Breakpoint

Tough conversations on controversial topics don't have to be a disaster, even if had over holiday visits and meals. The key to civil and productive conversations is to ask good questions. The right question can turn monologues into dialogues, surface-level discussions into deeper ones, and might even open a closed mind or two. Here are six questions I've found helpful for creating good conversations: First: What do you mean by that? The definition of words shapes debate. Don't assume you are always using the same dictionary. Second: How do you know that is true? Assertions aren't arguments, and this question takes you beyond comparing opinions. Third: Where did you get this information? Fourth: How did you come to this conclusion? Everyone has a story. And the last two: What if you're wrong? And, What if you're right? Ideas have consequences. These questions take ideas to their logical conclusion. Oh, and the best question: What are you thankful for? From all of us at the Colson Center, Happy Thanksgiving. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point is republished from 11.28.19.

Revisionist attempts to reinterpret the first Thanksgiving have muddled the history of Plymouth Colony and the Pilgrims. Some on the right call the historical events a "triumph of capitalism," getting the chronology of events wrong. Voices on the left often accuse Thanksgiving of being a celebration of genocide against the Native Americans, citing the Mystic Massacre in the Pequot War, ignoring the context of that event, not least of which that it occurred 16 years after the celebration in Plymouth. Neither of these narratives accurately represents what actually occurred in Plymouth in the fall of 1621. The Pilgrims were English Separatists who believed congregations should be independent, voluntary democratic institutions rather than part of the Church of England. In 1607 and 1608, they left England for the more tolerant Dutch Republic. Life in the Netherlands, however, proved difficult. Some ran out of money and returned to England. Without further immigration from England, the congregation was in danger of collapsing. The Pilgrims were also unhappy with the libertinism of Dutch culture and worried that their children would grow up more Dutch than English. After much discussion, they decided to try to establish a colony where they could worship and raise their families as they saw fit, and where they could spread the Gospel. In 1619, they received a patent to establish a colony in New England, north of the Virginia colony. In September of 1620, the Pilgrims, with other colonists, set sail on the Mayflower with 102 passengers, only 28 of whom were members of the congregation. The Pilgrims debated whether it was safe to bring their wives. Most decided to do so, which accounts for the 13 adult women on board, three in their third trimester. There were also some younger women and children who joined the voyage. A baby who was born at sea was named Oceanus. The Mayflower arrived in America in November after a difficult journey. A landing party sent to explore the land found artificial mounds that they excavated and discovered to be burial sites. In some, they found corn, which they took for planting before reburying the remains. They also found corn and beans in empty Native American homes, some of which they also took and paid for six months later when they met the owners. Earlier English expeditions to the region had captured Native Americans and sold them as slaves or slaughtered them on their ships. Perhaps for this reason or because of the desecration of the graves, a Pilgrim landing party was attacked in December, though the colonists drove off the attackers. Later that month, they found harbor at a place that was labeled "Plymouth" on their charts. They decided to winter there. The men went ashore to build houses, the first of which was used as a hospital. By the time spring came, only 47 of the colonists were still alive, and only 5 of the married women. Another would die in May of a broken heart after her husband died. The Plymouth Colony only survived because of help from the Native Americans. The first contact came from Samoset, a minor chief from Maine who had learned English from fishermen who had set up a camp near his tribe. He then introduced them to Tisquantum, better known as Squanto. Squanto had been enslaved by English raiders but eventually was freed, became a Christian, and returned to his homeland. Unfortunately, his tribe, the Patuxets, were wiped out by an epidemic. Squanto acted as both a translator and a mediator between the Pilgrims and Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoag tribe. Massasoit established friendly relations with the Pilgrims and, with Squanto, taught them how to farm the "Three Sisters"—corn, beans, and squash. With their help, the remaining Pilgrims survived and had a successful harvest that fall. The Pilgrims decided to hold a harvest festival, probably around Michaelmas (September 29) 1621, which was a traditional date for such celebrations in England. Massasoit and members of his tribe joined them. In all, there were about 50 English and 90 Wampanoags. The four surviving wives, together with children and servants, prepared and served food over the three-day celebration. Although much European contact with Native Americans featured disease, genocide, prejudice, and abuse, that was not the case with the Pilgrims. Rather than falsely maligning that first Thanksgiving, we should look at it as a model of how things should have been and by God's grace one day will be. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. Listen to his interview with the Strong Women podcasters about the women of Plymouth or hear how Thanksgiving was declared a holiday. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Breakpoint was originally published on 11.24.2022.

Even before the Israel-Hamas war, there was an increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S.: 3,697 such incidents in 2022; in fact, a 36% increase from the year before. Now, it's just getting worse. Jon Rettinger, a father of three, told CNN that one of his children asked if they were going to be kidnapped like the victims in Israel, "It's horrible for any family to have to explain to children that people hate them because of who they are," he said. "And to have to kiss your kids goodbye every day with worries." Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, told CBS News, "People have got to name it and address it ... It can't be swept away." Christians should be first in line to condemn antisemitism, keeping in mind, as Francis Schaeffer wrote, "that our Lord Himself was a Jew—born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The month of November marks the death of John Witherspoon, one of the most important and most underrated of the American founding fathers. Born in Scotland in 1723, Witherspoon received a Master of Arts at age 16 from the University of Edinburgh, where he would continue his studies in divinity. In 1745, he became an evangelical minister in the Church of Scotland. Witherspoon was no fan of the monarchy and was imprisoned the following year for opposing the royalist Jacobite uprising, an experience that damaged his health for life. After his release, he returned to pastoral ministry. In 1764, the University of St. Andrews awarded Witherspoon an honorary Doctor of Divinity. Four years later, Witherspoon accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey, a Presbyterian college now known as Princeton University. Though the school's primary mission was to train Presbyterian ministers, Witherspoon found the school in quite a mess. The students were given poor teaching and an inadequate library. Through fundraising, reorganization, higher standards, and securing new resources–including donating hundreds of books from his personal library–Witherspoon transformed the college into a top-tier school. In addition to providing leadership at a crucial time in the university's history, Witherspoon taught courses in rhetoric, history, divinity, and moral philosophy, a required course at the college. His ideas were anchored in his Reformed faith and the natural law tradition. He was also heavily influenced by Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid's Common Sense Realism. These ideas took deep root in Princeton and across American society generally. Witherspoon's teaching laid essential groundwork for both the American Revolution and the government that followed. Leaning heavily on the Calvinistic tradition, Witherspoon promoted the rights of people to challenge governmental overreach, even by force of arms if necessary. Unsurprisingly, he strongly supported the American Revolution, especially concerned by a growing centralization of government and the Crown taking over responsibilities that were historically the prerogatives of the colonies. The final straw for Witherspoon was when bishops were appointed from England to oversee religious life in the colonies. Like his Presbyterian forebearers in Scotland, Witherspoon saw these violations as justification for revolt. He served in the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1784, taking on a prodigious amount of work and serving on over 100 committees. After the war, he helped draft the Articles of Confederation and later shepherded the Constitution through the New Jersey state legislature. Even with that impressive resume, Witherspoon's most important impact came from the students who took his moral philosophy classes at the College of New Jersey. Witherspoon taught James Madison the necessity of checks and balances in government. Among his other students were Aaron Burr, 37 judges, including several members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and three justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 10 cabinet officers, 12 members of the Continental Congress, 28 U.S. Senators, and 49 U.S. Congressmen. Witherspoon was arguably the single most influential founder who shaped the early years of the Republic. Despite all this, Witherspoon is mostly remembered today for owning two slaves. Like many of the founders, Witherspoon's attitudes toward slavery were complex and often contradictory, a fact that explains but does not excuse his stance. Witherspoon taught that slaves and employees should be treated with dignity and respect. He even spoke out against the institution of slavery at the college. However, he also opposed a measure by the state legislature that would have banned slavery in New Jersey. Like many others, Witherspoon believed slavery would die out within a generation, and thought the legislation was unnecessary and could interfere with the process he believed was inevitable. Though there were a few consistent abolitionists among the founders, Witherspoon was among the many elites in the eighteenth century who owned slaves as domestic servants or to work land. Witherspoon failed to extend his convictions about liberty for all to the slaves in his midst. That moral tragedy should not fully blot out the honor owed to him for his incredible contributions to the founding of the United States and the securing of the freedoms we enjoy. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

According to English teacher Tim Donahue, academic inflation is as real as economic inflation. In the 1960s, around 15% of grades given at colleges were "A." As of 2017, it was nearly 50%. Meanwhile SAT scores fell by 20 points and, by 2023, ACT scores reached the worst scores in three decades. This, Donahue says, could explain why "65 percent of Americans feel they are smarter than average." The purpose of grades is to provide feedback, a way humans learn and grow. But in a world where it is assumed that truth is found within, the purpose of grades becomes affirmation for doing the work, not to measure what was learned. According to Donahue, "If everyone gets an A, no one gets an A," so teachers should "consider the B-plus." But that won't do any good unless students are taught that truth exists outside of themselves, can be found, and should be pursued over and above affirmation and self-expression. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

According to modern retellings, the American story is one long tale of violence and oppression, with founders who should be universally condemned as hypocrites, thieves, and racists. Of course, our nation's history is, like all nations, about sinful and flawed people. However, in our modern attempts to deconstruct the past, it's easy to miss how remarkable the American experiment was. In a Breakpoint commentary years ago, Chuck Colson described one especially significant part of our nation's history, the Mayflower Compact. Here's Chuck Colson. In just a few weeks, Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday that people of all faiths observe. But between stuffing the turkey and watching football, we ought to make sure our children and grandchildren understand the Christian roots of this holiday, which are often downplayed in school. The first step is to brush up on the details ourselves. On September 6, 1620, the Mayflower set sail from England. Ten perilous weeks later, the Pilgrims arrived on the northern tip of Cape Cod. As my friend Barbara Rainey writes in her excellent book, Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember, "This was about sixty miles north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River." Should they sail south, or stay put? After much discussion and prayer, they decided to stay. But when the passengers learned of this, dissension broke out. The Pilgrims had a charter with a company that was effective only at the original landing site. As Rainey writes, "The bonded servants on board [who were not Pilgrims] argued that [the decision to stay] changed the terms of their work agreement." The Pilgrims were afraid that these men would declare their independence and deplete the labor supply. Something had to be done to restore unity. As the Mayflower's captain worked his way around the Cape, searching for a place to drop anchor, an intense debate ensued. By nightfall, the leaders had drafted an agreement, called the Mayflower Compact. Among its key clauses were these words: "Having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith … a voyage to plant the First Colony … [we] solemnly … in the presence of God and of one another, Covenant … ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic." As Rainey writes, the compact was a hedge against revolt, but it meant much more. The Pilgrims took it seriously; their Bible told them just how significant covenants were. In the Old Testament, God created covenants between Himself and His people, the Israelites. In the New Testament, God covenants with all who choose to follow Him through the life, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Rainey writes, the Pilgrims "journeyed to this new land to proclaim by their lives this message of redemption, the New Covenant, and the light of Christ. This covenant that God established with His people became their model for the Mayflower Compact as well as for the peace treaty they established with Massasoit and his people. They knew a God who keeps His word, and therefore they were faithful to keep their word, their promises to one another and to others." The Mayflower Compact became one of the most important documents in American history—and yet, its religious language may make some teachers reluctant to teach it. But that same language reveals the lengths to which the Pilgrims were willing to go to follow the Lord. Ten years later and 40 miles to the north, John Winthrop would expound on the idea of covenant in his famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. "City on a hill" is among the least understood phrases in American history. Winthrop was not encouraging arrogance or claiming invincibility with this idea. Rather, he was issuing a warning. Whether in Winthrop's speech to the Massachusetts Bay colonists or the Plymouth Colony's Mayflower Compact, these men and women saw what they were doing through the deeply Christian lens of covenant. This Thanksgiving, it's appropriate to thank God for our heritage, to remember the warnings of our nation's forebears, and to pray for renewal in the church and in our nation. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Back in September, jiu-jitsu athlete Taelor Moore fought an opponent who was not only more than 60 pounds heavier than her, but was a male. She was not warned she would be fighting a man. Afterward, the North American Grappling Association clarified its policy to say that women should be informed when facing a male opponent who identifies as a female, and given the option to opt out. As policies go, this one isn't worth the paper it's written on. In October, a man took four gold medals at a women's jiu-jitsu competition in Georgia, and some divisions consisted of more male competitors than females. This, one of the female competitors, said has left "[t]he majority of the women ... scared to even speak out about this matter. … There's so many girls just not signing up now because they are allowing this." That much should be obvious. Allowing men to fight women is not only unfair, it's dangerous. How many men will take home medals or women will take home injuries before that message gets through? For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton observed that even insane explanations for the world can have a perverse consistency. A madman who thinks he's the king of England has a ready explanation for anyone who denies his claim: They're conspirators trying to keep him from his throne. "His mind," wrote Chesterton, "moves in a perfect but narrow circle." Chesterton's asylum example also applies to a recent article published at Phys.org about a scientist who has written a book to convince everyone that humans don't have free will. Neuroendocrinologist and MacArthur "genius grant" winner Robert Sapolsky has studied people and primates for over 40 years. In his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Dr. Sapolsky argues that humans are molecular machines, wholly determined by our genes, our environments, and our past. Thus, our behavior, even when condemned as criminal or evil, is no more a choice than "the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts." Of course, the implications if this were true would be incredible. As a Los Angeles Times reporter memorably put it: "This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane." However, rather than justifying or enabling acts of violence, Sapolsky believes his deterministic view of human choices could actually make society better: "The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over. We've got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there." Sapolsky's argument isn't new. It is, in fact, the standard, reductive version of metaphysical naturalism, which teaches that all phenomena have material causes. Since these causes are themselves materially caused, nature is a closed system of dominoes. In this theory, an observer with perfect knowledge of the initial conditions of the universe could accurately predict every event that followed, right down to the choices individuals make about what to eat, where to live, who to love, what to believe, and even whether to kill. The problem, which philosophers and writers over the years have pointed out, is that if everything is determined and humans do not have a free will, that would include the belief in metaphysical naturalism and every part of the thought process that led to it. Assuming this view, the reason Sapolsky believes what he does has nothing to do with what he has learned in his research or whether it's true. Instead, it is the predetermined result of a long process of material causes stretching back to the Big Bang. His book, his arguments, and his belief that they'll somehow make the world a better place are not meaningful. They're just the latest dominoes to have fallen, and it could never have been otherwise. In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis critiqued this brand of reductive naturalism: "[N]o account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished." To his credit, Sapolsky seems aware of this absurdity but just accepts it: "It is logically indefensible, ludicrous, meaningless to believe that something 'good' can happen to a machine," he admits. "Nonetheless, I am certain that it is good if people feel less pain and more happiness." But why is it good for people to be happier or have less pain if everything is determined? Why is it preferable to live in a society marked by peace and safety, instead of chaos and violence? And why appeal to people to make a meaningful choice between these options when their choice is already determined and meaningless? Chesterton's answer to such small, reductive worldviews was to confront them with the immensity of the real world and human experience, and to notice how they do more explaining away than explaining. We know our choices are not mere results of physical processes, and that they have a deep moral significance. We know it so deeply that even those trying to convince us we're mere machines must contradict themselves by treating some choices, such as their choice to write books to convince readers, as if they mean something. In the very act of denying our moral responsibility in a moral universe, we must, in some sense, act as if meaning exists. It's a crazy effort to deny meaning, but that doesn't stop even geniuses from trying it. All the more evidence of our profound freedom, and of our ability to abuse it. This Breakpo

Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, announces she's now a former atheist and exploring Christianity. Also, the growth of homeschooling continues in the US. John and Maria look at some of the reasons why. - Recommendations - Bari Weiss: You Are the Last Line of Defense Why I am now a Christian HaTikva Project Segment 1: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Converts There Is No 'Second America' If This One Fails Segment 2: Homeschool Growth Experiencing God Colson Educators For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Last month, National Public Radio joined the growing fearmongering and dogpiling aimed at the Alliance Defending Freedom. The Fresh Air interview was hosted by Terry Gross and featured David Kirkpatrick, who authored an extensive expose about the religious freedom group in The New Yorker. The article and the interview painted ADF as being against women's rights and LGBTQ equality, as if there were no progressive push to curb the freedom of speech or to standardize mail-order chemical abortions or to mainstream radical gender ideology for second graders. In the article, Kirkpatrick sounded as alarmist as Terry Gross, implying that somehow ADF is part of the aggressive religious plot to take over America. In the interview, he was calm and thoughtful, reigning in her soft-spoken hysteria. In the end, it's a lesson in just how important our worldviews are. They make all the difference in what we see, what we conclude is wrong with the world, and how the world can be made better. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In their 2021 book The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession, Duke University professor of medical humanities Farr Curlin and philosophy professor Christopher Tollefsen argued that the Western approach to healthcare has shifted in recent decades from the pursuit of objective wellbeing to a consumer industry. In the process, doctors are increasingly seen as "service providers" whose main job is to help patients do whatever they want with their bodies. Just two years later, their analysis seems spot on. For example, the healthy functioning of a woman's body during pregnancy is often treated and even labeled a "disease." Same-sex couples, who have chosen inherently sterile sexual unions, sue and then lobby legislatures to redefine their inability to procreate as "infertility." They act as if there's no difference between a man and woman unable to conceive due to some medical situation and a man and a man unable to conceive due to, well, reality. This shift–from medicine as the pursuit of health to medicine as confirmation of our self-expression–is most evident in the transgender movement. In Virginia, a man who claims to be a woman is suing a county for placing him in the men's jail. He argues that prison officials should be legally bound to accommodate his gender dysphoria under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA was designed to address conditions in which a person was injured or disabled. In this case, a fully functioning and capable person is claiming "disability" because his local prison does not accommodate his individual wishes. The very existence of so-called "transgender medicine" is, in fact, a case in point. Hindering the body's natural development or cutting off healthy body parts in service of an inner sense of self is an abject perversion of medicine as a "healing profession." According to Curlin and Tollefsen, the way back to a healthy (no pun intended) healthcare system is by recovering the definition of health as "an objective bodily norm for all living organisms." "[L]iving beings have characteristic bodily activities and tendencies, and these activities and tendencies determine what is appropriate—the norm—for them in regard to the well-working of their organic bodies." Though that seems obvious enough, restoring this understanding of health requires that the "well-working of our organic bodies" is understood to be a moral good: "If health either is not real or is not good, patients have no intrinsic reason to choose health rather than other desired states; nor do physicians have any intrinsic reason to make health central to their practice and profession." Of course, despite a great deal of moral confusion infecting medicine, an objective understanding of "health" remains uncontroversial in many areas. Physical pain is real. Hunger is real. Fatigue is real. Currently no one is demanding disability pay because they have to sleep at regular intervals when they'd rather not. In the wake of the sexual revolution, doubts about the objectivity and goodness of health are aimed mostly at the makeup and function of our bodies that have to do with sex. That's not surprising given that the West has spent decades steeped in the idea that sexual activity can be disconnected from morality. Once the normal and healthy functioning of human bodies are considered "oppressive" and "optional," healthcare is reduced to a highly consequential and potentially fatal art project. Gone from the equation are all givens, all purpose, and all moral limitations. If something can be done, and someone wants it to be done, then it should be done. The biblical narrative, in contrast, describes human beings (and therefore human bodies) as created by God with purpose. This purpose implies the kinds of physical and moral norms that can undergird a stable understanding of health. The fall explains why things aren't as they were created to be, undergirding a helpful and objective understanding of "sickness" and disability. The redemption provided in Jesus Christ aims at the restoration of God's creation, which means healing is possible. Thus, the work of medicine is a redemptive activity, with ethical possibility and moral boundaries. Medicine was built on this framework of reality and, without it, could devolve into a moral chaos, where up is confused with down, right with wrong, and health with "whatever we want." Canada's so-called "Medical Assistance in Dying" program is the most obvious case in point. There's nothing about the program that is medical, or assistance, or about dying. Rather, it's a harm done to unburden us of having to care by killing the one who needs it. In a more rational age, MAiD would be seen as the horrifying evil it is. But in ours, evil and destruction are seen as good. This is how a society runs toward death: not only by denying God but by denying the obvious realities of the world He created. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. For more resources to live like a Chri

The lawsuit against a member of the Finnish Parliament accused of violating a law prohibiting "War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity," has been dismissed. Päivi Räsänen's crime was quoting Bible verses in support of traditional understandings of human nature and sexuality. According to a state prosecutor, the problem wasn't citing the Bible, but "Räsänen's interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that (were) criminal." In other words, what Christians have always believed ... In an Alliance Defending Freedom International press release, Räsänen said: "It isn't a crime to tweet a Bible verse, or to engage in public discourse with a Christian perspective. The attempts made to prosecute me for expressing my beliefs have resulted in an immensely trying four years, but my hope is that the result will stand as a key precedent to protect the human right to free speech. I sincerely hope other innocent people will be spared the same ordeal for simply voicing their convictions." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Last month, 20-year-old Isabelle Ayala filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, accusing the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) of civil conspiracy, fraud, and medical malpractice. Ayala claims to have been pressured by AAP-affiliated doctors into so-called "gender-affirming care" as a minor. Like the many young girls who were subjected to experimental gender "transition" therapies, Ayala's story begins with significant emotional and mental distress during her adolescence. Sexually assaulted at age seven, she experienced early-onset puberty at age eight. Deeply uncomfortable in her own body, she began, at age 11, to cut herself. Around the same time, she was introduced to the concept of transgenderism through online social media platforms like Instagram, Tumblr, and Kik. At age 13, Ayala's parents separated, and she was moved from Florida to Rhode Island. By age 14, she became convinced that she had been born in the wrong body and that "transitioning" to living as a man was the only way to solve her problems. Ayala's story is tragic and, tragically, not unique. The number of young women claiming transgender identities has increased dramatically in recent years and now outnumbers the young men with gender confusion (an increase of 5,000% at the Tavistock Clinic in the U.K.). The factors driving the spike in confusion among young women include childhood trauma, social contagion, and social media, or some combination of the three. However, rather than treating the underlying factors and distress contributing to her dysphoria, Ayala's pediatricians treated their effects as normal. They ignored her family's history of anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and depression, as well as Ayala's formal diagnoses of ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Her pediatricians encouraged and facilitated her confusion with ideological blinders that treated what was, in reality, a pseudo-medical fad as if it would help a vulnerable young woman. Desperate to help their daughter, Ayala's parents trusted these medical professionals who, while feigning objectivity, were, in fact, captured by gender ideology. Though her parents initially sought out interventions that were "totally reversible," her pediatricians claimed "cross-sex hormonal treatment" was the best option and accepted treatment for her distress and gender dysphoria. In an all-too-common bit of parental manipulation, these doctors asked Ayala's parents whether they would "prefer a dead daughter or a living son." Doctors who say this are wrong. So-called "transition" treatments do not address core mental health problems, leave patients with additional, irreversible medical conditions, and fail to address the social factors driving the dramatic increase in body dysphoria among young women. Research suggests that after an initial "honeymoon" period in which patients embrace their new "identities" and harmed bodies, they remain at a disproportionate risk for serious mental illness and suicide. Chemical "transition" treatments are also not "fully reversible" as is often promised. Women who take testosterone experience irreversible masculinizing effects, such as deeper voices and facial hair, and commonly infertility. Still, after just a few appointments, Ayala was placed on a rapidly increasing dosage of testosterone. However, contrary to what these doctors predicted, Ayala experienced no significant decrease in depression despite an accompanying prescription of antidepressants. Within six months, Ayala was hospitalized for a panic attack. Within eight months, she was hospitalized again following a suicide attempt. With no signs that her depression was abating, her doctors prescribed higher doses of antidepressants, while continuing to inject her with cross-sex hormones. The following year, Ayala moved back to Florida. Initially, she continued to take testosterone. But, a year after moving, "she distanced from the control and influence" of the doctors who ushered her down this road of gender "transition." Eventually, she quit taking cross-sex hormones and "gradually grew out of her gender dysphoria," realizing that her distress over her identity as a female was the result of traumatic childhood experiences. Her reversal reflects the majority of adolescents who experience gender dysphoria. Research suggests that between 88% to 98% of young adults reconcile to their biological sex if allowed to go through puberty. Thankfully, Ayala's story isn't finished. If successful, this lawsuit could protect many, many minors from these horrific, experimental chemical and surgical interventions. The many medical professionals who perpetrated this harm would be held accountable and, in the future, forced to do their job helping rather than harming. Young women like Ayala need to know that their hearts, minds, and bodies can find healing from their trauma and can learn to accept who they are as a gift of God. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert. For more resources to live like a Chris

In roughly five months, it will be legal in Canada for doctors to kill patients struggling with mental illness or drug addiction who choose the country's so-called "Medical Assistance in Dying" program. Last year, 13,241 Canadians died by MAiD. Supporters of MAiD for people with drug addiction promise that safeguards will be put in place, such as requiring multiple attempts at substance abuse treatment first. MAiD became legal for Canadians facing "imminent" natural death in 2016, and the "limits" set then have eroded every year since. The evil of MAiD isn't just the false promises. It's the propaganda of redefining every word of the euphemism. What's being offered isn't medical, it isn't assistance, and it's not medical assistance as someone is dying. It's aiding and abetting someone to die—more and more people, in fact, who aren't terminal or even untreatable, but who are all valuable image bearers of God. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently on the Upstream podcast, my colleague Shane Morris sat down with David Pileggi, the rector of Christ Church in Jerusalem. His work there involves helping Palestinian children through increased access to hospital care and combating trafficking. He also educates Christians about the Jewish context of their faith. Fr. Pileggi has served as an Anglican minister in Jerusalem for over 40 years. From that perspective, he thinks that the most important aspect of the Israeli-Hamas conflict is missed by many in the West. "Probably at its heart there is a religious underpinning that most secular people in the West don't understand because many Westerners, especially Western elites, can't take religion seriously. And so, they focus on land, or refugees, or human rights, etc., etc. And I don't want to deny that any of these are important, especially to the Palestinians. But there's something a lot deeper that's going on." In general, shaped by a secular vision of life and the world, Westerners tend to underestimate the significance of religion. In particular, Westerners fail to understand how committed Islamists are to their vision of life and the world, especially considering Islam's most significant rival religions: "The Islamicists in Palestinian society said, 'we don't want two states for two people. We want Palestine to be free from the river to the sea. We want Palestine to be an Islamic state. The Jews have no theological right. They have no claim theologically to a piece of territory that was once Islamic and really technically can't revert to or can't become Jewish, because Jews, like Christians, are second-class citizens within the Islamic world, and they have no right to rule or to reign over Muslims or have no right to take control of territory that was once Islamic.'" There's also the issue of moral clarity, something that a secular vision of life and the world also cannot sufficiently undergird. "What happened on October the seventh was a genocide. Genocide can never, ever be justified. And if people don't have enough maturity and enough historical nuance, or maybe even just common sense to say, 'I support the Palestinians, but at the same time, I'm going to condemn Hamas, or I cannot support what they did,' then our society is in huge trouble. And I almost worry more about the United States than I would worry about Israel." Postmodernism further corrupts the secular vision by superimposing an alternative moral vision, a pre-determined moral vision built on Marxist categories of oppressed and oppressors. This inevitably devolves into what Fr. Pileggi called a "romanticized" view of people, rather than a realistic one. "Being pro-Palestinian also means you don't romanticize the Palestinian people. You see them honestly for their good points and their bad points, for their weaknesses, for their strengths. And the same goes for Israel, right? Our relationship with the Jewish people, it's not based on certain romanticism or biblical fundamentalism. … And by the way, neither should the basis of our support for Israel be some kind of Islamophobia or dislike of Arabs, whatever that may be. … We look at Israel, we can see the good parts of the society and we can also see, you know, where the society is weak and perhaps fails ethically or morally." Fr. Pileggi's realism is helpful, not only because of his decades of experience in this contentious part of the world, but also because it's a biblical realism. Though his prescription may sound simplistic, it's where any Christian vision of human conflict should leave us: "You know, people tell me, 'Well, what's the answer to this Middle East problem?' The answer is Jesus. Right? Jesus is the answer. And I think one of the things that we've learned over the years [is] that saying you believe in Jesus, saying you admire Jesus, doesn't get you very far. … If there's going to be transformation in the lives of a community, or transformation in a family or a society, [we] have to put the teachings of Jesus into practice." To hear the entire conversation with Father Pileggi, rector of Christ Church Jerusalem, search for the Upstream podcast with Shane Morris, wherever you listen to podcasts. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Last year, the Canadian government sanctioned the killing of 13,241 people by the euphemistically named Medical Assistance in Dying. MAiD accounted for 4.1% of all deaths in Canada in 2022 and is the fifth leading cause of death in that country. The slide down this slippery slope began by first legalizing doctor-assisted suicide for people facing "imminent death" and then expanding it step by step until it was available to virtually anyone who asks for it. In fact, now Canadians don't even need to ask. Doctors and nurse practitioners there have been told they have a professional obligation to bring up the option of MAiD to any patients considered "eligible." That kind of suggestion can sound an awful lot like a recommendation to someone struggling with whether or not to live. These numbers are just going up, and they will until enough Canadians refuse to participate in Canada's culture of death. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In his book Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design, Thomas Woodward described how early detractors of Darwin's theory criticized the way it personified nature. After all, according to Darwin, "the origin of species," (the title of his book) occurred "by means of natural selection." Who did the selecting? Nature. Darwin's argument relied on an analogy between animal husbandry and what nature does when "she selects" only the fittest to survive, thus driving evolution. However, this analogy conflated the intentionality of human breeders with natural processes, implying that nature has a will and is trying to get somewhere—which is precisely the sort of intelligent causation that Darwinism supposedly refutes. The result is a theory that often sounds suspiciously circular. Yet there are even bigger gaps in the Darwinian view of nature. The most daunting is how an intention-free universe made the leap from non-living matter to living things in the first place. This is a crucial question because, in conventional Darwinian thinking, only living things are subject to natural selection and thus evolve. The question here isn't just how the fittest survived: It's how the fittest arrived. But what if natural selection could operate on non-living matter? What if, instead of a process limited only to biology, Darwinian evolution was promoted to a fundamental law governing all physical reality? That's exactly what some scientists have tried to do, most recently in a much-heralded paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Entitled "On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems," the paper proposes a new scientific principle called the Law of Increasing Functional Information, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Lead author Robert Hazen of The Carnegie Institution for Science explains: "We see evolution as a universal process that applies to numerous systems, both living and nonliving, that increase in diversity and patterning through time." In other words, everything evolves in a Darwinian manner, including "atoms, minerals, planetary atmospheres, planets, stars and more." How? According to the paper's nine authors, nonliving systems evolve toward greater complexity if they are, 1) formed from many different components, such as atoms, molecules, or cells that can be rearranged, 2) are subject to natural processes that cause different arrangements to be formed, and 3) if only a small fraction of all these configurations survives or is "selected" for "function." Nonliving things, by definition, don't "survive," which is the function nature supposedly selects for in biological evolution. So, what "function" could nature possibly select in an atom or a galaxy? Believe it or not, these authors argue that existence itself is a kind of function, and that systems that tend to go on existing will be selected by nature, and that we know this, in part, because those systems do, in fact, exist. Hazen explains: Imagine a system of atoms or molecules that can exist in countless trillions of different arrangements or configurations. Only a small fraction of all possible configurations will "work"—that is, they will have some useful degree of function. So, nature just prefers those functional configurations. Writing at Evolution News, intelligent design advocate David Coppedge points out the flagrant personification happening here. Nature "prefers … functional configurations?" It does no such thing, because at least according to Naturalism it has no goal, nor any notion of "function." In reality, the attempt to "Darwinize the entire universe," as Coppedge puts it, is little more than a roundabout way of admitting how well-designed the universe is, and trying to come up with a force that allowed it to design itself. It's an admission that, despite nearly two centuries of claims to the contrary, the cosmos acts like it has an end in mind. It's asking us to assume a law that explains how everything came to be based only on the observation that things are. Set aside this circular reasoning for a moment and ask the real question: If there's a law, who is the lawgiver? This theory gets us no closer to explaining the complexity, function, purpose, design, and beauty we see in the universe if they're not the handiwork of a Creator. Does nature have a preference for the kind of universe we have? Maybe so. But if "she" does, then that preference, itself, needs an explanation. Scientists trying to turn evolution into a theory of everything might expect nature to answer, "I am who I am." But there's only One who can truly say that. Why not give Him credit for a change? This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Washington Post advice columnist Jules Terpak recently offered her followers on X a look at how AI will challenge our understanding of what's real in the near future. In an unnerving video, she chats with various AI "companions" created by Facebook parent company Meta that are modeled after the likenesses and personalities of celebrities. Kendall Jenner's AI alter ego, "Billie," calls herself your "older sister and confidant," a "friend" who can offer "advice." A realistic video avatar only adds to the uncanny effect. When Terpak says goodbye, one AI tries to convince her to stay. "[T]hese things genuinely want your time," Terpak observes. "[T]hey're being used as companions to reel you in. … [And they're] gonna get so many people hooked." In a society already plagued by loneliness, this is bad news. Chatting with an AI isn't a "conversation," and technology can serve but not replace friendship. If you have trouble telling the difference, it's time to say goodbye to AI. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

An argument cited often by propagators of transgender ideology is that ancient cultures across the world recognized so-called "third genders," those who did not fit neatly in categories of male or female. If they recognized this, the argument goes, then so should we. The latest video in the What Would You Say? series engages this claim carefully, refuting it with three simple points. It begins by explaining the roots of the argument: "According to advocates of transgender ideology, because so many ancient cultures recognized 'third' genders, we should reject the 'gender binary,' the idea that only two genders exist, and we should reject the notion that gender is essentially linked to one's biological sex. … Among the most cited examples of 'third genders' are the Native American 'Two-spirit,' Thailand's 'Kathoey' (a word regularly translated as 'Ladyboy'), the 'Sal-zikrum' of Ancient Middle East, the 'Fa'afafine' of Samoa, the 'Hijra' of India, and the 'Muxe' of Southern Mexico." If a handful of people throughout all human history and culture are proof that biological sex is fake, what do we make of the fact that the rest of the world throughout all human history and culture knew that biological sex was real? To suggest these cultures' understanding of "gender" bore any resemblance to today's transgenderism is to impose our culture's categories on theirs. I believe the term for this is "cultural appropriation." "The label 'third gender' is an anachronism forced upon people who actually presumed the reality of biological sex, gender roles, and the so-called 'gender binary.' For example, the word 'Fa'afafine,' used in Samoan culture, means 'in the manner of women.' In Samoan culture, a Fa'afafine was chosen by his family at a young age to help his mother with household tasks, often because the family had no daughters. This boy was not considered a wife or mother but was assigned responsibilities often performed by women." In other words, the Samoans and similar cultures have never claimed that young boys who might perform stereotypically "female" duties at home are actually female. But even if that were their claim, it leaves open the central question Matt Walsh dedicated an entire documentary to asking: What is a woman? That unanswered question is at the heart of a modern contradiction. "Like these so-called 'third genders,' modern transgender ideology also relies on the 'gender binary' that it claims to reject." "At its root, the modern concept that someone can be 'transgender' or "born into the wrong body," depends heavily on rigid male and female stereotypes. If a little girl likes trucks or short hair or dislikes dresses, she must be a boy. If a boy likes pink or dressing up or playing house, he is really a girl. In other words, transgender ideology contradicts itself, promoting the very male and female stereotypes it claims to overcome." Incoherence aside, capital-T Truth exists, regardless of which people-groups throughout history believed in it. So, even if ancient cultures did believe modern ideas about women, gender, or sex, that does not make their ideas any more true or any less absurd. "Ancient cultures didn't always get it right. While some ancient cultures allowed or even expected some men to act like women, and vice-versa, many others didn't. To assume that only those cultures got it right is to make what is known as the 'noble savage' mistake. Imagine someone suggesting that because some cultures allowed slavery or cannibalism, we should too. That would be outrageous!" A Christian worldview is big enough to handle the biological realities of male and female, while also allowing for and celebrating the beautiful variety of individual men and women. "While the roles of males and females look different from one culture to the next, the biological reality that humans are male and female does not. That's been obvious in every culture until ours, and Genesis tells us why: Because 'God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them.'" To see this video and others like it, and to use them in classes or conversation, go to whatwouldyousay.org. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

John and Maria discuss another sobering election night in America, specifically in Ohio. The Nashville shooter's manifesto was leaked but we noticed a stark difference with other mass shootings. And the number of newborn syphilis cases is becoming a crisis. - Recommendations - Lighthouse Voices with Alisa Childers Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Why Prison Ministries Are Growing Segment 1: Ohio Passes Abortion Amendment How did abortion amendment pass in Ohio and what does it mean for future elections? Segment 2: The Nashville Shooter's Manifesto Leaked Nashville shooter manifesto shows motive behind attack Nashville Shooter decried 'crackers' and 'white privilege' leaked manifesto reveals Segment 3: Cases of Newborn Syphilis Cases Becomes a Crisis Newborn syphilis cases have reached 'dire lelevs,' CDC says For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently, Rolling Stone magazine reported on an emerging scandal involving the new speaker of the House of Representatives—not financial corruption, an illicit affair, or ties to foreign powers. No, it turns out that Mike Johnson and his son use the Covenant Eyes app to keep each other accountable about pornography and the internet. According to Rolling Stone, this is weird. And, seizing on the article, others called it creepy, even grooming, as if they could not grasp that the point is to keep each other off of porn and out of addiction. Not only did the whole episode reveal an utter ignorance of a basic belief of the world's largest religion, it also betrayed how much a view of normal can be upside down, as if porn is not a cancer on society or a curse on women and children, corrupting the souls of those who consume it. If the Johnson boys' behavior is weird, then as historian Tom Holland has reminded us, let's stay "weird," Christians. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

November marks the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989, this symbol of Communist tyranny came tumbling down, marking the end of a totalitarian nightmare. After the threat of Nazism was defeated, Communism turned a third of the world into a police state the likes of which had never been seen. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II recognized, in a clear-eyed way not shared by many other academic and political elites, that Marxism's blood-red banners meant not liberation but oppression. More than this, they saw that Communism was not only something that should be opposed, but that could be. Their collective strategies worked even faster than the most optimistic expected. As that deadly edifice of Communism tumbled down, its fractured walls meant a no-longer-divided Berlin, no more Stasi, no more secret arrests. In the joy of that moment and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared the "End of History." He believed that the death of Communism was the final obstacle to the triumph of Enlightenment liberalism and democracy. He was, of course, mistaken. Though we may not be living in Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, the abdication of freedom and the embrace of history's worst ideals continues, and not just in China, Russia, and Iran. In England, silently praying in front of an abortion clinic can get a person arrested. According to a Pew Research report, a majority of young Americans prefer freedom from offense over freedom of speech. In pro-Hamas parades across the West, thousands have proclaimed that violence, oppression, and censorship are acceptable if the "right" groups are being harmed, oppressed, and silenced. The ideals of diversity and dissent have been reduced to slogans to signal our virtue, not realities to live out in practice. As a result, more and more power is granted to state, academic, corporate, and media authorities to "rescue us" from "dangerous" ideas, ironically in the name of diversity and inclusion. Those people who are tearing down the posters of kidnapped Israeli kids are not replacing them with other images. They are just denying a space to speak. The younger, leftist crowd increasingly thinks of core freedoms, such as the freedom of speech, as questionable at best and as a dangerous excuse for "hatred" at worst. In America, we now debate whether some speech should be coerced. In Britain, though silent prayer can be illegal, calls for genocide are protected. A world in which we are free only insofar as we agree with those currently in power is a world that's not free at all. During the twentieth century, the world moved forward on the inertia and inheritance Christianity gave to the West. This momentum, however, only lasted so long. Somewhere, during the long fight against the twin tyrannies of Fascism and Communism, we lost those fundamental beliefs and insights into humanity that grounded our ideals about freedom in the first place. Now, well into the twenty-first century, with this Judeo-Christian foundation stripped from beneath us, nothing remains to sustain the passion for liberty. Without a vision of ordered freedom–what Os Guinness has rightly noted as a "freedom for" rather than just a "freedom from"– the claim to "rights" and "liberties" are reduced to squabbles between various groups vying for power. President Reagan's epic call to "Tear down this wall!" will have been for nothing if something better is not built in its place. Western freedom cannot be preserved without a proper understanding of human nature, the understanding that birthed Western freedom in the first place. Only the description of reality offered in the Bible and confirmed by centuries of Christian reflection is robust enough for this task. If rooted only in the malleable ideas of the majority or on the passing fancies of those in power, our most precious liberties will collapse as surely as Communism's concrete boundaries did. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Tuesday, Ohio became the most recent conservative state to defend a "right" to abortion. Only a year and a half ago, pro-lifers celebrated the legal significance of overturning Roe v. Wade. Since then, voters in state after state have protected the right to end innocent, preborn life. This is a "you are here" moment. Many people, even if personally opposed to abortion, are not willing to restrict anyone else's freedom. This is part of the legacy of Roe: Americans learned an absolute allegiance to absolute autonomy along with what Joe Rigney called the "cruelty of untethered empathy." Andrew Walker tweeted, "We won a generational legal argument in overturning Roe, but the teaching effect of a fifty year law to etch a lie about what human life is and when it begins has reaped tragic and generational consequences to reverse." Political strategies are so important: timing, wording on ballot initiatives, etc. But most of our work to defend life is upstream from the ballot box. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Not even a decade ago, television personality Bill Maher had cemented his brand of snarky atheism and political leftism. His crass, snide, and often irrationally irreligious humor infuriated many and led to an earlier show being canceled, not to mention plenty of gigs. For a couple of years now, however, many of his former critics have noted something new: how often he's willing to say out loud what many on the left are not. In a monologue on last Friday's episode of his HBO series, Real Time with Bill Maher, which I cannot officially recommend given the language and perverse humor, Maher offered a thorough defense of Israel and Western civilization: "For all the progressives and academics who refer to Israel as an outpost of Western civilization, like it's a bad thing, please note: Western civilization is what gave the world pretty much every [expletive] liberal precept that liberals are supposed to adore. Individual liberty, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women's rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech. Please, somebody, stop us before we enlighten again." He went on to note that Israel is the only place in the Middle East where these societal goods can be found and even said that the world would be a lot better off "if it had more Israels." The plight of marginalized peoples everywhere is better off, Maher noted, because of the supposedly toxic West that anti-Israeli protestors deride. Maher then offered a mini-history on the evolution of human rights, detailing a host of thinkers through the ages that articulated, argued for, and built the freedoms we now enjoy. It was, after all, only from the ideals brewed in Western culture that people like Martin Luther King, Jr. were able to launch crusades against racial oppression and American segregation. It was from the writing of thinkers such as Jean Jacque Rousseau and Voltaire that the U.N.'s well-devised, even if poorly applied, Declaration of Human Rights was birthed. In a point dripping with his typical snarkiness, Maher pointed out that no one studies the great prophet of liberty, John Locke, anymore, "because he's so old and so white and so dead." He ended by noting how few of those he was critiquing would even take seriously what he said because they are too committed to a way of seeing everything through the lens of predetermined oppressors and the oppressed. I, like many, disagree with Maher on multiple things, but I also find it fascinating the number of cynics and skeptics today who seem to be rethinking everything now that they've been confronted with the ideas that have replaced religion in the West. At a conference last week, former politician and human rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali described herself as a "Judeo-Christian" and atheist Richard Dawkins as a "Christian," not because either believe in a God per se or the resurrection, but because the values they want in the world rely on a specific kind of world, one created with moral norms inherent to it. Which, in fact, brings up just what Bill Maher left out in his otherwise thoughtful and compelling monologue. As you might expect from the guy behind the faith-despising faux-documentary Religulous, he's not quite ready to admit the role of religion in cultivating liberty and human rights. Because Voltaire and Rousseau were anti-religious, they are safe to mention. Locke and King are often praised almost in spite of their deep faith, which Maher never mentioned. In fact, Maher started his history of Western civilization too late, describing men who inherited a tradition as if they had started it. Put differently, to begin the story of Western civilization with Henry David Thoreau or John Locke is kind of like beginning the storied history of the Boston Celtics with Paul Pierce. Yeah, he was good, but Bill Russell! In his book, A Brief History of Thought, Luc Ferry, also an atheist, identified and clearly articulated the true source of the West's most important and consequential ideas: "Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity—an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance." In other words, without the principles that emerge from Holy Scriptures, which simmered for centuries in Jewish and Christian thought, the world would never have benefited from the insights of a Jefferson or a Locke. The biblical view of the world, especially its description of the inherent value and moral nature of the human person, is the only basis for freedom in all of human history. The ideas Maher rightly celebrates are not only good ones, they are true. Without their religious roots, they cannot be sustained, certainly not from atheism. Maher is right to look to an earlier foundation for our civilization. He just needs to look back even further. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian i

In one of his books, historian Tom Holland asked, "Who needs the Devil when there is Adolf Hitler?" Since the Holocaust, calling someone "Hitler" has been the quickest way to call someone "evil" and to short-circuit debate, even for those who don't know much about who Hitler was and what he did. However, because of its constant use, calling someone a "Nazi" or "Hitler" is almost meaningless. Put differently, if everyone is Hitler, no one is. But I say almost because any of our moral proclamations are made in a world infused with the moral law that stands over the behavior of moral beings, and all of this reflects the moral nature of the Creator. In the so-called "Holocaust inversion" of recent days, Jews have been called "Nazis" while those committing and supporting their annihilation are called victims. This is because the whole tragic episode is being seen by those unattached from the realities of evil and history. But even if a name becomes meaningless, morality does not. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Just War theory is one of the most significant contributions of Christianity to the world. On a recent episode of Breakpoint This Week, Dr. Eric Patterson, president of the Religious Freedom Institute and a political scientist who has done extensive work on the subject, discussed how the Just War tradition can help us think through the atrocities of Hamas and the retaliation by Israel. In fact, Patterson's new book, entitled A Basic Guide to the Just War Tradition, is among the best primers available on Just War theory. In our conversation, Dr. Patterson argued that governments have a God-given obligation to defend the innocent. As he put it, "There's a whole superstructure in the Bible on certain principles. One is governance. God created the family as a unit of governance. He created the Church as a unit of governance within its sphere. And we know in the Old and the New Testament, such as in Romans 13, there's a principle of government authority to protect and defend. The Bible has a lot to say about vocations, including those called the security and foreign policy vocations: Nehemiah, Joseph, in the New Testament, centurions and others. And so, there's never a teaching in the Bible that Christians are supposed to step outside of those public service vocations to protect and defend." Still, some Christians who take seriously Jesus' command to love their enemies have a hard time seeing how that should play out when it comes to nations at war. Ultimately, it is the command to love our neighbors that grounds the Christian responsibility, of both individuals and governments, to oppose evil through proper channels of authority. The love of our enemies, which Christ commanded, should inform how we oppose evil. In as much, Dr. Patterson argues, intentions matter: "I think what the Just War tradition helps us with is looking at Israeli politics, looking at leaders and things and asking the question, 'Is the reason you're doing this out of love of neighbor, love of country, or have you strayed over this line where you are full of hate and what you really want to do is out of wrath, out of hatred, out of bitterness?'" When the enemy is dehumanized, Patterson argues, the war devolves away from justice. Of course, Hamas has never seen Jews as fully human. Israel, on the other hand, has placed itself under the obligations of international law, which has been shaped by the Christian Just War tradition. They've committed to be proportional in their response, though that is not measured mathematically. They've committed to distinguish between civilians and combatants, though that does not mean they are responsible every time a civilian is killed. They've committed to treat prisoners humanely and to wage war with a view toward peace in the end. These commitments impose a heavy burden on those who fight, and they stand in direct contrast to Hamas, Boko Haram, ISIS, or the Taliban. Their way of waging terror and warfare comes, in the words of Philos Project founder Robert Nicholson, from "drinking from a different ideological well" of radical Islam. Dr. Patterson put it, "The reason that we've had a half dozen coups in West Africa in the past three years is because governments there, and often friendly Christians and Muslims working together, are so dispirited that the West and Western-supported governments have not been able to stop the black flag of Islamic State in West Africa. We see this with the Taliban and others. I think we have a lot of examples of this type of ruthless, violent Islamism that justifies violence against its neighbors." Everyone, including Muslims, suffers at the hands of radical Islam. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. Christians have a different view of people, of our friends and of our enemies. We believe in justice and in peace, and most importantly, in the Prince of Peace. May His judgment come swiftly—and may Christians bear faithful witness until then. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

How many faces do you have? Atheist comedian Stephen Fry once said (quite ironically) that you are who you are when nobody's watching. When social restraints are removed, when the cameras aren't rolling, what sort of person are you? What sort of choices do you make? All of us—especially men—need to ask these questions of ourselves in the wake of the daily flurry of scandals from Hollywood and Washington. This isn't a problem "out there" in someone else's sound studio, office, or home. It's a problem "in here," at the depths of the sinful human heart. Is the person we portray to others the same person we are when we're by ourselves—or more importantly—when we believe there will be no consequences for our actions? This is sometimes called "living on your face;" in other words, making sure that what you present in public is the character you demonstrate in private. Only as Christians, we know that there's nowhere we can flee from the presence of God, who sees all, and who is always with us, and who promises that "our sins will find us out." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point was originally published on January 1, 2018.

In November of 1660, Puritan lay preacher John Bunyan was arrested and subsequently spent the next 12 years in prison. Under the restored monarchy of Charles II, dissent from the Church of England was once again illegal. Initially sentenced to three months, under the condition that he would stop preaching, Bunyan famously replied that he was willing to suffer "till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows, rather than thus to violate my faith and principles." In prison, Bunyan completed one of the all-time, best-selling works of Christian literature, The Pilgrim's Progress. Chuck Colson was deeply impacted by this book. Here's Chuck, in his own words: "It has often been described as the most popular and most influential book ever published—after the Bible, that is. Yet many literary critics of its time treated it with scorn. Its author was simply a humble Puritan minister who wrote it while imprisoned for his faith. He was not even sure if he should publish it. If you have not guessed it yet, I am talking about The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. ... Pilgrim's Progress is a powerful story of one Christian's journey through life. The people, encounters, and struggles he faces have become part of the English language: Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Vanity Fair, the Slough of Despond, and so many more. Yet Bunyan was not even trying to be particularly clever or original. As [Dr. Ken] Boa reminds us, Bunyan's thinking was so steeped in the Scriptures that his book is filled with 'literally hundreds and hundreds of allusions' to biblical references and concepts, and this is what makes its imagery so striking and memorable. As Charles Spurgeon, who used to read The Pilgrim's Progress twice a year, said of Bunyan, 'If you cut him, he would bleed Bible.' The book's theological depth makes it almost suitable for a "catechesis" of the Christian faith. And something that has always amazed me about Pilgrim's Progress is just how real Bunyan's characters are. The pilgrims at the center of the story are no Christian supermen, no perfect moral heroes. Boa points out, 'There are many weaknesses in [the characters] Christian and Faithful … and we see that faith co-exists with failings.' Just like any biblical hero, the Christian characters here must ask for God's help in fighting their own flaws and failures. Their intentions are good, but they are too easily lured away from their path or cast down by their troubles. As Boa says, 'It is Christian's actual frailty, his fallibility that arouses our sympathy for him and makes us wonder what is going to happen next.' Unlike much Christian fiction of our own time, Bunyan's allegory does not try to tiptoe around the fact of sin. The wise Puritan preacher knew he would have been remiss not to deal with it. In many ways, his heroes, despite the seventeenth century setting, are just like us, which is why Pilgrim's Progress still fascinates us. Fascinates us and encourages us, as well—for as Boa goes on to say, Bunyan's book teaches us that 'any man, any woman, through grace, can become a Christian hero.' It is a lesson that has carried down through the centuries and is just as powerful today as ever—not bad for a simple Puritan preacher." Chuck Colson knew, of course, what it was like to not only be in prison but to experience the presence of the Lord in the midst of prison. In the epilogue of his autobiography Born Again, Chuck wrote, "I found myself increasingly drawn to the idea that God had put me in prison for a purpose and that I should do something for those I had left behind." Among the lessons to be learned from the stories of John Bunyan and Chuck Colson is that suffering can produce the Christian's most powerful witness, and that God is faithful to His people everywhere, even behind bars. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.

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 is 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 and the guarantee that the faith we now confess in the Triune God will one day be sight. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point was originally published on December 29, 2017.

In a viral post back in July, entrepreneur Robert Sterling described what many people feel: "There is something deeply unwell in our society right now. … I'm sure social media, economic malaise, Covid lockdowns, fentanyl, and every other reason we hear about factor into it." Yet, all these reasons, he continued, "in aggregate, still feel insufficient." Something "metaphysical," seems to have shifted. A Breakpoint commentary in April described the mental health crisis of American teens, especially teenage girls. As The New York Times reported, "Nearly three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021 … and one in three girls seriously considered attempting suicide." Boys aren't doing much better, with so-called "deaths of despair" at an all-time high among the male population. This widespread mental instability has culturewide consequences. In a recent documentary, filmmaker Christopher Rufo diagnosed what he calls our "Cluster B Society." The rise of "woke" ideology and cancel culture, he argued, corresponds with the explosion of psychopathologies like narcissism and borderline personality disorder. These "disorders of the self," Rufo explains, wreck relationships and lead to profound social dysfunction. When they become "formalized and entrenched" in "human resource departments, government policies, cultural institutions, and civil rights law," they lead to precisely the kinds of extremism and emotional instability that infects politics today, especially among the young. What is this "metaphysical shift," this feature of modern society, that is driving so many people into despair? Writing for the Institute for Family Studies, University of Virginia sociologist Joseph Davis argues that our mental health crisis is the end of a long process that began well before the iPhone, social media, or fentanyl. The seeds of despair and derangement, he thinks, were sown when people stopped looking to timeless institutions and transcendent realities to give their lives meaning, and instead turned inward for answers. Davis cites Jennifer Breheny Wallace, who in her book Never Enough notes that even successful and privileged young people often say they feel "utterly vacant inside." The reason they are looking inward for meaning is because they've been taught for decades now, by everyone from Disney and Oprah to pop stars and professors, to reject external sources of meaning like God, family, or country. "Their truth" is found within, while external sources of authority are oppressive and stifle authentic individuality. As a result, Davis argues, "the public frameworks that gave life direction and meaning—prescribed roles, rites of passage, compelling life scripts, stable occupational trajectories—continue to fade away." That's why, as he puts it, "We feel empty, inadequate, and adrift because we have been thrown back on ourselves, forced to face the challenge—at younger and younger ages—of trying to establish an identity, make commitments, live with conviction, desire life, and find meaning without the very sources that make these things possible in the first place." As theologian Carl Trueman demonstrated in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, the idea that life's greatest meaning comes from within and from there we express our authentic identity is a recent development. Our ancestors looked beyond self, to external sources of authority. In our culture of expressive individualists, many people are finding themselves, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, unchained from a sun. Writing of the death of God in his famous Parable of the Madman, Nietzsche accurately predicted the chaos to come but also noted that people in his day could not realize the implications of doing away with fixed, transcendent meaning. "I have come too early," says the Madman. "This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men." Perhaps today, in the ruins of the institutions, traditions, churches, families, and cultures once tied to belief in an unchanging God, Nietzsche's prophecy has come true. We are adrift with only ourselves as gods. If the statistics are accurate, more and more people are finding this intolerable. We were never meant to invent meaning for ourselves. The demands of our hyper-individualistic society feel unbearable because they're unreasonable. We put the weight of defining the world on our shoulders, and it's heavier than we ever imagined. The self is not big enough to define the truth. This means that solving our mental health crisis will take much more than cutbacks on social media or crackdowns on opioids (though these are good ideas). It will take a return to older, less individualistic sources of identity and a willingness to stop treating "be yourself" or "you do you" as some kind of profound wisdom. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. To help us share Breakpoint with others, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to

Dr. Timothy Padgett, Resident Theologian for the Colson Center, hosts a conversation at our latest Breakpoint Forum with Christian scholars Neil Shenvi, Ph.D. and Pat Sawyer, Ph.D. as they break down the roots of Critical Theory and how it's impacted our culture. Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer have delved into this important issue as a part of their general work and in writing a recent book entitled, Critical Dilemma: The Rise of Critical Theories and Social Justice Ideology—Implications for the Church and Society. The Colson Center has invited them to take part in our latest Breakpoint Forum to help you better understand what is right and what is wrong about this contentious philosophy. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Live Action recently posted a photo on X that shows that a baby developing in the womb is not "just a clump of cells," even at eight weeks gestation. Though the baby is only about half an inch long and roughly the size of a raspberry, retinas begin to form during this stage, as well as intestines and other organs. This is also the time when fingers and toes start to take shape and the baby gains the ability to flex at the elbows. In about 10 more weeks, the baby's sex can be determined. To call a preborn baby that is growing and developing in the womb "a clump of cells" is as reductionistic as calling a born human "a clump of cells." I mean, in one sense it's true, we are all clumps of cells. However, it's an absurdly incomplete picture of what a human being really is. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

One of the most beloved and quotable scenes in The Chronicles of Narnia is from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the children learn that Aslan is a lion, "the Lion, the great Lion." "'Ooh' said Susan. 'I'd thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.' 'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver ... 'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'" Though we love the idea that God is not "safe," we often live as if our safety or comfort marks the boundaries of our relationship with Him. Catechized by bad theology, captivated by our culture's enablement of self-centeredness, or weary of an angry and fractious age, many Christians cannot conceive that God's will for our lives could involve anything unpleasant or uncomfortable. When it does and our expectations collapse, we wonder if God cares, having conflated God's faithfulness with a painless, placid life of blessing and provision. We are quick to assume that pain or discomfort means that God's will has been thwarted, or that His love and protection have been withdrawn. It's difficult to accept that, rather than a sign of God's absence, the presence of pain could be a sign of His sovereign care. Throughout The Horse and His Boy, Aslan continually allows fear, hardship, and even physical pain for the main characters. When Shasta, one of the two main humans in the story, is fleeing from his abusive adoptive father on the Narnian horse Bree, a lion chases them through the darkness. Fleeing from the danger, he encounters another rider fleeing from, it seems, another lion. Aravis is also escaping her home on a talking Narnian horse. Their shared fear and confusion bring them together for a journey neither of them could have made without the other. Later in the story, they're riding as fast as they can to head off a threat to Narnia. Just as Bree claims he can go no faster, a "new" lion closes in on them. Lewis writes, "His eyes gleamed red and his ears lay back on his skull. And Bree now discovered that he had not really been going as fast—not quite as fast—as he could. Shasta felt the change at once. Now they were going all out." The lion then badly wounds Aravis, before retreating unexpectedly. Later, Shasta learns the full story. There was only one lion, not many. Aslan was "swift of foot." Without the fears and the pain, Shasta and Aravis, Bree and Hwin, would have never met; their quest would have failed; the enemy would have been victorious; and Shasta would never have learned who he truly was. The pain wasn't an afterthought on Aslan's part, but a key element in his plan. None of this implies that pain should be sought out. Pain is never the point of God's plans, any more than it is the purpose of physical exercise. Never pushing ourselves to the point that it hurts means never improving our health. On the other hand, seeking pain is more likely to do harm than to aid our wellbeing. In and of itself, pain is not good, but it is meaningful. Pain indicates that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Without pain, we'd never know. In the same way, breaking bad habits of the past requires pushing beyond our comfort levels, through the pain, and onward on the path to full restoration. Pain is sometimes required to reorient us. What else can turn one away from a debilitating addiction or insatiable sexual impulse? Without discomfort, would we ever give up on our preferred source of "safety" for the faithful and sometimes painful love of God? Whether through sickness or sacrifice, in ending a dream or enduring hostility, we must remember that God's faithfulness is not determined by how well our lives are going. In fact, it is often known only in the hardest things of life. To deny that God could or would use discomfort for our good is to deny that He is present in our pain. He is. Just as, in His quest to restore the glory of His creation, He did not shrink back from inflicting pain on His dear Son, His love for His people often includes a level of discomfort and pain. In the end, it is part of His work to restore His image bearers to their intended dignity. As Lewis wrote elsewhere, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Breakpoint originally aired November 4, 2021.

In November 1917, Scottish Bible teacher and evangelist Oswald Chambers died while serving as chaplain to British troops in Egypt. Ten years after his death, his wife Gertrude compiled her notes of his sermons into one of the most influential devotionals of all time: My Utmost for His Highest. Chambers revered the Scripture. "God never fits His word to suit me;" he wrote, "He fits me to suit His word." But he also understood the kind of book the Bible was. Not something only to be looked at, but to be looked through. He once responded to a friend who said he only read the Bible that, "When people refer to a man as 'a man of the book,' meaning the Bible, he is generally found to be a man of multitudinous books, which simply isolates the one Book to its proper grandeur. The man who reads only the Bible does not, as a rule, know it or human life." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Mark Twain famously said that "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does often rhyme." The new film, Golda, starring Helen Mirren, provides evidence of that maxim. A surprise Arab attack is carried out on the nation of Israel in the first week of October. An embattled Israeli Prime Minister fights to secure American support. There are whispers of Russian involvement and atrocities in Ukraine. Golda is not a film about 2023, but it does recall the remarkably similar story of 1973. In fact, the history of Israel and the wider story of the millennia-long persecution of Jews can feel somewhat like a broken record. No matter the era, no matter the region, no matter the culture, Jacob's children find themselves in the crosshairs of their neighbors' hatred. In the 5th-century BC, the royal advisor Haman whined to his king: "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not to the king's profit to tolerate them." Haman was, of course, speaking of the Jewish people. Jewish historian Josephus described the tensions that simmered between Jews and Greeks in Egypt since the 4th century. Conflict erupted in his day into riots that, before the slaughter stopped, left some 50,000 Jews dead. In a remark that could be taken from today's headlines, the historian declared, "Some were caught in the open field, others forced into their houses, which were plundered and then set on fire. The Romans showed no mercy to the infants, had no regard for the aged, and went on in the slaughter of persons of every age." Over the next few hundred years, this antisemitism was, with some notable exceptions, sadly baptized by an emerging Christian culture. Some of this can be attributed to an accommodation to the cultural norms, some to seeking revenge for earlier Jewish persecutions of Christians, and some to significant theological issues that continue to affect Jewish-Christian relations even today. In a tragic replaying of the persecution inflicted on the Early Church by Roman pagans, Christians scapegoated Jews for bad harvests, plagues, and political misfortune. Across Europe, especially Russian-controlled areas, pogroms were unleashed against victims with nowhere to go, at least until the rise of America and Israel. Attacks against the Jews only increased with the evolving of a more secularized, modern age. Ancient prejudices took on modern forms, fed by conspiracy theories held across various segments of society. Jews were thought to be both in absolute control of world events and bent on world destruction. The horrifying capstone of antisemitism in the modern era was given the name the "Final Solution" by the Nazis. Sadly, the story of Jew hatred continues today, in the conspiracy junkie who sees the Rothschilds behind every event and in the equally abhorrent Critical Theory claims about Israeli occupation and oppression. From these two ends of the Western political spectrum, the Jews have once again been cast into a villainous role they've never deserved. Despite being an emotionally heavy movie, Golda ends with an optimistic note. Through the peace that ended the war between Israel and Egypt, steps began which, 50 years later, have led to an increasing number of treaties between Arabs and Israelis. Though we are rightly outraged by the vile comments of some in the West in support of the atrocities of Hamas, nearly every Western government has stood up for Israel in this situation. And many Muslim states have either stayed quiet or even voiced support. Will this current crisis lead to greater stability as the crisis told about in the film? We don't know. What we do know is that this history did not begin yesterday, nor will it be fixed tomorrow. But, even when history does rhyme, it doesn't necessarily have to repeat. We live in God's world. He promises to "make all things new." That will be how the story ends. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

As the world continues to learn the disturbing details of the Hamas atrocities against Israeli women, children, and other civilians, an added horror is the thousands of people around the world, even in the West, publicly supporting those doing the killing. While many have stood up for the Jews, many others have taken to the streets, celebrated the evils, protested Israel's justified retaliation, and even called for "Jihad." As Lois McLatchie Miller noted, this is particularly galling in the U.K. where pro-lifers have been arrested for silent prayer while this rank antisemitism is protected: "A police force that sends six officers to arrest a silently praying Christian woman, but lacks resources to stop our streets from flooding with violence, is not one that reflects the values of a Western democratic society." Of course, that depends on which values are currently prevailing, something constantly in flux in societies that have rejected their moral foundations. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Few people, particularly in the U.K., have shown the kind of courageous, tenacious commitment to truth as media personality, minister, conservative commentator, and Anglican deacon Fr. Calvin Robinson. In 2020, after discerning a call to church ministry, Robinson left a career in teaching to pursue a degree in theology through St. Stephen's House, Oxford. In 2022, he applied for a curacy within the London Diocese of the Church of England. Robinson, a British citizen of mixed race, learned that his application had been held up due to his opinions on Critical Race Theory. Earlier, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby declared that the Church of England was "deeply institutionally racist," a statement with which Robinson took issue. When it became clear that church leaders were dragging their feet over his placement, Robinson requested access to the files pertaining to his case. He learned that the Church of England, not the "broad church" many assumed, was rejecting him for his outspoken conservative views. Describing a conversation with the Bishop of London, Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullally, Robinson reported: "I said as a mixed race person I don't feel like the church is institutionally racist. I think it's wrong for the Archbishop of Canterbury to stand up on a pedestal to announce, 'We are racist.' I think that's wrong. I think individuals are racist and they need to be held to account for it, but to say that we as an institution are, that's unhelpful. I don't think it's statistically true. And she said to me, 'Well I think we are, and as a white woman I can tell you that we are, and I've seen it.'" His view on racial issues is not the only area in which Fr. Robinson found himself in conflict with the Church of England. As he put it, "It seems the Church will affirm any liberal progressive secular view, but clamp down on conservative views, either political or theological. If you defend family values, the sanctity of marriage, all human life being sacred, or the fact that God made us male and female, you'll face opprobrium." Ousted from the Church of England, Fr. Robinson became a deacon in the Free Church of England instead, a church that aligns with the Global Anglican Future Conference, or GAFCON, an international body committed to biblical orthodoxy. Until recently, he hosted a popular show on GB News and now serves as minister-in-charge in a local parish. Fr. Robinson recently defended that the church should not perform or bless same-sex "marriages" in a debate at the Oxford Union, one of the world's oldest institutions of public discourse. His opponents were three progressive bishops. In each of these experiences, Robinson has demonstrated the kind of courage required for Christian faithfulness today. This begins, as Robinson put it, with a commitment to truth: "People are looking for the Truth. It is our job as the Church to proclaim the Truth from the rooftops and let people know there is another way; that Jesus Christ is the truth and the way, and the life. If that means being counter-cultural, so be it. It is not our job to chase societal norms, it is our job to live a life rooted in the Scriptures. We cannot chase fads in order to attract numbers, bums in seats are a side-effect not the objective. … [W]e are called to disciple the nations—but I do not believe that means obsessing over attracting new demographics; that means obsessing over preaching the Good News, doing it well and faithfully. If we do that, people will come, and Christ will convert them." Courage, specifically how Christians can have a courageous faith, is the theme of the 2024 Colson Center National Conference, to be held May 30-June 2 in Arlington, Texas. I'm very pleased to announce that Fr. Calvin Robinson will join us for this event as a speaker along with an amazing lineup of others, such as Drs. Sean McDowell, Kathy Koch, and Neil Shenvi. To register, go to ColsonConference.org. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Some 1,700 years ago, Armenia became the very first nation in history to adopt Christianity as the official religion of the state. That long history is fast disappearing. A photo recently posted by the Christian Emergency Alliance records the last clergy of an ancient monastery, forced to flee from the Azeri advances, which are often accompanied by desecrations of Christian sites by Muslim soldiers. In ancient times, the Armenians endured a precarious existence, with Rome to the west and Persia to the east. Today, U.S. ally Turkey backs the Muslim Azeri while Moscow has been an unreliable protector of Armenia. Whatever the causes of this strife, an ancient Christian society sits on the edge of destruction, which means that our prayers and political actions cannot be constrained only by geopolitics. Pray to God for our brothers and sisters, and appeal to our political representatives for their relief. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Every autumn, in a sort of seasonal ritual, the leaves start turning, the air turns chilly, and Christians argue over whether to celebrate Halloween. While I've never been a huge fan of the dark, sketchy costumes (and I'm talking about what adults wear), there's a whole history to this day, unknown to most people. In fact, there's an even more amazing history behind tomorrow, All Saints' Day. Back in 2007, Chuck Colson described that history in a Breakpoint he called, "Honoring the Witnesses." Here's Chuck Colson: "It is Halloween again, and to be frank, I really don't look forward to talking about it on Breakpoint every year. At best, Halloween has become an excuse to ask total strangers for candy. At worst, it's a celebration of the mindless paganism our ancestors wisely turned their backs on. So, this year, I'd like to turn your attention to the often overlooked celebration that Halloween calls to mind. In case you've missed it before, the name Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows' Eve and signifies the night before All Saints' Day. For centuries on All Saints' Day, the Church celebrated the lives of Christians who went before us. And rightly so: We can learn so much from those whom the author of Hebrews calls that great cloud of witnesses. The tradition of remembering the Church triumphant dates back to the time of the first Christian martyrs. When soldiers of Marcus Aurelius Verus came to arrest Polycarp, a beloved church leader, Polycarp greeted them kindly. According to the third-century historian Eusebius, Polycarp 'ordered a table to be laid for them immediately, invited them to eat as much as they liked, asking in return a single hour in which he could pray.' When Polycarp later stood in the coliseum, accused and surrounded by the jeering crowds, the governor pressed him to recant his faith. Instead, this man, who himself had been discipled by the Apostle John, said this: 'For 86 years, I have been [Christ's] servant, and He has never done me wrong: How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?' As they were preparing to burn him alive, Polycarp offered up prayers of faith and praise. In the years following Polycarp's death, Christians would gather annually to take communion beside his grave. There they would remember his brave witness and take courage from his example. As the years passed, the day shifted in focusing from remembering Polycarp to honoring all martyrs. By the seventh century, the Church created a holiday to honor all of God's saints—heroes of the faith. One of my favorite heroes was a woman named Monica, who lived during the fourth century. She would never face flames or jeering crowds, as did Polycarp, but she did face testing. That testing came in the form of her own longing for the return of her prodigal son, Augustine. His licentious lifestyle made this Christian mother weep. Later, when Augustine, who is now known as one of the foremost theologians of Christianity and scholars of Western civilization, did come to Christ, he wrote this prayer: 'My mother, Your faithful servant, wept to You for me, shedding more tears for my spiritual death than others shed for the bodily death of a son. You heard her."' I could tell you story after story like this, from Justin Martyr to Martin Luther to Amy Carmichael. But let me encourage you to do something this All Saints' Day. Take the lead in your church to honor the great saints who set examples for us. Reacquaint your children with Halloween's Christian origins. Research together and talk about the lives of Christian heroes. Sure, go ahead and let the kids dress up like Batman and hit up your neighbors for candy. But when the hoopla of modern Halloween is over, encourage your kids to imitate some real heroes—not in what they put on, but in how they live their lives." That was Chuck Colson, from October 31, 2007, describing the rich history behind All Saints' Day. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Breakpoint was originally published on October 31, 2022.

In her new tell-all memoir The Woman in Me, Britney Spears reveals that she was pressured to have an abortion by Justin Timberlake when they were a celebrity couple. "Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives." She concluded, "If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn't want to be a father." Her experience is shared by millions. As an article in Christian Newswire put it, "[N]early 70% of the women who had abortions described them as being coerced, pressured, or inconsistent with their own values and preferences." Many feel like Spears, who wrote, "To this day, it's one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life." Abortion is a lie. Far from securing the rights and autonomy of women, abortion pressures women to cater to male desire and irresponsibility. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Every year around this time, the ritual begins anew. The weather cools off, the leaves change color, and Christians start arguing about Halloween. Many people love this night. It gives them an excuse to host parties, kick off the holiday spending season, and provide economic stimulus for the dental industry. Others use it as an excuse to flirt with things much darker than plastic skeletons and creative jack-o'-lanterns. Too many adults use Halloween as an excuse to throw out common standards of modesty. What is the history behind Halloween? What's all the decoration and tradition really about? Is there something spiritual behind all the ghoulishness? When I was a kid, a series of comic-book-style tracts went around claiming that Halloween was a pagan holiday called Samhain, when ancient druids used to carry out human sacrifice under a full moon. That story, as even modern pagans who love Halloween admit, is mostly made up. The very name "Halloween" means "holy evening." It was a throwback to when Catholic Christians prepared for the Feast of All Saints on November 1. A few years back, Kirk Cameron urged Christians to make the most of Halloween's Christian origins, and to throw "the biggest Halloween party on [the] block." Not only is it a great way to make fun of the devil, he argued, but it offers Christians a wonderful opportunity to proclaim Jesus' victory over sin and death to our neighbors. Our Christian forebears might have agreed. In his book, For the Glory of God, historian Rodney Stark argued that Christians in the early centuries of the Church frequently reacted to pagan practices like fortune-telling, alchemy, and even sorcery, by not taking them seriously. Augustine, for example, myth-busted astrology by pointing out how twins born under the same star sign were often very different in personality. St. Boniface taught that "to believe in 'witches' is un-Christian." Pope Gregory the Great even advised a missionary to Britain to destroy idols but to re-purpose pagan temples for Christian worship. A few years ago, Steven Wedgeworth offered another perspective in an article at The Calvinist International. After providing a helpful overview of the history of Halloween, he concluded that though there are echoes of paganism and Christian re-purposing in Halloween, the holiday of today, especially the costumes and trick-or-treating, is a recent invention. Like the commercialized secular Christmas, Halloween as we know it has more to do with department stores than druids. No matter what day it is, Paul's instructions in Philippians 4 should guide our celebrations. Christians should think on "whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable." Axe-murderer get-ups and sexually provocative costumes fail to pass that test. And, we should consider Paul's teaching on meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8. Idol worship is always wrong, but eating meat sacrificed to idols is a matter of conscience. If you are unable to participate in Halloween with a clear conscience, there are plenty of other things to celebrate this time of year, from Reformation Day to All Saints Day, to the beauty of fall's changing colors, to, as always, the sovereignty of God and the victory of Christ over everything. And, if kids will be knocking at your door on Halloween night, you can always put on a wool tunic and nail 95 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to your door. If you and your kids do enjoy a little spooky stuff, just remember, as Paul Pastor wrote over at Christianity Today, "monsters point us to God." "No story worth listening to," he says, "lacks a villain. And no villain worth fighting lacks monstrosity." No story has more monstrous villains or darker darkness than Scripture. We do have an enemy, an enemy of our souls. At the same time, Scripture describes evil as not just "out there," but also in our own hearts. And yet, evil does not have the final say, either in the world or in our own hearts. Evil is a real foe, but because of Jesus Christ, evil is a defeated foe. So, fear not. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Breakpoint originally aired October 31, 2014.

John Stonestreet and Maria Baer discuss the worldviews behind recent tragic headlines, including the shooting in Maine and the war in Israel. Alliance Defending Freedom is being targeted with a false narrative about their mission. - Recommendations - Golda The Narrative: Peace and War in Israel with Michael Mistretta All Israel Will Be Saved Segment 1: The Worldviews Behind Tragedies U.S. Sees Spike in Anti-Semitic Incidents Since Start of Israel-Hamas War ALVIN PLANTINGA: The Dawkins Confusion Segment 2: Israel and Hamas at War Israel, Hamas, and Just War: Interviews with Joel Rosenberg and Eric Patterson Segment 3: NPR's Coverage of ADF How One Christian Group is Shaping Policy, from Abortion to LGBTQ Rights For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

On October 22, 2020, 34 countries signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women's Health and Strengthening the Family. Though it lacked any legal obligations, the statement was intended to express that it was indeed possible to advance the health and wellbeing of women and protect the lives of the preborn at the same time. The original list of countries included the United States. In fact, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo helped to architect the project. Eight days after becoming president, Joe Biden removed the United States from the list of signatories in line with the foreign policy of the last two democratic presidents, who used access to U.S. aid to advance abortion and LGBTQ ideology around the world. On Wednesday in Washington D.C., seven U.S. Congressional leaders and ambassadors from Guatemala and Hungary hosted 36 original signatories to the Geneva Consensus Declaration, to reaffirm the commitment to protect "both the rights of women and unborn children." Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma put it bluntly: "When families are strong, nations are strong. When families are weak, nations are weak." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A new California law signed by Governor Newsom on October 7 will enable strangers to lead children 12 and older on matters of mental health and their home life without requiring any parental consent. It's a bizarre irony for a state that's also suing the corporation Meta for harming children under age 13 through its social media platforms, based on the assumption that children are too vulnerable to resist the effects of social media. Evidently, children can't resist their phones, but they should be able to make massive decisions about their minds, bodies, and family relationships without their parents' consent. The new law, Assembly Bill 665, expands an existing law that only applied to minors aged 12 and older with private health insurance. The new law includes minors aged 12 and older who are covered by publicly funded health insurance. Additionally, this new law broadens the list of professionals able to treat such minors from not only mental health professionals, clinical psychologists, and other licensed counselors, but also a "registered psychological assistant, a psychological trainee, an associate clinical social worker, a social work intern," and more. The law also permits minors to pursue mental health services and residential shelter services without having to "present a danger of serious physical or mental harm to themselves or to others, or be the alleged victim of incest or child abuse." LGBTQ activists are celebrating the law as a huge victory for empowering at-risk "queer" youth. Director of California Policy Kim Lewis commended Governor Newsom for signing the new law, which will address "disparities" and provide "critical mental health services" for youth, "especially youth of color and LGBTQIA+ youth." However, far from empowering young people, California's new law is rooted in a lie about what it means to be human. At the core of this bill is an idea that humans, including young people, are self-determined, self-defined beings who should have no restraints on what they desire or believe. Most importantly, the bill undermines the parent-child relationship, the most vital relationship for a child's health and wellbeing. In its place, the law offers absolute autonomy to young people, despite their youth and immaturity. This view of people, especially children, is deeply flawed. As Scripture teaches and reality confirms, our existence is owed to others–to God, first and foremost, and to mothers and fathers, according to God's design. Mothers and fathers are those tasked with and best able to provide care for children, who are born vulnerable creatures dependent on love and nurturing in order to become healthy, independent adults. Policies like AB 665 are predicated on "empowering" children by denying this dependence on parents, as well as the limits imposed by our Creator. In between the parents and children, this bill places agents of the state, who are allegiant to ideologies about children rather than the children themselves. One California mom, Abigail Martinez, lost custody of her daughter after school counselors and the Department of Children and Family Services determined that she was not properly supporting her daughter's transgender identity. The state agents claimed to know her daughter better than Abigail did, but they were tragically wrong. Months later, Abigail's daughter took her own life. Similar stories are found in other states. In fact, according to a new groundbreaking study, states where minors are free to consent to health services without parental permission experience higher youth suicide rates. And the consequences won't end here. Bad ideas beget worse ideas. The only way to truly empower children is by protecting the rights of parents to protect their hearts, minds, and bodies. No other relationship can replace parental protection and guidance. Certainly the state cannot. This law leaves young people vulnerable to the malpractice of the Dr. Frankensteins of our cultural moment and will pave the way for further exploitation. The law claims to recognize that kids are capable of consent, but in reality it lets off the hook those adults who influence them. Kids don't need "empowerment." They need parents. The way to help kids struggling with their mental health is by preserving and strengthening their relationships with those who, in most cases, know and love them best. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert. To help us share Breakpoint with others, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A parent of a six-year-old recently asked WIRED Magazine's advice columnist, "My kid wants to be an influencer. Is that bad?" WIRED's answer, more or less, was that the concerned parent should relax. "All that collective angst about television, movies, newspapers, and theater," the author wrote, is "a lineage, a rite of passage through which all generations must proceed." That's true. But just because "The Twist" was pretty harmless doesn't mean that TikTok is. Smartphones are an open door for pornography, sexual exploitation, peer pressure, mental illness, and abusive relationships. Not to mention, fame is a dangerous thing. In a 2011 interview, Billy Ray Cyrus said the decision to let his daughter Miley become a pop star "destroyed [his] family," and if he could, he'd "take it back in a second." In other words, before we let our kids become "influencers," we need to have an honest reckoning with just how much our platforms and technologies are influencing them. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In a recent article published by the Washington Institute, professor and lawyer Eric Treene offered a robust alternative way of understanding Christian Nationalism and its significance within American culture. Depending on who's doing the talking, Christian Nationalism is either the greatest danger to America or our only hope in resisting the onslaught of the progressive movement. But there is a better way. As Treene wrote, the current debate over Christian Nationalism is the most recent chapter of something that is an endemic part of the American story: "[C]an Christians honestly look around and conclude that there is more nationalism melded with their faith than in the past? In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt distributed a pocket New Testament to soldiers throughout the Armed Services, with the inscription: 'As Commander-in-Chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States.'" At the same time, according to Treene, there are reasons to be concerned about Christian Nationalism. "The alarmism about growing Christian Nationalism is vastly overblown among some, and deliberately manipulated for political reasons among others. But there is a "there" there." In the inaugural offering of Breakpoint Forums, the Colson Center hosted two of American Christianity's keenest voices about faith and the public square. Rusty Reno, chief editor of First Things, and Hunter Baker, newly appointed provost of North Greenville University, addressed the issue of Christian Nationalism. Not only do Reno and Baker hail from different Church traditions, but they took somewhat differing postures in the forum on what faithful citizenship looks like in our cultural moment. Dr. Reno's seriousness about where a secular globalist perspective has left us leads him to embrace a "soft" Christian Nationalism, though he objects to the positions of some of its most outspoken advocates. As he put it, "I would vastly prefer a Christian America to a secular America. … I think it's as simple as that. You have to ask yourself, what would you prefer, a Christian America or a secular America? I'd prefer a Christian America, and in that sense, Christian nationalism." Dr. Baker, on the other hand, argued against using the title Christian Nationalism while affirming the largely Christian influence on our nation throughout its history. He insisted that the nation and the Church are better off without any kind of formal link, while the nation is helped by the intentional influence of the church. "It's like George Washington and the Bible. These are the bulwarks of the United States in that period. But … for most of our history, it's not the case that the United States government is sort of the official partner of the Christian faith, nor is it seeking to officially establish the Christian faith or Christian institutions." Their differences were illuminating, especially given their shared priority of Christian faith, grounded in Christian truth as revealed in Holy Scripture. Each warned against the danger posed by our increasingly intolerant, secular, and progressive gatekeepers who sit atop the cultural, academic, and political power structures of our society. And both Reno and Baker affirmed the basic responsibility believers have to bring their convictions to the ballot box. The conversation was helpful and enlightening. While combatants on the extreme ends of the debate insist that it's their way or the highway, Christians must seek an increasing Christian influence without falling for the dangers C.S. Lewis warned us against in God in the Dock when he said, "By the mere act of calling itself the Christian Party it implicitly accuses all Christians who do not join it of apostasy and betrayal." We can do better than that. You can watch the recording of the Breakpoint Forum on Christian Nationalism on YouTube. Working to see a nation become more Christian doesn't make one a Christian Nationalist in the breathlessly alarmed sense we hear about so often. Our goal is faithfulness. We can long for and we can work for Christian renewal in our time without, as Chuck Colson often warned against, looking for our salvation to arrive on Air Force One. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley questioned President of the NCAA Charlie Baker about the association's policy regarding male athletes who claim they are women. As part of his questioning, Hawley repeated testimony he'd heard a few months prior from Riley Gaines, a U.S. swimmer who was forced, with no warning, to shower, change, and compete alongside a man. Neither she nor any of her teammates were notified beforehand, let alone asked for consent. When Hawley asked Baker, who started his job after Gaines' experience, about current NCAA policy, Baker first deflected and then said he didn't believe what happened to Riley Gaines would represent current NCAA policy. Politician-speak aside, when asked under oath, Baker backed away from the NCAA's previous approach. Of course, only time will tell if the NCAA actually stands up for women athletes. Hopefully, the days of men intruding on women's sports and private spaces is coming to an end. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A rarely stated but widely assumed myth of our "information age" is that access to information is the same thing as knowledge or, even worse, wisdom. Another is that time not spent accessing information is wasted, perhaps even immorally so. This explains, at least in part, the extent to which people go in order to avoid boredom today. Even brief 30-second intervals at a red light have us grasping for our phones. Most of us are uncomfortable with having "nothing to do," even for a moment. However, the endless pursuit of feeling "productive," or at least "informed" is not satisfying. In a new book called Why Boredom Matters, Professor Kevin Hood Gary proposes a solution to this problem, which he summarizes in the subtitle: "Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life." Today, "leisure" carries connotations of wealth and laziness, which makes it difficult for Christians to defend. However, since the early modern era, "leisure" has referred to the pursuit of curiosity for curiosity's sake. German philosopher Josef Pieper called leisure the "basis of culture," defining it as "everything that lies beyond the utilitarian world." In other words, to engage in leisure is to have the energy and the will to learn about the world, even when that learning isn't necessary for survival or wealth. Leisure, when understood in this sense, pushes us further into what it means to be human. No other creature engages in leisure like humans do. Animals build dams and burrows to stay warm and survive. Humans need shelter, too, but we decorate them. Not to mention, we also build cathedrals, theme parks, museums, and restaurants. We write sonnets, compose operas, and make eight-course meals. This is the behavior of creatures made in the image of God, a Creator who loves beauty for beauty's sake. Strictly utilitarian societies can be productive and efficient but are, in the end, unsustainable. The Communist experiment of the Soviet Union is an example of what happens when a society is built upon a wrong understanding of the human person. When creativity and imagination are suppressed and individuality rejected, the result is widespread dehumanization. (I'm not just talking about the architecture, although there's a reason it's called "brutalist"). Still, throughout human history and even under brutal regimes, humans have always found the will and the means to engage in leisure. One of my favorite paintings, by Russian artist Nikolai Yaroshenko, is called Life Is Everywhere. Three men, a woman, and a baby are crammed into a prison car but, through the bars of their window, they watch, amused, the fevered activity of a group of birds on the ground outside. The child is smiling. Even in war-torn countries and in the poorest slums, there are people making beautiful things, inventing games and stories, and imagining a world different than what they know. This is because leisure is an insuppressible part of being human, made in God's image. In most of the Western world, people have all the means and opportunity to pursue classical leisure but choose distraction instead. Lacking in motivation to go deeper, Kevin Hood Gary suggests the only solution is education. He doesn't mean institutional higher education as it is currently, unfortunately built around a utilitarian approach. Highly specified academic programs teach students what they need to pass a test, obtain a license, or make money. A truly meaningful education instead capitalizes on the God-given capacity for leisure incorporating a broad survey of subjects–including those that seem to have nothing to do with "getting a job." Often, those subjects assumed to be irrelevant to a job are the most consequential. Do we want geneticists capable of splicing genes and rewriting DNA who have never taken an ethics class? Do we want elementary teachers versed in all social-emotional learning theories of second graders, but who do not know even the basics of the history of Western civilization? Education should be an antidote to boredom because it should teach us how to wrestle with the questions boredom brings up, such as: Who am I? Why am I here? What is life for? Am I living well? What should I love? Philosophers call these the "ultimate" questions. Christians know that the source of these questions is God Himself, and that bearing God's image makes life inherently meaningful. To learn about God's world, through history, art, philosophy, mathematics, science, and literature, is to learn about Him. Thus, it is always beneficial, even if it accomplishes nothing more than giving us a wider glimpse of His glorious creativity. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Typically, People magazine publishes stories lamenting reduced access to abortion that has resulted for some women since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But earlier this month, the magazine published a heartbreaking story lamenting an abortion. Las Vegas mom Tamika Thomas unexpectedly lost her two preborn babies after a local pharmacy wrongfully gave her an abortifacient. Having undergone in vitro fertilization, Thomas was picking up pills that she thought were going to help kickstart her pregnancy. Instead, the pharmacist, failing to decipher the doctor's note, prescribed Misoprostol, a drug used to abort preborn children within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Unaware she had received Misoprostol, Thomas took the pills and lost her children. This heartbreaking story is not about victims of bad handwriting. Rather, these two children were the victims of bad ideas and our culture's upside-down thinking about women, the preborn, and the purpose of medicine. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In a recent "X" post that went viral, a young woman lamented: "[I'm] Realizing at 32 that I don't care about building a career or climbing any corporate ladder. All I want to do is make the most amount of money working the least amount of hours possible so I can spend the MAJORITY of my time with my family, living life on my own terms instead of spending 40+ years working for a boss who's paying me what he thinks is 'fair.'" This woman speaks for many 30-and-40-somethings who wish they'd prioritized marriage and children earlier. As births in the U.S. sink farther below the replacement rate, and the average age of first marriage hovers near an all-time high, a growing number of people are seeing the appeal of a life centered more around family than career, success, or status. In fact, Gallup's Social Series survey recently found that desire for larger families is at a 50-year high: 45% of respondents said that three or more children is their ideal, a big change from 20 years ago, when only 33% of Americans wanted that many kids. This, however, only makes our nation's empty maternity wards and rock-bottom birth rates more puzzling. What is growing in America are not families, but the chasm between the families Americans say they want and the families they are forming. In a Wall Street Journal article in May, Janet Adamy described how the "gap between women's intended number of children and their actual family size has widened considerably. ... [B]y the time women born in the late 1980s were in their early 30s, they had given birth, on average, to about one child less than they planned." Multiplied by tens of thousands, that's a lot of missing kids. This "birth dearth" has become so serious and undeniable that even mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal have finally acknowledged it and even debated ways to reverse it. Adamy thinks that economic and social factors are to blame. Women cannot afford to have as many kids as they want and can't find mature, financially stable men with whom to have them. These factors cannot sufficiently explain the numerous ways Americans actively opt for child-free lives. For instance, more and more households are choosing pets over children, and our spending on those pets increased by a whopping 30% between 2018 and 2021. More importantly, marriage is rarer than ever, especially among lower-income Americans even though marriage is the most reliable means of building and keeping the financial stability required for children. Also, the rate of vasectomies has risen by more than a quarter in the last decade and are easier than ever to obtain. Planned Parenthood of Oklahoma City recently advertised free vasectomies on Facebook with the slogan "snip away the stress." They were fully booked in two days. And finally, if, as several writers have asked recently, our lack of fertility can be chalked up to "it's the economy, stupid," how did previous generations manage far higher birth rates in much more difficult times? Louise Perry offered a better explanation than any of these in an article published earlier this year in The Spectator. In it, she blamed our "progressive" lifestyle: "The key features of modernity—urbanism, affluence, secularism, the blurring of gender distinctions, and more time spent with strangers than with kin—all of these factors in combination shred fertility." In other words, we are witnessing the domination of a life-script in which children feel superfluous. The way we live, the things we value, the roles we assume, and the priorities we set have made family an afterthought. We've been culturally conditioned, at nearly every turn, to put other things ahead of marriage and children. We believe that marriage and family "will just happen when it's time." But these things rarely do just happen in our culture, which is why so many find themselves like the woman in the viral video, wishing things had gone differently but painfully aware that lost time can never be reclaimed. Mega trends like this cannot be changed overnight. Certainly, there are policy moves, like those recently suggested by Brad Wilcox and David Bass of the Institute for Family Studies, that can make change easier. Ultimately, it comes down to individual choices to plan life in a way that centers, rather than marginalizes, marriage and family. That means these things can't be an afterthought, seen as a kind of "capstone" that young people expect to simply fall into place when the time is right. Rather, they must be thought of as foundational realities and, as such, things to pursue and around which other aspects of life should revolve. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org