Breakpoint

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the global economy, sparked fears of world war, and pumped gas prices to record highs. There are personal costs, too. Aside from the lives already lost in the fighting, the conflict in Ukraine has revealed a conflict of interest at the heart of an increasingly common practice. In an article at The Atlantic, Alison Motluk described how, in recent years, Ukraine has become "an international surrogacy hub." Prospective parents from the U.S., China, Germany, Australia, and other countries have rushed to take advantage of Ukraine's lax surrogacy laws, hiring less-wealthy women there to gestate their children. By some estimates, around 2,500 such arrangements are made each year in Ukraine. One large fertility clinic in Kyiv reported that they expect 200 surrogate babies to be born in the next three months. None of the "intended parents" involved foresaw a Russian invasion. Like COVID-19 did in early 2020, the war has "disrupted the supply chain," something you say until you realize the product is human beings. the war has "disrupted the supply chain," something you say until you realize the product is human beings. In the last few weeks, surrogate mothers across Ukraine have been forced to choose between doing what's right for themselves and their families, and following the contractual demands of paying "parents" thousands of miles away. Many of these women have refused to move since that would separate them from loved ones in harm's way. Others fled after the clinics in charge of their pregnancies were forced to shut down. Still others are debating whether to seek refuge in other countries, knowing their babies' legal status and ultimate fates will be uncertain. As Motluk writes, "Some people in wartime can turn all of their attention to family and the war effort, but surrogates cannot. Even if they defy pleas to go to places of safety, they carry their work with them, inside their body. … The reality is that the interests of the surrogate and the interests of the parents don't always align. War just makes it that much more stark." Of course, there's a third party whose interests often aren't considered, particularly in the media coverage: the unborn babies. Where are their rights? What say do they have in all of this? Who will they call "mommy" and "daddy"? If they make it to their intended buyers, what will they think of being the result of a risky commercial transaction? And if they don't make it "home," what fate awaits them? Maybe something similar to the dozens of surrogate babies who were stranded in Ukraine in 2020 after COVID-19 hit. All of this reveals one of the central problems with our limited ethical deliberations over artificial reproductive technologies, such as surrogacy (especially surrogacy across national borders and between people from such disparate socioeconomic backgrounds): we tend to assume best-case scenarios. Moral dilemmas, however, rarely happen in a best-case scenario. That's not how the world works. The hardest decisions we make in life are during times of chaos and conflict—when illness, financial hardship, or family trouble make it incredibly hard to do the right thing, or even know what that is. We've approached surrogacy as if the women contracted to carry the children are always informed, never under financial pressure, protected by contracts that can handle extenuating circumstances such as war or pandemics, that the wishes of the intended "parents" never conflict with their best interests, that no lasting emotional bonds to the baby will be formed, that no coerced abortions will ever happen—and of course, that no one's country is invaded. When any of these assumptions prove wrong, a terrible human cost is exacted. Recently, my colleague Shane Morris interviewed pro-life author and speaker Stephanie Gray Connors on the Upstream podcast about her new book Conceived by Science. The book and the conversation detail the ethical problems with both in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy. One of the principles Stephanie emphasizes is that good desires don't justify immoral actions. It's natural for couples to want children of their own and tragic when they can't conceive or carry them. Still, that is no license to bring children into the world through any means, including technologies that treat children as a commercial product and another human as a supplier or that abandon children or "excess" embryos. The unfolding crisis for surrogate mothers in Ukraine is a sad reminder of what happens when people are treated as instruments rather than image bearers, as means instead of ends. But ultimately, it's the children who pay for our failed transactions.

John and Shane discuss structural racism, how should Christians respond. They also explore the wide landscape of Disney movies, especially noting recent films that are problematic for a Christian worldview. To close, they field a challenging dilemma from a listener who is weighed down by an in vitro fertilization situation.

In his 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, sociologist Christopher Lasch argued that as the bonds of religious identity and family erode, Americans were increasingly looking inward for security and meaning. In such a culture, feelings and subjective experiences aren't just considered the most important thing in the world: They're considered the most accurate view of the world. We see that played out today, where special social status is awarded to people perceived as victims. In a secular culture increasingly hostile to Christianity, one a person's negative experience at Church or disdain for Christianity is elevated, and quickly believed,, even if that perception is false, or at least uncommon. As Lasch described, "the contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security." In such a climate, Christians must be quick to repent and quick to invite others into the abundant life Christ offers. If Christians have found peace, it's by God's grace, and our task is to invite the lost to come and find it, too.

Sir Isaac Newton, in a letter written in 1675 to fellow scientist Robert Hooke, wrote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Chuck Colson was one of those giants for many of us, and it is our privilege to steward his legacy at the Colson Center. In fact, Chuck believed that his most important legacy, more than any organization or his many books, would be people. That's why he started what he called the Centurions Program, something that continues today under a different name, the Colson Fellows program. Here's Chuck Colson, in his own words, on the important vision he had for this program, which continues today: I have a burning passion—it's the first item on my prayer list every day— and that's to see a movement of Christians raised up from the churches to defend truth in the marketplace of ideas and to live out the Gospel. Nothing less than this kind of an awakening can possibly save our quickly deteriorating culture. That's why I'm now spending all of my time working at BreakPoint and the Colson Center. One of my major projects is developing Christian leaders who can understand and defend a biblical view of all of life. We call this the Centurions Program. For the past six years we have brought 100 of the best and brightest into this year-long teaching effort, to study under some of the best minds in the Christian world. It's demanding: We read books together, view movies, and critique them; do a lot of teaching online; and have three residencies during the year in Lansdowne, Virginia, near our offices. Our Centurion graduates are like the Marines or the Navy Seals who are on the front lines of the next wave of leaders. Can this work? Just two weeks ago I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a rally on behalf of the Manhattan Declaration. It was organized by the Catholic Archbishop of New Mexico, Michael Sheehan, and a former congressman named Bill Redmond, who is a Centurion graduate. You can imagine my thrill when I walked into the convention center to see 1,600 participants. And they were on fire! They were there to learn biblical worldview, to learn how to defend the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty, to learn how to become activists! There were representatives from across the denominational spectrum: Southern Baptists, Nazarenes, Assemblies of God, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics. The Church had come together. And all of this was organized by one gutsy archbishop and one Centurion graduate. They in fact have built a powerful network across the state of New Mexico. So yes, it can be done. And our Centurions are doing a whole variety of important tasks across the spectrum. Like Jon Blankmeyer, who founded a safe home for girls rescued from forced prostitution. Josue Delgado, a hospital chaplain who teaches Emergency Medical Technicians on how to build stronger marriages. Kathy Peele, who founded a group to help mothers under distress, and so many more. By the time they are certified, Centurions know how to write, discuss, and teach Christian worldview in all sorts of settings. They know how to create God-honoring culture through the arts, media, literature, and business. They're able to debate ethical challenges with medical professionals, advocate human rights, and develop tomorrow's leaders by raising children grounded in biblical values. In short, they learn to defend Truth in an age in which many believe such a thing does not exist. Look, folks, the reason the Church today is having so little impact is too many Christians view their faith only in terms of a personal relationship with Jesus. But Christianity does not stop with salvation; that's only the beginning. We've got to learn how to present our worldview in a winsome way. And if we don't do this, it simply dooms our churches to isolation and irrelevance—just when our culture desperately needs the hope of the Gospel more than ever. After Chuck's death in 2012, the program he started as the Centurions Program was renamed as the Colson Fellows Program. I think Chuck would be ecstatic that, this year, over 750 Christians from across the country, and even around the world, have been studying worldview, theology, and culture in the Colson Fellows Program, and are currently planning to apply what they've learned in the time and place God has called them. If you desire to make a similar impact in your community for Christ, consider studying with the Colson Fellows program next year. With over 60 regional cohorts around the country, there is likely a cohort in your region. If not, there are online cohorts offered as well. Either way, you'll find a deeper understanding of truth and be better equipped to live out your faith in this cultural moment in whatever calling and vocation God has put before you. For more information, visit www.colsonfellows.org.

According to Pew Research, roughly 79% of Americans agree that there are major differences in the viewpoints held by different generations. The gaps are significant, but there's reason for hope. According to a report outlined in Christianity Today, younger generations are eager for more from church. Evangelicals under 40 are twice as likely as others to say they want more substance from the pulpit. That's one reason why the Colson Center is offering a special tool to help you connect with the generations in your church. The Pray for Me Campaign, headed by my friend Tony Souder, is a simple idea: Connect every student with three or more "prayer champions" across multiple generations. These mentors regularly pray for students, encouraging them in their spiritual walk. Already active in over 700 churches, 42 states, and more than 17 denominations, the Pray for Me Campaign is a practical tool for bridging a generational divide. We want to give you this resource in exchange for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center. To receive this resource simply visit colsoncenter.org/february.

It's not easy or comfortable to talk about the ethics of assisted reproduction. But too much is at stake not to. Artificial reproductive technologies are fraught with moral, ethical, and practical dilemmas. This includes technologies already widely accepted and practiced in our culture (and even our churches), technologies such as surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, and sperm donation. How these technologies are increasingly employed also goes largely unquestioned. For example, much of the demand for both international commercial surrogacy and for legalizing commercial surrogacy in the United States is now coming from same-sex couples who, having chosen a sterile relationship, demand the right to have children. There's also been a number of social adjustments made in order to reimagine reproduction and family life, such as changing the legal definition of the word "parent." All of this demonstrates just how much our technological abilities have outpaced our ethics. For the most part, the extent of our ethical deliberation has been reduced to two questions: Can we do this? And, do we want to do this? If the answers to these questions are "yes," the ethical case is closed, and the conclusion is that we should do this. In fact, the editorial team of the Colson Center recently recognized a trend in the significant amount of feedback we receive anytime we broach these difficult topics in a commentary, podcast, or short course. With rare exception, nearly every comment or question (especially the critical ones) has to do with the will and desires of the adults involved, not the rights and well-being of the children involved. For example, we are assured that couples who pursue assisted reproduction have good intentions, and anyone who suffers with infertility should be able to consider any and all available options, without judgment. Others wonder why, since we claim to be pro-life, we are critical of certain technologies that make it possible for couples to have children. Most ask if we have considered how painful it is to desire children but struggle to conceive. We have. The pain of infertility is real and deep, and the desire for children is natural, inherent, and good. It's a tragedy whenever someone who embraces this desire is unable to experience it. At the same time, we question the use of certain artificial reproductive technologies. Ours is a culture in which adult happiness is prioritized over the rights of children, both in the taking and the making of preborn life. It's as if the well-being of the children who may result from such technologies aren't even a consideration. It's as if they are the desired ends that justify any means. It's as if any innovations or experiments having to do with family structure, or the procreative process, are justified as long as the adults involved get what they want. To be clear, infertility is so personal and painful that the only reason to address the ethical and theological problems inherent to some forms of assisted reproduction is if much is at stake. After all, it is more than a little uncomfortable to discuss the ethics of a technology with someone, especially a friend or family member, who believes it could deliver what they want most in the world. Though some people do employ assisted reproduction after parsing out what is ethically acceptable from what is ethically problematic, too many operate from only good intentions and broken hearts. Good intentions, however, are not enough. Refusing to talk about these technologies to protect the feelings of adults won't end what is a growing human rights crisis, especially when so many people—Christians included—are unaware there's a crisis at all. Many people don't realize, for example, that the sperm donation industry is outrageously unregulated. In some areas, it's not only legal but common for donors to father dozens and dozens of children who, in the end, may be legally prevented from learning about their father or their half-siblings. Many don't realize the trauma inflicted on surrogate mothers and babies who have bonded physically and emotionally for nine months before being separated shortly after birth, robbing that child of the right to his or her birth mother. Many don't know that surrogate moms lose custodial rights to their babies or that their names aren't listed on their babies' birth certificates. Many don't realize that commercial surrogacy is banned in much of the Western world and many developing nations because of how it enables the exploitation of women. Many don't know that where commercial surrogacy is legal, it is a booming industry, primarily because wealthy Western couples keep impoverished women pregnant, underpaid, and away from their own families. Many also don't know how common it is for companies in the U.S. to lure college women into the incredibly dangerous process of freezing their eggs by promising an enormous fee. Many don't realize that an estimated one million embryos —tiny human be

Covenant College Professor of Theology Kelly Kapic has written a new book called You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News. Nobody likes the idea of "limitations." And that's for obvious reasons. A core piece of the American dream is to always fly higher, do more, and never let up off the gas pedal. As Kelly argues though, we sometimes internalize that idea even as Christians. As a result, too many of us go to bed exhausted and distracted. It's easy to have this underlying feeling that, at the end of the day we just didn't do enough for God. The good news is that there's a solution: we need to recover the God-given idea of human limitations.

According to the Pew Research Center, the U.S. has the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households. Almost a quarter of U.S. children under 18 live with one parent. Of course, there are many heroic single parents courageously committed to raising their children. Still, decades of research show how costly it is for so many. Children of unmarried parents, on average, do worse in school, have poorer emotional and physical health, are more likely to commit crimes, and are more likely to have children out of wedlock themselves. The sexual revolution decoupled sex from marriage while insisting "the kids will be fine." Well, they're not. Christians must speak into this issue with truth and love, especially in a society that fosters adults to seek happiness at the expense of kids. Redefining and reinventing family structures, parenting, and marriage are having horrible consequences. On Tuesday, March 15, we are partnering with Focus on the Family to address this topic. Katy Faust of Them Before Us will teach how Christians can stand for the rights of children. Register for the live stream at Colsoncenter.org/events.

Earlier this year, Kelsey Ichikawa of Nautilus magazine raised an important question: Is virtual reality harming the cognitive development of children? As they grow, kids rely on years of practice to develop basic levels of coordination. The process of "sensory integration," where sight, balance, orientation, and touch are integrated into a seamless neurological experience is a "long and elaborate process of development," writes Ichikawa, "that begins before birth and extends into early adulthood." One of the reasons young kids perform terribly in the virtual world is that they have yet to master those basic skills in the real world. This has led some experts to question if hours spent playing as an avatar could shortchange the process, leading to developmental issues later in life. So far, the jury is still out. "When you enter the virtual world, the rules of sensory experience change, which could impact kids' development," says Swiss neuroscientist Jenifer Miehlbradt; "Maybe it's totally safe, or maybe it's not. Either way we need to know a lot more about what happens to them when they slip into avatar." Researchers won't have to wait long for data. According to Bloomberg, more than two-thirds of all U.S. kids between the ages of 9 and 12 play "Roblox," a massive, multiplayer online game that lends itself to VR. Immediately after going public, the game was valued at $41 billion, making it an overnight competitor with juggernauts like Nintendo and Electronic Arts. While you don't have to use VR to play Roblox, millions do. Their experience could give researchers a baseline to test their theories, but with a painfully obvious catch. Any harm will have already been done. As it develops at a breakneck pace, VR is already creating other ethical dilemmas. For example, despite developers' best efforts, games like Roblox can fall victim to lewd or predatory content, as the BBC covered in February. As users upload content, a "small subset" find creative ways around built-in parental safety controls. It's a problem as common as the internet, but with dramatically higher stakes. VR is a powerful technology. University of Texas at Austin researcher Jakki Bailey found that immersive virtual reality far outpaces other digital media like TV or standard computers when it comes to creating a sense of "presence." That's exactly the purpose it was designed for. "It's why even most adults have trouble stepping off a gangplank in immersive VR despite knowing that in reality, an office carpet lies just below," writes Kelsey Ichikawa. But like any technology, that immersive power should raise questions. Some are Class 1 questions or questions that come up when technology doesn't work perfectly. What happens, for example, if VR safety protocols can't filter out disturbing content? But the more powerful dilemmas are Class 2 questions or "What happens if this technology does work perfectly?" What if we create such a seamless virtual experience that it's indistinguishable from real life? What if we spend more time there than in real life? What if kids can instantly connect with anyone on the internet in a way that to them seems completely real? For questions like these, simple answers aren't enough. Christians need to think critically here because, like all technology, VR needs to be carefully stewarded. On one hand, it has the potential for great good: medical applications, seamless business meetings, and just the fun of trying new things in virtual space. As God's image bearers, we were designed to build, innovate, create, and explore. As we've said before on BreakPoint, "God is no Luddite." But we should also exercise caution. Our bodies aren't an accidental part of who we are. In an age that increasingly downplays physical aspects of reality, elevating our quasi-spiritual projects of self-creation, God's view of our bodies is critical. We live in the most interconnected age in human history, yet people are lonely. We've forgotten that sharing simple things such as food, hugs, eye contact, fellowship, and physical proximity are essential aspects of living life together as humans made in God's image. This especially matters for children, who are at risk of losing the normal interactions of life. Some have never experienced them in the first place. As early adopters, they may gain the most from our new technologies, but they also have the most to lose.

Is the invasion of Ukraine a sign of the end times? What are the end times and how are Christians called to respond? John and Maria unpack the Ukraine crisis and how both Christians and the secular world are interpreting the events as an omen of the end of the age. Maria then asks John for clarity on the new Florida bill that protects young children from being exposed to sexual ideology in grade school. John explains the landscape of the culture and how and why many are responding the way they are. To close, John and Maria discuss a pair of recent commentaries and how Christians are called to this cultural moment.

Is your worldview big enough? Everything at the Colson Center, from the Point and BreakPoint commentaries to podcasts to Wilberforce Weekend brings clarity on culture from a Christian worldview. But the goal isn't just to think clearly. It's also to live in an intentionally redemptive way. And nothing gets in the way of that more than a truncated view of the Gospel. You might call it a "two-chapter" worldview, one focused only on sin and salvation but doesn't take seriously the biblical realities of creation and restoration. Creation helps us see God's intent; restoration puts our personal salvation in larger context of Christ's work in history. A two-chapter Gospel simply isn't big enough for this cultural moment. What if you could spend nine months building the worldview "muscles" needed to make sense of the culture and, working and studying with others, develop a plan to live a life of Christian influence grounded in the story of Scripture? The Colson Fellows program is a regionally based (or online) deep dive into a robust Christian worldview. There are cohorts in over 60 cities and online. Colson Fellows can be found in state legislatures, board rooms, schools, medical research, prisons, pulpits, dinner tables, racial reconciliation efforts...in other words, in every area of life. And that's the vision: everyday Christian leaders, all across culture, with a clear vision for how God can use them in this cultural moment. Learn more at colsonfellows.org.

Babies aren't popular, right now. In fact, on average, Americans have never had fewer children as we did in 2020. Of course, that was also the year the pandemic began, something that historically, like war and recession, tends to empty maternity wards. The decline in our nation's birth rate, however, didn't begin with COVID-19, and there's little reason to believe it has turned around in the last year and a half. The current decline goes back a while now, and didn't reverse when the economy boomed in the second half of the 2010s. In fact, the dwindling U.S. birth rate seems strangely indifferent to what's happening in the stock market or the headlines. It's almost as if, no matter our financial or political situation, Americans are simply choosing to have fewer and fewer children year by year. And, it's not because they can't afford them. It's because they don't want them. That's the conclusion of a new study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which found that economic factors such as rising cost of living or student debt, factors which historically played outsized roles in fertility rates, are not when it comes to declining birth rates today. To isolate what is causing today's decline, the authors estimated the impact of policy and economic shifts—things such as Medicaid coverage, abortion access, childcare cost, and sex education. "Perhaps the key explanation for the post-2007 sustained decline in US birth rates," the authors conclude, "is not…some changing policy or cost factor, but rather shifting priorities across cohorts of young adults." Or as Patrick Brown at the Institute for Family Studies summarized: "It's not the economy, stupid, but the culture." In fact, American incomes have reached record highs, and standards of living are better than they were in decades past. Americans, on average, have the resources to bear and raise more children than they are, something like 5.8 million more, according to the Institute for Family Studies' Lyman Stone One factor that did stand out as firmly predicting fertility was marriage rates. Birth rates among married women haven't changed much since the mid-1990s. What has changed is the percentage of women getting married. That number has fallen by nearly half since 1990. According to Brown, "It doesn't seem to be the case that women who might have had multiple children are stopping at one, but rather delayed marriage and childbirth are preventing more women from having any children at all." The authors of the study cite cultural preferences about adult life as the cause of both falling marriage and fertility. This shouldn't really surprise us. As a 2018 poll publicized by The New York Times found, the most frequently cited reason for young adults' decision not to have children was a desire for more leisure time. Patrick Brown at the Institute for Family Studies is appropriately cautious about what we can learn from this research. For example, it doesn't mean policies designed to make parenting easier for young couples aren't important or that we don't need to address the student debt crisis. What it does mean is that it's time to rethink the conventional wisdom about why people decide to have children. We are not purely economic creatures. Cultural attitudes, norms, and preferences about what makes for a meaningful life have a far bigger impact on fertility than previously thought. Young adults today are having fewer children than ever before, not because they can't keep food on the family table, but because for so many there is no family table. Christians should have different priorities. Throughout Scripture, God prioritizes marriage and children. In the creation account, in the history of Israel, in the Wisdom literature, and in the New Testament Epistles, family is seen as a blessing, the cradle of faith, the place where culture begins, a center of worship. and the setting for some of the greatest joys human beings can experience. That doesn't mean that single life is any less of a calling, or that every young person should focus all their energy on finding a life partner. Just that it wouldn't hurt for more churches and Christian families to play matchmaker, helping young adults reimagine what life should be. We ought not imitate a society that, in its zeal to get the most out of life, is forgetting to pass it on.

There's a religious element to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In 2019 the Orthodox Church of Ukraine officially split from the Russian Orthodox Church. Obviously, the political and religious history of this part of the world goes back far beyond that, but it should be noted that one of the ways Vladimir Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine is by claiming that he was fighting for "the religious soul of Ukraine." And prior to the invasion, one strong indicator of his ultimate intentions is that Jews, Muslims, and Protestants were reporting religious oppression in the parts of Ukraine under Moscow's control. In other words, restrictions on religious freedom came first. Unprovoked invasions, genocide, and totalitarian tendencies are often the things that draw the world's attention that something is wrong in some part of the world. A better "canary in the coal mine" of geo-political conflict is religious persecution. That's because religious freedom is the first freedom. When it falls, so do the others.

When the University of Northampton added a trigger warning to George Orwell's 1984 last year, a fresh round of conversations about speech and censorship followed. What do people in a free society owe each other when it comes to our words? What is the nature and purpose of education? Is it possible to have accountability if there's no real debate? Many educational institutions are taking extreme measures to eradicate language they think is problematic. Students at Brandeis University, for example, compiled a suggested word list to help students and faculty avoid terms with any conceivable sexist, racist, or ableist undertones. Phrases like "killing it," for example, made the list because of their supposedly violent connotations. Others, like "rule of thumb," "you guys," or "that's crazy" were included for even less convincing rationale. In one of the strangest ironies, Brandeis students placed the term "trigger warning" on the list. The students put it this way: Their reason, and I quote, was that "'Warning' can signify that something is imminent or guaranteed to happen, which may cause additional stress about the content to be covered." Ah, but there's a plot twist here: Recent studies are now questioning the effectiveness of trigger warnings for this exact reason. It turns out, the students were on to something. For example, a study published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry found that, on average, trigger warnings increased peoples' perceived emotional vulnerability to trauma. For example, reading written material identified as harmful led to an increase in anxiety. Crucially, these findings only held if the reader actually "believed that words can cause harm" in the first place. In other words, teach a generation that reading certain words can cause irreparable harm, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same logic applies to other "trigger warnings," like the Brandeis word list: They may create the exact anxiety they're intended to prevent. As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt write in their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, "A culture that allows the concept of 'safety' to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy." This is not to say any limits or changes in language amount to censorship. Derogatory terms for people of a different race or with a disability such as Down Syndrome once passed as normal in even "respectable" parts of society. Ridding our language of those terms was an improvement. And, on a personal level, we all need to filter the content we take in daily. That's the idea behind the rating system on movies, which has proven to be more than a bit problematic. Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom initially received a PG rating despite a cultic ritual where a man's still-beating heart is pulled out of his chest. The outroar by parents is what led to the PG-13 rating. On the other hand, Facing the Giants, the Christian movie, received a PG rating instead of G because critics feared it was too religious and would offend viewers. The whole thing is a mess. Even so, we should be able to see that there's a world of difference between old-fashioned parental guidance—really, what we would call wisdom—and immediately removing anything controversial under the guise of it being "triggering." The former acknowledges the moral agency that needs cultivation and shaping. The latter treats us as passive victims in need of coddling. And to be clear, there is always a moral framework behind anything that is labeled as "triggering" speech. Even when it's not clear who is making the rules, they reflect some worldview. And once they are set in stone, violating them is anathema … the equivalent of a physical act of violence. That's an impossible system to uphold and leads to a culture void of real moral discourse and the possibility of forgiveness This is our context, and it is quite a challenge for Christian parents. The answer is not to create our own version of intellectual isolation, hiding from any and all offensive content, shying away from tough topics like sexuality or CRT, or arguing as if our own feelings of being offended are legitimate moral reasoning. In the words of Lukianoff and Haidt, "Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child." All Christians, but especially students, will have to be able to think critically and articulate why things like free speech matter. The best antidote for fragility is the confidence that comes from real preparation. It's the only way to avoid resorting to outrage as a strategy and how we can follow the example of Jesus, Who is truth and love together. Intellectual fragility, on the other hand, is neither.

Listeners write in asking for a framework to teach young people to view the world with a Christian perspective. John talks about credibility, plausibility, and discernment. Then, Shane asks John for a Biblical grounding for Lent and how Christians should approach the season. Another listener writes in to ask for clarity on how BreakPoint recently explained Jesus' humanity and if his body was fallen or perfect. To close, John helps a listener think well on where we find our identity and how to think well of cultures and race in the spheres of society.

America has a real trust problem. We've lost trust in our institutions and each other, and the ramifications for society are immense. Recently a senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers wrote in the Harvard Business Review about how businesses should focus on building trust with their customers. A recent survey showed that Americans are wary of trusting companies on issues such as cyber security, employee relations, and transparency. A crutch for many businesses, the author wrote, is not having a dedicated employee or department charged with building trust. Much of his advice was helpful, but the piece could have been distilled into a much more effective message: Anyone who wants to be trusted must be trustworthy. This goes for individuals, businesses, and the state. Because all are comprised of fallen people, there's always the temptation to hide missteps and protect our image. This goes back to the Garden of Eden. It shouldn't take a dedicated employee in the C-suite or a checklist from the Harvard Business Review to act virtuously, but in the end, that's the only true "secret sauce" to building real trust.

Richard John Neuhaus, founder of the journal on religion and public life First Things, once wrote, "When I meet God, I expect to meet him as an American." The line got him in a good bit of trouble back then, but today he'd almost certainly be accused of being a "Christian nationalist." Nationalism of any stripe has gotten a bad name recently, but especially so-called Christian nationalism. How should Christians think about nations and national loyalty? The first use of the Hebrew word for nation comes appears in Genesis 10, in a listing of nations that descended from Noah's sons. It's notable that this comes before the Tower of Babel, recorded in Genesis 11, where God created more nations by confusing the languages and scattering people across the Earth. Nations, it seems, were part of God's plan for humanity before the rebellion at Babel. And, even in that story, the dividing into tongues and scattering of the people is described more as an act of mercy than of judgment, to prevent humans from doing all that was possible as one people. Then in Genesis 12, God tells Abram that his descendants would become a great nation, and that, through them, all the nations of the world would be blessed. The Old Testament frequently refers to the Jewish people as a nation, while also using the same word to describe the other kingdoms and empires around them. In the New Testament ethne, the Greek word for "nation" most famously appears in Jesus' instructions to make disciples "of all nations," which is a fulfillment of God's original promise to Abraham. Also interesting is that in the New Testament, language about nations seems to exclude "empire." Though ethne can be translated either as "people group" or "nation," the two are related. Historically, the word "nation" referred to a relatively homogenous group, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically. The kingdoms of the ancient world mostly consisted of people of a single nation. Thus, ethne can refer to a people group within an empire, but not to empires themselves because they contain multiple nations. Nations also seem to be present after the Second Coming of Christ, according to biblical descriptions. For example, Micah 4:2 says: "Many nations shall come, and say: 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.' For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." And in Revelation 21:24, we are told that "by the light [of God and of the Lamb] will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it [the New Jerusalem]." So, it seems that something of the nations will survive into eternity. Of course, because human beings are fallen, everything humans build are susceptible to sin, including nations. Just as sins characterize our lives as individuals, so also can certain sins dominate nations, corrupting their cultures. And, just as we must be cleansed of sin to enter the Kingdom, so must nations be cleansed from sins if they have any place in the New Heavens and New Earth. A fascinating illustration of this is found in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Their high views of ancient northern European culture show up in their stories of Narnia and Middle Earth. However, though they believed virtue could be found, they also recognized the evils of Norse paganism. Thus, they argued for a recovery of "northernness," cleansed of its paganism and Christianized by the Gospel. Exactly what the cleansing of nations entails isn't clear, but the result is beautifully described in Revelation 7, where "a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" will join together in worshipping the Lamb. This passage confirms that, at least to some degree, our nationality will accompany us into eternity. Rather than homogenizing us, God's Kingdom will be a glorious mosaic of people of different races, ethnicities, and nations. This makes sense given that God delighted in the diversity of His creation. In other words, according to these texts, when Father Neuhaus died in 2009, he did, in fact, meet God as an American. Of course, all good loves, including love of spouse, child, family, community, or culture, can be disordered and even idolatrous. Nationalism becomes idolatry whenever love of nation devolves into an excessive or uncritical devotion, is confused with the Kingdom of God, justifies evil, or engages in a partiality that treats citizens of other nations as less worthy of love or justice or charity. However, the idea that nations should be defined, self-governing, and the immediate object of Christian stewardship is not idolatry. Another way to say this is that Christians are called to be good stewards of the nations they are in. Our nations are, after all, the most obvious aspect of the time and place in which God has placed us. At the same time, great harm is don

In 2020, America reached a grim milestone. According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, 2020 was the first year that more than half of all abortions performed in the U.S.—54%—were done with drugs instead of instruments. That's up from 39% in 2017. Abortion pills are only approved for use before a baby reaches 10 weeks' gestation. Due to COVID-19, prescriptions became available via "telehealth." But how can a doctor verify gestational age without seeing a woman in person? In fact, how is a doctor supposed to monitor women for life-threatening complications after they take the drugs—which do happen—if they never even come into the office? Privatizing abortion for hurting women will increase profits for drug companies and doctors, who can collect their dues without seeing patients, let alone treating them. However, sending abortion home also increases the danger, shame, and isolation of women in need of care. And, of course, adding this bad idea to an already bad idea makes more babies the victims. A grim milestone, indeed.

Many Christians, rightly concerned about protecting the Church's witness in front of the wider world, have embraced claims about the church that simply are not true. Last week, Pastor Josh Howerton of Lakepointe Church in Dallas shared a fascinating Twitter thread demonstrating that when it comes to the Church's reputation, perception is not always reality. Citing research from the Barna Group and others, Pastor Howerton debunked the popular myth of the pro-life evangelical who cares only about babies until they are born but not once they are outside the womb. For example, practicing American Christians are more than twice as likely as non-Christians to adopt.. Then there's the accusation that conservative Christians are sexually repressed, obsessed with "purity culture" and the sexual oppression of women. The research actually shows that couples who identify as "highly religious" report having the most satisfied sexual lives. Those numbers are even higher for women than for men. A more recent accusation is that American churches are rampant with abuses of power, gaslighting, or narcissistic leaders. To be sure, those problems exist, as illustrated not long ago by Christianity Today's podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. But the data show clearly that regularly attending church, on the whole, dramatically improves people's mental and emotional health, accounting for a 33% decreased risk in deaths from despair, a 50% reduced risk of divorce, and a 29% decreased risk of depression. The Church, of course, has plenty of problems. But how has the gap between reality and perception grown so wide? Part of the problem is myopia. It is human nature to think that our perception of the world is true, and to downplay or even ignore evidence to the contrary. This is especially true when we are trying to stand with victims and work for wrongs to be righted. Even so, ours is a culture that rewards self-preoccupation. In 1979, sociologist Christopher Lasch wrote The Culture of Narcissism, arguing that as the bonds of religious identity and family erode, Americans were increasingly looking inward for security and meaning. In such a culture, feelings and subjective experiences aren't just considered the most important thing in the world: They're considered the most accurate view of the world. In such a world, special social status is awarded to people perceived as victims. Thus, testimonies of victimization—both inside the Church and out—get louder play. Stories of everyday faithfulness, sacrifice, and ministry seem boring. And, in a secular culture increasingly hostile to Christianity, one person's negative experience at church or disdain for Christianity in general will be much better received and more readily believed than the opposite testimony, even if that one person's perception is false, or at least uncommon. Simply put, a lot of people just don't want to like the Church. In some cases, they have good reason. Whenever that is the case, we should grieve and take appropriate steps to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. But we should also not be surprised when a secular culture skeptical of the existence of moral realities flinches at the moral certainty offered in Scripture. As atheist Thomas Nagel honestly admitted, "It isn't just that I don't believe in God…. I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that." Describing The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch wrote, "the contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security." Even though the Christian life offers the best path for human flourishing, there is no promise of personal comfort. Jesus promised that the difficult grind of sanctification—the self-sacrifice, the commitment, the generosity that we're called to—wouldn't always come across well, not to others or even to us. He said the world would hate Him because darkness hates the light. As Christians, our response should be invitation, not self-flagellation. The reason data shows Christians are living more satisfied lives isn't because Christians are better people. If we've succeeded in anything, it's only because of God working through us. Without Him, Jesus said, we can do nothing. The advantage to being a Christian is seeing reality as it really is. It makes perfect sense that the people willing to accept the Bible as the true account of the world would be the people most able to live at peace in the world. If we've found that peace, it's by God's grace, and our task is to invite the lost to come and find it, too. The data doesn't lie. Neither does the Bible.

Tony Souder is the founder of the Pray for Me campaign, something being used in over 700 churches to connect generations. BreakPoint writer sat down with Tony Souder this week to hear how his ministry is uniting the church. Kasey also shares how BreakPoint listeners can receive the resources from The Pray For Me Campaign, and bridge generational breaks in their own communities. For more information visit www.breakpoint.org/february.

"From Neolithic constructions to atomic clocks, how humans measure time reveals what we value most," writes Clara Moskowitz in Scientific American. She's reviewing physicist Chad Orzel's new book A Brief History of Timekeeping, and her comment is an insightful one. We may not think measuring time is an extension of worldview, but it is. Os Guinness puts it this way: "Accelerated time is one of the primary shapers of our modern world and far more influential than any individual modern thinker." Our tools have made us incredibly productive, but they also encourage us to ignore the contextual clues from the world around us. Under the glare of LED lights, for example, we can stay up and work when even our hardest-working forbears would have chosen rest. One of the best gifts Christians can give the world is a re-contextualization of time. Like professor Kelly Kapic writes in his book You're Only Human, "What we want most is to live in harmony with time, instead of being driven by it." We may have gained productivity with our calculated time, but we lost some things as well.

In his letter to the church at Philippi, St. Paul exhorted the believers there to live lives "worthy of the gospel of Christ.." How Paul goes on to describe that kind of life lived is a bit unnerving, especially in a letter supposedly about finding a life of joy. Such a life, wrote Paul, involves, "striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, not frightened in anything by your opponents…. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake." Most of us cannot imagine living out those words, but the Nigerian schoolgirls, kidnapped almost eight years ago by Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, can. Now in their early 20's, their stories are documented in a new book, Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria's Missing Schoolgirls by Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw The nightmare began the night of April 14, 2014, when armed members of the terrorist group descended on the majority Christian town of Chibok, firing their weapons and looking for food supplies and a new brickmaker. After forcing the 276 teenage girls out of their beds and into the courtyard, they eventually decided to them as captives as well. They burned the school to the ground and disappeared into Nigeria's rugged northern scrubland. The multinational search and rescue attempt that followed was accompanied by the viral social media campaign known as #BringBackOurGirls. Unfortunately, it had limited immediate effect. The girls, most of whom were Christian, were at the mercy of their captors. While the Muslim classmates were forced to marry Boko Haram fighters, the Christian schoolgirls faced a choice. They could convert to Islam and likewise be forced into marriage, or they could refuse and endure every imaginable form of forced labor, assault, and deprivation. For the girls, the answer was clear. They would not submit. "Anything that happens, happens," they told each other. Kept at near-starvation levels and forced into back-breaking labor over the next three years, Parkinson and Hinshaw describe how the girls' faith remained strong. Parkinson and Hinshaw tell the story: "At the risk of beatings and torture, they whispered prayers together at night, or into cups of water, and memorized the Book of Job from a smuggled Bible. Into secret diaries, they copied Luke 2, because they saw themselves in Mary's ordeal of giving birth to Jesus. They transcribed paraphrases of psalms in loopy, teenage handwriting: 'Oh my God I keep calling by day and You do not answer. And by night. and there is no silence on my part' (22:2)." "As we interviewed some 20 of the young women," Parkinson and Hinshaw continue, "We discovered [something] that much of the foreign coverage had missed. We saw clearly how the teenagers' will to survive was inseparable from their religious convictions." Those same convictions are being tested in other parts of Nigeria, as well. To this day, the regular murder, abduction, and violence meted out towards Christians—combined with the sometimes complicity of the government and relative silence of the international community—has led some to call it "Nigeria's silent slaughter." To date, the Red Cross estimates that more than 24,000 people are registered as missing, the most of any country. In the case of the Chibok girls, 163 either escaped or were eventually released. At least 13 died in captivity. Nearly 100 girls remain unaccounted for. According to Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw, their story holds a surprising but important lesson for Africa's most populous nation: "At times it could be easy [to] adopt the facile hope that Nigeria's problems might be resolved by gradually secularizing its more than 210 million people," they write: "Yet we found a different perspective in a group of young women who had faced unimaginable hardship and survived. Their faith provided twin anchors of identity and hope during a period when their captors were trying to erase both.… [it] became the language of their resistance." In the tradition of so many who went before them, who were granted "not only to believe in Christ but to suffer for His sake, the Chibok schoolgirls held on to faith, and in so doing, found life and hope where there was seemingly none. Pray for Nigeria, and the thousands of Christians suffering for Christ there.

What exactly did President Joe Biden say at the State of the Union? John and Maria identify the worldview foundation that President Biden spoke from and how the topics in his speech, ranging from Ukraine to education, reveal important realities about his worldview. To close the show, Maria shares a haunting reality in the Ukraine conflict: Surrogate children conceived for commercial purposes are stuck in a Ukrainian bomb shelter because their paying parents aren't able to reach them. John explains the challenge of commercial surrogacy and how it differs from adoption and other forms of surrogacy. -- Recommendations -- Watch Mike Kryzyzewski's Final Game at Cameron Indoor Stadium>> Read Through the Gospels with Maria>> Katy Faust - Lighthouse Voices Series>> -- Show References -- Ukraine's Surrogacy Industry Has Put Women in Impossible Positions Ukraine is an international surrogacy hub, one of only a handful of countries in the world that allows foreigners to enter into surrogacy arrangements. That means people from the United States or China or Germany or Australia can go there and hire a local woman to gestate their child. There are conditions—the parents have to be straight and married and have a medical reason for needing a surrogate—but surrogates are plentiful, paying them is legal, and establishing legal parenthood for the intended parents is uncomplicated. The Atlantic Protecting the Victims of Bad Ideas Standing for the inherent dignity and rights of children against the innovations of our age is our version of "running into the plague and caring for victims" while everyone else is running away. BreakPoint>>

As the world watches Russia attack its neighbor, it's worth remembering that threats to freedom can come from within, too. Scotland's newest Hate Crime Act is aimed at squashing any speech that critiques transgender ideology. Offenders face jail time, for up to seven years, for what's being called "stirring up hatred." Exactly what "stirring up hatred" means, of course, is the problem. Incredibly, the law not only applies to public spaces but to conversations held in one's own home. Many in Scotland are rightly worried about the chilling effect this law would have on free speech, let alone how it would enable more of a police state. This is in stark contrast to a classical liberal view of liberty. As John Stuart Mill famously argued, free speech is the only defense against the "tyranny of the majority." Christians have an additional reason to care about free speech. Loving our neighbor means defending their ability to speak without coercion… especially when those opinions are unpopular.

Earlier this week, Christians were reminded, by a smudged cross on foreheads and with words first spoken to Adam and Eve, of our mortality: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." These words, delivered by clergy on Ash Wednesday, are God's words about us, recorded in Genesis 3:19. Though it's not pleasant to be reminded that we are dust, it is good. Ash Wednesday tells the truth about who we are. The Season that follows, Lent, helps us order our lives around that truth. And yet, dust is not merely our status after the fall, or because of sin. We were created from the dust of the earth. That meager beginning is what God intended for those who would bear His image before the rest of creation. Recently, an article was published critiquing how Christians often talk about identity. Under the provocative title, "Stop Finding Your Identity in Christ," Caleb Morell rightly notes that throughout most of Church history, the theological emphasis was on union with Christ, not identity in Christ. He also rightly notes that how we talk about finding identity in Christ is, too often, a re-hashed postmodernism, more about self-discovery or, even worse, self-determination, than anything theological. While I agree with much of it, I don't think that "finding your identity in Christ" is unbiblical. It is, however, incomplete if disconnected from our identity in creation. Any talk of who we are disconnected from who God originally created us to be misses essential truths of what it ultimately means to be in Christ. And, it leaves our thinking about a fundamental question of human existence, who are we as human beings, vulnerable to modern and postmodern ways of thinking. Is the self a "construct" of culture and bias? Do our feelings determine what is true about who we are? Are our bodies pliable and changeable according to our internal whims? Or are we created? What is given about who we are that we need to know, accept, and embrace? In the creation story, the answers to these questions are not up for grabs. When God reminded Adam he had been formed from dust scooped from the Earth, He's taking Adam back to the creation narrative. Adam and Eve were the only members of God's creation not merely spoken into existence. The difference in language is dramatic. Rather, than "let there be... and it was so," God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Humans were given authority over the rest of creation. They were to care for and cultivate the creation according to God's purposes for it. In this way, they were created distinct from the rest of creation. They were to glorify God by stewarding His world. Our ability to fulfill that purpose was crippled by sin, but that purpose was not removed. God sent Jesus, in the flesh of fallen humanity, to restore and reconcile humanity to God, and therefore, also to our created purpose. In Eden, the first promise of redemption is given. The Seed of Adam and Eve would crush the serpent's head. In Christ, the culmination of this and all of the promises of God is realized. Jesus Christ is, as Paul said, the person in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." As such, in Christ, we are restored to Who we really are. Paul, writing to the Colossians, directly connects Christ with Creation: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him." Paul uses that phrase "in Him," meaning "in Christ," multiple times. The image of God is restored in Christ. Through His birth, life, obedience, death, resurrection, and ascent, human purpose is restored, renewed again in the Holy Spirit. Another way to say all of this is that Christ did not come to save us from being human, He came so that we could be fully human. It's not unbiblical to talk about identity in Christ. But, disconnected from the larger Biblical Story of Creation to New Creation, it's woefully, and consequentially, incomplete. Our identity was established by God from the very beginning of the story. We're made in the image of God, and that image is restored and perfected in Christ. The implications of this are immense. Our purpose to steward and rule the created order is restored in Christ. Our God-given relationships—with Him and others and the created order—are reconciled by Christ. Our sense of self is not constructed, but it is only realized in Christ. At last year's Wilberforce Weekend, we looked at our identity as imago dei from various angles, and each of the different chapters of the Story: creation, fall, redemption, restoration. At this year's Wilberforce Weekend, we look at the implications of our salvation,

Are we overusing the word trauma? In a recent article, Lexi Pandell of Vox news notes: "Current cultural references to the word (trauma) have become a mess of tongue-in-cheek and casual mentions, mixed with serious confessions and interrogations of the past." Of course, trauma is a reality, which is why overusing it is so problematic. The undiagnosed shell shock among World War I veterans is a tragic example. Unaddressed, emotional wounds caused by injury, violence, or sexual assault can have terrible consequences. But for a culture lacking moral consensus, it's so tempting to overuse the word. "Its current usage has created a tidy framework within which to understand our lives and roles," writes Pandell: "An event happens to us, an aggressor attacks us, we are born into generations of suffering. In this telling, we are powerless—it's beyond our control." Another expert put it more cynically, "(The word) has currency, so people broker in it." The only way forward is to recover two truths: That people have agency and that definitions matter.

In Tuesday night's State of the Union address, President Joe Biden told young people with gender dysphoria that he will "always have (their) back." Though he didn't specify what exactly that means, presumably it had something to do with extending Title IX protections to include allowing men full access to women's facilities and sports; extending mandatory insurance coverage for "gender reassignment" surgeries; and restricting any counseling, treatments, or public advocacy that does anything less than fully affirm one's gender dysphoria. What makes it likely that the President's late-speech shoutout referred to these sorts of extreme positions on the issue is that it was quickly followed by a call to pass the so-called "Equality Act," something that remains (at least for now) dead in the Senate. The Equality Act would be a kind of legislative nuclear option, rendering about 250 so-called "anti-LGBTQ" bills under consideration across America pointless, leading to serious restrictions on religious liberty, especially for religious schools. Over the last few years, following a strategy that proved effective for pro-life protections, states like Texas have been laying creative groundwork to hold adults accountable for experimenting on young people struggling with gender identity. Having these laws in place is incredibly important, given the astronomical rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender, and how quickly transgender ideology went from being unthinkable to unquestionable in so many aspects of society. For instance, the field of so-called gender-affirming "medicine" is the only example of medical treatment that attempts to orient the body to the mind, as opposed to correcting the mind to align with biological reality. That was a $316 million industry in 2018. By 2026, it is projected to be a $1.5 billion industry. Children, in particular, are the subjects of this social experimentation, which is only one example of how reality has been reimagined along the lines of sexual autonomy. If the early days of the sexual revolution were about being free from the confines of sexual morality, these latter days are about being free from the confines of sexual reality. That these created realities were part of a biological, social, and religious package deal went largely unquestioned until recently. However, technological innovations such as the pill, IVF, and surrogacy; legal innovations such as no-fault divorce; and cultural innovations such as ubiquitous pornography and "hook-up" apps, have all made it increasingly easy to reimagine the world along the line of advancing our sexual happiness. Children are forced to go along. Pursuing social and legal equality without reference to reality has proven even more disastrous. It's one thing to say that men and women are equal before God and the law; it's quite another to say that they are the same or, like we are saying today, that any and all differences are either an illusion or unjust. So now, we talk without a hint of parody that men can bear children and that "not all women menstruate" and that love can make a second mom into a dad. None of this is true, but young people are expected to play along, to adapt and adopt these lies, pretending all is well, even if they're not. Of all of the lies of the sexual revolution, that's the most devastating. It was repeated at each new stage of the sexual revolution, in some form or another, in order to justify whatever way we were going to reimagine life in the world: "the kids will be fine," But, of course, the kids haven't been fine. Not even close. In her book, Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement, Katy Faust documents all the ways the kids aren't fine, and all the ways their wellbeing is sacrificed on the altar of adult happiness. On Tuesday, March 15, I will be talking with Katy Faust about all the ways that the kids aren't fine. We'll talk about how Christians can and must defend children from the myths, misnomers, and lies of the sexual revolution. This isn't a theoretical topic. In fact, I'm absolutely convinced that standing for the inherent dignity and rights of children against the innovations of our age is our version of "running into the plague and caring for victims" while everyone else is running away. It's what we're called to at this cultural moment. Katy's presentation will be part of the new Lighthouse Voices Speaker Series, a partnership between the Colson Center and Focus on the Family. We aim to help Christians think clearly and biblically, especially about the most critical, confusing, and important issues at the intersection of family and culture. If you're in the Holland, Michigan, area, you can join the conversation in person. If not, you can sign up for the livestream of this important discussion at www.colsoncenter.org/events

Earlier this week, Christians were reminded, by a smudged cross on the foreheads and with words spoken first to Adam and Eve, of mortality: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." These words, delivered to us by clergy on Ash Wednesday, are God's words about us, recorded in Genesis 3:19. Though it's not pleasant to be reminded that we are dust, it is good. Ash Wednesday tells the truth about who we are. The Season that follows, Lent, helps us order our lives around that truth. And yet, dust is not merely our status after the fall, or because of sin. We were created from the dust of the earth. That meager beginning is what God intended for those who would bear His image before the rest of creation. Recently, an article was published critiquing how Christians often talk about identity. Under the provocative title, "Stop Finding Your Identity in Christ," Caleb Morell rightly notes that throughout most of Church history, the theological emphasis was on union with Christ, not identity in Christ. He also rightly notes that how we often talk about finding identity in Christ is re-hashed postmodernism, more about self-discovery or, even worse, self-determination, than anything theological. While I agree with much of it, I don't think that "finding your identity in Christ" is unbiblical. It is, however, incomplete if disconnected from our identity in creation. Any talk of who we are disconnected from who God originally created us to be misses essential truths of what it ultimately means to be in Christ. And it leaves our thinking about a fundamental question of human existence, who are we as human beings, vulnerable to modern and postmodern ways of thinking. Is the self a "construct" of culture and bias? Do our feelings determine what is true about who we are? Are our bodies pliable and changeable according to our internal whims? Or are we created? What is given about who we are that we need to know, accept, and embrace? In the creation story, the answers to these questions are not up for grabs. When God reminded Adam he had been formed from dust scooped from the Earth, He's taking Adam back to the creation narrative. Adam and Eve were the only members of God's creation not merely spoken into existence. The difference in language is dramatic. Rather, than "let there be... and it was so," God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Humans were given authority over the rest of creation. They were to care for and cultivate the creation according to God's purposes for it. In this way, they were created distinct from the rest of creation. They were to glorify God by stewarding His world. Our ability to fulfill that purpose was crippled by sin, but that purpose was not removed. God sent Jesus, in the flesh of fallen humanity, to restore and reconcile humanity both to God, and therefore, to our created purpose. In Eden, the first promise of redemption is given. The Seed of Adam and Eve would crush the serpent's head. In Christ, the culmination of this and all of the promises of God is realized. Jesus Christ is, as Paul said the person in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." As such, in Christ, we are restored to Who we really are. Paul, writing to the Colossians, directly connects Christ with Creation: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him." Paul uses that phrase "in Him," meaning "in Christ," multiple times. The image of God is restored in Christ. Through His birth, life, obedience, death, resurrection, and ascent, human purpose is restored, renewed again in the Holy Spirit. Another way to say all of this is that Christ did not come to save us from being human, He came so that we could be fully human. It's not unbiblical to talk about identity in Christ. But, disconnected from the whole Biblical Story of Creation to New Creation, it's woefully, and consequentially, incomplete. Our identity was established by God from the very beginning of the story. We're made in the image of God, and that image is restored and perfected in Christ. The implications of this are immense. Our purpose to steward and rule the created order is restored in Christ. Our God-given relationships—with Him and others and the created order—are reconciled by Christ. Our sense of self is not constructed, but it is realized in Christ. At last year's Wilberforce Weekend, we looked at our identity as image bearers of Christ from various angles, and each of the different chapters of the Story: creation, fall, redemption, restoration. At this year's Wilberforce Weekend, we look at the implications of our salvati

John clarifies the role of technology in worldview, specifically how it impacts the Church. He is asked how the Metaverse is problematic for Christianity when people from around the world are able to enter deep conversations inside the faith. Then, Shane asks a listener's question who is wondering if we're missing relevance in the Russian motivation for invading Ukraine. Later in the show, John explains the role of religion in the conflict.

Free speech is very much at risk on college campuses. According to one study, some 66% of students say that "it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus." And, over 80% of students report self-censoring their own viewpoints out of fear of saying the wrong thing. But as the Atlantic's Jennifer Miller reports, a new, grassroots movement of civil-dialogue clubs is offering a strong response in support of free speech. One such organization is Bridge USA. As one of their student leaders put it, "Not being able to speak openly [is] I think, one of the main problems. I just wanted to create this community where anyone could feel like they could express their ideas and actually be heard." This is a particularly worthy aim for a student, and for Christians, who should never be afraid to bring their best ideas to the table. Christianity, after all, is the best explanation for reality there is. Thus, we don't need other people to "self-censor" their opinions around us. We extend an invitation to all to join us in exploring truth in love, an invite God extends to us. And, when we do, it can be a tremendous witness in an age of stifled public discourse.

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Its message is more needed today than ever. Lent is a 40-day period of time (Sundays aren't included in the count), set aside in the Church calendar to reflect and to prepare. In a sense, the Season of Lent is for Easter what the Season of Advent is for Christmas, but even more counter-cultural in its assessment of the human condition. Plus, as a holiday, Easter is not nearly as popular as Christmas, and can come and go before we know it. Even so, for most Christians, all that's left of this season is the idea of "giving up something for Lent." The original idea of disciplining the body, repenting of sins, and preparing to remember Jesus' passion and death in order to celebrate His resurrection has been whittled down to an annual Christian weight-loss plan. It's a loss far greater than mere tradition. Implied in the disciplines of Lent, whether fasting from some indulgence or embracing some new habit of life and godliness, is the inherent connection between body and soul. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, when ashes are imposed by the clergy on the forehead in the shape of a cross, we are reminded of who we are with these words, "Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The ashes remind us that we are not less than physical beings, made from the dust of the earth, and therefore mortal. We will one day die. All of the above is easily forgotten in a society like ours, which suffers from a split personality. On one hand, tremendous emphasis is placed on physical appearance and meeting physical desire. We idolize sex, obsess over diet and how our bodies look, and rearrange the entire world in order to guard our physical health. On the other hand, we deny that our bodies have any say about who we are, instead demanding biological workarounds that will accommodate whatever it is we want. This is just the latest incarnation of an ancient heresy that will not die. Gnosticism arose at roughly the same time as Christianity. The name comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. Gnostics believed that through the acquisition of secret knowledge, one could escape the confines of the physical world. According to Gnostic cosmology, the invisible and immaterial are superior to the physical. Thus, the soul or spirit is superior to the body. At best, the body is irrelevant. At worst, the body is an evil, an hindrance to the spirit and thus to salvation. So, some Gnostics gave themselves over to hedonistic expressions of drinking, gluttony, and sexual abandonment since the body could not affect the spirit. Others turned to strict asceticism, rejecting sex, wine, meat, and other foods, denying the body to strengthen the spirit. Some even went so far as to starve themselves to death. Gnosticism as a formal religion largely died out by the end of the third-century A.D. Gnostic ideas, however, continue to show up in both conservative and progressive Christianity. Some Christians confuse the Bible's condemnations of the world and the flesh as a rejection of the physical world and the significance of our bodies. This shows up in forms of false asceticism, which in the words of Paul's letter to the Colossians "are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." Alternately, many progressive Christians embrace new cultural orthodoxies and deny that our bodies have meaning. Rejecting the natural purposes of God's good design, they deny sexual difference and that our reproductive systems are designed for procreation; they deny the inherent good and rights of children, the permanence of marriage, the morality that best protects sexual relationships, and other ordered goods of the human body. In particular, transgenderism is an explicit neo-gnostic rejection of human bodies, treating them as largely irrelevant to our identities. Instead, who we really are is determined by some non-observable, non-objective, non-empirical secret knowledge known only to ourselves, but to which everyone else and reality itself must adapt. Ash Wednesday and Lent directly challenge this way of thinking, reminding us that our bodies and souls are inextricably linked, that we are more but not less than physical beings, and that God's creation was, indeed, good. We will die, one day, a fact of life that so many in our culture perpetually try to distract themselves from. And, corrupted by our own sin, we are in need of God's mercy and forgiveness. Whether or not you receive the imposition of ashes today or participate in a Lenten fast, don't let Easter sneak up on you just yet. Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Embrace the significance of the body and its inseparable union with our spirits. This knowledge is revealed by God, and not kept in secret. Use it to draw near to God, who took on a human body, lived, died, and rose again so that we might rise with Him.

In Tuesday night's State of the Union address, President Joe Biden told young people with gender dysphoria that he will "always have (their) back." Though he didn't specify what exactly that means, presumably it had something to do with extending Title IX protections to include allowing men full access to women's facilities and sports; extending mandatory insurance coverage for "gender reassignment" surgeries; and restricting any counseling, treatments, or public advocacy that does anything less than fully affirm one's gender dysphoria. What makes it likely that the President's late-speech shoutout referred to these sorts of extreme positions on the issue is that it was quickly followed by a call to pass the so-called "Equality Act," something that remains (at least for now) dead in the Senate. The Equality Act would be a kind of legislative nuclear option, rendering about 250 so-called "anti-LGBTQ" bills under consideration across America pointless, leading to serious restrictions on religious liberty, especially for religious schools. Over the last few years, following a strategy that proved effective for pro-life protections, states like Texas have been laying creative groundwork to hold adults accountable for experimenting on young people struggling with gender identity. Having these laws in place is incredibly important, given the astronomical rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender, and how quickly transgender ideology went from being unthinkable to unquestionable in so many aspects of society. For instance, the field of so-called gender-affirming "medicine" is the only example of medical treatment that attempts to orient the body to the mind, as opposed to correcting the mind to align with biological reality. That was a $316 million industry in 2018. By 2026, it is projected to be a $1.5 billion industry. Children, in particular, are the subjects of this social experimentation, which is only one example of how reality has been reimagined along the lines of sexual autonomy. If the early days of the sexual revolution were about being free from the confines of sexual morality, these latter days are about being free from the confines of sexual reality. That these created realities were part of a biological, social, and religious package deal went largely unquestioned until recently. However, technological innovations such as the pill, IVF, and surrogacy; legal innovations such as no-fault divorce; and cultural innovations such as ubiquitous pornography and "hook-up" apps, have all made it increasingly easy to reimagine the world along the line of advancing our sexual happiness. Children are forced to go along. Pursuing social and legal equality without reference to reality has proven even more disastrous. It's one thing to say that men and women are equal before God and the law; it's quite another to say that they are the same or, like we are saying today, that any and all differences are either an illusion or unjust. So now, we talk without a hint of parody that men can bear children and that "not all women menstruate" and that love can make a second mom into a dad. None of this is true, but young people are expected to play along, to adapt and adopt these lies, pretending all is well, even if they're not. Of all of the lies of the sexual revolution, that's the most devastating. It was repeated at each new stage of the sexual revolution, in some form or another, in order to justify whatever way we were going to reimagine life in the world: "the kids will be fine," But, of course, the kids haven't been fine. Not even close. In her book, Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement, Katy Faust documents all the ways the kids aren't fine, and all the ways their wellbeing is sacrificed on the altar of adult happiness. On Tuesday, March 15, I will be talking with Katy Faust about all the ways that the kids aren't fine. We'll talk about how Christians can and must defend children from the myths, misnomers, and lies of the sexual revolution. This isn't a theoretical topic. In fact, I'm absolutely convinced that standing for the inherent dignity and rights of children against the innovations of our age is our version of "running into the plague and caring for victims" while everyone else is running away. It's what we're called to at this cultural moment. Katy's presentation will be part of the new Lighthouse Voices Speaker Series, a partnership between the Colson Center and Focus on the Family. We aim to help Christians think clearly and biblically, especially about the most critical, confusing, and important issues at the intersection of family and culture. If you're in the Holland, Michigan, area, you can join the conversation in person. If not, you can sign up for the livestream of this important discussion at www.colsoncenter.org/events

This past Wednesday morning, a man named Tedd Mathis announced that his father had died a champion. "Forty-eight hours before he died," Tedd wrote, "dad was wheeled to the nursing home chapel to preach his final sermon. Christ was worthy, even with a cracked hip, failing kidneys, and a 95-year-old body bruised and stitched together from numerous falls of late." There's something unusual and inspiring about a life lived faithfully to the very end. It's what we want for ourselves but see so rarely. Of course, really the only way to end well is to live well… What can be called "a long obedience." At funerals, we hear how someone "is in a better place." They are, but it's also true that God has called us here to make this a better place. So, like this godly man, let's live our lives in such a way that our end is the capstone of a life lived in restoring all things to God's will.

In ninth grade, I was a knucklehead. Even worse, I was a Christian school knucklehead. Those are the worst kind... Six days a week from as early as I could remember, between Bible classes and Sunday school, I was in the same building, often the same classrooms, hearing Bible lessons, often from the same people. I spent my time on basketball and girls (in that order) but didn't have much of a faith I could call my own. Around Christmas in December of 1990, I met someone who would change my life. Instead of a much-anticipated Christmas party, the boys senior high Bible class was sent out in twos to visit the elderly "shut-ins" of our church. I'm sure the intention was to bring Christmas cheer to folks not physically able to get out anymore, but as you might imagine, the only thing we wanted to do less than schoolwork on the last day of classes before Christmas break was to visit two old people we'd never met. I was paired with my friend Brian, who shared my disdain for the assignment. But he had an idea: "We'll go visit one person and say we couldn't find the other person's house. That way, we'll be done early and can go to the mall." That's how I met Ms. Buckner, who lived down a windy, rural Virginia road in a little apartment attached to her grandson's farmhouse. Ms. Buckner, an 89-year-old widow, came to the door and invited us inside. There was, shall we say, a pretty significant generation gap in that room. We didn't know what to talk about, and she didn't really know what to talk about. Just when we thought it couldn't get more awkward, Ms. Buckner said, "Let's sing Christmas carols together." After we stumbled our way through "Silent Night," she decided one carol was enough. "Well, Ms. Buckner," Brian said, "we'd best be on our way." "Yes," I lied, "we still have one more person to visit before heading back to school." And then she asked, "Well, before you go, let's pray together." So I prayed, and Brian prayed. That took about 45 seconds. And then, Ms. Buckner prayed. At that point in my life, I'd probably heard thousands of prayers. But there was something about this one. Ms. Buckner spoke to God as if she knew Him, with a confidence and humility that only comes when you're certain that Someone is listening. We left Ms. Buckner's house and headed to the mall, hoping to meet some girls. But Brian and I agreed that Ms. Buckner was a pretty cool old woman. Two years later, (and to this day, I have no idea why) I woke up thinking about Ms. Buckner. I was even less interested in spiritual things by then, but I ended up going back down the windy road to her house. When Ms. Buckner came to the door, I said, "you probably don't remember me, but two years ago I came here with my friend Brian." "John," she smiled. "I prayed for you this morning." Ms. Buckner became a close friend. She prayed for me every day for the rest of her life. I have no idea what she has prayed me into or out of. In so many ways, the gap between generations today is more pronounced than ever. And one way to bridge that gap is prayer. My friend Tony Souder has developed a set of prayer guides that will help Christians bridge that generation gap through prayer, just as Ms. Buckner did for me. According to the Barna Group, millennials who stayed in church were "twice as likely to have a close personal friendship with an adult inside the church." Tony's Pray for Me Campaign is a way to facilitate those relationships between generations through prayer. The Pray for Me Campaign offers simple, practical guides that equip adult believers to pray for children and students. There are guides aimed to jumpstart intergenerational prayer relationships between parents and their children, grandparents and their grandchildren, and adults and the students in their church. This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we will send you the prayer guide of your choice that best fits the relationship needs that you have with the next generation. Just go to breakpoint.org/February

INC.com's Jeff Steen has a new technique for anxiety management: schedule time to worry. Setting aside time to consider what worries us, he writes, clarifies our fears. It reminds us of what's important, what we can do about it, and (most importantly) what we can't. It's something he's encouraged business leaders to do for years, and it's seen results. There's a biblical term for Steen's technique: prayer. If that sounds cliché, it might be because we've lost one of the main things prayer is meant to be. "Cast all your anxiety on him," writes the Apostle Peter, "because he cares for you." The Psalmist also puts it beautifully: For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken. We aren't meant to muscle through our anxieties, but to bring them to God. That's important – because as good as Steen's advice is, it's still only self-help, a speaking into the void. Christians have something just as good and even better. We have Someone listening on the other end.

With the Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization expected this summer, panic is rising in pro-abortion ranks. There is real possibility that the Court could overturn or at least severely gut Roe v. Wade, curtail abortion rights, and throw the issue back to the states. Because abortion advocates see this as denial of basic women's rights, their arguments are increasingly shifting from legal ground to moral ground. Instead of claiming that abortion is a constitutional right, some are even arguing that it is a "theological right"—in other words, sacred. In 1939, Margaret Sanger recruited ministers for her "Negro Project," which sought to promote birth control and sanitized eugenics ideas to African Americans. Today, in an attempt to sanctify another cause rooted in eugenics, the killing of the unborn, progressive clergy are recruited to promote abortion. This has been going on for years, for instance, when mainline Protestant pastors hold "prayer services" outside of abortion clinics in order to bless the "work" going on inside. Earlier this month, The Washington Post intensified the effort to baptize abortion with a thinly veiled advocacy piece entitled, "The Threat to Roe v. Wade Is Driving a Religious Movement for Reproductive Choice." In it, Michelle Boorstein profiled a young pastor of a mainline church in Maryland who calls the practice "holy." The Reverend Kaeley McEvoy says she has "never felt more known and heard and loved by God than when [she] entered the doors of a Planned Parenthood." Two of those times, she entered for her own abortion. According to Boorstein, this pro-abortion minister is part of "an increasingly bold and more visible religious movement for reproductive choice, a hard shove back to the decades-old American narrative that a devout person sees abortion only as murder." And this really is her argument: that Christianity is not necessarily opposed to abortion, and that any perception otherwise is just a "narrative." As proof, she points to a gathering of "clergy and other advocates" back in January who met virtually for an event called SACRED. For these 450 pro-abortion advocates—again, mostly mainline Protestants and liberal Jews—abortion is "a theological right of women to bodily autonomy and health." To take away that "right," these clergy believe, is "theologically wrong," since it means choosing "a fetus over a woman." For Boorstein, the very existence of such gatherings, even if dramatically smaller than the many pro-life gatherings held across the United States each year, proves that pro-lifers have hijacked Christianity and that an honest look across Christian traditions yields "more nuanced and varied perspectives about abortion." She even (rightly) points to the sad history of some evangelical denominations, who signed on to pro-abortion statements in the days before Roe only to reverse course and join Roman Catholic ethicists later in opposing the practice. Boorstein's analysis, however, hinges on whether Christian history began in the 20th century. Of course, it didn't. A casual investigation shows that it is religious abortion supporters, not pro-lifers, who have radically departed from historical Christian morality. As early as the beginning of the second century, Christian documents condemned abortion. The Didache or "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" admonished readers, "you shall not kill a child by abortion nor kill it after it is born." The first- or second-century Epistle of Barnabas says, "Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born." The fifth-century Church Father John Chrysostom called abortion "worse than murder," asking, "Why then do you abuse the gift of God…and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given childbearing unto slaughter?" And Tertullian, who lived in the second century, even described an abortion using a copper instrument strikingly similar to what one might find at a Planned Parenthood—and he condemned such killing in the strongest terms. Throughout Christian history, far before modern, liberal theology came along, Church teaching was anything but nuanced on abortion. And it's little wonder, given Scripture's own testimony about the unborn: that they are "knit together" and "known" by God in the womb—that they sometimes "leap for joy," and that God, Himself, once came to dwell with us as an unborn Baby. It's true that Christians haven't always been faithful in upholding the value of unborn image-bearers of God. But such failures have been in spite of millennia of clear teaching, not because of them. Liberal clergy may call the sacrilege of abortion "sacred," but the evidence from Church history that Christianity was pro-life from the beginning is as clear as the evidence today that babies in the womb are human beings.

John and Maria consider the images and harsh reality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There's a call for Christians to pray, but is prayer really doing something? John responds. Then, Maria asks John to clarify a new religious liberty case before the Supreme Court out of Colorado. The case has a lot to say about free speech, but John pulls back and explains how religious liberty is really a primary liberty for all of humanity.

Two days ago, we talked about the possibility of war, the fear that maybe the long peace the West had enjoyed for nearly a century could be broken. Well, now that fear has been realized. As an American official told ABC News, "You are likely in the last few hours of peace on the European continent for a long time to come." After weeks of saber rattling out of Moscow, along with vain promises that they had no designs on Ukraine, the Russian army has invaded its neighbor. In retrospect, this isn't much of a surprise. After all, you don't roll 200,000 men up to the border just for kicks. And, of course, there have been theatrically executed meetings at the Kremlin where Vladimir Putin walked his advisers through a script of dubious historical grievances, justifying his nation's recognition of the independence of territory inside Ukraine that Russia already controlled. At the same time, especially this time in history where we actually see the effects of war up close and personal, and in real time, what we're seeing is really hard to believe. Up to the very end, pundits and politicians claimed that there was no way the Russians would take such a risk, with the Russians themselves calling warning of an invasion just American propaganda. It just didn't seem possible. There's an old military saying that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and Putin had to know that invading his neighbor would make his nation a pariah in the world community. So, surely, he wouldn't do it, would he? He would and he did. After an alleged call by the newly "independent" regions for aid against the "terrorist" actions of the Ukrainians, Putin ordered Russian forces into Ukraine. He claimed that this was to prevent a humanitarian crisis from the supposedly Nazi-inspired government in Kyiv, even though that government had a Jewish president. While pre-war estimates guessed that he'd go with a smaller attack, aimed to seize just part of Ukraine and to place a pro-Moscow puppet in charge, the Russian attack hit all across the nation. As of this writing, Russian forces are said to be in control of the Kyiv airport, to have seized the infamous Chernobyl nuclear plant, and to be making progress out of Crimea in the South and toward Kharkiv in the East. Our news feeds are showing this in real time. There's the low-flying Russian plane, flinging missiles into resident neighborhoods with a child crying in the background. The fathers saying goodbye to their children as they head back to the front. The massed helicopter attack, looking like something out of the 1980s movie Red Dawn. This is as chaotic as it gets, and we have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Maybe, somehow, Western sanctions will force the Russians to back down. Maybe the Ukrainians will show such a hardened resistance that they will outlast their foe. Maybe the Russian people will finally sicken of Putin's despotism and demand a new regime. Maybe it will all spiral out of control to the point that Europe and America will have to get involved. We do know that before it's all said and done, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people will be dead for the sake of Putin's vanity. Where can hope be found in such dark days? It's in the same place it's been since the beginning. When Christ was on Earth, He offered hope to people whose situation was more defined by fear than the affluence we're all used to. He also knew that their world was about to be further rocked by turmoil, the likes of which they'd never seen. And He knew He would not be with them, at least not in person. In fact, He issued a somewhat vague warning about how bad it could get. Wondering what His words meant, His disciples asked for direction, clarification, and hope. In Matthew 24, you can read his reply: "See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains." This is one of those places where Jesus doesn't pull any punches. He issues no false promises of world peace. He assures them that there would be wars, troubles, and calamities, and when they come, they'll just be the beginning. Despite the chaos, Jesus said that it's possible for us not to lose our way. Or, as He put it in John 16:33, "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." As we face these days ahead, I've been reminded of something about prayer. We often wonder at times like this, "Other than pray, what can I do?" Let's never forget that praying is doing something. In fact, it's doing the most important thing. The Anglican Church in Dublin, Ireland, has crafted a prayer quite f

America's corporate cooption in China's oppressive activities is shameful. Political philosopher Charles de Montesquieu said that "The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy." With China, , we're seeing this play out in real-time. China's control and censoring of its own citizens is disturbing, but predictable. But the number of American corporations and media willing to censor themselves is what's really stunning With access to 1.4 billion consumers at stake, corporations like Nike and the NBA, and most Hollywood studios have bowed to China's demands, apologizin profusely for any perceived offense. Ahead of the Olympics, house speaker Nancy Pelosi warned athletes not to speak up against human rights abuses while in China. Clearly, those with the most money to lose are wiling to stay silent on human rights abuses. human dignity Which makes China's evils not just a "them" problem. It's an "us" problem, too. Freedom of speech is only as good as what it is used for. Let's hope we start using it for something better: speaking the truth.

So-called "No-Fault Divorce" has always been a bad idea, and children have always been its tragic victims. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. This is BreakPoint. A couple of weeks ago, Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minister for the United Kingdom, praised what he called an "important" debate in Parliament. He was referring to a law effective April 6, under which married couples no longer have to name any faults before seeking a divorce. Ironically for a member of Britain's Conservative Party, this idea flies in the face of what "conservative" means. It certainly cuts against conservative foundations articulated by the likes of Edmund Burke and T.S. Eliot. According to these thinkers, family and tradition are the only real bulwarks against the chaos of our atomistic age. As we noted recently, "If we lose our belief in marriage and the family as the foundation of a healthy and flourishing society, there will soon be very little left for 'conservatives' to conserve." But Mr. Raab's comments got worse. He went so far as to claim that this new law was a positive good, not just for parents seeking divorce, but for children. As he put it, "This vital reform will remove unnecessary conflict from the process by ending the blame game—helping [to] spare children from the harmful effects this can have." This, "the kids will be fine" line, is not just nonsense: it's dangerous nonsense. It flies in the face of everything we know about the impact of divorce on the most vulnerable among us. Over 20 years ago, Chuck Colson said, "People who divorce are more likely to die from stroke, heart disease, cancer, and hypertension. Kids from broken homes are more likely to fail in school, abuse drugs and alcohol, commit crimes, and have children out of wedlock." What Mr. Raab and our friends across the Pond should do is look before they leap. A look at the American experience reveals how this so-called "freedom" has played out here, and the enduring scars it's left upon children. In the early 1970s, an incredible (and incredibly sad) study was launch, which was later published in book form under the title The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce. It told some of the tragic stories of these children. Drs. Judith Wallerstein and Julia Lewis interviewed over a hundred children of divorce in California, hoping to get at the real-world impact of divorce on the increasing number of children growing up in broken homes. They didn't only interview these individuals as children, but also followed them over the next 25 years. What this study found was devastating. As one reviewer described their findings: [O]nly seven of the 131 children from the original sample experienced a post-divorce home in which they had a good relationship with a step-parent. At this 25-year mark, only 60 percent had contracted for marriage. Two-thirds of the sample decided not to have children. Only 30 percent of the sample received financial support for college, as contrasted with 90 percent of children whose parents were not divorced, an indication of the nature and quality of their troubled relationships with their parents. This story is about far more than stats. It's about the heartbreaking impact divorce had on these kids' lives. There's the woman who almost 30 years later could still see in her mind the details of "the sun striking the patterns on the living room carpet" the day her father left when she was only 4. There's the boy who refused to take off his heavy coat at school despite the day's heat in case he'd have to leave at a moment's notice. There's the little girl who kept telling her teacher about her new baby brother, except there was no baby, only her little heart's plea to imagine her parents were still together. Then, there was the 5-year-old who said she needed a new mommy because hers had been "a tense, cranky, unavailable stranger." There are times when divorce is necessary, but it is always tragic in the same sense as when catastrophic cures like amputation or chemotherapy are necessary. To pretend otherwise is a dangerous fantasy. The Bible sees marriage as a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, but, recognizing the frailty of human nature after the Fall, it allows for divorce in extreme cases, such as abandonment, adultery, or abuse. Highlighting the "wholesome" effects of no-fault divorce is even more reckless than praising the upside of amputation. Divorce is a messy, sometimes necessary, side effect of living in a world full of sin and folly. But while we may have to deal with our human weakness in this way, it's never something we should excuse by saying that it is for the kids' good. The cost to children is too high. Its effects on children are too long-lasting for society to allow, let alone encourage. To do so is to ignore the data, the stories, and reality itself.

- References - The Quarrel Movie>> Moral Therapeutic Deism - Christian Smith>> Making Sense of it All - Thomas Morris Pensees - Blaise Pascal The Mad Man - Nietzsche A Free People's Suicide - Os Guinness

"What happens to fascist architecture after fascism?" asks a recent BBC Culture headline. It's a good question. Because buildings are made by people and cultures, they are never just "functional." They tell stories. A tax office in Bolzano, Italy, for example, features a mural of Benito Mussolini on horseback, giving the infamous straight-arm salute. "It's a remarkable piece of fascist [propaganda-inspired] architecture," writes the BBC's ​​Alex Sakalis: "Awe-inspiring, odious and perplexing all at once." For decades, the building sparked conflict, until yearly neo-fascist rallies and bombing attempts forced leaders to seek a compromise in 2017. The tax office was left standing, its mural still visible, but over the top, the words of Hannah Arendt were written in LED lights: "Nobody has the right to obey." In other words, the duty of conscience triumphs over the demands of totalitarian regimes. Incredibly, the compromise seems to have eased the tension. We need not choose between romanticizing or demolishing history. Sometimes it's enough to let the truth be put in context, and learn from it.

The top headline of the past few weeks has been the saber rattling out of Moscow. This week, Russian leader Vladimir Putin stepped even closer to war. On Monday, Russian troops entered Ukraine, and Moscow formally recognized the pro-Russian breakaway parts of Ukraine as independent states (independent of Ukraine, that is). There will likely be further developments by the time this is posted. In addition to a build-up of forces, Russia has ratcheted up the rhetoric against America, NATO, and Ukraine. In his speech Monday, Putin declared that Ukraine has no real right to exist, and only lives as a colony of the West. Cross-border cannon fire has increased, along with accusations of Ukrainian terrorist activity. Russian authorities have forced ethnic Russians living in separatist regions of Ukraine to leave their homes, supposedly for their own safety, but also to provide an excuse to fight a war of "liberation." Many in the West are being reminded that we've actually not evolved beyond this kind of thing. Wars are not only fought in other, less-enlightened parts of the world, and not only instigated by rogue agents of unstable nations. The truth is that in our small part of the world, the last several decades have been remarkably peaceable. Recent conflicts have been fought on the periphery of the world order. The wars we've seen have been, for the most part, across the sea, away from our shores and our lives. Of course, not everyone has been as fortunate as we have been. Full-scale war in Ukraine could cost tens of thousands of lives in a matter of days, might lead to an ongoing blood fest in the agricultural heart of eastern Europe, and may result in an even greater remilitarization of the world. In fact, it's possible that this could be the start of something the world has not seen in 80 years: a great power war. If the industrial might and technological prowess of the world's biggest nations are brought against, not ill-equipped insurgents in deserts or jungles, but against those equally capable of hitting back, millions could die. All of our illusions of being invulnerable to destruction would end. That's certainly a worst-case scenario, but not out of the realm of possibility. Such dark tidings lead to a fear, not just for our lives but that nearly everything we consider sure in this world could come crashing down around us. What if the "personal peace and affluence" we think of as our birthright is relegated to the history books? When Christ was on Earth, He offered hope to people whose situation was more defined by fear than affluence. He also knew that their world was about to be further rocked by turmoil, the likes of which they'd never seen. And, He knew He would not be with them in person. In fact, He issued a somewhat vague warning about what was to come. Wondering what His words meant, His disciples asked for direction, clarification, and hope. In Matthew 24, He replied: "See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains." Jesus doesn't pull any punches, does He? He issues no false promises of world peace. He assures them that there would be wars, troubles, and calamities, and that would just be the beginning. Despite the chaos, He said, it's possible to not lose our way. Or, as He puts it in John 16:33, "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." It's been 20 centuries since He said these words, and there have been wars and rumors of wars. There have been revolutions and famines and earthquakes and plagues. Yet, through it all, it's still true: Christ has overcome the world. Christ remains on the throne of the universe. This is no Pollyannish "hope of heaven." The fear is real because the danger is real, and the Bible never treats our pain as imaginary. Like the Hebrew children proclaimed, God does not promise to keep us from the fire, but He does promise to be with us in there as well as out here. It may be tomorrow that this global threat fizzles out, and we sigh collectively at what a close call it was. Or, it may flame up into a conflagration the likes of which few alive today have seen. It's not trite to say we don't know what the future holds, any more than it is to say but we know Who holds the future. Because we do, and whatever our moment entails, He has called us to it, to play our role in His greater story.

Dancing with Max by Emily Colson, , is an intimate look at what it means to raise a child with autism, alone. Emily's dance partner, Max, is Chuck Colson's grandson. He's now 31 and spreads love through art. The pandemic was incredibly difficult for people like Emily and Max, who lost their support structures. But Max took to painting colorful hearts on posters and hanging them around town. Pretty soon, Max's hearts were put on notecards, which have sold by the tens of thousands, with the proceeds going to charity. Writing at WorldOPINION, Jennifer Marshall Patterson described this mother-and-son dancing duo'ss latest project: infant onesies featuring one of Max's hearts and the word "Loved." Printed by a company that hires only employees with autism, For each onesie sold, Emily and Max donate another to a life-affirming charity. It's more than a way to pass the time until things return to normal. As Patterson observes, Emily and Max have shown that hope and encouragement "can be contagious in their own right."

Last year, the U.K. and German ministries of defense released a joint statement titled "Human Augmentation: the Dawn of a New Paradigm." The statement explored the future of technology in seeking to "enhance" people beyond the limits of biology, for military purposes. In this case, it's not a question of "whether" human enhancement is in our future. It's "when." CRISPR and other gene-editing tools, promise the ability to genetically alter human beings, turning off harmful genetic factors and turning on helpful ones. Pharmaceuticals promise, in addition to groundbreaking cures for mental illness, increased cognitive abilities. And, so-called "brain interfaces," promise the ability to "establish high-bandwidth data connections between brain and computer." "Six million years of evolution to where we are today," ­­­­­­­­­the authors claim, "and now we have the tools in our hands to decide how our continued evolution should be shaped." It's as if they don't even realize that there's at least half a dozen bad guys I can think of who used almost that exact line in some movie before nearly destroying the world. This time, it's not a sci-fi character making the promise he cannot keep. It's defense ministers from two major Western nations. While the authors do manage to mention ethics from time to time, it's a secondary concern at best. "The need to use human augmentation may ultimately be dictated by national interest," they write Countries may need to develop and use human augmentation or risk surrendering influence, prosperity, and security to those who will." In other words, like it or not, the cat is out of the bag. In response, bioethicist Robert Malone warned: "The arrogance and hubris in this point of view is enormous. That in one or two generations, the military industrial complex will pivot to controlling human evolution via genetic engineering and human augmentation is not only naive [and] ethically corrupt, but fundamentally dangerous." A helpful framework for thinking about what this future may entail is the difference between "Class 1" and "Class 2" problems, something articulated by Wired magazine's Kevin Kelly. Class 1 problems are when technology fails. An example would be iff someone botched an attempt at genetic editing and infected the human gene pool. Class 2 problems are worse. It's when technology works perfectly. As Gandalf put it, even the most wise cannot foresee all ends. It's possible that technology used exactly as it was intended could bring an outcome we failed to expect. To say, "it's going to happen anyway" is not an adequate ethical framework. Any ethical consideration, especially one with such consequential potential for humanity, should begin instead with the question, What does it mean to be human? Human innovation is possible because of how God made us. IFor that reason, we must distinguish between augmentation and restoration. Restoration is an amputee gets neural implants and can control a prosthetic limb with thoughts, Augmentation is an army or Olympic team outfitted with exoskeletons to make them stronger and faster. Our bodies are given to us, from our genders to our hands, feet, faces, and minds— As one moral theologian said: There are God-given limits, and if the limits are transgressed, people don't flourish. And one of those limits is respect for our bodily nature, which implies at very least that we shouldn't metamorphose that nature into some grandiose more-than-human reality. They [Christian scientists] hear in the transhumanist imperative a whisper of original sin, which is pride: "Do it and you'll be like God." The body is sacred, given purpose by God. Secularism lacks that grounding principle entirely. If everything is random, purposeless chance, then the physical "stuff" of our bodies can be shaped, molded, changed, prodded, and rearranged at our leisure or for our benefit. Other than individual desires, there are no limits on what we should do. In fact, if we can do it, we should. According to the authors of this report on human augmentation, all is justified under the guise of "national interest." It's as if they never heard of the Second World War... But good intentions cannot prevent bad ideas from having consequences and victims. Not in sci-fi films or in real life.

According to new census data, the number of parents living with their own children dropped to 40% in 2021 from 44% in 2011 and 48% in 2001. At the same time, as Brad Wilcox, Director of the National Marriage Project tweeted, "elite colleges are disproportionately made up of students from intact families." According to the Institute of Family Studies, 75% of graduates from selective schools have married birth parents. This counters the "divorce-is-better-for-the-kids" narrative, repeated in op-eds, that prioritizes adult happiness over children's rights. In a recent piece in The New York Times, entitled "Divorce Can Be an Act of Radical Self-Love," the author claimed that "Children benefit because happier mothers are better parents." The "children need happy parents not married parents" argument was widely used to advance no-fault divorce, at a time when we didn't know better, statistically speaking. Now we do. Even as the number of children not living with married parents increases, the data continues to show that's where kids are mostly likely to thrive. There are exceptions, of course, but they only prove the rule: family is God's idea.

In the historical dockyards at Chatham in England is the largest collection of Royal National lifeboats in the U.K.. On many of the lifeboats, printed numbers show how many times the boat has launched, and how many lives it saved. It's a haunting presentation of how life can sometimes hang on a precipice, and what it takes to rescue souls lost at sea. The dockyard is also an interesting analogy for the Church in this cultural moment. Sometimes churches seem more like a museum of saints, a place where salvation is remembered. Here, redemption is often described in the past tense, focused on what God has saved us from. Or, like the dockyard at Chatham, we mark our success by souls saved, with little reference to what happens next for those whose life is in Christ, much less their families, communities, or societies. This presentation of the Church isn't inaccurate, but it is inadequate. Our salvation isn't only about being saved from sin and hell, but also about but also about being saved to eternal and abundant life and for a redemptive purpose. Once Christians experience the life-changing impact of the Gospel, God's restorative work alters every aspect of their lives. This is more than being saved from Hell, and it's even more than being saved to eternal life. The famous pastor John Newton embodied this. When he famously wrote, "I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see," he revealed that he was not only redeemed from the incredible evil he perpetuated as a slave trader but that he was now given new vision, new direction, and new life. Newton inspired William Wilberforce, the great abolitionist, in the same way. For over four decades, Wilberforce fought against the horrible and inhumane practice of slavery, and also for what he called the "reformation of manners." He didn't see success immediately, especially on slavery. In fact, he was three days from dying when he heard that the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. But, in embracing the scope of God's redemptive work in Christ for the world, his personal redemption didn't stay private, he became a public force for good. Each year, the Colson Center gathers with Christians from across the country for an event named in Wilberforce's honor. The Wilberforce Weekend will be held in Orlando, Florida, May 13-15. This year's conference will explore, from a variety of angles, the scale and scope of God's redemptive work in Jesus Christ. Our goal will be to see all of life as redeemed by Christ. Together, we'll explore how Christ is best understood, not just as our personal Savior (though He is), but also as the center of reality. This means recognizing the essential links between who Christ is and creation, redemption, the kingdom of God, and all of history. We'll also dive deeply into the fullness of the redemptive vision Christ gives His people, as individuals, families, churches, and nations. We'll look closely at what we're saved from, not just Hell but death and fear of death, from bitterness and anger, and from confusion about who we are, all of which are incredibly relevant for the challenges of this cultural moment. We'll also look at what we're saved to...truth, identity and meaning and life, and also the vital needs of this cultural moment. And, we'll look closely at what we are saved for: wisdom, mission, reconciliation, and purpose. Along the way, we'll talk about what happens when redemption shapes a distinctly Christian approach to life, society, education, sport, hardship and conflict, film, and other aspects of culture. We'll hear from Jim Daly, Os Guinness, Ryan Bomberger, Nancy Guthrie, Max McLean, Rachel Gilson, Larry Taylor, Monique Duson, Morris Michalski—and many more! The Wilberforce Weekend features compelling talks, panel discussions, and live podcast recordings, and a special screening of The Most Reluctant Convert, a remarkable film about the redemption of C.S. Lewis. For more information, visit www.wilberforceweekend.org

John and Maria discuss recent events in the world, connecting how Christians find grounding and purpose in God's redemptive story. They consider the Church's role and influence in driving a culture of relationships in the wake of Valentine's Day. After a short break, the conversation shifts when they reflect on how the conflict in Ukraine is mirrored by a conflict inside the Orthodox Church. In this moment of virtual online church, Maria prods John to explain the important role technology plays in our lives, shaping our understanding of humanity and how we interact with each other.

A rural Ohio high school superintendent made a questionable decision last month by allowing an "After-School Satan Club" to meet on school grounds while refusing a group of protestors from even meeting outside. The Ohio attorney general sent a letter, reminding the superintendent that the protestors had as much right to gather on public property as the club. That this required a letter from the state attorney general is telling. Cultural tastes shift quickly and unpredictably. Not so long ago, it would have been the "Satan Club," not the protestors, who were considered "subversive." Today, apparently, it's the other way around. This is why it's so important to advocate for free speech based on principle, not on the content of the speech. Still, it could be argued that every news story about this dust-up in Ohio buried the real lede: The After-School Satan Club, it turns out, had 7 attendees at its first meeting. Two were students. The rest were adults. It's always the grown-ups.

Many Christian parents worry about how to best pass on the faith to their children. Sadly, statistics suggest they should. In 2020, the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found that just 2% of millennials, a generation now well into adulthood, have a biblical worldview. That's the lowest of any generation since surveys began. Lifeway Research reports that two-thirds of those who attend a youth group as teenagers will drop out of church as adults.