Breakpoint

A few years ago, a Philadelphia area Apple store featured a display in which a vibrant rainbow of the latest iPhones broke through a greyscale crowd of people. What was particularly striking about the advertisement wasn't the use of contrast nor that this was not some thinly veiled "Pride" month display. The multi-colored iPhones were positioned like veils, so that no face, or even part of a face, could be seen. If Apple hoped the display would inspire new eagerness to join the technicolor life awaiting customers behind their screens, instead, by veiling human faces, the campaign unveiled the depersonalizing effects of our most ubiquitous technologies, especially smartphones, social media, and the internet. This combination–which makes up our brave new world of new media–regularly functions as a barrier to other people and to the outside world, behind which we hide. Think of the socially anxious teen whose face is "glued" to the screen or think of the man who surfs for sexually explicit content online. New media offers them and others a place of anonymity, where they can live and move and have their being, unencumbered by others. Our "digital veils" also function as a source of power and control, in a way depicted long ago in C.S. Lewis's classic, Till We Have Faces. The main character and narrator in the story is Orual, the unattractive and tomboyish older sister of the goddess Psyche. Orual convinces Psyche to disobey her husband, the god Cupid, who then banishes Psyche and ends their marriage. As a result, Orual decides to live out the rest of her days wearing a black veil. The veil, which starts off as "a sort of treaty made with [her] ugliness," quickly becomes a form of power and control. Whereas her ugliness and mannishness caused others to disregard her, the veil gives her a kind of power over others. Her father, the king, takes her seriously, suitors flock to her, and enemies respect her. By shrouding her face in mystery, the veil even led some to imagine she was a dazzling beauty or even a spirit. Like Orual's veil, new media can become a kind of digital veil that enables us to hide from others, influence their perceptions of us, and control our personal images. Social media especially functions in this way. We build profiles of perfectly lighted and cropped snapshots, snippets of the latest vacation, nights out with friends, and personal projects. Through this, we shape others' perceptions of us, giving them the impression that our lives are constantly happy, fun, and productive. Through the process, some even become online "influencers," influencing what others post, buy, or do. Ultimately, the veil's power and control are short lived. Despite their apparent advantages, digital veils leave us anxious and unknown. As one popular YouTuber, Samuel Bosch, shared in a video earlier this year: "I sometimes think that many of you have this very wrong impression that I'm always happy, traveling, and productive, that I can buy anything I want to, get any job I desire, or date whoever I want to." Yet, for all his success as an online influencer, MIT Ph.D. student, and tech entrepreneur, Bosch is, admittedly, unhappy. This is because we were made by God to be known. It is, in fact, a central conclusion of the psalmist David that, wherever we go, we are known. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night," even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. The psalm begins with the definitive statement that God has indeed searched and known him and ends with an invitation to God to search and know him. That's the tension, isn't it? Years ago, as I wrestled through Psalm 139 with a group of college students facing graduation, they articulated that tension, of both comfort and fear, that they are always known and always seen. Ultimately, all veils are an illusion. They may hide us from others, but they cannot hide us from God, who not only sees us and knows us, but created us to be seen and known both by and for others. Toward the end of Lewis' masterpiece, Orual visits the widow of her beloved servant Bardia. Upset that the widow might be jealous of the time Bardia spent with her, Orual jumps up in a burst of rage and lifts her veil to show the widow that she had nothing of which to be jealous. However, rather than being met with fear or hatred or disregard, Orual is met with the widow's compassion and kindness. Orual finds herself no longer alone, no longer unknown, no longer unloved. Like Orual, we can lay down our digital veils. When we do, we will find that we are already truly seen, truly known, and truly loved by

Last month, the Colson Center hosted a conference from Bay Harbor, Michigan on our changing culture. John Stonestreet was joined by Kristin Waggoner from Alliance Defending Freedom and Jim Daly with Focus on the Family to discuss how Christians should respond to everything from critical theory to the Barbie movie. Find more information on the event and watch the full recording at greatlakessymposium.org. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

According to an article in Vancouver's Globe and Mail, after years of struggle and a recent traumatic event, Kathrin Mentler sought medical care at a local hospital for her suicidal ideation. Like America, Canada has spent millions on public service campaigns encouraging those contemplating suicide to seek professional help. Katherine, however, was not offered help. Instead, she was offered death. The hospital staff told Katherine that it would take a long time to see a psychiatrist and suggested she consider Canada's Medical Aid in Dying program instead. A story like this might be funny if the consequences weren't so severe, but they are. In this brave new world, killing is called "medical aid," harm passes for help, and healthcare professionals recommend suicide to deal with suicidal ideation. The so-called "right to die" becomes an "option to die," then an "expectation to die," and eventually the "duty to die." And people like Kathrin Mentler are in grave danger exactly where they should be able to find help. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

On August 19, 1662, French philosopher, mathematician, and apologist Blaise Pascal died at just 39 years old. Pascal, despite his shortened life, is renowned for pioneering work in geometry, physics, and probability theory. His most powerful legacy, however, involves the ways he engaged with life's biggest questions. Pascal's intellect garnered attention at an early age. At 16, he produced an essay on the geometry of cones so impressive that René Descartes initially refused to believe it could possibly be attributed to a "sixteen-year-old child." Later, Pascal advanced the study of vacuums in the face of a prevailing (and misplaced) belief that nature is completely filled with matter, and thus "abhors a vacuum." In 1654, his work on probability took a new turn when he was sent a brainteaser by a friend. Applying mathematics to the problem, Pascal laid out rows of numbers in a triangle formation, a formation that now bears his name. As author John F. Ross described, Here was the very idea of probability: establishing the numerical odds of a future event with mathematical precision. Remarkably, no one else had cracked the puzzle of probability before, although the Greeks and Romans had come close. In 1646, Blaise Pascal encountered the kindness of two Jansenist Christians caring for his injured father. Their love in action earned Pascal's admiration. Then, on the evening of November 23, 1654, Pascal experienced God's presence in a new and personal way, which he described on a scrap of parchment that he sewed into his jacket and carried with him for the rest of his life: FIRE—God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certitude, certitude. Heartfelt joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. My God and thy God. Thy God shall be my God. In his writing, Pascal's notions of probability met his faith in God. A compilation of his collected manuscripts was published after his death in a volume entitled, Pensées, or "Thoughts." Best known is his famous "wager" that, facing uncertainty and in a game with such high stakes, it makes far more sense for fallen human beings to believe in God's existence than doubt it. "If you gain," he wrote, "you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is." Pascal also offered among the keenest diagnoses of humanity: The human being is only a reed, the most feeble in nature; but this is a thinking reed. It isn't necessary for the entire universe to arm itself in order to crush him; a whiff of vapor, a taste of water, suffices to kill him. But when the universe crushes him, the human being becomes still more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and the advantage that the universe has over him. The universe, it does not have a clue. Or, even better: What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe. He also described our moral conditions as human beings, "[W]e hate truth and those who tell it [to] us, and … we like them to be deceived in our favour" (Pensées 100). Apart from God, Pascal observed, people distract themselves from the reality of death. But the diversions run out, and then mankind feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair. (Pensées 131) "Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world" (Pensées 213 ). With a poetic nod to his work on vacuums, Pascal concluded: What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace …? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. A generation later, as waves of the Enlightenment swept over Europe, the continent's most prominent thinkers could not escape Pascal's brilliance. According to philosopher Dr. Patrick Riley, Holbach, as late as the 1770s, still found it necessary to quarrel with the author of the Pensées, Condorcet, when editing Pascal's works, renewed the old debate; Voltaire throughout his life, and even in his last year, launched sally after sally at the writer who frightened him every time he—a hypochondriac—felt ill. On the human condition in particular, the French Revolution would prove Pascal right and Voltaire wrong. Divorced from God and instead committed to the worship of "pure reason," France devolved into a violent, anarchic wasteland. Even today, Blaise Pascal's intellect, passion, and eloquence have lost none of their fire, dedicated as they were to the God who claimed his total devotion. As he wrote on the parchment sewn i

We often hear of folks forced to endure "sensitivity training" for holding opinions everyone did five years ago. But, in an unusual turn of events, a U.S. District court judge has ordered corporate lawyers for Southwest Airlines to undergo training with the Alliance Defending Freedom about the nature and importance of religious liberty. On August 7, a U.S. District Court ruled that Southwest Airlines violated Charlene Carter's rights when they fired her for posting pro-life opinions on her personal social media. The ruling also declared that Southwest notify their flight attendants about protections for their religious views. Southwest did not follow through, and instead notified their flight attendants that the company policy did not violate their religious freedom. To say the least, the judge wasn't happy, ruling that more training was in order and that ADF was the group to provide it. Not surprisingly, Southwest appealed the decision while media outlets feigned disbelief and expressed outrage. Hopefully the inconsistency will be obvious to everyone. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In her book Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, apologist Alisa Childers breaks down widespread mantras of culture and their consequences. One of these is a misunderstanding of Jesus' words so common that, for many, it may be the eleventh commandment that supplants the other ten: "You shouldn't judge." Over the last 60 years, studies have confirmed that Americans have become more tolerant of alternative sexual lifestyles, non-traditional beliefs about God, and certain political identifications, such as Communism. According to the most recent State of Theology report from Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, some 56% of self-described evangelicals believe that "God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam." Upon closer examination, this shift has far more to do with losing convictions in these areas than about gaining tolerance. In fact, accepting the "do not judge ethos" has been a primary corrosive agent to those convictions, and this is what Childers addresses in her new book. In addition to identifying the obvious contradiction in saying "it is wrong to judge," which is itself a judgment, she reminds Christians what Jesus' words mean in context. [J]ust after saying, "Judge not," Jesus lets his audience know that when they judge, they should be very careful to make sure their judgment isn't hypocritical. "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye," Jesus instructs in verse 5. In other words, don't point out a sin in your brother's or sister's life before you confront the bigger sin in your own. But the whole point is to help your brother or sister take the speck out of their own eye, which requires you to judge that it's there. … If there is still any confusion, just a few verses later, Jesus tells us to recognize wolves, or false teachers, by their fruit (verses 15-16). Again, this requires us to judge whether these teachers are speaking truth or deception. Then, in John 7:24, Jesus couldn't say it more plainly. He directs his listeners to "not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment." The point of these verses, she concludes, is not to prevent moral discernment, but to help believers instead judge "carefully, rightly, humbly, and without hypocrisy." Childers then offers a powerful illustration from her time with ZOEgirl, when her struggle with body image eventually led to a secret eating disorder of binging and purging. On some tour in some town somewhere, I shared a hotel room with one of my bandmates. She is a sweetheart—gentle, deeply intelligent, and thoughtful. … She was also a natural peacemaker, and confrontation did not come easily to her. So when she worked up every last bit of courage to ask me what I was doing in the bathroom, it surprised me. And it also made me angry. To put it lightly, the conversation didn't go well. I not so politely invited her to stop "judging" me and back all the way off. That didn't stop her. … Looking back, am I thankful that my bandmate "judged" me? That she dared confront me about the self-harm I was guilty of? Absolutely! She was the catalyst that first brought the darkness into the light. To this day my eyes mist with tears when I think about how much she loved me to do such a difficult thing. Childers' example not only calls Christians to do similarly difficult but right things, it reveals the consequences of relativism when lived in the real world. What begins as a desire to not judge others turns into the narcissistic demand that no one, under any circumstances, judge us. But that also renders healing and forgiveness impossible. After all, with no way to say that we've been wronged, neither is there means or reason to forgive those who harm us. Any culture that rejects objective morality lacks any way to counter evil. Alisa Childers' book reclaims truth from the empty slogans that dominate our culture and our thinking. This August, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we'll send you a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Just go to breakpoint.org/give to learn more. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A feature of life in Colorado is the prevalence of pot. There are dispensaries on virtually every corner, and everywhere I travel I hear a pot joke. Something else my adopted state is becoming known for is the harmful aftereffects of legalized marijuana. According to state statistics, the drug was found in the system of some 42% of teen suicides, a rate nearly twice as much as with alcohol and four times of any other substances. Of course, correlation doesn't mean causation, but it can mean connection. If nearly half of stroke victims were taking the same medicine, would we wonder if there was a link? Why the reluctance to connect the dots here? Marijuana might not cause suicide, but numbers don't lie. It encourages or exacerbates problems that lead down that deadly road, especially for a group at high risk. The link is there for those willing to see it. Since suicide rates have risen every year that it has been legal, we're far past giving the benefit of the doubt. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Few voluntary associations in American history have had as deep and wide an influence as the Boy Scouts of America. The training ground of soldiers and senators, pastors and presidents, the organization effectively instilled values like trustworthiness, loyalty, courteousness, thrift, bravery, and reverence in many of the over 100 million young men who joined in its over 100-year history. In fact, for much of the 20th century at least, "Scout's honor" was among the highest assurances one could give of their honesty and integrity. However, if the only evidence considered was the Boy Scouts of 2023, it would be hard to imagine that this long and storied history ever took place and that the organization ever helped boys mature into virtuous manhood. Ten years ago, the Boy Scouts of America allowed openly gay members for the first time. Soon thereafter, an avalanche of sexual abuse allegations, many of them decades old, forced the Scouts into bankruptcy and a 2.5-billion-dollar settlement. Since then, the organization has been in membership free fall. This year, for the first time since 2017, the Scouts held their National Jamboree in the hills of West Virginia. Reporter Mike De Socio attended and, writing in The Washington Post, described the shell of an organization he encountered. This year's Jamboree drew only 15,000 scouts compared to 40,000 at the previous Jamboree in 2017. Between 2019 and 2021, the Boy Scouts lost 62% of its membership, and there's no sign of a post-COVID recovery. As Carnegie Mellon's student newspaper put it, the Boy Scouts "is a dying institution." Despite this, De Socio, who identifies himself as gay, praised the progressive palooza the Jamboree has become. Specifically, he touted the pride tent, complete with "LGBTQ Pride flags and a string of multicolored lights, … tables covered with bowls of rainbow bracelets, pronoun stickers and diversity patches" and that a diversity merit badge is now required to become an Eagle Scout. According to De Socio, the blame for the organization's near collapse should fall on the abuse scandal and the pandemic. Certainly, these factors hastened the demise we now witness, but it's as if the author cannot imagine how the Scouts' enthusiastic embrace of LGBT ideology over the last 10 years sealed its fate. In the same period, a Christian organization for boys called Trail Life USA saw a 70% increase in membership. In fact, the pattern matches the long-term dwindling of mainline Protestant denominations. When an organization, whether a church or a youth association like the Boy Scouts, forgets or rejects why it exists in the first place, it soon stops existing. Once liberal mainline churches stopped offering anything distinctly Christian and offered the same progressive, all-accepting, therapeutic talking points as Oprah and NPR, why go to church? Much the same can now be said for the once venerable organization we call the Boy Scouts. The sexual abuse scandal may have fatally undercut the group's claim to trustworthiness and integrity, as well as the perception that they provide a safe and wholesome place for boys to grow into men. However, throwing open the doors to LGBT ideology changed the very nature of the organization. Not only did the Scouts begin (ironically) promoting sterile lifestyles that would deprive the organization of future members, it also became a place where evil is called good and children are herded into life-destroying behavior and beliefs. This not behind closed doors as with the scandals, but proudly in the open, on charter documents, and at Jamborees. By the time the Boy Scouts decided to undermine their name by admitting girls, I imagine most families had already asked themselves, "What's the point?" To be clear, the loss of the Boy Scouts, despite its flaws, is huge. What other institution shepherded generations of boys toward responsibility, self-mastery, and moral living? Our whole society would be a poorer and less trustworthy place had it never existed. I hope that churches and Christian programs like AWANA and groups like Trail Life USA seize the moment and make up for this profound loss. I also hope all organizations learn that they only remain good as long as they remember their purpose. When they succumb to trendy ideologies and the spirit of the age, they not only lead their members astray, they also make themselves unnecessary and, in this case, leave their very necessary work to someone with conviction. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently, NBC news shared an article entitled, "Pope says church is open to everyone, including gay people, but has rules." Asked if it was inconsistent for him to say that Christianity was open to "everyone" when some, including gay people, were apparently excluded, Pope Francis replied, "The church is open to everyone but there are laws that regulate life inside the church." To anyone even vaguely familiar with the Roman Catholic Church or Christian teaching throughout history, the only newsworthy item here is that reporters thought it was newsworthy. The rest of us may not have been sure that the Pope would be as forthright as he was. What he said was not an innovation. St. Paul was pretty clear when he described Christians and their sin, "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

As if the last few years were not strange enough, the United States Congress recently held hearings on the subject of UFOs. As NBC News reported, numerous claims were made by those called before the subcommittee, including by former military or intelligence personnel. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this otherwise earth-shattering story was how it has largely been greeted, at least on social media, with a collective "meh." If so much information was kept hush-hush for so many years, why the sudden transparency now? Isn't this just another chapter in red herrings tossed out to distract us from what's "really" going on? As tempting as it is to think of these hearings as an unaired episode of The X-Files, the virtue of stories like this, and of the whole genre of sci-fi, is that they bring up questions about the deeper things of life. Who are we? Are we alone in the universe? What would it mean if we weren't? What makes us special as human beings? Noted sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke famously said, "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." Religious people are less likely than others to believe that aliens exist. Or, if they think something is "out there," they are less likely to think of extra terrestrials as E.T. as they are to think of them as demons trying to deceive us for one reason or another. On the other hand, those with a materialist outlook tend to see the world as just a "pale blue dot" in the heavens and humanity as nothing more than the consequence of chance and chaos. In fact, it's become almost an article of materialist faith that if we are here, someone else must be too. All of which suggests that there's more to how we view these matters than what we have seen or not seen. For instance, despite being supposedly a planet-wide concern, nearly all UFOs sighted tend to show up in the English-speaking world. Or, as someone on Reddit noted, "they sure love the US." A similar phenomenon can be seen in the variations of "bigfoot" stories, depending on from what region they are. The stories out of the Pacific Northwest tend to resemble a Harry and the Hendersons vibe. Sure, the creature might seem a bit scary but, in the end, they are one with nature, like a kind of extra furry Bill Walton. The stories out of Texas are all about these super aggressive creatures that are ready to fight and kill and steal your children. Tennessee bigfoots, on the other hand, are just downright neighborly, knocking on doors to ask for some garlic. These together suggest it's clear that, even when it comes to urban legends and outer space, the stories we tell ourselves make a big difference in what we see in the world. Anyone who has read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy can tell you that the great apologist used his own imagination to tell wonderful stories where very plausible aliens lived and interacted with his human heroes. The inhabitants of Mars and Venus, or as Lewis named them, "Malacandra" and "Perelandra," were fellow creatures born of the artistry and care of the same God we encounter in the Bible. Yet, in one of his last books, he noted the subjective element in people's belief in the extraordinary. Right at the end of his study of the medieval worldview, he wrote: "Fifty years ago, if you had asked an astronomer about "life on other worlds," he was apt to be totally agnostic about it or even stress its improbability. We are now told that in so vast a universe stars that have planets and planets that have inhabitants must occur times without number. Yet no compulsive evidence is to hand. But is it irrelevant that in between the old opinion and the new we have had the vast proliferation of "science fiction" and the beginnings of space-travel in real life?" What we believe about alien life and other mysteries says more about our beliefs, or what Charles Taylor called our "social imaginaries," than it does about their existence. The culture around us affects our view of the world in profound ways. Our worldview is a pair of belief "glasses" that help us understand the nature of reality, but it can also be a kind of blinder, too. This doesn't mean we are completely lost in the fog of our own precognitive assumptions, only that we should follow Francis Schaeffer's advice about checking our presuppositions "after a careful consideration of which worldview is true." This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Massachusetts is rejecting would-be adoptive parents if those parents are Christian and thus denying a home to children in need, according to a new lawsuit. Mike and Kitty Burke went through all the classes, background checks, and home assessments required to become adoptive parents, and scored highly. Yet, they were rejected because, as state officials wrote in their report, the couple's Christian faith meant they are "not supportive" of kids who identify as LGBTQ. Right now, in Massachusetts more than 1,500 kids are in need of a foster home. Not only do advocates deny biology and sexualize children by suggesting their sexual preferences are their identity, but they also deny kids loving parents as if it is better to not have a home than to be in a home with a religious mom and dad. This is not an isolated incident. A mom in Oregon was also rejected from fostering kids for the same reason. Again, it's the children who are harmed. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In the 22nd week of surrogate Brittney Pearson's pregnancy, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Because the necessary treatment could harm the baby, her doctors recommended inducing labor early and allowing the baby to be cared for in neonatal intensive care while she started chemo. However, the gay couple paying Brittney Pearson to serve as their surrogate did not want a premature baby with potential developmental or health problems. They wanted her instead to have an abortion. Pearson offered to put the baby up for adoption, but the men refused because, according to Pearson, they did not want a child who was genetically related to one of them somewhere "out there." According to Pearson, the men threatened both her and her doctors with a lawsuit if she did not abort her child. Because of California's radical surrogacy laws, which allow financiers of a surrogacy arrangement to be granted legal parental rights of the baby before he or she is born, they likely would have prevailed. In an interview with Jennifer Lahl of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Pearson told her story. Her son was born at 25 weeks of pregnancy, a gestational age that, thanks to advances in maternal medicine, children have survived. Though she has not publicly stated whether her son was killed before or after delivery, or whether he was given or denied the medical treatment a premature baby needs, she has confirmed that her son died the day he was born, which was Father's Day. Though, of course, not every surrogacy contract ends this way, Pearson is not the first surrogate mom pressured to kill her baby by those paying for it. However, it would be a profound mistake to think of hers as a case of "surrogacy gone wrong," as advocates of the practice claim about stories like hers. Each and every moral violation that occurred along the way was not exclusive to Pearson's unique circumstances. Rather, they are violations endemic to surrogacy itself, a practice that denies children the right to their mother and, at times, their father, and denies a mother the right to her own child. Children are treated as products to be purchased and arranged, subject to property laws and other legal realities long used to dehumanize certain individuals. It's jarring to hear these men talk of Brittney Pearson's baby as if he were a lamp ordered off Amazon that was delivered broken. However, it is the surrogacy contracts signed ahead of time that treat human babies as commodities. If it seems like an obvious violation of human rights and God's moral order for two men to demand that a woman have her baby killed, what should we make of the legal contract governing the baby's creation, gestation, and delivery in the first place? If babies are treated like products and pregnancy like the means of production at the beginning of the surrogacy process, ought we not to expect things to be different at the end? Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Thus, they should never be treated like any other thing. Like the social research that shows how extended exposure to violent video games and media can desensitize people to actual violence, surrogacy is among those cultural realities that reveal how much our view of children has been desensitized by all that constantly reduces them to "things." As one gay man who sued his employer last year for refusing to pay for him and his husband to hire a surrogate put it, children are just one of the modern "trappings" of "marriage," like a "house, children, [and] 401k." The willful death of Brittney Pearson's son is a tragic, but logical, escalation of the moral errors fundamental to surrogacy. As marriage and family are increasingly deconstructed, reimagined, and replaced in law, the demand for surrogacy will only increase, and more babies will face the same kind of danger as Pearson's baby. If we don't stand up for them, who will? And if we do, it will require standing against this practice, which is fundamentally disordered and always wrong, and not merely against selective cases. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Millions of Americans have stopped going to church creating the biggest social shift in our lifetime. We'll look at the reasons Ohio's Issue 1 failed giving pro-life voters another defeat. And suicide rates in America are at levels not seen since the Great Depression. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Distressed by the onset of puberty, California teenager Chloe Cole was fast-tracked to a double mastectomy at age 15. Recently, on her 19th birthday, Chloe appeared before Congress, passionately describing the harm of so-called "trans-affirming" medicine, which is anything but. After Chloe's remarks, a mother who had transitioned her 18-year-old daughter told her story. Given a chance to respond, tears filled Chloe's eyes, and she replied to the committee chairman: "I just want to set the record straight that I don't hate her. … In fact, I see my own mother and my own father in her. … That being said, I don't wish for a child to have the same result as I did. … It comes with its own difficulties, and it's not easy. And I hope that her child gets to have a happy and fulfilling adulthood." Without sacrificing truth, Chloe offered love, as well as a reminder to all of us that it is possible to speak the truth in love. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Fifty years ago this week, Charles W. Colson became a follower of Jesus Christ. Chuck would subsequently become one of the most respected evangelical leaders of the 20th and early 21st centuries, founding both Prison Fellowship Ministries and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and authoring bestselling books such as Born Again, How Now Shall We Live?, and Loving God. Chuck Colson's influence came about because of how deeply and thoroughly Jesus Christ changed his life. Certainly, he was an incredibly gifted person (after all, not everyone lands in a White House office as special counsel to the President of the United States in their thirties!). Yet, Chuck's giftedness before he found faith was corrupted by pride, which led to an incredible public fall. On the thirtieth anniversary of his conversion, Chuck Colson described it in detail. Here, in his own voice, is Chuck Colson: "Thirty years ago today, I visited Tom Phillips, president of the Raytheon Company, at his home outside of Boston. I had represented Raytheon before going to the White House, and I was about to start again. But I visited him for another reason as well. I knew Tom had become a Christian, and he seemed so different. I wanted to ask him what had happened. That night, he read to me from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, particularly a chapter about the great sin that is pride. A proud man is always walking through life looking down on other people and other things, said Lewis. As a result, he cannot see something above himself immeasurably superior—God. Tom, that night, told me about encountering Christ in his own life. He didn't realize it, but I was in the depths of deep despair over Watergate, watching the President I had helped for four years flounder in office. I had also heard that I might become a target of the investigation as well. In short, my world was collapsing. That night, as Tom was telling me about Jesus, I listened attentively but didn't let on about my need. When he offered to pray, I thanked him but said, no, I would see him sometime after I had read C.S. Lewis's book. But when I got in the car that night, I couldn't drive it out of the driveway. Ex-Marine captain, White House tough guy, I was crying too hard, calling out to God. I didn't know what to say: I just knew I needed Jesus, and He came into my life. That was thirty years ago. I've been reflecting of late on the things God has done over that time. As I think about my life, the beginning of the prison ministry, our work in the justice area, our international ministry that reaches one hundred countries, and the work of the Wilberforce Forum and Breakpoint, I have come to appreciate the doctrine of providence. It's not the world's idea of fate or luck, but the reality of God's divine intervention. He orchestrates the lives of His children to accomplish His good purposes. God has certainly ordered my steps. I couldn't have imagined when I was in prison that I would someday go back to the White House with ex-offenders as I did on June 18—or that we would be running prisons that have an 8% recidivism rate—or that Breakpoint would be heard daily on a thousand radio outlets across the United States and on the internet. The truth that is uppermost in my mind today is that God isn't finished. As long as we're alive, He's at work in our lives. We can live lives of obedience in any field because God providentially arranges the circumstances of our lives to achieve His objectives. And that leads to the greatest joy I've found in life. As I look back on my life, it's not having been to Buckingham Palace to receive the Templeton Prize or getting honorary degrees or writing books. The greatest joy is to see how God has used my life to touch the lives of others, people hurting and in need. It has been a long time since the dark days of Watergate. I'm still astounded that God would take someone who was infamous in the Watergate scandal, and soon to be a convicted felon, and take him into His family and then order his steps in the way He has with me. God touched me at that moment in Tom Phillip's driveway, and thirty years later, His love and kindness touch and astound me still." Chuck Colson's life and legacy continues to be a testimony to God's amazing grace. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

It's an experience that drives many young mothers crazy. After carrying a child for months, enduring labor and childbirth, nursing through many sleepless nights, what are the first words she hears from the kid? "Dada!" It isn't always the case, but across time and cultures, babies are more likely to name their father before their mother. However, rather than a preference for dad or a slight to mom, according to a tweet by Dr. Dan Wuori, it more likely reinforces how important mom is. At that young age, the mother/child bond is so tight that babies simply can't see her as "other." She is the world, with Dad more of a visitor. This is a reminder of what Ryan T. Anderson has said. Kids don't need just "parents." They need a mom and a dad, and each provides unique and distinct gifts by their presence to children. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In 1973, evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote that "nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." Almost 50 years later, an increasing number of scientists are asking whether evolution makes any sense in light of what we now know from biology. A recent long-form essay in The Guardian signals just how urgent the problem has become for the most dominant theory in the history of the sciences. In it, author Stephen Buranyi gives voice to a growing number of scientists who think it's time for a "new theory of evolution." For a long time, descent with slight modifications and natural selection have been "the basic" (and I'd add, unchallengeable) "story of evolution." Organisms change, and those that survive pass on traits. Though massaged a bit to incorporate the discovery of DNA, the theory of evolution by natural selection has dominated for 150 years, especially in biology. The "drive to survive" is credited as the creative force behind all the artistry and engineering we see in nature. "The problem," writes Buranyi, is that "according to a growing number of scientists," this basic story is "absurdly crude and misleading." For one thing, Darwinian evolution assumes much of what it needs to be explained. For instance, consider the origin of light-sensitive cells that rearranged to become the first eye, or the blood vessels that became the first placenta. How did these things originate? According to one University of Indiana biologist, "we still do not have a good answer. The classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time," he says, "has so far fallen flat." This scientific doubt about Darwin has been simmering for a while. In 2014, an article in the journal Nature, jointly authored by eight scientists from diverse fields, argued that evolutionary theory was in need of a serious rethink. They called their proposed rethink the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis," and a year later, the Royal Society in London held a conference to discuss it. Along with Darwinian blind spots like the origin of the eye, the Extended Synthesis seeks to deal with the discovery of epigenetics, an emerging field that studies inherited traits not mediated by DNA. Then there are the rapid mutations that evade natural selection, a fossil record that appears to move in "short, concentrated bursts" (or "explosions"), and something called "plasticity," which is the ability we now know living things have to adapt physically to their environments in a single generation without genetically evolving. These discoveries—some recent, others long ignored by mainstream biology—challenge natural selection as the "grand theory" of life. All of them hint that living things are greater marvels and mysteries than we ever imagined. And, unsurprisingly, all of these discoveries have been controversial. The Guardian article describes how Royal Society scientists and Nobel laureates alike boycotted the conference, attacking the extended synthesis as "irritating" and "disgraceful," and its proponents as "revolutionaries." As Gerd Müller, head of the department of theoretical biology at the University of Vienna helpfully explained, "Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships. It's a whole industry." Such resistance isn't too surprising for anyone who's been paying attention. Any challenges to the established theory of life's origins, whether from Bible-believing scientists or intelligent design theorists, have long been dismissed as religion in a lab coat. The habit of fixing upon a dogma and calling it "settled science" is just bad science that stunts our understanding of the world. It is a kind of idolatry that places "science" in the seat of God, appoints certain scientists as priests capable of giving answers no fallible human can offer, and feigns certainty where real questions remain. The great irony is that this image of scientist-as-infallible-priest makes them seem like the caricature of medieval monks charging their hero Galileo with heresy for his dissent from the consensus. As challenges to Darwin mount, we should be able to articulate why "settled science" makes such a poor god. And we should encourage the science and the scientists challenging this old theory-turned-dogma and holding it to its own standards. After all, if Darwinian evolution is as unfit as it now seems, it shouldn't survive. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Breakpoint was originally published on August 3, 2022.

The award for the weirdest and most misleading headline of the year goes to a recent article in the Washington Post that announced, "An abortion ban made them teen parents." The article tells the story of Billy and Brooke High and describes her pregnancy at age 18 as something that just "happened" because they were hanging out after meeting at a skate park. Brooke gave birth to twins soon after the Dobbs decision. She wanted an abortion but would have had to drive 13 hours to get one. Instead, she kept the babies and married their father. Because all of this is hard, the Washington Post implies, neither the children nor the marriage should have ever happened. Billy's and Brooke's perspective on the other hand is that day-to-day life is really hard. And being parents is growing them up, though they didn't have great examples. What we can learn from the Post article is not where babies come from, but what young families need. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, request a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa Childers. Visit colsoncenter.org/august to learn more. ___ In her new book, author and apologist Alisa Childers targets the lies that often masquerade as cultural proverbs today. In Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, Childers offers just what the title promises. She exposes the bad ideas at the center of slogans we hear all the time. You can receive a copy of the book with a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month. Just go to colsoncenter.org/august. Though the mantras that dominate our world can seem harmless, they are not. "Our culture," Childers writes, is brimming with slogans that promise peace, fulfillment, freedom, empowerment, and hope. These messages have become such an integral component of our American consciousness that many people don't even think to question them. … The problem? They are lies. In fact, Childers argues, slogans like "You are enough," "authenticity is everything," "Put yourself first," "It's all about love," or "God just wants you to be happy," commonly redefine words like love and hate and happy. What's left is a modern-day "tower of Babel" (or "Babble") situation where those with the most social media followers are granted authority and assumed to have expertise on life and how to live it. At the root of these destructive slogans is a view of the self. For example, Childers cites Glennon Doyle, whose New York Times No. 1 best seller Untamed centers around her decision to leave her husband for a woman she saw at a local zoo, all while quoting Carl Jung: "There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent." Alisa compares Doyle's story with that of Elisabeth Elliot, the missionary famous for bringing the Gospel back to the same Waodani people who killed her husband, Jim. With a toddler in tow, Elliot lived in the Waodani village for two years before returning to the United States to speak, write, and appear publicly with some of her husband's killers who had become dedicated followers of Jesus: Elisabeth Elliot laid hold of deeper strength. … She rejected the urge to defy God's Word or redefine his holiness. … How did she do it? She once wrote, "The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances." Childers openly admits to struggling with these ideas, including what it means to be truly authentic, during her time as a popular and successful Christian musician: [A] therapist I began seeing toward the end of ZOEgirl's run (who had the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job) looked at me intently and gently asked, "What if you got throat cancer and could never sing again?" I was dumbstruck. She had stumped me. After all, I was made to sing, and if I couldn't sing, who was I? That question pushed Alisa away from the shallow definition of authenticity that is widely embraced today, and toward a deeper grounding in the truth of who we are—made in the image of God, and yet fallen. This makes all the difference in how we think about ourselves and how we choose to live life: Today I write. Maybe tomorrow I will wash feet, clean toilets, or start a food blog. God knows. He is trustworthy. My identity is grounded in him. True biblical authenticity is glorifying Christ with whatever gifts and talents he has given me. As my friend Teasi says, this is my calling whether I find myself in a palace or in a prison. Another commonly repeated, highly consequential lie is that there's such a thing as "your truth" and "my truth": Christian, your truth doesn't exist. Your truth won't bring hope or save anyone. ... The Cross is the answer to every lie that tells me I can find everything I need inside myself. … The Cross is not just a symbol of salvation. It's a place of rest. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Since it was legalized in 2016, Canada has increased pressure on doctors and hospitals to offer assisted suicide. Recently, an article in WORLD Magazine reported that Canadian authorities kicked a nonprofit called the Delta Hospice Society out of its rented building because they refused to kill their patients. Before they closed, executives with the hospice said they had briefly considered registering as a "faith-based organization" to qualify for a religious exemption under Canadian law. This is a cautionary tale that while religious exemptions are important, they do not offer protection from immoral laws. This is especially the case when the state dramatically limits who should be considered "religious" enough for an exemption. Faith cannot be reduced to names or titles or just evangelistic work. More importantly, a religious exemption cannot make an unjust law just. So-called "Medical Aid in Dying" is exactly not aid in dying: It is aid to die, and that means it's not medical. Instead, it is harmful. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently, Chloe Cole, a 19-year-old young woman who was pressured to undergo transgender surgeries, challenged a social media video by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the populist astronomer and science personality. Although a legitimate astrophysicist, Dr. Tyson's public proclamations and videos are not always from his area of scientific expertise. In fact, they aren't always scientific. In this particular video, Tyson asserted, in favor of gender ideology, that "no matter my chromosomes today, I feel 80% female, 20% male. I'm going to put on makeup. I'm gonna do it. Tomorrow, I might feel 80% male." Seemingly to Dr. Tyson, the ability of people of any gender to feel a particular way and then to put on makeup accordingly, proves that "the XX/XY chromosomes are insufficient because when we wake up in the morning, we exaggerate whatever feature we want to portray the gender of our choice." Dr. Tyson continued in a blatantly non-scientific statement, "What business is it of yours to require that I fulfill your inability to think of gender on a spectrum?" In her reply, Chloe Cole interspersed video of herself confronting his bizarre claims. How about we stop confusing basic human biology with cosmetics? Like, what a weird jump. … I don't wear makeup most days. If I leave the house without makeup on, does that make me like 70% [m]ale?... If it was only truly about aesthetics, nobody would care. It's my business because you're using 1950s gender stereotypes to justify an ideology that leads to the sterilization and mastectomies of 15-year-old girls who just don't fit in, girls like me. Cole ends her video with, The idea that people can be percentages of either male or female just further reinforces the fact that biological sex is a binary. There's only two. There may only be two sexes, but there are an infinite number of personalities. I mean, it really doesn't take a degree in astrophysics to understand that. Watching Dr. Tyson's video and Cole's response, I was reminded of something from my childhood. Due to the popularity of Superman in the late 1970s, Mr. Rogers dedicated a week of his daily TV show to helping kids distinguish between what was real and what was make-believe. He was concerned by the reports of children who put on capes and thought they could fly, leaping from staircases or top bunks or balconies and causing serious injuries. He even took his viewers onto the set of the show The Incredible Hulk to show them that the actors involved were indeed only actors. In other words, he understood that children struggled to distinguish between make-believe and reality. This is exactly what Chloe Cole did earlier this week, only she was instructing an astrophysicist about the harm done to children in the name of "science," while Mr. Rogers was confronting the harm done to children by cartoons. Cole knows that putting on makeup, a dress, or a muscle shirt cannot transform a man into a woman or a woman into a man. Even worse, she knows that neither did the testosterone she received at age 13 nor the double mastectomy at age 15 make her a boy. According to Mr. Rogers' biographer Max King in the documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Rogers was "angry that it was his medium that was doing this," i.e., deluding and harming children. What began with his concern about children being misled prompted a new weekly theme for the show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood that dealt with tough issues such as death and divorce. Like Cole, Rogers wasn't a scientist. But he was committed to helping children discern truth from error, the difference between make-believe and reality, between the cosmetic and one's identity. He even famously sang a song that clarified that kids could not become whatever or whoever they wanted, that only boys could be daddies, and only girls could be mommies. In fact, he once said, "I'll tell you what children really need. They need adults who will protect them from the ever-ready molders of their world." Those are the kind of adults that children still need. What we all need less of is the sort of thinly disguised, condescending, and anti-scientific rhetoric that molds their identities. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Heather Peterson. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently on NPR, reporter Rachel Martin interviewed Dr. Lisa Miller, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University, about her controversial claim that spirituality is good for mental health. According to Miller, those who say spirituality is "very important" show an 80% decreased risk for addiction to drugs and alcohol and are 82% less likely to die by suicide. "[T]he more high risk we are," Miller said, "the more that there's stress in our lives, … the greater the impact of spirituality as a source of resilience." "Here is published, peer reviewed science for skeptical audiences," the interviewer concluded, which runs contrary to what we so often hear. Though a particular kind of religion is not specified by Dr. Miller, apparently turning our focus outward and even upward is better for us than just "looking inside" or "following our hearts." That makes sense if we are indeed creatures and not just self-creations, made for relationship with the One who gave us life in the first place. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

As unexpected as it was that the Barbie movie would spark such a widespread and intense cultural conversation, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, a film about the brilliant and broken man who became the father of the atomic bomb, has too. The film tells the story of the man who gave the world the power to destroy itself, or as Oppenheimer famously put it, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Atomic weapons have been a constant source of debate since their initial use to end the war against Japan in 1945. At the time, Christians had a dual reaction. On one hand, many breathed a sigh of relief that the long war was over, that the boys would come home, and that there would be no further repeats of the devastation seen at places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where Japanese resistance was so fanatical that they fought almost to the last man. On the other hand, Christians shared the widespread sense that a deadly Pandora's Box had been opened and that there was no way to go back to a world before "the Bomb." Certainly, the sheer destruction and the immense casualties leveled on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are difficult to justify. America has also been accused of racist motivations in dropping the bomb, and in overlooking the significance of the August 8 Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the weakened state of the Japanese military that late into the war. The fact remains, numerous factors must be considered in light of some ethical framework. By far the best framework for considering war comes from the Christian contribution of the just war doctrine. Specifically, in what is known as jus in bello, just war doctrine says that for a war, or even part of a war, to be considered moral, it must only be done for the right reasons and in the right ways. For example, while civilian deaths are inevitable, particularly in modern war, noncombatants must never be targeted. This was recently argued again by Adam Mount in Foreign Policy magazine. He wrote that in dropping the bomb, Japanese civilians weren't merely collateral damage but intentionally killed as an act of terror to scare Tokyo into surrendering. In response, Marc LiVecche wrote in Providence magazine that the attacks were indeed a demonstration to the Japanese government, but the target of destruction were the cities, not the people within them. It's also significant to keep in mind the pressures of the cultural moment. President Truman faced the brutal question of how to end the immense suffering of a war that had gone on so long, when great suffering would follow no matter what he did. As such, doing nothing would not have been a preferable moral option. The Japanese empire had for years been perpetuating great evil upon its neighbors, leaving millions dead and millions more enslaved. Had the Americans gone ahead with the planned "Downfall" invasions of Japan, the death toll might have made the atomic attacks pale in comparison. Simply blockading Japan without direct attacks of any sort would have left millions of Japanese people to slowly starve before the military caved, something they'd already demonstrated an intense unwillingness to do. From the comfort and safety of distance and time, it is much easier to issue a simple proclamation. Reality on the ground at the time is not so simple, and theological reflection, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, must be done in the "tempest of the living." Centuries ago, when asked by a Roman officer if he could, in good Christian conscience, continue his work as a soldier, St. Augustine replied, "Therefore, even in waging war, cherish the spirit of a peacemaker, that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace." Just war doctrine warns us that any and all actions in a war must not be seen as their own end but only as the means toward a greater end. War is always awful and sometimes necessary. The great virtue found in just war doctrine is not that it allows for a clean war, free from doubt about our actions. There's no such thing. However, it can help guide those forced to do terrible things in the face of horrible options. To learn more about just war theory, see Just War and Christian Traditions, edited by Eric Patterson and Daryl Charles. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The Oppenheimer movie has Christians revisiting the morality of warfare. An extra warm summer in some parts of the U.S. raises climate fears again. John and Maria discuss ways to slow down the growth of assisted suicide. — Recommendations — Summit Ministries Latigo Ranch Section 1 - Just War and the Bomb Between Pacifism and Jihad: Just War and Christian Tradition by J. Daryl Charles Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Let's Talk About Just War" by Nathaniel Peters "Canadian hospice forced to close after refusing to offer assisted dying" CNA Section 2 - Climate Change The Editors podcast Section 3 - Assisted Suicide "States remove protections from assisted suicide" WORLD "Canada's Suicidal Slide" Breakpoint For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The number of teens experiencing symptoms of depression are higher than ever. According to research from psychologist Jean Twenge, 49.5% of teens report that they feel they "can't do anything right," 44.2% report that they feel their "life is not useful," and 48.9% say they "do not enjoy life." Each of these findings is roughly double what they were in 2009. These stats are the latest in a growing body of research that demonstrates a significant link between teens' mental health and their usage of new media. The combination of smartphones, internet, and social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter is dramatically harmful especially when contrasted with those who spend time participating in in-person activities like sports and religious services. For families who hope to help their teens avoid or overcome depression, the best starting place is to restrict usage of smartphones and social media. All families should proactively cultivate healthy disciplines with devices, as well as habits and choices that promote real-time, in-person relationships. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently, British author and journalist Helen Joyce offered a hard-to-hear but reasonable explanation for why transgender ideology continues to endure, despite its inherent contradictions, its obvious falsehoods, and the harm that has been inflicted on children. Her words are worth quoting at length: "There's a lot of people who can't move on [from] this and that's the people who've transitioned their own children. Those people are going to be like the Japanese soldiers who were on Pacific Islands and didn't know the war was over. They've got to fight forever. This is another reason why this is the worst social contagion that we'll ever have experienced. A lot of people have done the worst thing that you could do, which is to harm their children irrevocably, because of it. Those people will have to believe that they did the right thing for the rest of their lives for their own sanity and for their own self-respect. So, they'll still be fighting. I've lost count of the number of times that somebody has said to me of a specific organization that has got turned upside down on this, "Oh, the deputy director has a trans child," or "the journalist on that paper who does special investigations has a trans child." The entire organization gets paralyzed by that one person … And now you can't talk truth in front of that person because what you're saying is, you as a parent have done a truly—like a human rights abuse level—awful thing to your child that cannot be fixed." In other words, according to Joyce, the real breakthrough of the current gender ideology movement has only come through the co-opting of parents, whose instincts to protect their children tragically became a threat to them and their wellbeing. This was accomplished, in large part, because Western medical authorities ultimately betrayed parents. Dr. Miriam Grossman, a clinical psychologist, has described this phenomenon in her new book Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness: "The entire mental health profession—psychology, social work, counseling—was captured by radical ideologues years ago, and you and your families are paying the price. The doctors are wrong, your gut is right. Your son will always be your son. Your daughter will always be your daughter. To say differently is inane. And to place blame on you, parents who represent reality, is shameful." Dr. Grossman's best advice for parents is to "[t]rust your parental instincts. The entire world is telling you to put your gender-questioning child in the driver's seat, but you will learn they're wrong." The story of 19-year-old Chloe Cole, "perhaps the most well-known detransitioner in America," is a case in point: "They coerced my parents into allowing me to do this. And while my parents were required to sign off on everything, they were also putting it on me, because I desired to do this." In fact, most parents who deny their children's wishes and instead try to do the right thing will often find entire communities opposed to them. Friends, counselors, teachers, and medical professionals—not to mention their own children—will condemn them as hateful and bigoted, and even accuse them of choosing a "dead daughter over a live son," or vice-versa. After all, it is the children, these new experts insist, who are the inexhaustible source of truth about who they are, and their desires should always be respected. All of which means that, if Christians do not come to the support of parents walking this incredibly difficult road, no one else will. Pastors, youth pastors, Christian friends, neighbors, and family members simply must show up here. And parent, if you are in the middle of a child's gender crisis, remember that you can walk with them in truth and in love. Or, as Dr. Grossman has said, "It's possible to survive, albeit with scars." Erin Friday, a California mom described her journey this way: "Your love for your child has to be strong enough to take their vitriol. And it's very, very hard. I spent many nights crying myself to sleep. Some days, I didn't get out of bed. But you still have to do it, because now there's not a day that doesn't go by that my daughter doesn't say that she loves me … even if my daughter didn't come back to have a relationship with me … I saved her from being a lifelong medical patient, so I would do it again." Tragically, there are many parents whose children chose differently. Even more tragically, there are many parents who fit the description offered by Helen Joyce. Coming to terms with what they have done to their children seems impossible. So, Christians must run toward this brokenness with the Gospel, especially its offer of forgiveness and promise of restoration. Many men and women have faced the reality of choosing to have an abortion and, in the process, were found by Jesus Christ. Their lives prove again that no one is beyond the reach of God's grace, that as Paul wrote to the Romans, "by the glory of the Father, we too might walk

If all we had to go on was Salon, Slate, or The Atlantic magazines, we'd be forced to conclude that becoming a parent is a life sentence of loneliness. Though studies do demonstrate a loss in certain forms of happiness for parents, according to Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies, that conclusion "no longer fits the data." Nearly 60% of childless men and women say they are lonely some, most, or all the time while only 45% of those with children report the same. Likewise, "82% of parents say they are 'very happy' or 'pretty happy' compared to just 68% of the childless." Some of the shift likely has to do with how the pandemic disrupted social life, which families were partially insulated against. Another factor is likely America's improved work-life balance. More important is how happiness is defined. Kids can create stress like nothing else, but they are also a source of joy and meaning. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, proposed The National Strategy for Social Connection Act. The bill has three parts. Part one would create a White House Office of Social Connection Policy to advise the president on the epidemic of loneliness and develop strategies to improve social connection. Part two would mandate the federal government to develop an official, national Anti-Loneliness strategy across all federal agencies. Part three would send more funding to the CDC for the study of the mental and physical effects of loneliness. The bill itself exemplifies the clunkiness and inefficiency that characterizes the work of the government: a new office will be formed, then an office will be placed inside that office, and that office will advise and send money to yet another office. To be fair to Senator Murphy, America is facing a very dangerous loneliness epidemic that is quickly becoming a public health crisis. Rates of suicide, homicide, depression, self-harm, crime, and social isolation are at all-time highs. These trends are correlated with loneliness, which researchers have found can be twice as detrimental to our physical health as obesity. Even if well-intentioned, there are two fundamental problems with Senator Murphy's legislation. First, no program, government or otherwise, that does not first understand what it means to be human can hope to combat the growing pandemic of loneliness. Second, there are some problems that the government with its clunkiness simply cannot address. It is a very modern belief, as Jacques Ellul so clearly described in his writing on the rise of "technocratism," that all problems can be solved through the proper application of technique and the effective use of technology. This illusion only contributes to the expansion of state power. After all, who else can be trusted to properly apply the technologies that promise to solve our problems? Under this illusion, there is less and less room to look to God for help. Consequently, there is less and less concern for how He created the universe, including human beings, to function in the first place. If there's no real motivation to seek out our intended design, there's even less reason to seek out the Designer, and on and on it goes. This same faulty assumption is at the root of Senator Murphy's proposal. Like a lot of political solutions, creating a government office to combat loneliness assumes human beings are less like God and more like problems to be solved. If we can just get the technique right, by setting up the right system at scale, we can "reboot" all these lonely humans back to their factory settings so they'll stop making so much trouble. Of course, because that's not what humans are, no government program will ever be able to regenerate the fallen human heart. Though the state cannot solve all problems, it can incentivize and disincentivize certain behaviors. For example, many social welfare programs disincentivize marriage. No-fault divorce policies disincentivize long-lasting marriages. Legalized abortion incentivizes (or at least de-stigmatizes) risky sexual behavior. Calling same-sex relationships legal "marriage" reduces marriage from being the basic unit of social society and the source of healthy population growth into little more than "two people who like each other ... at least for now." The reality is that healthy, intact families are the single most effective tool to combat loneliness. Yet with every one of these policies, the government has weakened family stability. Any proposed legislation to "fight loneliness" that doesn't mention the cancer of fatherlessness in this country just isn't serious. Senator Murphy has written elsewhere about the connection between loneliness and the breakdown of institutions like the family, churches, sports clubs, and civic clubs. But the physical act of walking through the doors of a church or civic center or YMCA will not magically relieve loneliness. Institutions foster deep relationships because they call people to devote themselves to things outside themselves. People form deep bonds with others when they are devoted to something bigger together, and that devotion also gives them a reason to put up with each other. This is an important but overlooked factor in a cultural moment in which we're often encouraged to "get rid of toxic people" in our lives, as if human relationships should never experience conflict or tension. Loneliness is a public crisis because people are lonely. People are lonely because their hearts were made for relationships with others and with God. If the government really wants to "solve loneliness," its money would be better spent hiring whomever it planned to lead the Department of Social Whatever and telling them to instead pick up the phone, start dialing, and tell the person who answers to get married, have kids, go to church, and call their mom. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. For more resources to

Disney has decided, again, to reimagine a classic. Instead of the traditional seven dwarves, the new Snow White will be accompanied by seven "magical creatures" of all ages, sizes, and genders. Of course, Disney has always been rather liberal with source material. Few Disney movies follow the original plots of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. Even so, a recent Tweet thread highlighted how this kind of ideological editing can move from a quirk to a crisis. Its author noted the passion with which progressive commenters reject anyone saying anything nice about the Middle Ages. More than poking holes in romantic views of the past, everything must be all filth, all sickness, all the time. This is more than bad history: It's willfully bad history. Progressivism is built on a wholesale rejection of older ways of doing things, especially anything reflecting a Christian worldview. A better take is one that allows for real progress, while never assuming that the newer is always going to be better. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In its most recent term, the United States Supreme Court strengthened free speech by ruling that business owners cannot be punished for expression consistent with their deeply held beliefs and by ruling that affirmative action practices in college admissions violates the constitutional prohibition of racial discrimination. All this on the heels of the landmark decision in the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion law to the states. Again, unsurprisingly, the Court is being accused of replacing justice and the Constitution with partisan politics by pundits who decry the Court's conservative bias. However, contrary to the critics, the Supreme Court's record reflects more of a broad consensus than partisan politics. Despite the dramatic ideological diversion of the administrations that appointed the Justices, almost half of the cases decided by the Court each term are unanimous. Though there are certainly outlier years, this was not one of them, and the trend lines have been fairly consistent since the 1950s. Many critics argue that last year marked the end of the Supreme Court's "consensus," pointing to the strong ideological divides on decisions like Dobbs, Carson v. Makin, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. After all, just 29% of the rulings were unanimous for the 2021-2022 term. Forty-six percent of the decisions, however, were ones in which at least eight of the nine justices ruled in agreement. That can hardly be considered a divided court. During the 2022-2023 term, only six of the 57 cases considered were decided along ideological lines. Twenty-seven of the rulings, about 47%, were unanimous, and over half, 56%, were decided with eight of the nine members again in agreement. Even the New York Times didn't totally misrepresent the reality of these numbers. Of the 12 cases featured in an article summarizing the most recent Supreme Court term, only a third were decided along ideological lines. This year, in fact, a number of rulings featured unexpected alliances and disagreements. In one majority opinion and three concurring opinions, Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch and Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were in agreement, favoring limits on government power. In a recent case regarding the artwork of Andy Warhol, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—appointed by the same administration and both considered progressive—were in strong disagreement with one another. The willingness of Justices to work together often extends beyond the courtroom and can even result in cultivated friendships. The conservative iconic justice Antonin Scalia famously shared a friendship (and even vacationed) with progressive iconic justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. On the current court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Clarence Thomas have cultivated a beautiful friendship despite their significant ideological differences. In her own words, Justice Sotomayor has "probably disagreed with [Justice Thomas] more than any other justice" but maintains a friendship with him because she considers him a "man who cares deeply about the court as an institution—about the people who work here." The current Court consists of justices appointed by four different administrations, two progressive and two conservative. Still, a general consensus remains. Whatever ideological fault lines exist within the Court are not always determinative of its rulings, as evidenced even in its past two terms. In other words, members of the Court have deep disagreements, but it should not be considered irredeemably partisan. Often, those who bemoan the current state of the Court, consider it illegitimate, and call it a failed institution, only betray their own philosophical commitments. Namely, they have embraced a postmodern view of law and of the courts, which assumes that "to judge is an exercise of power," not an exercise in the interpretation and application of the law. Thus, they cannot imagine that a ruling they do not like could be legitimate. In contrast, we can be assured by the relevant facts that the recent legal victories for life and liberty are not the products of the Court's corruption but a genuine realization of justice for the nation. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert. If you enjoy Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Russell Brand's "brand" is crass British actor, comedian, and freethinker. However, he recently offered a profound take on the Ten Commandments, human nature, and contemporary culture: "When it says in the Old Testament, 'Worship no other gods than me,' the implication ... is that we are a species that worships, and if you do not access the Divine, ... you will worship the profane. You will worship your own identity. You will worship your belongings. You will worship the template lai[d] before you by a culture that wants you ... relatively dumb." Wow. John Calvin called the human heart a "perpetual factory of idols." St. Augustine wrote that the heart remains restless "until it finds rest in" the One Who made us. Pascal talked about the God-shaped hole in the human heart we are always trying to fill. I did not expect Russell Brand to join that esteemed list of keen observers of human nature ... but let's hope God grabs a hold of his heart. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

If it is true, as Richard Weaver famously put it, that "ideas have consequences," it is also true that bad ideas have victims. On no other contemporary issue today is the connection between a bad idea and its victims clearer than assisted suicide. In no other nation today are the bad ideas and their victims more aggressively embraced than in Canada. In a lengthy and powerful essay at The Atlantic this month, David Brooks exposed just how monstrous Canada's so-called "medical aid in dying" regime has become since it was enacted in 2016. Originally, Canada only permitted the request for medical aid in dying to those with serious illness, in advanced or irreversible decline, unbearable physical or mental suffering, or whose death was "reasonably foreseeable." The criteria are vague enough. Since the law went into effect, however, the number of Canadians killed annually has gone from 1,000 to over 10,000. In 2021, one in thirty Canadian deaths was by assisted suicide, and only 4% of those who applied to die were turned down. Were all these people terminally ill or suffering from serious and irreversible conditions? Hardly. In fact, Brooks tells the story of a man whose only physical condition was hearing loss yet who was "put to death" over the objections of his family. Another patient had fibromyalgia and leukemia yet wrote that "the suffering I experience is mental suffering, not physical. I think if more people cared about me, I might be able to handle the suffering caused by my physical illnesses alone." One otherwise healthy 37-year-old who suffers from schizoaffective disorder and is unemployed said, "logistically, I really don't have a future. … I'm not going anywhere." As of Brooks' writing, that man was awaiting approval for assisted suicide. Simply put, Canadians who need help are instead being helped to kill themselves because they're depressed, lonely, or mentally ill. And the slope keeps getting slipperier. Brooks described patients who have been pressured by doctors and hospital staff into killing themselves to avoid medical bills. Earlier this year, the Canadian Parliament's Special Committee on Medical Assistance in Death recommended extending the program to "mature minors" as young as twelve. Brooks observed, this is what happens "when a society takes individualism to its logical conclusion." The core question "is no longer, 'Should the state help those who are suffering at the end of life die?'" It is now whether any degree of suffering is worth living with. He concludes, "The lines between assisted suicide for medical reasons … and straight-up suicide are blurring." Brooks clearly identified the bad idea behind these victims: what he calls "autonomy-based liberalism." In its place, he proposed something called "gifts-based liberalism," which acknowledges that each of us is a "receiver of gifts … including the gift of life itself." That life, Brooks insists, is "sacred" because each of us is endowed with "dignity," and society has a duty to say, "No, suicide is out of bounds. … You don't have the right to make a choice you will never be able to revisit. … We are responsible for one another." At least, that is, in most cases, according to Brooks. He is so close to getting this one right and articulating the sanctity of life in the way Christianity does. That's why it's frustrating that Brooks seems to think it's possible to climb back up the slippery slope and re-establish assisted suicide only for "extreme" cases. He writes, "I don't have great moral qualms about assisted suicide for people who are suffering intensely in the face of imminent death." But, David, the moment you begin setting criteria for when a life is no longer worth living, no longer sacred, and a person no longer deserving of love instead of lethal injection, you let the bad idea that led to all those victims right back in the cultural door! For all his admirable reporting on how bad it has gotten in Canada, Brooks never gets around to answering his core question: Why did Canada's "medical aid in dying" law–which supposedly limited victims to only those he agrees should have the right to die–become government-sponsored mass suicide in just seven years? The answer is simple: because the value of human life is not based on any extrinsic quality. Period. It's instead based on the fact that humans are made in God's image. We belong to Him, not to ourselves. This is ultimately why the slope from accepting some suicides to all suicides is so slippery. It's also why "gifts-based liberalism," until it acknowledges the one who gave us life, will never be able to keep its footing or help those intent on throwing away the very gift. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Local authorities in a coastal English town are dropping the threat of legal charges against Adam Smith-Connor for praying silently outside of an abortion clinic. In a video of the incident, a police officer, obviously uncomfortable, asked Smith-Connor to describe the "nature of [his] prayer," adding that she doesn't "want to probe." She suggested Smith-Connor might be violating the town's "buffer zone" rule, which outlaws "acts of disapproval" outside of the clinic. Ultimately, the officers say they believe he is allowed to pray silently, but they still fined him. Smith-Connor refused to pay it. People have to stand up to government overreach. It's much easier to be a council member and pass an ordinance like this from safely inside City Hall than to be the police officer charged with enforcing it while their gut says, "No, this isn't right." And Christians, who are called to "live not by lies," as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, may have to make tough choices about what or Whom they must serve. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Despite having three daughters, I can't say I ever expected to discuss the theological implications of a movie based on Barbie dolls. And yet, Barbie is dominating headlines, not only for bringing in a whopping 155 million dollars on its opening weekend, but also for garnering thought-pieces on the deeper meaning of its plot and for its cultural implications about the identity and value of women. A Vox article, for example, compared its plot to the biblical account of the Garden of Eden, with a primal couple living in a paradise before newly discovered knowledge about good and evil taints the world with corruption. Whether or not director Greta Gerwig intended that particular angle, her "Barbie" not only engages with contemporary discussions about feminism but also the biggest of worldview questions, such as "What's the meaning of life?" "What has gone wrong with the world?" and, "What will fix the world?" In the process, Barbie tells a story of the world that, beneath its shiny colors and self-aware snark, more closely reflects the tenets of postmodernism than the truths of Scripture. In Barbieland, the meaning and purpose of life is to be happy, and happiness means a woman-run society of libertine freedom and unhindered expression. Lines repeated throughout the film include "Barbie is every woman, and every woman is Barbie," and "Barbies can be anything, so women can be anything." In this view, to be empowered is to be free of restraint and responsibility. Something that is also communicated in its view of motherhood. Both Christian reflection and common sense betray what's wrong with this subjective view of happiness. If happiness is what life is all about, and our experiences of happiness swing on such an extreme pendulum of circumstance, freedom, and expression, how can anyone be happy for long? True happiness, as C.S. Lewis taught, is a byproduct of a life well lived, rather than the goal. Happiness requires that we are connected to something larger than ourselves, ultimately God. We belong to the One who made us for Himself, and, in Him, we find true joy. Barbie's answer to the question, "What's wrong with the world?" is, well, men. When she is cast into the "real world," she discovers that its brokenness is due to the actions and attitudes of men, primarily against women. As one character proclaims, "We can only agree on one thing. We all hate women. Men hate women, and women hate women." This is both an astute observation and an odd complaint in a society unable or, more accurately, unwilling, to say what a woman is (other than as a "non-man"). In the world of this movie, every man is both oppressive and oblivious. Barbie can outsmart them all while Ken only "slows her down" and "gets into trouble." Rather than accept the female-ruling class of Barbieland, Ken longs to emulate the powers of middle-aged white men in the "real world." So, he introduces his own brave new world, "Kendom." But in the world of Kendom, the ultimate obstacle to happiness and freedom is men. They are not good. Women are. This is, of course, the same framing of reality that shaped second- and third- wave feminism. In the biblical account, sin is disobedience and the longing for autonomy. What's wrong with the world is the conflict, pain, and death that resulted. Sin has infected the world ever since and has turned the sexes against one another. Men have screwed up the world. So have women. Both were created good by God. Both are not good because of sin. In the film, Barbieland is fixed by expelling the patriarchy. Barbie calls on one of the "real" women from the "real" world to preach the gospel of oppression to brainwashed Barbies. The unthinking Kens turn against themselves. The Barbies are given a Barbie-fied version of Betty Freidan's Feminine Mystique: Women are victims of oppression and can never win. They are even victims of their own bodies, shaped as they are by the design of motherhood. On this point, the movie is not subtle. In a scene from the film's first two minutes, young girls, bored with their baby dolls, smash them on the ground until their heads explode. A pregnant Barbie is also hinted at as being "creepy" and is discontinued. In the end, Barbieland is made new, restored to the paradisical, women-run society it once was. The Kens "find themselves" too, but apart from Barbie. In other words, men and women were not made for each other. Or were they? Much of the film's discussion has to do with the final scene, in which Barbie chooses to not live in the restored Barbieland utopia, but in the real world of humanity instead. As such, there's a not-so-subtle acknowledgement of the reality of human bodies, especially the female body. It's not clear if Gerwig intended this final scene as a sort of undermining of the subjective portrayal of Barbieland. What is clear, whether she intended it or not, is that this is a world of objective realities, and the answers to life's biggest questions can only be found by firs

The Barbie Movie is setting attendance records. What messages is it sending? LGTBQ+ students are flocking to Ivy League universities. What's driving the trend? And Russell Brand shares some insightful views about God and worship. — Recommendations — Focus on the Family's Radio Theatre How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk: The Foolproof Way to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind by John Van App Section 1 - Barbie Check Breakpoint.org on Monday, July 31, for our official Barbie review. "'Barbie' Box Office to the World: The Pandemic is Officially Over" The New York Times "Mattel Needs Barbie's Movie Magic to Lift Toy Sales" The Wall Street Journal 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' Set Post-Pandemic Box Office High - The New York Times Section 2 - Ivy League Students Leaning LGBTQ "Ivy League LGBTQ+ numbers soar and students point to identity politics" New York Post "U.S. LGBT Identification Steady at 7.2%" Gallup Section 3 - Russell Brand on Worship Russell Brand on Worship "Jesus's plea to Russell Brand" Christianity Today "'I Need God': Actor Russell Brand Delivers Candid Admission About the Lord, 'Spirituality'" Faithwire For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Despite cultural propaganda that sells marijuana as "harmless," increasingly research finds that regular cannabis use is just the opposite. Not only have recent studies found that marijuana use is a leading indicator of workplace accidents and leads to schizophrenia among young men, but a new, peer-reviewed study tracking almost 30 years of medical records for over 6.5 million Danish citizens has found that marijuana use is closely associated with increased risks for depression and bipolar disorder. Those previously diagnosed with cannabis addiction were almost twice as likely to develop clinical depression and up to four times as likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The increased risk for psychosis is more likely for men than for women, and the chances go up with use. As U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse deputy director Dr. Wilson Compton noted, studies like these are rapidly exposing that "cannabis may not be the innocent and risk-free substance that so many people believe." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

190 years ago today, the great British parliamentarian and abolitionist William Wilberforce died at the home of his cousin near Westminster, London. Three days earlier, Parliament had passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which "abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada" on condition that the Crown compensated slave owners. When his friend Thomas Babington Macaulay delivered the news, Wilberforce allegedly responded, "Thank God that I should have lived to witness the day in which England is willing to give 20 million sterling for the abolition of slavery." Upon the news of his death, newspapers around the world proclaimed Wilberforce "as pure and virtuous a man as ever lived." During his life, however, he endured incredible opposition and even hostility. England benefited both economically and militarily from the transatlantic slave trade. Some 46,000 British families owned slaves, and during war with France, abolitionists were accused of being unpatriotic. In a private letter, legendary naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson wrote that he would never surrender Britain's "West India possessions … whilst I have an arm to fight in their defen[s]e, or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable and cursed doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies." One of Wilberforce's most vocal opponents, a slave trader named George Hibbert, was a fellow congregant at his church, Holy Trinity Clapham. Many years ago, Chuck Colson described Wilberforce as "biblical worldview in action": When Wilberforce came to Christ early in his political career, he thought about leaving Parliament and public life altogether. Thankfully, William Pitt—who went on to become Great Britain's youngest prime minister—convinced him otherwise. Pitt wrote to Wilberforce: "Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple and lead not to meditation only, but to action." And for the rest of his life, Wilberforce's Christianity meant action. His fiercely unpopular crusade against the slave trade consumed his health and cost him politically—but he could not stand idly by and see the imago Dei, the image of God, enslaved and abused in the holds of ships. He endured verbal assaults and was even challenged to a duel by an angry slave-ship captain. When the French Revolution began, what had been merely an unpopular position became a dangerous one in Britain. Wilberforce's detractors charged that the humanist revolution would sweep England, and Wilberforce, with his passion for the slaves, was made suspect. Nonetheless, Wilberforce persevered. Writing about political expediency and whether to give up the fight, Wilberforce notes, "a man who fears God is not at liberty" to give up. But Wilberforce's worldview led him to engage in more than just the issue of slavery. He sold his home and dismissed servants to have more money to give to the needy. He fought for prison reform. He founded or participated in sixty charities. He convinced King George III to reissue a proclamation encouraging virtue and reinstated the Proclamation Society to help see such virtue encouraged. He cared for God's creation, founding the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and he championed missionary efforts, like the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society. All of us would do well to take Pitt's words to Wilberforce to heart: Surely the principles and practice of Christianity lead not just to meditation, but to action. Chuck penned these words around the 2006 biographic film of Wilberforce's life, Amazing Grace. Last week, one of our nation's greatest leaders revealed that she watches this film at least once a year. The life of William Wilberforce is a direct rebuke to a privatized faith. Having had a very personal experience with God through Jesus Christ, for Wilberforce, Real Christianity (which was also the title of his book) requires living out the full implications of the Gospel. For him that meant embracing conflicts with his culture, challenges to his reputation, and doing hard things if they were the right things to do. As he put it, "If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures … is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large." Thank God that he was. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. 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

On this day 75 years ago, an elderly German couple living in the shattered remains of Berlin turned on the radio. This was Klaus and Paula Bonhoeffer, the parents of pastor, theologian, and resistance leader Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Because lines of communication had been devastated by the war, the first Klaus and Paula heard of their son's death was his memorial service in London, organized by his good friend Bishop George Bell and broadcast over the BBC. In the words of my former colleague Eric Metaxas, "As the couple took in the hard news that the good man who was their son was now dead, so too, many English took in the hard news that the dead man who was a German was good." Bonhoeffer's faithfulness was a reminder to the world that, even in the face of radical evil, faithfulness to Christ is possible. As Bishop Bell would put it, "He represents both the resistance of the believing soul, in the name of God, to the assault of evil, and also the moral and political revolt of the human conscience against injustice and cruelty." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

To see Dr. Kristin Collier's speech at this year's Colson Center National Conference, go to colsonconference.org. To hear more about how her faith shapes her medical practice, check out her interview on the Strong Women podcast. ______ Perhaps the most helpful framework for wrestling with moral issues comes from T.S. Eliot. To paraphrase, we can only know what we should and should not do with something if we first know what that something is for. For example, before we decide what we should do with human life (whether we should take it, make it, or remake it), we should know what human life is for. Recently, Dr. Kristin Collier, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan and a speaker at this year's Colson Center National Conference, published an important essay in the healthcare journal BMJ Leader. In it, she called doctors and the medical profession in general to return to this essential question. In fact, Dr. Collier entitled the piece, "What is Medicine For?" Today, medical leaders are participating in an industry dominated by the production of science and technology. But what is scientifically possible for the body and what is humane for the person are different questions which medicine must answer together. In other words, Dr. Collier says, doctors shouldn't only ask what medicine can do. They must first ask what medicine is for. This is even more important in an age of increasingly complex ethical dilemmas in medicine. For example, consider the abortion pill reversal regimen which, according to estimates, has led to the saving of more than 4,000 lives. Medication abortions consist of two pills, the first of which starves the baby by cutting off the mother's production of progesterone. The abortion pill reversal is essentially a blast of progesterone, something commonly administered to women in fertility treatments. Abortion advocates in medicine and public policy oppose allowing women to even consider this option, even falsely claiming that supplemental progesterone is, or at least might be, unsafe. So, is supplemental progesterone "good" or "bad"? On the one hand, it can be administered to save a child's life. On the other hand, it can be used in a process that leads to the creation of an excessive number of embryos, many of which will be abandoned, discarded, or subjected to medical experimentation. This is where Dr. Collier's question is critically important. What is medicine for? Is the telos (or intended goal) of medicine to give us what we want, or to serve healing? And is health merely the "absence of disease or pain," or something else? Dr. Collier rightly points out that to answer these questions, we must first answer another, deeper one: What does it mean to be human? A holistic view, which integrates biomedical science with theological and philosophical realities, understands health as rightly ordered relationships with our bodies, with the world around us, with others, and with the God who made us. Medicine has made many things possible. But it's a profound and consequential mistake to assume that because we can, we therefore should. We can cut off or carve up healthy body parts in a misguided attempt to relieve the psychological pain of gender dysphoria. We can use surgical instruments or chemical drugs to kill babies in their mothers' womb or to create babies in laboratories to be sold to adults who will have no biological connection to them. We can even prescribe lethal drugs to patients who say they want to die. But to use medicine like this violates the moral boundaries of our relationships to our own bodies, our relationships with each other, and our relationship to God, who made our bodies, who Has a specific design for marriage and family, and who forbids the taking of human life. A biblical view of health and healing presumes a few things: first, that the absence of disease and suffering is not the full biblical picture of living well; second, that while physical death is a reality for each of us, it has not rendered living meaningless, so we shouldn't fight the end of life as if it has; third, that our obligations to God, to the world around us, to ourselves, and to each other may come into conflict with our desire to not be in pain—physical or mental—and when they do, we ought to prioritize those relationships. The Christian witness in the next 20 years is going to not only involve Christian doctors practicing medicine well. It will also involve Christian patients suffering well, dying well, and helping others die well as human beings made in the image of God, whose ultimate hope is in His salvation, not medical technology. To see Dr. Kristin Collier's speech at this year's Colson Center National Conference, go to colsonconference.org. To hear more about how her faith shapes her medical practice, check out her interview on the Strong Women podcast. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite

Groundbreaking medical technologies such as immunotherapy and targeted chemotherapy have changed the game when it comes to fighting cancers, with new treatments seemingly on the horizon. Praise God. At the same time, one non-medical factor has long been known to significantly improve the odds of someone surviving cancer. According to one 2013 study of over 700,000 cancer patients, those who were married were less likely to die of cancer than those who were not. In fact, at least according to this study, marriage was a more decisive factor for a patient's survival than even chemotherapy. This points to the reality that relationships are central to who we are as human beings and points to the kindness of God for creating and designing the institution of marriage the way He did. It also supports the idea that marriage is a created part of reality, and not merely a social construct. And that, whenever our single friends suffer with cancer, they need the support of God's family. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In his new book, 32 Christians Who Changed Their World, Colson Center Senior Fellow Dr. Glenn Sunshine tells the stories of faithful men and women, most of whom are unknown today, whose lives were used by God in extraordinary ways. To receive a copy of 32 Christians Who Changed Their World, give a gift of any amount this month to the Colson Center (please visit colsoncenter.org/July). _______ Ho Feng Shan was born in Yiyang, Hunan province, in China. Orphaned at age seven, he was taken in and educated by Lutheran missionaries. A lifelong Lutheran, he eventually immigrated to San Francisco and became a founding member of the Chinese Lutheran Church there. In 1935, after earning a doctorate from the University of Munich three years earlier, Ho joined the diplomatic corps of the Republic of China. Two years later, thanks in part to his fluency in both English and German, he was appointed First Secretary to the Chinese legation in Vienna. In 1938, when Austria disappeared into the Third Reich, all foreign embassies were downgraded to consulates. Ho was appointed Consul General in Vienna, answering to the ambassador in Berlin. As he would later recall, "Since the annexation of Austria by Germany, the persecution of the Jews by Hitler's 'devils' became increasingly fierce. There were American religious and charitable organizations which were urgently trying to save the Jews. I secretly kept in close contact with these organizations. I spared no effort in using any means possible. Innumerable Jews were thus saved." Among the "any means possible" at his disposal were visas. At that time, the Nazis permitted Jews to leave Austria, even from concentration camps, if they had a visa to another country. China's Nationalist government had instructed Ho to be "liberal" with visas, so he began issuing them to Jewish families for travel to Shanghai. Shanghai was an open city, and no visa was required to go there. However, Ho used the ruse to help Jews escape Austria. Keeping the secret was not easy. Ho and his family were at risk of the Nazis ignoring his diplomatic immunity if they decided he was too much trouble. On at least one occasion, Ho faced down an armed Gestapo officer to protect a Jewish family. When the Chinese ambassador ordered Ho to stop giving Jews visas, Ho replied that the Foreign Ministry had told him to be liberal with visas. The ambassador could not figure out what Ho was getting out of the visas and sent an inspector to Vienna to investigate. Finding no evidence of wrongdoing, the inspector returned to Berlin and placed a negative report into Ho's record for insubordination. No one knows just how many visas Ho issued during this time. A conservative estimate is around 4,000. How many were used is also unknown. What is known is that Ho's courage saved thousands of lives. After the war, when the Communists won the Chinese civil war and the Nationalists withdrew to Taiwan, Ho remained loyal to the Nationalist cause. He served in numerous diplomatic posts until a subordinate, whom Ho had turned down for a promotion, accused him of misappropriating $300 of embassy funds. Though innocent, Ho was pushed out of his job and denied his pension despite 40 years of service. Ho retired to San Francisco, where he dedicated himself to his church and to community service. When he died in September 1997, Ho's daughter brought his ashes to China and buried them in his hometown of Yiyang. Ironically, the Communists government sent a wreath while the Nationalist government ignored his passing. Finally, in 2015, Taiwan recognized his work and posthumously awarded him the President's Citation Award. When asked why he worked so hard at such great personal risk to save Jews when other diplomats did not, he explained, "I thought it only natural to feel compassion and to want to help. From the standpoint of humanity, that is the way it should be." Shaped especially by a character formed by his Christian faith and a Western liberal education rooted in Christianity, Ho was providentially prepared to save lives in Vienna even at great risk to himself and his family. His life is an example of how, through history and across diverse eras, Christians courageously lived lives of restoration in incredibly difficult cultural moments. In his new book, 32 Christians Who Changed Their World, Colson Center Senior Fellow Dr. Glenn Sunshine tells the stories of faithful men and women, most of whom are unknown today, whose lives were used by God in extraordinary ways. To receive a copy of 32 Christians Who Changed Their World, give a gift of any amount this month to the Colson Center (please visit colsoncenter.org/July). This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. 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

It's not unusual for family photos to include the family dog, but as families in the photo have become less traditional, the dog has taken on new significance. A recent poll by Pew Research found that about half of U.S. pet owners consider their pets "as much a part of their family as a human member." Those living with a partner but not married were the most likely to say this, at 65%, followed by those never married, non-parents, and then those divorced or separated. Those married and those with children were the least likely to place pets on par with people. Pets can be awesome. However, putting them on par with humans not only humanizes pets, but de-humanizes people. It's notable how the presence and committed family love between real human beings corrects that bad idea for people. It's also notable that as much as we appreciate the affection of Fido, when we need to be cared for, only a person and not a pet will do. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In the parable of the sower, Jesus illustrated how the seed of God's Word flourishes or perishes depending on the kind of ground it falls on. Some seeds fell on a path, and birds ate them. Some fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the seedlings. "Other seeds," said Jesus, "fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away." That rocky soil group aptly describes the rapid rise and decline of evangelicals in America in recent decades. Recently, political scientist Ryan Burge, co-author of The Great Dechurching, explained how, between 1983 and 1993, the share of Americans who identified as evangelicals exploded. In fact, at their height in the early '90s, nearly a third of Americans called themselves evangelical. This growth overlapped with the sharpest period of decline for mainline Protestants which, between 1975 and 1988, fell from one in three Americans to less than one in five. As Burge points out, this coincide-ence was no coincidence. Evangelical gains resulted partly from "cannibalizing" the mainline denominations. By 2018, however, those gains had withered. Evangelicals returned to their pre-1980s percentage of the population, and by all indications, are still declining today, though more slowly. Part of the story of what happened is the rise of the "nones," those who claim no religious affiliation. Between 1991 and today, the percentage of Americans who identify as "nones" skyrocketed from 6% to 29%. Burge calls this "the most significant shift in American society over the last thirty years." Of course, pointing to the rise of the "nones" is basically a way of restating the problem. The evangelical bubble of the '80s and '90s, as well as the longer-term decline of American Christianity, requires a fuller explanation. Perhaps, given how quickly the evangelical bubble burst, part of the problem was that it was filled with shallow belief. Or to switch back to Jesus' metaphor, perhaps some of the seeds that came up so quickly in the final decades of the 20th century—amid chart-topping Christian albums, huge music festivals, and sprouting non-denominational megachurches—lacked deep roots. Of course, there is nothing wrong per se with creative outreach strategies, but Jesus never told us that the goal was to get bodies through the doors or bottoms in the chairs. It was to make disciples committed to Christ and His Kingdom—disciples who would in turn "bear much fruit." Given the rapid rise and fall of the evangelical crop, we might safely conclude that many of those who joined and helped it spring up so quickly had shallow roots. Overall, Christians were not cultivated with deep roots in the truth God has revealed about Himself, His world, human beings, and His plan to make all things new. Much of that is the Holy Spirit's work through families and the church, of course. He prepares the soil, and He gives the growth. He also gives many commands in Scripture that indicate the part we play and the responsibility we have. One of the most important ways to ensure deep roots is through the cultivating of a worldview informed by Christian truth, something in stark contrast from sprinkling Christian encouragements on top of the world's view. This means teaching the Bible as if it is the true account of reality, contrasting a Biblical understanding of things with those widely accepted, meeting challenges from the wider culture head-on, answering tough questions about the faith, teaching Christians to take seriously Christ's sovereignty over all of life, belonging and not merely attending church, and teaching worship as everything we do, not just when we sing. It also means recognizing the role cultural currents play in eroding faith—especially those undermining marriage and the family. As Mary Eberstadt wrote almost 10 years ago in How the West Really Lost God, one of the most powerful forces behind secularization and the rise of the "nones" is the decline of the family. Subsequent research has only proven how right she was. If evangelicals or members of any Christian tradition want to have a future, we're going to have to prioritize intact, stable families. After all, families not only make new people, they teach them the language and categories God uses to describe His new family—the Church. Despite the numbers, we should always maintain hope and expect a harvest. Those who've turned in the last few decades from Christian belief to no belief aren't doing well. We're in the midst of a historic mental health crisis, and people raised without faith in God are suffering the worst of it. Religious observance, by contrast, is strongly correlated with better mental health. As helpful as therapy can be, the greatest longings of the human heart and the greatest problems of human relationships are only redeemed in Christ. That's why, despite evangelical decl

Recent research from political scientist Ryan Burge indicates that, at least in the United States, the Christian faith is found primarily among the educated and wealthy. Americans most likely to regularly attend church hold graduate degrees and have an average annual income of $60,000-$100,000. Does this mean Christianity is a "luxury religion?" Not exactly. According to marriage experts John Van Epp and J.P. DeGance, "one's economic future is greatly impacted by the relationship choices one makes, specifically in the areas of marriage and parenting." So, for example, for people whose values include having children after marriage (and not before), the likeliness of being in the "middle- or top-income tier" brackets more than doubles despite their background. This reinforces, again, that God's design of marriage and family is built into the created order and, when followed, leads to economic, social, and spiritual flourishing. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In John 16:33, Jesus said that "[i]n the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." In the 20 centuries since our Lord spoke these haunting yet hopeful words, they've proven true. In fact, in terms of absolute numbers, we live in the worst period of persecution against Christians in history. More Christians died for their faith in the 20th century than the previous 19 combined, and the 21st century is shaping up to be at least as deadly, but likely more. According to Open Doors International's latest World Watch List, 312 million Christians face "extreme" or "very high" levels of persecution—1 in 5 in Africa; 2 in 5 in Asia. Last year was the worst year on record for persecution, with 5,500 Christians killed for reasons related to their faith, more than 2,000 churches attacked, and over 4,500 Christians detained or imprisoned. For the most part, each year of the past decade has been worse than the previous year. Writing of the persecutions that plagued God's people in the early days of Christianity, Tertullian claimed that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Though particularly intense persecution has, at times, led to a decrease in overall Church numbers, the Church has grown far beyond the wildest imagination of Jesus' first followers. Stories of the faithful who endured persecution and faced martyrdom have been a catalyst for that growth. In 1563, historian John Foxe told many of the earliest stories in a book that would become one of the most widely read works in the English language. Foxe's Book of Martyrs chronicles hundreds of Christians who gave their lives or were persecuted for their faith from the New Testament all the way to his day. Through generations of expansions and editions, it became an indispensable classic. Foxe's Book of Martyrs was written from a Protestant perspective and, almost 50 years older than the King James Bible, is a challenging read. Recently, a pair of daring authors took up Foxe's mantle to tell the stories of the martyrs afresh for modern readers. In The New Book of Christian Martyrs, Johnnie Moore and Dr. Jerry Pattengale of Indiana Wesleyan University offer accounts of heroes of the faith from the first to the 21st centuries. Written in a fast-paced and richly informative style, with reference to important historical sources, Moore and Pattengale make cultural connections and frequently quote Foxe's best "vintage" passages about the martyrs. Throughout, they seem constantly aware that they are writing to a Christian Church vastly larger, more global, and by some measures more persecuted than it was in Foxe's day. Dr. Pattengale joined Shane Morris on a recent Upstream podcast to talk about The New Book of Christian Martyrs. He covered a number of stories from the book in the episode and connected the ancient martyrs to modern victims of persecution. Perpetua and Felicita were two newly converted and young Christian mothers who were killed in the arena at Carthage in 203. At the time, Perpetua, a noblewoman, was nursing her newborn. Despite entreaties by her friends and family, Perpetua and Felicita refused to denounce Christ or worship the emperor. Perpetua's diary was likely preserved by Tertullian, who tells how, on the day of her execution, she and her companions faced leopards, wild boars, and a raging bull. Perpetua was eventually gored and tossed across the arena but took the time to fix her hair before soldiers finished her off. As Tertullian reports, she did so because "it was not becoming for a martyr to suffer with disheveled hair, lest she should appear to be mourning in her glory." Eighteen centuries later, in February 2015, 21 Coptic Christians displayed a similar dignity as they prepared to meet Christ from a beach in Syria. Pattengale and Moore compare their orange jumpsuits to the jerseys of a sports team, ready to leave it all on the field for their Captain. In the moment before their masked executioners beheaded them, the Coptic 21 sang a line from the hymn, "Ya Rabbi Yassu,"—"my Lord Jesus." Thanks to an Islamic State propaganda video, millions witnessed their martyrdom. As the book notes, ISIS's objective "backfired" when the video galvanized the world against their cause and became a source of pride and celebration for Coptic Christians. In the words of Revelation, the world saw 21 young men conquer "by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death." In a time when our brothers and sisters face more persecution than ever, the stories from across times and cultures told in The New Book of Christian Martyrs will inform your faith and your prayers. As Tertullian and Foxe believed, such stories can fuel the growth of a Church whose Lord overcame the world and will ultimately grant rest from all persecution. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.o

John and Maria discuss the importance of biblical literacy as well as how a worldview of the human condition can impact the function of government. — Recommendations — Free Livestream: Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview Meghan Daum & Sarah Haider on Child Activists Section 1 - Tucker Carlson and Biblical Literacy Tucker Carlson on spiritual warfare Section 2 - Bureaucracy and Human Nature For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

If you haven't heard, the state of Texas is under invasion from small creatures who are, according to breathless media reports, popping up everywhere. "Nearly 10,000 more babies born in nine months under Texas' restrictive abortion law," read The Texas Tribune. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School arrived at the number by comparing Texas births after Senate Bill 8 took effect, which prohibits abortion after conception, to the number of births in the same period the year before. One of the study's co-authors told CNN that 10,000 new babies mean women were "denied a needed abortion." Referring to the moms, she warned ominously, "It's hard to imagine the short- and long-term implications of a personal trajectory that may have been rerouted." Of course, it's harder to imagine the implications for a child denied the right to have a personal trajectory. Ultimately, interpreting the Texas baby boom depends on worldview. It's either a tragedy or 10,000 inherently valuable, unique, and beautiful reasons to celebrate ... thanks to Texas' pro-life lawmakers. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A few months ago, kidney specialist Dr. Stanley Goldfarb was fired from UpToDate, a digital research tool for physicians. Last year, the president of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where Dr. Goldfarb served as an associate dean, wrote a public letter accusing him of racism while students and colleagues circulated a petition calling for his title as professor emeritus to be stripped. Dr. Goldfarb's purported crimes had nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with his public opposition to DEI ("Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion") in medicine. For example, last year, he wrote, The campaign for diversity is long running and has some value, yet the ideological extremism of the past two years has led medical schools to adopt dangerous strategies. To fight supposed "systemic racism," at least 40 institutions have dropped the requirement that all applicants take the MCAT, the gold-standard test that measures students' grasp of this life-saving profession. More recently, he added this observation, It quickly became apparent that my beloved medical profession, to which I had devoted more than 50 years, was spiraling downward even faster than I had realized. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the decline, as did the death of George Floyd in 2020. Suddenly, medical schools were loudly proclaiming that health care is "systemically racist," that "medical reparations" are urgently needed, and that medical education and practice must fundamentally change. Whereas DEI and social justice were frequently discussed in 2018, by the end of 2020 they were the central facets of medical education, where they remain to this day. Other examples of Dr. Goldfarb's concerns include the supposed systemic racism of being seen by a physician of a different race and pledges made by medical students to fight the gender binary and "honor all indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by western medicine." Near the end of the 20th century, it was common to dismiss and deny the possibility of objective truth claims in the liberal arts and social sciences, such as literature, art, and politics. But the "hard" sciences remained untouched until recently. It is now common for the same kind of deconstructions to be applied in math, medicine, or the other biological sciences. As it turns out, the first chapter of Romans accurately describes the very real potential of fallen humanity to deny what is observably true in the world God made. Contemporary ideas of DEI prove a maxim of G.K. Chesterton, that "(t)he modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad." The impulse for justice and equality, birthed within the Western world from Christian ideas about morality and the human condition, draws more from the philosophy of Michel Foucault than the Bible. Built instead on a standpoint epistemology rather than eternal categories of right and wrong and human dignity, an individual who belongs to what is understood as a traditionally marginalized group is granted moral status and authority over and above those from groups not assumed to be marginalized. Functionally, objective reality is denied. As Shane Morris and I recently described, students taught that successfully solving algebra problems will depend more on the color of their skin than knowing algebra, or that their calculus professors are oppressors if they are white, will not only not unlock the mysteries of the universe, they will believe lies about who they are. Even worse, lowering standards for certain students only dehumanizes them, suggesting they cannot reach the standards in the first place. In the 1990s, renowned economist Thomas Sowell wrote the following about lowering SAT scores: The Educational Testing Service is adopting minority students as mascots by turning the SAT exams into race-normed instruments to circumvent the growing number of prohibitions against group preferences. The primary purpose of mascots is to symbolize something that makes others feel good. The well-being of the mascot himself is seldom a major consideration. Sowell understood–even firsthand–racial injustice and the uphill climb that minority students can face to reach success. Yet for Sowell, ditching objective measurements was not the answer: People of every race and background are fully capable of becoming world-class physicians. Medical schools should seek out the best candidates who are most likely to provide the best care for patients, regardless of what they look like or where they come from. Anything less jeopardizes the very purpose of these institutions. Critical Theory in all of its forms only critiques, never constructs. Applied, it will only tear down, never build up. Advocates of this ideology should consider that their proposed solutions may be fueling the problems they claim to address. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Rather than celebrating their differences and strengths, women are increasingly being told that the only way to true equality and freedom is by rejecting who they are, especially their God-given capacity for procreation. This message is clearly reaching teenage girls, who today make up the majority of those identifying as transgender or non-binary. In recent years, a group of "reactionary feminists" have pushed back on the attempts to erase women. Unlike their progressive counterparts, reactionary feminists reject the transgender trend and the destruction it wreaks on women and their bodies. For them, the chemical and surgical erasure of female bodies is a means of oppression, not freedom. Ironically, "reactionary feminists" are doing what too many Christians are unwilling to do: defend the reality and beauty of God's creation and the dignity men and women possess as image bearers. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Please join us for the Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview on Thursday, July 27. Sign up to attend live or to join the livestream at ColsonCenter.org/GreatLakes. _____ When I was growing up, Christians had to wrestle with whether or not our convictions could withstand the threat of ridicule. We'd be asked, "Are you willing to be mocked and made fun of by a professor who doesn't believe in God or a friend trying to tempt you into doing something you know is wrong?" About the worst thing to expect from this was what a friend has called "cocktail party pressure" or getting kicked out of the cool kids' clique. To be clear, cocktail party pressure was quite effective, though those days seem quaintly in the past. Increasingly, Christians are hated, fired, or otherwise harassed on account of their principles. Particularly bewildering is that the loudest complaints against believers today are for things considered mainstream until just a few years ago. Just this week, the Alliance Defending Freedom came to the defense of a man in Vermont who was fired after 10 years as a successful snowboarding coach. His crime, as one of ADF's lawyers put it, was "merely expressing his views that males and females are biologically different and questioning the appropriateness of a teenage male competing against teenage females in an athletic competition." For that, "school district officials unconstitutionally fired him." Clearly, the district violated coach David Bloch's First Amendment rights and likely, given the legal track record of the Alliance Defending Freedom, he will be vindicated in the end. Still, this is another example of what feels like a new cultural moment in which the question of Christian courage is in the context of even more tangible pressures. This context is at the center of a conversation I will be hosting Thursday, July 27 at the fourth annual Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview in Bay Harbor, Michigan. If you happen to be in the area, there's limited space available to join us in person, or you can sign up to join us via livestream. Either way, there is no charge for this conversation featuring two Christians leading the way into this brave new moment: Kristen Waggoner is CEO, president, and general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Jim Daly is president and CEO of Focus on the Family. Both are witness to these increased pressures. For years, Kristen has successfully advanced legal protections and religious liberty by representing courageous Christians such as Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman. Most recently, she represented Lorie Smith of 303 Creative in a landmark victory for free speech at the Supreme Court. However, for her efforts, Kristen has been unfairly attacked and lied about by media outlets, fellow lawyers, and even the Attorney General of Colorado. Last fall, Focus on the Family's grounds were vandalized by activists. Though not the first time, there was something different about this attack. The perpetrators falsely and unfairly blamed Focus for the then-recent murders at a local Colorado Springs gay club. These accusations have been repeated by media outlets and critics as recently as last week. This brave new world of hostility is familiar for our brothers and sisters elsewhere, in places like Nigeria, India, and China. Ours are more experiences of a series of horrible moments, such as earlier this year in Nashville. Christians in the West do not fear for their lives. Even so, something has clearly shifted. Calls to tolerate the views of others are about as 1990s these days as talking about abortion being "safe, legal, and rare." As we've seen in Nashville, it's a perilously small step from the rhetorical games of wanting to punch "literal Nazis" to literally punching those who dare stray from the cultural narrative. The only way forward for the Christ follower is to commit again to knowing what is true, to commit again to saying and living what is true even if there is a cost, and to say and live what is true in a way that is pleasing to Christ. In other words, faithfulness will involve both the what we believe and the how we'll live it out. I don't know anyone I'd rather have in this conversation than Kristin Waggoner and Jim Daly. Please join us for the Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview on Thursday, July 27. Sign up to attend live or to join the livestream at ColsonCenter.org/GreatLakes. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org