have raised more than $20,000 online to publish their project. The title? What’s an Abortion, Anyway? Creators say they also plan to send 300 copies to libraries across the country.
“We believe in building a world for kids and adults where abortion is normalized as another outcome of pregnancy,” reads the fundraising site. But this raises an important question. If abortion is “just another outcome of pregnancy,” why does it require a $20,000 effort to “normalize” it? How normal can something be if it takes a fundraising and propaganda effort just to convince the world how normal it is?
Here’s one thing this sad campaign gets right: it is incredibly important what we teach our children. Very young kids don’t need to know what an abortion is until parents feel they’re ready. But it’s never too early to teach our kids that each person, no matter how small, was created on purpose by a good God and therefore has an inherent dignity no one can, or should, ever steal.
Chuck Colson was passionate that Christians need to be in every aspect of society. The culture says we can be in any aspect of society, but we’re not allowed to be Christian, in the full sense of the word. Being a Christian means our motivations and interactions are driven by God’s guidance and our desire to be a part of Him restoring all things.
That’s why we’re offering a special short course on restoring all things. We have Os Guinness, Chris Brooks, and Angela Franks slated to encourage us and help us understand how we can join what God is doing in every sphere of Creation.
A gift of any amount to the Colson Center will give you access to this special short course. Give your gift today and gain access to the short course on restoring all things by visiting breakpoint.org/july2021.
In a truly bizarre opinion piece in Scientific American, Allison Hopper argues that questioning evolution is a form of white supremacy. She strains to connect criticism of evolution with racism, even suggesting that those who take the account of Adam and Eve as history are trying to exclude people of color from their ancestry.
As one pastor pointed out on Twitter, it’s hard to see how the biblical account of all humans being descended from “one blood” and made in God’s image is racist, while the Darwinian account of primitive man emerging from Africa is non-racist. But to say Hopper whitewashes evolution’s record on race is an understatement.
Darwinism has a long and tragic history of motivating white supremacy — a history that goes back to Darwin himself, who in his book, Descent of Man, infamously compared people of African and Australian descent with apes.
Scripture, too, has been twisted by racists to support their ideas. But Scientific American conveniently ignores the fact that Darwinism needs no twisting. Some background reading might be in order before their next opinion piece.
One of the problems with skepticism is that again and again, the archaeological record continues to affirm the Bible’s version of history. According to The Jerusalem Post, Israeli scholars recently found an inscription from ancient times, the name “Jerubbaal” written on a jug from the 12th century BC.
If you remember your Bible stories, you’ll know that Jerubbaal was another name for Gideon, the Israelite judge who defeated the Midianites with a dramatic night attack using only 300 men. He’s a pivotal character in the Book of Judges, both as a hero for his people and a warning about the importance of “ending well.”
The article notes that there’s no way of knowing for certain that this Jerubbaal is the same as the Bible’s. But, when you’ve got the right name in the right place at the right time, it’s enough to make you wonder. It pokes yet another hole in the knee-jerk skepticism of our cultural elites who’d otherwise see biblical stories as just another fairy tale.
What is the image of God? Here's what my friend Dr. Glenn Sunshine said:
In the ancient Near East when someone claimed to be the image of a god, it meant that the god had given that person authority to rule in his or her name. The proclaimer was literally the face of God on the earth and had that god's authority to rule. It was the title given to kings. We actually see it in Genesis where God says, “Let Us make man in Our image and let him have dominion.” The image of God is found, ultimately, in our working out of the cultural mandate.
This was part of my conversation with Dr. Glenn Sunshine, and it is part of Wilberforce Weekend Online. For $49, you can get all of the content about the idea of the image of God from a variety of angles. Visit wilberforceweekend.org.
Tim Keller recently reviewed the new book by Chris Bail, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing. Most critiques of technology blame it for making us worse people, but Keller says that’s backwards. We are the real problem, not our technological toys.
Many people resort to social media as a way of establishing identity. Our sense of who we are rests in what others see and say about us. As Keller says, “We need validation from someone outside, we cannot validate ourselves.” But, rather than recognizing who we are in the identity God has given us, we are trapped in the image others give us.
The Christian worldview offers something far better. We are not left in the marred and broken state that people often define us. Our identity is best understood in what God intended for us in creation, with the hope of being restored to that by Christ.
Last month the New York Post congratulated the first transgender contestant for winning the Miss Nevada USA Pageant, saying that the biological male was “making history.”
Kataluna Enriquez bested 21 other contestants, in the usual beauty pageant stuff including wearing skimpy swimsuits. For years, these contests have been justly criticized as sexist and objectifying to women. But now that a man is competing, they’re “historic”?
Certainly not like the first man on the moon, or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, or the signing of the Magna Carta? I doubt that “men in beauty pageants” will earn an entry in our history books next to “George Washington.”
If these steps in the trans revolution are remembered as historic, it will be as signs of a culture that lost its way and indulged in unhealthy delusions.
Those who declare that trans men are “making history” should take care. After all, History is littered with “historic” moments, once praised, that are now derided.
“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. God from God, Light from Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father.” The Nicene Creed’s description of God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, was written to counteract the heresy that Jesus was just another creation.
John 1 clarifies the Son is actually the very agent of creation and the eternal God himself. What C. S. Lewis describes as the central event of human history: the Son took on humanity, a mortal body from the Virgin Mary and a soul untainted by Adam’s sin.
He did this for us and for our salvation, to bear the weight of our guilt and rise again to be our high priest. He is the fulfillment of the ancient promise, “My dwelling place will be with them. I will be their God and they will be my people.” In Jesus, our God is with us.
The Holy Spirit has been called the forgotten God. But He’s also, according to Scripture, at the heart of the Christian life. “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” says the Nicene Creed, “The Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son is both worshiped and glorified. Who has spoken to us through the prophets.”
Now, there’s a longstanding debate between Eastern and Western churches about whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from the Son as well. What Christians agree on, however, is that the Spirit is God. He’s a person, not a force.
He inspired the Scriptures. He raised Jesus Christ from the dead. He’s the comforter sent by Jesus, the One who gives us ears to hear the Gospel and who intercedes for us when we pray, indwelling us to this day. We are His temples, and He is the pledge of our inheritance. He guarantees that the faith we now confess in the Triune God will one day be sight.
G.K. Chesterton said that gratitude was “nearly the greatest of all human duties, (and) nearly the most difficult.”
It is the greatest of human duties because, as Paul wrote the Corinthians, “what do we have that we did not receive?” Truth, tradition, technologies, medicine, democracy, relative peace, are all things that were given to us by those who’ve gone before.
And yet, to paraphrase Jesus, even pagans can give thanks when things are going well. Expressing gratitude in a year like this, is much more difficult. Things could have gone better. We mourn for our friends and neighbors who’ve faced sickness, financial struggles, and relational fractures throughout this year.
Gratitude in difficult times is what Jonathan Edwards called “gracious gratitude.” We give thanks, not just for what God has done for us and not for what we’ve received, but for who He is. This gratitude is relational, not conditional. Though our world may shatter, we are secure in the One who made us and who saved us, and we can never be separated from His love.
Abortion isn’t just an American issue. For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet.
A few weeks ago, a federal judge struck down abortion across the country. It just wasn’t ours.
At the beginning of this year, Argentina became the largest Latin American country to legalize abortion. Abortion advocates around the world hailed the new law as a great success, even though its parameters are moderate by U.S. standards, only allowing the grisly procedure up to 14 weeks in most cases. Thankfully, a judge has put the brakes on this law, at least temporarily.
Last fall, the Guatemalan President rebuffed attempts by Planned Parenthood to bring its “services” to his country. Arguing that life begins at conception, he declared that his government would not support “the creation, registration or start-up of any organization that goes against life.”
This serves as an important reminder. Our support for life isn’t about winning political battles at home. It certainly can’t end at our own shores since abortion supporters are not shy about exporting it abroad. The right to life is a creational issue, rooted in the image of God, borne by all human beings in all nations of the world.
Last week at the U.S. Olympic Trials, an American hammer thrower turned away from the flag while the United States National Anthem played. Gwen Berry later told reporters that the national anthem “doesn’t speak” for her.
Berry isn’t the first athlete to shun the anthem.
Looking ahead to July 4th this weekend, it’s worth reflecting that had a group of men — imperfect, brave, brilliant, and sometimes morally inconsistent men — not written and signed our Declaration of Independence 245 years ago, Gwen Berry today may not have the right to freely speak her mind about her country.
For all the sins of our founders, the Declaration of Independence wrote into law not merely good principles on which to build a country, but principles they saw written already on creation: that humans were made by a Maker, in His Image, and are therefore the owners of unalienable rights and dignity. July 4th is a time to be proud of those ideals, even if we don’t always live up to them.
Recently, The Atlantic described a problem unique to the 21st century: “stateless” babies.
Here’s the situation: a gay couple uses their own sperm, an egg donor, and a surrogate mother. The result is twin boys, born in Canada. One was genetically related to his American father; the other to the partner, an Israeli citizen. The men wanted to bring the twins to the U.S. but one wasn't an American citizen. Diplomatic woes ensued.
As the reporter put it, “When a child can have five possible parents, whose citizenship counts?” The exploitation and cold consumerism that create this kind of legal riddle shouldn’t be considered “unintended consequences” of assisted reproduction; they are inherent in the process of separating babies from the moms and dads who create them.
This puzzle isn’t really about solving an immigration puzzle. Only recognizing that every child has the right to his or her own father and mother can do that.
It’s no mystery why our news feeds are filled with information on what’s gone wrong in the world. After all, we’re more likely to click on stories that make us angry or sad than ones about sunshine and happiness. But sad tales aren’t the only ones worth reading.
Writing at Juicy Ecumenism, Arielle Leviste recently shared some good news out of Africa. Normally, when Sudan has made the news, it’s been about famine, war, persecution, and so on. But now, with the passing of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms Act, Sudan has repealed former laws which enshrined “blasphemy, female genital mutilation, alcohol consumption” and other common practices from hardliners in the Muslim world.
This is a good story worth hearing, simply as an encouragement in light of our too-dark timelines. More than this, it’s a helpful challenge to a common misconception among many Christians. Because of the loss of any Christian consensus in our culture, we can trick ourselves into thinking that things will always go from bad to worse. But good news happens, God is still working, and He is making all things new, even now.
When Richard Hutchison was born last year, there wasn’t much hope he’d survive. Richard was born five months premature, and weighed 11.9 ounces. No one born that early and that small had ever survived.
After more than six months in the hospital, with his parents commuting in each day and dodging hospital COVID restrictions, Richard went home. And he just celebrated his first birthday.
The wonderful work of the doctors and nurses at Children’s Minnesota hospital is an example of common grace, where God uses the skills and dedication of these healthcare workers to achieve the impossible. What couldn’t be done was done, and this little boy owes his life to their remarkable God-given abilities.
The story also exposes the hypocrisy of America’s radical pro-abortion regime — medical professionals using their skills not to save but to kill children like Richard. His survival should inspire us to fight for them.
In 2019, on Easter Sunday, Islamic extremists bombed Zion Church in the nation of Sri Lanka. One of those who were killed was a woman named Girija, who left behind a husband and a 12-year-old daughter named Dukashini. Before her death, Girija would read the Bible every night to her husband, who is illiterate.
The terrorists may have thought that the act of violence would break this Christian family, but they were mistaken. As Open Doors reports, “since her mother’s death, Dukashini … reads God’s Word to her father.”
The book of Daniel is her favorite, but she chose to read the Psalm 23 for the people at Open Doors. Even if you don’t speak Sinhalese (like I don’t) I think you will find the recording of Dukashimi reading this Psalm to be simply beautiful. After all, she actually walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Come to BreakPoint.org and we’ll link you to the recording at Open Doors.
Each year hundreds of Christians who are hoping to more deeply understand their faith, understand their world, and understand how to live out their faith in the world, study with us at the Colson Center as Colson Fellows.
The program is the deepest dive into Christian worldview that I know of, with an intensive reading program, online interaction with Christian thought leaders, a group study in one of 55 regional cohorts around the country or by one of our online cohorts.
But the goal isn’t merely to think, it’s to live our faith where God has placed us in this time and in this culture. So Colson Fellows work with mentors and develop a three-year plan for action in ministry.
This year's class of Colson Fellows is finishing their training now. Applications are being taken for class. Don't wait, the deadline to apply is July 1st.
Learn more at ColsonFellows.org.
Sci-fi and horror movies often feature the brilliant but mad scientist corrupted by his own arrogance, and the tantalizing question: “What if…?” before proceeding down a path of inhuman destruction.
These fictional warnings against scientific hubris are increasingly moving from the screen to real life. According to recent articles by both the Susan B. Anthony List and The Federalist, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have been grafting scalps from aborted infants onto rodents.
This barbaric practice, justified of course by “science,” shocks and triggers our moral gag reflex. We all know it’s wrong. But why? Are there any moral grounds in our culture today to explain why this is not only repugnant but wrong? If the human body is nothing more than malleable material to fulfill our whims and curiosity and self-expression, there’s no real moral barrier between “we can” and “we should.”
As Peter Kreeft observed, just as our technologies have made so many new things possible, we’ve become moral infants. Bad timing.
There are certain moments in history, such as the fall of the Roman Empire or the Enlightenment, when it's obvious just how much the cultural ground is shifting. Cultural norms which may have worked before to foster social cohesion and the good life no longer suffice. Certain ideas, certain shared ways of thinking can no longer be taken for granted. It's at these hinge points that Christians are forced to remember who we are in the image of God. And to rethink our place in the overarching story of Redemption. I'm so humbled — and driven — by what I see God doing through the Colson Center. The Colson Center seeks to serve you and your family as well as your churches and schools to rise to the challenges of this cultural moment. Please prayerfully consider partnering with us with a fiscal year-end gift. Thank you for your generosity. To give your gift, just go to breakpoint.org/broadcast. That's breakpoint.org/broadcast. Please support the Colson Center today.
Dr. Anthony Bradley of the King's College has long been a champion of the importance of fathers, not only to children, but also to society as a whole. Responding recently to a truly horrific story of a child murder last year, Bradley recently tweeted, “As I track male teen murderers this summer, one variable stands out: dad deprivation. Dad-deprived boys put us all at risk. I don't understand why nonprofits, churches, and social justice organizations don't focus on reaching unmarried fathers. Fathers are crime prevention.”
With so many voices in our culture content to show dads as pointless or useless oafs or even worse, both wider society and the Church continue to do a poor job of highlighting the centrality of dads to human flourishing. As Ryan Anderson has put it, kids don't just need parents, they need mothers and fathers. Trying to live without either one isn't just bad for kids. It's bad for society.
USA Today reports that conservatives in the UK “got their knickers in a twist” when graduate students at Oxford’s Magdalen College removed a 70-year-old painting of Queen Elizabeth II, the reigning monarch of Britain. According to the student group, the painting was an unwelcome symbol of “recent colonial history.”
It was strange that USA Today pointed to conservatives as the irrational, emotional ones here, instead of the students who didn’t know that the Queen has overseen the largest wave of decolonization in British history, particularly in Africa. Then again, cancel culture isn’t known for discernment.
Of course, not every historical or living figure is worth celebrating. But this quest for morally spotless figures has its own blind spots and more than slight religious overtones. Savior figures who’ve never sinned and need no forgiveness are hard to find, and this generation of moral outrage-ists is in for a rude shock when the next generation of woke activists judges them.
I’m going to say it—a book is better than a phone.
Stop me if you’ve heard this: a guy is walking his dog right beside a very busy road and he almost dies because he’s staring straight into, wait for it . . . a book!
You were expecting it to be his phone, right?
If you’re going to risk your life, at least do it for the printed word. We might tell ourselves there’s no difference between reading on paper and reading on a screen. But as Dr. Martin Tobin writes, “Our eyes lie to us.”
“Cognitive scientists have discovered that reading is not only a visual activity, but also a bodily activity,” Tobin writes. “A book is a physical object . . . you see and feel the texture of its pages. Leafing back and forth provides a mental map of the entire text, aiding comprehension …and recall.”
And, of course, when we read a book, we’re not tempted to check email, voicemail, Facebook, texts, and on and on.
So put down the phone. Grab a real book. But avoid traffic when you do so.
For more on faith and culture, come to BreakPoint.org
Everything we do at the Colson Center, including the Point and BreakPoint commentaries and the BreakPoint podcast, is designed to offer clarity on the culture from a Christian worldview.
But the goal isn’t just to think clearly. It’s also to live redemptively. And if you’re ready for this kind of deep dive into Christian worldview, check out our Colson Fellows Program.
Colson Fellows sign up for nine months of intense training in worldview and culture. The program’s world-class faculty, readings, webinars, and residencies equip Christians to confidently approach culture with biblical clarity.
Colson Fellows also leave the program with a 3-year plan for action and ministry. Colson fellows have taken their Christian worldview training to state legislatures, board rooms, schools, medical research, prisons, racial reconciliation efforts—in other words, into every area of life.
That’s the vision: Christian leaders, who are trained and eager to apply biblical truth with a clear vision and plan, planted everywhere across the culture. Learn more at colsonfellows.org.
In a recent op-ed at CNN, a doctor argued that “bodily autonomy” should be the highest moral objective in medicine. In other words, if a patient wants to do something to his or her body, doctors should comply even if they don’t think it’s best.
The obvious context of this op-ed, especially obvious to anyone who’s ever attempted to disagree with their doctors, is gender transition. The doctor smartly offers a philosophical take, since medical justifications for cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating surgeries are lacking.
In claiming that her own moral judgment shouldn’t inform her treatment decisions, the doctor misses that that claim is itself a moral judgment, as is the claim that a patient’s bodily autonomy matters, much less is to be preferred.
In fact, the very idea that we should help and heal the sick with compassion at all is a moral claim. A doctor may claim moral neutrality in medicine all day long, but there’s no such thing.
Responding to a church’s tweet that celebrated all “sexual orientations and gender identities,” a self-described atheist retorted, “[I]f your church is just preaching the exact same thing as the broader culture, what’s the point of going to church? Just imbibe the party line somewhere with more comfortable seats.”
CS Lewis once said something similar: “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”
One of the biggest mistakes the Church can make is the vain and relentless pursuit of relevance. All indications consistently show it’s a losing proposition.
What makes the Church meaningful to a watching world is what historian Tom Holland has called Christianity’s “weird stuff.” You know, those moral standards and ideas that don’t jibe with modern sensibilities. Otherwise we might as well, as St. Paul put it, “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
My friend Dan Darling recently offered insight on an oddity of Christian subculture. He tweeted, “If ‘stop fighting culture wars’ means rejecting irrational fear and worship of politics, yes. If it means ignoring Jesus’ command to love our neighbors by using our voice and vote to speak and work against injustices that hurt our neighbors’ flourishing, then no.”
Most Christians agree that the Church should never politicize the Gospel. It’s a complaint we rarely applied to ourselves, only to others. For example, pastors who find it “too political” to speak out against abortion or religious liberty march in a Black Lives Matter protest, as a “Gospel issue.” Churches who champion biblical sexual ethics avoid the “controversial” questions of race and refugees.
We can’t pick and choose which elements of Christianity deserve a public hearing. Any true, lived-out faith will embrace the whole counsel of God, not just the bits that don’t offend our political allies. The Christian worldview should never be reduced to politics and culture. It must always engage them.
Last month LiveAction shared a story from the New Zealand Herald about a couple whose surrogacy experience went terribly wrong. After a surrogate mom volunteered to carry a couple’s IVF-conceived child, she began suffering prenatal depression and opted for an abortion.
The biological parents were devastated and helpless. Their story is one of many ways surrogacy goes wrong.
But does it ever go right?
Even if the surrogate mother had carried the baby to term, the child would be deprived of its biological mom. In cases where donor gametes are involved, the children of surrogacy lose their right to their biological mom or dad, or both. Increasingly, when the intended parents are a same-sex couple, the child is denied a mommy or daddy altogether.
Surrogacy may attempt to fix brokenness, but it always creates more. Even when everything goes according to plan, there’s a cost paid by the only one who didn’t consent: the child.
This deconversion story, I can get into.
With so many stories of “exvangelicals” and why they left the faith, and celebrity Christians “deconstructing” their faith, including some formerly strong voices for Christianity and the Church, it’s important to note that it’s not just Christians walking away from their faiths.
Last week, the Atheists in Kenya Society issued a regretful announcement that the secretary of their organization, Seth Mahiga, had resigned because “he has found Jesus Christ and is no longer interested in promoting atheism in Kenya.” Praise God!
This is a reminder that Christ is building His Church in places beyond the United States and North America. While we talk of the growth of non-belief in the West, the Holy Spirit is working in places often ignored, drawing men and women and children to Christ.
I pray that Mr. Mahiga will follow the footsteps of Justin Martyr, Augustine of Hippo, and C.S. Lewis, who came to faith later in life, converting from other belief systems, and were used by God to build His Church.
Recently, a reporter who went undercover to investigate the growing international commercial surrogacy industry in Kenya found that Kenya has no real laws on the books governing surrogacy. Some would-be parents, including wealthy international couples, fudge the rules to get what they want. In some cases, couples have convinced the surrogate to illegally list their names on the child’s birth certificate – which legally erases the mother from the child’s life, forever.
With one-third of Kenyans living in poverty, and the cost of surrogacy less than a third of what it cost in the United States, the situation is ripe for exploitation, corruption, and violence.
And there is no official count of the number of babies born by surrogacy in Kenya. Every one is born into a tragic situation. Even if it were just one, it’s awful. Neither babies nor poor women are bodies for sale. And every child has a right to their own mother and father.
On May 26th, CNN informed the world that the Old Testament people of God didn’t always follow the Mosaic dietary laws. Specifically, Israeli researchers found remains of catfish and sharks in Jerusalem – a big no-no according to the Torah.
While the academic sources for the story are far more restrained, the CNN piece leads off with hints of something more significant. The lede provocatively asserts that “Ancient Judeans ate non-kosher fish at a time when it was thought to have been prohibited in the Bible.”
It’s an interesting find, but not really much of a revelation about the Israelites. The Old Testament is pretty clear about how they struggled to follow God’s law, even falling into idol worship before they even got to the Promised Land! Much of the Old Testament, in fact, is God’s prophets mourning about Israel’s failure.
The far more shocking part of this story is what God did to rescue His disobedient people. You can read about it in the New Testament!
Each year hundreds of Christians who are hoping to more deeply understand their faith, understand their world, and understand how to live out their faith in the world, study with us at the Colson Center as Colson Fellows.
The program is the deepest dive into Christian worldview that I know of, with an intensive reading program, online interaction with Christian thought leaders, a group study in one of 55 regional cohorts around the country or by one of our online cohorts.
But the goal isn’t merely to think, it’s to live our faith where God has placed us in this time and in this culture. So Colson Fellows work with mentors and develop a three-year plan for action in ministry.
This year's class of Colson Fellows is finishing their training now. Applications are being taken for class. Don't wait, the deadline to apply is July 1st.
Learn more at ColsonFellows.org.
Recently, Oscar-nominated actress Ellen Page, who very publicly came out as transgender over the past year, shared a series of topless photos, showing where her breasts used to be, before surgery.
Last week, Sixty Minutes told the story of other people who had “transitioned,” but changed their mind and then detransitioned.
It’s not hard to guess which story in this cultural moment is celebrated as courageous, and which one is being at best ignored, and at worst criticized.
This has it exactly backwards. Page’s story aligns with the new gender ideology, now accepted as absolute and unquestionable by most cultural power centers. Her choices have been widely celebrated.
But the people covered by “Sixty Minutes” aren’t even supposed to exist. Their story contradicts the cure-all promises made about “transitioning.” Their choices are not being celebrated.
I think it’s pretty clear which of these folks have shown true courage.
John Cena has built a persona, both in the wrestling ring and on the silver screen, as a tough guy. Last week, however, Cena made headlines for contritely apologizing to China for referring to Taiwan as a country. And he did it in Chinese, even.
As tempting as it is to get snarky about the whole scene, this story is about far more than one celebrity. Millions of dollars are on the line with a new Fast and Furious film, and Hollywood hasn’t been willing to criticize Beijing since Seven Years in Tibet twenty-four years ago. Beijing’s oppression of Taiwan and Hong Kong and Christians and Muslim Uyghurs has only gotten worse since then. Yet Hollywood and much of corporate America turn a blind eye, while criticizing Georgia and North Carolina.
Of course, the pressure of having to choose between your career and your convictions is very likely in the future for every Christian. As Christ warned, our faith won’t survive unless it is built on the Solid Rock.
Are our neighbors means or ends? Last week, The New York Times ran an opinion piece with the headline “Attacks on Jews are a Gift to the Right.” Its writer, Michelle Goldberg, argued that the dramatic uptick in attacks on Jewish people around the world, including the U.S., is really troubling because it makes it more politically difficult to criticize Israel. The appalling suggestion is not only evidence of a particular kind of anti-Semitism that plagues the left, but of what happens when politics becomes religion—people are seen first as either means or obstacles to political ends, and only later as human beings. The logic of Goldberg’s piece is very similar to that of Hamas launching rockets from places like hospitals and schools. Treating people as political pawns or using them as human shields are two points on the same evil spectrum. In both cases, human value is determined by and cheapened by a utilitarian calculus.
Malta has been called the most beautiful country in Europe, if not the world. While that’s clearly a subjective opinion, here’s something that’s not: Malta is the safest place in Europe to be an unborn child.
Ninety-eight percent Roman Catholic, Malta is the only European country to prohibit abortion, except in cases of ectopic pregnancies.
Recently, when a member of Malta’s Parliament introduced a bill to decriminalize abortion, the reaction was swift and fierce. Malta’s Life Network said they were “shocked beyond belief” at the idea.
A leader from Labour Party told the bill’s sponsor to “get stuffed” and said “no to abortion” (And that’s the center-left party!).
Malta’s President declared he “will never sign a bill that involves the authorization of murder,” and would have “no problem” resigning instead.
Pristine beaches, 300 days of sunshine, and even center-left politicians unapologetically defending the sanctity of life? Maybe Malta is Europe’s most beautiful nation.
It's good to remember. If we don't, we risk our character.
G. K. Chesterton said that gratitude is the queen of the virtues. Today of all days we should remember this. Realizing we owe a debt to those who sacrificed for our good encourages us to live for the good of future generations ourselves.
In his classic book, "The Crisis of Our Age," sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin described the difference between cultures on the decline and cultures that were progressing. The main difference, he said, was whether the people in that culture were living for immediate gratification or ordering their lives around higher ideals that drove them to build for the future.
Out-of-control national and personal debt is evidence we struggle to live for the future. Remembering the sacrifices of others on our behalf can restore our vision. So amidst the cookouts and activities of this memorial day, take a minute to remember and be thankful for those who gave their lives for us. It'll do us all good.
At the recent Wilberforce Weekend, Dr. Ryan Anderson offered a succinct but sound statement about the Christian view of the body:
"No one is born in the wrong body, because you are not 'in' a body. You are a body."
Interestingly, when a colleague tweeted out this line, it was met with astonishment and opposition in the Twitterverse. Here’s why:
In place of a Christian understanding of creation, many have instead embraced a new form of an ancient heresy. Gnosticism is the faith that just won’t die. It both rejects the inherent goodness of the physical world and elevates inner knowledge as being special and spiritual and true.
Christianity has always held that the physical aspect of our creation is not optional. In fact, God called it “good.”
In a world where so many are taught that their bodies get in the way of their true selves, the news that they were created good is good news indeed.
In a recent radio interview, atheist Richard Dawkins was asked about a tweet in which he suggested that pregnant women should abort babies with Down syndrome in order to decrease the world’s suffering.
Even using his utilitarian calculus, which determines moral value and worth based on a thing’s usefulness, Dawkins admitted (when pressed on it) that he really had no idea whether or not Down syndrome children decrease happiness.
But get this: earlier in this same conversation, Dawkins was asked whether religion was a societal good since it helps people cope emotionally with difficulty. He said “no.” It doesn’t matter if religion helps if it’s “downright false.”
So, which is the highest good, Mr. Dawkins? Truth or happiness?
It’s interesting how the greatest atheist of this generation cannot get through a 20-minute radio interview about real life issues without breaking his own rules. It certainly doesn’t inspire much confidence in his worldview.
Last week, Shopify Ceo Tobias Lutke sent an email to all of his employees to draw clear lines between work and family. He discouraged the notion that Shopify functions as a family. He wrote, “Shopify, like any other for-profit company, he wrote, is not a family. The very idea is preposterous ... The dangers of ‘family thinking’ are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go.” He then listed a few other reasons, and added that Shopify was also not a government.
More and more American workers do expect their workplaces to step into roles that have no business end intended, like being therapists, moral spokespersons, or political activists.
Theologian Abraham Kuyper suggested a much better framework which recognizes how God created different spheres of human life and ordained them to operate. When any sphere oversteps its bounds or when a sphere fails, social break results. CEO Tobias Lukte may not have had all that in mind, but it's a really helpful idea.
According to Britain’s The Daily Mail, a Cambridge University chaplain recently found himself in an accidental religious service. It was supposed to be a lecture on bullying and diversity, but instead the speaker led the staff in loudly chanting, “Smash heteronormativity!”
According to the article, the event was a cross between a revival service and a totalitarian moment of collective rage.
Still, the intensity of those pushing critical theories and the new sexual orthodoxy shouldn’t surprise us. They sense that something is wrong with the world and they demand justice. Many of course miss why they think there should be justice, and why they care! Every human heart, even those who reject God, are made for Him.
It’s a big void to fill, which is why filling it is often so intense. The rage typical of our time is in reality strong evidence that God exists and that we bear His image.
One of the things that the Christian worldview offers is dignity to women that is not found in other worldviews throughout human history. Author Rebecca McLaughlin spoke about this at our annual Wilberforce Weekend conference. Here is an excerpt from Rebecca’s talk:
Sometimes we celebrate and uphold marriage and motherhood at the expense of all other things God calls women to do. Some say a woman’s highest calling is to be a wife and mother. But it is actually to follow Jesus. Some women are called to that as wives, or as wives and mothers. Some are called to follow Jesus as single people. The Bible gives us an elevated view of both.
To hear the rest of Rebecca McLaughlin’s talk, download this episode of the Strong Women podcast on your favorite podcast app.
The Book of Acts begins with Peter and the Apostles providing basic care for widows in the Jerusalem church. It ends with Paul returning to Jerusalem, bringing contributions from the newer gentile churches for what might be called famine relief.
The Church today faces a similar crisis. It’s not as much a famine of food as it is a famine of freedom and tolerance. Christians in India, for example, are an oppressed minority. As the nation reels from a new wave of Covid-19, believers often end up at the back of the line for medical supplies like ventilators.
The suffering of Christ’s Church comes in various forms. Certainly there is persecution in India and around the world. There’s also the constant suffering of Christians as a result of the fallen world.. We must pray for our brothers and sisters and, like Christians have throughout history, do whatever we can to help.
What if it’s not inevitable.
What if the next step in the sexual revolution is not inevitable. What if a backlash to a transgender dogma that’s clearly overstepped legal and parental authority is in the air
Carl Trueman thinks so, and his prediction seems vindicated by the recent decision of Karalinska Hospital in Sweden, one of the world’s most renowned medical establishments, to end the practice of prescribing puberty-blockers to minors.
The hospital cited the high risk-to-benefit ratio of hormonal interventions in children to justify their decision. What’s called the “Dutch Protocol,” of blocking puberty and then administering cross-sex hormones, may be falling out of favor. The National Health Service has suspended new hormonal interventions for minors under 16, and there’s growing resistance across Finland too.
Chemically altering the bodies of healthy children after teaching them to hate their bodies isn’t just bad medicine; it’s malpractice. Turning around from this ledge is progress, and proves a jump over it isn’t inevitable.
Recently, an NPR story described a curriculum change at the historically African-American Howard University. The school announced that it would soon dissolve its classics department, the section of academia devoted to the Greco-Roman thinkers at the foundation of Western civilization.
In response, Harvard scholar Dr. Cornell West rebuked Howard for “diminishing the light of wisdom and truth” that inspired great black leaders like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. West rebuked Howard for a failure to make “the distinction between Western civilization and philosophy on the one hand, and Western crimes on the other,” calling it part of the “massive failure” in education.
Dr. West is absolutely right. Too many institutions consciously reject the accumulated wisdom of the ages, what G.K. Chesteron called “the democracy of the dead.” And the worst part of doing that, which C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery,” is the assumption that we, today, are somehow more virtuous than those in the past.
The April jobs report from the Labor Department was, to understate it, not good. U.S. employers filled only one-fourth of the expected one million jobs. And, that same month, unemployment claims went up.
The data, along with a growing number of anecdotes from business owners, suggests that one reason for the disappointing numbers is that many people are choosing not to work. The increased unemployment benefits during the pandemic are a disincentive.
By no means is it true that everyone on unemployment is just being lazy or gaming the system. Still, if the government pays people enough to stay home, they will. Theologian Ron Nash once put it this way, we have to help people with our heads as well as our hearts.
We know this is true when it comes to international aid, disaster relief, and efforts to alleviate poverty. It’s true in a pandemic too. Otherwise all of our helping will only, in the end, hurt.
Recently, the New York Times reported that U.S. population growth is now at its second lowest rate in history. Lower birth rates devastate a country’s ability to ward off labor shortages, compete economically, and take care of its elderly.
The question is, why is this happening now?
One overlooked factor is the power of bad ideas: particularly the treatment of sex as a commodity, commitment as optional, and children as a burden. Children are often seen today as obstacles, not blessings, getting in the way of making money and satisfying our desires.
But this view misses the awesome responsibility and source of immense joy children are. Every person bears the image of God, so whenever families produce children, they mirror God to the world. Sure kids are sometimes irritating, but they’re often hilarious, and they always remind us that life isn’t about ourselves.
That’s a message a culture on the brink of a demographic crisis desperately needs to hear.
Can a leader make an impact in culture by recognizing the image of God? Looking at the background of our 2020-2021 Wilberforce Award recipient, the answer is a resounding yes.
We recognize Pastor Bob Fu’s tireless advocacy for tens of millions of Chinese Christians who live under constant threat of persecution. After converting to Christianity post-college, Doctor Fu became active in the Chinese house church movement. He and his wife, Heidi, were jailed for “illegal evangelism.” After their release, they fled to Hong Kong and then to the U.S. In 2002, Fu founded ChinaAid to support the persecuted church in China.
Bob Fu is a champion for the image of God, tirelessly engaged in defending the right to life of so many of our brothers and sisters in China. His simple example of steady faithfulness in the Gospel is what the Wilberforce Award was created for, and we are honored to recognize him this year. For more information visit www.wilberforceweekend.org.
Sociologist Philip Rieff wrote about “death works”—cultural activities or expressions that serve no purpose except to tear down tradition and belief in the sacred.
Recently, Culture of Life Africa founder, Obianuju Ekeocha, took to Twitter to highlight an especially appalling death work. Bloomberg Quicktake featured a video on an art exhibit in New York City called “Abortion is Normal,” in which over 50 artists celebrate and defend the so-called “right to choose,” in bizarre and even grotesque ways.
The exhibit is described as a way to push back against abortion restrictions, but the pieces really speak to the central place death plays in the pro-choice movement.
For Rieff, abortion itself was a death work. It ends not just a life but a culture’s belief in life and that sex has a necessary connection with new humans. As Obianuju Ekeocha reminds us, “Abortion is vile and ugly.” That can’t be covered up with paint or anything else.
Progressive Christians often say that the Church in America is failing because it is stuck in the past. If only Christians would lose their hang-ups about sex and doctrine, then young people might find the church relevant and listen to what it has to say.
The reality is different. Take the PCUSA denomination, which has been at the forefront of shifting stances to be more inclusive and up to date. They’ve been hemorrhaging members for years, going from over 2 million in 2010 to 1.2 million last year. That’s a 40 percent drop in just a decade.
Of course, conservative churches have their issues too. But to say that the only way to win the world is to become like it just flies in the face of the evidence. Theological fads come and go—mostly go, in fact. Yet, the Bride of Christ and the Faith it proclaims have endured for two thousand years. She has a surer Foundation than “relevance” can ever provide.
A possible change to Azerbaijan’s Religion Law and Administrative Code threatens to make matters worse for the country’s Christian minority. Under the proposal, “religious organizations and churches” must have “a state-registered religious center or headquarters” where all their functions must occur. Any activities that take place anywhere else could bring “legal repercussions.”
In Azerbaijan, “legal repercussions” means police interference, arrests, and the confiscation of teaching materials. Christians there are already subject to government pressure, and new converts face “violence from their families, friends and local community.”
Like in China, Christians here live at the convenience of the authorities. There’s a facade of religious freedom but the substance is gone.
Please pray for our Azeri brethren. Life is difficult enough for them without new persecution that now seems inevitable. And, let’s insist to our own leaders that they call out this infringement of religious freedom. The stakes are too high to remain silent.