Breakpoint

In the 19th century, India was coming to grips with the modern world. British companies, like the East India Company, aided in modernizing India through trade, and British missionaries like William Carey helped modernize India through culture formation. Arguably the most creative interaction with the west happened in Bengal through the work of Christian missionaries. For example, when Krishna Mohan Bannerjee was a child, he attended the School Society Institution started by David Hare, a watchmaker from Scotland. Though Hare's faith commitments are unknown, he was concerned about social welfare in Bengal and started several noteworthy schools in the area. Hare recognized Bannerjee's potential and pushed him to continue his education, first in Pataldanga, and eventually at the newly founded Hindu College (now Presidency University) in Kolkata. Bannerjee thrived at Hindu College, where the atheist headmaster, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, advocated for free discussion and debate on any and every issue and profoundly influenced Bannerjee. When his father died of cholera in 1828, Bannerjee was forced to support himself through manual labor, and yet, still excelled in his studies. After graduating from Hindu College in 1829, Bannerjee got a job teaching at David Hare's school. In 1829, Scottish missionary Dr. Alexander Duff noticed that Christian missions in India had only reached the lower castes. Duff proposed a new mission strategy of offering education in English in the sciences and biblical studies to help upper-caste Hindu students see the contradictions in their own beliefs and move toward Christianity. Like so many others, Duff connected Western learning and success with Christianity. He believed that making Western learning and the Bible available would inevitably lead to conversions. Bannerjee not only began to attend Duff's lectures, he even visited Duff's house for serious discussions about religion and philosophy. In 1832, Bannerjee converted to Christianity. The conversion came at great cost: Hare fired Bannerjee from the school, Bannerjee's wife was forced to return to her father's home, and a firestorm erupted in the local press about Hindu College. Ironically, Bannerjee's conversion was blamed on the atheist, Derozio, and the popular headmaster was forced out. Bannerjee moved to the Church Missionary Society School, where he served as headmaster. He studied theology at Bishop's College and became the first Indian ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church in Bengal. Before long, Bannerjee became the foremost Indian apologist of his day. Prior to 1865, Bannerjee followed the lead of Duff and other missionaries in seeing Hinduism as nothing but superstition and idolatry that needed to be destroyed. However, his entire approach to apologetics eventually changed, and he began to argue that Christianity was actually the fulfillment of Hinduism. He noted how sacrifice was the most important ritual in the earliest forms of Hinduism. Further, he showed from the Vedas, the Upanishads, and other Hindu writings that Prajapati, the Lord and Supporter of Creation, sacrificed himself to save humanity, and did so by taking on a mortal body. This, Bannerjee argued, prefigured Jesus' incarnation and sacrifice on the cross. Bannerjee's efforts to find a doorway from Hinduism to Christianity grew out of his love for his country and his culture. He wanted to reconcile Christianity and modern education with Indian culture. In keeping with this goal, he became heavily involved in a wide range of social organizations in Bengal and worked for social reform. He opposed the caste system, polygamy, idolatry, the sale of girls into marriage, and sati, the practice of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. He also supported the education of women, seeing it as a yardstick for measuring the social progress of a country. Beyond his work as an evangelist and apologist, Bannerjee was a critically important figure in the Bengal Renaissance, bringing modern ideas of scholarship and social justice to India, and developing an approach to Christianity that honored Indian culture while remaining firmly anchored in the British evangelical tradition. He was a remarkable example of contextualizing the Gospel to India, and applying the biblical worldview to all areas of life. For Bannerjee, this started in school, inspired by a teacher who taught students to desire wisdom, seek truth, and follow honest inquiry. Eventually, this pointed Krishna Mohan Bannerjee to love God with all his mind, and to love his neighbors as himself.

A Minneapolis ballot initiative would replace one of the city's largest police departments with a new "Department of Public Safety." While not doing away with police officers entirely, the initiative would reduce the number on patrol and outsource many police duties to unarmed community safety officials. Not everyone is on board. Minnesota Public Radio reports that, while the majority of voters are in favor of some reforms, few want fewer police officers. This is especially true for African-American voters, "75 percent [of whom] said the city should not cut the police force compared to 51 percent of white voters." The average Minneapolis resident sees the obvious: violent crime is spiking. The number of homicides in Minneapolis doubled from 2019 to 2020, and 2021 is on track for another record-breaking year. James Madison said that "if men were angels, no government would be necessary." Justice and respect of citizens require an accurate understanding of human nature. Without it, we either swing toward severity or fall toward foolishness.

The Christian commitment to advancing education is part of the historical record. While not wholly consistent in every time and place, the Christian view of life and the world (especially its view of a created, ordered reality and the divine imprint on every human person) has been history's most fertile ground for advancing learning and knowledge. In a Christian worldview, the value of education isn't merely utilitarian. Instead, it grows from the rich soil of Christian beliefs: in a God who wants to be known, Who created an ordered and knowable universe to be stewarded by humans, to whom He gave the ability to learn and the capacity to use knowledge in His service. That worldview framework has been uniquely fruitful for advancing education, even (and perhaps especially) at times of civilizational crisis. For example, during the decline of the Roman Empire's authority in Western Europe, education went into sharp decline. Centuries worth of accumulated knowledge and learning were at risk of being lost forever, except In Ireland, where monks preserved learning that they'd later reintroduce to Europe. Irish monks viewed the preservation of literature and knowledge as part of their task as Christian scholars and clergy. More than merely preserving learning, they innovated in the methodology of education. Up to this point, the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages were written in an unbroken stream of letters with no capitalization, punctuation, or word spacing. The Irish changed that and, in doing so, made writing a primary method of learning. The Irish also had a hand in the recovery of education on the European continent in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. Having built an empire, Charlemagne realized that he desperately needed educated officials to govern it. So, he searched for the best scholar in all of Europe to head his educational reform program and found the Irish-trained Alcuin of York. Alcuin reintroduced liberal arts as the foundation for education in Europe. He started schools in monasteries, cathedrals, and even the palace itself. Alcuin also oversaw the systematic copying and preservation of any and all ancient texts that he could find. In fact, many of the oldest copies of classical works still in existence today date from copies produced under his direction. Within a generation or two after Charlemagne, however, all but the monastic schools had collapsed. Then, around the year 1000, Europe experienced a significant turnaround. As the population grew, cities were founded, and government became more centralized, there was a greater demand for education. Because rural monasteries were more concerned with the training of monks than educational needs in the cities, urban cathedral schools were reestablished. This led to a tremendous expansion of education, and a great deal of new, creative scholarship. The result is what medieval historians call the Renaissance of the 12th Century. As cities grew and bishops took on more administrative duties, they could not devote the resources necessary to continue the cathedral schools, so these schools spun off into universities. The first was the University of Bologna, founded around 1150 and focused primarily on law. The University of Paris was founded around 1200, with other universities following. The liberal arts continued to be the foundation of the curriculum, with advanced study available in theology, law, and medicine. Because logic was the foundation of the scholastic methodology used in these schools, the works of Aristotle, translated from Arabic texts in Muslim Spain, were particularly important during this period. Along with great scholastic theologians like Thomas Aquinas, medieval thinkers like Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon helped lay the intellectual foundations for the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Christian advancement of education also happened elsewhere. In the late 14th through 16th centuries, the Brethren of the Common Life provided basic education for students in the Low Countries and most of Germany. Their goal was to equip the population to read the sources of the Christian faith. By training students such as Erasmus, Gutenberg, and Luther, the Brethren of the Common Life helped lay the foundation for the Protestant Reformation. History is replete with these stories of the impact Christianity had in advancing education. The question for us in our civilizational crisis is, will we follow suit? There's never been a greater opportunity for Christians to take the lead in education than in our current cultural moment. We've seen a dramatic shift in public confidence in the existing systems over the last several years. Parents are looking for new educational solutions for their children. The Colson Center is heavily invested in training educators, especially in this current cultural crisis, by equipping homeschool parents as well as Christian school leaders and other leaders in educational innovation. If you

This week John and Shane discuss adoption, ranging from embryo adoption to same-sex adoption. A listener asks how adoption supports God's family structure and what the role of it is in God's redemption. Another listener writes in noticing a movement to single-parenthood in their region. The listener asks how to move forward with friends, when those friends are offended by Scripture. Later, John and Shane consider how and when to use modern quotes in BreakPoint and when to use Scripture. John gives a listener perspective on why we use quotes so often, and how we consider using Scripture in specific situations. To close, John and Shane explore a question asking for clarity on marijuana. John provides good context into the difference in medical marijuana and recreational marijuana.

In mid-September, an organization called "TwoDadsUK" held an exhibition called The Modern Family Show in London. It was a trade show to sell fertility services for LGBTQ people. One vendor's floor-to-ceiling banner announced,, "The New Face of Surrogacy!" next to a photo of two men embracing. No woman. This is an example of marketing being more about the audience than the product. . The audience are those who've intentionally chosen a sterile union, but who now demand the product, which is a child. The development and birth of a child requires a woman's womb, hired out as a means. Because no one wants to think about that side of this industry, all we see is the happy audience, as if the woman doesn't exist. She does. Women aren't machines, babies aren't products, and no one is entitled to a child at the expense of a woman whose physical labor and emotional pain are left out of the glossy photographs used for the sales pitch.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, since the start of the pandemic, more than 1.5 million students have left traditional public schooling. Many parents are realizing, some for the first time, that students aren't learning what their parents thought they were learning. As one former college professor noted, if you haven't been in education in the past three years, it's almost unrecognizable to what you experienced growing up. This has led to incredible growth in the number of home schooling families and record enrollments for nearly every Christian school that I know of. Part of the Colson Center's calling as a worldview-equipping institution is to serve Christian educators by equipping them to think and teach from a Christian worldview. We invite you to partner with us as we serve Christian education in this strategic moment by training Christian educators. To learn more about our work in Christian education, and to support it, visit www.breakpoint.org/september.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, were chosen to grace the cover of the 2021 edition of "Time100: The Most Influential People of 2021." After publicly cutting ties with the British royal family several months ago and moving to America, the couple described the whole ordeal in a televised interview and, as a result, made this year's list. Many people have strong opinions about Harry and Meghan's decision to leave Buckingham Palace; I don't. My knowledge of British royalty is limited to the few seasons of "The Crown" I watched with Sarah before we canceled our Netflix subscription. What does interest me, however, is how their decision, which has been widely hailed as "brave" and "authentic," mirrors something increasingly popular among modern young adults: cutting so-called "toxic people" out of their lives. It's also notable how quickly friends, relatives, and neighbors can be labeled "toxic" simply by holding different political, moral, or religious beliefs. Recently, a psychologist specializing in family therapy told the Atlantic that his practice is flooded with older parents mourning estrangement from their grown children, and with grown children angry and hurt by conflicts with their parents. Apparently, when it comes to family fractures, the royal family is far from exceptional. In fact, according to a recent piece by Sarah Logan in The Guardian, you don't even have to be "toxic" to find yourself cut out of a loved one's life. It's enough that you don't "spark joy." In the article, Logan documents a growing group of young people practicing "relationship minimalism." Inspired by home organizing coaches like Marie Kondo, these mostly urban, single adults are not only clearing their lives of excess stuff; they're tossing out excess people. For example, 20-something YouTube star Ronald Banks says that living a minimalist lifestyle with only a few sets of clothes, simple furniture, and bare minimum electronics prompted him to go the next step and ditch meaningless relationships, too. Or, as he called them, "emotional clutter." Young adults like Banks are all about cutting ties. As Logan put it: "If the city they live in no longer sparks joy, they move." Some keep apartments so sparsely furnished that guests can't even sit down or have tea. One YouTube minimalist quoted in the article refuses to have a mirror in her apartment because, in her words, "Why would I try to impress people that I don't even like?...I'd rather be alone than with people who make me feel alone." Not to be too "judgy," but that doesn't sound much like joy. This kind of utilitarian attitude toward other human beings is not only sad, it's also darkly ironic given our culture's epidemics of loneliness and suicides. Behind these cultural crises are a growing group of young people who think of relationships as dispensable and people as furniture. As the Director of Research and Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families put it, "Never before have family relationships been seen so interwoven with the search for personal growth, the pursuit of happiness, and the need to confront and overcome psychological obstacles." Anyone willing to walk away from parents, friends, or even an entire city, just because they don't "spark joy," fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and functioning of relationships. People are not consumer goods to be rummaged through, tried on, and returned if they no longer fit. If anything, we need to be around people who rub us the wrong way or who demand something from us instead of serving our therapeutic goals. That's part of what the Church is for! It's a redeemed community united not by hobbies, career goals, or personality traits, but by allegiance to a Lord whose love transcends all of this. In the context of such relationships, the Bible says that "iron sharpens iron." Anyone who's ever banged two pieces of metal together knows that sparks will fly—and not always sparks of joy! But in God's eyes, and in the eyes of the author of Proverbs, the results are worth the friction. No, we're not called to put up with just anything, without limit. Sometimes there are situations in which cutting people out of our lives is necessary and wise. Contrary to what these relationship minimalists believe, our personal happiness is bound to our relationships but is not bound by them. In an age marked by historic loneliness, "relationship minimalism" sounds like a poor way to love both our neighbors and ourselves.

More than 500 female athletes signed an Amicus brief last week asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule against a Mississippi law that bans abortions after about 15 weeks of pregnancy. Signed by female Olympians, soccer and basketball and swimming stars, the brief failed address the critical questions of the humanity and moral status of children in the womb. Instead, the athletes focused on how abortion restrictions "harm" them. Their approach is typical of the kind of arguments being made against the Texas law, and abortion restrictions in general. These arguments depend upon a number of faulty assumptions which, like the humanity of babies in the womb, are left unsaid. First, the brief claims that without abortion, female athletes would be "compelled" by the state to "carry pregnancies to term and to give birth." Implied here is that abstinence is too preposterous a proposition to even be considered as an option. Even if ideological and moral considerations are left aside, that's simply illogical. The U.S. government doesn't force anyone to make children, or to engage in the kinds of sexual activity that leads to pregnancy. Also, according to the attorney who filed the brief on behalf of the athletes, the right to kill unborn babies is absolutely necessary in order for women to be able to "realize their full athletic potential." Even if we set aside the degrading tyranny of low expectations assumed in that statement, implied here is that it's impossible for women who become mothers to also be successful athletes. That's simply not true. Allyson Felix is the most decorated American track star in history. In 2018, she was effectively dropped by her sponsor, Nike, after refusing to terminate her pregnancy. She was picked up by another sponsor and, despite a challenging pregnancy, went on to win both gold and bronze medals in Tokyo, while her two-year-old watched from home. Pregnancy and parenting does, of course, disrupt life in many profound ways. Still, scores of women have been successful as athletes and, for that matter, in business, education, science, finance, politics, and countless other areas, while also being mothers. Even so, abortion advocates often pit a woman's body as an obstacle to her success as a woman. This makes it all the more strange that so many of the athletes who signed this brief, claiming to support women's sports, publicly advocate for allowing men to participate in women's sports. A few months before signing this brief, U.S. soccer player Megan Rapinoe wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post in which she opposed restrictions on males competing against females. Unlike abortion restrictions, allowing men in women's sports is unfair and unsafe for women. In fact, it eliminates any logical ground for gendered sports leagues in the first place. Perhaps the most problematic part of this brief is its subtext that competing in sports is as important for human flourishing as creating and bearing children. For athletes to assert that they must have the right to kill their unborn children in order to compete is to suggest that competing in a sport is of greater value than the life of another human being. While courageous and talented athletes like Allyson Felix disprove this point practically, Scripture counters it ontologically. Men and women were made to image God and, as the Westminster Catechism puts it, to glorify and enjoy Him forever. Competing in sports is one way humans can enjoy and glorify God, but that's only because enjoying and glorifying God is what humans are for. Watching Michael Jordan play basketball in the 90s, Serena Williams serve a tennis ball in the 2000s, or Simone Biles tumble across a balance beam today unfailingly elicits awe and wonder. These various physical talents reflect and portray the deep value that humans have, but they are not the source of that value. Human value is God-given and therefore intrinsic to who we are. This brief implies that something we do, competing in sports, carries more value than who we are, valuable image bearers of God. If that is true, what of the rest of us with more, shall we say, limited athletic abilities? Simply put, this Amicus brief gets everything exactly wrong. It's wrong to suggest that the ability to bear children is somehow a bug, not a feature, of the female body. It's wrong to suggest that children are a hindrance to athletic success, as if they were a sprained ankle or broken hockey stick. And it's wrong about who women's sports are for, what they are for, and what they portray about human value. When a sports league pressures women to violently inhibit their body's natural functioning, it ceases to be a women's league at all. Instead it becomes a pretend-men's sports league which encourages women to compete as long as they aren't too much like women. It disregards those women who do compete - and win - while being and becoming mothers. And it belittles the beauty and design of women's bodies, which are strong enough to

John and Maria visit on changes in the education landscape. They discuss the power of technology to not only inform our understanding of the world, especially in education, but how technology forms us. They consider the addictive nature of technology and how it can be associated with increasing numbers in things ranging from facial tics to gender dysphoria. Maria then asks John's perspective on China's crackdown on technology, especially for adolescents. China is limiting video game access for young people, and Maria asks if this is right, knowing the impact of technology on teens, or if this is an infringement on the family sphere. To close, Maria shares an amicus brief filed by hundreds of women who are opposing the Mississippi abortion law. The brief states that limiting access to abortion will infringe on the rights and progress of women in society. Maria pulls the veil back on the brief, showing the way the arguments fail to recognize the strength and opportunity women have. -- Stories Mentioned In-Show -- The Cost of Digital Addictions? In a recent Wall Street Journal article, psychiatrist Anna Lembke offered a stark warning: our favorite technologies are "drowning us in dopamine." Dopamine is the brain's natural feel-good chemical. It rewards us when we do enjoyable things like connect with friends, laugh at a joke, or eat a taco. Today, that powerful reward cycle is being hijacked by digital technology.BreakPoint>> You Are What You Binge Pediatricians are growing increasingly concerned about an explosion in facial and vocal tics in teenagers, especially teenage girls. According to the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society, case numbers in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Australia have skyrocketed over the last year. They've even called it a "parallel pandemic" alongside COVID-19. A UK journal has reported similar findings.BreakPoint>> College and the Decline of American Men In yet another indicator that they are not ok, men in America are abandoning higher education in record numbers. According to the Wall Street Journal, at the end of the 2020 academic year, the percentage of male college students dropped to just over 40 percent. Soon, if current trend lines continue, one expert predicts, for every man who earns a college degree, two women will earn a degree.BreakPoint>> Leaving Church The pandemic policies, social unrest, and political division that's left so much of our culture on edge have created quite a bit of tumult for churches, too. A few weeks ago, in a blog at Mere Orthodoxy, Pastor Michael Graham offered a new way to categorize how Christians are reorganizing amidst the chaos.The Point>> Learning Loss From Covid-19 Like most of the damage from this pandemic, the key factors for education were pre-existing conditions. Students already accustomed to facing challenges can grow more resilient in adversity. Students whose education was already more than information transfer were able to build curiosity in new ways. Parents who accepted that their kids' education was primarily their responsibility made necessary pivots.BreakPoint>> China's New Video Game Restrictions Are About Far More Than Kids' Habits China has twice as many gamers as the U.S. has people—some 700 million of them. That ubiquity, especially among young people, has worried China's central government. So at the start of this month, it banned people under 18 from playing video games for more than three hours a week. They could only play from 8 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. But it's not just video games. The government has gone after tutoring companies and big tech players in this "season of crackdowns," in an attempt to bring these sectors more in line with what they perceive as socialist values and to strengthen control over Chinese society and the Chinese economy. Slate>> More than 500 female athletes file amicus brief against Mississippi abortion law More than 500 of the U.S.'s most prominent professional female athletes filed an amicus brief on Monday that voices their opposition to a Mississippi law that prohibits abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Hill>> -- Recommendations -- Louise Penny>> The Third Education Revolution with Vishal Mangalwadi Most recently, Vishal has written The Third Education Revolution, in which he traces both the history of the Christian promotion of education around the world and the opportunity we have in front of us right now. Here's a segment of that interview with Vishal Magalwhaldi BreakPoint Podcast Special>>

Most likely, Tsuda Umkea's father regarded her as expendable. He was so angry when his second child was a second daughter, he stormed out of the house. Still, during Japan's rapid modernization campaign in the late 19th century, he had become interested in the education of girls, and especially the possibility of girls studying in Western countries as exchange students. So, when that opportunity arose for his six-year-old daughter, he volunteered Umkea, known as Ume, to go. Ume ended up in Washington, DC, in the family of Charles Lanham, the secretary of the Japanese legation to the United States. Lanham and his wife had no children of their own, but treated Ume as if she were their own child. After about a year in their home, she asked to be baptized. When she returned to Japan in 1882, she had nearly forgotten the language and was shocked by the inferior status of women in Japanese culture. At the time, Japan was experiencing a backlash against Western influence, and a resurgence of very traditional Neo-Confucian ideals. Seeing this, she decided that she would never enter a traditional Japanese marriage, but only one built on mutual love and respect like she'd seen in America. Ume was soon hired as a tutor to the children of Itō Hirobumi, soon to be prime minister of Japan. In 1885, she began teaching at a school established by the Imperial Household to educate its daughters in traditional manners and customs, to prepare them to be wives and mothers. Troubled, Ume began to think that her own "unique destiny" was to improve educational opportunities for Japanese women. In order to do that, she needed more education. And so, she returned to the United States. Ume attended Bryn Mawr College from 1889-1892. There, she studied English literature, German, philosophy, and biology. She also attended St. Hilda's College, Oxford University. She did so well that Bryn Mawr offered her a fellowship to pursue an advanced degree. She refused, intent on returning to the royal family and Japan in order to improve women's education. The only school at that time that provided higher education for women in Japan was the Tokyo Women's Normal School. Ume decided that others needed the same opportunity she'd had abroad. She began giving public speeches about the subject and, with the help of some Quaker friends, raised $8,000 to provide scholarships for Japanese women. In Japan, Ume resumed teaching, while writing and lecturing about the status of women. In 1900, realizing that girls would never be given the same opportunities as boys in existing schools, she resigned from her post and established Joshi Eigaku Juku, or The Women's Institute for English Studies. Following the example of Bryn Mawr, which insisted that students meet the same standards demanded by Harvard, she determined that her school would follow the standards of the very rigorous and prestigious Tokyo University. The school focused on liberal arts and discussion of contemporary topics, with the goal of developing students' personalities and encouraging creativity. Ume had to work very hard to support herself and fund the new school. In addition to teaching at her own school, she took jobs at other schools, tutored daughters of friends, and engaged in fundraising. Her efforts paid off when, in 1903, the school was approved as a vocational school by the Ministry of Education. Under Ume's leadership, the school's standards were so rigorous that, in 1905, it became the first school in Japan whose graduates did not need to take government examinations in order to obtain a teaching license. Ume's unrelenting efforts to support her school and promote women's education took its toll on her health. She suffered a stroke in 1919, and retired to a cottage in Kamakura. She died in 1929. After her death, the Women's Institute for English Studies was renamed in her honor, eventually becoming Tsuda College in 1948. It is the oldest and most prestigious private women's college in Japan, with over 27,500 graduates now active in all walks of life. Like other educational reformers of the period, Tsuda Umeka recognized the central connection between Western learning and Christianity. Her concern for women's education was born from her childhood experience in America, and the influence of the Quakers. Her sense of personal calling was born out of a recognition of the inherent connection between Christianity, education, and the value and potential of women, a potential that the dominant worldview of her native culture lacked. Hers is one more example of how the Christian view of life, the world, and the human person has inspired, informed, and energized education across the globe.

Pediatricians are growing increasingly concerned about an explosion in facial and vocal tics in teenagers, especially teenage girls. According to the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society, case numbers in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Australia have skyrocketed over the last year. They've even called it a "parallel pandemic" alongside COVID-19. A UK journal has reported similar findings. A significant majority of these young patients report spending a lot of time on social media; particularly a corner of TikTok where influencers with, who themselves have tics, share their stories and show their tics on the platform. According to researchers in the UK, the TikTok videos bearing the hashtagchannel #tourettes boastedhad 2.5 -billion views as of last February. Doctors say that neurological scans of teenage girls with what they called "functional tic-like behaviors" don't show the same signs common withas Tourette's Syndrome. While Tthe tics are real and uncontrollable, they are but not neurological, but . Rrather, they are learned over a screen. These types of phenomenaon, known as "social contagions" or "mass socio-genic illnesses," have baffled psychologists for decades. A few years ago, jJournalist Lee Daniel Kravetz published a book called Strange Contagion. Inin this book,which he told the story of a phenomenon atdescribed a Palo Alto high school where, inover the span of just six months, five students committed suicide, all on separate occasions, all by jumping in front of a train. School shootings can follow a similar pattern: the first is widely reported, and within weeks there's another, and then another. Wall Street Journal reporter Abigail Shrier described a similar phenomenon in her book, Irreversible Damage, about teenage girls with "sudden-onset gender dysphoria." One girl identifies as trans, and suddenly, severalmany others have joined hertoo. Like the "functional tic-like behaviors" currently alarming researchers now, social media has playedplays a big role in each of these examples. Whether it manifests as gender dysphoria, violent behaviors, or facial tics, there's something about us - especially our younger selves - that is so vulnerable to suggestion and pressure, even to the point of causing hurting ourselves harm. The reality of social contagions reveals something about how God made us. To put it as simply as possible, we're impressionable people. Proverbs, especially Cchapter 4, repeatedly alludes to this. Chapter 4 We are warnsed against following "the path of the wicked." We are told, "Above all else, (to) guard your heart" because everything about us "flows from it." Though we like to think of ourselves as primarily rational creatures, making decisions by carefully and objectively considering all sides, we are far more driven by what we desire than by what we think. angle of an issue. God gave us hearts that are often shaped in ways and by forces beyond our awareness.of which we aren't always aware of. Marketers know this. We want to wear what others are wearing, and economic considerations go right out the window. Influencers know this. Popular cultural idioms become part of our vocabulary because of them. The fact that there even is a category of people in our culture called "influencers" pretty much says about all we need to know. Before the Fall, Scripture describes how God "walked" with Adam and Eve in the Garden. The idea of "walking" emerges again in Proverbs. Out of the Garden, we are warned against "walking" with the wicked. Apparently the problem is not that we are impressionable. The problem is not that our hearts were made to be formed and shaped by others. We were, in fact, made to become like God, by walking with Him. We were to be formed by Him. In a fallen world, that very good way God made us can instead allow us to be twisted us into the image of something corrupt, foolish, or sinful. Anxiety-induced behaviors like the tics inflicting teen girls aren't sinful, but they do illustrate the power of suggestion and the way we were made. The most obvious strategy in light of that would be to dramatically limit social media exposure. In healthy communities, there is support and sharing ofabout struggles, but social media doesn't come with any safeguards, especially for teens. Digital community is not real; . Iit's more of a performance art in front of strangers. Physical community is real, or at least should be, especially in the context of families and churches. If we are potentially impressionable to the point of harm, then we're also impressionable to the point of health. Opposite of the wicked man, Psalm 1 says, is the one who "meditates on the law of the Lord day and night." This is because the Word of God is living and active. And it's also because our hearts are shaped by what we binge.

John visits with Vishal Magalwhaldi, author of several books, including The Book That Changed Your World, and most recently The Third Education Revolution, in which he traces both the history of the Christian promotion of education around the world and the opportunity we have in front of us right now.

Some people think that Christian interest in education is only instrumental. In other words, we start schools so that we can tell our kids about Jesus Christ and how to become Christians. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, but the Christian understanding of education goes much deeper. Throughout human history, wherever the Church has gone, education has followed. This is because of how Christianity understands life and the world, particularly the nature of reality itself and the human person. Education doesn't make sense in a worldview that is only about survival. In a worldview that is only about survival, education is only utilitarian. But with a worldview that says that the world itself came from a first cause that is intelligent, reasonable, knowable, and - this is important - wants to be known, there is solid grounding for actual knowledge, and therefore education. Christianity says that God has made us in his own image. In other words, not only is God knowable, but humans are knowers. So, the act of learning is nothing less than, as Johannes Kepler put it, thinking God's thoughts after him. Knowing God's world leads to knowing God, and knowing God is what life is all about. This week, on a very special edition of the Breakpoint Podcast, I spoke with one of the most outstanding leaders in education in the Christian world, Vishal Magalwhaldi. He's the author of several books, including The Book That Changed Your World, and most recently The Third Education Revolution, in which he traces both the history of the Christian promotion of education around the world and the opportunity we have in front of us right now. Here's a segment of that interview with Vishal Magalwhaldi In a biblical worldview, Satan is out to deceive the nations, that's Revelation 20. The church is out to disciple the nations. God says to Abraham, "if you follow me, I will bless you. I will make you a great nation." But how would Abraham become a great nation? God says in Genesis 18: 18-19 that Abraham would become a great nation because he would instruct, he would teach, he would command, he would disciple his children. And his household is a blessing and is non-ethnic. So, it was by teaching them to walk in God's ways that Israel would become a great nation and Israel would become a light to the nations. Nations would flock to the love of God to learn to bring peace. So from the very beginning of the calling of Abraham to follow Him is a teaching of education. In India, 100 years ago, a carpenter, or a fisherman, or a shepherd did not go to school. But what you find in the New Testament is a tentmaker writing, a shepherd writing, a fisherman writing. Where did they learn to read and write? They'd entered the synagogue. The priest, on the sabbath, was the teacher. He was a master educating others during the five days of the week, or whatever. Every child has to be educated. God has given his law, and is saying, "You make copies of them." They complained, "We don't have pen and paper." God says, "Don't complain, don't make excuses. You write it on your doorpost, you write it on your walls. You teach your women to learn to write as they're stitching their clothes. They must write them in your clothes." The objective is, if you're meditating upon the law of God, day and night, you're not just memorizing, but meditating. It is written on your heart. You can't reform a nation if there is no objective written text with which you can critique your teachers. Martin Luther critiqued universities, he critiqued the church, and said this is what God says: the church needs to reform. So, the written Word is people becoming people of the book. And this was key to the opening of the Western mind. That was a portion of my conversation with Vishal Magalwhaldi, one of the great education leaders of our day. To hear the entire conversation, go to www.breakpoint.org and click on the Breakpoint Podcast, or search for the Breakpoint Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts from the Colson Center.

The pandemic policies, social unrest, and political division that's left so much of our culture on edge have created quite a bit of tumult for churches, too. A few weeks ago, in a blog at Mere Orthodoxy, Pastor Michael Graham offered a new way to categorize how Christians are reorganizing amidst the chaos. Long gone are the days when believers automatically joined the church down the street. Even denominational loyalties, theological convictions, and worship styles are not as important as they used to be. More and more often, suggests Graham, church shoppers are prioritizing political and social convictions. And the shopping process itself involves a kind of spy-craft, with phrases like "social justice" or "the sanctity of marriage" seen as stealth signs of belonging to one side of the aisle or the other. Of course, the risk of judging an entire congregation or denomination wrongly via this process is dangerously high. Not only does the "aisle" metaphor fail to acknowledge that a spectrum of views exists on many issues, especially the most controversial, but the so-called "aisle" itself is too often being drawn with only political concerns in mind. Not to mention most buzzwords are left undefined, and therefore unhelpful. In short, the "fracturing of evangelicalism" currently happening is mostly not good. As the wider culture fractures in a million ways, the Church should look different. When it doesn't, our witness suffers. Leaving churches over politically charged disagreements, without taking the time to explore the motive, practices, and beliefs behind them is just not biblically permissible. Leaving a church should be a last resort, like the choice to break up a family, not a knee-jerk response, as if we're disgruntled shoppers. Of course, even a quick look at the motives, practices, and beliefs of some church leaders, congregations, and denominations will reveal problems that must be addressed. If Samuel John Stone were writing his great hymn today, there's more than enough consumerism, celebrity-ism, Christian Nationalism, and cultural Marxism afflicting the church to inspire these same mournful words: Tho' with a scornful wonder,men see her sore oppressed,by schisms rent asunder,by heresies distressed,yet saints their watch are keeping,their cry goes up, "How long?"And soon the night of weepingshall be the morn of song. Driving past six churches, some big and shiny, to find one faithful to the Gospel is a tragic reality for many. Christians will find help in the various metaphors Christ gives for His Church: the "Household of God," a husband and his bride, a "body" with many members and functions, a flock of sheep guarded and shepherded by Christ, and even brothers and sisters. Though living into these Biblical metaphors is incredibly difficult, especially at a time when political and ideological divisions are breaking even the bonds of family, it's not difficult to see that a different metaphor is dominating our approach to church. In short, Christians today approach churches primarily as consumers. We're too picky when it comes to where we worship and why. We want the songs we like, and the preacher that "speaks to us." However, consumerism is a problem for church-goers, because it is first a problem for churches. Pastors face enormous pressure to fill pews and minimize conflict. Often, they are hired for their fidelity to the Scriptures and tasked with discipling a congregation, but are evaluated by completely different metrics. If you "give the people what they want," it will rarely be the hard truth of the Gospel. In this, "evangelical fracturing" is not new, but it is saddening. In the past, God has used "fracturing" to accomplish a "pruning." It is His church. He will protect it, even from itself. May it be so today, too. For as much time and effort we spend evaluating a church we plan to leave or join, we should spend at least that much on evaluating the motives and the criteria we employ in leaving or joining a church. Churches that misuse or rewrite the Bible, that choose the approval of men over God, or that serve temporal power more than the Kingdom of God should be left. At the same time, the biblical metaphors matter. We are family, not isolated gatherings of consumers. Issues matter because truth matters and morality matters, not because they are political hot buttons. We are employed by Christ for His Kingdom, not for protests, extra-biblical theories, or deconstruction. More important than finding a church we like is that we are the Church He leads, seeking first His Kingdom and righteousness. With that in place, we can trust that anything else will be added, as God is willing.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, psychiatrist Anna Lembke offered a stark warning about our favorite technologies. Dopamine is the brain's natural feel-good chemical. It rewards us when we do enjoyable things: connect with friends, laugh at a joke, eat a taco. Today, that powerful reward cycle is being hijacked by digital technology. Technology is designed to be addictive. With every tap, click, and like, our brain chemistry, which is supposed to spur us on to action, is instead keeping us on our phones. As Lembke writes, "The quantity, variety, and potency of [these highly addicting] behaviors has never been greater." We've been warned, but it's not clear that a society in which the average adult spends around eight hours a day interacting with a screen of some kind will actually listen. I'm as guilty as the next guy, but the consequences aren't just personal. As Lembke reports, the self-reported happiness of nations in which these digital technologies are most widespread is declining. A few years ago, an article in The Economist described the rising numbers of young men who were opting out of the workforce in order to play video games. While there's something sad about young men choosing to invest so heavily in a fantasy world while ignoring the real one, the question is why? At least part of the answer is that their hearts and minds had been cultivated to pursue immediate gratification. Though such short-sighted decisions will inevitably reduce their long-term happiness, if Dr. Lembke is correct, they're not capable of thinking that way. Not only has a generation of young men not been cultivated toward long-term, cause-and-effect thinking, they've actually been cultivated for short-term dopamine fixes. In Brave New World, one of the most haunting books of the last 100 years, Aldous Huxley describes a dystopian world where pleasure, rather than pain, has finally enslaved humanity. Drugged into perpetual bliss, most people live lives of cheap hedonism. In the process, they lose those things that make life meaningful, like real connection, perspective on suffering and purpose that is bigger than physical desires. Years later, in the Introduction to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman summarized what Huxley got right. People, he said, would "love their oppression, (and) adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." Contrasting Huxley with George Orwell's dystopian vision of state oppression, Postman wrote: "Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture… In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us." How can it be that in a society with more income, resources, and leisure time than ever, people are less happy? How is it that the most connected generation in human history is ravaged by loneliness? Why can't a generation that (Covid aside) has seen the greatest medical advances and reduction of diseases of any era ever stop the pandemic of so-called "deaths of despair." Secularism offers very little that can counter the consequences of unchecked hedonism. After all, if we're not hurting anyone, why shouldn't we spend our time in digital fantasies? If there's no bigger purpose to life, why shouldn't young men pursue video games instead of jobs, a wife and a family? If there's nothing more to God than what He can do for me, what purpose is greater than our own immediate fulfillment? A secular culture lacks any incentive to break out of our digital cages and into the real world. The real world is more vibrant, more painful, and more meaningful than any digital counterfeit. It's filled with image-bearers, not mere images. Our actions have consequences, without an easy restart button. We are able to love and serve a God who is actually there, in a world that actually exists, by following the beautiful, paradoxical call of discipleship: "Come, take up your cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it." This way of the kingdom, this joy of the real world, is far better than a dopamine fix.

John and Maria revisit a piece from this week that highlights the beauty of God in the Cosmos. John provides a reflection that we are not simply our bodies or simply a spirit. He gives a worldview lesson, reflecting on another piece that highlights how the Greeks viewed the unborn. Maria then asks John for insight on a recent court case in North Carolina. She focuses her question on the point that the ruling judge ruled against the Catholic school because the school didn't have a strong enough presentation of their Catholic convictions in their hiring practices. John shares how the Colson Center is coming alongside Christian schools to support the Christian worldview and its influence in every academic discipline and the overall mission and vision of Christian education. To close, Maria revisits a piece she wrote for BreakPoint that highlights the importance of words in language. John explains the necessity of a Christian worldview in understanding the role and function of definitions. — Stories Mentioned In Show — What the Greeks Knew About the Unborn Hippocrates, the Greek physician whose followers gave us the Hippocratic oath, recognized six-week-old pre-born babies as… babies. Through studying miscarriages, he concluded that a baby's limbs and organs are complete by 40 days after conception. That's part of why the Hippocratic oath states: "I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child." The Point>> For God So Loved the Cosmos We've been sending people past Earth's atmosphere for just over 60 years now. Every single time, the reaction has been awe. Astronauts call this sensation the "overview effect." Something within the human heart reacts to the beauty, size, and overall scope of Creation with a sense of awe. The fact that God made us to respond that way ought to tell us something profound. The Point>> Christian Schools Should Be Thoroughly Christian (and not just for legal reasons) Last week, a U.S. District judge ruled against a Catholic school that had fired a male teacher for announcing that he planned to marry his male partner. Coming from a judge notably progressive on sex and marriage issues, who cited last year's consequential Bostock decision, this wasn't much of a surprise. However, a significant part of his reasoning was: the Catholic school was not Catholic enough. BreakPoint>> Gay and trans teachers in Christian schools will keep jobs under new law "Unless a person's religion is actually relevant to their role or their needs, faith-based organisations should treat all their employees and the people who rely on their services fairly and without discrimination", Ms Brown said." The Age>> Our Way with Words In a recent and unintentionally poignant episode of National Public Radio's "On the Media" podcast, an entire conversation debating free speech hinged on the definition of a word that was never established. "Free speech absolutism," reporters claimed, is an old-fashioned concept because some speech causes harm. Never defined in the conversation (and rarely defined in decades of debate about free speech and first amendment rights) was the word "harm. Surrendering words and their meanings to cultural whims will only lead us, as writer David Foster Wallace once put it, to the tower of Babel. Surrendering reality to these whims leads to death. BreakPoint>> — Recommendations — The Gospel According to Norm Erick Sorensen | 1517 | September 15, 2021 Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman | Penquin Books | 2005

In yet another indicator that they are not ok, men in America are abandoning higher education in record numbers. According to the Wall Street Journal, at the end of the 2020 academic year, the percentage of male college students dropped to just over 40 percent. Soon, if current trend lines continue, one expert predicts, for every man who earns a college degree, two women will earn a degree. On one hand, this says as much about the state of higher education as it does young men. Simply put, the ROI of higher education is just not what it used to be. Not only are students bombarded by narrow, progressive ideologies with little real-world application, they often graduate with no marketable skill set, high levels of debt, and no compelling vision for how to spend their lives. It shouldn't surprise anyone that there are 1.5 million fewer college students today than there were five years ago. Still, for men, who represent 71% of those abandoning higher education, return on investment is extra low. Not only are they overpaying for college, but at many schools they can expect to be consistently berated for things they have no control over, like for their ethnicity, or for simply being men. "No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics," says enrollment expert Jennifer Delahunty. "The conventional view on campuses is that men make more money [and] hold higher positions. Why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?" In other words, it's politically incorrect to help men succeed. All of this is set against an even larger backdrop: "perpetual adolescence." While at other times and in other places, teenaged young men would be fighting battles or managing farms or embarking on grand adventures, today we punish them with low expectations. Teenagers, especially young men, are expected to care for nothing, have no job, and spend most of their time playing video games. Even worse, adolescence now extends to young people, especially young men, in their 20s and 30s. Young men in their 20s and 30s are aimless: refusing to grow up, addicted to pornography, and spending their time and money in digital fantasy worlds. By excusing their so-called "Peter Pan Syndrome," we've subjected them to a tyranny of low expectations. Unsurprisingly, these low expectations don't stop the worst elements of fallen masculinity; rather, they fuel them. As one fraternity president at the University of Vermont put it, "… a lot of guys are here for four years to drink beer, smoke weed, hang out and get a degree." Despite millions spent on training and awareness, college campuses are still haunted by the specter of sexual assault. Tragically, that makes sense in a world where all that's left to sexual morality is a blurry line of consent. That will never be enough to temper the bad behavior of young men trapped in extended adolescence. All of this points to a central problem. Having abandoned moral and creational norms, we've no idea what to do with human beings, especially men. Fallen masculinity has always been a dangerous thing. Men account for the vast majority of domestic abuse, rape and violent crime, not to mention historically aggressive behavior in war. When men give in to aggression and violence, they leave a trail of cultural devastation in their wake, particularly for women and children. Margaret Mead observed that a central question any society has to answer is how to make a proper place for men. Of course, she thought their proper place was somewhere on the moon, but her basic observation is correct. Missing in our current cultural equation for men is purpose. Low expectations, combined with a dearth of purpose, make for a dangerous concoction. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, before we know what to do with something, we need to know what that something is for. We'll never know what to do with men, especially young men, if we don't know what men are for. The answer is not to reject masculinity as inherently evil, as many tend to do, including Christians. Instead, the answer is to define masculinity from a Christian worldview. Embedded in the Creation story is a unique grounding for the dignity of both men and women. We also find definitions for their purpose as male and female. In fact, Jesus pointed to God's creational intent for creating humans as male and female when asked about male responsibility in marriage. In that answer and throughout His ministry, Jesus confronted men, even young men, with higher expectations: action instead of passivity, protection instead of abuse, faithfulness instead of abandonment. Many men today get each of these exactly wrong, and culture enables it. Without a corrective, we can expect it to only get worse. Fortunately, we have just such a corrective. A Christian worldview gives us this corrective, and in Scripture, we have the portrayal of a man perfect in gentleness, humility, and strength: Jesus Christ.

In a recent and unintentionally poignant episode of National Public Radio's "On the Media" podcast, an entire conversation debating free speech hinged on the definition of a word that was never really established. "Free speech absolutism," reporters claimed, is an old-fashioned concept because some speech causes harm. Never defined in the conversation (and rarely defined in decades of debate about free speech and first amendment rights) was the word "harm." Most English language dictionaries are updated every quarter. The latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary, released in June, contained 700 new words added since the previous March. One thousand existing definitions were revised. The process is neither straightforward nor worldview-neutral. In the ongoing debate in academic circles about the process, two sides have emerged. The descriptivists argue language has no "rules." If enough people use a certain word in a certain way, that is its definition. The prescriptivists argue that certain immovable rules are necessary for language to work. For example, "book" has to mean a collection of pages bound between two covers. It will never mean a four-legged animal with fur. Communication, prescriptivists argue, requires these kinds of rules. This debate has consequences for areas like law and public policy and medicine, and also for the way we organize our lives together. If the meaning of the word "harm" evolves from 'something that causes or demonstrates real pain or damage,' to mere discomfort such as, "I must not hear a perspective I don't like," then the role and purpose of law fundamentally changes. And the meaning of the doctor's oath to "do no harm" changes as well. The whole thing brings to mind the conversation between Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel Through the Looking Glass. "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'" That fanciful conversation, set by Lewis Carroll in a bizarre and absurd upside-down world, is taking place in our own world. At the time the book was published, Humpty Dumpty's descriptivism would have been understood as illogical and unsustainable. But around the same time there were some, most notably Friedrich Nietzsche, who began to suggest, in different words, that maybe Humpty was right and language is malleable. From there it was a very short step for others, such as Jacques Derrida and Ludwig Wittgenstein, to suggest that not just language, but reality itself, is malleable. If everything is a text, as Derrida suggested, then nothing is left but interpretation. This shift in our understanding of language and meaning can also be traced through art. When Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, he was portraying reality. Assumed in the style and delivered in the final image was the idea that there was, indeed, a real-world and that the real world could be, in fact, communicated. Later, impressionists such as Vincent Van Gogh reflected a different view. Starry nights existed in reality,, but Van Gogh's abstract piece offered only his interpretation of it. In contrast, much of postmodern art looks nothing like reality at all. In fact, rather than even attempt communication, many postmodern artists see their task as creating endlessly interpretive experiences for viewers, as if access to the objective world were impossible. Without God, there is no meaning. This is true in language, art, worldview, and reality itself. Christians, because our worldview begins not only with God but with a God who communicates, are far more in the prescriptivist camp when it comes to words. While words obviously change over time as custom and culture ebb and flow, words point beyond other words and random interpretation to true realities. The basis of the world itself is words… God's words, to be precise. The Apostle John not only introduces this God as "the Word," but tells us that He took on flesh and invaded this world. And He has given us His Word which, Jesus said, "cannot be broken." Surrendering words and their meaning to cultural whims will only lead us, as writer David Foster Wallace once put it, to the tower of Babel. Surrendering reality to these whims leads to death.

John and Shane are asked a host of questions surrounding recent BreakPoint commentaries. To start off, John fields a question asking if the church completely missed the lessons we should've learned from 9/11. Additionally, another listener asks if the shift in worldview attention from Islam after 9/11 to critical theory today is one that is honest or if we're missing something in culture. Later in the show a listener asks for definition on where the American idea of inalienable rights is housed, especially as the church finds itself with less of a voice in society.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, since the start of the pandemic, more than 1.5 million students have left traditional public schooling. Parents and students, it seems, are looking for something different. Many parents and students are looking elsewhere because students struggled to learn online, and some have even fallen behind. Others feel helpless to respond to how school districts and states have handled, and sometimes mishandled, the pandemic. Others are worried about their students learning bad habits with technology, or suffering from loneliness and despair. Other parents have finally seen what their students are being taught. During the pandemic, various forms of anti-Americanism, sexual indoctrinations, and critical theory that pass in the name of education have streamed into homes through online Zoom classrooms. Many parents realized, some for the first time, that their students weren't learning what the parents thought they were learning. As one former college professor noted, if you haven't been in education in the past three years, it's almost unrecognizable to what you experienced growing up. All of which has led to incredible growth in the number of homeschooling families, and record enrollments for virtually every Christian school I know. I've talked to dozens of leaders of schools who didn't have waiting lists before, but have them now. One Christian school administrator told me that, even early on in the pandemic, his teachers were begging him to do what they could to reopen their school. "They need us," the teachers would say, even while the public school teachers unions in that state were asking officials to keep schools closed. Their attitude was unique in their community, but not among Christian schools around the nation. And, apparently, parents noticed. At the same time, Christian schools face incredible challenges, especially internally. Too often, for example, Christian education takes the form of regular education with Bible verses added on as illustrations, or as the same school only with chapel, a "spiritual formation" week, more rules, longer skirts, and shorter hair. In reality, truly Christian education is a fundamentally different enterprise. Christian education rests on the assumption that every person is made in the image of God, created by God for a purpose, called by God to live in the world He created, and specifically called to live for Christ in this cultural moment. Christian education equips and prepares people to understand reality and to live with the clarity, confidence, and courage they need to face the challenges of this cultural moment. To paraphrase T.S. Elliot, Christian education is not just teaching Christian students to behave or how to be safe in a dangerous world. It's about training them to think and live as Christians for such a time as this. This means that in this particular moment of incredible opportunity, we can do Christian education right or we can do it wrong. Done right, Christian education begins with Christian assumptions about life, truth, and humans. It aims at Christian goals. It's measured by Christian outcomes. It's guided by Christian methodology. Christian education also relies heavily on the home and the church to provide essential support. Part of the Colson Center's calling as a worldview-equipping institution is to serve Christian educators by equipping them to think and teach from a Christian worldview. Hundreds of Christian educators have been commissioned in our Colson Fellows program. Tens of thousands have been trained in worldview and cultural issues through our online courses. Many now serve as Christian worldview experts in their homes, schools, and churches. Each and every day, in classrooms and around dinner tables, BreakPoint commentaries are used to teach Christian worldview to the next generation. Together with our What Would You Say? videos, educators have the resources they need to connect Christian worldview to the most important and challenging issues of our culture. And, we invite you to partner with us, as we serve Christian education in this strategic moment by training Christian educators. To learn more about our work in Christian education, and to support it, visit www.breakpoint.org/september.

Last week, a U.S. District judge ruled against a Catholic school that fired a male teacher who had announced he was marrying his male partner. Coming from a judge notably progressive on sex and marriage issues who cited last year's consequential Bostock decision, the decision wasn't much of a surprise. However, a significant part of his reasoning was: the Catholic School was not Catholic enough. Here's the story. In 2014, a male substitute drama teacher at Charlotte Catholic School announced on Facebook that he planned to marry his male partner. The school argued that his post showed open disregard for the teachings of the Catholic Church and amounted to activism, which the school prohibits. So, they fired him. At roughly the same time, a female teacher announced on Facebook that she was engaged to her male partner. She was not fired, because her post did not violate the teachings of the Catholic Church. This is where the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock vs. Clayton County comes in. In a bit of rhetorical jiu-jitsu, Justice Neil Gorsuch determined that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 protects sexual orientation and gender identity along with biological sex. Though, wrote Gorsuch, "homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex… discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex." In other words, rather than saying that the word sex in Title VII includes sexual orientation and gender identity, Gorsuch argued it's impossible to make employment decisions regarding sexual orientation and gender identity except on the basis if sex. So, if a man wouldn't have been fired for sleeping with a woman, a woman shouldn't be fired for sleeping with a woman. If a woman is allowed to dress like a woman, a man shouldn't be fired for dressing like a woman. Effectively, any employment decision made in which sex is a factor amounts to sex discrimination. Though it was clear that Gorsuch's sleight-of-hand was bad news, it wasn't exactly clear how bad. Now, we have a better idea after U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn applied Gorsuch's principle from Bostock in his decision in the Charlotte Catholic case. According to the judge, because the school objected to the drama teacher's announcement that he was marrying a man but did not object to the female teacher who announced she was marrying a man, the school therefore discriminated on the basis of sex. With this kind of legal precedent in place, employers that believe biological sex is a distinct category, but sexual orientation or gender identity are not, have only one protection: a religious exemption. So, why wasn't Charlotte Catholic protected in this case by a religious exemption? This is where this decision gets very interesting. According to Judge Cogburn, With a slightly different set of facts, the Court may have been compelled to protect the church's employment decision...Importantly, Charlotte Catholic discourages teachers of secular subjects from instructing students on any sort of religious subject. [emphasis added] The school asks that teachers who teach secular subjects refrain from instructing students on Catholic Doctrine. (Doc. No. 28-5 at 28). Secular teachers do not have to undergo religious training, do not have to be Catholic, and do not have to be Christian. (Doc. No. 28-3 at 58). The administration at Charlotte Catholic does not know the percentage of teachers at the school who are Catholic and does not ask if candidates are Catholic during job interviews. In other words, Charlotte Catholic failed to be Catholic enough. By dividing subject areas into "secular" and "religious" categories, the school effectively divided educators into "secular" and "religious" categories. This was, especially in the wake of Bostock, a serious tactical mistake. Even worse, to divide subject areas and educators into "religious" and "secular" is a serious worldview mistake. Father Richard John Neuhaus once said, "If what Christians say about Good Friday is true, then it is, quite simply, the truth about everything." For any institution committed to forming students in a Christian worldview, there is simply no such thing as a "secular subject." Every subject—from science to geometry, dance to drama, religious studies to social studies—is part of God's Creation, informed by God's revelation, and within the scope of Christ's work of redemption. This also means, there's no such thing as a "secular" educator in a Christian school, either. Simply put, any school wishing to be Christian must be thoroughly Christian: in purpose, content, curriculum, aim, and personnel. This is no easy task. In fact, to be a Christian educator is, to paraphrase Dr. John Stackhouse, "more than twice as hard." After all, A Christian educator must be Christian. And they must be educators. And they must be Christian educators. That's always been a theological imperative for those God's called to educate. It just so hap

September 11, 2001. For those who were alive and old enough to remember, it is a day indelibly seared into our memories. Puzzlement at the first plane, shock at the second, and terror at the third and fourth. Throughout, there was a slowly emerging realization that this was no accident, that America was at war, and that our world had dramatically, irreversibly, changed. That night, America went to sleep thinking that 10,000 people could be lying crushed in the burning rubble of New York City, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania. When that number was eventually reduced to just under 3,000, the day felt no less evil. At the same time, we gave thanks for everyone that made it home and marveled at miraculous stories of survival and heroism. We feared that more attacks were inevitable. Over the coming days and weeks, a new spirit was in the air. America found its moral clarity, national unity, and a deeper respect for the firemen, police officers, and first responders who had courageously run into the danger. We were more gracious to strangers and flew more American flags. In the days after 9/11, the lines between "us" and "them" were shifted, though not always in good ways. Even in Congress, at least for a short time, national divisions seemed far less important than our shared national identity. There was something deeper to all of this than a shared experience of pain. In the end, for a time, our national conversations were reframed by a shared witness of evil. Destroyed with the Twin Towers were postmodern pretensions about the malleability of truth and ethics. Gone, for a time, was any talk of "your truth" vs. "my truth." We had witnessed it with our own eyes: Good was good and evil was not. There were heroes, and there were villains. There were New York's Finest rushing into the danger, and there were the vile assassins that brought destruction. It was as if we'd been awakened from an ideologically-formed dreamworld to the real one. For a while, long-suppressed truths about the human condition and the reality of evil were undeniable, having breached the surface of our hearts, minds, and culture. Pain, wrote C.S. Lewis, is God's megaphone. And, for a moment, our collective pain allowed us to see more clearly than we had without it. Sadly, it was only for a moment. In the months after 9/11, a well-known Christian apologist confidently announced that postmodernism was dead. After witnessing the evil of that day, no one, he suggested, would embrace a worldview that denied absolute truth or morality. He was wrong. Eventually, a postmodern culture made sense of the day by retreating to its postmodernism. Rather than conclude that the evil of 9/11 required that moral absolutes must exist, the narrative became that the evil of 9/11 was because of those who embraced moral absolutes. Once the obvious contradiction is set aside, it's a short step to a different kind of absolutism, in which evil is called good and good is called evil. Of course, any of the collective spirit and national identity from those pain-filled days is long gone as well. To be clear, reality is not gone. Our ability to see it is. God willing, we'll never see another day like 9/11. God willing, we'll find ways to recapture the awareness of what is true and good without another day like that. The very least we can do is to remember, not just what happened that day and what it meant to us, and not even just the pain we felt. We must remember what the pain taught us. We must remember that categories of good and evil are far more than culturally conditioned preferences. We must remember that virtue consists of more than silly slogans of tolerance or plays for power. We must remember how the trendy philosophies about reality and morality that were so popular on September 10 simply weren't big enough for September 11, that our ideas about God and truth and morality have consequences, and that our bad ideas have consequences. We must remember that God is real, truth is real, morality is real, and human dignity is worth fighting for.

John and Maria discuss the impact of 9/11 on our current cultural moment. They revisit the historical significance of the timeframe surrounding the terrorist attacks, also explaining the worldview and ideological challenges we've faced following the 9/11 attacks. -- Bonus Episode | BreakPoint Podcast Special -- Reflecting on 9/11: Timeless Wisdom from Chuck Colson John Stonestreet & Chuck Colson | BreakPoint Podcast | September 10, 2021 -- In Show Mentions -- Teaching 9/11 to the Emerging Generation Instead, for them, it's distant history. Of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, the assassination of JFK, and the moon landing are all history for my generation as well. But they weren't nearly as distant. These events were essential parts of our cultural memories. We were still among those citizens who actually had a shared national memory. That's something that many in the emerging generation simply do not have.BreakPoint>> Remembering 9/11 from a Christian Worldview In the days after 9-11, Chuck Colson offered an incredible gift to God's people: A Christian worldview framework for understanding what had happened and a roadmap for Christians to both speak truth and love to their neighbors. Colson warned against out-of-control anger and against seeking revenge instead of justice, in both our personal and national responses.BreakPoint>> Chuck Colson Commentary from September 13 Many neighbors lost friends or loved ones in airplanes and buildings beyond that most americans spent all of Tuesday and the bulk of yesterday glued to the television, as did most of our Children in schools, people are traumatized, confused. They need to talk and we can listen and give a reason for our hope. We can listen and we can be an influence on those around us. BreakPoint>> For example, we can love our muslim and Middle Eastern neighbors. Our instinct for self preservation will cause us to see someone in traditional muslim dress or with Arabic features and wonder if he or she represents a threat. At the same time, we know that most Arabs living in America are christians, christians who have fled from the kind of militant Islamic leaders, fanatical extremists who are suspected of Tuesday's terror. Beyond that. The vast majority of Muslims living in the United States are peaceful law abiding people. Christians should be the first to recognize this and befriend those who will find themselves shunned by many. BreakPoint>> Chuck Commentary September 14 - Overcoming Evil with Good One of the reasons I believe the Christian gospel couldn't be a made up religion, as some people think, is that it tells us to do those things which are contrary to our human nature when evil is done to us. The human instinct is to respond with evil. The result is that evil triumphs in this case, if we respond to the terrorist attacks with evil, the terrorists win. But the Gospel tells us to act exactly contrary to our own nature, to respond to evil with good. BreakPoint>> Chuck Commentary September 17 - Responding to Terror Of course, as christians, we are the community of scatological hope. We live in the constant expectation of jesus return. That will be the most glorious day in all of human history, but it's our hope, and though we may talk about it among ourselves, this is not the time to inject it into secular discourse. BreakPoint>> Chuck Commentary September 18 - Where was God? If we would be prophetic, we need to speak out for the right reasons not to find scapegoats or condemn or denounced, but out of our love for our neighbors, rather than demonizing others. We offer an alternative to destructive worldviews that have left many victims, including the victims of last Tuesday in their wake, comments that sound self righteous and point the finger at others, make it hard for ordinary people to see how the christian message differs from the condemning message of the hijackers. BreakPoint>> -- In Show Recommendations -- The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World OrderSamuel P. Huntington | Simon & Schuster | August 2, 2011 (Orig. Pub. 1996) 20 years on, 'The Falling Man' is still you and me Richard Drew | The Associated Press | September 9, 2021 -- Recommendations -- I Was There When Maria Baer | I Was There When Podcast Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Jonathan Safran Foer | Mariner Books | April 1, 2006 The Rising Bruce Springsteen | Sony Legacy | July 27, 2006 The Only Plan in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Garrett M. Graff | Simon & Schuster | September 8, 2020 September 11 | Drive Thru History Special Dave Stotts | Coldwater Media | September 9, 2021

Welcome to a special edition of the BreakPoint podcast. In view of the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attack on the United States, our team went back and revisited commentaries from our founder Chuck Colson. I was blown away by the gracious and truthful framing that Chuck offered to the events of that day. In a series of BreakPoint commentaries, Chuck Colson offered a Christian worldview that was, as we often say at the Colson Center, "big enough." I was also struck by how relevant this wisdom still is. So, over the course of the next hour or so, as a way of recounting the events of September 11th, we'd like for you to hear directly from Chuck Colson. I'm John Stonestreet, President of The Colson Center and the voice of BreakPoint. Thank you for joining us. Like most Americans that were old enough on that day, I remember exactly where I was on September 11th, 2001. At 7:59am American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston, bound for Los Angeles. At 8:14am the plane was hijacked. At 8:46am Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center between the 93rd and 99th floors. At the same time, United Airlines flight 175 took off from Boston, also bound for Los Angeles. Flight 175 was hijacked between 8:42 and 8:46am. Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03am, Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, between the 77th and 85th floors. As New York City was sent into disbelief, American Airlines Flight 77, which took off from Washington Dulles International enroute for Los Angeles, was hijacked, between 8:50 and 8:54am. Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37am. At 8:42 am, before any of the hijackings or terrorist activity was realized, United Airlines Flight 93 left Newark International Airport bound for San Francisco. Flight 93 was hijacked at 9:28am, and because of the heroic action of the passengers on the flight, at 10:03am, the plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania rather than the destination intended by the terrorists, the White House. At 9:59am the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, and twenty-nine minutes later, at 10:28am the North Tower collapsed. The world long remembers the lives lost in that fateful attack on our country. The day after the attack, Sept 12, 2001, Chuck Colson delivered the following commentary. I cannot describe how I felt when I heard the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We are partly and appropriately struck silent with the enormous loss of life in the collapse of Twin towers. The explosion at the pentagon and the hijacked airliners that were crashed. If your loved ones perished yesterday as a result of these acts, Please know you have my deepest sympathy and our heartfelt prayers go out to all involved as the bible says when one suffers, we all suffer as I listened to the reports, I felt the same way I did when President Kennedy was assassinated when President Reagan was shot or Pearl Harbor for that matter, which I'm old enough to remember. Such acts caused grief not just for the loss of life, but for the assault. They are upon our deepest beliefs. They assault the very soul of America terrorism. The warfare of the new century is engaged in for the specific purpose of destabilizing free societies. The terrorists succeed if free people cower in fear and begin to restrict their treasured freedoms and liberties. We should never succumb to terrorist inspired fear. We can never allow such people to win. Instead, we must renew our commitment to the most fundamental liberties and the rule of law and we must support our government in its response, God established government to preserve order by punishing evil and seeking justice without this restraint on human sinfulness. The strong will prey on the weak and seek to impose their will on others. What is true in relations between individuals is also true in relations between nations As ST Augustine wrote 1600 years ago. Loving God and our neighbor will require using force against aggression. And this brings me back to yesterday's events. For the Christian, we believe government has a special duty to punish those who in effect invaded our soil and committed these dastardly X. But we must do so in a just manner. As Augustine's just war theory teaches any military action must have a reasonable chance of success in our context. That means being fairly certain as to the identity of the perpetrators. We can't simply strike out for the sake of doing something or in a blind rage. We need to also make sure that our targets are military ones, civilians, even those who applaud the terrorist actions should never be targeted. Finally, our response should be proportionate after an event like yesterday's. We are understandably tempted to lash out with every weapon in our arsenal. But we must be careful and not let our response to the harm we have suffered. Lead us to commit even greater harm, something that our technological superiority makes poss

Tomorrow, as we mark the 20th anniversary of arguably the most devastating day in America's history, we should also remember how Christians are to confront evil. In the days after 9/11, Chuck Colson offered an incredibly good gift: a Christian worldview framework for understanding what had happened, and a roadmap for Christians to both speak truth and love their neighbor. He warned against out-of-control anger and against seeking revenge instead of justice, in both our personal responses and the national response. In fact, three days after 9/11, Chuck directly addressed the many stories emerging of Muslims, Sikhs, and others being attacked on American streets. He offered a prophetic warning that "evil in this world begets more evil." The commentary is a model of applying Christian truth to a most chaotic moment. It's just as helpful today as it was 20 years ago. Here's Chuck: Sher Singh was born in India and has lived in the United States for two years. On Wednesday, when his train from Boston to Washington, D.C., stopped in Providence, RI, he was arrested, suspected of involvement in the terrorism that rocked the country on Tuesday. Alerted by television reports, a crowd gathered outside the train station as police led Mr. Singh from the station. The crowd whooped and jeered. "Kill him!" yelled one man. "You killed my brother!" shrieked another. Mr. Singh, who had absolutely no connection with terrorism, is a Sikh and wears a turban, a long beard, and a ceremonial dagger strapped to his shoulder. Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. In Chicago, a crowd marched on a local mosque shouting, "USA! USA!" Someone threw a firebomb at an Arab American community center in Texas. Arab Americans have been assaulted and harassed across the country. A 19-year-old from Chicago commented, "I'm proud to be an American and I hate Arabs and I always have." Evil in this world begets more evil. It's self-perpetuating and we're already seeing that in the rage against Mr. Singh and people like him. By sharp contrast, Paul wrote to the Romans, "Overcome evil with good." One of the reasons I believe the Christian Gospel couldn't be a made-up religion, as some people think, is that it tells us to do those things which are contrary to our human nature when evil is done to us. The human instinct is to respond with evil. The result is that evil triumphs. In this case, if we respond to the terrorist attacks with evil, the terrorists win. But the Gospel tells us to act exactly contrary to our own nature: to respond to evil with good. The most powerful example of this principle I know is Father Popieluszko, a Catholic priest in Poland. In the early 1980s, the pale, gaunt priest had a twofold message: defend the truth and overcome evil with good. People responded and overflowed his church. The secret police followed him everywhere. He began to receive threats. And finally, one night after celebrating mass and preaching, the Father disappeared. About 10 days later, as 50,000 people came to mass to listen to a tape of his last sermon, they heard that his body had been found in the Vistula River, badly mutilated by torture. The secret police braced for an uprising. But on the day of the Father's funeral, the huge crowd that walked past their headquarters bore a banner and shouted what it said: "We forgive, we forgive!" He taught them well. Only Christians, men, and women who are touched by and understand the present reality of the Cross, can possibly overcome evil with good. And if we don't, rage and anger will carry the day and the terrorists will have won. This doesn't obviate the government's use of the sword or a military force to swiftly and proportionately respond to those terrorist attacks. We must do that. Our government will. But as the nation's anger rises, there is a great test for American Christians. Can we live by the Gospel? Will we love our neighbors, even those who look or sound or seem like those who so ruthlessly attacked us? That was Chuck Colson from September 14, 2001. It's an example of the sort of Christian worldview wisdom that God used Chuck Colson to provide to His people in the days after 9/11. Tomorrow, we are releasing a very special program on the BreakPoint podcast. We've put together all of the BreakPoint commentaries from September 12 to September 19, 2001. Together, they provide an incredible retelling of 9/11, within a Christian worldview framework. Come to breakpoint.org to listen, or look for the BreakPoint podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

Like many of you, I remember exactly where I was on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was preparing to teach a class of college freshmen on the topic of Christian worldview. Obviously, my teaching plans for that day changed, but I also had a very real example of how significant worldview is to understanding the world around us. I remember the chaos, I remember the confusion, I remember thinking this had changed our world forever, and it did. Those of us who were alive and old enough realized that this was an event of national significance - as serious as the attack on Pearl Harbor or the assassination of JFK. Yet I've talked to so many parents and grandparents over the last several months who have realized that 9/11 is not a part of the story of this emerging generation. It's a distant memory. It's distant history now. Of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, the assassination of JFK, and the moon landing are all distant history for my generation as well. But we were a different type of citizenry. We were citizens who had a shared national memory. That's something that many in the emerging generation simply do not have. I've been looking for resources to help teach the younger generation about 9/11. That's why I'm so excited for my friends at Drive Thru History. This week they will be releasing their special called 9/11: A Drive Thru History Special. You can watch it today at 9 p.m. Eastern time on the Drive Thru History YouTube channel, or you can see it Saturday at 1 p.m. Eastern on the Breakpoint Facebook page. Many of you are familiar with Drive Thru History and the tremendous job that they do making history come to life. The 9/11 special is also hosted by Dave Stotts and provides a historical overview of that eventful day. Through incredible video footage and narration, you'll walk through the events of 9/11 with highlights on the stories of terrorism and the face of such great evil. The team over at Drive Thru History was kind enough to give us a sample of the premiere special that they will be airing for the public later today and this weekend. Here's a transcript of a segment of the video. -- The September 11 strikes against America, often referred to as 9/11, were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic group al-Qaeda. Four passenger airliners that had departed from airports in the northeastern United States were hijacked by 19 Islamic terrorists. Two of the planes were crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third plane was crashed into the US Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, heading towards Washington D. C., crashed into a Pennsylvania field after the passengers fought back against their hijackers. According to scholars, 9/11 ended up being the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history. There were 2,977 killed, over 25,000 injured, and more than $10 billion dollars in property damage. It was also the single deadliest incident for U.S. emergency personnel, with 343 firefighters and 72 police officers killed that day in the tragic aftermath of 9/11. It took 99 days for the New York City Fire Department to finally extinguish the smoldering fires at the World Trade Center complex. Then, it took another 160 days to finally declare the cleanup and recovery operation over. In the end, about two million tons of tangled steel and rubble were removed from the site. Next came the process of healing and restoration through designing and building an appropriate structure to memorialize the event while functioning as meaningful office space for economic renewal in lower Manhattan. The iconic replacement was finally approved and constructed on the 16-acre site. One World Trade Center. In the months after 9/11, we came together as Americans like I've never seen in my lifetime. First responders were applauded. Churches were packed. Radio stations played patriotic music. Sports stadiums honored the fallen. The military was revered. American flags flew on homes, schools, and businesses everywhere. Indeed, 9/11 was tragic, but I've never seen such American patriotism, unity, and resolve. While the country processed its grief, it also came together across religious, political, and ethnic divides. We were all just Americans. Yeah, September 11 is a day to remember an attack on our homeland, an attack on our freedom, an attack on our very worldview. It's also a day to remember our fallen Americans and our selfless heroes. It's a day to remind the new generation to stay vigilant in defending our country, our liberty, and our way of life. Once a year on the anniversary of 9/11, a special tribute in light fills the Manhattan skyline. Two massive beams of light stretch toward the heavens symbolizing the fallen twin towers. It's a profound way to remember the day we will never forget. -- That was just a small taste of 9/11: A Drive Thru History Special. It's being released today at 9 p.m. Eastern on the Drive Thru History

John and Shane talk through the challenges in reasoning through the pro-choice stance in the face of Texas' new heartbeat bill. John also answers a question on a recent commentary dealing with Millennials. The listeners asks how to communicate the goodness of the Gospel to those who might have a taste for it. To close, John and Shane go point-by-point through a series of statements a Christian school administrator is fielding in Australia. The listener's school is considering how to process sexual orientation and gender identity at their non-denominational school. The listener notes that many teachers haven't been able to process all of the points before the conversation rose. John and Shane provide resources and a step-by-step response to the points listed below: The Bible's authors only wrote to their particular context and knew nothing of what us contemporaries now understand about human sexuality, The word 'homosexuality' is a recent, Victorian-era invention inserted into scripture to condemn all same-sex sexual activity when that was not the original intent, The word/s used in scripture to denote homosexuality actually only condemn exploitative sexual practices, not same-sex sexuality between consenting adults, The story of Sodom and Gomorrah denotes God's judgment on the people of those cities due to their lack of hospitality rather than the practice of homosexuality, and Jesus said very little about sexuality anyway. -- Resources -- Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God's Design for Marriage Sean McDowell & John Stonestreet | Baker Books | 2014 The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics Richard Hayes | Harper | August, 1996 Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God's Grand Story Christopher Yuan | Multnomah | 2018 The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics Robert Gagnon | Abingdon Press | 2002

How did things in Afghanistan change so dramatically, seemingly overnight? How did a decades-long, frustrating stalemate become the greatest American foreign policy debacle in 50 years? A nation is left asking, "What went wrong?" The most immediate explanation is the way the withdrawal was handled, from pulling out troops before evacuating citizens and allies, to abandoning the Bagram Air Base. These details and others are hard to explain. A common, longer-view explanation is that the War in Afghanistan ultimately failed because the United States shifted focus from fighting terrorism to nation-building. Nation-building can be formally defined as "the process through which the boundaries of the modern state and those of the national community become congruent." In practice, nation-building is far more complicated. Attempting to rebuild essential cultural and institutional elements of another country rarely goes well. America's view of nation-building tends to change. In defending his recent decisions, President Biden has spoken derisively of nation-building, even saying that it "never made sense" to him. Yet, that claim was fact-checked by the Washington Post: apparently, he was for it until he was against it. Many condemn nation-building, not so much because it's wrong as because it's impossible. Cultures run too deep, they say, to change from the outside. No weapon or army is stronger than a people's will to resist. Just consider Afghanistan (twice), Vietnam, or the collapse of European empires. On the other hand, it's also true that national borders can change, languages do shift, religions reform, and whole civilizations rise and fall. In recent years, powerhouses like Germany and Japan each went from global menace to responsible neighbor. India, Korea, Taiwan, Dubai, and Singapore have changed dramatically in just a few generations. Cultures do change. Not always and not easily, but they can and do change. Others see nation-building as necessary and good policy. A century ago, energized by victory in the first World War, President Wilson predicted a new dawn, made possible by good ol' American can-do spirit, in which democracy would break out over the globe and the world would be transformed into our own image. Instead, the world descended into totalitarianisms, Left and Right. Despite these historical realities, the temptation to engage in nation-building has proved hard to resist. In the wake of the Cold War, the first President Bush talked of a New World Order. President Clinton intervened everywhere from Haiti to Somalia to the Balkans. And, most famously, moved by the horrors of 9/11 from quasi-isolationist to interventionist, the second President Bush worked to remake the Middle East along Western, democratic lines. None of these actions, to put it mildly, went as planned. The historic, tribal, ethnic, sectarian, and religious realities of Middle Eastern life held far more power than Western notions of human rights and economic progress. If non-interventionists see cultural traits as immovable, always-interventionists see them as merely cosmetic, about as enduring as a new coat of paint. Every society, however, is built on and around ideas, many of which are so deeply ingrained, either by history or religion or both, that they go unspoken. Changing them is not impossible, but it is also not easy. In fact, the faltering state of freedom in the Middle East is as much a failure to know our own history and ideas as it is a failure to know theirs. The blessings we enjoy, like free elections and free markets and free speech, didn't come from nowhere. They came from a thousand years or more of cultural development, from kings and battles, revolutions and rebellions, ideas and new ideas, power struggles and false starts. In other words, politics alone cannot nation-build. In western culture, certain ideas about human nature, derived from Christianity, have played an essential role. Biblical concepts about the image of God and original sin enabled thinkers (who were also influenced by the Enlightenment) to craft a style of government that saw both citizens and the state as dignified and liable to corruption. Though Voltaire and even Jefferson may have ignored the source of these principles, and though, in practice, the inconsistent application of these principles led to grave evils and injustice, neither the Declaration of Independence or Declaration of the Rights of Man would have come to pass without Christianity and the Bible. Without them, in fact, the democratic project simply cannot endure, as demonstrated by our failed attempts at nation-building around the world.

There is a pandemic that has lasted far longer than COVID. It's also been more deadly. It's more difficult to treat, and there's no vaccine for it. Masks are ineffective in stopping it and may actually make it worse. America's pandemic of despair shows up most obviously in the mounting number of suicide and suicide attempts. According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide rates are higher today than at any other time since the Great Depression. Unless one takes into account just how different our world is today, it's impossible to grasp what that data point really means. Today, we have emergency rooms, a much better knowledge of poison and poison control, better technologies, and emergency medications like NARCAN. These incredible, life-saving medical interventions mean that a large percentage of patients who attempt suicide survive. But adjusting for these medical advances, we are likely living through the worst suicide crisis in our nation's history. This is a crisis that is, at its root, fueled by despair. Hopelessness afflicts individuals and entire communities. Deeper than economic hardship or access to firearms and opioids, we have created, to borrow words from my friend Matthew Sleeth, "an unlivable society." Loneliness and isolation are the norm, and they pre-existed this Coronavirus. Matthew's latest book is the most direct, helpful, and clarifying book for Christians on this topic of suicide. It's called Hope Always: How to Be a Force for Life in a Culture of Suicide. In it, he combines his first-hand knowledge of America's suicide crisis as an emergency room doctor with statistical insights, a biblical overview of the topic, and an incredible amount of wisdom. His conclusion is nothing less than a calling. When it comes to addressing this culture-wide pandemic, if not the church stepping up, who will? Scripture, as Dr. Sleeth points out, says a great deal about suicide, and therefore has a huge role to play in preventing it. From the beginning, Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden to, in effect, kill themselves. Ever since, demons, both literal and figurative, have been whispering lies and words of despair into human ears. Throughout the book, Sleeth threads an important needle. On the one hand, he argues against a materialistic view of suicide. Humans are, he argues, the only creatures that knowingly take our own lives. Thus, this terrible decision has an irreducible spiritual component. On the other hand, Sleeth warns Christians not to ignore the very real medical and mental health factors that drive people to self-harm. By holding together the material and moral sides of suicide, Sleeth addresses the issue from the best foundation available: who humans are as image-bearers of God. Thus, Sleeth makes clear why Christianity has proved to be the most powerful and effective response to those whispering demons that call us into the darkness. Near the beginning of Hope Always, Sleeth tells an especially touching story of two patients from his time as an emergency room physician. The first was an able-bodied young man, full of promise, who chose to shoot himself in the temple. The other was a joyful, wheelchair-bound man, slightly older with a permanent neurological injury, who had come in for a minor infection. A nurse asked Dr. Sleeth if he recognized the patient. "It's the man you saw last spring who shot himself." The two patients, as it turns out, were the same person. As the young man's parents later told Dr. Sleeth, after surviving his suicide attempt, their son had found a reason to live. In their words, "He got his faith back," and his faith had given him fresh hope. (This kind of powerful storytelling, born in his wealth of experience, is just one example of Matthew Sleeth's compelling writing style.) To be clear, having a Christian faith is no guarantee that, ultimately, the demonic voices will go away, or won't steal, kill, and destroy a life. Still, especially in this area, only the Church is properly grounded in both Scripture and science. Only the biblical vision of the imago Dei, of our creation and fall, can address the fullness of the human condition. In light of this, I say with Matthew Sleeth, if not the church on this issue, then who? Come to BreakPoint.org and we'll tell you how you can get a copy of "Hope Always." And be sure to check out Matthew Sleeth's outstanding interview with Shane Morris on our Upstream podcast, and his incredible talk at the 2021 Wilberforce Weekend.

One of Christianity's greatest strengths is its explanatory power. Christianity can explain the human experience and the human condition far better than any other worldview. This is true when it comes to humanity's created goodness, as made in the image of God. It's also true of its explanation of what's wrong with the world and the human heart. It's especially true when it comes to explaining human activity and ability, such as artistry, athleticism, and work. Today, on a special Labor Day edition of BreakPoint, I was reminded of how Chuck Colson described Christianity's unique perspective on the human reality of work. -- Fashion magazines are aghast over the latest fashion craze: work clothes. Carharrt hunting jackets are the rage on the streets of London and New York. Blundstone boots, until recently worn only by sheep farmers and miners, are now counted as hip footwear. The workwear craze actually has a long tradition in America. Back in 1946, a magazine called The American Weekly celebrated Labor Day with a cover photo of a worker standing astride the world in overalls and boots. That's actually not a bad image to take with us from Labor Day—a tribute to the fundamental dignity of the worker. Christians have a special reason to celebrate Labor Day. We worship a God who labored to make the world—and who created human beings in His image to be workers. When God made Adam and Eve, He gave them work to do: cultivating and caring for the earth. In the ancient world, the Greeks and Romans looked upon manual work as a curse, something for lower classes and slaves. But Christianity changed all that. Christians viewed work as a high calling—a calling to be co-workers with God in unfolding the rich potential of His creation. This high view of work can be traced throughout the history of the church. In the middle ages, the guild movement grew out of the church. They set standards for good workmanship and encouraged members to take satisfaction in the results of their labor. The guilds became the forerunners of the modern labor movement. Later, during the Reformation, Martin Luther preached that all work can be done to the glory of God. Whether ministering the Gospel or scrubbing floors, any honest work is pleasing to the Lord. Out of this conviction grew the Protestant work ethic. Christians were also active on behalf of workers in the early days of the industrial revolution, when the factories were "dark satanic mills," to borrow a phrase from Sir William Blake. Work in factories and coal mines in those days was hard and dangerous. Children were practically slaves and were sometimes even chained to the machines. Then John Wesley came preaching and teaching the Gospel throughout England. He came not to the upper classes but to the laboring classes—to men whose faces were black with coal dust, women whose dresses were patched and faded. John Wesley preached to them—and in the process, he pierced the conscience of the whole nation. Two of Wesley's disciples, William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury, were inspired to work for legislation that would clean up abuses in the workplace. The British parliament passed child labor laws, safety laws, and minimum-wage laws. Here in America, we've lost the Christian connection with the labor movement. But in many countries—from Canada to Poland—that tradition still remains. So go ahead, let your kids wear hunting jackets and Blundstone boots, as long as workwear is the fashion. But this Labor Day, remember that labor derives its true dignity as a reflection of the Creator. And that whatever we do, in word or deed, we should do all to the glory of God. -- That was Chuck Colson talking about the Christian vision of work. It is an appropriate topic, especially today. For all of us at the Colson Center, as you gather with friends and family, and maybe and fire up the grill for the last time this summer, happy Labor Day.

John and Maria start the show discussing the disillusionment of millennial evangelicals. They ask if the way we've done church has led to the rise in Evangelical evacuation in young people. John asks if this is because we have a bigotry in low expectations. Maria then asks John for further explanation in his recent commentary on Isaiah 6. The commentary was sparked from President Biden's speech last week where he took Isaiah 6 out of context. John then offers an explanation on the new heartbeat bill in Texas that significantly restricts abortion. The law faced last minute challenges from pro-choice advocates, but the courts didn't vote to pause the law. Maria asks John for further context on what this specific law means and if its framework is extrapolated how that could impact religious freedom with other laws. To close, Maria asks John to comment on litigation many states have taken up against the Biden administration. The concern is how LGBTQ and sex discrimination protections that are expanding and having an impact into schools. Maria then brings up a recent piece done by ESPN that highlights gradeschool and junior high athletes who identify as transgender in states that have restricted policies to protect sports from blurring lines in who an can compete based on gender identity. -- Story References -- BreakPoint Recap The Disillusion of Millennial Evangelicals Though Gen Z-ers have all but replaced Millennials as the dazzling object of scrutiny and cultural analysis, it's not because Millennials are no longer struggling. Rates of addiction, depression, burnout, and loneliness are all disproportionately high among the demographic born between 1981 and 1996. Since 2013, in fact, Millennials have seen a 47 percent increase in major depression diagnoses.BreakPoint>> President Biden and Isaiah 6: It's Not Really About 'Here Am I, Send Me' President Biden certainly isn't the first President to misquote Scripture for political ends, only the most recent. Last week, in a speech responding to the terrorist attack on the airport in Kabul, Biden quoted from Isaiah 6:8, when the prophet answered the Lord's call by saying, 'Here am I send me!" It was odd. It was out of place. And, it was inappropriate. Even worse than blurring the line between America and the Kingdom of God, the President used Holy Scripture to deflect from his own responsibility for this disaster.BreakPoint>> Supreme Court Hears Texas Heartbeat Bill Case and Let's it Stand Supreme Court Upholds New Texas Abortion Law, For Now The U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday night refused to block a Texas law that amounts to a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 5-4, with three Trump-appointed justices joining two other conservative justices. Dissenting were conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's three liberal justices. NPR>> Media fear the worst after Texas abortion law: 'Who is gonna invade Texas to liberate women and girls' The media meltdown over a Texas law banning abortions after six weeks stretched into its second day with no end in sight Thursday, with analysts comparing the measure to slavery, terrorism, and the end times. FoxNews>> Psaki shuts down male reporter's abortion questions: 'You've never faced those choices' White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday responded to a male reporter who pressed her on President Biden's support for abortion by saying the reporter has "never faced those choices." The Hill>> Transgender Athletes Debate Hits New Level 20 states, including Tennessee, sue over Biden administration school, work LGBTQ protections. Attorneys general from 20 states sued President Joe Biden's administration Monday seeking to halt directives that extend federal sex discrimination protections to LGBTQ people, ranging from transgender girls participating in school sports to the use of school and workplace bathrooms that align with a person's gender identity. The Tennessean> ESPN Makes Claim That Young transgender athletes are caught in middle of states' debates Julie has been to legislators' offices. She sat across from elected officials, arguing on behalf of her daughter. Stephanie usually wants to come, but Julie thinks she's too young. In one official's office, Julie noticed a photo on his wall of his kids playing soccer at a park where she has often watched Stephanie play. "You know, there's a good chance your daughter has played against my daughter in soccer," she said to him. "You would have no idea. She's just like any other little girl." ESPN>> -- In Show Recommendations -- The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Podcast Christianity Today | 2021 Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and What Justice Gorsuch Hath Wrought John Stonestreet & Shane Morris | BreakPoint This Week | June 19, 2020 Why Asking Kids to Announce Their Pronouns is a Big Deal John Stonestreet & Maria Baer | The Point | August 30, 2021 Rescuing the Victims of the Sexual Revolution John Stonestreet | BreakPoint | March 8, 2021

From the beginning, proponents of the sexual revolution have wrapped themselves in the mantle of science, especially social science. For example, in the 1950s, the "Kinsey Reports" helped normalize a range of sexual behaviors. They were also the source of the still-often-quoted "statistic" that 10 percent of people are same-sex oriented. Both that figure and the methodology behind Kinsey's "research" has long ago been discredited. Still, that 10 percent number has stuck in many people's heads. A new wave of studies in recent years paints a rosy picture about the benefits of medical transitions for people with gender dysphoria. So much so that, as Paul Dirks recently wrote at Public Discourse, "lifelong experimental medicalization, sterilization, and complete removal of healthy body parts . . . is no longer a rarity. It is the recommended treatment for gender dysphoria." But what if these studies are like the Kinsey Reports? What if they reflect the bias and agendas of the authors rather than reality? Given what is at stake, this a vitally important question, especially since social science itself is in the midst of what's called a "replication crisis." In other words, when other researchers try to replicate the findings of studies in the social sciences, they often cannot. This failure of replication even includes studies that are regarded as canonical in some fields. So how can we distinguish between solid research and what won't withstand further scrutiny when it comes to the so-called "settled science" of gender transitioning? Paul Dirks' Public Discourse article, "Transition as Treatment: The Best Studies Show the Worst Outcomes," sums up the results of his deep-dive into the research. Dirks defines "best studies" as those that have followed people who underwent medical transition for the longest period of time. "It is well recognized in the literature," Dirks states, "that the year after medical [gender] transition is a 'honeymoon period, which 'does not represent a realistic picture of long-term sexual and psychological status.'" Yet most of the popular gender transition studies are limited to just a few years following medical transitioning. Other studies that support medical transitions fail to follow up with as much as half of the original participants. That's well beyond the threshold of reliability. Many of the studies, Dirks states, are "fraught with . . . design problems," such as "small sample sizes, short study lengths, and enormously high drop-out rates," to name just three. The problem is so bad that one systematic review of the literature, "rated only two out of twenty-nine studies as high-quality." In contrast, the best-designed and most rigorous studies, whose results are most likely to stand up over time, found that medical transition was not the solution to the patients' problems, especially in the case of male-to-female transitions. They reveal much higher mortality rates due to increased rates of suicide, AIDS, drug abuse, and even cardiovascular disease. Another high-quality study found a 7-fold increase in suicide attempts and a nineteen-fold increase in completed suicides after transitions. Even when the findings are adjusted for pre-existing psychiatric problems, which are often treated as unrelated to the gender dysphoria, there was still a three-fold increase in psychiatric hospital admissions. In other words, when it comes to medical gender transitioning, "the best studies show the worst outcomes," and the current use of shoddy social science to support medical transitioning is not only misleading but dangerous. In this case, as is common in the social sciences, especially throughout the history of the sexual revolution, ideology is overwhelming truth-finding. Too many researchers think they know what the data should tell us, so they, at times unconsciously and at times consciously, design their studies to make sure that it does. Sadly, the consequences of their failure are far worse than professional embarrassment or tarnished reputations. In this case, the consequences can be permanent and even deadly.

Though Gen Z-ers have all but replaced Millennials as the dazzling object of scrutiny and cultural analysis, it's not because Millennials are no longer struggling. Rates of addiction, depression, burnout, and loneliness are all disproportionately high among the demographic born between 1981 and 1996. Since 2013, in fact, Millennials have seen a 47 percent increase in major depression diagnoses. For their part, evangelical Millennials are in a season of deconstruction and deconversion, or reeling from the many influential and high profile leaders that have recently either left the faith or fallen from grace. Disillusionment is now a dominant feature of this group that was once convinced it could change the world. In his influential book The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt uses a rider and an elephant to illustrate moral psychology. The rider represents intellectual reasoning. The elephant represents immediate perceptions, intuitions and instincts. Most modern people, Haidt argues, think that their own moral frameworks are derived from objective, rational reasoning. In other words, it's the rider who tells the elephant where to go and what to eat. In reality, however, moral decisions primarily come from our gut instincts, and we use intellectual reasoning to justify those decisions. Or, back to our metaphor, the elephant wants bananas, and the rider explains why bananas are good after the decision to get bananas has already been made. If Haidt is right, we can better understand the beauty and power of Christianity. To borrow his metaphor, Christ speaks to both the rider and the elephant. "Like newborn babies," the Apostle Peter tells us, "crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good." Christianity is not only ultimately true, it is also ultimately satisfying. It is satisfying, in fact, because it is true. This provides a helpful lens by which to understand Millennial deconstruction, deconversion, and disillusionment. What if a generation of Christians have been taught to crave the wrong thing? Recently, my friend Sean McDowell described a conversation he had with a deconverted evangelical. He was surprised to learn that this skeptic first started to doubt his faith at a Coldplay concert. Though there are plenty of anti-Christian bands, Coldplay isn't one of them. The lead singer didn't challenge anyone's faith or any particular truth claims from the stage. However, the concert produced in the skeptic so many of the feelings he had always associated with worship. The stadium of people singing in unison, the strong emotion elicited by lyrics and melody, and the unifying cultural grandeur of it all felt a lot like, well, church. But then, what had this former believer been experiencing all those years? It suddenly seemed possible that Christianity was just another man-made phenomenon, enjoyable and moving but not really true. You know, like a Coldplay concert. What if we are seeing the fruit of a generation that was sold endless attempts to make Christ cool and likable, worship relevant and hyper-emotional, and Christian morality more about politics and cultural influence than obedience to God? And what if this generation has now found those experiences elsewhere? What if all of the trendy marketing, political capital, and massive concert experiences inadvertently taught a generation to love the glamour and the feelings, but not Christ? If there's any truth to this analysis, there is also consolation. Many Millennials are discovering that there are no better answers "out there," either. Yet, like all human beings, they still crave the truth, depth, and beauty found only in the Gospel. Chuck Colson kept a plaque on his desk that read: "Faithfulness, not success." Having climbed the heights of worldly success, he knew that nothing in this life could ultimately satisfy. Forced to reckon with how empty it all was, he encountered Jesus. As he wrote in Loving God, God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of paradox, where through the ugly defeat of a cross, a holy God is utterly glorified. Victory comes through defeat; healing through brokenness; finding self through losing self. Culture - even Christian culture - comes and goes. The eternal truths of Christ are forever. And they are enough to satisfy a drifting generation.

John and Shane answer questions from listeners ranging from how Christians should define persecution in a desire to fulfill a Biblical call to encourage the saints to how a public counselor can represent Jesus while honoring her call as healthcare provider. Shane also asks John to comment on the history of the United States of America and how it bodes for those who have been mistreated during it's history.

President Biden isn't the first president to misquote Scripture, only the most recent. He did it by quoting Isaiah 6:8, when the prophet answered the Lord's call with, "Here am I. Send me!" This reference was made in a speech responding to last week's terrorist attack at the Kabul airport. It was odd. It was out of place. It was inappropriate. In doing so, the President not only blurred the line between America and the Kingdom of God, he deflected his own responsibility for this disaster onto "God's will." Of course, the service and self-sacrifice of our military should always be recognized and honored. And it's completely appropriate, as many members of our armed forces surely do, to see military service as one's service to the Lord. For believers, every calling, if legitimate and done as to the Lord, is sacred. But how we carry out those callings - or as in this case how we order others to carry out theirs - is on us, not God. Still, in his misuse of Scripture, President Biden joined not only a long line of presidents (especially the previous two), but plenty of pastors and other Christians, as well. I've lost count of the number of mission conferences I've attended in which the words, "Here am I, send me," were plucked from the middle of Isaiah 6, printed on banners, and hung around the church. The intent of encouraging people to respond to God's call on their lives is noble. However, to miss the full context of the story is not only to miss the significance of Isaiah's famous words, but to miss details that are particularly relevant for our cultural moment. First, the recent death of King Uzziah puts it in the context of a national crisis. Not only had Uzziah reigned over the kingdom of Judah for 52 years, but he had been, at least for the most part, one of the few good kings. When God allows Isaiah (who may have been a cousin of Uzziah) to see Him, He is showing Isaiah that even though the earthly king is dead, the True King of the universe is not. God's status remains unchanged. Even the most chaotic cultural moment does not alter the rule and reign of Christ Jesus. We would do well to remember that, too. Second, Isaiah's answer was not so much courageous or heroic as it was grateful. The key point of this passage is not what Isaiah said at all. It's what God did. Immediately after Isaiah saw the Lord, he said, "Woe is me!" This could be very roughly translated as, "uh-oh… I'm dead meat." After all, the central feature of God's presence described here is God's holiness. Isaiah is not special. He's a sinner like the rest of us and, as such, cannot survive in the presence of God's perfection. The whole scene is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis's, The Last Battle, where the soldier who had spent his life serving the false god Tash sees Aslan and, sure of his impending death, thinks to himself, "Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him." Isaiah has something of the same response. But when Isaiah predicts his ruin owing to his unclean lips, God spares him: He orders coals from the altar to touch his lips, cleansing him from his impurity. I suppose even a prophet can have a dirty mouth, but only mercy from God Himself can make any of us presentable to Him. Having thought that his life was over only to have it spared by God, what else will Isaiah say when the question is asked, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" What's too often missed, especially when we fail to read beyond Isaiah's response to the rest of the passage, is what God is calling Isaiah to do. "Go, and say to this people: 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' 10 Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed." In a word, God is sending Isaiah to fail. Isaiah the prophet, whose job it was to speak for God, is told that the more he speaks for God, the less the people will listen. The more he speaks, the more their hearts would grow harder and harder. To which Isaiah asks a question of his own (a good one, in fact): "How long, O Lord?" I think it's safe to assume Isaiah may have been asking for some degree of assurance that, eventually, they would listen. Like any committed communicator, he wants to know he is being heard. God's reply? "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, 12 and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land." In other words, Isaiah, you're going to speak, and they aren't going to listen. And this is going to go on and on until it's all over. The next chapter isn't repentance for Judah. It's captivity. "For us there is only the trying," said T.S. Eliot. "The rest is none of our business." Any result of our work, when done for the Lord, is up to God. In a Bibli

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a small village in south-central France. Back in 1940, the total population of this area, including the surrounding villages, was only about 5,000. Still, under the leadership of their Protestant pastor André Trocmé and his wife, Magda, the residents of these villages were responsible for saving up to 5,000 Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps during World War II. In late January, Holocaust survivor Eric Schwam passed away at age 90. According to a BBC article, Schwam, a native of Vienna, arrived in Le Chambon in 1943, a refugee along with his mother, father, and grandfather. After the war, Schwam eventually returned to Austria to live a quiet life. However, he never forgot the people of Le Chambon for saving his life. In fact, he left the town more than $2 million in a bequest. As Dr. Glenn Sunshine described in a BreakPoint article from a few years ago, in the winter of 1940, after the defeat of France, a Jewish woman fleeing the Nazis knocked at the Trocmé's door, seeking help. Magda attempted to secure false papers for her, but the mayor refused to help. He feared that if the Germans found out anyone in Le Chambon was helping Jews, the entire village would suffer. This did not dissuade Magda and André. In fact, according to Sunshine, "Pastor Trocmé began to exhort his congregation to shelter any 'People of the Book' that were fleeing Nazi persecution, telling them, 'We shall resist whenever our adversaries demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the gospel.'" The members of his church responded, volunteering to hide Jews. When more Jews arrived in Le Chambon, André would announce the arrival of "Old Testaments" and ask if any in his congregation would be willing to take them. There was never a lack of volunteers. Eventually, the townspeople created an underground network to help Jews travel safely across the Swiss border. Local officials caught on and tipped off the Germans. They searched Le Chambon but found nothing. Finally, the officials demanded that Trocmé stop any and all activities that provided help for the Jews. His response was blunt. "These people came here for help and shelter. I am their shepherd. A shepherd does not forsake his flock. I do not know what a Jew is. I only know human beings." Eventually, André was arrested and sent to a detention camp. He was released after ten days and spent the rest of the war underground. Le Chambon's rescue operation continued, even without him. What the people of Le Chambon did was, as Dr. Sunshine called it, "a conspiracy of goodness." An untold number of lives were saved by their courageous actions. In fact, not a single Jew was caught in Le Chambon during the entire war. Why did these French Christians risk so much? In a post-war documentary, one villager said, "We didn't protect the Jews because we were a moral or heroic people. We helped them because it was the human thing to do." But of course, we have to ask ourselves, why did so many others refuse to help? André Trocmé died in 1971. His wife Magda died in 1996. Both were named as Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Memorial Authority in Jerusalem. A final, fascinating element of this story is that the residents of Le Chambon were descendants of French Protestants known as Huguenots, who were themselves victims of savage persecution at the hands of the French Catholic monarchy during the 16th and 17th centuries. A method of survival used back then played a major role in the 20th century work to protect Jews. Dr. Sunshine describes it this way: "In the area around Le Chambon, the Huguenots made secret rooms similar to the priest holes in England, and secret paths through the mountains to Switzerland to smuggle pastors and Bibles into France. Even after Protestantism was legalized, the people of the area kept the locations of these rooms and paths secret since they never knew when they would need them again. Providentially still available, the rooms and paths were put back into service to save the Jews from the Nazis."

The theory of intelligent design is often dismissed as religion pretending to be science. Critics argue that the theory doesn't make any predictions or contribute to our knowledge of the natural world, and plus, it's not taken seriously in any peer-reviewed scientific journals. However, a new paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Theoretical Biology makes a strong case for the need for intelligent design. The paper is called "On the waiting time until coordinated mutations get fixed in regulatory sequences." If that title is all Greek to you, don't worry; you're in good company. This technical, math-intensive paper was written by intelligent design researchers Ola Hössjer, Günter Bechly, and Ann Gauger. As Casey Luskin explains at Evolution News, the project came out of the Discovery Institute's ID 3.0 research initiative, which aims, in part, to test how plausible Darwinian evolution is on a mathematical level. And though it's just a beginning, this paper's conclusions should make die-hard Darwinists nervous. Here's the background. The fossil record has been a perpetual problem for Darwin's theory ever since it was first published in 1859. Put simply, the fossil record doesn't look like the theory predicts it should. If, as Darwin proposed, all the diversity of life on earth developed through natural selection, sorting random variations over untold eons, living things should change very gradually. This means the record of evolution we find in rocks should look gradual, too. Invertebrates should turn slowly into fish, which should turn slowly into amphibians, which should turn slowly into reptiles and mammals, and so on. What we actually find is the basis of what philosopher of science Stephen Meyer calls "Darwin's doubt": the fossil record consists of numerous "bursts" of biological diversity, such as the famous "Cambrian explosion," in which new body plans and animal phyla appear in the fossil record seemingly without ancestors. Evolutionary biologists have come up with several ways to explain away these sudden leaps in the history of life to reassure us of evolution's power. The problem is that it's difficult to test these explanations to determine whether evolution is up to the job of generating new life forms suddenly, rather than gradually. How fast is too fast for evolution? This is the so-called "waiting time" problem. Traits like gills, wings, functional legs, and eyes don't just appear as the result of one mutation. They require many mutations, often in regulatory regions of DNA before an organism gets any fitter. But as the necessary mutations pile up, the time required for evolution to occur increases, and does so exponentially. Summarizing the paper, Luskin uses an example of marbles. Imagine you have a bag of red and blue marbles. You want only blue marbles, but you need to select at random. Let's say it will take two seconds on average to pull out a blue marble. However, because the search is random, it will take four seconds to pull out two blue marbles. For three, it's eight seconds. And so on. The time required with each additional marble increases exponentially. Now imagine those marbles are random mutations—the alleged raw material of evolution. As the authors of the paper note, many traits that confer a survival advantage—such as those activated by regulatory regions in DNA—involve sequences hundreds or thousands of nucleotides long. And when you realize that "blue marble" mutations may each take centuries to happen, and that none of them give a survival advantage until they change the expression of actual genes—well, the problem for evolution becomes a simple matter of math. Okay, maybe "simple" is the wrong word. This paper's model is dense, and these authors merely develop that method and suggest how it could possibly be applied to the fossil record. They haven't yet taken that next step. What they have done is offer a plausible way to calculate just how much time evolution requires, and show whether the theory can make good on its promises and actually explain the fossil record that caused Darwin so much doubt. Maybe more importantly, this is the latest in a series of papers by intelligent design (ID) researchers to sustain peer review. It demonstrates, once again, that despite the protests of die-hard Darwinists, ID theory is capable of scientific predictions and insights, and may in fact be better at explaining the wonders of the living world than Neo-Darwinism. Perhaps it's even a theory that could eventually replace Darwin's. As this paper hints, the answer may only be a matter of time.

-- Story Resources -- Suicide Bomber Attacks Citizens at Kabul Airport At least two explosions took place near the Kabul airport on Thursday as the US and other countries try to evacuate their citizens and Afghans at risk from the Taliban. Three US officials and a source familiar with the situation said that, according to initial reports, there were some US personnel among the casualties. CNN>> The Crisis in Afghanistan And Humanity's Capacity for Evil The desperate scenes at the Kabul airport are hard to take in. To describe America's exit strategy as "negligence" is charitable. More accurately, it's somewhere between folly and abandonment. It's the latest chapter in a war with, as Mindy Belz put it, "a history of political ambivalence." Even back in 2006, one frustrated soldier described it this way: "We're at war; America's at the mall." It may have been our culture of self-absorption that sowed such a catastrophic exit, but it's the Afghan people who are reaping the whirlwind BreakPoint>> Prayer is Doing Something I saw a tweet recently from a mom that described this well. "Sometimes," she said, "I'm mad at God that all he lets me do is pray about a situation that is out of my hands. I suppose that says more about me, and my frustration with prayer, than it says about God." BreakPoint>> Chuck Colson on "Radical Gratitude" A friend reminded me of a commentary by Chuck Colson from all the way back in 2005. It's safe to say that it has aged well. Despite how much has changed and how much more chaotic the headlines might be today, the core truth underlying his commentary is the same. A posture of gratitude is one that recognizes Whose world this actually is, and how we fit in God's overarching plan to make all things new.BreakPoint>> The Myth of Family-Friendly Abortion Planned Parenthood's website says that "Deciding to have an abortion doesn't mean you don't want or love children. In fact, 6 out of 10 people who get abortions already have kids—and many of them decide to end their pregnancies so they can focus on the children they already have." Less than six percent of Medicaid-enrolled women had both births and abortions. As study lead, Dr. James Studnicki remarked: "…abortion is in no way typical of motherhood…the overwhelming number of children are born to mothers who never have an abortion.The Point>> The Pronoun Revolution Chicago public school teacher sent forms to Abigail Shrier that show teachers are explicitly required to keep kids' newly declared gender identities from parents. Twitter>> Spike in Transgender Surgeries Show Medical Priorities It's so strange that despite all the rationing we've been hearing about, there was a notable rise in so-called "gender confirmation surgeries" for women. These are procedures in which otherwise healthy body parts are removed from female patients suffering with gender dysphoria. BreakPoint>> -- In-show Mentions -- How Does the Women's March Define What a Woman Is? Joseph Backholm | What Would You Say? | January 22, 2020 Transgenderism Depends on Stereotypes Joseph Backholm | What Would You Say? | January 15, 2020 The Last Christian on Earth Os Guinness | Baker Books | 2010 The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self Carl Trueman | Crossway | 2020 -- Recommendations -- GI Joe on Youtube The Fellowship of the Performing Arts Bethany Bernard - All My Questions

Yesterday a suicide bomber from an ISIS-related group attacked crowds outside the Kabul airport. How will the U.S. respond? Given how poorly President Biden has handled the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan up to this point, it's impossible to predict just how the U.S. will respond to an attack by an ISIS-related suicide bomber. The tragedy resulted in the killing of at least 12 U.S. service members and more than 60 others hoping to flee the country. If yesterday's press conference by the President was meant to inspire confidence or provide clarity, it failed. Carl von Clausewitz, the famous German student of war, once argued that war is just politics by other means. That, if it's true to any degree, puts us in an absolutely terrifying position. Now, the question: how should the U.S. respond to a horrific attack like this one? That's another matter. Thankfully, there's a long history of theological reflection that's known as Just War Theory. It's helpful, especially at times like these, when anger, hurt, and desire for retaliation overwhelm our senses. Acts of war should always be thought of only as extraordinary means, like surgery or chemo. War is only justified by a situation so bad that acts ordinarily unthinkable become morally obligated. Still, even justified violence will involve horrors that would never happen in a sinless world. Think of even the best possible situations, where all involved are adult males in uniform, under arms, with a clear objective: it's still image-bearers of God, using their God-given abilities to attack, to harm, to kill other image-bearers. And I'm not sure there's been a war that clean in all of human history. Because of the awful realities of life after the Fall, Christian thinkers throughout the ages - from Augustine, to Aquinas, to Luther, to others today - have struggled to articulate acts of war within a Christian moral framework, so that believers could figure out ways to actively oppose grave injustice while not becoming part of the injustice themselves. Some believers have, of course, held that this sort of thing is impossible, and they've embraced various degrees of pacifism. However, the majority of the church settled on a set of criteria that, if met, would justify acts of war. Though different groups have categorized these criteria in different ways, they can generally be grouped into whether or not to go to war and how war should be waged. The first set of criteria has to do with the right to war. It demands that leaders and nations never go to war without fully counting the cost. Not only must there be good reason, but all other options must have been exhausted. Extraordinary injustice has to be present or imminent acts of war must be waged by legitimate authorities, not just by vigilante individuals. There has to be a likely chance of success and the act of retaliation cannot exceed the evil that it opposes. Even a just cause is not sufficient justification in and of itself, if it's mixed with unjust goals, or an overly devastating response, or an unlikely chance of success. The second set of criteria has to do with governing right behavior once a war has been waged. Even when fighting and killing is justified, not all means of fighting and killing are justified. Whenever noncombatants are caught in crossfire, it's tragic. But noncombatants should never ever be targeted. Nor should military personnel be targeted if wounded, captured, or incapacitated in some way. Only the force necessary to accomplish a mission as quickly as possible is justified force. Now, of course, there's a vast difference between a nice and neat theory like this and how it's applied on the ground. Rarely will both sides, or even anyone on one side for that matter, agree that each and every criteria has been sufficiently met. Both sides tend to assume that they're the ones justified in taking action against their enemy. All of which brings us back to the very non-theoretical question of the moment: How should President Biden respond to the murderous bombing of innocent Afghans and American service members yesterday? First, it's essential to remember the larger context of this bombing. It's a decades-long war that has, especially recently, been badly bungled. The more immediate context is that nothing in the President's handling of Afghanistan, especially in the last two weeks, does anything to inspire confidence that he can do the right thing here and now. This is where applying Just War criteria to yesterday's attack becomes all the more complicated. On one hand, of course, American forces were attacked while not engaging in any sort of hostile action, even as they were trying to help innocent civilians. And this attack was maybe sponsored, but was at least allowed, by the ruling Taliban, the so-called government. Above and beyond our own losses, there were noncombatants killed. Going by all of these principles alone, there's ample justification for swift and serious retaliati

The next edition of Webster's Dictionary will probably include a new definition for "zoom." For most people, life during the pandemic included Zoom meetings, Zoom classes, Zoom calls, Zoom church services, etc. Nearly everything now consists of a virtual option. The shift has been culture-wide, especially in the area of work. Earlier this month, the Institute for Family Studies released findings from a new survey of 2500 American adults. More than 50 percent of working moms and dads said that the COVID-19 pandemic had changed their preferences. They'd now prefer to work from home than at the office at least part of the time. The pandemic has also changed other work preferences of parents. Though economic realities leave many parents without the choice of whether to work or not, the study found that working, college-educated moms, in particular, are now more likely to want to work only part-time. And the most significant percentage of both moms and dads of children under five described their ideal arrangement as sharing childcare duties with a spouse instead of hiring a nanny or using daycare. This study was only about preferences, and preferences don't always coincide with reality. Not every parent gets to choose whether or not to work or the job arrangement they prefer. And not every job can be done from home. However, because logistical realities so often shape our lives, whether we're aware of it or not, we should be aware of them and how they are changing us, and we should be intentional about them. Not everyone is aware of their worldview, though everyone has a set of assumptions about the world that informs everything they do. Likewise, not everyone is aware of how much a changing cultural landscape can shape their worldview. By understanding how modern life and outside forces, like a pandemic or new work arrangements, affect the ways we order our lives, we can better align our choices with a Christian worldview instead of being blown around by cultural winds. In the Psalms, David implored God to "teach him to number his days." Elsewhere, he asked that God would "search him and know him." It is a Biblical mandate to think about why we do what we do and align with how God calls us to live. It's one thing to know that in principle, it's far more complicated to practice it. Does God want us to work? Does he want us to work that job? Do we justify our work's type, intensity, or location merely by the lifestyle we prefer, or based on other factors: what's best for the family? What's best for mental health? What is most conducive to church life or Christian service? For the Christian, there are immovable Biblical principles that should mark and form the structures of our lives. These should not be moved, edited, or altered by cultural shifts. For example, the reality of marriage is a real thing, like gravity, ordained by God within the created order and reclaimed by Christ for the health and growth of His kingdom. Marriage is not made something else by changing cultural norms. In the same way, the obligations of parents to their children are fixed. Despite how they are so often treated in our cultural moment, they are image-bearers who belong to God, not ornaments to decorate our lives or pieces of clay to mold into our images. A song by Christian singer Sara Groves called "Scientist in Japan" questions the pride humans have in the technological advances we've made or wished we've made, such as artificial heart muscles and front-load washing machines. "We set machines in motion just to set machines in motion," she sings, but "Who's going to stay to think about it? Everybody's left the room… there's no one here to talk it through." Christians, of all people, should be the ones to stay and think about the ways our culture is changing and how these changes influence and dictate our decisions. God's truth is unchanging. How we live out of that truth in a changing culture must always be considered. No cultural wind should blow us around without us at least noticing. And no circumstantial change should stop us from living as God has called us.

John and Shane help a listener understand the difference between an evangelical, a protestant, and evangelical. They use the Bebbington quadrilateral to provide context and give a full explanation on the unique worldview understanding in evangelical, protestant, and evangelical approaches. -- Resources -- Religion and American Culture: A Brief History George Marsden | Eerdmans | September 6, 2018 God in the WastelandDavid F. Wells | Eerdma ns | July 1, 1994

The American withdrawal from Afghanistan is forcing us to look, again, into the face of humanity's capacity for evil. President Biden's rationalizations aside, painful questions remain about Afghanistan: what will Taliban rule mean for Afghan women and children, for Christians, dissidents, and journalists? What will happen to those Afghan citizens who served and stood with the U.S. for the last two decades? Has this extremist regime really evolved as they claim and as many hope? The desperate scenes at the Kabul airport are hard to take in. To describe America's exit strategy as "negligence" is charitable. More accurately, it's somewhere between folly and abandonment. It's the latest chapter in a war with, as Mindy Belz put it, "a history of political ambivalence." Even back in 2006, one frustrated soldier described it this way: "We're at war; America's at the mall." It may have been our culture of self-absorption that sowed such a catastrophic exit, but it's the Afghan people who are reaping the whirlwind. In his book A Free People's Suicide, Os Guinness observed an historical reality being played out in Afghanistan. Winning freedom is not rare in history; maintaining freedom is. As James Monroe lamented, "How prone all human institutions have been to decay. How difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism." Again and again throughout history, human frailty, foolishness, and fallenness corrupt even our best endeavors. Israel thought it had a righteous king in David, but his sin wrought personal, familial, and national havoc. Emerging from Roman persecution, some Christian leaders persecuted their pagan neighbors. St. Augustine of Hippo finished City of God, then watched from his deathbed as Vandals destroyed what was left of the Roman world. Even U.S. President James Monroe was a painful contradiction: a President who advocated for abolition but stubbornly refused to free his own slaves. Every story of human failure reminds us, again, just how desperate our world is for re-creation. A quick paint job won't do. We are not capable of cleaning up our messes, or putting back together what we've broken. Even the best human rulers, institutions, and heroes of history cannot save us. Only the God of the Cosmos can. If He isn't on the throne, ruling and redeeming, all is lost. Jesus' mission to Earth must be properly understood. This is more than merely an inspiring story of sacrifice, service, and humility. It's even more than the story of how we can find forgiveness and avoid eternal punishment. Let me be clear: the story of Jesus certainly isn't about less than these things, but it is about so much more. It is, rather, the story of the Cosmos. The story that best describes reality, particularly in its brokenness. Os Guinness observed that "Christianity is the only religion whose God bears the scars of evil." In the context of the Fall, this is significant. By suffering within His creation and with His image bearers, being despised and abandoned, tasting the bitterness of human failure and corrupt institutions, feeling anger at injustice and sadness at human frailty, Jesus experienced evil in its fullness. In His death, He became the only fully innocent victim of evil. And, by resurrecting from the dead, Jesus became the only secure source of hope - hope that evil will indeed be overcome and ultimately defeated. Though all human institutions should fail, Christ will make all things new. Everything truly Christian flows from these bedrock truths: our ethics, any strength we have to continue to push back against evil and brokenness, any good that is within us. It's only because the Judge of the universe is perfect that our earthly justice has any meaning. It's only because of what Christ has done for us that we can truly love and care for our neighbors. America has some serious soul-searching to do in light of this failure in Afghanistan. Even more, we have some serious course-correcting to do. Specifically, we'll need to reckon with the humanitarian crisis we helped create, and we'll need to find ways to support the tiny, embattled Christian remnant there. At the same time, the only way to bear the overwhelming weight of human evil in this world is to embrace the long Christian view of history, and to fix our eyes on the Christ Who is at its center. All other ways lead to either judgmental cynicism or self-centered hedonism. Only the story of Christ is big enough to make sense of the evil in our world. Only His nail-scarred hands are strong enough to hold the course of humanity. As Edward Shillito wrote in his masterful poem Jesus of the Scars, "to our wounds only God's wounds can speak. And not a God has wounds but (Christ) alone."

Last week, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change panicked. Or, at least, they officially announced to the world they were panicking. In its new official Assessment Report, the panel concluded we won't be able to stop the earth from warming at least 1.5 degrees. That change, scientists said, will melt arctic ice, cause a rise in sea levels and an increase in dangerous weather, and send millions into poverty. And if industrialized nations don't dramatically cut their carbon emissions, they said, those consequences will be even more devastating. Sometimes Christians hear apocalyptic news about climate change and feel a distinct urge to change the channel. I empathize with that instinct - the people releasing these reports are not always unbiased or even trustworthy. But it's not controversial to say that Christians should care about the planet. The book of Genesis says that God "breathed life into the dust" of the earth to create us. The earth feeds, clothes and shelters humans, but the Bible also talks about the world as an intrinsic good in and of itself. Just considering the incredible variety, intricacy and beauty of the animals, plants and topography across the globe is a study in God's intentional creativity. God doesn't breathe on what he doesn't love. If the latest research seems to show the climate is changing in ways that could harm both humans and the planet, we should listen. However, there are worldview assumptions built into a report like the IPCC's that too often go unspoken. One such assumption is that the earth's climate is changing now in a way it was not supposed to. A sense of existential instability is warranted within a naturalistic worldview. If one believes human beings only came into existence on razor-thin margins - that is, that the chance we evolved from single-cell organisms into the unfathomably complex, billion-cell organisms we are today was astronomically astronomical - then our survival here dances on razor-thin margins, too. In that case, a report suggesting "it's getting dicey out there" would be the least shocking news we could get. Christians need not share that existential dread. The Bible tells us God both created and sustains His creation. "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together," Paul writes in Colossians. But the consequences of the fall can wreak havoc on God's creation. Things aren't perfect here; we are capable of harming ourselves and the earth. But that doesn't mean our climate is hopelessly out of control. Isaiah 40 sounds at first like a warning: "The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it." But there's great comfort here: nothing withers or fades without His breath. That comfort isn't available in a God-less worldview, and that's evident in many reports about climate change. For example, there's an emphasis in this IPCC report on what humans should do to prevent the globe from warming further. Notice the implication that we can control this problem. Certainly as humans we have agency, and a responsibility to make good decisions. But it's far easier on an emotional level to believe that the big, scary problems like climate change — or a pandemic — are humans' fault, and therefore can be fixed by humans, than to believe we can't control everything. Vulnerability is very uncomfortable. But to believe we can either make or break the climate is to view humans as blunt instruments - as if we're a problem that needs solving rather than potential agents of a solution. In fact, as the world has changed over centuries, including a warming period in the Middle Ages, humans have often displayed incredible adaptability. Even the things we blame now for harming the climate - like the industrialization that increases carbon emissions - have improved the lives of humans more than our ancestors could have imagined. - arguably, more than their side-effects have harmed humanity. We should beware reports about the changing climate that come as an alarm and not a calling. Christians are to "hold fast to the hope that we confess without wavering, because the One who has promised is faithful." We are like the servants in Jesus' parable about the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew 25: God has put us in charge of His home while we wait for His return. With the power entrusted to us, we should solve the problems that arise, reminding each other all the while that He's coming back, and that the foundations of the house don't rest on our shoulders.

A friend wrote to me and reminded me of a commentary from Chuck Colson on Breakpoint from all the way back in 2005. It has aged well. That's because, despite how much things have changed, despite how much more chaotic the headlines might be today, the core truth is the same. A posture of gratitude is one that recognizes whose world it actually is, and where we fit in to God's overarching plan to make all things new. Here is the transcript from Chuck Colson's commentary from 2005, talking about gratitude: The notion of gratitude is hot these days. Search the Internet, and you'll find more than a million sites about thankfulness. For example, university psychologists recently conducted a research project on gratitude and thanksgiving. They divided participants into three groups. People in the first group practiced daily exercises like writing in a gratitude journal. They reported higher levels of alertness, determination, optimism, energy, and less depression and stress than the control group. Unsurprisingly, they were also a lot happier than the participants who were told to keep an account of all the bad things that happened each day. One of the psychologists concluded that though a practice of gratitude is a key to most religions, its benefits extend to the general population, regardless of faith or no faith. He suggested that anyone can increase his sense of well-being just from counting his blessings. As my colleague Ellen Vaughn writes in her new book, RADICAL GRATITUDE, no one is going to disagree that gratitude is a virtue. But, Ellen says, counting our blessings and conjuring an attitude of to-whom-it-may-concern gratitude, Pollyanna-style is not enough. What do we do when cancer strikes -- I have two children battling it right now-- or when loved ones die, when we find ourselves in the midst of brokenness and real suffering? That, she says, is where gratitude gets radical. While they often mingle together in the life of a follower of Christ, there are actually two types of thankfulness. One is secondary, the other primary. The secondary sort is thankfulness for blessings received. Life, health, home, family, freedom, a tall, cold lemonade on a summer day -- it's a mindset of active appreciation for all good gifts. The great preacher and once president of Princeton University, Jonathan Edwards, called thanks for such blessings "natural gratitude." It's a good thing, but this gratitude doesn't come naturally -- if at all -- when things go badly. It can't buoy us in difficult times. Nor, by itself, does it truly please God. And, to paraphrase Jesus, even pagans can give thanks when things are going well. Edwards calls the deeper, primary form of thankfulness "gracious gratitude." It gives thanks not for goods received, but for who God is: for His character -- His goodness, love, power, excellencies -- regardless of favors received. And it's real evidence of the Holy Spirit working in a person's life. This gracious gratitude for who God is also goes to the heart of who we are in Christ. It is relational, rather than conditional. Though our world may shatter, we are secure in Him. We can have peace in times of pain. The fount of our joy, the love of the God who made us and saved us, cannot be quenched by any power that exists (Romans 8:28-39). People who are filled with such radical gratitude are unstoppable, irrepressible, overflowing with wha C. s. Lewis called "the good infection" -- the supernatural, refreshing love of God that draws others to Him. That was Chuck Colson in a Breakpoint commentary from May 17th, 2005. It's aged well because it's a truth that transcends cultural moments and the challenges of one age to the next. That in and all were to be grateful to God for the fact that he is our creator, the fact that he has sent christ as our redeemer and he is overseeing the scope of history and allows us to be part of what he's doing in the world. It's always a good habit to take some time day by day to be grateful for the Colson Center.

John and Maria unpack the recent happenings surrounding Afghanistan. They discuss the history of the situation in Afghanistan and President Biden's responses to the U.S. force pull-out. They also discuss the worldview of the Taliban and the concerns for women and Christians. Maria then asks John for insight on responding to claims that actions around the vaccine show morality. She asks for clarity in how to respond to intentions whether a person does or doesn't vaccinate. To close, John gives Maria insight on a new report showing employees are preferring to work from home to have a better family life. Maria notes that the report shows how opinions and habits have changed in recent times due to Covid closures.

Today, historically horrific diseases like polio and leprosy have been all but eradicated. Most people consider past moral failures, such as slavery, despicable. Famines are increasingly few and far between, and abject poverty around the world has been dramatically reduced. Among the reasons that our normal is so different from much of history is the work of Christians who saw their lives as a means by which God could accomplish restoration. In living out a Christian worldview within their own time and place, they laid foundations for this current world, which is better in so many ways. Dr. Benjamin Rush is a prime example of someone who had this sense of vocation. Rush was born one of seven children in 1746 just outside of Philadelphia. He studied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), completing his degree in 1760 at age 15. He received his medical degree in Britain, and then practiced medicine there before returning to the colonies in 1769. At the age of 24, he opened a medical practice in Philadelphia. He was also a chemistry professor, writing the first chemistry textbook published in America. He also wrote treatises on medical education. A significant area of study for Rush was the treatment of mental illness. He argued that people with mental illness shouldn't be treated as criminals but brought into normal hospital settings. He also believed that giving them productive work could aid in their recovery. His ideas proved to be successful strategies in treating many of his patients. Rush was also active in social reform. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (the Pennsylvania Prison Society today), and an ardent abolitionist, joining abolitionist societies and writing pamphlets against the institution of slavery. He specifically argued, on scientific grounds, that blacks were in no way inferior to whites. All of the activities on Rush's very impressive resume were informed by his faith. His stands on mental health, prisons, and slavery came from his understanding that each person is made in the image of God and is, therefore, worthy of dignity and respect. His observations on the importance of work for well-being reflected ideas contained within the biblical worldview. His stand on abolition had been the historical position of the Church and, in his day, was being advanced by evangelicals (among others) in Britain and America. His concern for the well-being of the black population led him to act as an advisor to Richard Allen in the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He lent the church and Allen his public support. His faith grounded his political beliefs as well. Rush's focus on inalienable rights can be traced through John Locke to medieval scholastic theologians. He wrote numerous patriotic essays. Thomas Paine even consulted with Rush as he wrote Common Sense. Not only was Rush appointed to the Continental Congress, he was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Rush also championed education on all levels. Along with his work in higher education, Rush is considered the father of American public education, and he was a major supporter of the American Sunday School Union. Rush believed Christianity to be essential for the proper functioning of society and, therefore, integral at the heart of education. "Without religion," Rush said, "I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind." This argument is key to Rush's views of the Bible and education. Rush believed education was vitally important to produce a virtuous society, but it needed to be grounded. Though he considered any religion better than none, he advocated for the superiority of Christianity and the specific importance of the Bible. For Rush, teaching the Bible was not just about personal salvation, but also about personal and societal well-being. Stories from history, like that of Benjamin Rush, demonstrate what it means to live as if the Christian worldview is, indeed, true. Thus, aligning with it is good, not only in the hereafter but for individuals and societies here and now. In other words, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say much later, Christianity is not an otherworldly religion. It describes the world as it actually is, which allows us to be part of God's work not just to prepare for Heaven, but to repair what is wrong.

The Supreme Court had declined to pick up the case of Barronelle Stutzman in the Arlene's Flowers lawsuit. As a result, she now faces the full consequences of the decisions of the lower court in the State of Washington. It has been an eight year legal battle for Barronelle since she took a stance against gay marriage as a business owner. She stood for what she believed about marriage and was not vindicated by the courts. The case, now in its latest development, has shown a significant nuance in legal culture in America. The court has shown a repeated willingness to defend Christian institutions, pastors, and religious organizations who hold to their deeply held beliefs. But Barronelle's case demonstrates that religious freedom is being lost, not by organizations and people in pastoral roles, but in the rights of parishioners and individuals to order their public lives according to their beliefs, especially in the world of commerce. It is clear we Christians owe Barronelle a debt of gratitude as she has demonstrated that it is possible to stand for truth and goodness, and how to do it. On this week's Strong Women podcast, Barronelle spoke with co-hosts Sarah Stonestreet and Erin Kunkle about her case. She offered her perspective not only on what it has meant for her to stand for truth, but to do it right: by loving her persecutors, and ultimately relinquishing all to God. Below is an excerpt of Barronelle Stutzman's interview on the Strong Women podcast: I absolutely love Rob and I would wait on him for another 10 years if he came in [to the store]. He has a great sense of humor and he loves artistic things, and he would come in and say, "This [arrangement] is for Kurt's birthday, and this is what I'm thinking ... Now just do your thing, just create." And I absolutely love that because I do a lot of "bread and butter" work, as they call it in the floral business. But he let me use my artistic ability to make something different and unique. And we had a great time. We got along awesome until the government stepped in. And I miss him. Rob came in to talk to me about getting married [to Kurt] and before he got too far, I told him that I could not serve his wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ. Weddings symbolize the relationship between Christ and his Church. And weddings are very involved. You spend months with the bride and groom; you get to know them, you get to know how they argue, how they met, and what their favorite color is. Those things are so personal, and for me, it is such a sacred ceremony. To create something for Rob and Kurt's wedding was just something I could not do. Our faith, our freedoms, and our constitution are slowly being taken away piece by piece. And because we're Christians, we want to be loving, we want to be kind. But no, Jesus was spit upon, He was kicked out of town, He was called names, He wasn't politically correct. Yet He still loved and He still stood, and He is our example to stand on. I just pray that God gives us the strength and the obedience to stand strong. Pray for our churches, and that our churches would begin to rise up and realize that we need to be obedient to Christ's word. Pray for Kurt and Rob through this also. Barronelle Stutzman's entire interview with Sarah Stonestreet and Erin Kunkle is on the Strong Women podcast. Visit breakpoint.org for a link to the Strong Women podcast interview with Barronelle. Consider subscribing to Strong Women, and never miss an episode.

John is joined by Colson Fellows Director Michael Craven in this week's BreakPoint Q&A. Michael asks John a question about vaccines, where a listener is likely facing a mandate for a vaccine by her employer. She asks John if there is a "theology of being vaccinated". She inquires about a possible habit being formed in going against a mandate for compliance.

After seeing the images out of Kabul in recent days, Maajid Nawaz, a former radical Muslim, said, "Barefoot Taliban conquered a palace. They believed in something and fought for nothing. I have lived with men like this in prison. It is difficult to describe just how seriously they take their cause. There is a lesson here for us in the West, if we are humble enough to see it." We hear the terror from Afghan women who now wonder what the lives of their daughters will be like, worried that 20 years of progress in women's rights have disappeared overnight. We see the desperation of citizens so afraid of what might come next that they're literally clinging to the wheels of American aircraft as they depart. Yet, we struggle to have a category for what they actually fear. Many Westerners don't have the categories to understand the realities of Islamic fundamentalism. Much of the world has long struggled to understand the worldview that is driving the Taliban conquerors today, or the ISIS fanatics from a few years ago, or the al Qaeda terrorists that struck on 9/11. These groups are driven by their own internal logic, their own worldview. I'm not going to try to explain the entirety of Radical Islam. However, there are a few key points about this worldview that can give us clarity in understanding what's happening in Afghanistan and what we might expect in the days ahead. First, for Radical Islam, this isn't about this particular American president or the last American president or any particular foreign policy decision. This is seen as part of a war that's been going on for over 1,000 years. In the wake of 9/11, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the second in command of Al Qaeda, and in many ways the strategic planner for Osama bin Laden, spoke about his group's goals for this war with the West. In repeated statements to the press, he referred to waging war until all Muslim lands were restored, connecting the conflict in Afghanistan and the battle for Palestine to a worldwide conflict that spans from Iraq to Spain. Yes, Spain. To American ears, it doesn't make any sense. Iraq, Israel, we can follow. Palestine, sure. Spain? You see, what he knew and what many Westerners have forgotten is that the mostly Catholic country of Spain was once the heartland of the Muslim world. Centuries before the Turks or Indonesians followed Islam, Spain was the base of operations for a potential invasion of Europe. It wasn't until 1492 that Spain was retaken for the Cross. For Radical Islam, once lands have come under the sway of Islam, it is vital that good Muslims do whatever it takes to return those regions to the House of Islam – places where Islamic law and teaching is practiced. Whether we're talking about Catholics in Spain or Israelis in Palestine, these people are merely occupying what's rightfully a Muslim land. This connects to another element of this worldview that we often miss. For Islamists, the West is not the primary enemy. We're merely in the way of where history's headed. What they seek is the overthrow of false Muslim rulers who have been corrupted by the wiles of Western influence. These are, as Al-Zawahiri put it, the near enemy and they must be cast down. Only then can true Muslims take control and implement the fullness of Sharia. In other words, what we've seen on the ground in Afghanistan and what we've seen in the Middle East for a long time is the working out of a worldview. None of the happenings of the last 20 years, or the last 20 days, can be understood without understanding the worldview. Now, every worldview answers questions. Among these questions are those that ask, what is wrong with the world, and what must be done to make it right? For Christians, the problem is sin and all of its myriad manifestations. The solution is conversion: the conversions of individuals, as well as the restoration of culture through the grace and work of Christ, and through His Church, the restoration of the goodness of His creation. For secularists and much of contemporary Western culture, the problem is ignorance. Through education and science, and by becoming aware of the perspectives of others, we can hope to improve the structural failings that have plagued our world. But the problem is seen differently in Radical Islam. The problem is seen as the internal corruption of the Islamic states and the unwillingness of the rest of the world to bow to what is ultimately true. Here's how Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis described it: "For Osama bin Laden and those who share in his views, and there are many of them, the object of the struggle is the elimination of the intrusive Western power and corrupting Western influence from all the lands of Islam, and the restoration of Islamic authority in these lands. When this has been accomplished, the stage will be set for the final struggle to bring God's message to all mankind in all the world." Now, I hope one of the things that you notice is that for a true Muslim, Islam is not a point of person