Breakpoint

Recently, an impressive development in embryology was reported by the Israeli Weizmann Institute of Science. Using only stem cells, without the presence of sperm, eggs, or even a womb, researchers successfully created functioning mouse embryos, complete with beating hearts, blood circulation, brain tissue and rudimentary digestive systems. Carolyn Johnson in The Washington Post described the discovery as "a fascinating, potentially fraught realm of science that could one day be used to create replacement organs for humans." For the more than 100,000 people currently waiting for a life-saving organ donation, that kind of breakthrough would indeed seem like a miracle. However, since scientists are still years away from creating human organs in a lab for the purpose of transplant, the technology raises serious ethical questions, none of which should be taken lightly. One of these questions is, in fact, an old one. Do the promises of embryonic stem cell research justify it? While some stem cells can be harvested from a variety of non-embryonic sources such as bone marrow, others are harvested from so-called "unused" embryos that have been donated to science. The lives of these tiny, undeveloped human beings are taken in the process. For context, the research conducted by the Weizmann Institute uses embryonic stem cells. Though, for the time being, this implies only embryonic stem cells harvested from mice, the move to human research would involve the harvesting of stem cells from human embryos and involve tissue derived from already living human beings. The Christian stance on when life begins is the same as the science. Human life begins at conception, and every single human life is worthy of protection. If we would not take the life of a born child in our research for a cure for some medical condition, neither the anonymity of an embryo nor the confines of a laboratory justify doing the same thing in the process of embryonic stem cell research. Science is a process of trial and error, but we should never employ "trial and error" with the lives of thousands of human beings, in particular human beings who cannot consent to our actions. A rule of thumb is this. If you wouldn't try an experiment on an adult or small child, don't do it to human embryos at any stage. The breakthrough at the Weizmann Institute, however, takes this old debate a step further. On one hand, lead researcher Dr. Jacob Hanna was quick to clarify that the goal is not to make complete, living organisms of mice or any other species. "We are really facing difficulties making organs," he said, "and in order to make stem cells become organs, we need to learn how the embryo does that." Given the history of science, including the last chapter involving breathless promises of what embryonic stem cell research would bring, the grandiose predictions of scientists should be taken with at least a grain of salt. The process of growing organs for mice, for example, involved the creation of entire embryos. Should the technology be perfected in mice, what ethical or legal limits are there to prevent the creation of synthetic human embryos for the purpose of harvesting their organs? Our first concern should be what these embryos would be created for. The answer is, inevitably, "science," devoid of any consideration for human purpose, relationships, worth, or dignity as equal members of the human species. All societies that treat people as a means of scientific advancement, instead of infinitely valuable ends in-and-of themselves, have a track record of perpetrating atrocities. A second concern is what these embryos would be deprived of. Though not all do, every human should enter the world with the love and commitment of their biological mom and dad. The very design of human development suggests this, and societies have long recognized that those born without these relationships have had something priceless taken from them. Creating children from cloning or stem cells intentionally makes them orphans, ripping them from the vital context of parental relationship. It is a grave injustice. Bringing children into the world as a product of pure science without the possibility of relationship with their biological parents or relatives is enough an ethical consideration to oppose such research, but we should also consider the implications of recklessly creating humans for future experimentation and of dismantling them to see how their components work. Science is, in many ways, blind to what should be ethical bright lines. Creating organs for transplant in order to save lives is a worthy goal. But such work should only proceed in an ethical manner, one which does not require the death of other distinct, valuable, human beings. Unfortunately, such ideas have not shaped the society we live in today.

John and Maria discuss the life and legacy of Queen Elizabeth II and her longstanding sense of service to her nation. Afterwards, they stress the correlation—not the causation—between deaths of despair and decline in blue laws, laws against commerce on Sunday. They end by touching on commentaries from this week, in particular one highlighting the rebuttal of a false narrative that the religious right was founded in racism.

Yesterday, after the world had learned that her family had been called to her side, Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch in British history, died at age 96. It's simply impossible to articulate just how much the world, Britain, the British Empire, Western civilization, and the monarchy changed during her reign. Many Americans were fascinated by her and the royal family, as demonstrated in the popularity of shows like The Crown. She seemed to navigate a changing world by not changing, something that at times stabilized and at other times infuriated the British people. Perhaps the most consistent features of her tenure, which seemed out of step with the modern world, were her sense of duty and her consistent expression of faith and religious observance. Her annual Christmas messages reflected theology that was mostly orthodox and a faith in Jesus Christ that seemed personal. Convinced that Divine Providence had brought her to the throne, she seemed to see the crown as a calling and not an entitlement. In both of these things, her death marks the end of an era.

A few weeks back, Twitter banned a user for violent language. The offending tweet was, "I will out sword drill any Christian man." For anyone not familiar with evangelical subculture, a "sword drill" has nothing to do with blades. It's a game to see who can find a particular Bible passage first. Had the protectors of Twitter taken the time to investigate or, even better, had some Christians on their staff to ask, they may have spared themselves the ridicule which rightfully followed. Unfortunately, it's a habit of academic and media circles to either not understand or not take evangelicalism's claims for itself at face value. Sexual ethics, we are told, are novelties, due more to patriarchy than anything Jesus taught. The priority that evangelicals place on the home, family, and gender norms is more the product of 20th-century cowboy movies than any enduring truths about men and women. And, most commonly, political involvement by conservative Christians is nothing more than a naked grasp for power and maintaining the status quo. Recently, a handful of political commentators have claimed that the rise of the so-called Religious Right was rooted more in racism than in concern for the unborn or the spiritual fate of our nation. Though conservative Christians claim that the 1970's-era increase in political action was birthed in opposition to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and removal of prayer and Christian symbols in public schools, it was really about segregation. White Christians did not care about saving the lives of unborn children as much as they wanted to make sure their kids did not have to attend school with African Americans. This contention is now part of most formal analyses of evangelical culture, including from mainline and progressive Christianity. As one recent book put it, "In the end…what changed their mind wasn't abortion or school prayer, but tax-exempt status for segregated schools." Jonathan Whitehead, writing at The Gospel Coalition, dates this story to a book published in 2006 which claimed that conservative Christians got into politics in response to the 1975 action by the IRS against the (overtly) segregationist policies of Bob Jones University, a view the school later recanted. Whitehead goes on to argue that this supposed smoking gun turns out, in reality, to be an urban legend. Rather than being agitated that the IRS had attacked segregationism, conservative Christians found that the Feds were using the situation with Bob Jones University as a pretext to move against other religious schools that weren't segregationist. This was at a time when school choice and homeschooling were far from established options, and anyone who did not comply with state schools was suspect. The segregation narrative fails in other ways, as well, most notably in timing. One of the first political action groups expressly formed by evangelicals in 1972 supported Democratic Senator McGovern's ultimately failed presidential campaign. Christians, especially Roman Catholics, were already organizing for political action in the wake of Roe in 1973, and evangelical standard bearers like Christianity Today were talking about abortion before Roe and speaking out against segregation even earlier than that. In the end, the racist history rumor is an example of "nut-picking," when the worst-case example of a vast movement is held up as normative while any example to the contrary is ignored. It only contributes to our culture's increasingly uncivil discourse but is convenient for rhetorical purposes. Throughout his career, the late, great Michael Cromartie declared that there needed to be a dramatic improvement in the relationship and understanding between secularly minded Americans and their religious neighbors. "We're like an anthropological project for them," he once said, summarizing the approach of secular elites to religious believers as "We'll go study these people, because I've never met one." Without any first-hand knowledge about the intricacies of Christian culture, or at times, having an axe to grind for being raised evangelical, too many are quick to assign the worst of motives to Christian actions and words. Billions of people rely on the professionalism of journalists and academics to discover and share the truth. The truth is never served by a convenient story that happens to neatly coincide with the popular narratives of the day. If pundits and professors are going to continue to regain any authority to speak into our lives, they've got to do better.

Recently the University of Washington published research into whether hormones and puberty blockers improve the mental health of kids with gender dysphoria. According to the PR team for the university, pretty much every media outlet that covered the study, and the study's authors themselves, the answer was yes. Except it wasn't. The numbers actually revealed no difference between kids' mental health before taking hormones and after a year of the treatment. At both moments in time, kids were suffering from dramatic mental health problems. If anything, the study suggested that kids who did not start taking the medications got a little worse. The university refused to officially respond when an independent journalist challenged their conclusions—though the study's authors admitted their findings had been misrepresented. Internal emails showed the university's communications team wasn't concerned the story was not accurate. They liked that it was popular. Among the casualties of the politicizing of scientific research is public trust in our institutions. Still, the most vulnerable casualties are the kids.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature," wrote Karl Marx, "…the opium of the people." Decades of often painful historical experience has proven his observation both right and wrong. Believing in God does ease pain and suffering of faithful followers, but he was wrong in thinking that religion, especially Christianity, leaves them with nowhere else to go from there. A recent article in The Economist put it this way: "Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty." Although there is a correlation between poverty and decreased mental health, the article highlighted German sociologist Dr. Jana Berkessel's recent findings that religion significantly mitigates this effect. A variety of similar studies confirm this. Regular attendance at religious services consistently correlates with longer life spans, stronger immune systems, and lower blood pressure, as well as decreased anxiety, depression, and suicide. Kids raised in religious households have a lower incidence of drug addiction, delinquency, and incarceration. They're more likely to graduate high school. In short, the nearly unanimous scientific consensus is that religious belief is good for you. Of course, Marx's point was that these benefits only serve to keep people content in their chains and to keep them distracted so much by the next world that they do nothing to change this one. Many critics today take the critique even further. Religion, especially Christianity, has not only been used to pacify people in their oppression but is the very source of it. Of course, the charge that Christianity has been co-opted, corrupted, and weaponized to justify all kinds of abuse, conquest, and enslavement, is undeniable. At the same time, it's also undeniable that Christianity has been a global force for the kinds of goods now so pervasive, it's hard to even imagine the world without them. Many of the rights and principles we consider to be naturally occurring features of the world only came to be by the influence of Christianity. In the ancient pagan world, violence, rape, infant exposure, and prostitution were rules, not exceptions. Almost immediately, Christianity began to revolutionize pagan ethics, particularly in its view of the poor and the outcast. Roman Emperor Julian famously wrote that when the "impious Galileans support not only their poor, but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us." To a world with no reason to believe in the equality of all people, Christianity taught that "there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all, and is in all." This belief was grounded in the Christian view of the human person, which had no parallel in the ancient world and which created an explosion of literacy, social mobility, and human rights that we now take for granted in the modern world. Christianity's unique contributions in humanizing the modern world are yet another reason to not simply lump all "religious beliefs" into the one blanket category. All religions are simply not the same, not in substance nor impact. Economist Robin Grier, for example, conducted a cross-national survey of 63 formerly European colonies. She found that, across the board, Protestant Christianity, in particular, was "positively and significantly correlated with real GDP growth," and that "the level of Protestantism is significantly related to real per capita income levels." A National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper found that only certain religious beliefs—notably beliefs about heaven, hell, and an afterlife—are linked with economic growth. In other words, it's not just about having a "religion," but about what your religion teaches. Consider Africa. A recent paper from NBER analyzed educational outcomes among religious children. Though Africa is becoming increasingly religious across the board, the paper found that in many countries, "primary school completion for Christians was more than double that of Muslims or Africans adhering to local religions." Christian communities far outpace others when it comes to intergenerational educational growth. Writing in 1843, Karl Marx couldn't have anticipated how thoroughly science would analyze his claims about religion. He'd likely have been among the modern theorists surprised that the world is becoming more religious, not less. As one writer with The Brookings Institution put it, "While weak state structures collapse and aid agencies switch priorities, one group of actors persist against all odds: religious institutions." Of course, this isn't why anyone should believe the truth claims of Christianity. They should be believed if they are true. At the same time, the fact that Christian belief has been an educational, social, and economic ladder for millions suggests these beliefs ought to be taken seriously.

Hope Resource Center, a Christian crisis pregnancy center in Knoxville, Tennessee, offers free pregnancy tests, well-women exams, STD testing, and ultrasounds. If you search for Hope Resource Center on Yelp, a "consumer notice" pops up with a warning: "Crisis Pregnancy Centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite." Last week, Yelp announced that these notices will appear at the top of listings for every crisis pregnancy center—even when they don't apply. If Yelp truly were worried about women's access to "real" medical care during pregnancy, they'd put a consumer notice above every Planned Parenthood listing. A few years ago, Live Action found that fewer than 5% of Planned Parenthood facilities in the country actually offer prenatal care, even though Planned Parenthood openly pretends and advertises otherwise. It's these practices by Planned Parenthood that make crisis pregnancy centers so necessary in the first place. Women—especially those in crisis pregnancies—deserve accurate information and actual care, which they can't find from Planned Parenthood or, for that matter, on Yelp.

The Institute for Family Studies has published a list of legal and policy recommendations to protect teens from the dangers of social media. Among the recommendations are age-verification laws, parental consent requirements, and shutting down social media platforms at night for teens. Other nations have already attempted to restrict young people's access to technology. For example, a couple of years ago, France banned cell phone use in schools up to age 15. Monitoring teens' engagement with social media should be a no-brainer. Anyone still not convinced that something needs to be done need only consider the teens on TikTok exhibiting Tourette-like tics, not to mention the rapid onset gender dysphoria crisis initiated within social media communities. However, the fact that government may now be the last line of defense in providing some boundaries for social media means that the other lines have failed. Most notably, families have failed to protect children from that which threatens them the most. This is a modern-day application of one of the most helpful ideas of Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, who lived at the turn of the 20th century. Kuyper has jokingly been called the Colson Center's "patron saint." Near the end of his life, Chuck Colson described how influential Kuyper's thought was to his own, specifically in understanding how Christians were called to interact with and influence the culture around them. Christians could best influence society, according to Kuyper, through the sphere of our family, the basic building block of society. During his lifetime, Kuyper worked across various spheres of culture, not only writing as a theologian but founding a university, leading a newspaper, and eventually becoming prime minister. Throughout his various careers, Kuyper proposed and championed a concept called "sphere sovereignty." "Spheres," as Kuyper understood them, are the social groupings, or domains, that keep society running. He saw them as interlocking "cogs" that work together. In his message at the inauguration of the Free University in the Netherlands, he explained that each sphere—such as science, art, business, government, and family—has "its own law of life" and "its own head" or leadership. Ultimately, Christ is sovereign over all of life. His most famous quote is, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human life of which Christ, Who is Sovereign of all, does not cry: 'Mine!'" It is Christ who moves "the wheels to turn as they are destined to turn. Not to oppress life nor to bind freedom, but to make possible a free exercise of life for and in each of these spheres, is not this a beckoning ideal for every noble State Sovereign? [or leader]." His idea, that the duty of the head of a state is to facilitate "free exercise of life," reveals that, in many ways, Kuyper lived in a time period similar to ours—a time when people were calling for revolution. Kuyper was so uncomfortable with this lawless approach that he called his political party the "Anti-Revolutionary Party." According to the author Michael Wagenman, Kuyper believed, "Human beings are called to responsible human agency in which 'the course of our historic development may be altered only through gradual change in a lawful way.' But this is accomplished through responsible reforms rather than outright revolution that seeks to usher in a manufactured utopia." If the language of ushering in a "manufactured utopia" doesn't sound familiar, just search for "antiracist" and "revolution" on Twitter. The crisis in the state, Kuyper believed, revealed a crisis of family. Kuyper saw family leadership as "responsible for the good order in the family," rather than the "head of the state." Government should only step in if parents did not do their job. He insisted that "the central government may only take on and carry out what is not (and for so long as it is not) properly taken care of in the smaller spheres of life." If government control of the good order of the family has to occur, it should be only temporary. Thus, the government can incentivize good family order, such as tax deductions for college saving plans, but a secular government controlling family life can get weird fast, such as removing a child seeking a transgender identity from a Christian family's home. It's one of the reasons Christians should recognize and champion parental rights. Coming back to the topic of teens and social media, we can say that restricting their access to social media is a good idea. But this is the job of the family, not the government. When families fare well, society fares well. That's those cogs of spheres working together well. A society is only as virtuous as its families. This month, if the Colson Center has helped you understand the sphere of the family better—if it's helped your thinking to be big enough for this world and for living in your place in it, would you consider giving a gift of any amount? Go to colsoncenter.org/september

Recently The New Yorker profiled a nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor. The piece described, in admirable terms, the Catholic nuns' reputation for treating the elderly with dignity and compassion, as well as the Little Sisters' founder, a French nun known for personally taking in the homeless. Such behavior is not strange for followers of Jesus. What is strange is The New Yorker's about-face. Not long ago, the magazine covered the Little Sisters for a very different reason. Writing about the nuns' lawsuit against the federal government's Obamacare mandate, which would have forced them to pay for contraception and abortion, The New Yorker called the nuns "irrationally passionate." There was not a word about the Little Sisters' love for the elderly or their courageous founder. Instead, reporters suggested they didn't care about women. In a secular society, Christ followers will sometimes be loved and sometimes subjected to baseless accusations. That's OK. We were told this would happen. Our job is to keep loving our neighbors while never compromising our convictions.

Teen mental health has never been this bad. As New York Times journalists Michael Barbaro and Matt Richtel discussed last week on The Daily podcast, we're facing an unprecedented crisis in teen mental health. Mere decades ago, the major threats to the health and well-being of young people in the West were nearly all external, such as illness, car accidents, risky sexual behavior, alcohol, or smoking. Today, the greatest threats to the health and well-being of young people are internal. As Richtel reported, in 2019, 13% of all adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60% increase from 2007. Teen suicide rates, which had been stable for nearly a decade prior to 2007, "leapt nearly 60% by 2018." In 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced, "Mental health disorders have surpassed physical conditions as the most common reasons children have impairments and limitations." The factors behind this tsunami of depression, anxiety, and self-harm are many, one of which is the internet. In 2017, Dr. Jean Twenge of San Diego State University noted that the spike in adolescent mental health problems reached a crescendo in 2012. That year, the percentage of Americans who owned smartphones surpassed 50%. Exposing developing brains to an overwhelming amount of social information, she argued, was contributing to a massive, unprecedented uptick in mental health issues. On one hand, social media has brought the near constant experience of social comparison to the developing minds of 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds. On the other hand, the sheer amount of panicked, hyperbolized, and truly frightening headlines a student must navigate is unprecedented in human history. We might forgive students who are convinced the world is completely out of control. Richtel and Barbaro also noted other factors in the podcast. For example, the average age for the onset of puberty has become earlier and earlier since the 1980s, especially for girls. Experts are unsure as to exactly why this is the case, but there are plenty of correlations having to do with early exposure to sexually explicit material, fatherlessness, and family breakdown. Whatever the cause, the impact is real. In the face of this exploding mental health crisis among young people, the demand for care is outpacing the number of trained counselors and psychologists. Pediatricians and emergency rooms have become first responders. As Richtel observed, "Every night, in emergency rooms across the country, there are at least 1,000 young people spending the night waiting in a room to get to the next level of care where they can be helped." More and more frequently, medication is seen as the only answer. While an important tool, Ritchie notes why that is far from adequate. "We are prescribing medications in the absence of dealing with… fundamental structural changes that we have not addressed as a society." In every generation, followers of Christ have seen protecting and caring for vulnerable children as a crucial part of their calling. Today, children are vulnerable to radically changing social conditions, harmful ideas about their minds and bodies, the loss of institutions crucial to their health and well-being, and a barrage of bad news. The first step in fulfilling our calling is, in the words of my friend Dr. Matthew Sleeth, to Hope Always. Children need the truth about life and the world, about themselves and God, and we can give it to them. Of course, parents must limit and help guide children in their digital interactions, as nearly all experts recognize. But this is not merely a crisis of media: It's a crisis of meaninglessness. That's one reason a Harvard psychologist writing in Scientific American argued that "Psychiatry needs to get right with God." To that end, we've developed a new Colson Center Educators course taught by Dr. Matthew Sleeth to equip parents, pastors, and educators, with the tools to meet the current crisis. Also, tonight, is the latest in our Lighthouse Voices series. "Despair, Mental Health, and the Crisis of Meaning: How Christians Can Speak Life to a Lost Culture" is a live event featuring Dr. Ryan Burkhart of Colorado Christian University. To register for the live event in Holland, Michigan, or the livestream, visit Colsoncenter.org. Christians have an obligation to care. When we see the brokenness of the world around us, we are to imitate the work of Christ. In His name, we can be a force for good in our lifetimes, and, God willing, reverse the tide.

Fertility is a gift, not a problem. According to an NPR report, more women are seeking sterilization. For example, at Bozeman Health Deaconess Hospital in Montana, more women in their twenties and thirties are asking not for their tubes to be tied—a reversible procedure—but to be removed, a permanent procedure. This is another sign that women's fertility has been largely pathologized, treated as a bug rather than a feature of being a woman. It's as if a woman's body is presumed better when more like a man's—without the ability to bear children... somehow in the name of "women's rights." But studies cited in the article suggest these women may regret their decision. Dr. Kavita Arora, the chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Committee on Ethics, described a patient: "She wanted to have autonomous control over her body, and this was her way of ensuring she was the person who got to make the decisions." Rather than practice sexual self-restraint, the patient's desire for "control" led her to deny the potential of motherhood.

On this Labor Day, here are some important ideas from Chuck Colson on the importance of work. Americans are rethinking work, at least in the sense of employment. While there are many factors behind what has been called "The Great Resignation," "The Great Quit," and "The Great Reshuffle," we shouldn't underestimate the connection between how people see work and our culture-wide crisis of meaninglessness. Christian ethicist Oliver O'Donovan has written: "In work we make a difference to the world, not merely the kind of difference that any event must make … but a purposeful difference. In work we not only affect things; we effect things…. To work well is to bring intelligence and love to bear upon the grain of our worldly material, whether that is inert stuff, living beings or abstract relations of things." In other words, our work, whether physical labor or intellectual pursuits, matters. Here is a recording of Chuck Colson, from many years ago, explaining a Christian vision of human work. "In American society, most of us spend more of our waking hours at our jobs than in any other activity. While that may or may not be a positive commentary on our culture, it's a fact that's got to be considered by churches and ministries seeking to equip Christians to live faithfully. Yet, in our work cultures today, most of us have been trained to separate our faith lives from our work lives. The chasm between the two worlds disturbs us, signaling that something is wrong. And this comes at a time when the single most common demographic among people in the church is work, and at a time when the culture of that workplace is most foreign to our faith. For years we've lived with the belief that the real work of God's kingdom was done by missionaries and members of the clergy. Others work to make money to support the 'real work.' Yet, Scripture insists that our work is good. The ancient Greeks thought of work as a curse; Christianity gave meaning to work. Work, for the Christian, is a calling. After all, Jesus grew up with the callused hands of a carpenter, and the very fact that He worked gives dignity to our work. The Reformation, as I wrote with Jack Eckerd in Why America Doesn't Work, 'struck at society's dualistic view of work. Just as they saw the church comprised of all the people of God, not just the clergy, so the Reformers saw all work—sacred and secular, intellectual and manual—as a way of serving God.' Work embraced as a calling expresses the glory of God, and it's part of—very literally—following Jesus. Through our work God provides for us and for our families, contributes to the common good, and also gives us a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. He has given us work as the way to fulfill His mandate to us as humans—to take dominion over the world he has created. As we work, we extend God's reign and influence as his agents or stewards. And the way that we take that dominion, confronting the challenges and difficulties that "go with the job," is, in itself, our witness to the reality of God and our faith in Christ. Excellence in our calling, which the Bible calls for, makes the most powerful witness for us in the workplace. Sure, we could wait for those who are seekers and skeptics to come into our church buildings, but the vast majority never will. We could wait for them to seek out a pastor, but most don't know any. Now more than ever the "indigenous believers," those Christians already in the mission fields of accounting, sales, software, construction, and other honorable vocations, need to be equipped to work with integrity and thus share their faith in actions as well as words." That was Chuck Colson. I hope that this Labor Day can be a sabbath from your work today.

John and Maria focus in on the factors contributing to the remarkable rise in mental health issues for young people, including the crisis of authority that results from the barrage of information online. Afterwards, they discuss how the Church has always led in innovative education and must continue to do so. They end on a recent win and two losses for religious liberty in the lower courts.

It's been a year since the U.S. military's disastrous pullout from Afghanistan left allies, colleagues, and up to 1,000 American citizens there to fend for themselves. Though the new Taliban government promised to respect human rights, especially the rights of women, it's turned out as many expected. Universities and primary schools are open to women, but girls over age 11 are locked out of secondary schools, women are only permitted to work in education and health, must keep their faces covered, and must be accompanied by a male guardian for long-distance travel. And, swift and cruel punishments for breaking these rules also have returned. Though the Taliban deny it, a division is growing between a political wing that wants better relations with the outside world (and therefore wants to relax restrictions on women) and clerics in Kandahar who, like the Ayatollahs in Iran, dictate policy on the ground. We often hear that all worldviews are equal, all religions the same, and we shouldn't impose our values on anyone else. The truth is that our ideas about the world and human beings have real consequences and real victims.

Three days before the first day of school in Columbus, Ohio, the teachers' union went on strike, leaving 47,000 students with nowhere to go. School board officials promised that schooling would move forward "online," but on what was supposed to be the first day, the website suffered hours-long outages. It was chaos. Even as this teachers' strike was brewing, a new school, in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Columbus, was preparing to open its doors for the first time. Westside Christian School will serve kindergarteners through second graders this year, using Sunday school classrooms and the gym inside a local Baptist church. Thanks to funding from donors and Ohio's school voucher program, which allows kids who live in failing school districts to use their tax dollars for private schooling, students can attend Westside Christian School without paying tuition. This is just one example of the kind of creativity that has animated Christians all over the country for decades now, with the goal of offering different and better educational options for families. While some consider the idea that Christians are involved in education, especially public education, controversial, it didn't use to be. In a filmed conversation a few years ago, I asked Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi, a philosopher who has studied the historic impact of Christianity on the world, why Christians should engage in educational work, especially in a pluralist society like ours. His answer was that Christianity is education. The Christian account of reality, from creation in Genesis to the New Creation in Revelation, is the true story of the world. The biblical mandate to tell that story to everyone, rich or poor or clergy or not, is the foundation of the entire Western world's concept of universal schooling. For example, a chief complaint of the Reformers was that Rome kept a tight rein on education and learning, most notably in limiting Bible translations to Latin. The Reformers' view that everyone should hear God's Word led to Bibles in a common language and widespread education for those previously left out. The ability for everyone to read God's Word for him- or herself led to the dramatic expansion of literacy and learning, not to mention commerce. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church was also a great champion of education, founding universities and parochial schools everywhere the Church expanded. That's because of the fundamental view that all Christians share: that God has revealed Himself and wants to be known. Therefore, learning is a high calling of being human. A few hundred years after the Reformation, the American founders established public education as the right and duty of every citizen. Thomas Jefferson even suggested that an uneducated citizenry would neither flourish nor long be able to self-govern. Unfortunately, public education was isolated from religious faith long ago and therefore untethered from its moral foundation. Today, most people, including Christians, think of education as a secular arena. Religion, we're told, should be kept personal, private, and above all, outside the classroom. This bad idea has had real consequences. Far from neutral on issues of religion and morality, public schools instead push dangerous religious and political ideologies, like critical race theory, and harmful, irrational ideas about sex and gender. Administrative costs have ballooned while teachers strike over salary demands. Many American schools aren't even succeeding in the basics. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education found that almost 20% of American high school graduates could not read. In many communities, that number is far higher. Lockdowns and Zoom classrooms made parents more aware of these things, and so now in many communities, public school enrollment is in a free fall. In contrast, private, Christian school enrollment has gone up, and a record number of households are homeschooling. This is a moment for Christians to love our neighbors through education, like our forebears did. We do this by pressing public schools to do better and by providing as many other options as possible, and by making those options financially and otherwise feasible. We should also advocate for new school choice policies, like the one just implemented in Arizona which allows parents to use their own tax money for the schooling that's best for their kids. There's a lot that we can do, and when we do it, we give good gifts to the world. While grown-ups stalk picket lines, there are real kids who need a real education right now. The Church has always been more than up to the task.

Recently, in a speech at a Georgia church, rising progressive star Stacey Abrams, after noting that her parents had been pastors, declared, "I was trained to read and understand the Bible, and I will tell you this, there is nothing about the decision to eliminate access to abortion care that is grounded in anything other than cruelty and meanness." However, the way the Bible speaks of preborn children eliminates abortion as a moral option. In Psalm 139, the psalmist declares, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." The Prophet Jeremiah was told by God, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." And in one of the most beautiful moments in Holy Scripture, John the Baptist, still in Elizabeth's womb, leapt when in the presence of Jesus, still in Mary's womb. Test everything, the Scripture says. Especially those who claim to speak for God.

Recently, at The Celebration of America's Promise to Parents event, hosted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, Abigail Martinez, a grieving mother, shared a story that every single parent, pastor, and lawmaker in America needs to hear. Abigail's daughter Yaeli began to struggle with depression when she was in the 8th grade. Without communication with her mother, Yaeli was quickly funneled by personnel at her school towards the LGBTQ group, and then to an outside psychologist. Soon, Yaeli was being led by these adults towards a "social transition," going by the name "Andrew" and increasingly presenting as a boy. All the while, she was urged to keep the details hidden from her family. Once she caught wind, Abigail protested both the secrecy and the strategy of this counseling, urging the counselors to instead look into underlying issues of Yaeli's mental health. Instead, she was told that by refusing to call her daughter by her new name and pronouns, she was the problem. If anything happened to Yaeli, the school said, it would be Abigail's fault. From that moment on, the system boxed her out at every turn. When Yaeli was 16, the school psychologist urged the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services to intervene, arguing that because her mom was "unsupportive" of her social transition, Yaeli would be better off living elsewhere. Yaeli was moved to a group home, where she started taking cross-sex hormones. Abigail was only allowed to see her daughter for one hour each week, supervised, and strictly warned not to bring up anything relating to her daughter's transition, including their Christian faith. If she did, her visitation rights would be revoked. "If we keep [Yaeli] out of your home," Abigail remembered being told, "she [will] have more chance to survive. She's not going to try to commit suicide." Instead, all the while, Yaeli's mental health continued to decline. The testosterone caused her constant pain, for which a doctor prescribed CBD oil. "She was taking the [cross-sex] hormones; she was not happy," her mother said. "She changed her name, [but] was not happy, she adopted a dog because that was going to make her happy. None of it, everything that they've done, didn't work." At age 19, having moved out of the group home and pursued her new identity for about three years, Yaeli took her own life. As Abigail later told The Daily Signal, "I don't want any parent to go through this, because this pain never goes away. … You breathe and you can feel the pain." It's hard to imagine a tragedy like this could happen. It's hard to believe that a parent could lose custody to the state, simply for holding to a child's biological sex. What's not hard to imagine is that Yaeli Martinez will not be the last victim of these bad ideas, indoctrinated by state power. Local governments like Los Angeles County aggressively promote the doctrine of "gender-affirming care," even if it means tearing a family apart. On a state level, one California senator has proposed a bill empowering courts to remove children, not just from California residents, but from anyone who travels to the state and whose children claim their parents do not support them in their gender identity or sexual orientation choices. A similar case recently unfolded in Ohio, where a county prosecutor charged a couple with "abuse and neglect" for seeking counseling instead of transition for their daughter. And in Michigan, it is very likely that a ballot initiative will be taken to the voters this November utilizing the language of "reproductive freedom" to usurp parental rights in similar ways. Through these laws, the state perpetuates grave evil. In the case of Yaeli Martinez, the silence of her church was even more tragic. When at the state-assigned group home, Yaeli repeatedly asked her mother when a pastor or youth leader might come visit. She had felt close to these leaders and was eager to see them. "[They] know I'm here, right?" Abigail remembered her daughter asking. As Abigail said, "I asked them. I gave them the address." But they never visited. Not Abigail. Not Yaeli. No public support from the pulpit. No private support either. Abigail Martinez has walked this path all alone. In this, Abigail was the victim of a church culture designed around making people feel good and dodging difficult issues. Shame on them. Yaeli Martinez will not be the last teenager in crisis. That's why I'm grateful for churches that, with truth and grace, do show up for parents in need. Nobody wants this culture war over sex and gender, but we didn't choose this moment. To oppose state-sponsored trans ideology in law and in school is a necessary act of love. No child should be harmed by state-sponsored lies. No parent should go through what Abigail Martinez went through. And absolutely no parent should go through what Abigail Martinez went through alone.

Earlier this month, British-Indian author Salman Rushdie was brutally attacked at an event in upstate New York. In 1989, Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses so enraged Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini that he issued a global kill-order, or fatwa, on the author, his editors, and publishers. Though Khomeini died later that year, fatwas cannot be revoked posthumously. So, Rushdie went into hiding, appearing later only under heavy security. Eventually, many in the West simply forgot about it. Shia extremists did not. This tell us something about how differently the secular West and radical Islam sees the world, and how short our cultural memory is compared with theirs. And, at stake is more than a contest of memory. In the Western world, we've been secularized to think of religion as a privatized matter of preference. We therefore underestimate the power that religious convictions wield, including the power that our secular religious convictions hold over our own hearts, minds, and culture. All of which is an opportunity for Christians to show and live a better way, one that sees God, history, people, and the world so differently.

In 2016, Canada legalized euthanasia through the euphemistically titled Medical Aid in Dying (or MAiD). Since passing, the number of Canadians who either "enthusiastically" or "cautiously" support the practice has risen slightly from 75% to 80%. The response from communities representing those with disabilities, however, has remained consistently opposed. Their fears, that Canada's end-of-life policies would prove to be only the cliff edge of a moral abyss, have proven to be largely accurate. As Maria Cheng of the Associated Press has reported, Canada "arguably has the most permissive euthanasia rules [in the world.]" Just last year, over 10,000 lives were legally taken, an increase of a third from the year before. Patients can request aid in dying without informing family members and for any reason, including, beginning in 2023, mental health issues and not just physical suffering. Doctors, as well as nurse practitioners, can raise the topic of euthanasia with any patient and are not required to first exhaust all other treatment options. Though the government keeps track of yearly deaths by euthanasia, it does not have a commission to review troubling cases, a practice used by other permissive nations like Belgium and the Netherlands. Next year, euthanasia will likely be extended to so-called "mature" minors. At a time when so many efforts are being made toward suicide prevention among teenagers, they will be taught that death is an acceptable way out of mental anguish. Horrific. The deadly cocktail of adverse incentives, little accountability, and ineffective "safeguards" have led to a context in which, as AP's Cheng wrote, "Some disabled Canadians have decided to be killed in the face of mounting bills. .… Other disabled people say the easy availability of euthanasia has led to unsettling and sometimes frightening discussions." The worst impact of this slope Canada is sliding down could be a perversion of the word "care." For example, one Canadian armed forces veteran was outraged after a healthcare worker raised the possibility of assisted death as a "treatment" option for his PTSD. Alan Nichols was a 61-year-old man who was hospitalized in 2019 over fears he might be suicidal. "Within a month," Cheng described, "Nichols submitted a request to be euthanized and he was killed, despite concerns raised by his family and a nurse practitioner." The only physical health condition listed on Nichol's form of consent was hearing loss. According to his brother Gary, "Alan was basically put to death." Stories like these are shocking, but we can't say we were not warned by nearly every disability group in Canada, observers from the UN, and even the American Medical Association. When it comes to euthanasia and doctor-assisted death, abuses and loopholes are not anomalies. They are inevitabilities of a system that operates from a cheapened view of human value and a redefined understanding of healthcare. The AMA's official opinion makes clear, "Euthanasia is fundamentally incompatible with the physician's role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks." Particularly in a single-payer health care system like Canada's, the decision of who lives and who dies will inevitably be influenced by crass factors such as money, access to medical resources, and arbitrary decisions about what constitutes "quality of life." Against such cultural headwinds, mere "consent" is not enough. In fact, whenever and wherever it is legalized, the so-called "right" to die soon becomes a perceived "duty to die." Patients consistently report making decisions about not wanting to be "a burden" on friends or family, or because they are convinced, as law and disability professor Theresia Degener described, "a life with disability is automatically less worth living and that in some cases, death is preferable." Euthanasia is at odds with any civilized vision of human value. As Alan Nichols' sister-in-law said, "Somebody needs to take responsibility so that it never happens to another family. I am terrified of my husband or another relative being put in the hospital and somehow getting these (euthanasia) forms in their hand." Let's pray the rest of the world learns from Canada's terrible example and in nation after nation the lid of this Pandora's box will be slammed shut.

Last week President Biden announced a plan to cancel student debt, about $330 billion worth. The cost to taxpayers could be as high as half a trillion dollars. My friend Dan Darling joked on Twitter that youth pastors just received the gift of a great sermon illustration, but some have actually defended the policy (which even former Obama advisors have criticized) by pointing to Jesus words in the Lord's Prayer: "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…" For example, an editorial in TIME argues that when Christ prayed these words in the Garden, He was referring to the Old Testament "Year of Jubilee," in which debts were canceled every 50 years. So, mass debt forgiveness, conclude the authors, comes from Moses not Marx. OK, I'm lost. Is it now suddenly OK to impose Old Testament laws on America? Which ones? All of them? It's so strange after hearing over and over that when it comes to things such as sexual morality, the Bible is not clear; but when it comes to debt policy, it is... In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus was not talking about economic debts. Both His words and the Year of Jubilee in Israel point to the forgiveness of a debt far greater than college loans: our sin. That debt was paid in full by His blood, not by moving tax dollars around.

A new "manifestation trend" called "The Whisper Method" has gone viral on TikTok. If the word salad in that sentence is new to you, "manifestation" is the practice of focused, intense thinking about what you want until you get it. The practice is grounded in New Age philosophy and seems to re-emerge every few years in some new form. The "Whisper Method" is the latest manifestation of manifestation, and TikTok is where it is all happening. The "Whisper Method" involves thinking of what you really want and identifying who can give it to you. Then, you are to imagine whispering instructions into that person's ear, such as, "You're going to give me that promotion." Or, "You're going to fall in love with me." If you really believe (and whisper), then eventually you shall receive. We've seen this kind of thing before. Years ago, Oprah popularized "The Secret," a philosophy that if people put "positive thoughts and vibes"' into the universe, they'd get positive results back. In other words, if we send out energy claiming a bigger bank account, a smaller waist, or a better parking spot during Christmas, we'll get those things. From a motivation standpoint, it's easy to understand how something like The Secret or The Whisper Method gains traction. It involves little work with big rewards. Beneath the irrationality and geographic specificity (these strategies aren't very popular in war-torn areas or regions inflicted by famine), there is a truth. The human imagination is incredibly powerful. In a 2006 episode of Oprah, she described "The Secret" this way: "What you focus on gets bigger." Short of the weird metaphysical claims to be able to "manifest" new objective realities, Oprah was not entirely off base. God created humans with creative ability. We cannot create out of nothing, or ex nihilo, like God did, but humans are unique among creation in our ability to make something out of the world around us. Thus, humans invent and build and improve and innovate. And, in Psalm 37, we are told that if we "delight" ourselves "in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our heart," though that has more to do with God first giving us rightly ordered desires once He is our ultimate delight. Various studies have demonstrated that athletes who routinely imagine themselves performing well often develop a measurable competitive edge. However, even the most imaginative and sincere visualization techniques cannot magically bend reality. Thus, researchers believe that visualizing strong athletic performance is a way of practicing the sport. Not to mention, that any athletic improvements served by visualizations are in addition to actually physically practicing the sport. The Whisper Method isn't about training for a good performance or searching our hearts and motives to make sure they align with the will of God. The Whisper Method is about the illusion of control. It assumes that internal focus can determine external realities. This desire for control is nothing new, nor has The Whisper Method shifted from changing our own actions in place of manipulating the actions of others. In that way, The Whisper Method reflects the cultural ethos that other people are primarily objects to be used in service to our own ends. We didn't make the world, and we're not in charge of it. God did, and He is. We're not to worry ourselves over controlling it but instead are to "cast all our anxieties on Him." If we are going to "whisper," it should be in prayer to the God who made us and loves us. In honest prayer, our hearts are taught what they truly desire. In prayer, we place those desires at the feet of our Heavenly Father, ask Him to conform them and us to His will, trusting that everything He does will be for our good. All of which makes prayer the opposite of The Whisper Method, which only pretends that we can control the world and assumes that our strategies for controlling it are fully informed and perfectly wise, as if we have the faintest idea of what's really best for us. We don't. In his book on prayer, Pastor Tim Keller wrote that "God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything He knew." Thank goodness we don't live in a world where our wishing, or our "whispering," makes it so.

A new law in a northern state of India imposes up to 10 years in jail time for so-called "forced," or "mass" conversions … meaning more than one person at a time. It also casts suspicion on those influenced by Christian social services like health, education, and charity, which often appeal to those trapped in Hindu's marginalized lower castes. India's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but laws like this reflect how rapidly the ruling party's push for Hindu Nationalism has changed things for Christians in that country. But efforts to restrict the gospel rarely work. As one local bishop put it... Anybody who converts to Christianity is doing so from a strong unflinching personal following of Jesus Christ and very much as a personal conscious decision of divine attraction to Jesus Christ, God's love, compassion, forgiveness, justice and truth. His death we celebrate in love, His Resurrection from the dead we profess with living faith, His coming in glory we await with unwavering hope. This personal experience makes them embrace Christianity. Amen. That's why faith in Christ has survived so many attempts to stamp it out.

The Dobbs decision is the most significant Supreme Court decision of our lifetime, and it's already been cited in another legal case. Recently, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall requested that a federal district court remove an injunction against a ban on medical intervention for youth seeking a transgender identity. He wrote: "But no one—adult or child—has a right to transitioning treatments that is deeply rooted in our Nation's history and tradition." His words are based on language from Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion in the recent Dobbs case. Alito argued that abortion cannot be found in the Constitution, nor has it ever been "deeply rooted" in the history and traditions of the American people. Roe v. Wade, which was overturned by the Dobbs decision, was part of a series of Supreme Court decisions that "discovered" new constitutional rights based on little more than the whims of the sitting Justices. Commonly, in the use of the "substantive due process doctrine," earlier Supreme Courts invoked a so-called "right to privacy," as they did in Roe v. Wade. While there's little more American than the right to be left alone, the Court misconstrued this reasonable desire for privacy to mean the "right" to kill children in the womb. "Substantive due process" is supposedly based on the 14th Amendment's due process clause. Proponents of the doctrine contend that, even if a right isn't explicitly recognized in the Constitution, the rights that are explicit cast "penumbras"—or shadows—which suggest the existence of other, unenumerated rights that the Supreme Court should protect. If this sounds like a stretch, that's because it is, not least because the due process clause is about just that—lawful process, not substantive rights. The notion of "substantive due process" is often a pretext for judges to affirm current social norms with little more than passing reference to the Bill of Rights. So, what was never historically a right could be deemed one simply by finding a way to rationalize it with reference to some other right in the Constitution. Instead of rights finding root in the constitutional text or in who we always are as human beings, they become based on shifting cultural norms, as easily created as denied. As Justice Thomas pointed out in his concurrent opinion in the Dobbs decision, substantive due process is "legal fiction." Thus, he questioned the Court's power to "divine new rights." While substantive due process has been used to cause harm, it's also been used to support good decisions, for example the ruling on interracial marriage in the case of Loving v. Virginia. However, the Court also based Loving v. Virginia on another part of the 14th Amendment, the equal protection clause, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, among other things. In other words, the victory for interracial marriage was a recognition of reality, that all human beings, of whatever race or ethnicity, are fundamentally equal and therefore should not be treated differently. The call for a right to gender transition, however, is a rejection of reality, arguing that maleness and femaleness are illusory or ancillary to who and what we are. In the current application of the "deeply rooted" test in Alabama, parents demanded a right to experimental medical treatments for their children seeking a transgender identity. They argued that "enduring American tradition" makes them, and not the state of Alabama, primarily responsible for "nurturing and caring for their children." In that sense, they are right. Parents rank higher than the state when it comes to childcare, but what these parents are demanding is the opposite of nurturing and caring. And in too many cases, government officials are usurping parental rights in promoting gender transitions to children, against their parent's wishes. American tradition recognizes a right of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children and even to make medical decisions for them, but it has never recognized a right of parents to cause their kids harm by radically altering their bodies in ways that render them permanently sterile and perpetually dependent on medical interventions. This is something radically new, not deeply rooted in American tradition and history, at best social experimentation. We can expect more cases in which the "deeply rooted" language of Dobbs is cited. Lower courts, taking the Supreme Court's cue, should be reluctant to strike down democratically enacted laws based on newly minted theories of unenumerated rights. In the meantime, Christians must continue to point to the reality of human nature, including the good of our bodies as male and female, and most of all, to the Source of our actual rights: our Creator.

In response to a recent op-ed at Christianity Today, Maria and John insist that Christians can and should be involved in the public square, particularly in the schools. One clear reason is the proposed regulations reinterpreting Title IX. These regulations would remove parental rights from parents whose kids are drawn to radical gender ideology, making the schools conduits to transgender treatments. Maria and John then move to a discussion of the "why" behind a new stat showing that women are leaving the Church.

Next month, the Colson Center is offering a short course entitled "The Essential Church: Why Christians (and the World) Still Need the Church." It's a timely message, especially given a recent shift in Church demographics. Christianity Today reported that younger women are, for the first time, less likely to go to church than men... not because more men are now attending church, but because more women are deconstructing their faith, and more likely to identify as "nones." Battered by church controversies and scandals, and shaped by cultural messages, women are increasingly heading for the exit. In doing so, they are rejecting a faith that, in the words of my colleague Glenn Sunshine, has done "more to improve the status of women than any other historical force." The Church is meant to enable and empower men and women to live as image bearers, according to God's design. Simply put, the Church is essential, and that's the topic of our upcoming short course, hosted by Dr. Tim Padgett and featuring Peter Leithart, Collin Hansen, and Glenn Sunshine. Christians need to know why. Go to colsoncenter.org/August to learn more.

Frequent readers and listeners of Breakpoint know about Max. The grandson of Chuck Colson and subject of a book called Dancing With Max, authored by Emily Colson (Chuck's daughter and Colson Center board member), Max is a remarkable young man who has autism. The last few years have been difficult for Emily and Max, especially since the COVID lockdowns disrupted their routines and canceled their helpers. The last few years were particularly hard on full-time caretakers. And yet, in the middle of the challenges and disruptions of the last few years, God gave Max a ministry of encouraging and blessing others, a ministry now reaching people whose lives have been disrupted by war. Here's how Emily Colson described this remarkable story in a recent email: We didn't have a plan: We had a prayer. "How can we be a blessing to others?" More than two years later, God continues to answer that prayer beyond what we could ask or imagine, bringing hope around the world. Even into a war zone. It was COVID shutdown 2020 when Max began to hand-paint colorful heart yard signs and deliver them around our community. Max wasn't an artist: Autism had made fine motor a lifelong challenge. God often uses the most unlikely individuals to accomplish His purposes so that the story is unmistakably His. Our dining room became a workspace with plastic wrap stretched across the table and paint dripping into places that won't be found for another decade. Our home began to look as if we'd invited Jackson Pollock to dinner. It was there, in the ache and loss and isolation of shutdown, that Max would paint his joy-filled hearts. Max has given away more than 250 heart yard signs now, and he is still painting. The hearts have made it onto note cards, 36,000 cards in circulation so far, with all proceeds going to charity. His hearts grace the front of shirts, each one packaged with a message of God's love and the value of every life. With every shirt purchased a duplicate is given to a life-affirming charity. And a "heart exhibit" is traveling to different gallery locations, telling the story of what only God can do. Of how He can multiply blessings. As incredible as all of that is, there's now another chapter to this story, which began when Emily's friend April sent her a message. She'd been watching the war break out in Ukraine on live television. She prayed, and God pressed an idea into her heart like a hot wax seal: Send Max's hearts to Ukraine. Our church leapt at the idea. Our printer, Spectrum Designs, a company employing the most amazing team of individuals with autism, jumped just as quickly, printing the first 1,000 shirts. A team of highly caffeinated volunteers began folding and packaging each shirt with a message of God's love and hope—all translated into Ukrainian. But…where would we send these? Who would receive and distribute these shirts in Ukraine? That answer began 50 years ago, in the brokenness of Watergate. My dad, Chuck Colson, served as Special Counsel to President Nixon... When my dad was released from prison he founded Prison Fellowship ministries, which became the largest prison ministry in the world, reaching millions of people in the darkest places around the globe with the hope and love of Jesus Christ. Even reaching Ukraine. The ministry he founded 50 years ago through the brokenness of Watergate would carry his grandson's hearts, born of the brokenness of COVID, to bring hope to those in a war zone on the other side of the world. James Ackerman, president of Prison Fellowship USA, traveled to Romania... and (with) a team of ministry leaders and volunteers carried the shirts and other supplies deep into Ukraine, delivering them to children of prisoners, and to people in a Ukrainian refugee center. Emily received a photo of one little boy who was holding Max's picture, and wearing a shirt printed with Max's hearts and the words, "Beloved by God." Both of his parents were killed in the war. As Emily said, When I saw this little boy's face, I cried for days... God cares. He aches for the brokenness of this world. He is close to this little boy, just as He is close to Max. God was even leaning over Max's shoulder as he began to paint, knowing He would carry these hearts—and His hope—around the world. You can learn how to join Max and Emily in their mission at www.heartbymax.com.

According to Ian Lovett in The Wall Street Journal, "Dozens of priests from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the country's largest denomination, have been kidnapped or killed since the (Russian) invasion began." Some have been tortured, accused of stirring up anti-Russian sentiment. Those allowed to return to their congregations bear scars and missing teeth. Some never return at all. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church's split from Russian Orthodoxy in 2019 provides the political motivation for Russia to target its members. The Russian church, under Patriarch Kirill, has supported the war, arguing that it has "metaphysical significance." He may be right, though not in the way he believes. By targeting Ukrainian believers, Russia adds to the ranks of those who suffer, not just for Ukraine, but for Christ. Father Ioann Burdin, a Russian Orthodox priest who has publicly opposed the invasion, wrote in February, "Russian soldiers are killing their brothers and sisters in Christ…. We can't shamefully cover our eyes and call… evil good."

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Department of Education announced new regulations regarding Title IX, which is designed to ensure and protect access for women and girls in education. These new rules are 700 pages long and are being trumpeted by organizations such as the National Education Association as a victory for victims of sexual harassment and clarification of discrimination based on sex. However, what is meant by "sex" will be a disaster for women. The massive document is infected with the presumptions of transgender ideology, specifically that "sex" includes "gender identity," ignoring the biological reality of sex. Not only will these rules limit our daughters' opportunities to participate in sports and lead to dangerous violations of their privacy, but they will erase parental rights and free speech in favor of state-centered authority. There is a limited time to speak into these regulations before they are instituted. In 1972, Title IX was enacted to provide equal access to education and athletics for girls and women. Recent reinterpretations of sex threaten the good goals of Title IX by turning reality on its head. In a recent meeting of ministry leaders, Vernadette Broyles, general counsel and president of the non-profit law firm, Child & Parental Rights Campaign, explained three major implications of this regulation. The first concern has to do with the removal of parental rights. Minors who decide to transition at school will be supported by the schools and led into the process of "social transition," including using preferred pronouns, without requiring the consent of parents. It's Broyles' belief that this will "weaponize" government agencies like Child Protective Services and channel these children to "gender-affirming" counselors and clinics, eliminating the influence of parents in the process. This is already happening in some states, such as California. A second and primary concern is the remarkable damage that will be done to children's bodies and emotions by encouraging and furthering social experimentation. For example, in July, the FDA announced that puberty blockers, which activists claim are harmless, can cause brain swelling and vision loss. Their long-term cognitive effects are still being studied. We also know that cross-sex hormones cause permanent sterilization. And of course, that doesn't even get into what happens when things go "right" with the devastating permanent injuries caused by so-called "gender-affirmation" or "sex-reassignment" surgeries. Finally, Broyles spoke of the scandal intrinsic to girls having no private spaces in locker rooms or on school trips, and the heartbreaking irony of women and girls' losing place to male athletes, all under the banner of Title IX. Even if your state has already acted, as some have, to protect parental rights and girls' opportunities in sports, these rules will challenge state legislation at the federal level. So, what can be done? Every American has the opportunity to submit comments on these new rules before September 12. Through bureaucracy, the Biden administration has skirted the legislative process and accountability to elected representatives as it did with the mandate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regarding insurance supporting "transgender medicine." When contacting Congressional Representatives and Senators about legislation, it is acceptable to use a copied script. In this situation, however, comments must be submitted through the Federal Register, the online journal that publishes the federal government's rules and regulations. Rather than a Senate staffer tallying positions for or against a bill, staffers associated with the Register look for unique comments. If thousands of people flood the Register with the same script, that repeated comment would be counted as only one. So, please comment, in your own voice, laying out your specific concerns with these regulations. The Child & Parental Rights Campaign has provided multiple prompts—not scripts—to assist you in registering a comment. There are "comment starter letters" for parents, educators, and community religious leaders. In your comment, tell a unique story or specify your concerns for your daughter, son, grandchild, or school. If you have a psychological or medical background, refer to that expertise in explaining your perspective. If you have a law degree, use your legal training to explain the issues with these regulations. Express your concerns, not only for parental rights and potential harm to children, but also implications this will have for freedom of religion and speech, especially for teachers. Please, flood the Federal Register with unique comments before September 12. Visit the Child & Parental Rights Campaign website for resources, links, and prompts. The future of our children may depend on it.

Last month the world got its first look at new photographs of deep space from NASA's James Webb telescope. The level of detail in the photos was staggering and beautiful, revealing stars, "Cosmic Cliffs," and ultraviolet radiation from the birth of new stars. Christians should approach new technologies with care. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. At the same time, this new telescope is an inspiring example of what humans can do because of how God made us. Technology can enable us to know and appreciate God's world and to better tend the garden of creation. It also enables us to fight God's design or try to control it as if we were God. This telescope is a remarkable achievement, involving years of insight, ingenuity, and perseverance, which are God-given virtues. The fruit of this work rightly elicits awe and should drive us to study and admire a vast and mysterious universe. And it points us to the God who made it all. Technology that leads us to appreciate creation, grow in wonder, and learn more about it is a true gift.

Regular listeners to the weekly Breakpoint This Week podcast know that my co-host Maria and I are fans of the reality competition show Alone. Ten wilderness experts are dropped in the middle of nowhere, usually a place that is cold and full of bears, forced to fend for themselves. Whoever stays the longest wins. In the latest season, a military veteran with strong survival skills and extensive experience overseas seemed poised to win. Instead, he called it quits just a few weeks in. In an interview afterwards, he explained, "When I was in the military and separated from family, I didn't have a choice. Out here... I had that opportunity to get on the radio or the phone and say, 'Hey, I'm going to go back to where I'm comfortable.'" In other words, having the choice to go home made staying much harder. According to conventional wisdom, at least the kind accepted in this cultural moment, the opposite should have been true. More control and more choices are supposed to bring easier and more satisfying lives. That misconception is, in fact, a feature of life since modernism. For most of human history, humans held no illusions of being masters of their own fate. Writing back in 1976, American sociologist Peter Berger identified what changed, especially for Westerners. Because of the dramatic progress brought by science and technology, humans in the modern period began to believe that the world would eventually be fully understood. And if understood, it could also be mastered, as well. "What previously was experienced as fate now becomes an arena of choices," Berger wrote. "In principle, there is the assumption that all human problems can be converted into technical problems… the world becomes ever more 'makeable.'" A mark of our late postmodern era is the obsession with having choices. The higher the stakes, the more acute is the illusion of freedom. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy described this impulse in his now overturned Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, when he wrote that "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." In his view, the "freedom of choice" extends to even choosing what is real. Is it any wonder that people now believe that choice extends beyond sexual behavior to sexual identity? However, if happiness truly comes from the control made possible through infinite choices and the ability to "make the world," why did the military officer competing on Alone find the opposite to be true? Why did his freedom of choice turn out to be too much of a burden? Why do so many studies show that we are less happy than ever? The postmodern assertion that we can "make the world" exploits a weakness inherent to our fallen humanness and especially acute today. We struggle to delay gratification. We might fool ourselves into thinking that we can, in fact, define our existence or choose our gender. We may think our decision about whether to stay married or whether to bring an unborn child to birth is based on deep reflections. However, because we can, we tend to choose comfort now at the expense of flourishing later. If we have the option, we call the producers and tap out. Justice Kennedy was wrong. No matter how many choices we have, we cannot remake the world. Everywhere we turn, we butt up against the limits of creation. According to a Christian worldview, this is actually good news. God created the world with limits: physical and moral laws, bodies, certain geographic locations and times in history, and not other ones. He gives us specific parents and siblings and children, whose specific needs constantly impose limits on our choices. Even if, in modernity and postmodernity, such limits are anathema, to be resisted and fought against with all the science and technology we can muster, true freedom is found by recognizing and resting in God's good limits, both physical and moral. If God is good, then the limits He imposes are not burdens. They're blessings.

President Biden called the recent killings of Muslim men in New Mexico "hateful attacks," implying they were hate crimes against the Muslim community. Less subtly, the mayor of Albuquerque commented: "violence against members of our community based on race or religion will not be tolerated." Then the police arrested a Muslim man who, according to NPR, frequented the same mosque as his victims (though he was Sunni and three of his victims were Shia). This is what happens in a culture infected by a critical theory "mood." Reduce everything to sex, power, and race, and as the adage goes, to a hammer everything looks like a nail. Assuming racism without facts provokes suspicions among groups and keeps us from seeing others in God's image. In the end, people are judged by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character or, even worse, the content of their character is assumed because of the color of skin.

The last few years have felt like a real-life version of the popular board game "Pandemic," in which players cooperate to contain the spread of infectious, often imaginary diseases. The latest disease to grab real-world headlines sports a name that sounds like it came straight out of this board game: monkeypox. Our nation's response to this new outbreak has been far from a winning strategy, mainly because some public health officials have been more focused on sexual politics than protecting public health. Monkeypox is rarely fatal but reportedly excruciating. It is "overwhelmingly" transmitted by sexual contact between men. According to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine and reported by NBC News, 95% of monkeypox cases have so far occurred in the "gay community," and evidence strongly suggests that behaviors distinctive to that community are primarily responsible for spreading the virus. The public health response to monkeypox, which many are now describing as a complete disaster, has been largely shaped by officials who are unwilling to offend gay rights activists. Despite more than 6,000 cases reported nationwide, a figure The New York Times says is probably low, major cities like New York and San Francisco have hesitated to make clear exactly how the disease spreads, or to urge those primarily at risk to stop spreading it. In June, as The Washington Post described, officials in San Francisco stood by as "thousands of gay men clad in leather, latex—and often much less—descended on the city for an annual kink and fetish festival.'" According to the Post, "Even after the city had just declared the monkeypox outbreak striking its gay community a health emergency—one day after the World Health Organization urged men to sleep with fewer men to reduce transmission—San Francisco public health officials made no attempt to rein in festivities or warn attendees to have less sex." Officials in New York, Chicago, and other metro areas were also "avoiding calls for sexual restraint." Why? Well because they were "wary of further stigmatizing same-sex intimacy" and wanted to limit "government intrusion into the bedroom." "Officials and activists who spent decades on the front lines of the battle against HIV/AIDS," the Post article continued, "say they have learned it is futile to tell people to have less sex." There has, at least, been some pushback to this suicidal public health strategy. Gay sex columnist and polyamory advocate Dan Savage slammed cities that refused to tell the truth, saying "It was devaluing gay men's lives and health" not to warn them. And writing in The Atlantic this month, Jim Downs argued that it's not homophobia to warn gay men to be careful: "Public-health officials don't need to tiptoe around how monkeypox is currently being transmitted." Along with an incompetent rollout of vaccines and medications, which The New York Times' Daily podcast blamed for the crisis, these muted warnings may prove to be too little, too late in preventing more patients from suffering this painful and humiliating illness. Against the backdrop of two years of COVID lockdowns, mask mandates, mandatory quarantines, and "two weeks to stop the spread," the display of political priorities is breathtakingly hypocritical. While even the World Health Organization urges gay men to temporarily curb their lifestyle for the sake of safety, many American officials practically begged for an outbreak, afraid to place any limits on the expression of politically favored sexual identities. Doing so, they claim, threatens to revive the "stigma" and "homophobia" our culture has so successfully suppressed. In an echo of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, the disease itself is treated as discriminatory, as if it's unfair of the monkeypox virus to target gay men. The solution, many seem to believe, is to let it tear through the gay population unchecked as if sexual tolerance and progressive attitudes can make up for bad public health policy. In the end, all these sick men point to a sick worldview, one that would rather sacrifice people's wellbeing than treat them as moral agents capable of choice, whose actions have consequences. Monkeypox is only the latest damaging effect of this broken view of people and sex, but as long as our country is willing to play games with pandemics and people's lives, it won't be the last.

This month in The Atlantic, writer Kaitlyn Tiffany described a conflict with a friend over which Lorde album was best. A slammed door signaled the end of the relationship, and a text to Tiffany's boyfriend described her as "toxic." "I had rarely heard [the word] used offline, and then only semi-ironically, or in regard to people who were objectively terrible," she wrote. "I had never had to consider whether it was a word that could be applied to me." The story epitomizes the relational crises that face our culture. Of course, there are plenty of situations that require boundaries, distance, and healthy confrontation. But our culture-wide turn inward, which prioritizes one's own sense of self over everything else can escalate conflict quickly. Next comes an accusation of "toxicity," which tends to lack specificity or meaning. Missing are three virtues: humility (an awareness that all is not centered on us), resilience (the courage to face challenges rather than avoid them), and forgiveness (the expression of grace for the good of the other). Without these things, there's no way forward.

Perhaps the strongest antidote for optimism or for misplaced faith in our fellow man is watching the news. Of course, much of the media we consume is voyeuristic, so in a sort of supply-and-demand scenario, bad news makes headlines more than good news. At the same time, this is more than a problem of clickbait filling our newsfeeds. A series of events in recent years suggests that our cultural center cannot hold much longer. Not decades but just a few days ago, prominent novelist Salman Rushdie was stabbed, not in some "shady" part of the world, but in public at a lecture in upstate New York. Also, dogs in San Francisco are becoming hooked on meth. Apparently, human excrement is so common in public areas, pets have learned where to go for a quick high from the residue of addicted residents. Radical ideologies continue to dominate headlines, which few outside of ivory towers had heard of until a few years ago. They are now compulsory at some schools. And, those who challenge the new orthodoxy are often ostracized from what is an increasingly impolite society. Healthcare now involves practices that, until yesterday, would've rightly been considered abuse, including children having otherwise healthy organs turned inside out. Clearly, the state of our world is largely rotten. For some Christians, this indicates that the end is nigh. Particularly in the last century or so, many books and sermons have declared that we are living in the last days, so the best we can hope for is to go down fighting this increasingly fallen world. It's easy to forget in all these headlines that things have been bad before, in some ways even worse than today. In that time and place, God called His people to keep the faith, commit to the tasks at hand, and steward the time they were given by remaining faithful. Sometimes they won against the forces of darkness and death. Sometimes they lost. Either way, their calling remained the same, and God's Kingdom marched on. William Wilberforce was among those followers of Christ who faced down great obstacles. He deserves all of the recognition he receives as an archetype for faithful Christian engagement in the world. Eventually, because of his efforts, he won a long battle over the entrenched power of slavery in the British Empire, what he called one of the great aims that God had set before Him. But none of it happened in a day. Wilberforce began his fight against human bondage in the late 1780s, but he did not see the fruit of his work for decades. The slave trade wasn't banned until 1807 across the British Empire and was not fully brought to an end until 1833, just days before he died. How often must he have wondered at his impossible task? How often did he consider giving up? Closer to our own time and less well known is a story out of Russia. Detailed in a new book by Matthew Heise, The Gates of Hell: An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the Early Soviet Union tells of the trials of Lutheran Christians living under the newly founded Communist tyranny. The book is encouraging and heartbreaking at the same time. The constant determination of these Christians to be faithful to their Lord in the midst of some of the 20th century's most intense persecution is encouraging. Yet, by all earthly terms, their resistance absolutely failed. They fought to retain their freedom and their faith, but few managed to even retain their lives. They had no way to know their story's end—that all were wiped out by atheist totalitarianism. Regardless, they were faithful to the end. Our task is no different. We don't know if ours is a Wilberforce moment, when the enduring faithfulness of God's people standing athwart the tides of history will push this world back to reality. Or if this is a Russian Lutheran moment: We will lose our lives in our quest to be faithful. What we do know is that Christ has called us to this time and this place. As Gandalf said to Frodo, when he wondered why he should have to live in such times, being meant to be here and now "is a very encouraging thought." So, whatever comes, great victories or the full evaporation of progress, our task is the same: faithfulness, not success.

In this special episode of Breakpoint This Week, John talks with theologian and professor Carl Trueman about the challenges that affect us in this cultural moment. They discuss how technological advances have placed a "burden of self-creation" on us, influencing transgenderism, transhumanism, and artificial intelligence but also the loss of meaning and cultural institutions like the family.

Christians are often accused of "forcing our faith on others." But the idea that we shouldn't do that comes from the Church. Early Christians were persecuted because they refused to cater their faith to imperial power. Across Rome, people could worship whatever god(s) they wished, as long as their worship did not preclude the empire, the emperor, and the Roman gods. When Constantine the Great granted toleration with the Edict of Milan in 313, a new level of freedom extended not only to Christians but, with a few restrictions for public order, to others as well. Even when Christianity became the "official" faith of the empire, pagan worship remained legal. Of course, Christians have not always recognized religious freedom for others, but the fact remains, it came from the Church. This month, for a gift of any amount, join a Breakpoint online course called The Essential Church: Why the World (and Christians) Still Need the Body of Christ, featuring Drs. Timothy Padgett, Glenn Sunshine, and Peter Leithart as well as Collin Hansen. Go to colsoncenter.org/August

In June, a Google employee who claimed the company had created a sentient artificial intelligence bot was placed on administrative leave. Blake Lemoine, part of Google's Responsible AI ("artificial intelligence") program, had been interacting with a language AI known as "Language Model for Dialogue Applications," or LaMDA. When the algorithm began talking about rights and personhood, Lemoine decided his superiors and eventually the public needed to know. To him, it was clear the program had become "sentient," with the ability to feel, think, and experience life like a human. Google denied the claim (which is exactly what they would do, isn't it?). "There was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it)," said a spokesperson. The Atlantic's Stephen Marche agreed: "The fact that LaMDA in particular has been the center of attention is, frankly, a little quaint…. Convincing chatbots are far from groundbreaking tech at this point." True, but they are the plot of a thousand science fiction novels. So, the question remains, is a truly "sentient" AI even possible? How could code develop the capacity for feelings, experiences, or intentionality? Even if our best algorithms can one day perfectly mirror the behavior of people, would they be conscious? How one answers such questions depends on one's anthropology. What are people? Are we merely "computers made of flesh?" Or is there something more to us than the sum of our parts, a true ghost in the machine? A true ghost in the shell? These kinds of questions about humans and the things that humans make reflect what philosopher David Chalmers has called "the hard problem of consciousness." In every age, even if strictly material evidence for the soul remains elusive, people have sensed that personhood, willpower, and first-person subjective experiences mean something. Christians are among those who believe that we are more than the "stuff" of our bodies, though Christians, unlike others, would be quick to add, but not less. There is something to us and the world that goes beyond the physical because there is a non-material, eternal God behind it all. Christians also hold that there are qualitative differences between people and algorithms, between life and non-living things like rocks and stars, between image bearers and other living creatures. Though much about sentience and consciousness remains a mystery, personhood rests on the solid metaphysical ground of a personal and powerful Creator. Materialists have a much harder problem declaring such distinctions. By denying the existence of anything other than the physical "stuff" of the universe, they don't merely erase the substance of certain aspects of the human experience such as good, evil, purpose, and free will: There's no real grounding for thinking of a "person" as unique, different, or valuable. According to philosopher Thomas Metzinger, for example, in a conversation with Sam Harris, none of us "ever was or had a self." Take brain surgery, Metzinger says. You peel back the skull and realize that there is only tissue, tissue made of the exact same components as everything else in the universe. Thus, he concludes, the concept of an individual "person" is meaningless, a purely linguistic construct designed to make sense of phenomena that aren't there. That kind of straightforward claim, though shocking to most people, is consistent within a purely materialist worldview. What quickly becomes inconsistent are claims of ethical norms or proper authority in a world without "persons." In a world without a why or an ought, there's only is, which tends to be the prerogative of the powerful, a fact that Harris and Metzinger candidly acknowledge. In a materialist world, any computational program could potentially become "sentient" simply by sufficiently mirroring (and even surpassing) human neurology. After all, in this worldview, there's no qualitative difference between people and robots, only degrees of complexity. This line of thinking, however, quickly collapses into dissonance. Are we really prepared to look at the ones and zeros of our computer programs the same way we look at a newborn baby? Are we prepared to extend human rights and privileges to our machines and programs? In Marvel's 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron, lightning from Thor's hammer hits a synthetic body programmed with an AI algorithm. A new hero, Vision, comes to life and helps save the day. It's one of the more entertaining movie scenes to wrestle with questions of life and consciousness. Even in the Marvel universe, no one would believe that a mere AI algorithm, even one designed by Tony Stark, could be sentient, no matter how sophisticated it was. In order to get to consciousness, there needed to be a "secret sauce," in this case lightning from a Nordic hammer or power from an Infinity Stone. In the same way, as stunning as advances in artificial intelligence are, a consciousness that is truly human requires a spark of

The cultural crisis of loneliness is more acute than ever, partly due to factors like technology, and COVID-related protocols. And one researcher has identified another factor that should not be overlooked: isolation by choice. Time spent talking to other people, Dr. Jeffrey A. Hall has argued, has declined steadily for nearly 30 years. What's behind this trend? "Self-care regimes focus on cultivation of a mindful, inwardly focused life," he wrote. "There are increasing efforts to cut out other people in the name of removing toxicity. And all these tendencies are pushed forward by frictionless technologies that remove social obligations to leave home, talk to others and engage in our community." In response, Hall suggests that we develop a "social regimen that trains our atrophied muscles, even if there is some short-term discomfort, and even if it means encountering people with disagreeable or uninteresting opinions." It doesn't sound complicated, but it won't be easy in a culture that rewards the opposite. There is simply no substitute for real relationships, with real people.

Though we tend to think that Europe is less "Christian" than the United States, in some ways, that's not true. Certainly, per capita, church attendance is lower throughout most of Europe than it is here, and religious Americans enjoy certain political freedoms that Europeans do not. However, on at least two major social issues, America has, for a while now, been more extreme than Europe. In the case of abortion, the Supreme Court's recent decision in Dobbs reversed nearly 50 years in which Roe v. Wade kept states from passing meaningful abortion restrictions. States are now free to set their own rules on abortion and many are actually coming into line with the vast majority of European countries restricting abortion to the earliest weeks of pregnancy. America has long been a more progressive (and dangerous) place when it comes to the preborn. Another issue in which America remains extreme and dangerously out of step with the rest of the Western world is childhood gender "transitions." This became more apparent last month when Britain's National Health Service closed its largest and most influential center for childhood gender "treatment." Writing recently at Common Sense, Lisa Selin Davis chronicled the last days of the Tavistock clinic, which was shuttered after its "gender-affirming" treatment methods came under serious scrutiny. Thousands of children have been treated at Tavistock which, in the last 10 years, had seen a 4,000% increase in referrals for girls alone. The vast majority of younger patients were prescribed puberty blockers, drugs that are now known to cause brain swelling and vision loss. During the clinic's heyday, numerous voices raised the alarm about its gung-ho approach to altering children's bodies. Mental healthcare employees like Sonia Appleby and Sue Evans, both of whom worked at the clinic, warned that vulnerable minors were being rushed through transition without efforts to properly discern other mental health issues they may have had. Keira Bell, a young woman who received treatment at Tavistock, won a lawsuit in 2020 that temporarily halted referrals for puberty-blockers in children under 16. Bell is just one of a rapidly growing community of "de-transitioners" who were fast-tracked through medical transitions only to regret them later. For Tavistock, the final straw came when respected physician Dr. Hilary Cass concluded that the clinic's approach to gender dysphoria in minors had no convincing evidence to back its claims of effectiveness or safety. As she put it, there is "a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response." Following her recommendation last month, the NHS permanently shut down the clinic. "In effect," wrote Davis, Britain has rebuked "the common American medical approach" of "gender affirming care…. There will be no more top-down, one-size-fits-all transitioning for kids with gender dysphoria in the UK." And then last week, as The Times of London reported, around 1,000 families are expected to join a lawsuit filed against the Tavistock clinic for rushing their children into life-altering puberty blockers. Other European countries are also pumping the brakes on these sexual experiments on children. Davis pointed to "uber-progressive" countries like Sweden and Finland that have pushed back "firmly and unapologetically" against such interventions. The American approach, on the other hand, is now "at odds with a growing consensus in the West to exercise extreme caution when it comes to transitioning young people." In fact, despite absence of evidence for benefits and real evidence of harm, medical establishments in the U.S. and both state and federal government powers are doubling down on so-called "affirming" treatments, calling puberty blockers "safe and reversible." Groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics not only endorse chemical interventions but actively work to block state bans that would protect kids from them. All critics of runaway gender ideology, but especially Christians, have an urgent duty to speak up against our nation's dangerous experiments on children. All who love to look to Europe as a model for progress need to pay close attention to Europe's reversal on childhood gender interventions. Together, we should consider that progress in this area means taking a big step (or several) back from the edge of the abyss. The closing of Tavistock and the impending lawsuit are powerful reminders that there is nothing inevitable about the triumph of bad ideas. They can be challenged. They can even be toppled. Protecting their would-be victims is all the motivation needed. A quick glance across the pond should dispel us of our doom and gloom and inspire us to take a stand.

Pleas for tolerance and inclusion are often pretext for intolerance and exclusion. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. This is the Point. "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get one." Remember that one? These days it ought to say, "If you don't like gay marriage, kiss your job goodbye." At least that's what happened to U.K. mayoral candidate Maureen Martin last month. Martin published a campaign leaflet describing her views, including that "natural marriage between a man and a woman" is the "building block for a successful society, and the safest environment for raising children." LGBTQ activists swiftly complained that this was "hate speech" and got Martin fired from her day job at a housing association. Notice, she said nothing about gay people or same-sex marriage. All she did was state fundamental truths about the importance of man-woman marriage to society—truths central to her Christian faith and shared by millions. Still, like Martin, Christians must speak the truths that get us in trouble and show any way we can that God's idea of family is the best idea.

Far from being an otherworldly religion, Christianity teaches both the importance and goodness of life in this world. In fact, from Jesus' healing ministry to the work of modern missionary doctors, a consistent feature of the work of the Church in the world has been to care for the sick and needy, and not just point them to the life to come. The early Church understood Jesus' ministry to be a paradigm for their own work. So, just as Jesus set believers free from their bondage to sin, early Christians purchased slaves specifically to free them. Whereas Jesus used miraculous power to heal people from physical effects of the Fall, Christians used more ordinary tools to care for the sick and disabled. These activities are not merely good deeds in themselves but serve to advance the Kingdom. Though the Gospel is a message and must be proclaimed, the early Church saw works of mercy and preaching the Gospel as two sides of the same coin. The first major epidemic faced by the Church was the Antonine Plague (A.D. 166-189). In fear of their lives, the Romans threw the sick out of their homes to die in the streets. Galen, the most prominent physician of the age, knew he could neither heal its victims nor protect himself. So, he fled Rome to stay at his country estate. Recognizing that all persons were made in the image of God and that Jesus came to make all things new, body and soul, many Christians ran the other direction. They fought the Fall by tending to the sick, at risk (and often at the cost) of their own lives. Since even basic nursing care can make a significant difference during an epidemic, Christian action saved lives. Their courage and self-sacrifice contributed to the rapid growth of Christianity. For example, when Irenaeus arrived in Lyon from Asia Minor, there were very few Christians. By the time the plague ended, there were 200,000 believers in Lyon. The Plague of Cyprian, which took place the following century, was named after the bishop of Carthage who documented the epidemic. Dionysius of Alexandria, also a bishop, described what happened this way: At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treating unburied corpses as dirt... But, he continued... Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ. From the earliest centuries, Christians embraced the medical theories and practices of the day. Contrary to stereotypes, the early Church did not attribute illness to demons, though they did recognize demonization as a real phenomenon. The real difference between Christians and physicians of the day was the willingness to risk death in order to treat the sick, convinced that if they died it would only mean a transition to a better life. The physicians, on the other hand, fled. Christians also founded the first hospitals in history. By the late fourth century, there were hospitals in both the eastern and western halves of the empire. By the Central Middle Ages, hospitals and leprosaria (leprosy hospitals) could be found throughout most of the Christian world. When universities began granting medical degrees during the period, church-affiliated institutions continued to provide much of the care. By the 18th century, the medical field had become increasingly professionalized and separate from the clergy. Though monasteries still provided care for the poor and nursing was almost entirely in the hands of sisters and nuns, professional physicians increasingly handled medical issues for those who could afford to pay. Clergy attended to the dying and contributed to discussions of medical ethics but had few other responsibilities for the sick. However, medicine was an integral part of the modern mission movement of the 19th century. Because Christianity has always affirmed the importance of the body, hospitals soon followed wherever missionaries went. This is another way the Church has been essential throughout history. Many Christians and critics today are skeptical that the Church is essential or necessary in the modern world. It is. To learn how and why, please join the new online Breakpoint course The Essential Church: Why the World (and Christians) Still Need the Body of Christ. Hosted by Colson Center theologian-in-residence Dr. Timothy Padgett, the course will feature thought leaders Dr. Peter Leithart, Dr. Glenn Sunshine, and Collin Hansen. Go to colsoncenter.org/August.

A recent article in Fatherly summed up the risk of divorce by married years. Years 1 to 2 are "high risk." Years 9 to 15 go down to "low." By years 15 to 20, the risk rises again to "average." "Newlyweds and old married couples," concluded the article, "can never get too comfortable." The numbers don't lie, but the danger of studies like this is portraying divorce as something that just happens because of "falling out of love" or something like that. The truth about marriage is, thankfully, more complicated. Couples committed enough to fight for their marriage stand a good chance of making it. Eighty percent of couples who participated in Focus on the Family's Hope Restored Marriage Intensive are still together two years later. It also matters what we believe about marriage. As of 2019, divorce in America had reached a 50-year low, but that's because fewer Americans are getting married at all. So, the ones who marry tend to believe there's something to it. And there is, which is why when it comes to marriage and the health of our society, none of us should be comfortable.

Canceling a speaker is run-of-the-mill these days. So, when a university "cancels the cancellation," it's worth noting. Dr. Kristin Collier is a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan and director of the school's Program on Health, Spirituality and Religion. She was a natural choice to give the keynote address at the school's white coat ceremony for incoming students. The Gold Humanism Honor Society selects speakers "who are exemplars of compassionate patient care and who serve as role models, mentors, and leaders in medicine." A group of 300 students protested because of Collier's pro-life views. "We demand that UM stands in solidarity with us and selects a speaker whose values align with institutional policies, students, and the broader medical community," they wrote in an anonymous letter. Rather than bow to the pressure, as so many school officials have done in recent years, medical school dean Marschall Runge defended the choice of Collier and the school's commitment to freedom of expression. "Our values speak about honoring the critical importance of diversity of personal thought and ideas," he wrote in a statement. "We would not revoke a speaker because they have different personal ideas than others." The handful of students who walked out during Dr. Collier's address missed something special, an incredible speech that challenged students to rethink what medicine is and is for. "The risk of this education and the one that I fell into is that you can come out of medical school with a bio-reductionist, mechanistic view of people and ultimately of yourself. You can easily end up seeing your patients as just a bag of blood and bones or human life as just molecules in motion." You are not technicians taking care of complex machines, but human beings taking care of other human beings. Let's resist a view, of our patients and ourselves, that strips us of our humanity, and takes away from the very goal of why we went into this profession in the first place: to take care of human beings entrusted to our care in their moments of greatest need." From there, Collier challenged these medical professionals in training to ask big questions about who they are and what they do, and to practice gratitude. It was a brilliant speech overshadowed by a fabricated and unnecessary controversy. Roughly half of all Americans share Dr. Collier's views on abortion, which she did not address in her speech. As Dr. Vinay Prasad wrote in the blog Common Sense, "I do not share Dr. Collier's faith or her views on abortion. But ultimately, the decision of students to walk out of the lecture because they disagree with the speaker on another topic has no limit." Collier's colleague, University of Michigan professor Scott Richard Lyons, wrote for Inside Higher Ed, If the academy brooks no dissent, how can knowledge advance? If differing opinions are treated as thought crimes, how much longer will thinkers want to work at our universities? If institutions of higher education do not protect free thought and speech, intellectual diversity, dissent… why should they exist at all? In fact, the University of Michigan's Faculty Handbook states that "expression of diverse points of view is of the highest importance" and should be protected. Of course, most universities and organizations have similar statements but lack the courage to live by them. In contrast, Dr. Collier's courage, grace under pressure, and dedication to professional excellence exemplify what's required in a culture that forgets that free speech in a free society blesses everyone. Her kindness to those who walked out of their own white coat ceremony exemplifies how we must treat everyone, from those who reject that freedom to those still located inside the womb. In that moment, she lived out her advice to not see people as machines but as human beings. Especially for those entering a profession especially prone to cynicism and burnout, her address is worth watching in its entirety. Let's pray there are many among that University of Michigan crowd who follow in Dr. Collier's footsteps.

The second most important commandment, Jesus said, was to "love your neighbor as yourself." Why our neighbor? Decades ago, G.K. Chesterton offered an explanation: "The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world…. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. "We make our friends; we make our enemies, but God makes our next door neighbor. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain…. That is why the old religions and old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty towards humanity, but of one's duty towards one's neighbor." Of course, Jesus was the first to expand the word "neighbor" to beyond those with mere physical proximity to us. But by the same token, our literal neighbors matter too. They may not share our convictions, lifestyle, or worldview, but agreement is not a necessary prerequisite for love. So, our actual neighbor might be a great place to start.

Recently, the Colson Center announced an upcoming Breakpoint course entitled, The Essential Church: Why Christians (and the World) Still Need the Church. The responses we have received just to the title reveal a lot about where people are in regard to the Church. "Dear John, 'What is the Church for?' It used to be the Body of Christ. And the Bride of Christ. Being conformed into His Image. They were to 'love one another.' Despise is closer. 'What is the Church for?' Well . . . I have no clue anymore." "The nutjobs and con artists have run people away: Get rid of them and maybe people might come back." "I had to quit hanging out with other Christians so I could hang out with nice people again." "What is the Church for? To psychologically abuse people, particularly children, with indoctrination into its religion of FEAR." Some critiques of the Church are nothing more than personal grievances that they've elevated into blanket condemnations. Some critics didn't appreciate learning the truth about their behaviors, beliefs, and lifestyles, which they then chose over Christ. Condemning the Church becomes an act of self-rationalization, not justice. Others, of course, have more legitimate complaints. Christians have not been there for them at crucial points in their lives and families. And far too often, the Church has imitated the world in its worst depravities, and then, rather than expose sin within its ranks, closed them, protecting the institution or its leaders from being held accountable. While there are times (like now) that Church scandals seem to add up, a recent joke turned meme on social media notes that, at least historically speaking, this is not really new. "There are two kinds of Paul's epistles to the early Church," the meme goes. "One is, 'I always thank God for you and His unsearchable blessings in Christ.' The other is, 'Why can't you sick weirdos be normal for just a minute?'" A great hymn of the 19th century tells a similar story. In "The Church's One Foundation," Samuel John Stone proclaims Christ to be the security and preserver of His Bride, despite its obvious brokenness. This verse in particular speaks volumes. Though with a scornful wonder Men see her sore oppressed, By schisms rent asunder, By heresies distressed, Yet saints their watch are keeping; Their cry goes up, "How long?" And soon the night of weeping Shall be the morn of song. These beautiful words describe the tension of life between Pentecost and the Second Coming, and underscore something hotly debated today, even among Christians. Despite the painful reality of sin's enduring power in its members, the Church is essential, not only for Christians but for the entire world. Despite all these critiques—we could add so many more— Christians must see the Church as essential because Christ does. As a former colleague used to say, "the Church is Plan A, and there is no Plan B." Jesus didn't call us merely to embrace a set of theological proofs and wait for the end of the world. To be Christian is not just to believe in Him for personal forgiveness and meaning and then to live a moral life. When Christ saves us, He saves us into a movement, His Body, His redeemed people. Somehow, joining together with other frail saints is part of His plan to restore our hearts and minds, make all things new, and glorify the Father which is in heaven. We stick with the Church not because it is perfect, but because it is His plan. Because of this and the current confusion about the Church, we invite you to ponder with us what it means that the Church is essential, especially now when it does not always seem as if it is. For a gift of any amount this month, you can join this online course hosted by theologian-in-residence Dr. Timothy Padgett, and it will include thought leaders like Collin Hansen and Dr. Peter Leithart. To give and register for this course, please go to colsoncenter.org/August. After describing the church's obvious faults, Stone then, in the very next verse of "The Church's One Foundation," proclaims this: The church shall never perish, Her dear Lord to defend To guide, sustain and cherish, Is with her to the end Though there be those that hate her, And false sons in her pale Against a foe or traitor, She ever shall prevail.

John and Maria discuss the Tavistock centre (a gender clinic) in north London being forced to close due to multiple lawsuits. They also muse over Serena Williams' recent announcement to quit tennis so that she can focus on her family, particularly examining the way it's culturally framed as being a burden. Concluding by reflecting on a recent commentary, they talk about the ways that "chosen families" can never replace the responsibility and foundational importance of biological families.

A new California bill would require that youth receive so-called "gender affirming care" … even if it means removing them from the custody of their parents to do so. If passed, SB 107 would, according to the California Family Council, "empower California courts to take 'temporary emergency jurisdiction' of children if they come to California for trans-drugs, surgery, or mental healthcare." This would not only apply to parents and children who are California residents, but to children who travel to California from anywhere in the country. As one attorney put it, "SB 107 may be the most brazen assault on fundamental parental rights in the history of this state." This bill is the culmination of destructive and backwards ideas: that gender affirmation means rejecting the body, that removing healthy organs is the right way to treat gender dysphoria, that "trans kids" are expressing an innate identity instead of a temporary experience, and that parents who question invasive procedures deserve to have their kids taken away from them. Ideas have consequences. If this bill becomes law, there will be many victims of these bad ideas.

What would it be like to live only—and exclusively—in the present? Clive Wearing, a former musician for the BBC, is now the most famous amnesia patient in the world. In 1985, Clive suffered a severe fever that gave him both anterograde and retrograde amnesia. That means he can neither form new memories, nor recall most of his previous life. Instead, he lives his life thirty seconds at a time. Clive's struggle has been well chronicled in two documentaries, the first produced in 1986 and the second in 2005. Clive retains some knowledge—he can play piano expertly, for example, and remembers that he is married—he doesn't remember the wedding, his children, or his wife's name. The dominant experience of Clive's life, repeated hundreds of times a day, is of waking up from a coma for the very first time, without knowledge of who or where he is. "You are the first people I've spoken to in thirty years," he repeatedly tells his interviewers. Clive's story has inspired multiple publications of medical and psychological research, not to mention haunting existential questions. Who are we without our memories? What is life worth with no knowledge of the past and no ability to form new experiences from the present? Where is the hope for the future in this? While much has been written about Clive, the most powerful story lies with his wife, Deborah. The two had been married only a year when catastrophe struck. In the midst of her shock and grief, Deborah campaigned relentlessly to get Clive the care he needed. However, after seven years, she reached an impasse. A future with Clive seemed unbearable after years of the same questions, the same confusion, the same anguish. Deborah decided to leave and start a new life in America. She moved to New York, intent on resuming a career in the arts. She even tried new relationships. However, none of it worked. "I wanted to be with someone else and have kids and a regular life. Yet how can you love somebody when you already love somebody? I loved Clive," she wrote later in her book Forever Today. It was only after she returned to England, torn by what felt like the impossibility of life, that she found a future. It came from an unexpected source. "I'd reached the end of my tether, and I rang a friend and I asked her to pray for me," Deborah described years later. "She was the only Christian I knew, and as she was whispering away to God, I just felt this extraordinary power coming into me. And I knew that God was in my room. I just had this incredible sense that I was really, really loved … and that emptiness that I had been trying to fill all those years with relationships, with food, with alcohol, I was filled. " That moment changed everything for Deborah. She discovered peace. Though God did not erase her suffering or Clive's, suddenly their lives were imbued with purpose. In a scene from the 2005 documentary, standing in a London church, Deborah tells Clive about one of the last concerts he performed before the illness stole his memory: "It was so moving that everyone was in tears. That's how good of a musical director you were." At this, Clive is filled with emotion. Though he cannot remember the scene, or even the name of the woman describing it to him, he sensed her compassion. "I'm amazed that you would say that," he said. "I can't think that." "You were marvelous. You still are marvelous," she replied and kissed him on the cheek. Where, in the entire modern arsenal of materialist evolution, self-help, and expressive individualism is love like that to be found? Much less explained. Each of these dominant theories that claim to explain so much only turns the search for love and purpose inward. In the end, as Augustine described, these eternal values become incurvatus in se, destructively turned in on themselves—no help in the face of serious struggle. True love, like what Deborah offers Clive, dignifies the other. It's turned outward. Though he doesn't recall her visits, when asked what he wants to do after Deborah leaves, Clive answers: "A gin and tonic I think, and a cigarette. Waiting for time to elude and disappear. And her arrival."

According to new research, the link between depression and "chemical imbalances" in the brain could be less settled than previously thought. A leading theory as psychiatrists Mark Horowitz and Joanna Moncrieff write, "Our study shows that this view is not supported by scientific evidence." Related studies show, for example, that when people believe their depression is the result of mere brain chemistry, their self-confidence and ability to change plummet. Ironically, they also tend to feel more stigma, not less. Christians, of course, have nothing to fear from the insights of science. Findings like these matter. It confirms what a Christian worldview confirms: People are not merely their brains, nor are they at mercy of chemical forces. Thinking that everything about us is located in the brain is the inevitable conclusion of materialism, and an idea that has real consequences. Our brains are a big part of what we are, but they aren't all of who we are. A worldview limited only to material components is too small for reality. That's a conclusion that the science is beginning to support.

Particularly "in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, it's not uncommon to find a substitute family, colloquially known as a chosen family," Dani Blum recently wrote in an article in The New York Times. According to Blum, a "chosen family" refers to the "intense, intimate relationships … people form apart from their biological relatives; it is the kinship you create outside of a traditional family structure." Chosen families are not a new phenomenon, nor are they exclusive to LGBTQ people. But in an age quick to write essential relationships off as "toxic," they are increasingly common and consequential. Relationships were designed by God to be a gift of His common grace. Certain relationships, like the intimacy between a husband and wife or the bond between parents and children are distinct in purpose and unique in function, irreplaceable in their roles as building blocks of society. Friendship, from our deepest commitments to common neighborliness, is to be treasured. All of these relational arrangements are increasingly rare and disordered in a techno-driven culture, captive to utilitarian concern. And it is important to remember that Jesus taught of a tie that binds the redeemed beyond blood relation, secured by His blood. He asked in Matthew's Gospel: "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Then, pointing to his disciples, he answered: "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." The Church then is a family in an even deeper sense of the word. It is the family that is chosen by God. It has the capacity to fill needs keenly felt by those whose home life has been broken, characterized by absence, abuse, or hostility. In fact, family is the only relationship employed in Scripture as an analogy for the Church, both in the sense of Christ's relationship with us and our relationships with one another. The troubling thing about so-called "chosen families," at least in our modern context, is what they are intended to replace. Rather than simply "expanding" the scope of family or letting friends step into a gap, we employ these relationships to shove away and replace our biological families. The harms of this are most evident to children, as decades of studies have shown with stunning clarity. Biological fathers and mothers each contribute things irreplaceable by any other relationship. Even in the case of adoption, the most redemptive of all arrangements, deep emotional wounds often remain that children must process. Adoption is a beautiful choice, made because something has gone wrong. Thus, adoption is among the family relationships employed by Scripture to describe how God loves and redeems us. In its glee over creating "family" out of any assorted collection of people, society has forgotten that the biological family is baked into the world by God's intent. Family is no accident of history, no social construct that can be replaced. It is so woven into the fabric of biology that no society that has rejected it has survived. In fact, "chosen families" are already failing to meet people's basic relational needs. As Joshua Coleman wrote in The Atlantic, "Studies on parental estrangement have grown rapidly in the past decade, perhaps reflecting the increasing number of families who are affected." In one survey of mothers aged 65 to 75, one in 10 reported being estranged from an adult child. Some 62% reported contact less than once a month. Part of the beauty of biological families is that they are not chosen. In essence, they are built around obligation, a duty to the other, not merely as a means of self-fulfillment. By contrast, if we can opt into a group of friends, we can just as easily opt out. There are certainly cases in which family members are abusive, controlling, or in the true sense of an exhausted word, "toxic." Still, the spirit of the age is one that teaches us to prefer the company of those who ask less of us. Will these "chosen" replacements endure the demands of life, illness, and aging? In such an age, the Church's calling to be a family for those who have none matters all the more. Like the family, the Church is no social construct, but a reality baked into the world by the One who created it. He is the same One who included man and woman, husband and wife, mother and father in the design specs of humanity. Any society that tries to write these relational realities out of the story of the world will not fare well.