Breakpoint

In 2015, Canada's Supreme Court struck down a 22-year ban on assisted suicide. The next year, its parliament passed legislation allowing "MAID," or Medical Assistance in Dying for those who suffer from terminal illness and whose death was "reasonably foreseeable." Five years later, the "reasonably foreseeable" language was dropped, as was the requirement of terminal illness. Today, ending one's life with "medical assistance" simply requires a physician and a witness to agree that physical or mental suffering is such as "cannot be relieved under conditions that you (the patient) consider acceptable." Next year, that will expand to include anyone with a mental illness, like PTSD or depression. There's also talk about expanding the practice to include minors. Soon, under Canadian law, someone accused of a crime "must possess the capacity to understand that his or her behaviour was wrong in order to be found guilty." However, someone will not need the mental capacity to understand the implications of "medical assistance in dying" in order to choose death. None of which, we are told, should alarm us. Proponents of assisted death always point to "safeguards," such as physician approval, the uncoerced consent of the patient, or humane conditions. Certain stories are elevated, such as Betty Sanguin, an ALS patient who chose to end her life in a Manitoba church, surrounded by friends, family, and clergy, who secured permission for a MAID team to kill her in their sanctuary. Other stories are ignored. Even in the so-called "safe" cases, a grave evil has been done. Life is sacred, a gift of God, and should never be thrown away. To intentionally end life in a church is not a blessing. It's a distortion and a blasphemy. For the most part, the realities of doctor-assisted death look nothing like the beatific best-case scenarios described in the sales pitch. In particular, there are culture-wide implications for human dignity and value, something that euthanasia advocates seem unable or unwilling to predict. Many begin to believe that their lives are unworthy of life, their volition stolen, their dignity degraded. Last month in The Spectator, Yuan Yi Zhu described some of these stories in an article provocatively titled, "Why is Canada Euthanising the Poor?" In it, he described the real human cost of euthanasia laws and how the practice blurs the limits of consent: Now, as long as someone is suffering from an illness or disability which 'cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable', they can take advantage of what is now known euphemistically as 'medical assistance in dying' (MAID for short) for free. ... Soon enough, Canadians from across the country discovered that although they would otherwise prefer to live, they were too poor to improve their conditions to a degree which was acceptable. His examples included an Ontario woman, who opted for assisted death because her disability benefits weren't enough to cover smoke and chemical-free housing, and she was forced to live with crippling allergies. In Vancouver, another woman sought "medical aid in dying" when her debt kept her from affording the medication that would have alleviated chronic pain. The family of another 35-year-old disabled man discovered how appalling his living conditions were, only after he decided to end his own life. Tragically, by the time the government investigated the care facility and revoked its license, it was too late. As Zhu put it, "One may wonder how much autonomy a disabled man lying in his own filth had in weighing death over life." Individuals are supposedly "free" to choose, but it is unclear just how often this decision is impacted by financial concerns. "Healthcare, particular for those suffering from chronic conditions, is expensive," wrote Zhu, "but assisted suicide only costs the taxpayer $2,327 per 'case'." He concluded: Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What it will not do is spend money to allow them to live instead of killing themselves. For at least some of Canada's poorest citizens, coercion in death is not some distant fear, promoted by scared conspiracy groups. The pressure is a daily reality. Euthanasia in any form is a misguided answer to a real, human problem. Some, face a life of unimaginable pain. The only acceptable and loving response is to provide the best compassion, care, and pain management possible. Anytime a country, such as Canada, embraces "death with dignity" or "medical aid in dying" or some other euphemistically disguised lack of compassion, a price tag is placed on people. And, whenever a price tag is placed on something that is inherently priceless, it is cheapened. In Canada's case, the money is going to the so-called "autonomy" of vulnerable people, instead of fighting for their lives.

Today we revisit a speech by Chuck Colson on his renowned work The Faith. Chuck's main idea is that the church is at its best when we propose rather than impose the message of the Gospel. To order a copy of The Faith, visit www.colsoncenter.org

Responding to the leaked draft of Justice Alito's opinion in the Dobbs case, President Biden said, "The idea that we're gonna make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child ... goes way overboard." His statement is hard to follow but here's the point: The president said abortion kills a child—not a clump of cells, not a fetus, not a potential human. A child. This is more than a Biden gaffe. He is acknowledging what even honest pro-abortion folks have been forced to admit: The preborn is a human being and a child. Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has long held this position while not only arguing for abortion rights but also for infanticide. Most others don't go that far, but still argue that the good of the mother outweighs the child's right to life. And yet, many still claim a preborn child is only a clump of cells. We can show them differently. Babies in the womb develop fingerprints, suck their thumbs, have food preferences, recognize their mom's voice, and feel pain. The fact that abortion kills a child is something we can no longer not know. Heck, just quote the president.

Something long considered reliable evidence for Darwinian evolution, the chemical similarity of living things, is now in question. In 1973, leading Neo-Darwinist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote that "nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." He specifically pointed to "biochemical universals," or shared features in the chemistry of life, as evidence that all creatures "arose from inanimate matter only once" and that everything alive today descended from an universal common ancestor. Today, however, discoveries in molecular biology have complicated that conclusion. In fact, a new paper poses one of the strongest challenges yet to the idea that all life shares common chemistry. Though the title, "Scaling Laws in Enzyme Function Reveal a New Kind of Biochemical Universality," may be one that could excite only a scientist, what the authors describe should make everyone sit up and take notice. In fact, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, in a piece at Evolution News, called the paper "the most interesting biology paper of 2022 so far." Its findings are precisely the opposite of what we'd expect if life evolved from a common ancestor. The authors, including theoretician Sara Walker and Dylan Gagler from Arizona State University, looked at enzyme functions across all the major groupings of life. They tallied the different functions, then plotted these against the total number of classified enzymes. They found that "as the enzyme space grows … so do the number of functions." In other words, there are very few "specific molecules and reactions" common to all living things. If your head just exploded, Nelson offers a helpful analogy borrowed from one of the paper's coauthors, Chris Kempes. The English language contains many words, or synonyms, that can mean approximately the same thing. If the sky is darkened, we could just say it was "darkened." Or, we could say that it became "murky," "shaded," "shadowed," dimmed," or "obscured." All these words mean, more or less, the same thing but with very different spellings and histories. According to Nelson, "a strikingly similar pattern" occurs among the chemicals that make life possible. The authors of the paper agree, writing that "[biochemical] universality cannot simply be explained due to phylogenetic relatedness." Or, stated more simply, living things don't look like they evolved from a common ancestor using the same basic components on a molecular level. Instead, many different enzymes are used to accomplish similar purposes. This is precisely the opposite of what Darwinism predicts. An editor of this paper, Eugene Koonin of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, has long argued that life lacks the "universal genetic core" that Darwinian evolution predicts. Instead, he says, living things show a pervasive pattern of what scientists have termed "non-orthologous gene displacement." That's a technical way of saying that the functions necessary to sustain life are carried out by different molecules coded by different genes in different species. Or, as original paper's coauthor Chris Kempes puts it, "there are a lot of 'synonyms'" at work in biology. This is just the latest instance of scientific evidence complicating the Darwinian picture, which has long been portrayed as tidy, straightforward, and conclusive. In fact, this is an instance where evolutionary assumptions hinder rather than help us understand how life works and where it came from. Nelson simply points out the obvious conclusion: Functional requirements fulfilled by a different molecular tool doesn't appear to be the product of a universal common ancestry. Instead, it looks more like what we see in computers, cars, language, etc. Function and purpose seem to take priority over hardware in the world of biochemistry. And if there is a mind behind life, we can conclude from these findings that He took great care to equip every living thing with exactly what it needed to thrive, instead of giving them all identical tools. Theodore Dobzhansky may have truly believed that nothing in biology makes sense without evolution, but it's not clear how he would have dealt with these findings. The more and more we learn in biology, the less and less it makes sense when thinking from evolutionary assumptions. The more we follow the evidence, the more it leads elsewhere.

John and Maria explore the incredible emotion in the nation following a leak of a draft opinion from the Supreme Court. Then, Maria asks John about the ethics and the way Christians should respond to moves by the government to eliminate student student. They plan to do this by forgiving student loans, but is this a concept Christians should get behind? John and Maria explain the trapings of student debt forgiveness and why the move challenges society. To close, Maria asks John to go deeper into some of the ideas he presented this week in a number of commentaries. Notably, John explains society's problem with forgiveness, touching on a question from Maria on whether forgiveness is a sign of strength of weakness. Then, Maria asks John for some further commentary on the state of books for children, noting that many challenge children's developmental stages and interest in social movements around politics, race, and gender.

Pro-lifers aren't the only ones strategizing for a post-Roe America. By 2020, chemical abortions—abortions accomplished with oral medications—became the most common form of abortion in America. With the FDA recently permitting doctors to prescribe this poison without even an in-person visit, chemical abortions are only going to become more common. This is why it's critical to know that medical abortions can be reversible. The process starts with one drug that starves the baby. A few days later, the mother takes a second drug to induce labor. But women who take the first pill and do not take the second can and have gone on to have healthy pregnancies. Medical abortions will become more common in a post-Roe world for the same reason that they are so dangerous: It pushes a violent, dangerous act behind closed doors. As Christians we know that in God's light, we see light—pray for the light to shine in these dark places.

Many say they want a world without Christianity, but many secular thinkers are discovering they should be careful what they wish for. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of a public high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field after games. Though the firing should never have happened, this now years-long controversy has provided a window into how many in our culture feel about Christian prayer. Hint: they're not positive feelings. Still, one specific prayer, known as the Serenity Prayer, remains a part of our shared cultural language and a staple of addiction recovery meetings: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Of course, Alcoholics Anonymous' official position is that the "God" of the Serenity Prayer can be any sort of Higher Power you wish, but it is profound that most addiction recovery programs continue to stubbornly insist that faith is critical for addiction recovery. That insistence is backed by a constantly growing mountain of data, which has become un-ignorable. Even the government quietly admits that faith-based recovery programs are the most effective. A re-discovery of Christianity's practical benefits isn't just happening in addiction recovery. The more that various aspects of our culture struggle under the weight of bad ideas and their consequences, the more and more people are discovering "new" solutions in the old Scriptures. Canadian clinical psychologist and self-described nonbeliever Jordan Peterson has become famous in part for his bold claims that Christianity has a unique positive impact on individuals and culture. Contemporary historian Tom Holland, a self-described atheist, literally wrote the book on the responsibility Christianity bears for just about every good thing about modern culture. According to Holland: [Christianity] is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us… still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. And just last week, in former New York Times' reporter Bari Weiss's new independent Substack, non-believing author Tim DeRoche put forth what he called "The Secular Case for Christianity": The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most successful meme in the history of the world. And the spread of that meme over the last 2,000 years has largely been correlated with decreasing levels of slavery, war, crime, poverty, and general suffering. Modern culture, the same modern culture so scandalized by football field prayers and so put off by Christian sexual ethics, must reckon with what Christianity has given the world, DeRoche argued. We should, of course, welcome this kind of cultural self-discovery, though it is a bit like the angsty teenager who rejects the ways of his parents in order to find a more "enlightened" way to do life. But, after all his experimentation, that teen is forced to admit his open-mindedness only led to suffering and maybe his parents were right after all. Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck wrote that "an independent creature is a contradiction in terms." In other words, whether we acknowledge He's there or not, all creatures were made and are sustained by God. He knows best, and He knows us best. That He chose to reveal Himself to us in the creation, the Bible and ultimately in Christ is a tremendous mercy. A Christian life isn't without suffering, of course, but it is the only life in which suffering has meaning, can be redeemed, and will ultimately be defeated. Christians who claim that publicly promoting Christian ethics is somehow intrusive or unloving miss this point, as well as the related point that sharing the best way to live is a way of loving our neighbors. Years ago, comedian Penn Jillette of the comedy duo Penn and Teller famously said that he did not respect Christians who did not proselytize. "How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?" he asked. How much do you have to hate somebody to not tell them the best way to live life? To be clear, neither Christian faith nor Christian public witness is utilitarian. Christianity isn't true because it "works," but it does work because it's true. If God did not take the form of a man, if He had not died and then resurrected, if He were not on the throne of the universe, then Christianity's cultural "benefits" would not matter all that much. But He did, so they do. The Church's great opportunity is not to say, "I told you so," but rather "come and see." The world is better because Christianity is true. Now, come and meet the One behind it all.

I don't love BuzzFeed's clickbaity and crowdsourced approach to content, but a recent article caught my eye: Reddit users revealing what their childhood was like after their parents divorced. "When we were little, mom worked full-time and dad stayed home with us," wrote one user. "When I was six, they separated, and we only saw him once, maybe twice a year. I have never recovered from this sudden and unexplained abandonment." Others described having to become the unintentional middle man between their parents, or trying to keep up with both of them as adults. "Little things like that that take a really big toll on you," wrote one: "I always got physically ill before having to switch houses because of the stress." These anecdotes line up with the research. Divorce is awful, even if tragically necessary. And, more often than not, our culture trips all over itself to obscure its real impact. In order to protect adult feelings, we tell ourselves "the kids will be fine." They aren't. In fact, they deserve better. Sometimes, even BuzzFeed gets it right. I hope people pay attention.

A few years ago, a kids' book was published titled A is for Activist. On the book jacket is a tiny fist, raised, apparently, in solidarity. A quick stroll through any metropolitan library children's section will find more books like this one. There's Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi, The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish and, of course, Heather Has Two Mommies. There's Let the Children March and Woke Baby. There's even complete series, such as the "Little Feminists" and the "Citizen Baby" series, which include the titles Citizen Baby: My Vote and Citizen Baby: My Supreme Court. Anyone with actual children or who has been around actual children or who was once an actual child knows that "baby activism" is a misnomer. Little fists are used for temper tantrums and for fighting with dad, not for "solidarity." Chuck Colson advocated for classical education because of its understanding of and respect for the natural development of kids. Postmodern thinking in education was disrupting what he called the "order of learning" instead of recognizing that the right foundations, known as "grammar" and "rhetoric" in a classical vision, must first be established before children can move on to, for example, making coherent political arguments. Today, however, we've got it exactly backwards. Instead of teaching third graders their multiplication tables, we're teaching them to "express themselves." Instead of teaching high schoolers logic, we encourage them to share their opinion on every subject, as long as it aligns with our opinion, and that anyone who challenges them is a "threat." This approach is, in part, a downstream effect of postmodernism. If there's no absolute Truth, then anyone who believes they know something fixed about the world shouldn't be trusted. It's also a downstream effect of the sexual revolution, which prioritizes the needs and desires of adults over the needs, desires, and the design of kids. A is for Activist isn't really written for children. It's written for the adults that will buy it. Adults that buy it aren't really buying it for their children. They're buying it in order to be the kind of person who buys a book titled A is for Activist. The voting booth to dinosaur ratio in kids' books today is way off. Too many kids' books are being written by adults talking to other adults. This is an amazing opportunity for Christian creatives. However, there are plenty of bad "Christian" books for kids, too. Slapping a pastel-colored Noah's Ark on a book cover or a Bible verse on every page does not good literature make. C.S. Lewis, himself a master of children's literature, wrote that "the world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature." Elsewhere he implored Christians to write books on every subject: What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way around. Our faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defense of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. Good art paraphrases reality, describing the world as it truly is. Good art also respects the audience. Good literature for children will respect children. Jesus explicitly respected children as full human beings, with their own dignity and value. Kids should not be used as political pawns. They ought not be asked to shoulder the burden of advocating for our modern innovations, like proclaiming that Heather's "two mommies" replace a mom and a dad or that their bodies may be wrong or that they may be racist because of the color of their skin. They especially shouldn't be asked before they've learned the alphabet. Thankfully, a growing number of good books for kids is on offer. The Good Book Company produces a series of incredibly well-made picture books called "Tales that Tell the Truth." NavPress publishes a series called "God's Design for Sex," with a different book for each age that carefully and slowly teaches kids about their bodies. And there are fantastic children's authors whose books are not explicitly "Christian" but who tell good, true, and beautiful stories for kids in their own language. After all, if kids are full members of God's kingdom, they, too, deserve good books.

An early draft of Justice Alito's opinion was leaked from the Supreme Court. That's a big deal. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court confirmed the authenticity of a draft opinion from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito regarding the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case. Justice Alito's opinion is important and is briefly explained in our Breakpoint podcast by Erin Morrow Hawley. Here's a sample: The opinion sort of has a couple of parts. It looks first at, "is there any historical right to abortion?" Is it deeply rooted at our nation's tradition and history? That answer is clearly "no." Then the opinion talks about stare decisis. The idea is basically, even if Roe is wrong, even if Casey is wrong, should we still uphold them anyway? Justice Alito says clearly, "no." There's not the sort of alliance interest that would justify that. One thing Justice Alito's opinion focuses on is damage the so-called "right to abortion" and the Court's finding of it in Roe and Casey have done to this country. So, it's been damaging to our democracy, it's damaging to our institutions, and to the Court, so there's no reason to stick to it. Listen to the full conversation with Erin at www.breakpoint.org.

On Monday night, an initial draft of the Supreme Court majority opinion on the Dobbs case was leaked to news site Politico. As SCOTUS Blog tweeted: "It's impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff." Tuesday morning, Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the draft, and called the leak a "betrayal of confidences of the Court intended to undermine the integrity of our operations." Most likely, the leak was intended to pressure the Court's conservative justices to moderate their opinion before a final decision is published. That would be especially inappropriate if the source of the leak is a clerk of one of the Justices. One response would be for the Court, as National Review's Ed Whelan suggested, to announce the majority decision as soon as possible, allowing dissenting views to be published later. It's happened before in extenuating circumstances. What's not clear is how the leaked draft of the majority opinion will compare to the final draft. Unless it is somehow significantly gutted, Justice Samuel Alito has thoroughly and thoughtfully dismantled, at least in legal terms, the 50-year hold that Roe v. Wade has held on America. Here are three observations from the leaked draft. First, Alito thoroughly dismantles the claim that the right to an abortion is found anywhere in the Constitution. He states: "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision." Thus, Alito concludes, the 1992 follow-up case to Roe v. Wade, known as Planned Parenthood v. Casey would also be overruled. Quoting other cases, Alito insists that Casey's basis on Roe's precedent "is not an exorable command" and that it's time for the issue to "be settled right." Second, Alito dismantles what he calls Roe's "most important rule": "that states cannot protect fetal life prior to 'viability.'" When Roe was established, viability was considered to be at around 28 weeks of gestation. Today, it's at 24 weeks or younger. Viability, Alito further notes, is also based on the health of the mother and the hospital facilities where she lives. Given these multiple factors, Alito argues, "the viability line makes no sense, and it is telling that other countries almost uniformly eschew such a line." In a footnote, Alito notes that the U.S and the Netherlands are the only nations to rely on viability. He doesn't mention what others have recognized, that the U.S. is most in line with the authoritarian regimes of China and North Korea in its abortion policy. Third, if this decision holds, the Court would not be outlawing abortion but returning the decisions about abortion to the states. "In the years prior to [Roe v. Wade]," writes Alito, "about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process." Roe was, writes Alito, quoting the late Justice Ginsberg, an "exercise of raw judicial power." He then surmises that some states will expand abortion rights and other will limit them, but this is how states are supposed to work. State legislators will work out state regulations for abortion instead of a court, and voters will therefore have a voice in the process. Limiting abortion rights in any way, including moving the decision to the states, is intolerable for abortion advocates. In a tweeted response to the leak, Sen. Elizabeth Warren pressed for the elimination of the filibuster in Congress in order for the Women's Health Protection Act to pass. This extreme measure, which could be called the Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act, is not supported by a majority of Americans. According to a recent poll, 71% of Americans, including 49% of Democrats, want abortion limited to the first trimester. Warren also claimed that dismantling of Roe v. Wade would be an act of racism. In the same tweet about eliminating the filibuster, she alleged, If an extremist Supreme Court overturns Roe, wealthy women will still get safe abortions—by traveling to another state or country. But women of color, those with lower-incomes, and victims of abuse will suffer the most. And of course, the leaked draft of Alito's opinion also led to numerous Handmaid's Tale references and the tired old canard that pro-lifers care about babies only until they are born. None of these claims, of course is true. In fact, 4,000 pregnancy resource centers exist to help parents who may be in crisis. If this leaked opinion is indeed reflective of what the final decision will be, then we must do two things. First, we must thank God that this decades-long legal nightmare is over. Our efforts to protect babies and care for vulnerable women will no longer be pre-empted by an evil masquerading as an invented "right." Second, the Court has done its job. It cannot do our job. State legislatures now have very important jobs to do, but they cannot do the jobs that we are called to: to spea

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court confirmed the authenticity of a draft opinion from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito regarding the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case. John Stonestreet visits with Erin Morrow Hawley, senior counsel to the appellate team at Alliance Defending Freedom. Erin explains the significance of the leaked draft opinion and helps us understand the circumstances surrounding the court. She also provides important insight on what this means for the pro-life community moving forward. John also interviews Dr. Ryan T. Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Founding Editor of Public Discourse. Dr. Anderson paints a picture of the pro-life movement in the wake of this leaked report and the possible decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood. This conversation happens on the heels of the Colson Center's upcoming event, "Preparing for a Post-Roe World." On Thursday, May 12th at 7:00pm at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando Florida the Colson Center is hosting a gathering looking at the future of advocating for the pre-born that is featuring Tim Tebow, Stephanie Gray Connors, Jim Daly, Erin Hawley, and Kristan Hawkins. This bonus session occurs in conjunction with our premier conference on Christian worldview, the Wilberforce Weekend. For more information on this special event visit wilberforceweekend.org.

In March, online magazine Vox ran a series of stories under the title "America's Struggle for Forgiveness." That's not a typical topic for a thoroughly secular outlet like Vox, but, then again, Christians should be talking about forgiveness more than they are too. "The state of modern outrage is a cycle," writes contributor Aja Romano: We wake up mad, we go to bed mad, and in between, the only thing that might change is what's making us angry. The one gesture that could offer substantive change, or at least provide a way forward—forgiveness—seems perpetually beyond our reach. Each contributor to the Vox series was a committed progressive, and it showed when they discussed who they considered most in need of forgiveness. Romano, for example, questioned how to forgive J.K. Rowling, for her repeated defenses of biological women against erasure. In even suggesting that what Rowling has done was so egregious, Vox only proved that the fantasy writer has a firmer grasp on reality than they do. Still, Vox asked a question that is on point. What is the place of forgiveness in modern society? Consider, for example, how quickly celebrities are cancelled, for reasons ranging from the trivial to the serious. Ellen DeGeneres created a toxic workplace environment. Aaron Rodgers didn't get vaccinated. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard engaged in domestic abuse. And, the jury is still out on Will Smith's future. The point here isn't to equivocate every public fall from grace since, obviously, some are more deserved than others. What is missing in contemporary debate is any way forward. What's missing in our culture is forgiveness. After all, forgiveness doesn't ask whether condemnation is deserved. It assumes it is. Forgiveness isn't about the virtue of the other person's actions. It's about our response to that action. In the Vox article, Romano quotes Elizabeth Bruenig, a writer at The Atlantic, who put it this way: As a society we have absolutely no coherent story—none whatsoever—about how a person who's done wrong can atone, make amends, and retain some continuity between their life/identity before and after the mistake. She's right, but clearly, we need something. Romano concludes her essay with a suggestion: Grace, the act of allowing people room to be human and make mistakes while still loving them and valuing them, might be the holiest, most precious concept of all in this conversation about right and wrong, penance and reform—but it's the one that almost never gets discussed. Powerful words. It's always fascinating when a culture has exhausted all the resources a secular worldview can offer, only to discover that Christianity always had the best option on the market. Christianity offers the perspective on forgiveness that so many are desperate for. Because we've been forgiven, we can forgive others. Because we've been loved, even when unlovable, we can love even the unlovable. But let's be clear. There is no grace without God. Nobody likes thinking of the ways they have failed, and we avoid it at all costs. With God comes a moral law that we are responsible to. It may be that our world is short on forgiveness precisely because it has rejected God and His moral law. That also will make it more difficult to extend forgiveness to others. In the words of C.S. Lewis, "Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive." In a fallen world, we are quick to forgive people we like … for things we don't see as particularly serious. But what if the wrong was serious? What if the person isn't on my team? In those moments, only a transcendent perspective makes forgiveness a live option. Like Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." That's every one of us. That's why He later said so strongly, as recorded in Matthew's Gospel: "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." All of which makes me think, again, about Chuck Colson, whose unexpected redemption during Watergate led to an amazing amount of forgiveness between him and his political enemies. He was forgiven much by God, and by those who had been forgiven much by God, so he also extended forgiveness to others. In the end, that perspective grounded his whole understanding of criminal justice reform. If the world indeed is looking for forgiveness, then once again, only Christians have what the world is looking for.

The Colson Center is offering a special short course featuring Dr. Carl Trueman and Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. In the BreakPoint Podcast today we are featuring the first session in a four-part series the Colson Center is offering this month. During this month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, you'll receive a wealth of resources that will be explored in a special short-course offering. For more information visit www.colsoncenter.org/april

This April, scientists confirmed the dimensions of the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet, the single largest comet ever recorded. Its core appears to be about 85 miles across. "It's 100 times bigger than the typical comets we've been studying for all these years," says astronomer David Jewitt: Finding this thing is a reminder of how little we know about the outer solar system. There's a vast quantity of objects out there that we haven't seen, and a huge number of things we haven't even imagined. Awe is powerful and humbling. As John Piper once observed, no one stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon and says, "I am awesome." Awe points us outside of ourselves, and the whole drive to know the universe is, in reality, a drive to know God. Seventeenth century astronomer Johannes Kepler, whose precise mathematics led to his groundbreaking laws of planetary motion once wrote, "I wanted to become a theologian, and for a long time I was unhappy. Now, behold, God is praised by my work even in astronomy." For the God who created everything, good science is more than good work. It's worship.

Recently, a colleague noted how a growing number of conservative-minded people he encountered on social media, some of them Christians, were refusing to believe stories about Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Some even reject that the invasion was an unjustified war of aggression by Russia. When he asked the reason for their doubt, it was simply because those stories were reported in the "mainstream media," which has done nothing but lie to us for years. I share suspicion for certain sources. Most reporters for the major networks and news outlets have forgotten the difference between journalism and opinion writing. And, of course, their biases tend to lean in the same direction. Christian conservatives rarely get a fair shake on self-described neutral outlets, such as CNN or The Washington Post, let alone overtly progressive outlets such as Vox or MSNBC. However, when our suspicion about truth-telling becomes suspicion that there isn't truth, we've become postmodernists. Christian writer Samuel James calls this bad habit "negative epistemology." This is the idea that we don't need to figure out what's true, we only need to believe the opposite of whatever our political enemies say. Of course, this is only part of the overall and pervasive collapse of trust throughout American society, specifically trust in institutions. We are rightly concerned about misinformation, the frequently shifting landscape of rationale for dealing with COVID-19 and claims about election fraud. But beneath all of these specific examples is a cultural landscape that treats truth and truth claims as nothing more than power plays. This isn't a new idea. During the confirmation hearings for current Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concern was raised over a speech she had given at UC Berkeley. In it, she stated that "to judge is an exercise in power." The same idea leads activists to dismiss opponents by pointing out the color of their skin instead of addressing their argument. We see it every time cancel culture comes for a speaker or author on a college campus who says something that doesn't support their team. In other words, behind the collapse of trust in American society is a collapse of truth, the very possibility of truth. For more than a century now, academics have been preaching this kind of extreme skepticism, suggesting that all truth claims are really impositions of power. This belief was at the heart of a worldview known as "postmodernism," initially conceived by mid-20th century French philosophers and most fully expressed in late-20th century pop culture. Today, Eminem and Nirvana are considered "classics," but the fact that so much of our culture is reduced to political power plays and so many people decide what's true by asking who believes the opposite only proves that, to some extent, we are all postmodernists, now. For people whose faith teaches that truth is knowable and that it doesn't depend on the source but a reality external to ourselves, this is a road we simply cannot continue down. Once we embrace the idea that all claims are mere power plays, there's no room for reason, for revelation, for persuasion, for thinking, or for looking at God's world to know something about it and Him. Instead, we employ a version of a tactic promoted by postmodern English professors called "the hermeneutics of suspicion." We become suspicious of everything and, in the process, destroy the possibility of knowing anything. I'm not the first to make this connection, but we'd do well to learn from the Dwarfs from C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle. Having been deceived once by their enemies, these sadly memorable characters decided they would never believe a non-Dwarf again. Terrified of being "taken in," they retreated into a tribalistic huddle, and ultimately became blind to the world around them. Their suspicion of everyone and everything became their prison, and in the end, it deprived them of Lewis' equivalent of Heaven. If we come to believe that truth is only a matter of who's talking, that Vladimir Putin must be a good man because CNN says he's not, or that an unjust war must be just if a president from the other party condemns it, we have retreated into that same, fatal huddle. We have lost our ability to talk meaningfully about right and wrong, and even to persuade others of these moral realities. We have traded a Christian worldview for a postmodern one. In our fear of being "taken in" by a lie, we have blinded ourselves to truth. Let's not make that mistake.

John and Maria discuss society's reaction to Elon Musk buying Twitter. Maria questions why many reacted the way they did, and John explains how and why words matter in culture. Then Maria asks John about an upcoming Colson Center event at the Wilberforce Weekend, where John will guide attendees to imagine a post-Roe world. A number of guest speakers will inspire us to consider the individual responsibility, as many states enact "trigger" laws in preparation for a dismantling of Casey and a weakening of Roe when the Supreme Court decides the Dobbs case, likely in June. To close, John highlights a number of Breakpoint commentaries from the week, specifically pointing out the human rights challenges in China, lately expressed in China's "no-Covid" policies.

A recent viral video shows thousands of people in Shanghai screaming in unison into the night to protest the Chinese government's brutal "zero-COVID" policy. Entire high-rises of people are confined to their rooms, locked in with green fencing that appeared overnight. Children, including babies, are separated from their parents in massive government quarantine centers, some of which lack basic medical equipment or even beds. Other videos show hundreds of pets being collected and euthanized as supposed carriers of the disease. In the meantime, many of the city's 25 million people find themselves on the brink of starvation, with government food deliveries unable to keep up with demand. If we're looking for a culprit, it's not just the lockdown. It's not even COVID-19. It's the ideology of China's ruling elites, which rejects the sacred value of the individual in the name of the "common good." Human dignity is a deeply Christian idea, one that China's communist leaders have been at war with for decades. We must pray that the voices of Shanghai's suffering people will wake them up to what is true and good.

Many of our favorite stories culminate with a conversion experience. C.S. Lewis' autobiography, Surprised by Joy is like this, with Lewis fighting God every step of the way until he finally recognizes that Christ is the source of true joy. Another example is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with Ebenezer Scrooge realizing the error of his ways and becoming a new man. It's a Wonderful Life also features personal redemption, when George Bailey realizes his life has incredible value. In other tales, however, personal redemption is not the end of the story but only the middle, a turning point that sets up all that comes afterward. Think of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which Edmund was redeemed, but Narnia still needed saving. Or Pilgrim's Progress, in which Christian is released from the burden of his sin, but still must complete a journey to the Celestial City. Or consider real-life examples, such as the Apostle Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus or St. Augustine's conversion, as described in his Confessions. In both cases, an incredible amount of life and influence came after and because of personal conversion. Chuck Colson's personal transformation, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, was just the beginning of a life far more accomplished, influential, and significant after than before. These kind of stories, in which personal redemption creates a wake of redemption that impacts families, churches, communities, and even entire cultures, are the ones that better reflect the biblical story. Often, Christians tell a truncated version of this story. It's not a false Gospel, just incomplete, a "two chapter" story of sin and salvation. However, Scripture has four chapters. It begins before sin and the fall, with a very good world that God created and designed with a purpose. It ends with His creation restored, a New Heavens and New Earth. Sin and salvation are crucial parts of the story to understand and embrace, but not the whole story. Something incredible happens when we realize that our salvation is about more than getting to Heaven. We aren't merely saved from sin and death and to eternal life that begins when we die. We are saved for an abundant life in which, to borrow Jesus' own words, all things are being made new. In just a couple weeks, at the Wilberforce Weekend in Orlando, Florida, we'll be looking at "Life Redeemed" from as many angles as we can. Together with dozens of speakers, discussions, film sessions, and panels, we will explore the full scope of Christ's redemption. Along the way, we will celebrate amazing stories of personal redemption, such as Lewis and Chuck Colson and Harriett Tubman and others, before looking at how their personal redemptions led to the world being changed around them. This year's speakers include Os Guinness, Monique Duson, Max McLean, Jim Daly, Jennifer Patterson, and many more. We'll also be honoring the faith and courage of cake artist Jack Phillips and florist Barronelle Stutzman, two people whose redeemed lives meant taking a stand, paying a steep price, and inspiring thousands. I hope you'll join us May 13 through 15 at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando for the Wilberforce Weekend. And, if you are coming or live in the Florida area, please join us Thursday night, May 12, for a special training session to prepare for "A Post-Roe Future." That event will better equip us to stand for life and against abortion, and features Stephanie Grey Connors, Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life, Jim Daly of Focus on the Family, and the one and only Tim Tebow. Space is limited, and there are just a few days left to register. Visit wilberforceweekend.org to get tickets.

Recently, The New York Times asked six teens to describe what cancel culture "is really like." Their responses show just how normal the term has become. For many, it's "basically a joke," a word thrown around about anything and everything. That's not surprising for a generation so plugged in and coming of age just as the term has reached critical mass. For others, "it's a way to take away someone's power and call [them] out for being problematic in a situation," as one girl put it. But that power element makes cancel culture dangerous. Canceling someone is less about holding convictions with integrity, than it is convincing a mob of peers to forever isolate someone else. And, who decides what's canceled if not the powerful, which itself is subject to the changing whims of a moment's majority? This isn't about enduring truths or standing for what's right. These students have inherited a world with troubling public figures, celebrities, causes, and past sins, but no example of what to do. This is an opportunity for Christians to show a better way forward.

Is there hope for Hong Kong? That's the question the city's citizens, including nearly 1 million Protestant and Catholic Christians, are being forced to ask daily. Under more than 150 years of British rule, Hong Kong established itself as a bridge from East to West, and an economic powerhouse that protected the basic freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly. In 1997, when the British government relinquished control to Beijing, a 50-year transitional period was established under a principle known as "one country, two systems." The idea that China would respect the agreement and Hong Kong's liberties might have been tenuous, but it wasn't completely irrational. In terms of economic prosperity and a tolerance for democratic norms, some even hoped Beijing's own system would evolve to mirror Hong Kong's. That hasn't happened. In fact, as The Atlantic's Timothy McLaughlin wrote in April, "[T]hese hopes have now all but been extinguished." In 2014, China announced that, though Hong Kong voters could choose their chief executive, candidates first had to be screened by a Beijing committee. The response in Hong Kong was explosive. Over 1.2 million people took to the streets in peaceful protest, occupying the central commercial district and famously using yellow umbrellas to deflect tear gas. In 2019, protests were renewed over a proposed extradition bill that would grant authorities the ability to transport anyone accused of a crime, including political dissidents, to mainland China. Again, the backlash was massive. In a city of 7.5 million people, an estimated 2 million took to the streets, many pushing children in strollers or elderly in wheelchairs. Even when Chief Executive Carrie Lam eventually scrapped the extradition bill, it did little to stop the momentum. But COVID-19 did. And, like all authoritarian regimes, China did not let a good crisis go to waste. As the city locked down, key protesters were arrested and momentum stalled. China bypassed Hong Kong's government and implemented a draconian national security bill of its own. Now, the city's future seems especially dire. While some embers of protest still smolder, two of Hong Kong's last British judges resigned this April. By some estimates, nearly 50% of European firms are planning to leave the city. Though an economic blow like that should make Beijing think twice about Hong Kong's fate, economics has never been the primary driver behind the actions of the Chinese Communist Party or Xi Jinping. Christian concern goes beyond our commitment to human rights, or the tragedy of watching such a vibrant, beautiful place fall under oppression. Our brothers and sisters in Christ have long played a dramatic part in Hong Kong's non-violent resistance. From the beginning, in fact, Hong Kong's Christians have formed the backbone of its pro-democracy movement. A powerful example is retired pastor Chu Yiu-Ming who, along with eight others, was sentenced to prison for his role in the 2014 and 2019 protests. While his sentence was lightened due to his age, Pastor Chu was fully ready to bear the cost of following Christ and articulate why. Chu's speech, in which he described why he was compelled to act, should be required reading for all of us: I am a Christian minister committed to the service of God, and yet, at this very moment, my heart tells me that with this defendant's dock, I have found the most honorable pulpit of my ministerial career. The valley of the shadow of death leads to spiritual heights. … To those who are naked or hungry, the Christian minister has no business responding with greetings of Peace, Peace. I wish you well; keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs. What good are such greetings? [A]sk the Bible. … This is our conviction based on the faith we hold: Every person is created according to God's image. As such, every person should be respected and safeguarded. We strive for democracy, because democracy strives for freedom, equality and universal love. Human rights [are] a God-given gift, never to be arbitrarily taken away by any political regime. … We have opted for a peaceful, non-violent way. Although the power of injustice before us is immense and those holding power capricious, we are not afraid, nor will we run away. … We have no regrets, We hold no grudges, No anger, No grievances. We do not give up. In the words of Jesus, "Happy are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires; The Kingdom of heaven belongs to them!" (Matthew 5:10) Please pray for Hong Kong, for Pastor Chu, and for the other courageous Christians .

John and Shane are asked how a student should respond to his college requesting him to identify his preferred pronouns. John explains how using one's name is unique from a person's preferred pronoun. He also shares how choosing a pronoun says something distinct about what male and female are. Along with emphasizing the importance of understanding the issue, John emphasizes the way in which a person engages the issue of pronouns. He encourages the listener to respond with light, not heat. For another listener's question on the topic of "white fragility," John explains what white fragility is, where it originated, and how it's become a theory of everything. He notes that it isn't helpful to be reactive whenever a conversation on race presents itself, giving some helpful tips to guide conversation to a constructive end. To close, John and Shane respond to a listener about what young people can do now to prepare for the future. John encourages them to read books, find a mentor, and critique habits. Resources' Dr. Meriweather Stand on Pronouns John Stonestreet and Maria Baer | Breakpoint This Week | 2022 A Rebel's Manifesto: Choosing Truth, Real Justice, and Love amid the Noise of Today's World Sean McDowell | Tyndale | 2022 Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God's Design for Marriage John Stonestreet and Sean McDowell | Baker | 2014 -- White Fragility Robin DiAngelo | Beacon Press | 2018 -- Cultivate Jeff Myers | Summit Miracles C.S. Lewis | Harperone | 2001 The Four Loves C.S. Lewis | Harperone | 2017 Perelandra C.S. Lewis | Scribner | 2011 Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis | Harperone | 2001 The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis | Harperone | 2001 Knowing God J.I. Packer | Intervarsity | 1993 The Holiness of God R.C. Sproul | Tyndale | 1998 Dancing with Max Emily and Charles Colson | Zondervan | 2012 Through the Gates of Splendor Elisabeth Elliot | Living Books | 1981 The Journals of Jim Elliot, repackaged ed.: Missionary, Martyr, Man of God Jim and Elisabeth Elliot | Revell | 2020 Confessions Augustine | Moody | 2007 The Way of the Modern World Craig Gay | Wm. Eerdmans | 1998

In one of the most annoying tech moves since Microsoft's "Clippy," Google Docs now offers unsolicited advice about how to avoid using non-inclusive language. Terms like "landlord" or "motherboard" trigger a pop-up warning that reads "these words may not be inclusive to all readers." The folks at TechRadar were overly generous when they said that this was "a good idea, poorly executed." In reality, it's a bad idea, poorly executed. It's more than annoying for Google to thought police our words in this way. It simply doesn't correspond with reality. Sure, not all "police officers" are "policemen," but connecting "landlord" with slavery or class warfare misses the full history of the word. And questioning the word "motherboard"? That's just silly. Google has never been a neutral facilitator of communication, but this move demonstrates a misunderstanding of language itself. Words are more than social constructs. They reflect reality. Denying that certain realities exist with language doesn't change reality. As a friend used to say, "sloppy words make sloppy thought possible." Misusing language damages our ability to think.

According to Theodoret of Cyrrhus, on January 1, A.D. 404, an ascetic monk named Telemachus jumped to the floor of the arena during a gladiatorial match, and begged the competitors to stop. The crowd was so angry at the interruption that they stoned him to death. When Christian Emperor Honorius heard about Telemachus' act of bravery, he ordered an end to gladiatorial combat. Telemachus' stand led to martyrdom, but it changed a culture. Throughout history, similar stands made in Jesus' name yielded similar results. Though they often came at great cost, and transformation was not instantaneous, in the end, a culture was left better. Telemachus' brave act occurred 91 years after Christianity was legalized by Constantine, and 24 years after it was made the state religion of Rome by Emperor Theodosius I. Earlier Christians denounced other evils, such as abusive sexual mores. They insisted that sex be limited to marriage and, following the Jews, rejected abortion and infanticide. They treated women and slaves as the spiritual equals of men. As a result, woman and slaves became leaders in the church. Pliny the Younger, in a letter dated about 111, mentions deaconesses, and a slave was made a bishop of Ephesus in the early second century. Christians didn't kill baby girls, a practice common among the pagans. Nor did they pressure girls into early marriage, or Christian widows into remarriage. As a result, Christian churches had a higher percentage of women than did society at large. In fact, Christianity was held in contempt by the Romans as "a religion of women and slaves." The Church's response to slavery is more complex. Though the early Church did not outright oppose slavery, they opposed the abusive conduct normal to the slave trade, and often purchased slaves in order to free them. Eventually, as the implications of the Gospel's insistence on the spiritual and moral equality of all people sank in, medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas declared slavery a sin. Nonetheless, many Christians continued the horrible practice, particularly with the discovery of the Americas. Other Christians, most notably William Wilberforce and the Clapham Circle, actively sought the abolition of the slave trade. After decades of persistent effort in the face of opposition from cultural elites and an apathetic public, slavery was brought to an end in the British Empire. Similar examples can be found in other cultures. Christian missionaries led the fight against sati, the practice of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands, against the opposition of the Hindu elites in India. Native Chinese Christians fought against foot binding, the breaking of bones to compress the feet of girls, a trait considered desirable among the Chinese people. Christian diplomats saved Jews from the Holocaust, often bucking instructions from their home government and direct superiors. Many leaders and activists in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement faced beatings, dogs, lynchings, and fire hoses. Though these courageous actions led to the renewal of various aspects of those cultures, change was not immediate. Christians had to oppose cultures before change took place. Of course, they had no way of knowing whether or not their actions would bring change. Telemachus did not live to see the redemptive consequences of his courage. They acted because they had to, not because they knew their actions would work. As T.S. Eliot said, "For us there is only the trying. The rest is none of our business." Christians today must oppose cultural evils, such as the taking of preborn life, the buying and selling of preborn lives, the ideological sexual abuse of children, and the persecution of religious minorities. Though the rapid changes in our society are confusing and distressing, we must understand them if we are to know when, where, and how we must take a stand. So that we can join in the long history of Christian redemptive influence, the Colson Center is offering an in-depth study of our culture, particularly recent shifts in sex, gender, and identity, with the help of Dr. Carl Trueman's new book, Strange New World. For a donation of any amount to the Colson Center, we'll send you a copy of Dr. Trueman's book, an accompanying study guide, access to a four-week course with Dr. Trueman and Colson Center theologian-in-residence Dr. Tim Padgett, and access to Dr. Trueman's powerful presentation at last year's Wilberforce Weekend. To sign-up for this offer, simply make a donation of any amount to the Colson Center at www.breakpoint.org/april.

Big marijuana promised not to market to children. They are. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet with The Point. Legal recreational marijuana sales officially began this week in New Jersey. That's the same state where, on Christmas Day in 2020, a 3-year-old was admitted to a hospital ICU after he ate a dangerous amount of cannabis edibles. They were in a bag that looked like a package of Nerds candy. According to CNN, knockoff candy bags that actually contain THC edibles are a big problem. The New Jersey Poison Control Center reported that the number of kids poisoned with cannabis was six times higher in 2020 than just two years earlier. There are similar reports across the country. Marijuana lobbyists promise they don't market to kids, and that it's just a few bad apples selling edibles in kid-friendly packages. But making THC edible at all is a step towards marketing to kids, a genie that can't be out back into the bottle. As the nationwide march toward legalizing marijuana continues, the consequences of our culture's worst ideas will be paid by the most common victim: the kids.

Teens are not all right, and there's an underlying cause—the loss of meaning. At a recent gathering, Dr. Ryan M. Burkhart, Associate Dean of the Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at Colorado Christian University, noted that he and other counselors are seeing "treatment-resistant depression and anxiety." These counselors are seeing more young clients but are not seeing typical therapies bring the same results as in the past. One mark of this kind of despair is suicide. In the U.S., suicide increased by 30% between 2000 and 2018 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's pre-COVID-19. By 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, suicide was the runner-up cause of death for ages 10-14. As I stated yesterday, teens who claim they have "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness" have increased from 26% percent to 44%. It's such a concern that last fall the American Academy of Pediatrics deemed the mental health of youth a "national emergency." In his "The Parable of the Madman," Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared, "God is dead." He was not making an ontological claim, in the sense that God once lived but was now dead. Rather, the parable is full of observations of the consequences of a culture losing its divine reference point. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Nietzsche's remarkable description of meaninglessness echoes James 1:6: "The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind." In Nietzsche's parable, when those secular intellectuals who were gathered about the madman are shocked at his words, the madman proclaims, "I have come too early... my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves. Nietzsche penned "The Parable of the Madman" in 1882. Almost a decade earlier, in his "On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense," he pointed out that humans, deceived by pride, are limited by language in their ability to know. Decades later, postmodern theorists embraced these ideas and cast a deeper doubt on the ability to know at all. Their ideas first infected higher education, and then most of our society. Without God, there is no external reference point outside of ourselves. Nietzsche's description of a world untethered is now a picture of youth untethered. In his words, they've been "unchained from the sun," desperate for meaning, truth, identity, and ultimately, God. Of course, devout Christians can also struggle with despair, experiencing what John of the Cross described, in the 16th century, as a Dark Night of the Soul. Still, even when God feels distant, it matters that He is there. Where can young people turn in a society that treats God as, at best, an inward feeling and, at worst, not there at all? Apologists and Christian philosophers have discussed the cosmic and personal ramifications of a world without God. They warned that such a world affords no source for meaning. Now, for many, those predictions have become an existential reality. Behavior modification can treat symptoms, but not the underlying despair. In a Pew Research Center study released last November, only 15% of Americans mentioned faith as a "source of meaning"; outside of the U.S., the percentage drops to 5%. Members of the mental health community are recognizing the connection between meaningful faith and effective therapy. Last June in Scientific American, David Rosemarin wrote an opinion piece provocatively entitled "Psychiatry Needs to Get Right with God." In it, he argued that psychiatrists, the least religious of medical doctors, need to integrate spirituality into their treatment. As he put it, "The only group to see improvements in mental health during the past year were those who attended religious services at least weekly (virtually or in-person): 46 percent report 'excellent' mental health today versus 42 percent one year ago." According to the protocols of the mental health community, secular counselors are not to point clients to a particular faith. Still, they must begin to point clients to meaning. Dr. Ryan Burkhart and his student apply Victor Frankl's approach to psychology—a theory that encourages clients to search for meaning. Frankl, after surviving a Nazi concentr

Maria Baer visits with Ryan Bomberger about his upcoming presentation at the Wilberforce Weekend, May 10-13. Ryan has a rather unique perspective of the innate nature of Purpose. His biological mother was raped yet courageously gave him a chance to live and the beautiful gift of adoption. He was adopted at 6 weeks of age and grew up in a loving, multi-"racial" Christian family of 15. With siblings of varying ethnicities, he grew up with a great appreciation for diversity. Ten of the thirteen children were adopted in this remarkable family. His life defies the myth of the "unwanted" child as he was adopted, loved and has flourished. Today, he is an Emmy® Award-winning Creative Professional who founded The Radiance Foundation (TRF), a life-affirming 501c3, along with his wife, Bethany. He is a factivist, international public speaker, columnist, educator, broadcast media designer, producer and author of the powerful book, Not Equal: Civil Rights Gone Wrong. For more on the Wilberforce Weekend visit www.wilberforceweekend.org

In the warp-speed cycle of digital news, caring for our souls requires time in God's Word, time away from our devices, and a reminder that we're called to faithfulness, not success. In his book Every Moment Holy, Douglas Kaine McKelvey offers "A Liturgy For Those Flooded by Too Much Information." "We are daily aware of more grief, O Lord," he writes, "than we can rightly consider, of more suffering and scandal than we can respond to, of more hostility, hatred, horror, and injustice than we can engage with compassion. ".... remind us that we are but small and finite creatures, never designed to carry the vast abstractions of great burdens, for our arms are too short and our strength is too small. Justice and mercy, healing and redemption, are your great labors. "…. Give us discernment, to know when to pray, when to speak out, when to act, and when to simply shut off our screens and our devices, and to sit quietly in your presence, casting the burdens of this world upon the strong shoulders of the one who alone is able to bear them up. Amen."

America's teens are not all right. As Derek Thomas recently wrote in an Atlantic article entitled "Why American Teens are So Sad," From 2009-2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness" rose from 26 percent to 44 percent. [This] is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded. [Almost] every measure of mental health is getting worse, for every teenage demographic, and it's happening all across the country. What Thomas is describing goes far beyond typical adolescent angst. In fact, according to the National Institute of Health, other risky behaviors traditionally chalked up to adolescence—such as drinking and driving, fighting at school, and even underage sex—are significantly down. Nor can these declines in mental health be blamed on the pandemic or lockdowns. Rather, these were "pre-existing conditions" that, though certainly aggravated, were not caused by the social chaos of the last two years. Thomas suggests four converging cultural realities that are contributing to this crisis: social media, social isolation, the extra-stressful global situation, and today's parenting styles. Over a decade ago, psychologist Jean Twenge warned about the effect of smartphones on teenage brains. Since then, the prevalence of social media has unleashed new levels of comparison, exposure, and image problems on a demographic already wired to care too much about what their peers think. Instagram's own research found that while a third of teenage girls say the app "makes them feel worse," they cannot keep from logging on. Even so, writes Thomas, the biggest problem with social media might be not social media itself, but rather the activities that it replaces. [Compared] with their counterparts in the 2000s, today's teens are less likely to go out with their friends, get their driver's license, or play youth sports. And, of course, it also matters what teens are encountering on the screens that are such a big part of their lives. Even more than TV or print media, phones bombard teens with 24/7 coverage of the world's problems, creating a near-constant sense of fear and foreboding. These days, teens deal with more than just the stress of preparing for college. Alone in their rooms, they are worrying about the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, climate change, and whether they have been sufficiently "woke" on various issues. In response to all of the social chaos, many parents are choosing what Thomas calls an "accommodative" parenting style. It is very tempting for parents, instead of letting teens experience life's normal bumps and bruises, to insulate them. "If a girl is afraid of dogs, an 'accommodation' would be keeping her away from every friend's house with a dog, or if a boy won't eat vegetables, feeding him nothing but turkey loaf for four years" (which, he points out, is a true story). That strategy, sometimes called "lawnmower parenting," ultimately backfires. When every challenge on the path is mowed down, a child struggles to develop the resiliency necessary to confront the inevitable obstacles ahead. In the end, a world cannot be prepared for a child. A child needs to be prepared for the world. Every factor that Thomas identifies certainly contributes to the current mental health crisis among teens. However, there is more to consider. In his book, The Content Trap, Bharat Anand tells the story of the 1988 Yellowstone fire, infamously started by a single unextinguished cigarette. But Anand asks a critical question: Why that cigarette? After all, hundreds of cigarettes are dropped in Yellowstone every year. What was different this time? The answer, he argues, is not found by focusing on the spark—but the environmental factors that turned Yellowstone into a tinderbox. The extremely dry summer of 1988, the driest on record, combined with the park's controlled burn policy meant, as one former park superintendent put it, "We were a perfect setup to burn." Social media, parenting strategies, and world events are definite sparks for a mental health crisis (as are others such as the breakdown of the family and increased availability of substances to abuse), but it's the prevalent cultural worldview that makes devastating cultural wildfires inevitable. Our real cultural crisis is a catastrophic, culture-wide loss of meaning. Philosophers warned it was coming, as did social scientists, and now we are living with the existential results of a culture untethered from God, and therefore untethered from any fixed reference point for truth, morality, identity, and meaning. It is a tinderbox in which any spark, whether social media or addiction or lockdowns or something else, is destined to explode. It is also a tinderbox primed for a different kind of spark, one which can point people again to the God Who infused His world with meaning. This spark is Christ-changed people, shaped by redemption, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and armed with the truth and love abou

Maria opens BreakPoint This Week asking John for some insight into who Chuck Colson was. It's been 10 years since Chuck Colson's passing following a final message at a Wilberforce Weekend in 2012. Highlighting attributes he remembers about Chuck, John explains the legacy he gave to the Colson Center. Then, John and Maria explore how Florida is quickly becoming ground zero for the culture wars. John explains that a series of actions from the Florida Legislature and Governor DeSantis are causing sparks in the Sunshine State. To close, Maria asks John about the significance of a college professor's day in court after the professor refused to call on a student using the student's preferred pronouns. -- Recommendations -- These Precious Days By Ann Patchett The Secular Case for Christianity Common Sense - Bari Weiss Substack | By Tim DeRoche -- References -- Wilberforce Weekend>> Carl Trueman - Colson Center Offering in April>> Segment 1: Chuck Colson's Leadership One of the first projects after I joined the Colson Center team was a curriculum project called Doing the Right Thing. This film series reflected how Chuck understood those issues that plagued prison and the rest of our society. Upstream from the brokenness and evil was a lack of moral formation, an abandonment of right and wrong, and a neglect of virtue. In this film series, Chuck issued a clarion call for Christians to influence our communities with the Christian worldview. Christianity was, after all, a better way of being human BreakPoint>> Chuck Colson's Last Address At the 2012 Wilberforce Weekend, Chuck collapsed on stage. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital where, on April 21, he died. His final words may have been delivered with less energy than some of us were used to hearing from Chuck, but with no less lucidity or passion. BreakPoint>> Segment 2: Florida Rejects Math Texts For 'Indoctrinating' Kids? Florida called for textbook submissions from publishers in 2021 in accordance with a 2019 executive order from DeSantis aimed at eliminating Common Core standards in the state. The textbooks rejected "were impermissible with either Florida's new standards or contained prohibited topics." The 41% rejection rate was the highest in Florida's history. FoxNews Florida Senate passes bill to strip Disney's special self-governing status The Florida House still has to vote on the measure, which would dissolve the special taxing district that allows Disney to operate much like a local government. NBC>> Ron DeSantis takes his culture war to the next level (Gov. Ron DeSantis) has been outspoken in opposition to mitigation measures to slow the spread of Covid-19. (Florida was one of the last states to close down in the midst of the original outbreak in spring of 2020 and one of the first states to re-open after the initial wave.) He's championed civic literacy efforts aimed at teaching students the dangers posed by socialism and communism. "You have orthodoxies that are promoted, and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed," DeSantis has said of the moves. "We don't want that in Florida, you need to have a true contest of ideas, students should not be shielded from ideas and we want robust First Amendment speech on our college and university campuses." CNN>> Segment 3: Shawnee State: Professors must speak contrary to their beliefs or be punished In January, during a political philosophy class he was teaching, Meriwether responded to a male student's question by saying, "Yes, sir." Meriwether responded in this fashion because he refers to all his students as "sir" or "ma'am" or by a title (Mr. or Miss, for example) followed by their last name to foster an atmosphere of seriousness and mutual respect. After the class, the student approached Meriwether, stated that he was transgender, and demanded that the professor refer to him as a woman, with feminine titles and pronouns. When Meriwether did not instantly agree, the student became belligerent, circling around Meriwether and getting in his face in a threatening fashion while telling him, "Then I guess this means I can call you a c**t." Before walking away, the student promised to get Meriwether fired if he did not agree to the student's demands. The student then filed a complaint with the university, which launched a formal investigation. Meriwether offered to call the student by his first or last name only, but university officials rejected this and anything else that would allow him to speak according to his conscience and sincerely held religious beliefs. Instead, they formally charged him, saying "he effectively created a hostile environment" for the student. Later, they placed a written warning in his personnel file and threatened "further corrective actions" unless he articulates the university's ideological message. ADF>> Professor disciplined for refusing to use transgender student's pronouns to receive $400K in settlement In a statement, Shawnee State said the settlement was an "economi

According to The New York Times, some teens are choosing to keep their masks on, even after pandemic mandates end . The reason isn't because they fear Covid. It's due to anxiety. "The mask has offered teens a way to hide some of their anxiety symptoms and emotions from others, and wearing it has also made many of them feel 'normal' and 'like everybody else,'" writes Emily Sohn. The last two plus years have been tough on teenagers. Rates of Anxiety and suicidal thinking are both high post-pandemic, as is social media use. One psychologist described the "imaginary audience" with which many teens constantly deal: an invisible jury of peers scrutinizing their every decision. Only, in the age of social media, the audience isn't so "imaginary." Masks, by contrast, provide a degree of relief via anonymity. Even if teens feel the need to hide their faces, they were made for face-to-face interaction. The lack of it—whether from isolation or screens—is no way forward. We have to help students steward technology and their anxieties. A big part of that will mean investing in relationships that are out of the spotlight.

This week, the Colson Center has remembered our founder, Chuck Colson, on the 10th anniversary of his death. Though the Colson Center is part of Chuck's outsized legacy, we are not a memorial organization. We've often joked that if the Colson Center were only about playing a tape recorder of Chuck's commentaries, he would come back and haunt us from the grave. Chuck had a vision for the Church: that it would be the Church. And, he had a vision for the Colson Center: that it would serve and equip the Church to fulfill her calling. We're still as committed to that vision as we were when Chuck was with us. I'm constantly amazed at how prescient Chuck was. He foresaw many things that have, since his death, become realities. Today, I want you to hear from Chuck Colson about the necessity of courage in this cultural moment: The critical question in the West today is, "Can freedom survive where virtue isn't able to flourish?" A friend of mine who is a member of a good, strong evangelical church, met with his pastor to urge him to get more involved in some of today's worldview and cultural battles. The pastor drew back in his chair and said, "You know, I have one great regret about my ministry: that I got involved in the gay marriage debate. We lost several members over there." My friend was speechless as I would have been. What do you say to somebody who denies the clear teaching of Scripture or who in this case stands up for it, but then regrets it? Where was this man's courage? I wish I could say this was an isolated instance. It isn't, friends. We're navigating through rough waters in the culture today, and we're woefully unprepared. Oh, sure we have all kinds of information at our fingertips. Amazing technology, vast resources our forebearers could only dream of, but we're lacking something far more important: character. That's why on this morning, and for the next few weeks I want to talk about the building blocks of character: the four classic Greek virtues and the three Christian virtues. Today, we'll look at the first and I believe most important virtue, courage. Now courage is not a lack of fear. It's the willingness to do what you have to do in the face of your fear. Courage, Jerry Root and Stan Guthrie note in their book The Sacrament of Evangelism is the habit of saying yes to the right action, even at the risk of pain or loss. Courage never gives up. Courage sticks with the task until it's done. Courage faces one's fears and does the right thing in spite of them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of course, would be near the top of anybody's list of courageous Christians. He had the courage to defy the Nazis at the cost of his life. On his last day, Bonhoeffer held a brief service for his fellow prisoners. A contemporary who was there describes the scene. It's described in Eric Metaxas' wonderful book Bonhoeffer, which I strongly recommend. Bonhoeffer hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us." "Bonhoeffer came over to me," the man writes, "drew me aside, and he said, 'This is the end, but for me the beginning of life.'" Bonhoeffer and countless martyrs like him through the ages had the courage to stand up to evil in the name of Christ and pay the ultimate price. Do we have the courage to lay it all on the line? Do we have the courage to speak out for traditional marriage when we know we'll be called bigots and worse? Or would you have the courage to stand up at a school board meeting and speak against a curriculum that indoctrinates kids and sexual license? You have to prepare to be shouted down. Believe me, it takes courage to take an unpopular stand and risk our popularity, our reputations, and maybe even lose a few church members. Now I could be wrong. But the continuing assault on religious liberty is a test. If we lack the courage to defend our religious freedom, then we will lose all other freedoms as well. Remember this. However, it's easier to summon up courage when you know someone has your back. I learned this well. When I was a lieutenant in the Marines, I knew my men had my back and I had theirs—that they would have laid down their life for me. That inspired courage in me. I have to say, too, that when we act for goodness for truth, Jesus Christ has our back. He is the source of our courage, He who laid down his life for us. Ten years ago yesterday, Chuck Colson went to be with the Lord. We are grateful for his life, for the work of Christ to make Chuck a new creation, for his remarkable life of passion and leadership, and for the privilege of being part of his ongoing work and legacy.

Christian legal experts are bracing for the Biden administration to issue a reversal of a 2019 "conscience rule," which protected faith-based groups from being forced to violate their beliefs. To quote one Christian attorney, reversing the protection would create "an existential threat to religious-based employers," who would be forced to provide services, such as abortifacients or gender assignment surgery, or face fines, lawsuits and legal challenges that would drive them out of business. If they are to respond in a helpful way, Christians first need to remember the basics of religious liberty: It's for all individuals, it's the cornerstone of a free and democratic society, and it's the first freedom from which every other freedom springs. Respecting the right to conscience provides a setting in which both people and society can thrive. Remove it, and there's nothing to stop some future administration or regime from imposing its worldview on millions of people. Religious liberty might be the direct result of a Judeo-Christian worldview, but it's the birthright of every American—and it's worth fighting for.

Ten years ago today, Chuck Colson met Jesus Christ face-to-face in eternity. As many would note later, Chuck Colson died in a way fitting for a marine, with "his boots on." I was sitting on the stage behind Chuck as he delivered what would be his final speech. At the 2012 Wilberforce Weekend, Chuck collapsed on stage. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital where, on April 21, he died. His final words may have been delivered with less energy than some of us were used to hearing from Chuck, but with no less lucidity or passion. Here's Chuck Colson: My topic is the cultural environment today. Culture and a crossroads, which indeed it is, and what you've just witnessed with the Department of Health and Human Services attempting to impose a mandate on the Church, that the Church and Christian groups and religious organizations would have to provide insurance for things which violate our conscience and that we wouldn't be allowed conscience for exemptions. What's extraordinary is that there haven't been battles of religious liberty ever since the nation was founded and most of them have ended up in court decisions. Sometimes legislative. This is the first time in history, which is why Cardinal Wuerl here in Washington said, "This is the most serious invasion of the Church by government ever." This is the first time it's been done by a bureaucrat in a government agency simply writing it and then putting it out as law. Normally in a court case, you get a chance to argue both sides, but there wasn't a chance for two sides to be argued this time. It was done by executive fiat. This is a moment in which the Church has to learn how to defend itself against this sort of thing and do it in a way that is constructive with what we're witnessing in our culture today. The HHS mandate is but the tip of the iceberg. It's about the latest visible manifestation of a growing hostility towards Christianity mainly because—this has always been the case— government officials feel threatened by the power of the Church because we all worship a king higher than the kings of this Earth. And that's seen as a threat, and we're also seen as wanting to impose our views on people. Don't let them tell you that we don't propose to impose anything. We propose an invitation to the wedding feast to come to a better way of living, a better way of life. And it is the great proposal. We couldn't impose if we wanted to impose, and we don't want to impose in a democracy. You can't. So, we need to be very clear about who we are and what we do and why we do it. What we're seeing now is the full fruits that have come from 30 years of relativism, death of truth in the academy particularly and in public discourse, and the coarsening of public-discourse question of politics. Everybody looks at the elections and thinks the elections are going to settle this problem. Elections are important for who it is who serves in office. It makes a difference what kind of person that is and what that person believes. But elections can't solve the problem. We've got the problem that our culture has been decaying from the inside for 30 or 40 years, and politics is nothing but an expression of culture. So how do you fix the culture? Culture is actually formed by the belief system of the people, by the cult, which was what the Church has been historically. So if things are bad, I don't think it's going to be solved by election: It's going to be solved by us. You have a healthy cult, you have a healthy culture, have a healthy culture of healthy politics. So it comes right back to us. Look in the mirror: That's where the problem is. And if we can through the Church renew the Church too, really bring healthy cultural influence, then there's some hope that we can be changed. I think Eric is right that this is a moment. This is a moment when the time is right for a movement of God's people under the power of the holy spirit to begin to impact the culture we live in. It's desperately needed. This is why I've been spending so much time in recent years teaching biblical worldview because I think that's at the root of our problems. Once we can get that understood by the Church: that it is a worldview and we have to live it and express it and contend for it. Otherwise, it's not going to be. You'll see that continued deterioration of the culture and all that goes with it. So, I think the responsibility has to be taken by the Church for a movement that will bring back the authority and strength and winsomeness of the Church, which then in turn affects the culture. Chuck's final passion was to see the Church embrace the fullness of the Lordship of Christ and be the Church in this cultural moment. Many of us took these final words, delivered at the 2012 Wilberforce Weekend, as a calling. The Colson Center exists to carry this mission forward.

John and Shane reflect on who Chuck Colson was and the legacy he left in the Colson Center. A listener writes in asking for some context to the organization, noting that this is the 10th anniversary of Chuck's passing. John and Shane then provide some answers to how a public school parent can work to impact their community. A single-parent writes in asking how a parent can guide a student in the public arena noting the challenges in curriculum and ideology taught in public schools that oppose a Christian worldview.

As pressure continues to mount on institutions to accommodate the sexual revolution, it's no longer possible to avoid the issues or craft a "third way." Yet, colleges keep trying. Recently, Calvin University spun off a department to accommodate a lesbian staffer who wished to marry her same-sex partner, and the assistant professor who presided over the ceremony. The staffer quit after Calvin asked her to keep her "marriage" quiet. Writing at WORLD Opinions, Bart Gingerich points out that attempts by Christian colleges to thread this moral needle makes nobody happy and everyone upset, including donors and board members committed to Christian truth, and the LGBTQ students and staff committed to full affirmation. Over the last few years, other colleges have attempted similar flip-flops, for example, deciding to allow LGBTQ "romance" among students but not sex, then reversing the decision, then reversing the reversal…none of the attempts have gone well. It's time for Christian institutions that want to remain meaningfully Christian to make decisions, and when they do, we should remember what Jesus said about serving two masters.

Ten years ago this week, Chuck Colson went to be with the Lord. After his time in the White House and then in prison and then in leading the largest ministry to prisoners and their families in the world, the great passion of the last few years of Chuck's life was advancing a Christian worldview. He worked and prayed so that, as he often put it, the Church would be the church. One of the first projects after I joined the Colson Center team was a curriculum project called Doing the Right Thing. This film series reflected how Chuck understood those issues that plagued prison and the rest of our society. Upstream from the brokenness and evil was a lack of moral formation, an abandonment of right and wrong, and a neglect of virtue. In this film series, Chuck issued a clarion call for Christians to influence our communities with the Christian worldview. Christianity was, after all, a better way of being human: I have a peculiar habit in my life. I read the Bible every morning, but I also read The New York Times through clenched teeth. I have to. I do it because I write BreakPoint radio broadcasts every day, and I usually get half my BreakPoints out of The New York Times, out of some of the silly things they say. It's wonderful. I mean for a guy like me who's writing biblical commentary on public events The Times is indispensable. I should be paying twice as much for my subscription. But one morning I picked it up and—let me tell you what—I read the extraordinary Thomas Friedman, a great writer of The World Is Flat, a great thinker, very liberal, secular Jew. Thomas Friedman wrote a column about why America was number one in the world by all ratings and all polls and all standards and all measurements for years and years and years and all of a sudden it appears number 11 on the list. What happened? Everybody's talking about Newsweek's cover list of the most important and influential nations in the world, the best nations in the world. America's number 11. So, Friedman writes a column in which he restates the whole thesis of all of his books, which is that the world is flat. Everybody's got access to all the same resources and tools, and therefore we're all equal now. But here's what he says at the end about why America is number 11. This is the conclusion of his column: China and India have been catching up to America not only via cheap labor and currencies; they're catching up with us because they now have free markets like we do, education like we do, access to capital and technology. They alike in what we do. But most importantly—listen. Most importantly, they have values like our greatest generation: They have a willingness to postpone gratification questions. That's a Christian virtue, deferred gratification, paying your bills, providing for your kids in the future. In a flat world where everyone has access to everything, values matter more than ever. And listen to this coming from a secular Jew. Right now, the Hindus and Confucianists have more Protestant ethics than we do. And as long as that is the case, we will be number 11. All of you know that I spent my life, the last 35 years going into prisons. I love it. I have a passion for it: to bring the Gospel to prisoners who are absolutely loved. But I discovered early on that the reason the prisons were being filled wasn't all the sociological theories about crime that we hear generally. It was the fact studied at Harvard in 1986 by two great social scientists: the lack of moral training during the morally formative years. It hit me that we are raising a generation that lacks male role models. The family has broken down. These kids aren't learning character. Where does character come from? It comes from habits that you learn in the family first. That's the first basic structure that Aristotle once said is the first school of human instruction. It comes from associations that you become part of, where you find your identity—you find role models and other people. That's how character forms. You cannot teach character. All these courses going in public schools today about teaching character. It's a joke because you can't teach character. You learn character. You learn character by living with people who create an environment which is righteous where people live righteously in that environment. That's how you do it. So, I thought to myself, "This is really a problem." And I had had this experience at Harvard, and then I'd spoken at schools all across the country. I ended up speaking at the 2nd Marine Division where I started out as a platoon commander in the 1950s. The commanding general invited me back to give a speech on ethics. Grizzled-up old master sergeant stood up to me, and he said, "Mr. Colson, which is more important, loyalty or integrity?" Ah, got it! I wish I had thought about that when I was in the Oval Office. Whoa! They really got it. But the result of this, when I was realizing what was happening in the prisons, was I thought, "I've got to do som

One company is proposing an innovative digital solution for loneliness. "Replika" is an AI chat-bot created "for anyone who wants a friend with no judgment, drama, or social anxiety involved." The company makes audacious claims. "Feeling down, anxious, having trouble getting to sleep, or managing negative emotions?" the website asks. "Replika can help." Presumably, this is by filling a relational void: a virtual "friend," "mentor," "boyfriend," or "girlfriend" … whatever the user wants. If you think that's both weird and problematic, you're right. Replika promises the loneliest generation on record a technological answer that only people can deliver. It's a gimmick now, but what happens when the technology is perfected? What pornography is to lust, Replika could easily become to loneliness. Like pornography, it can never solve the underlying problem. Young people are hurting and longing for a better answer. There is one. Real friendship always exposes us to the risk of social anxiety, drama, or judgment … but it's worth it. The Church has a chance to model the real thing, so they'll never be fooled by a replica.

Evidence is mounting of possible war crimes by Russia and, on a vastly smaller scale, by Ukraine. We can be sure, given that every act of warring nations is documented on social media today, that the truth will come out. But where did the idea come from that some ways of fighting wars crossed some sort of civilized line? Who decided where that line should be drawn? Where did the very notion of "war crimes" come from? Union Major General Sherman, the general behind the infamous Sherman's March during the Civil War, famously said that "War is hell." International laws on war crimes are a historically recent innovation intended to mitigate how terrible and devastating war becomes. They are attempts to prevent war from descending entirely into hell, especially for non-combatants. In the West, the primary sources for laws governing how war should be waged are found in Just War Theory. The earliest idea that war should be governed and moderated, however, dates long before any formal formulation of Just War Theory. In Deuteronomy 20, Moses instructed the Israelites not to kill the women and children of their enemies. Much later, the Roman Republic would embrace three criteria for waging war: first, that it had to be waged for a legally sound reason, such as in response to aggression; second, that it had to be declared by someone legally authorized to do so; and third, that it had to be waged justly. As ethically innovative as that may sound, the Romans still had no problem using horrific tactics, such as rape, torture, enslavement, and terrorism, in their warfare. It was Christian thinkers, especially Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, who most fully developed the ideas governing if and how war was to be waged. This Judeo-Christian approach eventually influenced the formation of the code of chivalry in Medieval Europe. Like the injunctions in Deuteronomy 20, the code was eventually expanded to include the protection of women and non-combatants, with the ideal of the knight being a protector of the weak. Though in the throes of war, these ideals were rarely followed, the code held among the nobles. For example, if a knight unnecessarily killed another knight in combat, he could be charged with murder. This was not considered a war crime, however. In the wake of the brutality of the Spanish conquests in the Americas, thinkers such as 16th century Spanish theologian and jurist Francisco de Vitoria began to argue that war was never part of God's plan and could only be justified on the grounds of the common good. Thus, consideration of war and warfare shifted from a topic within theology to the emerging realm of international law. At the same time, the emergence of gunpowder armies and other military technologies made war increasingly destructive. As weapons became more powerful, the ability of armies to target civilians grew as well. This led to legal attempts in the 19th century to restrict warfare. The first international treaty on warfare was the 1864 Geneva Convention, which covered the treatment of sick and wounded prisoners of war. This was followed by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which also banned weapons such as poison gas, the killing of surrendering prisoners, looting, and the bombardment of undefended towns. The 1925 Geneva Protocol supplemented the ban on chemical weapons with a ban on biological weapons. Protections afforded to civilians were expanded in the 1949 Geneva Conventions. In 2008, the U.N. Security Council added rape and sexual violence to the list of war crimes. Although a few Germans were tried for war crimes after the first World War I, it was the Nuremberg Trials and the lesser known International Military Tribunal for the Far East after World War II that most fully established the idea of war crimes and holding violators accountable. Since 2002, such trials have been handled by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In the U.S., war crimes can be prosecuted using the 1996 War Crimes Act and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Despite all the conventions, treaties, and laws, war crimes continue to be a part of every military conflict and are often perpetrated by all sides. Heads of state and others have been prosecuted, from a range of countries, while others have escaped accountability altogether. It is important to remember that the U.S. has been guilty of war crimes, such as the violations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The very concept of war crimes is rooted in the Judeo-Christian understanding that in a deeply flawed world, war is at times a horrible necessity. However, the desired ends of nations, even if noble, do not justify the means. The waging of war, even if just, must not violate the inherent dignity of human beings. In other words, all is not fair in love and war, and to whatever extent we can control, war should not be hell.

In the midst of brutality, the war in Ukraine is revealing stories of courage, beauty, and human decency in the face of evil. The Polish city of Przemyśl is situated on Ukraine's western border. According to the BBC, over 4 million Ukrainians, about 10% of the population, have fled their country since the war's beginning. Poland has received more than half of them. What makes their kindness ever more incredible and significant is that during World War II, Ukrainian nationalist groups killed over 100,000 Poles in the region of East Galicia. This led to Polish reprisals and an ongoing cycle of violence, ethnic tensions which remained until quite recently. Today, this Polish city has been transformed into a refugee hub: locals giving their own time and resources to house and resettle those fleeing the war. As one veterinarian put it, "We have to help. It's our destiny." It's a beautiful reminder that there's something deeper than borders, political gridlock, or even ethnic tension: when other image bearers of God are seen and treated as neighbors.

-- www.wilberforceweekend.org -- Virginia Prodan grew up in Communist Romania. Unaware of the truth about her own family — including why her family never showed the slightest hint of love toward her — she discovered God's Truth and Love as a teenager. Virginia accepted the divine call to defend fellow followers of Christ against unjust persecution in an otherwise ungodly land as a human rights attorney. For this act of treason, she came within seconds of being executed under the orders of Ceausescu himself. How Virginia not only managed to defeat her enemies time and again, but helped expose the appalling secret that would lead to the demise of Ceausescu's evil empire is one of the most extraordinary stories ever told. BreakPoint This Week Co-Host and Wilberforce Weekend Emcee Maria Baer sat down with Virginia to discuss Virginia's session on forgiveness at the upcoming Wilberforce Weekend.

I'm Kathy Koch of Celebrate Kids here in Fort Worth, and I want to talk with you about how God made us good. I think God is good and God is a good Creator. And if children, teens, or adults don't know that, then it doesn't matter to them that they're created in His image. That's how my friend, Dr. Kathy Koch began her presentation at last year's Wilberforce Weekend event. In a remarkable talk, which many attendees identified as the highlight of the conference, Koch talked about something incredibly elusive in this cultural moment: a settled identity. In Psalm 139, verses 13 and 14 declare that we have been formed by God in our inward parts. It says in Psalm 139:13 that Father God knitted us together in our mother's womb. Knitting is a precise skill; the knitter knows before starting what he is making, or he'd better not start. Otherwise he'd have a mittens-scarf-hat-afghan sweater thing. The size of the stitch and the needle, the color of the yarn, and the design of the creation is known before the knitter begins. For years, Dr. Kathy Koch has taught the truth about God's design of human beings, especially how to help children grasp who they are. Tomorrow, she joins the Lighthouse Voices Series to speak about how parents, educators, and mentors can secure the hearts of children for God. The Lighthouse Voices Series is sponsored by Focus on the Family and the Colson Center. If you live in the Holland, Michigan area, please join us in person. If not, please join us online for the live stream. Childhood matters. In our culture, children are too often the victims of adults pursuing their own happiness. If children are to experience their full potential, they must learn to see themselves as the image bearers they are. How can we point children to God? How can we help them understand who they are when there are so many competing voices? How can we help them emerge as adults, stewarding their gifts and talents for the glory of God? How can they grow up to be who God created them to be? Tomorrow night, Dr. Kathy will share three essential beliefs and three communication approaches that can help us secure our children's hearts for God. You'll appreciate her upbeat instruction, her practical and realistic ideas, and her tremendous speaking ability. The verse that revolutionized my understanding of God's creative intent is the end of Psalm 139:14 where David writes on behalf of God: My soul knows very well that I am a wonderful work of the creative intent of God. A fearfully and wonderfully creation made in His image. Dr. Kathy Koch is founder and president of Celebrate Kids, and is one of the best speakers I have ever heard. She is practical, relevant, and gives a results-oriented approach that's grounded in a Christian worldview. She helps parents, grandparents, teachers, and anyone caring for kids do so in a way that's engaging and honoring of the image bearers that children are. Dr. Kathy's presentation in our Lighthouse Voices series will guide us to secure children's hearts. Her talk will be practical, powerful, and impactful. I hope you'll register to attend, either in person or through the live stream, tomorrow, Tuesday April 19, at 5:45pm for those in the Holland Michigan area, and at 7pm for the livestream. To register visit www.colsoncenter.org/events

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, John Stonestreet introduces a sermon given by Chuck Colson from a Prison in Michigan in 2010. Nearly every Easter, Chuck visited a prison to give the Gospel. In this presentation we hear why, and the significance of Easter to Chuck Colson.

John and Maria discuss new findings in teen sadness and what it means for culture. They also discuss a recent podcast by Jen Hatmaker and what it means to misunderstand what church is and what church is for. To close, John explains the landscape of a recent BreakPoint commentary on the roots of Easter. He shares how Easter is a pivotal moment in history that changed the course of humanity. -- In-Show Mentions -- Segment 1: New York City subway shooting attack timeline Frank R. James, the 62-year-old man accused of popping a smoke canister in a crowded New York City subway car before opening fire during the Tuesday morning rush hour, is in police custody after a good Samaritan spotted him walking down a Manhattan sidewalk in broad daylight Wednesday. In 30 hours between the attack and his arrest, investigators obtained and distributed images of the suspect in the hope that the public could help catch him. They searched a storage unit and apartment linked to him in Philadelphia, which he had spoken of in numerous videos posted to a now-disabled YouTube channel. And he may have taunted investigators by calling in the tip line to report himself, according to law enforcement sources, even as a security camera technician spotted him in the East Village and turned him in. FoxNews>> Why American Teens Are So Sad The United States is experiencing an extreme teenage mental-health crisis. From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel "persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness" rose from 26 percent to 44 percent, according to a new CDC study. This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded. The government survey of almost 8,000 high-school students, which was conducted in the first six months of 2021, found a great deal of variation in mental health among different groups. More than one in four girls reported that they had seriously contemplated attempting suicide during the pandemic, which was twice the rate of boys. Nearly half of LGBTQ teens said they had contemplated suicide during the pandemic, compared with 14 percent of their heterosexual peers. Sadness among white teens seems to be rising faster than among other groups. The Atlantic>> Derek Thompson on This Week in Startups>> Segment 2: What is Church? With Jen Hatmaker 1999: 70% of US adults said they belonged to a religious institution. 2020: It fell to 47%. Why are people leaving & where are they going? Is the church experience still relevant & what is its future? Jen Hatmaker Youtube>> Is Easter a Pagan Holiday? Most Christians consider Easter to be a sacred and joyous celebration of Christ's resurrection. But what about the claim that Easter and its accompanying traditions originated from a pagan spring celebration? BreakPoint>>

One of my all-time favorite B.C. comic strips has two guys talking. "I hate the term Good Friday," says one. "Why?" says the other guy. "My Lord was hanged on a tree that day," the first guy replies. "But if you were going to be hanged on that day," his friend says, "and He volunteered to take your place, how would you feel?" "Good," the first guy replies. And there it is. Today marks the greatest act of love in the history of the universe: "he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). Today on very a special BreakPoint podcast, we air four of Chuck Colson's classic BreakPoint commentaries reflecting on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the day that, as he said, tells "the truth about everything."

Today, on Good Friday, we remember, honor, and reflect on the God who entered the world of human suffering on our behalf. "I thirst." Only John's Gospel records these words. They were uttered by Jesus, we're told, not as a guttural physical response, but with intention: "Knowing that all was now finished," Jesus said, "I thirst" in order to fulfill the Scriptures (John 19:28). And yet, we ought not think these words are manufactured or insincere either. Earlier in His ministry, Jesus had, on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, "stood up and cried out, 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:37). "The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:13–14). And now, on the cross, He who said these words was Himself thirsty. Why are we told this? Why is the fact that Jesus thirsted important? The world changed on All Saints Day in 1755. In Lisbon, Portugal, a 10-minute earthquake, followed by a tsunami and fires, killed an estimated 60,000 people, many crushed by collapsing churches where they had gathered to celebrate that Christian holy day. According to moral philosopher Susan Neiman, for many Western intellectuals this incident of natural evil proved that God could no longer be trusted. The French philosopher Voltaire offered scathing words in a poem: "Are you then sure," he wrote, "the power which would create The universe and fix the laws of fate, Could not have found for man a proper place, But earthquakes must destroy the human race?" And so in the modern era, trust moved from God to man. And it seemed to work: The next few centuries were marked by technological advances, scientific progress, and scholarly criticism of the Bible. However, the peak of modernism was the 20th century, which revealed that trust in man was badly misplaced: the mechanized slaughter of millions in two world wars, Communism, Auschwitz, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. So where do we turn now if we can't trust God or man? The cross directly addresses this world of moral and natural evil: As the prophet Isaiah foretold, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). The cross proves that God is not aloof from human suffering as Voltaire had imagined, nor will human evil have the final say. Our God once thirsted, like we do. He bled, as we do, in this existence of fallen people and a fallen world. In Christ, God entered the world of human suffering, suffered Himself, defeated suffering and now has the scars to prove it. Nearly two centuries after Voltaire, theologian Edward Shillito, offered a poem with a very different take on the suffering we experience. Here are two stanzas of that poem: "If we have never sought, we seek Thee now; Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars; We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow; We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars. . . "The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak; They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone." Today on Good Friday, we remember, we worship and proclaim this God, Jesus of the scars. To Him be all glory and praise forever and ever. Amen. And before I leave you today, I want to invite you to come to BreakPoint.org for a free pdf that the Colson Center team has prepared on the seven last sayings of Christ from the cross. It's a beautiful booklet, with reflections from our team and sacred art to help you reflect this Easter season on what Jesus suffered and said for our benefit. Again, it's at BreakPoint.org.

In the church calendar, the Thursday before Easter is called Maundy Thursday. It's set aside to remember the last supper Jesus shared with his disciples. The word "maundy" comes from the Latin word for command. At this supper. Jesus commanded His disciples to love and serve one another. And then he demonstrated what he meant by washing their feet. And let's not forget: This was the supper remembering Passover, when the Jews remember God rescuing His people from Egypt, as described in Exodus. At this supper, Jesus revealed himself as the fulfillment of that event. It's His broken body and shed blood we are to remember. So is Christianity service or salvation? This divided the church in the 20th century and still does today. The answer is, it's both. On the same night, Jesus commands us to remember that we need rescue by His broken body and spilled blood, and to show we have been rescued by loving and serving each other.

"Jesus would've baked the cake." "Christians hate LGBTQ people." "You're on the wrong side of history" "Why can't you let them be 'their true selves'?" "That's just your truth, not mine." And, perhaps most painful, especially when it comes from a friend or family member: "If you love me, you'd accept me for who I am." All of the slogans that leave Christians silent or shamed today are, at root, different ways of saying the same thing – that truth and love are incompatible. For people to tell the truth, especially when it comes to issues of sexuality and gender, is to be unloving and intolerant. And, to love someone is to affirm their choices. There's a uniquely "Christian" version of these slogans, too. Taking a moral stand, we are told, especially on questions so culturally controversial, is to distract from the Gospel. Instead, the Church must become more welcoming and avoid anything that makes people feel excluded from the Church. After all, we are told, isn't the Gospel really about inclusivity? Today, of all the days of Holy Week, directly confronts this mentality. Maundy Thursday is set aside on the Church calendar to remember the Last Supper. The word "maundy" comes from the Latin word for "mandate," or "command." At this first celebration of Communion, Jesus gave His disciples "a new command," that they should love and serve each other. To demonstrate what He meant, He picked up a basin of water and a towel and washed their feet. To fully understand His words and actions, recall that at this "Last Supper" and first Communion, Jesus and His disciples were obeying God's original command, given to all Jews, to remember the Passover. God's people were to never forget how they were rescued from slavery in Egypt. For Jesus to issue a "new" command was an audacious thing to do, especially given how significantly God's original command stood in Israel's history and identity as a people. Jesus, however, went even further than merely adding instructions to an old celebration. Now, rather than remembering how the angel of death "passed over" those homes with lamb's blood on their doorposts, they were to remember His broken body and His shed blood. Ultimately, the new command was to remember a new rescue, and how, through Christ's death, death is not merely avoided but finally defeated. Since at least the mid-20th century, the American Church has been divided over whether it should be primarily about proclaiming truth or about serving others. More recently, the volume in this debate has significantly increased. The Lord's Supper and Jesus' "new" command remind us that this is a false dichotomy, an unnecessary choice to make. Truth and love need never be separated and should never be separated. On the same night Jesus when commanded us to remember how His broken body and shed blood rescues us from sin (that's the truth), He commanded us to demonstrate our new life by serving others (that's love). We need not choose between truth and love. In fact, we must not choose. They always go together, because they are both grounded in the same Source, or specifically, the same Person. Jesus embodied truth and love, not only in the event we commemorate this day, but every event we remember this Holy Week. He is truth. He is love. And, He has risen. Indeed.

John and Shane discuss what a worldview is and if it can shelter racist sentiments. John gives a full explanation of worldview, and explains how the concept is both helpful and challenged in this cultural moment. Then Shane asks John to explain how we know Adam is a historical figure. A listener writes in because a pastor he knows presents Adam as an idea inside Scripture. To close, John explains an interesting trend in the United States where in some cases we're outpacing Europe in progressive actions. A listener asks for some explanation on the culture trends that are creating fertile soil for secular ideas.

Quantum theory boggles the mind. As science journalist John Horgan writes, quantum theory is "science's most precise, powerful theory of reality. It has predicted countless experiments, spawned countless applications. The trouble is physicists and philosophers disagree over what it means, that is, what it says about how the world works." At the core of the disagreement is what matter consists of at the quantum, or the smallest, level. At that size, matter's properties change when we try to observe it, even—amazingly—because we try to observe it. That's led to over a century of frustrated efforts to understand exactly what the fundamental "stuff" of reality is. It's not that these tiny things aren't real; it's that we can't figure out what they're like. At the same time, quantum theory has proven explanatory power. A theological parallel is the Trinity. We can't comprehend exactly how the Godhead functions, but that doesn't mean it's not real. As C.S. Lewis wrote back in 1952, if Christianity is true, it would be "at least as difficult as modern physics." And, we could add, just as rational.