Breakpoint

Christians have so many wonderful resources that can help us celebrate Christ's birth and prepare our hearts for His second coming, and one of them is sacred music. The abundant supply of truly majestic Christmas music points to a long line of theological artists, individuals who took seriously both what truth needed to be said in music and how it could be said so as to be both memorable and beautiful. Perhaps the greatest offering of all is Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio. For much of his life, Bach was in charge of music at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Leipzig, Germany. However, his many other responsibilities, such as raising 20 children, might explain why he indulged in a few shortcuts. For example, Bach often recycled old material for new musical pieces. Of course, true creativity does not always require an artist to work from scratch. We are made in the image of the God, who created ex nihilo, out of nothing, but human creativity always, to some degree, involves cultivating what God has given us and developing it to its highest form. In the Christmas Oratorio, Bach took virtually every solo from sacred music he had composed earlier and combined them with other choruses and instrumentals that were both new and old. The opening chorus, "Celebrate, rejoice, rise up and… glorify what the Highest has done today," was completely original. Later in the oratorio, Bach invites us to contemplate the paradox of the Incarnation: that the King of heaven saw fit to become a tiny baby born in a stable. By means of a powerful bass, Bach marvels that, "Great Lord, O powerful King, dearest Savior. . . He who sustains the entire world, who created its magnificence and beauty, must sleep in a harsh manger." Bach's original lyrics are in German. Come to BreakPoint.org, for a link to the entire English translation. Bach's notion of creativity has been largely lost today. As children of 19th century Romanticism, many contemporary artists focus on the self as the creator and see the role of the artist to spin out something completely novel and unique. Most artists today equate creativity with novelty, some even think that the role of art is to be subversive to any and all norms. It's a form of what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery." Bach's music is as a powerful reproach to that vision of what art is. He saw creativity as a means of highlighting and enhancing traditional Christian belief. He saw that scriptural texts and musical forms were compatible, serving each other in order to supply rich liturgy. Bach signed all his work "SDG," shorthand for Soli Dei Gloria, which means "to God alone the Glory." Bach knew the One true source of human creativity and that He must work through the composer if the art is to be what it should. This Christmas, let one of history's greatest artists, remind you that all of our work should be done to the glory of God. Like Bach, our creativity is intended to serve the Creator, who is the source of our lives and our abilities.

Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into two big pharmaceutical companies profiting from pushing off-label hormone treatment for gender dysphoric kids. In a public statement, Paxton accused these companies of failing to warn about the devastating side effects of the medications, including sterility. The fact is, the hormone suppressing medications being prescribed by so-called "gender clinics" are not approved by the FDA to treat gender dysphoria. They are only FDA-approved for diagnosable physical medical conditions like premature puberty and prostate cancer. Paxton is right: these companies should be held accountable, as should medical professionals who cave to social pressure and prescribe medications for the wrong use. And, if nothing else, Paxton is sending a critical message: that gender dysphoria is a mental condition, not a physical one like malaria or the flu. If more public officials and medical professionals would emulate Paxton's courage, many hearts, minds, and lives could be saved.

At the risk of falling into the current debate over whether Christians should tone down the violent language and imagery when it comes to their faith, the Bible presents the Incarnation as an act of War. In fact, the Bible presents the Incarnation as the central chapter in the larger story of the conflict between good and evil; one never fully lost by God but captured in Christ Jesus. That's something missing from the 24-hour holiday music stations, most Christmas plays and pageants, and many Christmas Eve sermons. Still, there is a source that continues to confront our culture with the whole story, with some of the finest Christian teaching ever produced by redeemed Image Bearers. Christmas offers us the amazing opportunity to not only immerse ourselves with deep Christian truth, but also present it to others. Of course I'm talking about Christmas carols. Carols provide us a level of incredible clarity and depth, that is so rare. As an example, consider the "Wexford Carol." Good people all, this Christmas time, Consider well and bear in mind What our good God for us has done In sending his beloved son With Mary holy we should pray, To God with love this Christmas Day In Bethlehem upon that morn, There was a blessed Messiah born You get a sense of the rescue mission that was the Incarnation in the traditional English carol, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." God rest ye merry gentlemen Let nothing you dismay Remember Christ our Savior Was born on Christmas Day To save us all from Satan's pow'r When we were gone astray Oh tidings of comfort and joy Comfort and joy Oh tidings of comfort and joy And in the haunting beauty of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," the coming of Christ is presented in the context of God's Old Testament promises. O come, O come, Thou Lord of Might, Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height, In ancient times didst give the law, In cloud, and majesty, and awe. O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan's tyranny; From depths of hell Thy people save And give them victory o'er the grave. And few hymns offer a Christology as rich as "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," which, if Wikipedia is to be believed, is the brainchild not only of the great hymn-writer Charles Wesley but also, in part, the great revivalist, George Whitefield. Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Immanuel Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Immanuel Hail the heaven born Prince of Peace, hail the sun of Righteousness Light life to all he brings, ris'n healing in his wings Christ the highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord Come desire of nations come, fix in us thy humble home Come desire of nations come, fix in us thy humble home We could go on, but finally in "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," we are offered hope in how this cosmic battle will eventually turn out. And in despair I bowed my head: "There is no peace on earth," I said, "For hate is strong and mocks the song Of Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep, The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men"peace on earth, good will to men" Till, ringing singing, on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, Of peace on earth, good will to men! In these songs, sung by my friend Josh Bales, we have the fullness of the Christian story: a world that belongs to God, our lost plight due to sin, our captivity to Satan's schemes, the working of God through the ages, His promises revealed in the long path of redemption that God worked through the Patriarchs, through prophets and kings, and through promises given so long ago; the wonders of the Incarnation, the fear and hope of Mary and Joseph, and the realization and glory of angelic hosts proclaiming their king, and ours. Each year in these hymns, and others, we are reminded that God did not leave us in our sins but came down and lived among us that He might die for us. We have in these songs the whole gospel of God. As comforting and instructive as they are to our own hearts, at what other time of the year do our disinterested friends, neighbors, and family members find themselves humming along with theology? What greater opportunity will we have to share the Faith than when our listeners are already hearing its truths every day? As a colleague once observed to me, this is our moment to echo the work of Philip with the Ethiopian. The world around us knows their need. They hide it well, under vain pleasures and false narratives, but they also know that things are not quite right. What they need is someone to explain to them how things might be made right in Christ Jesus. Let's take this opportunity, singing our way through Christmas, to share the joy that has been given to us that this joy may spread to others.

John and Shane are asked if there should be a Christian approach to boycotting. They are then asked about the unity Evangelicals and Catholics can have while still being true to their convictions. Another listener writes in to ask how to think well of a liberalizing in her field of psychology. To close, John and Shane discuss a commentary on the rise in opioid deaths in America and how the church can and should respond.

Two months ago, Apple quietly removed a Quran app and a Bible App from its app store in China at the request of the Chinese Communist Party. Apple claimed in a statement they had to do it because they have to, quote, "obey local laws." This is the same 2.8-trillion-dollar company with an "Inclusion and Diversity" initiative that claims, without a sense of irony, to hold a, quote, "long-standing commitment to making… the world more just." According to its American website, that means hiring a more racially diverse group of employees. That's great. It's unclear how that helps the 1.4 billion people living under increasing religious oppression in China. This is a good reminder. When companies like Apple throw around the word "inclusive," it's because they see a profit opportunity. When companies like Apple are happily complicit in outright oppression, it's because they won't risk a profit opportunity. If the day comes when American culture gives Apple an ultimatum: either nix the Bible here or lose your profit, we need only look to China to discover what they'd do.

As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Americans continue to leave religion behind in large numbers, even during the pandemic. According to Pew Research, the percentage of American Christians has fallen about 12% over the last ten years, from 75% in 2011 to around 63% today. The number who pray every day is even lower, at 45%. The demographic rising in its place are the so-called "nones," those who identify religiously as "nothing in particular." This group grew to about 20% of the US population in 2021, up from 16% in 2017. The surprising thing here isn't that Americans are leaving organized religion behind. That's been happening at about the same rate for a while now. However, it is newsworthy that this trend continued unabated in the face of a global pandemic. Historically, catastrophic events that bring uncertainty, stress, or political chaos tend to draw people to reconsider faith. In this sense, ours is in sharp contrast with other historic moments, such as World War II, the assassination of JFKL, and the Gulf War. More recently, 9/11 brought a flood of Americans back to church and, although the trend wasn't permanent, those who lived through it remember a renewed sense of unity and commitment to spiritual activities such as prayer. Of course, other moments were deeply divided along religious lines. America's war in Vietnam is a good example. While overall church attendance remained steady, Vietnam represented what some have called "a ripping of the nation's religious fabric." Mainline churches, in particular, posted significant losses about this time. As the Washington Post reported in 1982, the United Presbyterian, Episcopal, and United Church of Christ lost 21%, 15%, and 11% of their membership respectively in the previous decade. The fact that certain crises inspire unity, and others division, likely says more about the state of the culture affected than the crisis affecting it. The Covid pandemic has only further ignited the rift created by America's massive political and ideological differences, and further shaken religious loyalties. In the 1970s, people reacted to the cultural upheaval by changing religious affiliations. Today, people are dropping their religious identities altogether. Of course, one reason that Americans didn't flock to churches was many were closed. Still, even after Churches adapted, attendance took a hit. In June 2020, even though 96% of pastors said they offered live streaming services, Barna reported that just 48% of otherwise regular attendees were tuning in. Today, even with Sunday morning services available nearly everywhere, in-person attendance is still between 30-50% lower than before the pandemic. In contrast, Netflix added an incredible 10 million subscribers to its ranks in just three months in 2020. While an encouraging number of Americans reported that the pandemic strengthened their faith, they were the minority. When given the choice of where to find meaning, Americans chose streaming platforms over church pulpits. On a purely pragmatic level, this is bad news. Recently Tyler Vanderweele and Brendan Case argued over at Christianity Today that "Empty Pews Are an American Public Health Crisis." They have a point. Study after study suggests that church attendance corresponds with lower rates of substance abuse, divorce, incarceration, and depression…. not to mention higher levels of meaning and satisfaction, volunteering, longevity, and civic engagement. Given that we are in one of the loneliest eras in recent memory, why aren't Americans back in church? Perhaps a better first question would be, why aren't American Christians back in church? They may be catechized too well in an entertainment-driven, performance-oriented kind of service. It may be because of the moralistic and therapeutic ways they were taught to think about faith in our hyper-individualistic age, and they found better fulfillment elsewhere. We may be more steeply formed by the liturgies of our age rather than the liturgies of Christian worship. For Christians, church attendance simply is not optional. Scripture commands it and, for all its imperfections, the Church is the body and bride of Christ. It's how Christians are equipped and sent to proclaim and live the Gospel. It's the means by which Christians grow the kinds of deep roots needed to survive a chaotic and hostile culture. As Scripture says, a cord of three strands is not easily broken, but "pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up." To be clear, the Church will go on. In particular, outside of the western world, the Church is growing at incredible rates. It will survive COVID, militant secularism, and rampant individualism. In other words, the Church can take up the strands of life together again. The question is whether we will put down our idols.

Last year, the FDA lifted an important restriction on the "abortion pill," a drug that induces abortion in early pregnancy by starving the preborn child. Prior to the pandemic, doctors were required to meet face-to-face with patients before prescribing the drug, but that requirement was lifted during the pandemic. Last week, the FDA made the policy change permanent. This comes just as our culture, from psychological literature to the arts, has begun to understand miscarriage as real trauma, even if it is a loss not readily seen. Part of the trauma is how hidden a miscarriage can feel. The abortion pill causes this trauma on purpose. Not only do many women report physical trauma after so-called "medical" abortion, but without a face-to-face visit, the mother is isolated from one less source of support and accountability. This is not healthcare. This is, however, the reality of what it will mean to advocate for the preborn in the days ahead. Hidden evil is allowed to flourish, we must work to change hearts and minds, no matter what the Supreme Court decides.

More than a few folks, from theologian John Calvin to philosopher William James to French theologian and historian Louis Auguste Sabatier, have noted that humans are "incurably religious" creatures. In other words, religion is native to the human heart. In the history of the world, the wholesale rejections of the supernatural is a quirk of Western secularism. At the same time, it will not ultimately survive the human longing for transcendence and communion with the supernatural, no matter how far technology advances. Evidence for this analysis is currently on display in Dortmund, Germany. An art exhibition, entitled "Technoshamanism," was recently highlighted in the New York Times article "Space Pagans and Smart Phone Witches: Where Tech Meets Mysticism." Josie Thaddeus-Jones describes the exhibition, which features the work of twelve artists and collectives, as an exploration of the "connections between technology and esoteric, ancestral belief systems." Visitors are welcomed by quotations from French artist Lucile Olympe Haut's "Cyberwitches Manifesto," which urges readers to, among other things, "use smartphones and tarot cards to connect to spirits" and "manufacture D.I.Y. devices to listen to invisible worlds." According to the Times, the exhibition is an example of the rising interest in pagan and occult practices among "spiritual but not religious" Westerners. The new development, reports Thaddeus-Jones, is how frequently these practices are being combined with technology: "Spirituality is all over our feeds: The self-help guru Deepak Chopra has co-founded his own [Non-Fungible Token] platform, witches are reading tarot on TikTok, and the A.I.-driven astrology app Co-Star has been downloaded more than 20 million times." One Brazilian artist at the Technoshamanism exhibition organizes festivals where participants use robots to "connect with ancestral belief systems and the natural world." Other artists imagine a pagan future for humanity in space, where "rituals and visions play as much of a role as solar power and artificial intelligence." For others, animistic customs and psychedelic drugs meet virtual reality and black lights for an experience that looks part séance and part science fiction. So, why are digital technologies and social media bringing about a resurgence of pagan spirituality? The Times cites an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University, who says that because of the Internet, "people have access to belief traditions that were not easily accessible to them before." This allows them to "discover, select and combine the spiritual traditions that most [appeal] to them." Still, availability is only part of the story. Materialists of all stripes have long predicted that the human thirst for superstition would soon vanish with the rise of science and more enlightened societies. Karl Marx famously prophesied that communism would bring the end of religion. Yet, this renaissance of paganism continues to happen precisely in countries where science and technology have most influenced life. If the Times is right, smart devices and the Internet have only fueled the spread of pagan spirituality. What this reveals is not only that the draw of the numinous is more enduring than 19th-century atheists ever imagined, but also that secularism isn't satisfying as a worldview. As it turns out, it's not so easy to disenchant the world or the human heart. We are incurably religious creatures. At the same time, celebrations of "technoshamanism" should remind us that pagan mysticism also fails to fill the "God-shaped vacuum" in every human heart. With VR headsets and tarot apps, would-be witches may try to reimagine what pre-Christian beliefs were like, but real paganism died out in Europe over a thousand years ago. The reason was the advance of Christianity, something historian Rodney Stark has called "The Victory of Reason." Christianity's triumph led to expanded human rights and freedom, capitalism, and the science that made the "tech" in technoshamanism possible in the first place. Fundamentally, Christ supplanted paganism because His gospel was better news, and the worldview centered on His rule and reign brings rest to the restless human heart. The more secular forces and ideologies in the modern West attempt to replace Christ with belief in nothing, the more paganism rushes back to fill the vacuum. But it has already been tried and found wanting before, and it will fail again. True hope, joy, and dignity come only from Christ, no matter how tech-savvy the world becomes.

Historian and long-time friend of the Colson Center, Dr. Glenn Sunshine joined Shane Morris to discuss if Christmas is a pagan holiday. During his conversation with Shane, Dr. Sunshine answered some of the core questions about Christmas. For instance, Sunshine argued that December 25th was not chosen as the date for Christmas in order to co-opt a pagan solstice festival. More likely, it was based on an ancient Jewish belief that people are conceived on the date of their deaths. Since Christ died on or around March 25th, some Church Fathers believed that Christ must have been conceived on that day and born nine months later… December 25th. For more on this topic, visit www.whatwouldyousay.org to find a special video to help guide conversation with your family.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, believes social media platforms should be held accountable for the damage they cause teenage girls. He offers many reasons why. In one study, young women were told to use Instagram, Facebook, or play a simple video game. After just seven minutes of scrolling, the Instagram users, in particular, showed decreased body satisfaction and a negative emotional state. This isn't because of the amount of time on the site, but because of its design. Focusing on body image creates a trap that young people can't escape. "Instagram," he writes, "can loom in a girl's mind even when the app is not open, driving hours of obsessive thought, worry, and shame." What's worse, Haidt argues, big tech executives have known about this effect for years but have done little to stop it. They should be held accountable, but that accountability starts with parents. We shouldn't just look to the state to do what God has tasked parents with first, to fight for the hearts and minds of our kids.

A few years ago, my friend and former Breakpoint co-host Eric Metaxas wrote a book called Seven Women. While researching for the book, Metaxas made a strategic decision: he would not write about women who were merely the first women to do something men had already done — even though these were the sorts of women people kept recommending he write about. Instead, Metaxas wrote about women who improved the world because they were women, not in spite of that fact. Since Seven Women was published in 2016, the rise of the transgender movement has further degraded our culture's respect for femaleness. A few weeks ago, Twitter users began sharing stories of notable women in history and claiming, under the hashtag "TransAwarenessWeek2021," that these women weren't women at all. "Queen Kristina of Sweden was born female, but wore male clothing," one user wrote. "She did not marry and inherited the Swedish crown." Thus, we are to believe, Kristina of Sweden was transgender. The contrast between Metaxas' celebration of women as women and the transgender movement's aggressive decree that any woman who does something stereotypically male must therefore be a man is profound. Until yesterday, culturally speaking, it was our bodies, not our minds or feelings — let alone what kind of clothes we wear — that determined a person's sex. This should especially hold true for Christians, who know that God created His world good, and His image-bearers, very good. Transgender ideology tells lies, not only about the human body, but about the inherent goodness of sexual difference itself. That's what was happening with this Twitter trend, too. In the name of inclusivity, transgender ideology says there is a box inside which exists all the potential actions, attitudes, and appearances of a woman. Any woman, whether centuries ago or today, who does not fit neatly inside that box must be a man. This isn't inclusivity. This is, in fact, the most exclusive possible vision of gender and sex. Even more, this backward view isn't unlike the unrealistic standards of female beauty often propagated by advertisers or the entertainment industry. For years, movies, advertisements, and fashion designers featured tall, incredibly thin, and often photoshopped women in their productions. These unrealistic depictions of femininity are harmful to women, especially young women. So, over the past two decades, the "body positivity" movement has pushed back, for a more accurate representation of women in mass media; including women of many shapes and sizes. That's a good thing not just because it could mitigate actual harm; it's a good thing because it better portrays reality. Transgender ideology promotes the same damaging error of improbable beauty standards, but further. Now, we're told, there's not just one right way to look like a woman. There's only one narrowly-defined way to be a woman. A Christian worldview, in contrast, offers a much more expansive, inclusive view of women (and men, for that matter). Asking the question, "Is this something a woman would do" about something a woman just did, is perfectly redundant. Would a woman really ride a horse or assume the Swedish crown? Well, a woman did…so, yes! This is the beautifully diverse way God created humans in His image. Of course, just because a man or a woman can do something without risking his or her identity doesn't mean he or she should do that thing. As Christians, we should always wrestle with how best to live out our God-given design as men and women, by asking questions like: "is this an honorable thing to do? Does this respect the body God gave me, or fight against it? Does it glorify God and His design?" Christians find answers for these questions in Scripture, common sense, observable realities, and history with guidance from the Holy Spirit, wise counsel from other believers, and in the (ironically) most ignored source of all, the general revelation of our own bodies. We will not find those answers in a culture like ours, one that increasingly and obstinately refuses to see the inherent goodness in our sexual differences. A few years ago comedian Tina Fey produced a charmingly strange comedy show for Netflix called "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." The script was characterized by somewhat stupid jokes that often followed a format of a premise with a predictable punchline, but then the joke would swerve. In one scene, a woman put on a pair of high heels and complained about how much they hurt her feet. "You know how I know men invented high heels?" She began. "Because women never invented anything." Her joke is not just an analogy or a metaphor for what's done to women when we look at their clothes, their bravery, or their intelligence and then claim, by virtue of those things, they must be men. It's the exact same thing. And it's wrong.

John and Maria discuss the destruction from a series of Tornados that swept the Midwest this week. The explore the worldview significance of the devastation in light of our culture's loss of the inherent value and dignity of life. To close, Maria asks John to expound on how society is experiencing a rise in acts of desperation, through crime and violence, and the avoidance of the deaths from despair. References: God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas Deitrich Bonhoeffer | Westminster John Knox Press | 2012 Every Moment Holy Douglas McKelvey | Rabbit Room | 2017 -- References -- Segment 1: Rare tornadoes strike America's heartland, destroying homes and knocking out power At least 21 tornadoes were reported across three U.S. states -- Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota -- between Wednesday and Thursday this week. This happened five days after tornados tore through Kentucky that have killed 74 as of Tuesday morning.ABC News>>Fox News on Kentucky>> Opioid Deaths Pass A Grim Milestone So how can the church help in this opioid crisis? Before we talk about how, we need to discuss why we must. It's not clear that any other institution, particularly those that lost so much public trust in the last 25 years, has anything much to offer. They are largely exhausted as social resources. The Gospel is never exhausted. It offers a clear sense of who we are, a source for meaning and purpose that goes beyond our age's radical individualism, and a potential source of the kind of social support everyone, especially men, desperately need. It also offers a clear call: to run into the brokenness, not away from it. To go where people are, into broken communities and families, often to those beyond our comfort zones, and be part of the solution. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost; can we, who claim Him as Lord, do less in the face of this challenge?BreakPoint>> Kids Are Dying. How Are These Sites Still Allowed A few years ago, a website about suicide appeared. On it, not only do people talk about wanting to die, but they share, at great length, how they are going to do it. Through public forums, live chats and private messaging, users can get advice as they make their plans. Times reporters were able to identify 45 people who killed themselves after spending time on the site, several of whom were minors. The true number is likely to be higher.NY Times>> Assisted suicide pod approved for use in Switzerland "The person will get into the capsule and lie down. It's very comfortable. They will be asked a number of questions and when they have answered, they may press the button inside the capsule activating the mechanism in their own time."The Hill>> Segment 2: Our Nation's Crime Spike and the Need for Shalom Communities must develop around virtuous citizens and mutual responsibility. The more shalom is cultivated within a community, the less "the stick" of coercion is needed. An essential ingredient is what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons" of society, the flourishing of non-governmental, local networks and institutions, an often intangible infrastructure of education, creativity, care, and problem-solving. BreakPoint>> Chicago Mayor Invests $400 million in social plan to curb violence "We may not call all of these (aspects in the "Our City, Our Safey" plan that highlights violence prevention, street outreach, affordable housing, job training, health and wellness, and community development) things part of the tools of public safety, but they absolutely fundamentally are. Because when people are healthy, when communities are vibrant, when folks feel like they have ownership of the geography under their feet, communities thrive." ~Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on $400 million safety plan targeting 15 communities in Chicago Chicago Sun Times>>

Every generation, it seems, complains about the next generation's music, sometimes for moral reasons and other times from taste. When Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring debuted in Paris, it sparked outrage from conservative opera-goers, leading to a full-scale riot. While musical styles often differ, the emerging consensus of researches suggests that music leaves its mark, especially when it delivers lewd or violent content. Multiple studies published in the American Association of Pediatrics, for example, have found a strong correlation between listening to sexualized lyrics and risky sexual behavior in teens. "Let me write the songs of a nation," says a quote sometimes attributed to Homer and sometimes to Scottish statesman Andrew Fletcher, "and I care not who writes its laws." Music is a powerful medium, shaping how we think and what we love. Recently Emily Ratajkowski publicly regretted her role in Robin Thicke's 2013 song Blurred Lines. Far from empowering, she now mourns the ways it commodified her body - and taught younger girls to do the same. When Solomon wrote, "Above all else, guard your heart," that includes music… "for everything you do flows from it."

In his article "A Photo History of Male Affection," Brett McKay catalogs the dramatic ways male friendship has changed over time. One hundred years ago, men were far more comfortable showing each other everyday physical affection: draping arms over shoulders, sitting close to each other, even holding hands. To modern eyes, McKay's examples look, well, odd. It seems impossible for us not to see some kind of homosexual subtext to these photos. But challenging that assumption is precisely why McKay wrote this article in the first place. "[You] cannot view these photographs through the prism of our modern culture and current conception of homosexuality," he writes. "What you see in the photographs was common, not rare; the photos are not about sexuality, but intimacy." In other words, as crazy as it sounds, we're the weird ones. The typical ways men have shown each other affection for all of human history are so foreign to us that, when we see them, we don't recognize them. That's the exact phenomenon C.S. Lewis wrote about in The Four Loves, when he said that "those who cannot conceive friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a friend." [emphasis added] Lewis was right in more ways than he knew. Americans are lonely. According to research from Harvard Graduate School of Education, 36% of Americans report feeling "serious loneliness," as do an incredible 61% of young adults. According to a Cigna health survey, nearly 54% of American adults agree with the statement, "nobody knows me well." Isolated and glued to our screens, it's a crisis that's only getting worse. The most significant decline in friendship is among men. According to a May 2021 poll, the percentage of men who say they have "no close friends" has quintupled since 1990, affecting nearly one out of every six American males. There are obvious reasons why ours is a lonely culture, and most of them predate the global pandemic: a high rate of geographical mobility, time spent traveling for work, and time on screens all play significant roles. And yet, behind those factors is one few people are willing to talk about: the power of ideas, namely ideas about sex. We've created a culture so obsessed with disordered erotic love that we've all but thrown away the concept of friendship as a vital component of life. This is especially true for men. There's evidence that the over-sexualized experience of American men is dramatically harming their ability to foster their other relationships. A good example is the effects of pornography. Porn addiction fuels cycles of loneliness, draining motivation and hijacking the brain's reward centers. Men addicted to pornography have less capacity to form life-giving relationships with real people. And increasingly, pornography is contributing to the sexualization of men, in a widening trend across culture. As the visual matrix of our collective brains are trained to see both men and women as sexual objects, what will the impact on male friendship be? Like McKay observes, the increase in - and corresponding fears of - homosexuality are exactly what led to the cooling effect in male friendship in the first place. One NYU researcher put it this way: "Children have remarkable social and emotional skills — to listen to each other, to read each other's emotions, empathy, all sorts of lovely things." But when they hit adolescence, "[You get the] 'No homo' [response], as if I've been asking a question about their sexuality rather than about their friendships." The tragic irony is that, these days, we are asking, or more accurately forcing questions about their sexuality. We tell girls who like to climb trees that they're actually boys. We tell boys who share emotions with their friends that they might be gay. Caught between what they are told is sexual behavior toward other men, and the type of cold, isolated masculinity demonstrated for them everywhere else, it's no wonder so many boys grow into lonely men. In the 1993 film Tombstone, Doc Holliday is asked why he's going to such lengths to bring a band of outlaws to justice. "Because Wyatt Earp is my friend," he says, referring to the legendary gunslinger. "I got lots of friends," comes the reply. Doc pauses for a second, then says simply, "I don't." Male friendship has always been a precious thing. It's worth fighting for. The first and best way to do this is to teach young boys what it means to be a friend. Sharing emotions and normal physical affection are not inherently sexual acts. But on a societal level, restoring friendship to its proper palace means keeping sexuality in its proper place. If we don't, it will keep ruining the relationships men - and all people - need the most.

According to Lifeway Research, over 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, but only 22 percent feel confident they could retell the story of the Jesus' birth from memory. 17 percent said they couldn't remember any of it! It's tempting to cry out with Charlie Brown, "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?!?!" Maybe it's time to whip out the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, and watch Charlie go through the motions of the holiday season without knowing why. Right when he is at his wit's end, Linus steps into the spotlight, literally, and recites the Nativity story from Luke's Gospel. The more our world detaches from the Bible, the more it detaches from truth. What the world needs are more Linus-es. Only the Church has the words of life, the message that explains, not only the reason for the season, but the real story of the world, why it is the way it is, and how God took on flesh to make all things new

Yesterday on BreakPoint, we talked about the rise in addictions and overdose deaths due to our nation's opioid crisis. Through a constellation of unemployment rates, cultural darkness, and opioid availability, thousands in America's "Rust Belt" are falling to what are being called "deaths of despair." All of which was worsened by the greed and deception of pharmaceutical companies and the FDA. And now, thanks to a new report, we know that the largely rural pain of opioid deaths is being matched by a predominantly urban crime scourge. In the last year, there's been an increase in crimes of all kinds, from shoplifting flash mobs to property crimes to outright murder. Just as with the opioid crisis, a network of causes is behind the uptick in lawlessness, and the consequences are particularly devastating for the poor living in many of our nation's urban centers. Though violent crime per capita isn't as bad as it was in the early 90s, at least twelve major U.S. cities broke annual homicide records this year, before the first week of December. This includes Portland, Oregon, Tuscon, Arizona, and St. Paul, Minnesota. Philadelphia, a city of nearly 1.5 million people, had more homicides this year than New York and Los Angeles, a 13% rise from 2020 and breaking the homicide record set in 1990. Overall, major American cities have seen a 33% rise in homicides since the "new normal" of Covid began. 63 of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw a rise in at least one violent crime category in 2020, those being homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. An obvious factor is that, in many cities, deterrents to crime have been removed. Facing accusations of police brutality, activists and municipal leaders called for defunding the police, diminishing the presence of law enforcement, and scaling back arrests and prosecution for certain crimes. The results have not been good. Target, Walgreens, and CVS have largely pulled out of the Bay Area after stores were targeted for "smash and grab" looting. Criminals were slapped with only misdemeanors if they lifted less than $950 worth of merchandise. Cities like Chicago have seen crime waves that began downtown nut now have hit the suburbs as well. Many cities which advocated for defunding the police last year are now looking to beef up police departments as crime continues to rise. But for too many, this is too late. As one study put it, "marginalized communities endure endemically high levels of violence. The events of 2020 exacerbated disparities in several forms of violence." Communities already suffering from economic hardship and crime are now stripped of the legal and police protection their more affluent neighbors take for granted. Many corporations and shop-owners who experience not only a rise in crime, but a corresponding drop in profits conclude it's best to take their business elsewhere. This can leave already doubly-afflicted communities without food stores and jobs. Still, it would be mistake to place all the blame for this crime surge only on fewer police officers and reduced law enforcement. After all, in 19th century Victorian London, the police force shrank without precipitating more crime. The difference is, in that case, they were no longer needed. A people able to govern themselves by the conscience is not in need of the constables. In our moment, those pushing to reduce law enforcement got the math exactly backward. As our culture is showing an inability to govern itself, evidenced by dual epidemics of "deaths from despair" and what could be called "acts of desperation," is not the time to lose the constable. A word used often in Scripture is Shalom, often translated peace. So much more than the mere absence of conflict, shalom means wholeness, rightness, the state of being when things are ordered as they ought to be. It is right to insist that those who "protect and serve" do just that. Security is a non-negotiable prerequisite to shalom in civic life. Without it, outside investors will stay away from poverty-stricken areas and residents seek a better life elsewhere, taking their talent and resources with them. Even so, security is only a first step. Communities must develop around virtuous citizens and mutual responsibility. The more shalom is cultivated within a community, the less "the stick" of coercion is needed. An essential ingredient is what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons" of society, the flourishing of non-governmental, local networks and institutions, an often intangible infrastructure of education, creativity, care, and problem-solving. Without it, communities only experience a peace born of force. This, of course, is precisely where the Church can thrive, doing what it's always done, caring for those in need through things like charity and education and care, as well as by proactively encouraging the other spheres of society to live out their roles as God intended.

John and Shane discuss the role of subsidiarity in the life of Christians before they answer a question for resources on caring for the elderly and those with disabilities. Then, Shane asks John how Christians should prepare for a post-Roe world before John answers a question for resources on building a four-chapter Gospel framework.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The case is about a Mississippi law that effectively bans abortion after 15 weeks. Abortion advocates claim this law and others like it assault the fundamental rights of women and "force them to have babies." Last week, the French National Assembly adopted a bill extending the abortion limit from 12 to 14 weeks in that country. Most European countries restrict abortion to the first trimester, but we keep hearing that a 15-week ban would effectively keep women from full participation in society? The fact is, the US has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the world—laws that place us alongside countries like China and North Korea. Eight states allow abortion up to the moment of birth!. When the hysterics start, it's important to know the truth. America's current abortion laws are what's extreme, not the restrictions being proposed.

The United States just passed a grim milestone: over 100,000 deaths from opioid overdoses in the past year. Most of these deaths were due to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. Though sometimes prescribed as a painkiller, fentanyl is also a street drug that is often combined with heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamines. America's battle with opioids is now 25 years old. Dopesick, a new streaming series on HULU based on a book by the same name, tells how Purdue pharma sold opioids to the public as non-addictive miracle cures for pain. The series also describes the Federal Drug Administration's complicity in creating what's been called "the worst drug overdose epidemic in (US) history," Statistically, fentanyl or other opioids are prescribed for pain for women at a higher rate than for men. Therefore, women are far more likely to become addicted after a prescription, while men are much more likely to become addicted to recreational drugs. In fact, over twice as many men die of opioid overdoses than women. Non-Hispanic whites die at a rate five times that of Blacks and seven times that of Hispanics. The states that have seen the most significant increase in opioid death rates are "rust belt" states, specifically Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. These states have experienced a 300% to 500% increase in deaths over the last ten years. Though abuse of prescription medications or addictions originating in prescriptions may not be the most significant factor of the opioid crisis, they are still a major concern, especially for women. This is partly due to an inordinate faith in medical experts. In 2014, properly prescribed medicines were the third leading cause of death in the US and Europe, according to the National Institutes of Health. This raises important questions about the role that pharmaceutical marketing practices and incentives for doctors play in prescribing these drugs, as well as the responsibility of major pharmaceutical corporations for practices that lead to addictions. There are also questions about the pharmacies that distribute the drugs. Recently, a federal jury in Ohio found that CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart had contributed to the overdoses and deaths in two counties by overselling benefits and downplaying the negatives of opioid drugs. Though this does not absolve individuals from responsibility for choices that led to their addiction, medical, pharmaceutical, and regulatory entities failed in their roles as so-called "trusted experts." That failure also contributed to the other side of the opioid epidemic, addiction from "recreational" use. So much so that addiction has become an aspect, perhaps the darkest aspect, of the crisis of meaning among young men in America. Factor opioid addiction into what's been aptly called "the war on boys" and our culture's consistent portrayal of men as dolts and masculinity as toxic, and we've got a systemic problem of epic proportions on our hands. This is particularly acute in the rust belt, where a sharp and years-long decline in both marriage and employment upend men's sense of purpose and direction. This all is a complicating factor in the increasing social isolation men face in American culture, something documented many years ago by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone. Many men have few, if any, close friends has significant implications for the opioid crisis. Soldiers who used heroin and other drugs in Vietnam sometimes came home as addicts, but a surprising number were able to drop their drug use on their return. The difference was often made by whether the veteran returned to a rich social network, a job, and a family. What was true then is only more pronounced today. The lack of jobs and a clear sense of purpose, along with diminished or vanishing friendships and social networks create a vacuum that too many fill with drugs. Covid lockdowns only made the situation worse, leading to the spike in what are being called "deaths of despair." The 100k plus opioid deaths are a dark chapter in this larger story. So how can the church help in this crisis? Before we talk about how, we need to discuss why we must. It's not clear that any other institution, particularly those that lost so much public trust in the last 25 years, has anything much to offer. They are largely exhausted. The Gospel is not. It offers a clear sense of who we are, a source for meaning and purpose that goes beyond our age's radical individualism, and a potential source of the kind of social support men need. It also offers a call: to run into the brokenness, not away from it. To go where people are, into broken communities and families, often to those beyond our comfort zones, and be part of the solution. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost; can we, who claim him as Lord, do less in the face of this challenge?

Washington State now allows convicted male felons who identify as female to move to women's prisons. No surprise but tragic nonetheless, reports are already emerging of biological males abusing and sexually exploiting female inmates. One convicted child molester was transferred to a Seattle women's prison after claiming to be a woman and changing his name. He's now accused of raping a developmentally disabled female inmate. A former guard told National Review that this predator was one of six men transferred there during his tenure. Another was also a convicted child molester. And all inmates must do to make the switch is convince an administrative panel they're transgender. California passed a similar measure, and already nearly 300 inmates have requested transfers... all men, no women. Now, prisons are reportedly handing out birth control. Ideas have consequences, bad ideas have victims—in this case, victims who can't escape

Le Petit Robert, a popular dictionary of the French language, recently created a gender-neutral pronoun. The word is "iel," a merging of the masculine pronoun "il" with the feminine pronoun "elle." But, it isn't sitting well with many French folks. Some see the move as an export of American wokeism into French culture, while others hail it as a travesty, an abuse of the French language. After all, French, like other Romance languages, is very gendered. Most nouns are either masculine, such as "book" or "hat," or feminine, such as "table" or "coronavirus." This isn't the first attempt to degender French or the other Romantic languages. These endeavors tend to go nowhere, except for those proposing the changes. For everyday speakers or official language guardians, there's simply too much to change or too much at stake. This is especially true for the French. As one article put it years ago, attempts to de-gender the language of love "make (French) look like algebra." The defense of gender in the Romance languages isn't just a clinging to tradition or living in the past. Many believe the gendered reality of French isvan essential part of its beauty. For example, Birgitte Macron, wife to French President Emmanuel Macron, said, "Our language is beautiful. And two pronouns are appropriate." Every noun, from professions to household objects, is either masculine or feminine in French, as are the articles preceding them. In the case of things that actually come in both male and female, like people and animals, gender-specific articles and endings clear up any possible confusion. Thus a male political candidate is "le candidat," while a female one is "la candidate." In defense of its new pronoun, La Petit Robert, claims their suggested change is a way of reflecting the world as it now is. Since language is evolving and changing, the country of France needs to adapt as well. But is it really? Are we really moving away from male and female? Or are some just trying to, but failing? Is this about language reflecting reality, or is this change more an example of using language to force a new understanding of reality? According to Jean-Michel Blanquer, the French Minister of Education, the answer is the latter. He tweeted last month that "inclusive writing is not the future of the French language." Others, like French Parliamentarian Francois Jolivet, see the move as nothing less than an attack on France itself, accusing the authors of the dictionary of being "militants of a cause that has nothing French about it: le wokisme." And, many in France are looking to the L'Academie Francaise, a 400-year-old gatekeeper of the French language, to undo what Jolivet called a "solitary campaign" - an obvious ideological intrusion to undermine France's common language and influence. It's hard not to be impressed by these French officials committed to defending their language. Those who push for gendered pronouns aren't concerned about linguistic sense, nor do they care how now-dead folks like Victor Hugo once thought about life and the world. They're concerned with advancing a way of seeing the world… one rid of gender differentiation. Attempts to degender language in the United States certainly aren't met with this same level of passion, not to mention this same level of thought. Here, inventing gender-neutral pronouns was so 2016. In fact, we've now moved on from inventing gender-neutral pronouns to determining God's pronouns, and replacing terms like mothers and pregnant women with "birthing people." We're teaching first graders to declare their pronouns, and telling teens to replace boyfriend or girlfriend with "partner." Most Americans, out of a desire not to offend (or maybe because they're scared out of their wits about their employment prospects) comply, failing to realize just how much is at stake. They've overlooked, or are unaware, of just how much of a culture's collective thinking is shaped by language. French officials, on the other hand, seem clear about what's at stake, and how a seemingly silly thing like gender-neutral pronouns indicates a serious worldview shift. Christians should be clear as well. As G.K. Chesterton once said, "The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only things worth fighting about." Scripture describes God's words as creating the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. As His image-bearers, our words also have incredible power. We cannot create ex nihilo, but our words either properly describe reality, or they distort it. In that sense, our words have the power to create impressions, beliefs, and even consequences. In a sense, our words are an essential aspect of the human ability to create entire worlds out of the world that God made. Defending language, like these French officials, is a move to recognize the structure of Creation, as God has designed and organized it, and our roles within it. Any worldview that denies that the world is a creation of God in

In the heart of the 1980s, there was a spate of "Aid" music projects. We had "We Are the World," "Farm Aid," and, for the holiday junkies, a song to raise money for starving Africans which contained the lines, "There won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime . . . Do they know it's Christmastime at all?" This is sweet, but it's also silly. From Christianity's earliest days, some of the most important Christian thinkers and leaders hailed from Africa: Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, and Augustine of Hippo, to name just a few. African cities like Alexandria and Carthage incubated core Christian theology still held around the world, and Egyptian and Ethiopian churches have a longer history than English or Russian ones. Not only this, but there is good reason to believe that there are more Christians in Africa today than on any other continent. This is so much the case that, in the face of doctrinal drift in their home countries, many Western churches now look to Africa for leadership. So, just in case you were still worried about this, yes, they know it's Christmastime in Africa - probably better than we do.

Recently, the Economist reported that "in any given year one person in six is afflicted by a mental illness… [yet] two-thirds of people with a mental health problem do not receive any treatment for it. In poor countries, hardly any do. And almost everywhere, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists are scarce." After painting this bleak picture, the same authors propose a solution with promising results: Non-experts, trained in the basics of "talk therapy." After a year of training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (or CBT), lay practitioners in England and Zimbabwe reported significant improvement in their clients' mental health, sometimes after only a few sessions. It's a trend that many healthcare experts are taking seriously. That's great news that, in light of a Christian worldview, has even bigger implications. And, it points to the irreplaceable value of community in a culture trapped in individualism and plagued by isolation. The skyrocketing rates of loneliness in our world correspond with high rates of mental health issues. People were created to live in relationship. Humanity's interdependence is a feature of how we were intentionally designed by God to both create and live in community. One of the cruel ironies of the modern world is that, having achieved previously unbelievable levels of wealth and convenience, we've lost so much of that vital sense of interdependence. In ways that Covid-19 only made worse, our work and friendship networks—which include churches, civil societies, and volunteer organizations—have grown increasingly thin. As a result, we now outsource to professionals a role previously delegated to these irreplaceable institutions. To be clear, many mental health problems require professional diagnosis and treatment. By and large, de-stigmatizing counseling and mental health care have been a positive development, and the lay practitioners mentioned by the Economist had some level of training. Even so, the success of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) suggests that mental health support can be far more accessible than many think. In his book The Coddling of the American Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt breaks down why CBT is one of the best-studied and most effective forms of psychotherapy. In stark contrast to the worldviews and our culture's dominant mood which tells people their feelings are always right, CBT encourages people to think critically about their feelings and evaluate whether they are true. In other words, CBT affirms that ideas, including those we believe about ourselves, have consequences. The Biblical admonition to "be transformed by the renewing of your minds," is both practical and vital. Even better, God never asks us to ignore our problems, but encourages us to bring them to Him and to each other, and so "fulfill the law of Christ." Active, compassionate listening is in concert with another Biblical admonition, to speak the truth in love. This kind of Christian fellowship has produced results for centuries. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about this in his classic work Life Together. "Secular education today is aware [that] a person can be helped merely by having someone who will listen to him seriously, but Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God, that we may speak the Word of God." The Apostle Paul encourages older Christians to mentor younger ones, and for Christians to "not forsake assembling together." Proverbs 20:5 puts it succinctly: "The purposes of a person's heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out." Listeners like this are too rare these days. The damnable lie of expressive individualism is that we each have our own truth inside. This leaves many of us ready to do all the talking (or social media posting) but not the listening. Instead of seeking truth outside of ourselves, in the time-tested wisdom of Scripture and the counsel of others, we keep looking inside and are surprised when nothing seems to change. Within a truly Christian worldview, we recognize the legitimate role of mental health experts, but that should never stop the rest of us from acting. We should never expect the professionals to replace what family, friends, and Churches are meant to do: love our neighbors enough to listen.

John and Maria outline the worldview angles behind President Biden's "Build Back Better Plan." Notably, John points to the inherent issue with the Department of Health and Human Services directing relief money sent to families to be used specifically in professional child-care services. Then, John explains the current issues with the Olympics and China. Maria asks John a series of important questions on how the United States should respond to the human rights abuses China is committing against faith-based groups in China. John outlines two important options before the State Department, considering how the United States can bring attention to the abuses and seek protection for those impacted. To close, Maria asks John a question related to how important it is to continually question worldview and faith-growth for Christians. She shares that it can be distracting for believers to continually be concerned about how we're thinking, failing to consider Christ in an effort to think Biblically. John shares important insights and encouragement.

To hear the NCAA tell the story, an average swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania became a nationally ranked superstar overnight. Check the receipts, and we learn Will Thomas only started breaking records and winning meets by comically huge margins when he began going by "Lia" Thomas this past year. Similar incidents are increasingly happening in various sports at all levels, but swimming offers an especially clear picture of what it means when we allow men to compete against women. Success in swimming is heavily dependent on physiology. The length of the body, the body's center of gravity, and even the placement of a person's belly button can mean the difference between an average swimmer and a major competitor. A man can identify however he wants, and can even take dangerous hormone supplements, but his belly button isn't going anywhere. This sort of let's-all-pretend-we-don't-know-what's-happening groupthink isn't good for college sports or for women's rights. It's not good for Lia Thomas, his teammates, or his competitors. No matter how fast he swims, no man really breaks a women's record.

One of the features of the sexual revolution, especially in these latter days, is a steady stream of new words that were invented to justify increasingly incoherent ideas. For example, the word "cisgender," coined by sociologists in the 90s, refers to "those who continue to identify with the sex they were assigned at birth." The definition itself is loaded with ideas, such as sex being assigned at birth, but it basically means boys who identify as boys and girls who identify as girls. Only a culture committed to normalizing dysphoria and de-normalizing biology needs a word like that. More recently, but in the same spirit of social engineering through nomenclature, some activists have suggested a new take on infertility, one not based on biology or health but on lifestyle choices. The suggested term is "social infertility," and refers to the state of those who intentionally choose sterile relationship arrangements, such as same-sex relationships, but still want children. Proponents Lisa Campo-Engelstein and Weei Lo describe it this way: "Expanding the current definition of infertility to include social infertility will elevate it to a treatable medical condition, justifying the use of ART [assisted reproductive technologies] for such individuals… States with infertility insurance mandates should provide the same infertility coverage to socially infertile individuals as physiologically infertile heterosexual couples." [emphasis added] Assumed here is that everyone has a right to babies. So, if you want one but are in a relationship unable to procreate, technology and the government should be employed to force employers, hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies to help you have one. To be clear, this is not yet law, but this same "universal parentage" line of thinking was used to legalize commercial surrogacy in the state of Washington a few years ago, and the Department of Health and Human Services has indicated this kind of language may find its way into new mandates. The irony is that the very concept of "social infertility" undermines the "love is love" slogan that has so effectively advanced the social innovations of the sexual revolution, such as same-sex marriage. Clearly, same-sex love – even when committed, sincere and monogamous – isn't the same as heterosexual love in terms of what intercourse means and its procreative potential. Therefore, some words need to be invented, and others redefined. Redefining "infertility" in this way involves redefining a slew of other important words, too, such as "medical condition." If an otherwise healthy man and woman fail to conceive a child, it's reasonable to suspect a deeper medical condition, but two men (or two women) will never be able to conceive a child. And, when they can't, nothing has gone wrong. No one suspects their inability to conceive is due to a disability or sickness. All that's left is to create a new category of discrimination. Advocates of so-called "social infertility" suggest it is unjust when two men or two women cannot conceive, and therefore the government should step in. This assumes, of course, that conceiving a child is a "right" even when biologically impossible, an idea only plausible in a culture in which the value of children is tied wholly to whether or not they are wanted. If terminating preborn life is justified when a child is not wanted, then all it takes to justify conceiving a life is that it is wanted. This leaves words like "rights," "discrimination," "equality" (not to mention "men" and "women") up for grabs. Imagine if I demanded insurance coverage for leg augmentations in order to sprint as fast as Usain Bolt. Is not being able to sprint as fast as Bolt a medical condition? Do I have a right to claim discrimination because I want to sprint like Bolt but can't? Do I have a right to force others - like religious hospitals and employers - to cover the cost to give me what I want? Using the logic of "social infertility," the answer to each of these nonsensical questions would have to be yes. What comes under the guise of social fertility is just as nonsensical but far worse, for two reasons. First, for most of us, not being as fast as Usain Bolt is not directly related to a life choice we've made. That dream has never even been a remote possibility for me. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of those who claim "social infertility" have intentionally chosen naturally infertile relationships. Had they chosen a different relationship, conceiving a child would be possible. Second, most artificial reproductive technologies today are justified by adult desires, while children's rights are forgotten in our ethical reasoning. So increasingly, we behave and pass laws as if children are something we have a "right" to have or, even worse, as if they are products to be obtained. This whole conversation reveals our society to be at odds with nature and itself. The inherent connection between sex and procreation has been thoroughly

In Scientific American, physician Carolyn Barber describes a new condition: "texting thumb." "The patient's right thumb knuckle is inflamed, swollen, and often painful," she writes, "especially toward the end of the day… Her middle finger intermittently has a new 'catch' to it when bent. The patient she's describing? Herself. An emergency room physician, Barber took to working more on her phone. At the same time, she started seeing an increased toll on people's musculoskeletal systems from phone usage. "Let's face it," Barber concludes. "Our hands weren't really made for all of this." Digital technology is a necessary part of life, but it also plays into what some have called the "gnostic impulse:" the ancient temptation to ignore our bodies in favor of our incorporeal selves. It's an impulse that is alive and well today. But, of course, we're not just spirits. God created our bodies, they matter, and He cares for them. That makes Barber's recommendation a good one: "Take a walk," she says. "Pocket your phone. And give your tweeting digits the break they deserve."

A young woman recently commented to a friend, "I feel like once you have kids, your life is just done." So, despite pressure from her mom, she was in no rush to settle down. "I've got too much living to do. I want to wait a while before I'm finished." It's not uncommon to hear people suggest that things like marriage and family and parenting are, at best, distractions from what life is really about (like a career or amusement or travel), or at worst, a sort of death sentence that marks the end of all of our fun. Despite the research showing otherwise, there's a clear message in sitcoms and romcoms that the quickest way to become miserable and end a good sex life is to get married. Single means free and unencumbered, the story goes, especially for women. Similarly, in our recent conversation about the Dobbs case currently before the Supreme Court, Dr. Ryan Anderson described how the pro-abortion movement advances the claim that women "need" abortion in order to fully participate in society. As he put it, "If that statement is true, that is a condemnation of our society." If we're only fully human when we're "free" from loving and caring for those closest to us, then we have a puny vision of humanity. But how much of the American dream centers on pleasures and possessions, career paths and vacations, seeing the dirty work of diapers, tending to a sick spouse, or making a meal for a neighbor as something between a necessary and avoidable evil? Even Christians are tempted to imagine that in "real" Christian life and ministry, a big platform is preferable over caring for actual people. Or that those involved in "full-time Christian ministry," serving the "people," are doing the real work of God, while those of us caught up in ordinary life comprise the B-Team? If anything, this way of seeing things has it all backward. Christians in the "ministry" do play a vital and important role in God's plan, but that role is to support those faithfully living everyday life in obedience to Christ. Marriage and family and children, or loving our neighbors and caring for our elders, really is "the end of life," just not in the sense those two young women thought. Those things are among the ends - the intended purposes - for which God created and called us. Families and communities are the real work, and through them, God works on us, and in us, and through us. What if the ordinary tasks of life were the front lines of the kingdom of God? What if it's in the relationships that seem to be mundane that we are most fully serving God? Many in the Church are ready to die for the Faith, but are far less willing to live for it. It's important to remember that in Genesis, God didn't say that it is not good for man to be lonely. Rather, He said it's not good for man to be alone. Our chief end is to glorify God, but most of our time and effort in glorifying God is spent loving and caring for others, and that's what he intended, particularly to members of the human race who make up our families and communities. To love, marry, raise children, and live the lives God intended for us; it's in these endeavors that the true radical lives, and it's by them that true change will come to the world. In 1955, C. S. Lewis wrote to a woman struggling to find meaning in her work as "just" a housewife. The great writer challenged her to turn the entire perspective around. Instead of being a nonessential worker in the economy of God's work on Earth, hers was the center. Here's how Lewis said it: "We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist." Now, he was talking specifically to what we call "stay-at-home-moms," but the principle applies across areas of life that the world and the Church are too quick to pass over as being insignificant or getting in the way of our true selves. Caring for one another, particularly when few see what we are doing, isn't God's back-up or second-best plan for human life; it's what He designed for us to do from the beginning. This is the end of life.

John and Shane are asked how to respond to church leadership who feels speaking about culture topics will cause ripples in the church. Later, the two are asked how they can speak with love to those who are confused about where their true sense of identity comes from? To close, John and Shane provide an understanding of how worldviews shape perspectives of the end times, and how Christians should handle those perspectives in living this cultural moment.

Christian history is full of incredible stories: Origen, Augustine, Wilberforce, Joni Eareckson Tada, Hudson Taylor… In fact, any life lived for Christ, is historic, significant, and inspiring. Success is never guaranteed, but we can be faithful. Each week, I hear from followers of Christ committed to living for Christ in this cultural moment, also an important time in history. In fact, a recent email just blew me away: "I found your podcast about one year ago, and it has been quite influential in my role as husband, as an elder in our church, in my role as parents of adult children, like grandparents, and owner of a small business. Having a correct worldview and then communicating it in love to the world around us and interpreting events biblically, helps me to live out my faith as I occupy this time and this place, (Acts 17) for God's Kingdom." The Colson Center exists to help Christians live out their faith in this time and this place. Join us in this work by making a year-end gift. You can do this by visiting www.colsoncenter.org/givehope

President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Act, which passed in the U.S. House last month, is expected to be passed by the Senate before Christmas. Adding this big-ticket "social spending and climate" bill to the trillions already passed in the name of COVID relief certainly won't thrill fiscal conservatives. Depending on which version passes, about $360 billion dollars would be added to the federal deficit. The plan is being hailed as good for families, since it extends the enhanced child tax credit by a year and provides assistance for childcare. However, as the saying goes, we need to read the fine print, especially the parts about childcare. As Tim Carney writes at The Washington Examiner, the bill will likely include a large new daycare entitlement and universal pre-k program, but neither apply to family members or homeschooling parents. In other words, the administration only wants it to be easier for families to get childcare if it's from the "professionals." Moms and dads, grandmas, aunts, and neighborhood co-ops need not apply. And as Carney points out, many parents (particularly those in households where both have to work) would prefer "an opportunity for one parent to stop working or work less." A long-term tax credit could help many achieve that, but not a one-size-fits-all daycare subsidy which, as he put it, seems designed "to change [parents'] minds about who should raise their children." Of course, there's a debate to be had about whether or not the government should be spending taxpayer money to incentivize families at all. But, in this case, how it is proposing to spend the money says far more. Again, here's Carney: "The question is this: If you wanted to spend money to help parents and children, and you were already willing to just hand cash to parents in the form of "tax credits" or a child allowance, then why would you specifically subsidize daycare instead of giving parents money and let them decide how to use it?" Carney's reading of the bill is not unfair, especially if you consider the President's own words. Last month, the President tweeted, "Nearly 2 million women in our country have been locked out of the workforce because they have to care for a child or an elderly relative at home. [The Build Back Better Act] will make caregiving accessible and affordable and help [women] get back to work." Of course, plenty of women do feel stuck at home and would prefer to return to work, but plenty of others would rather stay at home with their kids if they can afford it. In fact, a 2019 survey by Pew Research found that almost 20 percent of women think "not working for pay at all" is the ideal situation for mothers, and about half overall would prefer not to work full-time. These women are not "locked out of the workforce," as the administration put it. Rather, they'll be "locked-in" by a plan that subsidizes only "professional" childcare and not family care. This kind of state paternalism not only suggests that, ultimately, life is about building a satisfying career, participating in the economy, and making more money. It suggests that to prefer a family life that is reliant on a spouse's income is, to quote one progressive New York Times writer, "retrograde" thinking. And it serves a more insidious agenda item of cultural progressivism, that "government knows better than a parent" about what's best for children. This spending bill must be considered in light of other actions by the administration. Recently, we learned that Xavier Becerra, who heads up the Department of Health and Human Services under the Biden Administration, is looking for ways to keep faith-based children's service programs out of foster care. That's despite the fact that, as U.S. Senator from Oklahoma James Lankford tweeted, this move almost certainly runs afoul of the Supreme Court's decision in Fulton v. Philadelphia, in which justices ruled unanimously that the city could not discriminate against a Catholic adoption agency in placing children. Each case, childcare subsidies and foster care, reflects the belief that the state is the most important and competent sphere of society, and the one that should decide how all the others run. That's not how things were designed to work. God first and foremost entrusted the family, not the state, with raising the next generation. Our nation's long history of working with religious organizations to care for kids has resulted in services the state could never have provided without help. Any plan that's designed to "build back better" should recognize that parents and religious organizations are are solutions, not problems to be solved.

John and Shane respond to feedback and a question on why culture blames the church for a myriad of social, cultural, environmental, and many other ills. They then explain a few resources to help listeners think well on the topic of sexual immorality after fielding a question in response to a recent commentary. To close, John explains the idea of Sphere sovereignty.

On Black Friday, a surrogacy agency in Ukraine called BioTexCom offered a fun new deal: three percent off your next baby. The discount, according to the ad, applied to hiring Ukrainian women to be surrogate mothers, to IVF, or whatever mixture thereof. If the name BioTexCom sounds familiar, it's because this is the agency saddled with nearly 100 stranded babies in a Kiev hotel, to be cared for by a handful of nurses, at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. That happened because the babies legally belonged to the wealthy Western couples who bought them but couldn't pick them up due to travel restrictions. The babies' Ukrainian mothers weren't allowed to care for the babies after the birth - they weren't their "property" anymore. That situation, and this tacky Black Friday discount, illustrate something crucial. Whatever feels icky about "three percent off a new baby" is still there when it's full price. Industrialized assisted reproduction turns both women's bodies and babies into commodities on Black Friday and every other day. God made us for so much more.

Women in Afghanistan have been barred from participation in civil society. There are families hunted for their involvement with the U.S. military, and brothers and sisters in Christ have been tortured and killed for their courageous faith. Any faith in early signs of Taliban moderation was misplaced; all skepticism was well-founded. We have the testimony of many who've endured similar oppressions in the past. This can point us to what is true and good amid evil. For example, Hunayn ibn Ishaq was born in al-Hira, Iraq, in 809, the year of Caliph Harun al-Rashid's death, the same Caliph whose story birthed the Arabian Nights and Aladdin. A Nestorian Christian, Hunayn grew up speaking Syriac and Arabic. As a young man, he went to Baghdad to study medicine under the famous physician and fellow Christian Yuhanna ibn Masawayh. Hunayn's insatiable curiosity exasperated his instructors, to the point that Yuhanna kicked Hunayn out of school. Hunayn promised himself he would return to Baghdad, but he went abroad to learn Greek in the meantime. When he returned, he was able to recite Homer and the famous physician Galen in their original languages. His new knowledge impressed Yuhanna, and the two reconciled and started working together when Hunayn returned. Hunayn's new language skills enabled him to translate Greek works into Syriac and Arabic. This skill earned him a position at Bayt al Hikmah (the House of Wisdom), an institution dedicated to translating Greek texts and making them available to Arab scholars. Hunayn was sent into the Byzantine Empire to obtain works by Aristotle and other authors unavailable in the Caliphate. His work was so highly valued that he was paid the weight of the books he translated in gold. Hunayn is credited with translating the works of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Galen, Plato's Republic, several works by Aristotle, the Old Testament from the Septuagint, along with works on agriculture, chemistry, stones, and religion. Hunayn's son Ishaq was a primary aide and became the principal translator of Aristotle into Arabic. Hunayn developed a close relationship with the Caliph al-Mutawakkil. Recognizing Hunayn's skills as a scholar and translator, the caliph appointed him as his personal secretary. However, a rift developed between al-Mutawakkil and Hunayn when the caliph asked Hunayn to make poison to kill one of his enemies, and Hunayn refused. The caliph grew angry and had Hunayn thrown in prison for a year. After serving his sentence, Hunayn was brought before the caliph and replied, "I have skill only in what is beneficial, and have studied nothing else." The caliph, claiming that he was only testing Hunayn's personal integrity, asked him what kept him from complying with the order and facing certain death. Hunayn responded, "Two things: my religion and my profession. My religion decrees that we should do good even to our enemies, how much more to our friends. And my profession is instituted for the benefit of humanity and limited to their relief and cure. Besides, every physician is under oath never to give anyone a deadly medicine." Hunayn was released. Despite his support for translation, al-Mutawakkil was concerned about foreign ideas influencing Islam and about Muslim scholars who advocated a less literal interpretation of the Quran. As a result, he enforced a rigid Sunni orthodoxy on the state and began persecuting more liberal Muslim thinkers as well as increasing the pressure on Christians in the caliphate. This would be a harbinger of things to come both in the Muslim world and for the Christians in the Middle East. In the first dynasties of the caliphate, Christians played important roles in government and scholarship in the Muslim world. However, that is not to say that they were generally treated well. There were periodic outbreaks of violent persecution, including widespread destruction of churches, and they were clearly second-class citizens subject to ever-increasing oppression as the decades moved forward. These Christians played a far more central role in developing the medieval Muslim intellectual and medical tradition. Western Europe would eventually benefit from this, as works of Aristotle translated by Hunayn and his son would pass to scholars from the Latin world via Islamic Spain. Hunayn himself played the role of a Daniel in many ways, serving in the court of non-Christian rulers who were at times openly hostile to his faith. His scholarship, medical skills, and personal integrity born of his faith enabled him to survive and serve there, leaving an enormous and wide-ranging legacy in his own era and beyond. All of this reminds us that God has His people everywhere, even in the most hostile nations. We should pray that he grant those in hostile places the character and courage of Hunayn and Daniel to be motivated by their love and submission to Jesus Christ. And may the same be said of us, as we serve the Lord in an increasingly hostile culture.

Recently, a Switzerland-based euthanasia clinic posted that, going forward, anyone seeking so-called "death with dignity" must be fully vaccinated first. It isn't quite as crazy as it sounds. They aren't saying you have to be healthy before they kill you. Instead, they're taking precautions for the sake of the people who provide "assistance in dying." They don't want patients infecting the medical professionals tasked with killing them. Even so, there's plenty of tragic ironies here. For two years now, we've been talking about "doing what it takes" to save lives in the face of Covid. "If it saves just one life" then, we were told, that the masks, the mandates, and the lockdowns were all worth it. At the same time, proponents of doctor-assisted dying tell us that people should have full autonomy over death. Inconsistencies like these remind us that as much as we suppress eternity in our hearts, it's still there. Even when our worldviews deny it, life is a wonderful gift of God, and dignity is intrinsic to who He has made us to be.

William Blake said, "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." Recently, David Books of the New York Times quoted Blake as he described the importance of imagination. Advances in neuroscience, he argues, have highlighted the ways our imaginations are tied up with our perceptions of reality. This includes the moral imagination as well, both personally and collectively. Our imagination also affects our ability to empathize with others. When we are able to imagine the lived experience of others, we tend to be more compassionate, gracious and open to wonder. Brooks laments that our society is bad at cultivating a healthy imagination, "the faculty that we may need the most." The problem here isn't a wholesale rejection of the imagination, of course. We talk about it all the time. The issue is that we think of the imagination the same way we think about others aspects of our lives, identity, and morality. Namely, as Carl Truemann described so well in his masterful book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, we see ourselves as isolated individuals: self-determining, autonomous, and only responsible for self-expression. Thus, like so much of the rest of our lives, our imaginations have no external reference point. An obvious reason for this are the many addictive technologies in our world that so easily dominate our hearts and mind. Screens are designed to be captivating. Thus, moments and experiences that may have shaped our imaginations are instead mediated, either narrated for us by someone else or forced into some social media paradigm to prove that we are happy or influential. By teaching people that we are primarily self-constructed beings, imposing meaning into a purposeless universe, our culture unwittingly robs us of imagination's most fertile soil. There is no true wonder or real compassion for others unless there is a purpose to our lives bigger than our own selfish desires. The tragic irony is that humans have more avenues for self-expression than any generation before them. Shouldn't creativity and imagination be thriving right now? Anyone can be an artist, musician, or storyteller. Anyone can produce and express, and even garner an audience. But what's the point? The primary limit in a culture of limitless self-expression is meaninglessness. That's why we continue to see the epidemics of narcissism, loneliness, addictions, and depression and self-harms. We're like a room of kids who each brought their own show-and-tell project, but can't stop talking long enough to appreciate what anyone else has to offer. Dallas Willard once quipped that no one stands on the edge of the Grand Canyon and shouts "I am awesome." Today, plenty of people stand on the edge of something wonderful (i.e. wonder full), but cannot look outside of themselves long enough to figure out it's really not about us. In a world of constructed selves, imaginary gods and without purpose, the true roots of imagination wither and die. C.S. Lewis understood what is required to shape the imagination. "In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself," he wrote. By contrast, "The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison." In the works of Spenser, Milton and George MacDonald, Lewis sensed a true grappling with what he called "the roughness and density of life." Those authors could account for things like personhood, good, evil, purpose and meaning. By contrast, atheists like Shaw, Wells and Mills, felt surprisingly thin. Faced with "a desire nothing on Earth could satisfy," Lews concluded he was made for another, better world. That's why he said that his imagination was baptized before his conversion. A revival of Christian imagination is desperately needed today. Not only because who knows whether the next C.S. Lewis is out there, waiting for the kind of beauty and artistry that may baptize his or her own imagination. But also because imagination points to a vital aspect of what it means to be human. Only humans mirror the Creator in this way, with the ability to see what is not there and make it so. God, of course, created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing. We don't have that power, but we can create and our words are profoundly powerful. Jesus, the second Adam, appealed to the imagination in truth, compassion, and in story. He is the perfect expression of one of God's richest gifts to humanity. It's a gift that can help us make sense of life, move us to compassion, and bring what is not but ought to be into reality.

This week, the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) canceled all tournaments in China. The move was a protest against the Chinese Communist Party's censorship of missing tennis star Peng Shuai. The unprecedented move will likely cost the organization hundreds of millions in revenue. But, it's also the right move. Peng Shuai went missing after publicly claiming that she was sexually assaulted by a high-ranking government official. After a flood of international alarm, China finally produced rudimentary evidence of Peng Shuai's safety. But, it wasn't enough. "While we now know where Peng is, I have serious doubts that she is free, safe, and not subject to censorship, coercion, and intimidation," said WTA chief executive Steve Simon. The WTA's courageous response is tragically rare. Former U.S. Ambassador at large Kelly Eckels Currie put it best: "​​If you had told me a week-and-a-half ago that the Women's Tennis Association was going to be the most effective and bravest human rights organization in the world, I would have thought you were bananas… but here we are." Now, will the rest of the world join in?

John and Maria revisit the oral arguments for the Dobbs v. Jackson from the Supreme Court earlier this week. John shares insight from Ryan Anderson, who recently explained the impact of this case on the BreakPoint Podcast. Maria then reports on the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan. She briefly tells a story being reported of a father whose son was killed in the shooting. The father reportedly told a friend when the two couldn't locate his son that, Tate, the son, is the kind of person who would run towards the shooter. John and Maria discuss manhood and the importance of fathering in this cultural moment. -- Story References -- Segment 1: The Changing Landscape of Being Pro-Choice Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could upend Roe v. Wade. At the very least, Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization is the most significant challenge to legalized abortion to date. In question in a Mississippi law known as the Gestational Age Act. If the court decides the law should stand, the power to determine and limit abortion rights would effectively be returned to the states. The long battle over abortion in America has had many chapters. For years, most advocates of legalized abortion argued they were not really pro-abortion. Abortion, they claimed, was not a good thing, but women should have the right to decide whether or not to carry a baby to term. The painful decision to have an abortion, continued the rhetoric, is always tragic, but a woman must retain autonomy over her own body and health.BreakPoint> Oral Arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Point to a Post-Roe Future Today, on a very special edition of the BreakPoint podcast, I talk with Dr. Ryan Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) located in Washington, D.C. about the case, the oral arguments, and what the future could hold. BreakPoint>> Segment 2: Michigan Suspect's Parents Met With School Hours Before Shooting Prosecutors said the 15-year-old boy accused of killing four classmates at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit on Tuesday had planned the attack "well before the incident." The suspect, a 15-year-old boy who was charged with murder in the deaths of four students, had no previous juvenile record. But school officials had concerns about his behavior in the classroom. NY Times>> Anthony Bradley on Michigan ShootingSuburban 15-year-old boys have been shooting up their high schools since 1999. There is a clear profile that explains why this 20+year pattern repeats. Girls don't do this. Yet, when we say "There's a boy crisis" no one believes us. Why don't we want to focus on helping boys? Twitter>>

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the most significant challenge to Roe v. Wade to date. The anticipation surrounding Dobbs, on both sides of the abortion issue, has been palpable. And, what happened at the Supreme Court on Wednesday did not disappoint. Today, on a very special edition of the BreakPoint podcast, John talks with Dr. Ryan Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) located in Washington, D.C. about the case, the oral arguments, and what the future could hold. Anderson is a legal scholar and public intellectual. In our conversation, Ryan described the highlights from Wednesday and clarified why this case is so significant.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the most significant challenge to Roe v. Wade to date. The anticipation surrounding Dobbs, on both sides of the abortion issue, has been palpable. Wednesday's performance did not disappoint. Today, on a very special edition of the BreakPoint podcast, I talk with Dr. Ryan Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) located in Washington, D.C.. Anderson is a legal scholar and public intellectual. In our conversation, Ryan described the highlights from Wednesday and clarified why why this case is so significant: It was very telling that both of the two liberal justices who spoke, Sonia Sotomayor and [Stephen] Breyer, and the two pro choice advocates in the courtroom, they never really tried to defend "Roe" or "Casey" on the merits. The only things they appealed to are Stare Decisis; respect for precedent, the respectability of the court. "What would happen, the backlash, if we admit that we were wrong?" "We would look political…" The most important response there is that if the previous ruling was wrong, the way that something like "Plessy v. Ferguson" was wrong, it only does further damage to the court to say. "But we're going to uphold it anyway." That's where you're looking political; that's where you're not doing law anymore. And, so, there was several really good exchanges where Justice Alito was really, "Wait, so we couldn't have pushed back on that?" Brett Kavanaugh was also very good on this. He cited a whole string of cases where he said "[there were] dozens of major Supreme Court cases where the court overturned a bad ruling and actually, finally, got the constitution correct. And that's how we show our independence. That's how we show that we're lawyers practicing law and we're not politicians, were not doing public opinion. We're not doing public policy." And, so I just think the response there is "Roe" and "Casey" were wrongly decided the day that they were decided. They've done grave harm to the constitution, but more importantly, they allowed grave injustices to unborn human beings. And any moment that we wait is a moment too long to finally get rid of them. Perhaps the most important point Dr. Anderson made in our conversation is that if Roe v Wade is overturned, it's not the finish line for the pro-life movement. In reality, it's a new starting point, which will necessitate new efforts both in public policy and civil society. A post-Roe future demands more humane politics, and extra efforts on a local level to support both pre-born children and the women who find themselves in unexpected pregnancies. Again, here's Dr. Anderson: I think we're going to need to have a good kind of public policy. You know, child tax credits, paid family leave, things like that. That make it easier for families to form and for mothers to choose life. We need the public policy part of this. We also need the civil society part of this. I'm a both-and type of guy, and I think the pro-life movement at its best has been both-and on this. We want good public policy. I can't remember now who the sponsor is in the house, [but] he said we should extend, expand the child tax credit to include the nine months in the womb so that, rather than at birth, it kicks-in at conception. There are simple tweaks like that, that could make a difference in a family's life. We need to be thinking creatively on the policy side and on the civil society side. One particular pro-abortion argument presented during Wednesday's oral arguments is one that is commonly repeated on social media, or in conversation with friends and neighbors who support abortion: that abortion is necessary if women are going to fully participate in society as equal citizens. During our conversation, Dr. Ryan Anderson addressed this argument thoroughly: A world in which women rely on abortion, or women need abortion, is a sign that we have failed women. That's not a sign of women empowerment. That's not a sign of female equality. That is a sign that we have structured our society in which the male body is normative, in which women are somehow defective males and we've structured our economy, our education system, around my body as if it's the norm and that my wife's body is somehow flawed. The scholar who's doing the best work on this is actually one of my colleagues at the EPPC (Ethics and Public Policy Center), Erika Bachiochi. I kind of want to cite my sources on this. She published an excellent book earlier this year, titled "The Rights of Women" where she more or less traces the lost history of feminism. There was an early strand of feminism that emphasized that men and women are equal in dignity, but they're not the same; that there are two equal ways of imaging God, two equal ways of being human. Our law, our policies, our culture need to respect both of these ways of being human, and we need to craft law, policy, and cultural practices that support t

Not that long ago, what we ate was considered a matter of personal preference. Our sexual behavior, on the other hand, was considered a matter of morality that required regulating. Times have changed. In every society throughout history, sex has been seen as a moral matter of public concern. A primary reason for that is sex can result in children. So, it has implications for the community. With the advent of contraception and the popularizing of abortion, sex is no longer seen as a public moral issue, but only a matter of personal choice and consent. On the other hand, food is now increasingly seen as a moral issue, because of the ecological implications of food production and the promotion of personal health as an ultimate good. Scripture tells us that while we should steward our bodies, all foods are acceptable if received with thanksgiving, and that God designs our sexuality with purpose and with guardrails to keep it from becoming toxic. In other words, when we worship the creation instead of the creator, everything gets turned back to the front.

Every single person, including those who struggle with who they are, are made in the image and likeness of God. However much someone can be mistaken in their self-understanding, whatever they've done to add to their own confusion, they're still infinitely valuable and worthy of the fullest expressions of our love and care. This includes every person, within the growing population of people who identify as transgender. Because of this, it is important to say, definitively, that radical transgender ideology is destructive, harmful, and disconnected from reality. We are told, of course, that anything less than fully embracing radical transgender ideology is actually what is harmful. We frequently hear, for example, that people who identify as transgender are the most vulnerable group in the world, and that critiquing transgender ideology is committing violent discrimination. But how true are these claims? In October, Madison Smith, with the UK Critic, wrote about the claim that those who identify as transgender are the most "marginalized, abused and vulnerable group in the world." After reviewing the data, Smith concluded "...even though we've seen a sharp rise in the number of people who identify as transgender in the last few years, a trans person hasn't been murdered in the UK for nearly three years." Furthermore, "there are no reports ever of a trans person in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland being murdered." Journalist Anna Slatz elaborates further, "According to Human Rights Campaign's running list of trans deaths [in the U.S.], only two [are] being investigated as potential hate crimes." Despite this, the group categorizes all 44 of the deaths as hate crimes, "even when they had nothing to do with being transgender at all." Any death is tragic because every human has inherent value. Any act of violence against transgender people, including any act perpetuated for being transgender, is unacceptable. But that's precisely the point Smith and Slatz are making: the reports of widespread trans-phobic violence don't add up. Instead, they're being used as a bludgeon to silence anyone who criticizes trans ideology. According to this view, it's the inner self that matters, so people must change their bodies to accommodate their dysphoria. It's assumed that unless society encourages people with gender confusion in their confusion to undergo such surgery, we are guilty of violence against them. The awful truth and irony here are that the current practices of transgender treatment in medicine cause physical harm. In his book When Harry Became Sally, Ryan T. Anderson argues that anywhere between 80-95 percent of children who say they are transgender eventually abandon those feelings by late adolescence. For many today, waiting until after adolescence will be too late. They will have been encouraged by the adults around them to do real, irreversible damage to their minds and bodies. This is why Christians need to remember that love for our neighbors, especially the most vulnerable ones, must include telling the truth. As more and more stories of de-transitioners emerge, we hear from people who regret the invasive procedures of gender transition. They report long-term side effects of testosterone injections and surgical mutilations. Many of them are affected by anxiety, depression, and suicidal intention. We have to tell their stories. Even if many in the larger culture wish these people did not exist, their inherent dignity and value demand that they be heard. For the love of God and neighbor, Christians must have the courage to speak the truth, even about this very difficult and socially risky issue for the love of God and neighbor. We do so not because we want to be right but because the Gospel is a message of hope. It's a message that says we need not be victims of the power of bad ideas, and our minds need not be captive to destructive ideologies which tell us our bodies are secondary, malleable, or irrelevant. The Gospel offers what we need, forgiveness and holiness, a new identity, and a clean start. The swelling numbers of young people identifying as LGBTQ should tell us that captivity to great confusion is a culture-wide phenomenon today. At the same time, we must never lose sight that the victims of the bad ideas are individuals, especially children. They must know what Christ has to offer them. Consider the late Sy Rogers, who, after beginning what was at that time avant-garde, hormone therapy through Johns Hopkins medicine, detransitioned and found new life in Christ. He died two years ago now, a married father and grandfather, faithfully walking out the Christian ethic of sexuality, even as he called LGBTQ people to a new encounter with the God who made them - and loves them. That message of the possibilities of grace, grounded in steadfast truth and Christ's love, is needed now more than ever, especially as people deal with the fallout of destructive trans-narratives around us. For the sake of God and

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is crafting a new rule that could force religious employers, insurers, and healthcare providers to pay for and provide, among other things, gender transitions. The National Catholic Register broke the story. According to court filings, progressive activist groups demanded HHS expand its definition of discrimination "based on sex" to include gender identity. This would reverse the narrower Trump Administration rule, which provided religious exemptions. It turns out these groups, which included Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center, were part of a "task force" advising the HHS on its new rule. According to The Catholic Benefits Association, if HHS follows these groups' recommendations, "it would effectively remove all religious considerations from issues around life, family, marriage, the very nature of men and women," forcing religious healthcare providers to choose between their convictions and their existence. This would be disastrous, and as far as religious freedom goes, it's an all-hands-on-deck moment. If Americans' first liberty is to have a meaningful future, this cannot be allowed to happen.

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could upend Roe v. Wade. At the very least, Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization is the most significant challenge to legalized abortion to date. In question is a Mississippi law known as the Gestational Age Act. If the court decides the law should stand, the power to determine and limit abortion rights would effectively be returned to the states. The long battle over abortion in America has had many chapters. For years, most advocates of legalized abortion argued they were not really pro-abortion. Abortion, they claimed, was not a good thing, but women should have the right to decide whether or not to carry a baby to term. The painful decision to have an abortion, continued the rhetoric, is always tragic, but a woman must retain autonomy over her own body and health. The preferred label for these abortion advocates, "Pro-Choice," has always been problematic. For starters, a pre-born baby has distinct DNA and a separate body. So, abortion involves a body other than just the mother's, and her choice is made for someone else. The baby is not given a choice. Remarkable advances in science and technology over the years eventually dismantled claims made by early abortion advocates that the preborn are not yet human. So, the assertion shifted: preborn humans are not persons. This raised the immediate and historically fraught question of who gets to decide which human beings are persons and which are not? What non-arbitrary criteria can be used to determine personhood? And how can such criteria be applied consistently in a world where one woman mourns a miscarriage, and another deliberately causes a miscarriage?

A few weeks ago, I talked about a claim that we should call God "they" since "He" isn't inclusive enough. A tweet by the Religious News Service recently doubled down on this idea, asserting that Christian churches "lack consensus" about God's pronouns. Lacks consensus? That's a strange statement. That only makes sense if 99.99% of all Christian churches, in all times and places throughout history, don't count as a consensus. If you go around the world and ask Christians from all cultures and all denominations, you'll encounter a lot of different ideas about a lot of other things. Roman Catholics disagree with Presbyterians about church structure, and Anglicans argue with Baptists about baptism. Not only that, but you'll find a delightful degree of diversity when it comes to the way they sing God's praises. But, for all the glorious variety of Christ's Church down through the ages, pretty much the only place you'll get "God is they" theology is in the culturally narrow confines of the wealthy West. For all the disputes Christians have had, the core of the Gospel teaching, including God's pronouns, has remained unchanged since the Apostles.

We cover plenty of news at BreakPoint. Most of our commentaries, in fact, address a breaking story or headline in some way. And, several times a week or more, someone in our audience will ask if we plan to address this or that news story. Sometimes they are asking for our take on a high-profile headline. Other times, they are asking about a story that's been buried in the never-ending news cycle. While we take every request seriously, we aren't always able to follow through on every one of them. In our current news-saturated day, there are always more stories that pop up in newsfeeds than we could possibly cover. The constraints of time and space mean there's only so much we can talk about. And, to be clear, we're not a news organization. That's not what we do. Other organizations are set up to keep us informed about what's going on in the world. Strictly speaking, our mission at BreakPoint is not even to tell people what to think about news stories. If the only outcome of BreakPoint is a group of people repeating what we've said, then we've failed. Our goal is to help guide people in how to think about the world and their place in it. In other words, the headlines and news stories aren't the "what" of BreakPoint; they are the "when" and "where." This cultural moment is the stage of the play, not the plot. The news is where we see ideas and their consequences expressed, both good and bad. It's where the philosophies that were born in ivory towers meet the reality of people's lives, dreams, and decisions. Confusing the noise and chaos of the headlines as the Story of the world is the most common way Christians are lost in them. The latest addition to the LGBT acronym is more than an individual ethical concern; it says something about what it means to be an embodied human being. A Twitterstorm calling for a minor celebrity to be cancelled for something considered innocuous last year but unforgivable this year points to the innate and constant desire for justice within society and the human heart (and reveals how inadequate our basis for that justice is at the moment). Political disputes about abortion, racism, and liberty of conscience only make sense in the greater context of the divine imprint on each and every human being. In the news, timebound stories connect to broader issues of truth, meaning, morality, and justice. Headlines point to where our lives intersect with God's timeless work in the world. The challenges of our moment can only be placed and understood in light of the larger Story. We hope that in hearing us dissect these news events on BreakPoint, our place within God's larger story becomes more obvious. Christians believe that every moment is linked to eternity, each single frame an interrelated part of a bigger picture. By pointing out the connections between significant cultural moments and the larger story, we pray that God would empower His people to live out a Christian worldview in the time and place He has determined for them. After all, living a Christian worldview is about more than knowing a factoid or crafting the most clever response to an opponent of the faith. It's about seeing the world from God's point of view. When so much of life is captivated by the 24-hour news cycle, we are tempted to think of the world as a series of isolated events, or as Henry Ford put it, "one (darn) thing after another." Christians are tempted to reduce our cultural witness to a running and never-ending tally of wins and losses. God calls us to more than being tossed to and fro by every other headline. God has called us to a life of reconciliation in this time and this place (see 2 Corinthians 5). If you are in Christ, you have been called to this cultural moment. With God's help, the Colson Center and BreakPoint will be here to help you live out this calling with cultural clarity, Gospel confidence, and Christ's courage. If BreakPoint has been a helpful resource for you, please consider a gift of support today, Giving Tuesday. You can give at colsoncenter.org/givingtuesday21.

Shane Morris visits with Dr. Thomas Price about Athanasius' On The Incarnation. The pair discuss the significance of Jesus being man and how Advent is an important time for the Christian, and not only to celebrate the birth of Christ. This is a portion of an extended conversation Shane has with Dr. Price on the Upstream podcast. To receive the full conversation register for the Advent resources organized by BreakPoint at www.breakpoint.org/advent.

Last week the LA Times reported that, facing soaring rates of D's and F's, more schools are simply doing away with grades entirely. Instead, teachers are encouraged to give students little to no homework, move deadlines, and have fewer outcome-driven measurements of achievement. What's the rationale behind the move? "By continuing to use century-old grading practices," wrote L.A. Unified's chief academic administrator, "we inadvertently perpetuate achievement and opportunity gaps, rewarding our most privileged students and punishing those who are not." In other words, standardized grades are racist. But isn't suggesting that poor or minority kids can't get good grades itself a racist belief? A major reason for merit-based grading is that if we don't evaluate students based on their achievements, we'll evaluate them on something else; in this case, an administrator's preconceived ideas about their ability to succeed, based entirely on ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Even more, by doing away with grades, educators keep students from the potential to succeed, no matter how hard they work. It's a different kind of tyranny, but no less destructive: the tyranny of low expectations.

Recently in the Atlantic, Peter Wehner argued that the evangelical church is breaking apart. He references the politicization of Covid, the challenge of two contentious elections, and the fact that America is in a bitter partisan divide. Additionally, in June, Mere Orthodoxy columnist Michael Graham suggested that evangelicalism in America is undergoing a "Six-way fracturing." Graham doesn't express the same pessimism about the future as Wehner; Graham is descriptive, while Wehner's is predictive. All the same, evangelicals predicting their own demise is a pretty consistent feature of that branch of the Christian church. The most commonly blamed culprit is politics. Of course, things inside the evangelical camp are divisive. According to one study, 29% of pastors considered quitting in the last year, and Wehner suggests why: "the aggressive, disruptive, and unforgiving mindset that characterizes so much of our politics has found a home in many American churches." At the same time, there are reasons to doubt predictions of evangelicalism's impending demise. For one thing, evangelicals have long divided over politics; articles similar to Wehner's date back to at least the Reagan administration. It's essentially the same analysis blaming the same culprits. Part of the challenge in any analysis is defining "evangelicalism." After all, the identity of most denominations, even those historically formed over theological, geographical, or ethnic distinctions, seem up for grabs these days. Evangelicals are a cross-denominational bunch without a clear hierarchy. The best attempt to define evangelicalism, in theory, is what's known as David Bebbington's "quadrilateral." This four-part definition includes a commitment to conversion, Biblical authority, the centrality of the cross, and social activism. However, the label of evangelical is now claimed by many who define Bebbington's four parts in ways foreign to the Christian movements from the 19th century in England and America. Today, the term "evangelical" is claimed and applied to pastors, politicos, activists, bloggers, artists, commentators, congregations, and conferences with widely (and, at times, wildly) different views about Scripture, conversion, Jesus, and social issues. Each side of the label accuses the other of abandoning or compromising evangelical identity. The long-standing and dominant media narrative, for example, insists that conservative Christians are guilty of "politicized the faith." However, sociologists George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk offer a different take in their new book One Faith No Longer. Their surprising conclusions, wrote Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition, "upends conventional wisdom that conservative Christians are uniquely prone to falling captive to unbiblical political ideologies, or that conservative Christians are filled with rage toward their theological opponents." Countering the dominant narrative, writes Wax, "progressive Christians are more likely to establish their identity in politics, while conservative Christians find their identity in theology." Second, conservative Christians are more likely than their progressive counterparts to defy their side's "political orthodoxy." Third, progressive Christians tend to think that conservative Christians are the ones in need of conversion, not non-Christians. To be clear, as we've argued repeatedly on Breakpoint, many conservative Christians are guilty of doing politics poorly. Often, in fact. Many on the Christian right suffer just as deeply from the "political illusion," looking for political messiahs or for political solutions to problems that are not political. Politics, in and of itself, makes for a lousy worldview. The real crisis simmering beneath evangelical division is a theological one. A recent survey conducted by George Barna found that 62% of American Christians don't believe that the Holy Spirit is a real person. 61% say all religious faiths are of equal value. The survey concluded, noting core beliefs, like the inerrancy of Scripture, that just 6% of American Christians consistently hold recognizably Christian beliefs. One might say evangelicals have forgotten the Evangel. That doesn't mean a vacuum is left where the Gospel should be, however. As Alan Jacobs with Baylor University's honors program observed, "Culture catechizes." In the absence of biblical teaching, Christians will learn "not from the churches, but from the media they consume, or rather the media that consume them." Wholly avoiding politics, as some suggest, is not an option for Christians, especially in a world where abortions are legal, radical ideology is hoisted on elementary-age children, and China is committing genocide against the Uygurs. We should vote and advocate, to paraphrase Abraham Kuyper, in every square inch of human existence as if it belongs to Christ, who is Sovereign over all. Because it does. Christ calls His people to love our neighbors and our enemies. Sometimes, we must love

John and Maria discuss the recent convictions of Travis, and Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan, in the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery. They discuss how this case pairs with the Kyle Rittenhouse case and how worldview guides society to have strength to withstand horrendous acts as a civilization and to hold a worldview big enough for the brokenness in the world to protect image bearers. Additionally, John and Maria revisit the Thanksgiving commentary from Chuck Colson where he explains the story behind Thanksgiving. They also discuss a commentary that dealt with the blurred lines in the sexual revolution, considering a recent book my Emily Ratajkowski who explains the sexual exploitation in the music and film industry, as she looked back at a scenario on the set of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" music video. Maria then brings up a new Biden administration move to use the Health and Human Services (HHS) to accomplish progressive ideals. To close, John and Maria discuss a situation playing out in China involving Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who recently revealed how she was abused by a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official. Peng Shuai then disappeared and the World Tennis Association (WTA) called the CCP to reveal where Shuai was. In response, an outspoken NBA player, Enes Kanter, called on American-based sports organizations to stand with the WTA, going so far as to call for the boycotting of the winter olympics. --Recommendations-- BreakPoint Advent Resources>> GI Joe on Youtube>> Peter Leithart on Gratitude | BreakPoint Podcast>> Melanie Fitzpatrick on Thanksgiving | Strong Women Podcast -- Stories Mentioned in Show -- Segment 1: All 3 men charged in Arbery's death convicted of murder All three white men charged in the death of Ahmaud Arbery were convicted of murder Wednesday in the fatal shooting that became part of a larger national reckoning on racial injustice. The convictions for Greg McMichael, son Travis McMichael and neighbor William "Roddie" Bryan came after jurors deliberated for about 10 hours. The men face minimum sentences of life in prison. It is up to the judge to decide whether that comes with or without the possibility of parole.AP News>> Segment 2: Chuck on Thanksgiving Most of us know the story of the first Thanksgiving; at least we know the Pilgrim version. But how many of us know the Indian viewpoint?BreakPoint>> The Blurred Lines of the Sexual Revolution As our culture questions the consequences of the sexual revolution, it's also time to question the premise that as long as everyone consents, nobody gets hurt, and everybody has fun. It's clearly not true. As women continue to wrestle with the blurred lines of the sexual revolution and the industry that has long profited from them, Christianity has a lot to offer.BreakPoint>> Segment 3: An Even Worse HHS Mandate It turns out these groups, including Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center, were part of a "task force" advising HHS on its new rule. According to The Catholic Benefits Association, if HHS follows these groups' recommendations, "it would effectively remove all religious considerations from issues around life, family, marriage, the very nature of men and women," forcing religious healthcare providers to choose between their convictions and their existence. BreakPoint>> HHS Power in Government Biden's HHS Secretary is again using the power of his office to attack people of faith who disagree with him. Yesterday he revoked waivers for faith-based children's service programs—this is outrageous. His policy will reduce options for kids in foster care.James Lankford Tweet>> Segment 4: World Tennis Association Opposes China Seeking Tennis Great Peng Shuai "It's an unusual response and really to the credit of the WTA to be this vocal," said Sarah Cook, the research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at D.C.-based think tank Freedom House. "We do know from different people who have been detained in the past, international attention can really make a difference. These are not legal decisions; they are political decisions. Even if it doesn't get someone released, it can physically protect them. It's really important for her well-being that there is this type of international conversation...It could be a tipping point in how these kinds of organizations speak out," Cook said. ESPN>> Enes Kanter Calls Out 'Fake' NBA, Says League Silent on Things that Could Affect Its Business "Two years ago, when we were in the bubble, you know, NBA was standing with Black Lives Matter, and it gave me so much hope and motivation. I was like, 'Finally, an organization standing up for something bigger than basketball,' right? But to me, it was very fake when it comes to things like what's happening in China because NBA and also Adam Silver is the one telling us to speak out against all the injustices happening, not just in America, but all over the world," Kanter advised. "So, to me, it was very important." Breitbart>>