Breakpoint

As the world watches the disaster unfold in Afghanistan, there's another chapter of the story we're not hearing nearly as much about. The Afghan church, a growing body of believers that's experienced incredible growth, now faces life under the Taliban. Early indications are not encouraging. Almost as quickly as the Islamic fundamentalists is taking control of cities, Christians are being notified that they are being watched. Yesterday, I spoke at length with World Magazine Senior Editor Mindy Belz, who explained what is happening in Afghanistan. As part of the interview, she described what the Taliban takeover means for the Christian church in Afghanistan. Here is an excerpt from our interview. Here is a transcript of a portion of my conversation with Mindy Belz: — [The Afghan church] is a unique community, mostly aged 40 and younger. They are all Muslim converts. It's one of the fastest growing churches in the world. Since they are a tiny church, now doubled in size, they are considered very fast-growing. There are perhaps only 2,000 people. But they are an important force in Afghanistan, simply because of the force that the Gospel is. Because of the love of Jesus, the reach they have is a real thing in a dark, Taliban-shadowed country. About two years ago, a number of these church community leaders did something amazing and brave: they decided to change their identity, their religious affiliation in particular, on their national identification cards. All Afghan citizens have a national ID card. They are used all the time for many reasons. They often show religious affiliation. That affiliation tends to be handed down by the father of the family. The new Christian church elders wanted to change their identification for the sake of their future generations. Not all Christians agreed that this was a good idea, but several dozens of them have changed their official identification to Christian. Now the government records show Christian affiliation. These are the Christians that have been targeted over the past few days. At least one Christian that I know of has received a letter from the Taliban stating: "We know where you are, and we know what you're doing." This implies that the Taliban has access to this government record. The Taliban then showed up to this Christian's house the day before the full city takeover. They have also visited other Christian homes. You might argue these are small, isolated incidents, but they play against the backdrop of nearby atrocities: Afghan military who have been hauled out of their homes and shot, and in one case beheaded. Afghan Christians are totally vulnerable with no political power. They have no-one to appeal to. They don't even generally qualify for special immigrant visas to the United States or other Western countries because they have avoided working for American organizations or working for the Afghan military. To do so potentially exposes them to attention and danger. — Belz is the most experienced, trustworthy source I know of when it comes to the Middle East, especially on Christians and the Christian movement there. In yesterday's interview, she covered in detail not only the history of Afghanistan and how the past 20 years is understood differently by Islamic fundamentalists, but the failure of U.S. policy under various presidents. This is a disaster of America's own making. Visit breakpoint.org to listen to the entire conversation. And please pray for our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan.

Mindy Belz provides some insight and perspective on how we got to this place, what past administrations have done, and how the current administration is doing that isn't adding up. Mindy also gives perspective on the state of the Church in Afghanistan and what Christians were doing prior to the recent unrest. She bemoans the progress that was made in the country in a variety of rights and privileges that are now likely lost under Sharia law.

At the Colson Center we're always trying to point you to resources, not only from us but from our friends who offer a Christian worldview perspective and hope for living in our cultural moment. There's a reason that a lot of these resources are written by my friend Os Guinness. Os is a gift to the Christian community. He helps us think deeply about things that matter and presents them in a way that is understandable. Os's latest book, "The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom" is another must-read. Christians today are increasingly feeling the pressure of living in a cultural moment that champions freedom, but means something completely different by the word. It's always a freedom from any sort of restraint; not a freedom for who we are, who we were made to be, and what it means to live together. Os Guinness's book describes a choice that's in front of humanity right now. Below is an excerpt of a Os's presentation on his new book: For anyone who's thinking deeply, we're in an extraordinary civilizational moment. The West, which has dominated the world for 500 years, is in evident decline. The United States, which is the world's lead society, is suffering the greatest crisis in its history since the Civil War. The Christian church, which has been the single strongest influence in the West, is plagued with scandals and divisions and confusion and lack of confidence. There's no question that America is as deeply divided at any moment since the Civil War, but why? Some blame the social media. Some the former president. To some, it's the coastals against the heartlanders; some, the nationalists and populists over against the globalists. But what I'm arguing, and I think the deepest way of looking at it, is there's a difference between those who understand the republican freedom from the perspective of the American Revolution, and those who understand it from the perspective of the French Revolution and its heirs. Things like postmodernism, political correctness, tribal politics, identity politics, the sexual revolution, cancel culture, neo-Marxism, all of these have come down from the heirs of the French Revolution, and they are an entirely different revolution and a type of revolution that has never succeeded and that has always ended in oppression. So, my book shows the differences between, say, their sources: one, the Bible, the other, the French Enlightenment. Their views of humanity: The Bible's, very realistic with notions like checks and balances, and separation of powers; and the other's, utopian and very dangerous. And you can see the differences right down to those that are roiling America this year, like critical race theory and different notions of justice. Both sides agree there is injustice, sometimes terrible injustice, but the differences come in how we address them. As I said, the radical left only leads to oppression and failure and always has. Whereas the Gospel, in addressing these things, puts wrongs right, and after repentance and reconciliation and forgiveness, really leads to restoration so that enemies can be made friends again. What I've tried to write is the deepest analysis of what's gone wrong today. I have written this book to provide a constructive way forward. Because Sinai, the exodus roots of the American revolution, are what I argue is a magna carta for humanity. It's time for Christians to get off the back foot and stop being defensive. Our views of freedom, justice, human dignity, words, truth, and many other issues are not only good news, They are the best news ever. I want you to have this book. I think it's incredibly important. And so, for a donation of any amount this month to the Colson Center, I will send you a copy of "The Magna Carta of Humanity," Os Guinness's latest book. This book is important because it drives us towards a deeper understanding of how we got to this time and this place in human history. At the same time, it offers a hopeful way forward, showing us how the Christian worldview is not only true, but good. And it's good, not only for Christians, but it's good for the cultural moment. Go to breakpoint.org/august to make a donation of any amount to the Colson Center, and receive a copy of the book, "The Magna Carta of Humanity," by the brilliant Os Guinness.

John and Maria revisit a host of BreakPoint commentaries that highlight bright spots from the Olympics. They also explore how Christians can live well in a confusing world. The main story of the week is a new IPCC report on climate change that is raising the alarm. John provides a way to think well and live with responsibility in light of these types of reports.

We live in a confused and confusing age. Things once considered obviously true are now rejected. Things once considered unthinkable are now thought to be unquestionable. How should a Christian think? In the state of Oregon, high school graduates will now no longer have to demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, or arithmetic. The logic behind the suspension of the state standards, according to the governor, has to do with equity. Somehow, she missed that "helping" racial minorities by not giving them even the most basic tools for life is a different kind of bigotry altogether, one which Andrew Sullivan has called a bigotry of low expectations. Then, there's the story of Michaela Kennedy Cuomo announcing to the world that she's moved beyond identifying as a homosexual and bisexual, and even beyond pan-sexual, to now demi-sexual, meaning that she's only attracted to those with whom she shares an emotional bond. The need to publicize each and every stop on a journey of identity tourism is an odd feature of our day. The idea that every feeling, attraction, or preference is in and of itself an identity, is a tragic feature of our day. And, in case anyone thinks we've reached the bottom of this slippery slope, a TikTok video has now resurfaced from last fall in which a young woman passionately explains what may be next. Instead of identifying as "he" or "she," many now claim the words "kitty-," "pup-," or "bunny-self" as pronouns. All this means that we may soon see chosen identities that transcend species, not just gender. As my friend Dr. Kathy Koch said at a recent event, "Our first response in all of this should be tears, not anger." It's true, of course, that many are the victims of self-inflicted bad ideas. But it's also true that we live in a cultural moment in which even medical schools deny the basics of biology. How sad for young people to feel so distant from their own bodies that they'd rather be called rabbits than humans. But to be clear, our crisis is not merely a moral one, it's a cosmological one and an epistemological one. We've not just lost the ability to know right from wrong, we've lost the ability to know what's real, what's true, and what's false. In the ancient world, it was much simpler. There were authorities, civic and religious, that would announce what was good and true. You were told these berries are good. The water from that spring will make you sick. Your people came from this place and therefore you worship these gods. People came to know the world primarily by trusting the accumulated wisdom of those who had lived before. A major shift emerged a few hundred years ago, first in the West and then elsewhere. People discovered that their ancestors weren't always right. As society began to question the knowledge it had been given, the growing distrust in revealed wisdom grew alongside a greater confidence in what could be learned through reason and science. Reason offered not only a critique of revelation and tradition, but a compelling replacement for it. However, along with material comforts, this human-centered approach to knowledge brought along new and oppressive ideologies. On a societal level, we saw state-sponsored evils unleashed under the banners of "progress" for "the common good." On a personal level, these coldly clinical beliefs of the Enlightenment made life easier, but they also left it emptier. Beauty and truth lost their meaning, and the arts and social sciences in particular took a hedonistic turn. Truth claims built on human reason alone proved inadequate for human needs and human nature. With the postmodern shift, in whose waters we now swim, suspicion and doubt are just the only things we can trust. There's now a skepticism, not only of authority but also the objectivity of human reason, and this underlies and permeates our relationships to ourselves, to one another, and to the outside world. This habitual doubt now dominates the search for knowledge. This leaves truth as subjective, found within, and created by and for each of us individually. We imagine ourselves to be free thinkers. We're "free" from the constraints of governing authorities, "free" from the tyranny of tradition, and "free" from anyone else's expectations. We're "free" to imagine that reality conforms to our imaginations and fantasies, even though it doesn't. Underlying this brief history of Western civilization is a very basic reality. Without God, true knowledge is impossible. Without God, certainty loses to skepticism. Truth claims devolve into power plays, and objectivity can never escape subjectivism. Philosopher Richard Rorty put it this way, saying, "I came to realize that the search of the philosophers for a grand scheme that would encompass everything was an illusion, because only atheism that combined a God with equal measures of truth, love and justice could do the trick." I know what you're thinking: I know that "Who" that God is. But Rorty had already dismissed the possibili

The Olympics ended Sunday night, though many of us hardly noticed they were on. It's hard to cheer for athletes representing our country who don't seem to actually like our country. That, plus the insufferable push to sexualize these games have turned many of us off. This is a shame, because there were a number of inspiring athletes competing in Tokyo this year whose performances and stories are worth knowing and celebrating. Sydney McLaughlin is certainly one of them. After winning the gold medal in the 400m hurdles last week, she said, "What I have in Christ is far greater than what I have or don't have in life." She then went on to say, "I pray my journey may be a clear depiction of submission and obedience to God." Another female runner who shocked the world is only a teenager. Athing Mu won Olympic gold in the 800m as a 19-year-old. She's the first U.S. woman to win the event since 1968. In an interview in June Mu said, "As a follower of Christ, our main goal is to live in the image of Jesus in order to connect to God." And then there is Tamyra Mensah-Stock, the first African American to win gold for the U.S. in wrestling. Her interview after the Olympics will bring a smile to the face of any American, and her testimony of God's faithfulness put it all in perspective. Before the Olympics, she told Faithwire that "It's by the grace of God I'm even able to move my feet … I just leave it in His hands, and I pray that all the practice … my coaches put me through pays off and, every single time, it does." Mensah-Stock also noted that her dad would have been the loudest one cheering in the room. Tragically, he died in a car crash after one of Tamyra's wrestling meets in high school. He likely would have approved of the way his daughter responded after winning the gold, she said in an interview that has gone viral. In it she stated, "I love representing the U.S. … I love living here. I love it. And I'm so happy I get to represent the USA." Another U.S. Olympian who set a record despite incredible challenges is 400m sprinter Allyson Felix. In Tokyo, she earned the distinction of becoming the most decorated U.S. track star in history, with ten medals over five Olympics. However, she almost didn't live to see this one. She'd already won six gold medals and three silvers before becoming pregnant in 2018. Faced with a choice between her career and her child, Allyson endured a challenging pregnancy that nearly took her life and that of her unborn baby, who was delivered at 32 weeks by emergency C-section. Felix lost 70 percent of her endorsement pay with Nike after becoming pregnant. The sports brand wanted her to get an abortion to preserve her career. Instead, Felix chose life, and the stress of juggling motherhood and being an Olympic sprinter over an abortion. There are other stories, too, including those of athletes from other countries. After defeating New Zealand for the gold in men's rugby, the Fiji national team sang a hymn: "We have overcome, by the blood of the lamb, and the word of the Lord, we have overcome." It was a wonderful moment, and a wonderful reminder that whether we win in rugby or anything else, the most certain thing in the world is what Jesus Christ has done for us, not what we will ever do. U.S. wrestler Kyle Snyder faced his familiar Russian foe for the gold, but came up short. "I'm a competitor so I hate to lose," said Snyder, but winning doesn't define him. As he told an interviewer back in June, "God alone defines me. I'm always consistent with my Scripture study and prayer, and during the pandemic I was able to continue to grow and focus on God and hear what He wanted to teach me." These stories offer a more complete picture of the Olympics than what has been portrayed in so many media reports. These are athletes who have found in Christ that which is "more lovely than silver, and most costly than gold."

John and Shane discuss challenges to the faith and when a Christian should do battle with culture. They then discuss a critique on a recent BreakPoint that outlined demisexuality. Another listener says their friend's child now identifies as bisexual. The listener is looking for ways to support the family, knowing the suicide rates for gender dysphoria are high. To close, John fields a question from a listener considering the best way forward when culture calls her to apologize for sins in history.

Earlier this year, France's President Emmanuel Macron announced that his government would give 300 euros to every 18-year-old in the country to spend on "the arts." Officials call it the "Culture Pass" and said the purpose is to revive museums, the ballet, and other cultural institutions that struggled during the pandemic shutdowns. The other purpose of the pass is to expose more young people to the arts. Of course handing someone — particularly a teenager — a large sum of money doesn't guarantee they'll do what you'd prefer with it; and while the Culture Pass has a few stipulations, like prohibiting the purchase of violent video games, it turns out French teens aren't as "high-art" minded as their benefactors had hoped. As of last month, almost half of all the money spent with the Culture Pass has gone toward a Japanese genre of comic books called manga. The Culture Pass initiative raises questions, even beyond the challenge of trying to steer teens toward something more "high-brow" than graphic novels. It's not clear how the Culture Pass handles religious materials, for example. But it is hard to imagine that France, the birthplace of postmodernism, would approve of its teens buying the Bible with government money, despite that as the best-selling book of all time, the Bible has made a bigger impact on global culture than any other work in history. Maybe it is allowed; we are not sure. The biggest problem with the Culture Pass isn't the potential for censorship. Or that it's asking French citizens to subsidize their nation's teenagers' questionable taste in art. The pass has put France in an odd position. French officials keep telling the media that its purpose is to expose French youth to "the arts." These officials have defined "arts" as things like the ballet, the theater, and museum exhibits. But that narrow definition doesn't take into account the radical way technology has changed how culture is both made and consumed over the last century. Say what you will about the mind-numbing effect of video games on young minds, for example, which is real and troublesome, but there's more money in video games today than an award-winning Broadway play - and far more people have access to video games. As a result, you'll find some of the most advanced, meticulously designed and beautiful "art" (if you're willing to call it that) inside these games rather than on the stage. This begs the bigger unanswered question. Why put in the effort to "expose kids to the arts" at all? Is there such a paradigm as "good art" and "bad art"? To put a finer point on it, is there "useful art" and "regressive art"? Christianity says the answer is a clear yes. Sometimes Christians think of "culture" as all the "bad" stuff "out there." But culture is simply what humans do with the world. When God told Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it, He was telling them to make good culture. The result is that there are stories, art, music, and technological inventions that glorify God and build His Kingdom. Christian believers' contributions to culture and the arts have been historically some of the most beautiful and influential in the world. But evil corrupts culture-making, too. That's why humanity also makes art that spreads bad ideas, lifts up false idols, and hurts people. People have committed great evil, exploited one another and degraded themselves all throughout human history in the name of "art." Is it "bad" that French teens want comic books more than a ticket to the Louvre? To answer that with logical consistency, France needs more than its dominant worldview of postmodernism, which offers no moral grounding to determine what kind of "art" is beneficial and which is not. Christians should agree the arts can do great good for humankind. A good government will incentivize good culture, but it must define "good" first. Even if the Culture Pass is not the most coherent strategy, it is still an opportunity for Christians in France, and a reminder for Christians everywhere, to continue carrying out Adam and Eve's mandate. If kids are struggling to get along in the world, which today's kids definitely are, then good, true and beautiful things like art and inventions and scientific discovery can build culture that sets their imaginations towards redemption. And especially if France is going to foot the bill for a while, Christian culture-makers might as well flood the market.

Faithful watchers of the Olympics experience a letdown after the games are over. This year, with viewership in a freefall, there was likely not enough enthusiasm for there even to be a letdown on Monday morning. Many have tired of the politicization of this year's games, which started before the opening ceremonies. Patriotism, courage, and even "historic performance" were redefined in Tokyo, and for the worse. However, there is one protest, a quiet one, that demands our respect from the 2021 Olympics. Female athletes who are mothers earned well-deserved attention. Not merely with social media statements or corporate endorsements, but for winning medals and advocating for life. This Olympic narrative is not only heroic but counter-cultural in women's sports. In 2008, gold medal favorite Sanya Richards-Ross boarded a plane for the Beijing Olympics games after visiting an abortion clinic. Her husband, Aaron Ross, was in practice with the New York Giants, so Richards-Ross terminated her pregnancy alone. She came home with a bronze medal, writing later, "I made a decision that broke me." Richards-Ross went on to say that every female athlete she knows has had an abortion. This year, the U.S. Women's Olympic Track & Field team replaced a star runner in the 200 meters hurdles after she was slapped with a five-year ban on competition. The runner failed to follow anti-doping procedures because she was "traumatized after having an abortion". Her trauma lingers now even as she is facing repercussions for responding as she did to the anti-doping process. McNeal now speaks out against the pressure female athletes face in choosing career over motherhood. Now a truly historic performance in the 2021 Olympics games may change this narrative in profound ways. Allyson Felix is the most decorated track star in U.S. history. Tokyo was her fifth and final Olympics games, and she has left with two more Olympic medals. Perhaps she will display them beside a picture of her two-year-old daughter whom she carried and gave birth to despite pressures to abort her. The decision to carry her child nearly cost Felix her life. Felix had already won six gold medals and three silver medals before becoming pregnant in 2018. She chose to carry her child, even when her pregnancy was found to be high risk. At 32 weeks Felix underwent an emergency C-section. Throughout the pregnancy, faced intense pressure from her sponsor. After she opted to keep her baby, Nike, her corporate sponsor, pushed a new deal that included a 70 percent pay cut to her previous contract, with no maternity exceptions. The sports brand wagered that Felix's performance would falter as she bounced back and forth from competing to pregnancy to juggling motherhood. Felix spoke out, challenging the double-standard that exists in women's athletics for moms. Nike has since restructured how it works with mothers after Felix challenged the double standard. Following her Olympic successes, Felix is refocusing her attention on a new endeavor called "The Power of She Fund." The new organization is designed to support mom athletes in practical ways. The Power of She Fund will provide childcare for mothers who compete at high levels, offering them the support and encouragement they need. At least nine athletes who competed in Tokyo participated in Felix's program this year. These athletes received childcare grants that opened opportunities for greater training. Felix's work is also inspiring women's athletic brands to get behind mom athletes. Athleta and the Women's Sports Foundation are both corporate sponsors for The Power of She Fund. Felix's story is a tremendous example of what it takes to change culture. The ideas that are evil must be challenged; the imagination of what is possible must be expanded; new and better ideas must be offered. Also, very importantly, the direction of corporate pressure must be changed. In this case, it was from pro-abortion to pro-child. Hopefully, the important work of Allyson Felix will undo the abortion-minded atmosphere that currently surrounds women's athletics.

Dotting many U.S. main streets are the steeples and towers of beautiful and historic buildings, originally built as houses of worship. From its founding, mainline denominations gave America a kind of Protestant consensus, embracing much of our nation's charity, many of its most prestigious schools, and a significant number of congressional leaders and even presidents. Today, many of these buildings, especially those draped with rainbow flags, lie empty. On Sundays, only a small number of worshipers, mostly white and grey-haired, sit in the pews. Back in 2017, missiologist Ed Stetzer made a dramatic prediction in the Washington Post. "If it doesn't stem its decline," he wrote, "Mainline Protestantism has just 23 Easters left." Stetzer blamed the Mainline church's impending extinction on abysmally low birth rates, and the fact that many of them long ago "abandoned central doctrines that were deemed 'offensive' to the surrounding culture." However, last month a new survey from the Public Religion Institute challenged Stetzer's prediction. Called "The 2020 Census of American Religion," the report claimed that Mainline churches in America have experienced a dramatic recovery. According to this survey of 50,000 Americans, Mainline Protestants grew from 13 percent of the population five years ago to over 16 percent in 2020. Meanwhile, evangelicals seem to have entered rapid decline, tumbling from 23 percent of the U.S. population in 2006 to just 14 percent in 2020. Over at The New Yorker, Bill McKibben celebrated the "unlikely rebound" of Mainline Protestantism, and made conclusions that a political shift had happened in American Christianity. Others joined the celebration. Progressive church historian Diana Bass Butler declared, "A really important moment is here. The story of an old religious tradition hasn't ended the way critics once thought." Paraphrasing Monty Python she joked, "We're 'not dead yet,' we've just been awaiting resurrection." However, as Lyman Stone of the American Enterprise Institute, pointed out, the methodology used by the PRRI survey suffers from serious flaws. For example, all self-identifying white Christians who did not use the labels "evangelical" or "born again" were categorized as "white mainline Protestants." Stone called this categorization "bonkers," a little like assuming that anyone who doesn't identify as a New York Yankees fan must prefer hockey. More importantly, the terms "evangelical" and "born again" are "generationally-coded" as Stone puts it, not reliable indicators of beliefs or denominational affiliation. In fact, Stone points out, around 40 percent of members in evangelical churches would not describe themselves as "born again," while 20 percent of those in Mainline bodies would. A conservative resurgence in a handful of the mainline denominations would also be a problem for PRRI's methodology. A better measure of evangelical affiliation, suggest Stone and Stetzer, is what's known as the Bebbington Quadrilateral. David Bebbington, a British historian, distinguished evangelical identity by four essential beliefs: Biblicism, crucicentrism (a focus on Christ's atoning work on the cross), conversionism (believing that human beings need to be saved), and activism. Any announcement of a resurgence of Mainline liberalism is premature and probably exaggerated. These aging, shrinking communions will probably become irrelevant within our lifetimes, but it's not because evangelical Christianity is "winning" in any real sense. Liberal churches are shrinking because they are impossible to distinguish from the larger culture. Why get up and go to church on the weekend when the same teaching is available on NPR every day of the week? At the same time, evangelicalism is suffering an identity crisis featuring high-profile deconversions, scandals, and theological anemia. How many evangelical churches today could be described by Bebbington's four essentials? In some ways evangelicalism may be repeating the mistakes of mainline liberalism. Recently, on the Colson Center's Upstream podcast, my colleague Shane Morris spoke with Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, about the so-called "rebound" of Mainline churches. As a longtime member and observer of United Methodism, Mark gave a spirited defense of the good Mainline Protestant churches did in American history, and explained why permanent cultural exile isn't something evangelicals should be celebrating.

This week on BreakPoint This Week John and Maria discuss a recent report that verified the sexual harassment claims surrounding New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Then, Maria shares a recent podcast by Bari Weiss regarding Central Park Karen and how we respond to media outrage. To close Maria asks John for a worldview perspective of the new calls for masking in public places as the Delta variant of Covid-19 continues to spread across America.

Two features of our modern society are distrust and fear. First, we distrust the institutions that have long been the pillars of our society, and we distrust them for a reason. Many of them are broken. Many of them have fallen into disrepute. Many of them are simply untrustworthy. We are also fearful. Who knows what the next cultural land mine will be. We hesitate to align ourselves with any person, any leader, any church, any business, anything that might prove to fall apart under our feet. The only way forward is to go back to the basics. The basics found in Scripture. To the basics of the grand story that God is writing in the creation, fall, redemption, and restoration of the cosmos and his image bears. Recently, my friend Os Guiness gave a tremendous talk called Woke or Awakened. It was the first of a three week short course the Colson Center is offering this month. Os provides an alternative vision for addressing society's ills. Here's a portion of that talk by Os Guinness: What's affecting America? It's called revolutionary liberation. It isn't classical Marxism, but cultural Marxism. It goes back to a gentleman named Antonio Gramsci, who's a Marxist. Gramsci sat in jail under Mussolini in the 1920s. In fact, he died there. He was trying to figure out why revolution, as Marx predicted, never happened, and probably wouldn't. He shifted the thinking from economic determinism to what he called cultural dominance, in Germany. You probably know their tactics. They look at what they call discourse. In other words, how we speak. They're looking for who's the majority and who is the minority, who's the oppressor and who's the victim. When they find the victim, whoever it is, they're not really interested in the individual, say George Floyd. Instead, they want to weaponize a group and use that weaponized victim group in a struggle to overthrow the status quo. The revolutions on the radical left are not just classical Marxism, but also cultural Marxism. The revolutions have never succeeded and the oppression has never ended. That's different than the Biblical way we know. The Biblical way addresses truth to power, calling for repentance that leads to confession, leading to forgiveness, which leads to reconciliation and restoration. It's an incredible difference from cultural marxism. This is a tailor made kairos moment for Christians, who with confidence, step out and show how the answers of the Gospel address freedom, justice, and much more. This is far deeper, more profound, and more rich than anything on the radical left, which as I said, always fails and always leads to oppression. That was Os Guinness, presenting the first of a three week short course at the Colston Center. This month you can hear the full presentation and be registered for two additional upcoming presentations with pastor Chris brooks and Dr. Angela Franks. Visit breakpoint.org/july2021 and make a gift of any amount to the Colson Center to register for this important course.

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and to a critical theorist everything looks like oppression. But what if that's not a big enough answer? I often paraphrase one of my favorite lines from G. K. Chesterton. He observed that there are a lot of ways to fall down but only one way to stand up straight. It's a lesson that many of us who want to better understand the world and to have a better world should learn. One of the commonest defenses of critical race theory (CRT) from its advocates is that people have misunderstood it. It's just not what people think it is; CRT is just a tool to understand the American legal system, they say. It's just an academic analysis of cultural trends. It's just an attempt to look at our nation's morally fraught racial history. But to say that CRT is just any of those things is like saying Disney is just a cartoon company. It certainly started that way. And it's kind of true. But today it's rather a meaningless way to describe this behemoth of a company. You can't travel anywhere in the world without encountering the power of the Mouse and his minions. In the same way, CRT has now extended beyond the academic realm into education, into corporate HR departments, into the Church, and, more influentially, into the cultural imagination. This framework of seeing all of life in terms of oppressor and oppressed is a deep part of the cultural mood. Racial identity and power dynamics — these are seen as the issues of the day. Whatever the formal source of CRT was, now functions practically as a theory of everything. It demands conformity in many areas of our life to the very specific political ends that it advocates. To many minds there is simply no way to ask questions about injustice, much less to offer answers unless they are aligned with critical race theory. And strangely enough, this seems to be the place where both critical theorists and their critics agree: that it's either all or nothing. The CRT crowd is quick to identify their favorite philosophy with any quest for racial justice. On the other hand, many of the foes of CRT write off any discussion of race at all, including that of America's history, as CRT nonsense. To be clear, racism is not the defining characteristic of American identity that CRT folks often make it out to be. At the same time, racism has been the defining wound of our past and its residue continues today. For 250 years in America, human beings were sold like cattle but with far less care. Sure, slavery was a feature in almost all cultures, but in American history, it took a more diabolical turn. Along with the sheer fact of enslavement, beatings, sexual abuse, and the intentional severing of families were all part of this American nightmare. For a century after slavery, Americans of African descent continued to be treated as inherently less than. Their political rights were denied, their businesses destroyed, their education hamstrung. On top of all this was the ever-present threat of lynchings. In fact, in the decades after the Civil War, over 3,000 African Americans were lynched for the so-called crime of refusing to act inferior. These are the well-known details. And then there were the Tulsa race riots, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the redlining of African Americans housing opportunities. Of course, today real improvements have been made. Yet at the same time, there are disparities in incarceration rates, in poverty rates, and in health and mortality rates. Something is clearly not right in our land. While racism is certainly not enough to explain all of those disparities, it's also not true that tens of millions of people are coincidentally of a particular people group, making the same choices that lead to these outcomes. That's one of the problems with critical race theory. The reasons for these enduring problems are complicated, more complicated than the simplistic solutions that CRT offers. All the same, that these theories are wrong about the sources of poverty and oppression doesn't mean that poverty and oppression don't exist. We should do what we can to deal with them. To put it another way, just because someone is asking good questions doesn't mean that they are providing good answers. And, just because they are offering bad answers doesn't mean that the questions themselves are bad. What we don't want to do, like Chesterton's quote suggests, is to fall down in another wrong direction. The only way for us not to fall in the wrong direction is to join in the story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. This is the grand narrative of Christ redeeming His creation, using His people throughout the ages to work for the well-being of others and to change society. Until Christ comes again, the hurting will always be with us. But that doesn't mean we should tolerate it. Until Christ comes again, we are called to work with Him to restore all things in whatever time and whatever place He has put us. Our job is to work with Him t

John and Shane field a question from a listener who is looking at the state of affairs in the world and wonders how she can give a tithe to the church when the world might need her money more. They also discuss a finer point on the idea of the theology of being fired.

Leaders of the early Church, the Apostles, and their disciples wrote letters to churches facing difficult challenges. It was to help them overcome internal conflicts, or to deal with heresies creeping in, or, most likely, to help handle the persecution the churches were facing or would face soon. The letters served to encourage, and to instruct. I thought of these letters a few weeks ago. I was actually thinking about my friends, Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman, two private business leaders and people of faith who wanted to order their businesses according to their deeply held convictions. But they were challenged in those convictions. Since then, they have faced incredibly difficult situations. There's no way that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission should have treated Jack Phillips and his faith with such disdain. And there's certainly no way that a Denver lawyer should be allowed to continually harass him, as the courts have allowed that lawyer to do. And when it comes to Barronelle Stutzman, there's not a nicer person on the planet. She actually served the same client that she is accused of not serving. But in another real sense, their stories aren't that unusual, at least when they are seen in light of the larger account of Church history. To be a Christian and to hold to Christian conviction about what is true about the nature and person of Jesus Christ, and about the place of Christian conviction in the public square, is to be out of step with the larger culture. From the very beginning, Christians have faced these challenges. They have had to choose between their well-being and their convictions. What happened in the stories of Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman is that God was raising them up. This is not merely an indicator of where our culture has gone, but is (more importantly) a lesson for how we must think, the courage we must have, the choices we'll have to make, and the faith we must have in God, who is writing our stories. Last month on our Strong Women podcast, a family story was featured which might go down as an epistle for us all to read. Their story is simple, their faith is humble, and their situation is similar to one many of us might find ourselves in if we haven't already. It involves something as silly as a mask. A mask that says "Jesus loves you." It was too much for an elementary school to handle. The little girl who wore the Jesus loves you mask now finds herself in court, defending her right to simply share the joy that's in her heart. She is an amazing young girl, and her parents are impressive, too. Below is an edited transcript of Lydia's mother's account of the story from the Strong Women podcast episode: The principal called to tell me that Lydia needed to change her mask. She told me the students couldn't wear political or religious masks. I was shocked. I had read the school handbook and there was no such rule. I contacted the assistant superintendent. Even he verified that at that point it was not in the handbook. He told me that it was in a school restart plan document. Then he emailed me a copy of it. I went on the district webpage, and although the district didn't realize it, the original document was still archived on their website. When I pulled it up, I found that I was looking at two versions of the restart plan: the one that he had emailed me, and the one that had been released by the district at the beginning of the school year. The only difference between those two versions was the verbiage about the types of masks that were to be worn. I pulled the metadata on the emailed document. It showed that the superintendent had modified the document thirty minutes before he called me. When something wrong like this occurs and you just allow it, it goes that little things like these add up over time. This year it's the mask. Next year it will be t-shirts. At some point we won't even be able to say Jesus's name in school. Eventually my grandkids and great-grandkids won't be able to do what they're called to do as Christians: to share the Gospel and say Jesus's name in public. That was a snippet of the larger interview on the Strong Women podcast with Lydia Booth and her mother. Lydia is a third-grader forced to choose between her well-being and her faith. She made the right choice. Please join us in praying for the courage and confidence that the Booth family will need in these coming days, and for their attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom. I pray that this story of simple, courageous faith will encourage all of us today, as a kind of living epistle. It tells us the sort of thing that the early Church Fathers knew that the early Church would need to know. We ourselves will need to make decisions like this in the days to come.

Earlier this year, a prestigious Manhattan prep school fired its longtime director of health and wellness, Justine Fonte for teaching at another institution. It wasn't that she taught somewhere else. It's what she taught: "porn literacy." To high schoolers. Even more revealing than the course itself has been the ensuing debate about how best to help teenagers navigate the adult content found everywhere in online life. In a sympathetic writeup, the New York Times defended Fonte's class for "teach(ing) students how to critically assess what they see on the screen…how to recognize what is realistic and what is not, how to deconstruct implicit gender roles, and how to identify what types of behavior could be a health or safety risk." In other words, Fonte's class could help students consume online pornography ethically. As strange as that may sound, it's an approach more common than you might think. Three years ago, Nadia Bolz-Weber, a popular progressive writer, endorsed the idea. Still, as Samuel James put it in his article at First Things, "It is rather surprising that anyone who knows the name Harvey Weinstein could believe that progressive gender politics can infuse pornography with virtue." This is especially true for the New York Times. After all, their own Nicholas Kristof, just last year, broke the story that one of the Internet's largest porn sites featured videos depicting the exploitation of minors, sex trafficking, and even rape. On that particular streaming platform, which received 115 million views per day in 2019, a significant portion of visitors consumed footage of actual violence and sexual abuse against children. The videos remained despite being openly advertised as such by the users who uploaded the videos. Since Kristof's article, dozens of women have sued the website's parent company for profiting from their exploitation. Millions of hours of content have now been deleted in an effort to purge illegal material. Anyone with a smartphone can easily access this content, including students. Educating them about how to avoid the content, why to avoid the content, and the direct connection between pornography and exploitation would makes sense. Thinking that students can be trained to wade through this hellscape of exploitation to find "ethical" and politically correct content does not. Writing at The Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig argues that "porn literacy" teachers have no idea how dark and exploitive modern pornography has become. The kids in Fonte's class who spoke to the New York Times recalled being "annoyed and bored" by her presentation, not shocked. They'd already seen it all, exposed to this material that is not just "dirty" but in Bruenig's words "brutal, cruel, vicious, and even genuinely criminal." In writing her article, Bruenig spoke with teenage girls who candidly told her that the boys they date expect them to participate in the violent, sadistic, and degrading acts they've seen online. "If anything," she concludes, porn literacy classes "aren't given nearly enough funding, time, or other resources to fully demonstrate just how onerous ethical porn use really is." But all the time and all the funding in the world couldn't achieve that. Bruenig, like most progressives, may hold out hope that pornography can be sanitized and subjected to politically correct sensibilities. But her own reporting shows the latest chapter of what's long been true. There is a deep relationship between pornography and crime that has only deepened and worsened as it has moved online. There is no such thing as "ethical porn use." Porn is premised on the notion that human beings can be abstracted from their personhood and consumed as collections of body parts. Porn assumes and trains consumers to believe that people are products to be bought and sold, and then discarded with the click of a mouse or the flick of a finger. To objectify fellow image-bearers in this way inevitably bears the fruit of objectifying them in other ways, often more extreme and degrading ways. The "progress" toward ever darker genres isn't a bug of pornography: it's a feature. Believing we can tame it is like believing we can invite a crocodile to dinner if only we teach it table manners. The answer to this ever-growing monster of Internet pornography isn't to housebreak it, but to rid our houses of it — culturally, personally, and legally. Education can't fix this problem. Smarter dehumanizers more tragically dehumanize. Until we're ready as a society to do what's necessary, the children on the screen and in our schools will continue to pay the price.

Recently, a denominational leader said to me that the best thing that the Church could do to handle the challenges of this cultural moment would be to "stay in its lane." That the so-called "culture wars" have been grueling, and the Church is primarily called to spread the Gospel. That when it comes to the most controversial issues, the best strategy is non-confrontation and to focus on what is most important. I think I know what he meant. There's certainly truth to the idea that Christians overemphasize politics. As I've said on more than one occasion, politics makes a lousy worldview. In a culture without better answers to life's biggest questions, politics too easily assumes the place of God, determining everything from our values to our sources of truth to who we're willing to associate with. When Christians embrace a political identity rather than a Kingdom identity, the riches of Christ are exchanged for the porridge of political gamesmanship. However, telling the Church to just "stay in our lane" and out of politics is an equally unhelpful answer. Typically, the "stay in your lane" mandate is only applied to unpopular issues, like abortion, marriage and family, or religious freedom. No one ever tells the Church to stop fighting against sex trafficking, or to no longer dig wells for communities without fresh water, or to cease sustainable economic development in impoverished nations. Christians should absolutely engage worthy causes because the Lordship of Christ and the implications of the Gospel demand it, not because they are deemed culturally uncontroversial. Historically, the Church's shining moments have often come in direct conflict with dominant cultural beliefs and practice. The Roman world needed Christians to take in abandoned children and oppose the gladiatorial games, precisely because the pressure was enormous to do exactly the opposite. When we engage with culturally acceptable causes but "stay in our lane" on unpopular ones, we fail the tests of courage and integrity. It also exposes a Church that loves the approval of our neighbors more than we love them, and wants to fill pews more than practice what is good and true. Also, every law and state action reflect a worldview and are based on consequential assumptions about human value, the nature and purpose of sex, what and how children should be raised, the scope of the state, and a million other things. The question is never whether politics will operate from worldview assumptions, but which worldview it will operate from. Systems that value work, protect human life, and allow for dissenting voices instead of silencing them will always be superior to systems that don't. Therefore, Christians should engage the political "lane" as a way to love God and to love our neighbors. However, the biggest issue with this "stay in your lane" approach to the Church is the question of what exactly the Christian lane is in the first place. Dutch statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper put it best: "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!" In other words, because the head of the Church is Christ, who is Lord of everything, Christ's lane is the entire cosmos. The Scriptures are clear on this. Colossians 1 states that Christ is "before all things and in Him all things hold together." God was pleased through Christ "to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross." This means it all belongs to Him. Christian musicians should make music as if God is sitting next to them on the piano bench. Christian bakers should make sourdough as if God is going to have a slice. Christian citizens of a democratic republic should strive, with humility and wisdom, to influence and govern and live together as if Christ is over it all, because He is. We contend for the wellbeing of our neighbors, even when it's unpopular. The question isn't whether Christians should engage politically, but whether we will do it well. We don't live in a theocracy, and pastors aren't policy makers. But Christians are to apply God's truth about everything to everything. So, Christian, stay in your lane: do the good works which God has ordained for us to do from the foundations of the world. Just know that they encompass every conceivable aspect of human existence.

John and Shane discuss the place of the Olympics in framing our national identity and how we often objectify athletes as patriotic symbols akin to soldiers. This in the light of a recent situation where star gymnast Simone Biles took a mental health break from the Olympics, giving up her spot to other teammates to compete. Shane also asks John to expand upon recent BreakPoint commentaries, specifically one piece about a new sexual identity called "Demisexual." John then considers another that looked at a call to strip parental rights from moms and dads who challenge their children's desires regarding transgender chemical and surgical procedures.. To close, Shane asks John about recent court judgments that seem outlandish. In reply, John suggests that the religious freedom court cases are likely to land in the Supreme Court, and points out that many conservative lawyers and scholars are rallying with strong and surprising legal opinions against these threats to core freedoms. -- Story References -- Simone Biles Withdraws from Olympics Citing Mental Health When Simone Biles scratched most of the Olympic team final, she said it was not because of a physical injury, but her mental health. This doesn't mean she felt sad, or didn't have her heart in it to compete. It means that her psychological state put her at significant physical risk. If her brain wouldn't play along with what her body knows how to do, she could be seriously injured. CNN>> All I want to say about Simone Biles is this. She is a young woman. She is truly a remarkable young woman. Her achievements are extraordinary. What's more, she's endured some dreadful things. If she were my daughter, I would be extremely proud of her. Right now, I wouldn't be giving her a lecture or even advice. I'd be giving her a hug. She's a young woman--still a girl, really. And an amazing one. And what she needs right now is simply support and encouragement--not evaluation, or assessment, or disapproval, or (for that matter) even approval of choices or decisions she's made. Just support. Just a hug, really. ~ Dr. Robert George -- What Does "Demisexual" Say about Christian Hope? Earlier this month, Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, daughter of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, announced that she now identifies as "demisexual." As she described in the interview, her journey has gone from identifying as straight to identifying as bisexual to identifying as pansexual to now, finally, demisexual. This latest identification refers to someone who is sexually attracted only to people with whom one has formed an emotional attachment. BreakPoint>> Journal of Medical Ethics Says Parents Should Lose Rights Over Children The Journal of Medical Ethics recently released a formal paper in which they argued that parents should lose their rights to care for their children. The paper referenced an article by Dr. Lauren Notini showing a supposed benefit in treating minors with so-called gender-affirming surgeries. BreakPoint>> -- Mississippi Challenges Roe at the Supreme Court Last Thursday, two months after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear what could be the most significant challenge to Roe v. Wade to date, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch submitted a brief clarifying how this case could impact the abortion debate. "Under the Constitution," she wrote, "may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion." BreakPoint>> -- In Show Mentions -- When Will It Stop? 10th Circuit Rules Colorado Can Compel and Censor This Web DesignerAlliance Defending Freedom 10th District Written Decision on 303 Creative Decision -- Recommendations -- Upstream Podcast>> 10 More Rules for Life - Jordan Peterson>>

We are inundated with stories proclaiming, and often celebrating, the decline of Christianity and Christian morality. Headlines announce the rise of the "nones," the redefinition (and reimagination) of marriage and family, the cultural triumph of the LGBTQ+ movement, and a million other ways Christianity is losing its cultural privilege and influence. On and on it goes. An important factor to remember is that although America has been the leader of the Christian world for much of the last century, Christianity does stand or fall with America. When we look at the wider global picture, Christianity is more than alive and well. In fact, it is growing at an unprecedented rate. Consider the continent of Africa, which is poised to become the leader of world Christianity. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, the number of Christians in Africa is increasing at a rate of 2.81 percent per year. That may not sound like much, but the compounding effect is huge. In 1900, there were about 9.5 million Christians in Africa; by 1970, that had risen to over 140 million. Today, the number is nearly 685 million, over twice the population of the United States. In Asia, Christianity is growing at 1.5 percent per year, with over 100 million more Christians there than in North America. By 2030, it is estimated that there will be more Christians in China than in the United States, though with the current wave of persecutions, precise tracking of these numbers is impossible. We are also seeing disciple making movements throughout the Muslim world for the first time in history. As David Garrison has documented, we are seeing large scale movements to Christianity in all the major segments of the Islamic world. In fact, the fastest growing branch of the Church in the world is in Iran. One Iranian Christian described the situation in his country: What if I told you Islam is dead? What if I told you the mosques are empty inside Iran? What if I told you no one follows Islam inside of Iran? Would you believe me? This is exactly what is happening inside of Iran. God is moving powerfully inside of Iran. Of course, this growth in numbers comes with a corresponding increase in persecution. Where God is at work, Satan resists. The death toll is probably highest in Nigeria, with nearly 2,000 killed in 2021 alone. There's also heavy persecution in other African countries, along with North Korea, China, across the Muslim world, South Asia, and too many other places to name. The global Church also faces challenges that come from the rapid growth itself. Syncretism, the combining of Christianity with other beliefs, has been a problem in the Church from the first centuries, and has continued whenever and wherever the Gospel enters a new area. Bad theological ideas from the West like Word of Faith and the prosperity gospel often make inroads into Christian communities around the world, particularly poorer areas. Drawing the line between the prosperity gospel and a reliance on expectant prayer is a tricky task for leaders in these regions. This is where we can help. One strength of the Western church is its long history of theological and exegetical thought. Training Global South leaders in these areas can help new believers from going off the rails. At the same time, there is plenty that Western Christians should learn from our brothers and sisters around the world. As Glenn Sunshine and Jerry Trousdale outline in their book, The Kingdom Unleashed, we need to recover the kind of supernatural worldview that they have retained, but we have lost. Lacking other resources, they rely on God for their needs and the guidance of Scripture for their practices. Their prayer lives put ours to shame. They follow Jesus' model for making disciples rather than following the habits that have developed in American traditions. They understand evangelism as making disciples and discipleship in terms of loving Jesus enough to obey Him. Still, be encouraged. The True Aslan is on the move and amazing things are happening around the world as His Kingdom advances. And know this: God has the same power here as in Africa. Christ is as much on the throne here as He is anywhere else. He can do here what He is doing in so many other parts of the world.

Last week, A friend forwarded me a letter circulating in his community. It called for him to apologize for his race and placed on him the burden of hundreds of years of institutional racism and past injustices. There was no room for dissent, no room for disagreement. Agree in every way or stand condemned. That's not uncommon in this cultural moment. There's an incredible intensity, as my friend put it, an incredible absolutism for each and every issue, not just the race issue. It seems that the entire world is at stake and what we think and what we say, despite near constant calls to have dialogue and conversations. Too often tempers flare and the whole thing devolves into diatribe, echo chambers, reinforcing what each side has already thought. And for christians, these moments threaten to steal our understanding of where we fit in a greater story. God is writing a great story for the whole world, and Scripture reveals that story. It's the story of creation to new creation, from the heavens and earth to the new heavens and new earth. We're somewhere in that timeline, in this tale of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. It is important to ground ourselves in the truth that we have been created by a good God, and have been created good as part of a marvelous story of redemption and renewal. Even though in the fall of Adam, so much of God's good creation has been twisted and frustrated, in need of reorientation and healing. The story is clear, that God has worked in history, in Christ, to renew His creation and to make people new. To help them understand their role in the grand story of the renewal of all things. As we see this story correctly, as we become part of this story, as we learn to find our moment in the larger story, then suddenly we can have the clarity that we all need, particularly in this confusing cultural moment. Right now, one of the most confusing things in our cultural moment are all the bad ideas that we hear all the time about who we are, about what it means to be human. The deepest conflicts in this cultural moment aren't moral ones. It's not a disagreement about what's right and what's wrong, even though certainly our views on that as a culture have dramatically changed. The deeper confusion is about who we actually are. On one hand, you have that scientific view of what it means to be human, that one that has dominated academia and the cultural imagination in so many ways for about 100 years now. It says that we're basically the result of mindless, costless, purposeless processes. There's no supernatural being that had us in mind, and we're not headed to any sort of goal or purpose in history. On the other hand, you have this postmodern construct that says that you and I are whatever we choose to be. It says that the number one responsibility to be human is to express our true selves, and the number two responsibility is to accept other people's "true selves". But those true selves might be completely disconnected from reality, disconnected from biology, disconnected from bodies disconnected from families, disconnected from anything other than our own self determination. This has become a breaking point in our culture, but of course, we're not the first generation to face something nearly as challenging. The apostles, Peter and Paul experienced the decadent roman empire. St. Patrick faced a pre-Christian Ireland. Christians throughout history have found themselves in the rockiest of social soils, and at some level they have been able to survive, and even thrive, by remembering what is ultimately true, what is ultimately good, who they ultimately are in creation. These Christians have stayed the course through Christ, remembering that the Christian worldview is big enough for the challenges they faced. That reality is still true today. The Christian worldview is big enough for all the experiences in the world, both the problems and the glories. It is big enough for the groaning and the graces, the things that make us stand in awe and the things that make us weep in despair. In fact, if we have a correct view of Christian history, in a correct view of the sovereignty of God and the authority of Christ over all of creation, moments like these, as confusing and crazy as they are, can get us excited. We know that God is bigger than any cultural moment. We know that God is revealing himself to us in new and powerful ways. This commitment that Christ has made, to reveal himself in the world, it is what drives and grounds the Colson Center in almost everything we do. This is especially true in our rhythm of routine short courses. The newest series is coming out of the Wilberforce weekend, where we focused all of our attention on this idea of the image of God. We want to take that to an even deeper level. I'm so pleased that our next short course will be looking at additional aspects of the image of God. These aspects are housed in a brand new book, published by my colleagues Tim Padget

John and Shane field a number of questions from listeners. One listener who struggles with same-sex attraction asks if Christians should stop using the LGBTQ acronym. Shane asks John a series of other questions from listeners. They include if Christians need to stop passing judgement on politicians who are out of step with moral principals and if Christians should offer reparations, noting the Canadian church arsons.

Last Thursday, two months after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear what could be the most significant challenge to Roe v. Wade to date, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch submitted a brief clarifying how this case could impact the abortion debate. "Under the Constitution," she wrote, "may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion." This case goes back to 2018, when the Mississippi legislature passed the Gestational Age Act, which limited abortion after 15 weeks to only those pregnancies involving health emergencies or fetal abnormalities. In response, the state's lone abortion clinic, located in Jackson, sued and won in federal district court. When the state lost its appeal at the 5th Circuit, Attorney General Fitch brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court as a challenge to the constitutionality of abortion on demand and the definition of viability that's been in place since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. Previous attempts of states to limit or ban abortion have been squelched at the Supreme Court. However, according to Fitch, Mississippi's case doesn't rest on legal technicalities. She had made it clear that Mississippi's appeal is calling into question the constitutionality of abortion as a whole. It is notable that the Supreme Court decided to take another abortion rights case, and the court is thought to have a pro-life majority. On the other hand, this is also a court that has proved allergic to overturning precedent, and that is precisely what the Mississippi attorney general is asking it to do: "Roe and (Planned Parenthood vs.) Casey are thus at odds with the straightforward, constitutionally grounded answer to the question presented. So the question becomes whether this Court should overrule those decisions. It should." In her brief, Fitch offered clear arguments as to why. After talking about the legal mess that Roe and Casey created, the attorney general explained just how out of touch U.S. abortion law is with the rest of the world. She then described what the legislature had considered in terms of fetal development, including that an unborn child's heart begins beating at 5-6 weeks gestation, begins moving at approximately 8 weeks gestation, and all basic physiological functions are present at about 9 weeks gestation. Mississippi lawmakers also have a legal interest in abortion restrictions, Fitch argued, because the state has interest in protecting the life of the unborn, the well-being of women, and the integrity of the medical profession. Specifically, she detailed how abortions after 15 weeks often utilize "barbaric" dilation-and-evacuation procedures, in which "surgical instruments crush and tear the unborn child apart before removing the pieces of the dead child from the womb." This procedure, Fitch declared, can only be called "barbaric" (and was called that by the Mississippi legislature and Attorney General Fitch!), and is dangerous for women, deadly for children, and "demeaning" to the medical profession. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1,313 related laws have been signed since Roe was enacted in 1973, with over 500 just in the last decade. While many have been struck down in the courts, the pace and seriousness of abortion restrictions is picking up. The story of the abolition of slavery suggests this could be part of the shift in law and culture many have long prayed for and worked towards. In Great Britain, the work of Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgewood , William Willberforce, Hannah Moore and others eventually bore fruit as the slave trade moved from being unquestionable in 1787 to largely unthinkable by 1833. This brief by Attorney General Lynn Fitch is the clearest takedown of abortion by a lawmaker to date. That's a win in and of itself. Her very words and approach to this case are a testament to years of work by pro-life academics, apologists, and activists. That's all good news. At the same time, it's far from clear what the Supreme Court will do. And, even if they do overturn precedent and strike down Roe, there's growing momentum for Congress to replace it. This would make the mid-term elections even more important, given the full-on embrace of the abortion-on-demand-for-any-reason platform of the Democratic party. At the very least, overturning Roe would return abortion law to individual states. That means our job, to make abortion not only illegal but unthinkable and to care for vulnerable women and children, only continues; in schools, in churches, in neighborhoods, from the state house to your house.

Earlier this month, Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, daughter of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, announced that she now identifies as "demisexual." As she described in the interview, her journey has gone from identifying as straight to identifying as bisexual to identifying as pansexual to now, finally, demisexual. This latest identification refers to someone who is sexually attracted only to people with whom one has formed an emotional attachment. This kind of "I want it to be special" approach to sexual intimacy is nothing new, of course. (In fact, I think it was the plot of almost every teen coming-of age movie in the '80s and '90s.) On one hand, reattaching sexual behavior to emotional attachment is an improvement over the no-strings-attached hook-up approach, or the digital replacement of porn addiction. On the other hand, considering an emotional attachment as a way of expressing (and therefore identifying) oneself, rather than as a measure of relational maturity isn't an improvement at all. (Not to mention, the only way to be a "demisexual" in good standing, with all of the other identifications, requires that one not prefer male or female in one's emotional and sexual connections. So, it wouldn't be accurate to think of demisexual as the return of "Pretty in Pink".) It's difficult to keep up with these new identifications and all the rules governing them. As someone recently suggested, perhaps we should just change the acronym to "LGBTQ-TBA" and be done with it. After all, no sexual behavior was considered a category of identity until recently. Now all are; a move which ensures that none are considered wrong, unnatural, or immoral. The essential points to understand about this whole discussion are that, first, sexuality is no longer seen as behavior in our culture, but as identity. In other words, rather than something we do, sexuality is who we are. Second, who we are is considered fluid, not fixed. So, a journey through the acronym, like Michaela's, is self-discovery not a crisis. Increasingly, educational and social forces push the young on this journey, while the whole culture cheers them along. All of this may seem nonsensical, even observably wrong, but is widely assumed as true and normal. Christians must understand what's happening and be prepared to respond if we are to love God and our neighbors in this cultural moment. That will involve, at the very least, telling the truth. Anything less is not to love the victims of our culture's worst ideas. We must be prepared also to offer the far better vision of identity, love, sex, and friendship found in the Christian account of reality. To not offer the better way of the Gospel would be heartless and foolish. Not only do we have a better story to tell, but the timing is right. This late chapter of the sexual revolution is exhausting itself (and all of us) in its perpetual fight against reality. In other words, there is a grand opportunity in front of us. For example, the growing rift between the letters of the sexual orientation acronym, particularly the L's and the T's, will prove irreconcilable. While the T's attempt to silence all dissent from absolute gender fluidity, many of the L's still think that bodies and biology matters. The growing tension is leading some members of the LGBTQ+ community to cancel each other. This is the only way for those who have learned, even if subconsciously, their ideological rules of engagement from critical theory. The only way many have to advance their ideas is through power not argument. This is great if you are on the strong side of the issue, but not if you are on the other side. In the ensuing chaos, the church will have ample opportunity for victim care. And, we can be a voice of reason. My friend Kathy Koch often notes how ridiculous it is to ask grade school kids who are not sexually active what their sexual orientations are. While the culture treats sexual orientation like race, the Church has an opportunity to help children unlock who God has made them to be and how He has uniquely created them in His image. This can inject some stability into youth who are living in a culture that offers none. And it injects God into the conversation, a critical point in countering the rise in suicide among young people. As my friend Dr. Matthew Sleeth has argued, the greatest determining factor of suicide success, even among those who experience suicidal ideation, is whether the person believes that God exists or not. As C.S. Lewis outlines in The Four Loves, the biblical understandings of love are simply better than anything currently on offer, and are written into the very fabric of life. These loves point us to higher questions of meaning and purpose, and are beautiful when described and when embodied. I pray that Ms. Kennedy-Cuomo will find what she's looking for, but it will never be through identity tourism. Maybe a Christian can point her to a better way.

The Journal of Medical Ethics recently released a formal paper in which they argued that parents should lose their rights to care for their children. The paper referenced an article by Dr. Lauren Notini showing a supposed benefit in treating minors with so-called gender-affirming surgeries. To be clear, "gender-affirming surgeries" is a nomenclature for surgery that actually is gender-denying, in which a surgery performed changes the body in a mutilating and permanent way. To cut through the terminology, what's being said is that there is a benefit to allowing a thirteen-year-old the right to determine if she should have a mastectomy in order to affirm her inner self. Yes, you heard that right. Thirteen-year-old girls in the United States of America are actually going through surgeries to remove healthy breasts. The discussion is whether parents should have the right to interfere. The Journal of Medical Ethics argues that parents should not have the right to interfere. That they should not be able to guide their children in any way other than full affirmation. They shouldn't even be allowed into a conversation. Doctors should be free to treat minors without parental consent and parental influence. So, what is the actual role and right of parents in light of these developing so-called "rights of children"? My friend Katy Faust recently tackled this question in a What Would You Say? video: Do Children's Rights Override Parental Rights? Below is an edited transcript of Katy's talk: You're in a conversation and someone says, "We have to respect the rights of children. No-one, not even their parents should be allowed to interfere with their sexual autonomy." Children's rights are absolutely crucial. But does that mean parents shouldn't be able to direct their children's education and medical care? No. Many people have only heard the term "children's rights" misused. It's no wonder when top-tier U.N. agencies including UNICEF and the W.H.O. use the phrase to primarily promote the sexual rights of children. For example, some professionals argue that children have a right to harmful transgender treatments, even if their parents don't agree. But just because the term "children's rights" has been misused doesn't negate the reality that children have natural rights. Natural rights spring from our nature as human beings; what we need as a human person; and what we owe other humans, which can be called justice. Natural rights exist independent of custom or legal convention. When we apply that natural law framework, we see that indeed children have rights. It's helpful to apply the three rules that confirm a rights test to determine whether this "right" shares the three qualities to which all rights conform. First, a natural right is pre-government. Second, no-one has to provide a natural right. Third, a natural right is distributed equally. In natural law theory, rights correspond to duties and obligations. Parents have a natural moral duty or obligation to care for the children that they create. Because caring for children requires making decisions on their behalf, even at times when they disagree, parental authority flows from parental obligations. Parental rights protect that authority, enabling parents to fulfill their obligations in line with the dictates of their consciences. To see Katy Faust's full talk on children's rights and parents' rights on the recent What Would You Say? video, go to whatwouldyousay.org or visit breakpoint.org.

John and Maria discuss a new reality that over other the past 2 months at least 48 churches have been burned by arsonists in Canada. While some charge the fires are backlash from First Nations members, who have discovered that many in their culture were mistreated by the Catholic church, some are saying the facts don't add up. John and Maria question if there is a growing distrust and violence against the church in Canada. John and Maria also revisit a BreakPoint from James Ackerman, who told his story of finding a sense of redemption after going to an abortion clinic to talk to mothers. They also discuss Simulation Hypothesis, a growing idea in the scientific community that assigns spiritual language to unexplainable realities in Science.

The most common refrain in Genesis about God's creation of the world is that it was good. Down through the centuries, many people both inside and outside the Church have tried to say that the material world is less valuable or important than intangible inner truths. This has been one of the main talking points for the new sexual orthodoxy: telling hurting souls that their bodies are somehow wrong. Kathy Koch has worked for years to undermine this demeaning perception. In her talk at our recent Wilberforce Weekend, she reminded us about the wonderful intentionality in the way God "knitted" us together as male and female. For today's BreakPoint, here's a portion of Kathy's talk. I'm Kathy Koch of Celebrate Kids here in Fort Worth, and I want to talk with you about how God made us good. I think God is good and God is a good Creator. And if children, teens, or adults don't know that, then it doesn't matter to them that they're created in His image. In Psalm 139, verses 13 and 14 declare that we have been formed by God in our inward parts. It says in Psalm 139:13 that Father God knitted us together in our mother's womb. Knitting is a precise skill; the knitter knows before starting what he is making, or he'd better not start. Otherwise he'd have a mittens-scarf-hat-afghan sweater thing with no purpose at all. The size of the stitch and the needle, the color of the yarn, and the design of the creation is known before the knitter begins. Do we praise God? Because we're fearfully made? Do we stand in awe of ourselves now? We're not God. Fear in the Old Testament is fear of God. That we would have this awesome respect for the creation of who we are. The verse that revolutionized my understanding of God's creative intent is the end of Psalm 139:14 where David writes on behalf of God: My soul knows very well that I am a wonderful work of the creative intent of God. A fearfully and wonderfully creation made in His image. I have tremendous empathy for young people who live in confusion in a chaotic, messy culture. I believe that if I was young today being called "sir," I might wonder if I was supposed to be a boy. I have empathy for these kinds of teenagers and young adults. We are privileged at Celebrate Kids to talk with those who do not believe they were created good. They do not believe in a good Creator. They don't understand the image of God and it is not their fault. Generations of young people are trying to change what they should not try to change. And they're unwilling to work on the things they could work on because frankly, the adults around them are weak. God is good. Therefore he made me good because I'm in His image and He is fully good! So there's gotta be something here and I choose to not see it as wrong. I don't see it as a mistake. It is a challenge. I'm surrounded by great people and I'm loved well by God, and by people who love me deeply; without that I would question so much. So I'm not a too-tall-Kathy-with-a-low-voice-who-can't-spell-all-that-well mess of a person. I am who I am, created in the image of God, and He is good. What's your story? And what story are we helping young people who we love live? Kathy Koch is founder and president of Celebrate Kids, reminding the Church and the world of the goodness of our Creator and the enduring beauty of His creation. In her words, we see a path forward to loving—truly loving—our neighbors who struggle with gender dysphoria. As she argued, the new sexual orthodoxy encourages hurting young people to change what shouldn't be changed and discourages them from working on the things that they can work on. While giving lip service to the claim that people are perfect just as they are, our culture's fascination with expressive sexual identities leads proponents to argue that the only way we can be truly ourselves is through a radical rejection of our physicality.

John and Shane field a listener question who has left the faith and didn't consider how that would impact his parents. He writes into John to inquire about a middle ground, seeking to follow his thoughts and convictions in religion while also honoring his parents. After answering that question, a listener writes in asking how to honor her convictions while building a relationship with a new person attending her church. John gives reasoning to help the listener make strong steps in friendship and walk forward in conviction while also building relationship. Shane then asks a question from a listener whose school community is challenging the notion that critical theory is present in their school. The listener asks how they should lead their community knowing that ideologies and doctrines are present in the school system.

A heart is available, the clock is ticking, and doctors are forced to choose between three viable candidates for a transplant: A woman who could live for several more years with a new heart but doesn't want it; a beloved middle-aged father who's chronically overweight; and a young rich kid who might have just overdosed on cocaine but whose dad is dangling a $25 million donation to the hospital if his son gets the heart. All of this is in the plot of the new movie, "The God Committee." The team of doctors and nurses deciding who will live or die are given the nickname The God Committee. But this is a corrupt understanding of God, isn't it? God doesn't work from an algorithm. He doesn't give good gifts like new hearts to those people who will be missed the most, and withhold them from people with bad attitudes or harmful habits, or who are kind of annoying. Nor does he play dice with the universe (no reference to Albert Einstein). A Christian worldview of life and human value is not based on quantifiables such as how many people love a particular person, or how many years someone might go on to live. Every life is endowed by God with His image and likeness. Every life is equally valuable. Human value is not based on any extrinsic categories. It is intrinsic to each and every person, and God doesn't make what He doesn't mean to make. God created people to bear His image and likeness before the rest of the created order. In "The God Committee," doctors accuse each other of "playing God" and it is meant as an insult. But the Book of Genesis describes how within vitally important created and moral boundaries, God actually intended His people to play Him before the Creation. When Adam and Eve were commanded to be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill the earth and subdue it, they were told to do what God had just been doing. Throughout the first chapter of Genesis, God filled and formed an earth described in the second verse as being empty and void. Now, His image bearers are to carry on that work, ruling over the created order by filling it and subduing it. In fact, even after the Fall, that task continues, though now it is complicated by pain and by thorns. The key distinction here is whether we play God as if God actually exists, or whether we play God as if we are God. Whenever we think it's our authority that determines what's right and what's wrong, we're playing God in the wrong way. This was the Enemy's very first temptation for Adam and Eve. This was the temptation of the builders of Babel. This temptation continues today, especially as our technological abilities advance so far beyond our ethics. The irony of "The God Committee" is that doctors don't become gods by deciding who deserves someone else's heart. In fact, does anyone ever deserve another person's heart? Are patients who die before receiving a transplant somehow morally wronged before organ transplants were possible? Mere decades ago? Were the sick then somehow less deserving? No. God made His image bearers with a magnificent capacity to first imagine, and then make these kinds of technologies possible. But as God clearly states as He observed the Babel project, humans ought not do everything that comes into their minds. A culture like ours, drunk on the arrogance of our own technological innovations but without any sort of consensus about the true and the good, simply cannot deal with the moral dilemmas that we ourselves are creating. Our culture makes this mistake often when it comes to scientific discovery. First, we ask whether we can do something. Later we ask whether we should, and then we answer that second question with the first. That if we can do something that's all the reason we need to know that we should do it. That is playing God outside of the limits that He gave us. The confidence that we hold in our abilities is simply misplaced and we overlook the consequences of our decisions. For example, in a global medical community that doesn't even share consensus on the definition of death, not only has a black market for human organs developed, it specifically endangers the global poor. There's a great example of this in a poignant scene in "The God Committee" in which a main character informs his newly pregnant girlfriend that he cannot be a father to their baby because his important medical work is simply too time-consuming. By refusing to honor the people to whom his own actions have bound him, the character now refuses the opportunity to actually image God. To play God as humans (particularly men in this situation) were created to do. We miss this privilege and responsibility whenever we fail to recognize and submit to our created purpose and design.

Recently I talked to my friend James Ackerman who's the CEO of prison fellowship ministries. And he told me a story about when he was younger and how God used him in a special way. What follows is an edited transcript of a conversation I had with James Ackerman: When I was 18 years old, I got my girlfriend pregnant. She had an abortion. I was not in favor of it, but I didn't try to stop it either. Four years later, I gave my life to Jesus at an altar call at Calvary Baptist Church in New York City. Most of my new Christian friends were Upper East Side types who went to Bible studies at DeMoss House. A couple of my friends would regularly chain themselves to the entrance of abortion clinics, spending the rest of their weekends in jail. I was not up for joining them, but the Lord did call me to do something. I learned there was an abortion clinic in an office building on Lower Park Avenue, five blocks from my apartment. It opened at 6 a.m. on Saturday mornings. The Lord put on my heart the need to minister in front of the abortion clinic, not in protest but with a Bible in hand to share the love of Jesus. To let women know they had other options and to offer to pray with them, and to point them to the local crisis pregnancy center. I prayed, "Lord, if this is really from You, You have to wake me up at 5 a.m. every Saturday morning. I'm not going to set my alarm clock. It has to come from You." On Saturday morning at 5 a.m. I was wide awake. So, with a Bible in hand I make my way to Park Avenue South to the abortion clinic. It had a large plaza in front and as women made their way to the building, I would walk backwards from the sidewalk to the entrance saying, "Jesus loves you. There is a better way. Can we talk?" That's it. And every Saturday morning for a year at least one woman turned around. Some were just afraid, saying things like, "I can't afford to have another child." A few even told me they had prayed that God would put somebody in their path that morning, and I was the answer to that prayer. The last Saturday I went, a man became furious as I spoke to his girlfriend. After he got her inside, he came back out, walked to his car, and pulled out a baseball bat. After three or four blows to the head, I was on the ground. The security officers came running out to help me, asking if I wanted them to call the police. "No, it's fine," I said. "I'll be alright." Do you know what? Not once in that year did those security officers ever even talk to me. Not once had they told me to get off the property and stop what I was doing. That very night at a friend's birthday party I was in no mood to attend, bruised and beaten, I met my wife of 31 years, Martha. The next Saturday I woke up at 8 a.m., looking forward to taking Martha out on our first date. Just before Wilberforce Weekend in Fort Worth this spring, I had lunch with a friend of mine who reminded me of that time. He said, "God was redeeming you." I had never thought of it that way. And then I realized something: there are at least 52 men and women alive today, all of them 32 years old because Jesus alarm-clocked me at 5 a.m. Every Saturday morning for a year He said, "Go there." That season in New York City reminds me of another time the Lord called me into His service. He called me in 2016 to take up leadership at Prison Fellowship. My job has been to lead the organization from the era of being founder-led and primarily known by its founder, to being mission-led and known first for the work we do. It's been a very important transition for Prison Fellowship. And it's been an honor for me to lead it during this time. It's even been an honor to lead Prison Fellowship through a pandemic. I was the CEO of four companies before I came to Prison Fellowship, and nothing has given me greater joy and taken me through greater spiritual growth than my season as president and CEO of Prison Fellowship. The Colson Center and Prison Fellowship were birthed under the same roof by the same visionary, the late, great Chuck Colson. I loved hearing James Ackerman's testimony of how God pointed him to do something, enabled him to do it, and then the results were left up to him. What a great testimony for the rest of us to emulate.

Movies such as "The Truman Show," "The Matrix," "Inception," are all based on the premise of humans who were, unwittingly, living in a computer simulation. More recently, quite a few influential and brilliant minds are proposing this so-called "simulation hypothesis" as more than fiction. In some cases, the bizarre theory is morphing into something that looks suspiciously like a materialist spirituality. Back in 2016, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and Space-X, speculated to a tech gathering in California that the development of computer simulations that were "indistinguishable from reality" was inevitable. In fact, Musk believes that it's more likely that we live in a simulation than in the real world. And he's not alone. Recently in The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman described the increasing popularity of the simulation hypothesis among thinkers as diverse as "philosophers, futurists, sci-fi writers and technologists." The notion that we are all self-aware software trapped inside computer-generated virtual reality first gained academic credibility in a 2003 paper published by Oxford philosopher and futurist Nick Bostrom. In it, he argued that if we were to extrapolate the progress of current virtual reality and brain mapping technology into the future, the most likely result would be simulations indistinguishable from real life and programs indistinguishable from people. And, if that were true, then it would be unlikely that we would be the first generation in history with the ability to produce such simulations. That line of thinking led Elon Musk to conclude that the chances that our world is "base reality" and that we are not living in a simulated reality, are "one in billions." And it gets even weirder. Rothman suggests that the original programmers of our simulated reality could "find it interesting to watch us fight the battles they have already lost or won." Others have suggested that perhaps thousands or even millions of simulations are running at the same time. Philosopher Eric Steinhart speculates in his book Your Digital Afterlives that simulations are nested within other simulations. Within this "great chain of being," some people could be "promoted" to a higher reality when they die, attaining a kind of immortality or "resurrection." On a darker note, if the "computational cost" on our creators' processors ever becomes too great, perhaps they'll simply pull the plug on all of us. If this all begins to sound a bit metaphysical, Rothman agrees. One of the appeals of simulation theory, he thinks, is that it "gives atheists a way to talk about spirituality," or something like it. It offers "a source of awe." It even brings up similar questions for our simulators that one might ask of God: "Why did they create us? Why did they allow evil in their simulation?" "Why are we here?" And perhaps even, "Do they love us?" Of course, science fiction speculation does little to answer the actual big questions of human existence, and it certainly cannot justify a particular moral code. If none of this is real, including me, why should I care? Why not live, as in HBO's hit show "Westworld" in which people pay to visit a kind of simulated reality, entirely for my own gratification no matter whom it hurts? Simulation theory also makes the massive assumption that consciousness can arise from and be transferred through matter. And yet, it never explains the origin of consciousness in the first place. Where did the programmers, the real beings made of flesh and blood who inhabited what Musk calls "base reality," get their sentience, moral code, and meaning? As a theory of human existence, it only pushes the ultimate questions of existence back a step or two, beyond our reach. The simulation hypothesis is, as Stephen Meyer writes in his book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, one of many complicated "auxiliary theories" proffered to prop up materialism. It's telling how often advocates of this hypothesis utilize religious and spiritual language. Having reduced themselves to computer programs, they still speak of transcendence, resurrection, morality, and eternal life. Sometimes they talk of our supposed programmers in a way that sounds an awful lot like worship. In the end, maybe the best evidence against this bizarre and complicated version of materialism is that those who use it cannot resist simulating spiritual reality, even while attempting to explain it away.

In recent days, thousands of protestors have taken to the streets of Havana, Cuba to protest Covid restrictions and demand both help from the government and more freedom. After initially attempting to crack down on protestors, the government changed course late last week and lifted certain of the restrictions that drove the protests, including those on travelers bringing medicine, food, and toiletries. As a nation, Cuba relies heavily on tourism. As individuals, Cubans rely heavily on friends and family members outside the country sending food, medicines, and hygiene products. The crippling taxes on goods coming into the country, the lengthy power outages, food shortages, and ongoing blocked-access to the Internet — all during a global pandemic — was just too much for many of the people, and this propelled them to attempt a revolution in the streets. Christians in Cuba have joined the throng calling for an end to the restrictions, even to the regime. For years, believers there have faced discrimination and oppression. The Cuban Revolution 60 years ago (in keeping with Communist ideology) established an atheist state in what was, at least traditionally, a largely Christian culture. At various points in the history of the regime, including recently, Christmas celebrations were banned, and Christians were not allowed to run for office. Even so, Castro never fully closed church doors. Overall, religious life in Cuba has mainly moved underground, and is constantly under threat. In the 1990s, in an effort to mend relations between the U.S. and Cuba and to establish a diplomatic relationship with the Vatican, Pope John Paul II visited the island nation. After the visit, Christians were allowed to apply for state jobs and participate more publicly in church life, albeit under the watchful eye and oversight of the government. The movement toward religious freedom in Cuba has been, to say the least, slow and inconsistent. Still, Christian leaders continue to see cracks in the foundation of Communism. As Alberto Pías, a Catholic priest from Cuban descent wrote on social media earlier this week, "Human beings are made for freedom, to the point that even their Creator doesn't violate it. Human beings can be repressed, intimidated, threatened ... and this can make, by a pure survival instinct, the person submit to slavery and even defend the one who is oppressing him, but freedom is inscribed in our genes. Years, even generations may pass, but there comes a time when the soul rebels and says: 'enough.'" And just a few days ago, in what may be the only Communist dictator in history to almost admit some degree of fault, President Díaz-Canel said, "We have to gain experience from the disturbances. We also have to carry out a critical analysis of our problems in order to act and overcome, and avoid their repetition." I wish that the president's critical analysis included the Communist vision of life, social forces, the progression of history, and human value. I doubt that it will. Given Communism's historical track record, it should have long ago been relegated to the dustbin of history. Instead, what is too often claimed, by Communist "presidents'' and Western academics alike, is that the problem lies not in Communism itself but in how it has been applied. We see the same kind of thing when it comes to new technologies, especially biotech. When things go wrong, we think that it's just some rogue, "bad apple" scientists who are to blame for what is, in reality, inherent immorality in certain practices. This "evil man" assumption insists that the real problem with gene-editing technology or Communism are just the "bad apples" employing them, rather than the universal temptation that comes with unlimited power, whether over a nation or over some aspect of nature. We'd like to think that the problem is one particular human, not the human condition itself. Tragically, the only thing that the "evil man" hypothesis accomplishes is ensuring that the evils of history repeat. While recent admissions from President Díaz-Canel are noteworthy, hard repression in Cuba is not over. So, we should continue to pray and advocate for the people of Cuba in any way we can. And, we should take seriously the advice offered by Cuban-American Mike Gonzalez, in a recent interview on a World News Group podcast, when asked how Americans can help. Gonzalez said, "Ultimately, what Americans can do is remain free. We must remain free ourselves. We cannot help anybody, we're not going to be the symbol of anything if we don't ourselves remain free... America must continue to be the beacon of freedom."

John and Maria discuss new data from both the Centers for Disease Control and a report from a number of universities in the UK that reveal problems post-pandemic. Rates of suicide, depression, and a likely increase in pornography addiction are a few problems they unpack from recent BreakPoint commentaries. Maria then provides insightful commentary on the crisis in Cuba. She makes the statement that many will look at the situation and claim the problem with communism is the way it was carried out, not the human heart. John then provides insight on a movie called The God Committee that Maria recently reviewed. John gives a worldview analysis that shows how Christianity is a worldview big enough to handle the important ethical questions of the world. To close, John and Maria discuss a commentary by Glenn Sunshine on why wokeness is a heresy that finds moral grounding and meaning in the Church.

As rescue workers still look for remains in the rubble of the condominium that collapsed in Surfside, Florida last month, the official death toll has topped 95 people, with more missing and presumed dead. While this tragedy will change the lives of those involved forever, it will, as all tragedies do, fade from the news headlines to be replaced by others. This is the awful paradox of life after Eden. For some people, this felt like the very end of the world. For others, this was hard but unremarkable news to hear. How can both be true? Many Christians look at our world of mass shootings, natural disasters, political unrest, terrorism, and moral degradation and conclude that it is worse than it has even been. Others say we're better off than ever, noting advances in medicine and technology, life expectancy, and our unprecedented abilities to prevent and respond to disasters. Global poverty and infant mortality have fallen dramatically in the last two centuries, and continue to plummet. Even so, as J.R.R. Tolkein wrote in The Lord of the Rings, evil "always after a defeat and respite, takes another shape and grows again." His friend shared a similar philosophy in That Hideous Strength, the final novel of his Space Trilogy. "Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse," wrote C.S. Lewis. "The whole thing is… coming to a point, getting sharper and harder." Because time moves only forward, and because Jesus hasn't returned to finally make all things new, we will continue to confront new and different shapes of evil. Trying to decipher which shapes are worse or better than others is as futile as trying to predict which are coming next. What we do know, because Scripture is crystal clear about this point, is that God the Father sits in what N.T. Wright might call the "control room" of heaven. His hand holds back more evil from befalling his creation. A colleague of mine used to note that the four scariest words in the Bible are "God gave them over." The worst evil we can imagine visits humans at our own request. Any moments or eras of apparent respite is either because we've not recognized a new shape evil has assumed, or because God has chosen to graciously withhold what human sinfulness has invited. In moments of great suffering or tragedy, Christians will often say something like, "Don't worry. Christ is still on the throne." This is true and often comforting, but it can be a kind of Romans 8:28 "bomb," aloofly and tritely lobbed over our protective walls with too little empathy; a sort of religious version of saying "well, it could be worse" to someone in pain. In an old episode of the TV medical drama, House, the cantankerous and religion-hating Dr. House confronts a nun suffering from a mysterious illness. "You can tell me you put your faith in God to get you through the day," he says to her, "but when it comes time to cross the road, I know you look both ways." It was meant as an accusation, but believing in a good God who rules the universe doesn't require that anyone deny cars hit people. Christ is on the throne and I might suffer tragedy. Both are true. It's the rest of the story that answers Dr. House (and us). As Pastor Tim Keller writes: Often we see how bad things 'work together for good.' The problem is that we can only glimpse this sometimes, in a limited number of cases. But why could it not be that God allowed evil because it will bring us all to a far greater glory and joy than we would have had otherwise? People are living longer, medicine is advancing, and, sometimes, buildings collapse with people in them. Things in this world are really bad. Other things are really good. Ruling over it all, still on His throne, Christ is renewing our hearts and minds to make His glory our greatest pleasure and somehow mysteriously making us better through our suffering here.

National Public Radio's This American Life aired Tina Dupuy's (doo-PWEE) story recently. Tina had a difficult home life and was prone to acting out as a kid. Her parents eventually sent her to a group home. At 13, she went to her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. What she heard resonated. People spoke about not being able to control their own bad behavior; about feeling rejected by family and repeatedly getting into legal trouble. By 13, Tina had tried alcohol a few times. But it was in the philosophy — the worldview — of AA that she really saw herself. And for two decades, she (to use AA's lingo) "hung in." For 20 years in AA, Tina learned how to stop pitying herself and to take responsibility. She attended meetings and shared her gritty story openly. But once she was firmly settled in her thirties, with a husband and a steady job, Tina started questioning whether she was actually an alcoholic. So she tried a drink and nothing happened. Now, she says, she's been drinking occasionally for years, with no addiction. So what was it about AA that held so much sway over Tina, and for so long? What does her story reveal about what humans need to get along in the world? Alcoholics Anonymous was founded by Christians in the 1930s. The modern-day organization has distanced itself from those religious roots, but traces remain. Everyone's familiar, for example, with AA's insistence that adherents surrender to a "Higher Power." The official line today is that this Higher Power can be whatever we want it to be. That the practice remains, especially in our cultural moment, is a sign that AA knows that belief in God has a uniquely powerful and motivating influence on our minds and behaviors. AA also requires each member to have a sponsor, someone else who is actively recovering from addiction. Apparently, humans benefit from a mentor who is able to "sympathize with our weaknesses." AA also teaches members that they need community and accountability, because bad habits thrive in isolation. Tina Dupuy told NPR that what first drew her in was everyone's nearly obsessive insistence that she "keep coming back." AA teaches that forgiveness and personal responsibility are paramount. That human beings are capable of terrible behavior even if we don't mean to be. In fact, AA has a name for the addict's real disease: "self-will run riot." Christians have a name for that too: sin. We also know it's an affliction not exclusive to those struggling with substance addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous may have stopped outwardly acknowledging the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but His natural laws are woven into every fiber of the organizations' success stories. That's fine — the Church is happy to share her playbook. Still, going through the motions without knowing the how and the what for, which are by God's grace and for His glory is a terrible waste and a tragic case of settling for less. And even if AA inches right up to the Truth without making the final leap, the group has strengths that many churches might count as weaknesses in their own communities. Tina Dupuy's experience with AA was of a group of people obsessively in each other's business. That culture of unconditional intimacy should exist in more churches. Church isn't a place to hang out with friends we've carefully chosen based on superficial similarities like cultural tastes, or even age. Church is a place of confession and forgiveness as much as it is for the mild, pleasant feelings we mean to evoke with the word "fellowship." Jesus doesn't call us to love the social outcast because social outcasts are all really wonderful people the world has judged wrongly, though that happens a lot. He calls us to love outcasts because He loves them and knows they need community and brotherly love in order to run the race with endurance. Just like we do. If that kind of intimacy isn't happening spontaneously in our churches, maybe we should force it. AA does. Unconditional intimacy is the natural outgrowth of groups whose members don't have to be convinced they're unlovable sometimes, or often. When people walk into an AA meeting, they know they have a problem. That's why they're free to be so patient with everyone else. Church can and should be like that, too.

John and Shane discuss listener questions from recent commentaries. Today they answer an important question from a listener after our commentary on how critical race theory is a Christian heresy. Another listener asks for an overview of the landscape of Christian hope. The person references a our recent commentary on the Pandemic of Despair. The listener asks if there is hope on the horizon, because they don't see it. The listener asks if he is looking at the wrong horizon line. John then responds to a listener who feels despair in being informed by the tv news. John provides a sense of hope and how to remain grounded in the hope of Christ in this cultural moment. To close, John provides an explanation on why we value the creeds and the challenge of knowing creeds in a time and place where we base our understanding of freedoms and rights on constitutions.

There are three reasons that every Christian should be able to understand, articulate, and widely share what it means to be human. And to live their life from this deep Christian conviction. The Christian answer to the question "What does it mean to be human?" is different from the answer you get from atheistic naturalism, or from Eastern pantheism, or from the postmodern philosophy currently characterizing life here in the West. The biblical answer to what it means to be human is revolutionary. It's the idea that God created everything and called everything good. Then He put Man and Woman on the earth to rule over it as His image bearers. To represent Him and His will to the rest of the created order. The significance of this cannot be overstated. Here are three important reasons why. First, the idea of the image of God has been among the most consequential in all of human history. This is not just a personal, private belief of some followers of Jesus. The idea has fundamentally changed the world. It changed what humanity thought about people who were oppressed. It changed what we thought about the other. It changed law, politics, the courts, and education. Chuck Colson used to say that the image of God, other than the message of personal salvation, is the most important gift that Christianity ever gave the world. Even atheists like Friedrich Nietzsche, Luc Ferry, and others have acknowledged that the very concepts we now take for granted (much of the Western world concepts like human dignity and human equality) were actually birthed in history from this Christian idea of the image of God. Second, the idea of the image of God is essential for Christians to understand because it is crucial to an understanding of the Christian worldview. The Christian story is given to us as a story. That's what the Bible is. It takes us from the account of creation all the way to the account of new creation. It takes us from the heavens and earth to the new heavens and the new earth. Central to this gigantic narrative, the True Story of all of reality, is the human character — the image bearer; and God Himself taking on flesh. This idea is critical to understanding the Christian worldview. What does it mean that God actually became man? That God actually took on the skin and the condition of humanity in order to redeem and to restore it? Finally, understanding the image of God helps us meet the biggest challenges that our culture faces. Recently in Fort Worth, Texas, 1,200 of us gathered at the Wilberforce Weekend and looked at the image of God from every angle we could think of. You now have access to this incredible event through Wilberforce Weekend Online at wilberforceweekend.org. The conference featured teaching on how to see the image of God in everyone, including your ideological opponents. We heard from Jason and David Benham, the Benham Brothers, about how they have been mistreated for their faith, and how they turn around and speak love and grace to others. Then we walked through the idea of the image of God through Creation, Fall and Redemption. What does it mean that God created us in His image and called us good? Matt Heard talked about the inherent connection between what it means to be alive (in the language of John's Gospel) and to be made in His image. Dr. Kathy Koch talked about what it means to believe that God is good, and therefore to believe how God made us is good. Jennifer Marshall Patterson took us deep into the pages of Proverbs and other wisdom literature in the Scriptures. She stated that wisdom in other religions might be esoteric stuff that we can barely make sense of, but in Christianity, the advice of wisdom and Scripture shows a way to be truly and fully human. With Dr. Carl Trueman, we looked at how the image of God has been impacted by the Fall. He spoke about the fundamental replacement, the counterfeit idea for the image of God in our culture, expressive individualism. Dr. Bill Brown talked about how to see the image of God in those who have failed us. It was a particularly powerful and poignant session in light of the scandals of some Christian leaders over the last year. Alisa Childers then spoke about how progressive Christianity misunderstands and misdefines what it means to be made in the image of God. There were many talks on the image of God restored. What would it look like to engage culture in areas of justice? In areas of imagination? Of race? In the approach to the unchanging truth that all humans are made in the image and likeness of God? Wilberforce Weekend Online offers you a bonus module called the Worldview Intensive that deals specifically with the image of God culturally misunderstood in terms of gender entitled: Male and female, He created them with Dr. Ryan Anderson and apologist Rebecca McLaughlin. To access all of the content at Wilberforce Weekend Online, go to wilberforceweekend.org. All of this is available for just $49. We are hearing from people who are using i

A few years ago, a woman spotted her teenage son's laptop on the kitchen counter. She opened the lid and what she saw horrified her — a series of pornographic pictures. She clicked on an image and a sexually explicit video began playing. She checked her son's browser history which revealed this was not the first time her son had accessed pornography. This woman was shocked, but she should not have been. As Sean McDowell once told me, "The question is not if my kids will see pornography, but what will I do when it happens." In their new book titled Treading Boldly Through a Pornographic World, authors Daniel Weiss and Joshua Glaser note that today's parents are the first in history to bring up children in such a digitally connected, pornography-saturated world. It's not that we've ever had a world without sexual brokenness or pornography, but the access to it is unprecedented. Sexually explicit material is fully integrated into mainstream life, as they put it. And it's also become culturally accepted and is far worse, more violent, and more degrading than it was just a few years ago. A few years ago, I was on a panel with radio host Dennis Prager. I respect Dennis for so many reasons, but he didn't hold the same conviction as I did when it came to pornography. He mentioned growing up in a household where his dad had Playboy laying around. I had to tell him that Playboy of the 1950s and '60s is nothing like the Cosmopolitan magazines today, much less what's found on the internet and even on social media. Pornography is so prevalent that while parents should certainly do everything they can to protect their kids from these vile images, they should also accept the fact that sexual brokenness will confront their children's eyes — and their imaginations at some point. It's simply too widespread. The sexual brokenness we see front and center that is not considered pornography today was considered pornography just yesterday. Not to mention all the messaging that we get about the new norms of sexual behavior. It is too available. It's on every screen, including on the cell phones that so many of our children carry around in their book bags. If they don't have cell phones, their friends do. If they're not accessing it, it's likely that one of their friends will show it to them. Let's be clear about something. The point of the story is not that kids are looking for pornography. It's that pornography is actively looking for them. It's so pervasive that many children are first exposed to pornography at seven years of age. This exposure harms them in all kinds of ways. According to Weiss and Glaser, it perverts their understanding of sexuality, stunts their capacity to process emotions, and cripples their ability to form long-term relationships. Because they're so young, they think that what they see in pornographic images is normal. Parents must learn how to talk about the dangers of pornography with their sons and daughters before they see it, even though it's difficult. Parents must start by understanding and communicating God's plans and purposes for human sexuality to help their kids grasp what sexuality means as God intended, and to embrace the beauty and goodness of sexuality within the context of lifelong married love. Second, kids must understand just how easy it is to become addicted to porn. What starts as curiosity can become almost uncontrollable. If you've struggled with pornography yourself, say Weiss and Glaser, share it with your kids. It helps kids understand that our concerns about online sexual content are rooted in real personal experience, that we're not perfect. And that they don't have to pretend to be perfect either. Together we can help them navigate these very difficult waters. Third, set clear digital boundaries with your kids. There are all kinds of resources out there: internet filters, ad blockers, accountability software. Teach your kids what to do if they come across inappropriate material. Encourage them to come to you. Your goal is to guide them, to guard them. To help them grow in online responsibility. The ultimate goal is to help kids towards greater spiritual maturity — maturity that will help them resist temptation when they are no longer under your roof. When they don't have the same measures of accountability in place. Work on a plan for what to do if they stumble. If they stumble outside of your guidance, you want them to know that clear steps have to be taken. They won't have a magical ability to just wish away the attraction. Finally, if you discover that your child is addicted to illicit imagery right now, understand this is a long-term game. It's very difficult to break such a habit. Pornography literally reprograms the central nervous system. Parents should affirm their love for their child even though they will understandably be deeply upset and disappointed. Parents must talk with their kids to learn what led to this habit, how extensive the habit is, how long it's b.een

Dr. Kathy Koch joined John Stonestreet for a special recording for the Wilberforce Weekend Online. Dr. Koch was a featured speaker at the Wilberforce Weekend in Fort Worth, TX, and joined John for an encore conversation for the online offering of the Wilberforce Weekend. You can hear the full conversation by registering for the Wilberforce Weekend Online at www.wilberforceweekend.org. Dr. Kathy Koch is the Founder and President of Celebrate Kids, Inc., based in Fort Worth, TX, and a cofounder of Ignite the Family, based in Alpharetta, GA. She has influenced thousands of parents, teachers, and children in 30 countries through keynote messages, seminars, chapels, and other events. She is proud to be represented by the Ambassador Speakers Bureau of Nashville, TN. She is a featured speaker for the Great Homeschool Conventions, on the faculty of Summit Ministries, and a frequent presenter for Care Net, Axis, and other organizations. She speaks regularly at schools, churches, and pregnancy resource centers.

In 416 BC, during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, Athens decided to attack the neutral island of Melos. When the Melians protested they had done Athens no wrong, the Athenians replied, "The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must." The Melians were starved into surrender, their men were killed, and their women and children were sold into slavery. None of this was unusual in the ancient world. The strong, it was supposed, had every right to dominate the weak. Cruelty, rape, torture, and slaughter were ordinary means of enforcing power. Neither the gods nor the moral codes opposed dominations. Atheist historian Tom Holland, describes his feelings about the Greco-Roman world this way: "It was not just the extremes of callousness that unsettled me, but the complete lack of any sense that the poor or the weak might have the slightest intrinsic value." So what changed? As Holland notes, the difference was Christianity. Christians and Jews believed that all persons were made in the image of God. Thus, every person had intrinsic worth and dignity, no matter their race, ethnicity, gender, or strength. On this basis, oppression of the poor and weak was condemned. Neither might nor wealth made right. Christianity further emphasized the spiritual and moral equality of all people. Not only do we all share the same humanity, but we all suffer from the same problem (sin) and are in need of the same solution (salvation through Jesus). Because of these ideas, Christianity is the sole historical source of concepts now taken for granted: human dignity, human equality, and universal human rights. As not only Tom Holland but other prominent atheists such as Jürgen Habermas and Luc Ferry admit, these ideas are at the root of our modern concern for the poor and oppressed. And this is why it's accurate to call "wokeness" a Christian heresy. "Heresy" comes from the Greek verb hairein, which means to choose. The idea is, heresy is the result of choosing one thing that is true and then running with it until it distorts everything else. "Wokeness," a way of seeing the world built on critical theory, fastens onto the Christian idea that oppression is evil, but makes it the sole significant fact about humanity and society, while rejecting so much else that Christianity teaches — original sin, forgiveness, and salvation. It should not be difficult to see why various expressions of critical theory and "woke" rhetoric resonates with so many Christians. The appeal is rooted in legitimate biblical concerns about the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, and the potential misuse of power. However, it fails on many other levels. First, the anthropology of critical theory misunderstands who we are by assuming that the only relevant fact about us is where we fit within the various categories of oppression. We are the group we belong to, which serves a social role as either oppressor or oppressed. As such, this theory rejects any universals that unite humanity, including the image of God. Second, the understanding of sin, or what's wrong with the human condition, is limited to oppression. In this view, oppressors are guilty and the oppressed are innocent. The universality of human guilt before God, that we all are broken and sinful, that we are all in need of forgiveness and redemption is replaced by a moral reckoning that is dependent on which group we belong to. Human identity, human nature, and human problems are all flattened onto a single spectrum of oppression. Given its failure to diagnose sin, it's not surprising that critical theories lack an adequate understanding of salvation. At best, a semblance of acceptance is offered to those who accept its worldview, but even then, the guilt of certain groups and the moral superiority of other groups is fixed and perpetual. This also means that forgiveness and reconciliation are effectively ruled out a priori. Even for the oppressed, there is no path for healing; no bearing one another's burdens; no easing the burden of pain by forgiving another. In the end, wokeness is built on a worldview without salvation and offers an eschatology with no real hope. Though the proclaimed goal is to end oppression, it's what the late sociologist Philip Rieff called a "deathwork," dedicated to tearing down things but unable to build, or offer, anything better. Advocates of critical race theory, for example, argue that although race is a cultural construct, racism is an inevitable and irredeemable trait of certain groups and society. They cannot offer a vision of the world in which this sin is defeated or redeemed, much less one in which the guilty are forgiven and restored. The best that can be hoped for is to replace one set of powers with another. Playing off of legitimate concerns about power and corruption, concerns first introduced to the world by a Christian vision of life and the world, critical theories push these ideas to the point of reframing the Gospel. The real prob

John and Maria start BreakPoint This Week by discussing a recent commentary related to forgiveness. Maria notes a special point in the article where John states that we are likely choosing to forget about forgiveness, creating a unique honor-shame culture. Then John and Maria visit briefly on a story they covered last week where the IRS sent a letter to a Christian group stating they didn't qualify for tax exempt status. Due to public backlash, the IRS granted the Christian group tax exempt status. Maria continues the line of conversation from the IRS to the Supreme court, who denied hearing an appeal by Baronnelle Stutzman who is facing financial ruin. Baronnelle has been bullied by Washington state and has an ominous road ahead due to the Supreme Court not hearing her case. John shares her story and why the church needs to come alongside her as she continues to faithfully follow the Lord. Maria then asks John to give clarity on the situation in Haiti, where the President of Haiti was killed and now the country faces political upheaval. To close, John and Maria visit on recent reports that public school enrollment has dropped significantly over the past year. This comes on the heals of debates to teach Critical Race Theory as an ultimate theory for the state of the world. - Story References - Why The Greatest Gift the Church Can Give Us Right Now Is Forgiveness Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Appeal by Baronnelle Stutzman Haiti Hunts Down President's Assassins as Crisis Deepens 3% school enrollment drop is largest decline in over two decades | CRT Stokes Fire - Resources - Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good Steve Garber | Book on Virtue Muscle Shoals Documentary | March, 2020

John and Maria start BreakPoint This Week by discussing a recent commentary related to forgiveness. Maria notes a special point in the article where John states that we are likely choosing to forget about forgiveness, creating a unique honor-shame culture. Then John and Maria visit briefly on a story they covered last week where the IRS sent a letter to a Christian group stating they didn't qualify for tax exempt status. Due to public backlash, the IRS granted the Christian group tax exempt status. Maria continues the line of conversation from the IRS to the Supreme court, who denied hearing an appeal by Baronnelle Stutzman who is facing financial ruin. Baronnelle has been bullied by Washington state and has an ominous road ahead due to the Supreme Court not hearing her case. John shares her story and why the church needs to come alongside her as she continues to faithfully follow the Lord. Maria then asks John to give clarity on the situation in Haiti, where the President of Haiti was killed and now the country faces political upheaval. To close, John and Maria visit on recent reports that public school enrollment has dropped significantly over the past year. This comes on the heals of debates to teach Critical Race Theory as an ultimate theory for the state of the world. - Story References - Why The Greatest Gift the Church Can Give Us Right Now Is Forgiveness Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Appeal by Baronnelle Stutzman Haiti Hunts Down President's Assassins as Crisis Deepens 3% school enrollment drop is largest decline in over two decades | CRT Stokes Fire - Resources - Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good Steve Garber | Book on Virtue Muscle Shoals Documentary | March, 2020

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 19 percent more Americans died in 2020 than in 2019. Adjusted for population age, that's the largest one-year increase in mortality since the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918. The CDC attributes approximately 375,000 American deaths in 2020 to COVID-19, but making that stat the headline of this story would be burying the lede. Unlike the Spanish flu, the COVID pandemic left young adults largely unscathed. Only about 3.5% of the pandemic's victims were in the 25-34 age bracket. Yet deaths in this age group are still on the rise. In fact, working-age adults are the only group whose age-adjusted mortality over the last few decades hasn't improved. Writing at Bloomberg, Justin Fox reports that while the rest of the population has experienced increased health and life expectancies, younger adults — who are historically among the healthiest citizens — are dying at about the same rate they did in 1953, a time when medicine and health care weren't nearly as advanced as today. Back in March, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued a lengthy report which attempted to explain this data. The culprits identified for the "high and rising mortality among working-age adults" were "external causes" like drugs, alcohol, and suicide. Likewise the CDC has identified a surge in drug overdoses as the main problem, especially the popularity of fentanyl and similar highly potent synthetic opioids. In 2015, economists Ann Case and Angus Denton gave this collective of killers a name: "deaths of despair." Deaths of despair have been on the rise for years and are disproportionately concentrated among white, rural Americans without college degrees. More immediately, these have served as "pre-existing conditions" of COVID or, more accurately, "comorbidities." Though numbers are still trickling in, rates of "deaths of despair" worsened sharply in 2020, when lockdowns and social distancing were at their peak, according to the CDC. One lesson here is that because human beings are more than bodies, public health is more than controlling infectious diseases. Hope is as essential for our wellbeing as health care. If we hope to prevent young adults from dying too soon, we'll first have to help them answer the question: "What is there to live for?" In a modern world filled with infinite choice and distraction, but void of meaning, the answer to that question just isn't clear for many, particularly young adults. They've lost hope, and I'm not referring to a feeling. To borrow from Thomas Aquinas, an increasingly secular culture has removed any real conviction that it's even possible to "share in the goodness of God." Too many of our public policies not only disregard the fullness of who we are as human beings, they fail to take into account that our culture is so thin on hope. For example, the impacts of lockdowns, social distancing, and extended isolation cannot be measured in mere economic terms. So, too, any evaluation of the drugs that are approved and made widely available should, at the very least, take into account the rise in overdose deaths. We can no longer avoid uncomfortable questions about human value and pharmaceutical profits. Most importantly, the rates of deaths from despair should lead us to rethink what hope is and where it comes from. I cannot imagine anyone would actually say that stuff is more important than people, or that our phones mean more than our children, or that we are better off alone and autonomous than with others, and mutually responsible. Or that mindlessly consuming entertainment designed only to provoke or distract is the true definition of "the good life." Without argument, however, and through the persistent, perpetual habituation of our souls, many people have become convinced of this. The evidence is found not in what we say, but in the hopeless ways we live. The real culprit here is a worldview described by the prophet Isaiah centuries ago, one which urges us to spend money on that which is not bread and to work for what cannot satisfy. Today, we are urged to spend our resources and seek fulfilment in stuff, sex, state, and self. The countless Americans turning to anesthetics to numb their disappointment is proof that these things cannot satisfy. Who else can address this culture-wide pandemic of despair but the Church? Who else, if not us fellow beggars who have found the Bread of Life. In a society literally dying of despair, to "always be ready to give an answer for the hope that you have to anyone who asks," is not a mere suggestion. It's a calling. It's a matter of life or death.

In various forms and in various expressions, the perpetual myth repeated in each chapter of the sexual revolution (as each new extreme becomes a norm in our culture) is this phrase: The kids will be fine. It all started with no-fault divorce. That first version of the kids will be fine went something like this: "Kids will be better off with happy parents that aren't married than with unhappy parents that stay married." Last week, my friend Katie Faust tweeted the following: "The safest place statistically on record for children is in the home of their married biological mother and father."She was responding to a tweet thread from a gentleman who experienced horrific abuse following the divorce of his parents. This week our What Would You Say? team addressed this question of whether a child is better off with parents who are unhappily married, or happily divorced. That language itself needs to be unpacked since the statistics are striking. Below is an edited transcript of Katy Faust speaking on children of divorce on the recent What Would You Say? video. In headlines about a celebrity divorce, or in conversations with friends in struggling marriages we often hear that it will be better for kids if their unhappy parents get a divorce. But is that really true? No. Here are three reasons why. Number one is that kids don't just "get over" divorce. We often talk about divorce like it's a cold. Bothersome, but the kids will get over it. Divorce affects children's bodies, minds, and hearts for a very long time. For many kids, divorce kicks off a lifetime of loss and transition. Instability is often a feature of a child's life after a divorce. One study found that nearly half of children with divorced parents had not seen their father in the past year. Number two: For kids, two homes are not better than one. According to one long-term study of children of parents who lived in two different homes, these children (on average) obtained less education, experienced more unemployment, were more likely to be divorced themselves, faced a greater occurrence of negative life events, and engaged in riskier behavior than their peers raised in intact homes. Researcher Elizabeth Marquardt discovered these kids were not just living in two different homes — nearly half developed two different personalities. Each home offered different versions of the truth, required keeping different secrets, and operated under two different sets of rules. Number three: If couples persevere, unhappy marriages often become happy marriages. In the past, marriage was considered a permanent union unless one party was deemed at fault because of something like adultery, abuse, or abandonment. Since the passage of no-fault divorce laws, spouses can divorce for any reason or no reason at all. Now the majority of divorces take place because parents are unhappy or have fallen out of love. These are often called irreconcilable differences. One study found that a third of unhappy couples with new babies divorced, but of the two-thirds who persisted, 93% reported happy marriages. A 2002 report found that two-thirds of unhappily married adults who chose to stick it out reported happier marriages five years later. What's more, unhappy couples who divorced were no happier on average than those who stayed together. Harry Benson, research director of The Marriage Foundation, noted that contrary to popular belief, staying in an unhappy marriage could be the best thing you ever do. In cases of abuse, safety must be a priority. And in cases of adultery, the marriage may be irreconcilable, but even if leaving an unsafe situation is the right thing to do, divorce still inflicts a heavy mental, emotional, and physical toll on children. There are scenarios in which the harm that divorce inflicts on children is justified, but adult happiness is not one of them. Our most recent What Would You Say? video featuring Katy Faust is entitled "Happily Divorced vs. Unhappily Married - Which is Better for Kids?" Watch the full video at whatwouldyousay.org.Or, go to YouTube and subscribe to the What Would You Say? channel. Please note, if you search for "what would you say" on YouTube, the first result will be a Dave Matthews video, and the second result will be our channel, What Would You Say? with a distinctive big blue question mark. You can subscribe right there.

John and Shane discuss important questions this week, ranging from how to discipline a follower of Christ while being evangelistic to teaching worldview to students who are Biblically Illiterate. John and Shane also give guidance to how schools can approach Critical Race Theory in secondary schools, is culture missing the point in celebrating someone exercising freedom instead of virtue, and how a Christian can affirm the image of God in a friend without affirming their friend's behavior.

On Friday, in an act of what can only be described as dereliction, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear the case of Arlene's Flowers, Inc vs. Washington. In refusing to hear this case, the Court has failed to bring clarity to a situation it ultimately created. Despite the utopian thinking of Justice Anthony Kennedy in the Obergefell vs. Hodges decision, legalizing same-sex marriage has led to a crisis of religious liberty. Barronelle Stutzman is the definitive answer to the question, "how will my gay marriage affect you?" In 2014, a long-time customer (whom Stutzman considered to be a friend) asked Barronelle to create a floral arrangement for his same-sex wedding. When Stutzman declined due to her Christian belief about marriage, the client said he understood and asked for referrals to other florists who would be willing to do the job. She recommended three other floral designers, they embraced and said goodbye. When the attorney general of the State of Washington saw a post about the incident on social media, they brought charges against Barronelle. In 2015, a trial court found her guilty of violating Washington's anti-discrimination law, ordered her to pay a $1,000 fine and the ACLU's legal fees, and to no longer accept wedding business unless she agreed to serve gay weddings. Her appeal to the state Supreme Court drew so much interest that arguments were held in a local college auditorium. The state Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Stutzman, citing Kennedy's Obergefell language and even claiming that to not service a same-sex wedding is to "disrespect and subordinate" gays and lesbians. The court also ruled that floral arrangements weren't "speech" but instead "conduct," and rejected her free exercise claim based on the Employment Division vs. Smith. In other words, the Court found that even if the state had violated Barronelle's First Amendment right to free exercise, it had done so in a generally applicable way that serves a compelling interest of the government. Barronelle, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, when the Court found the state of Colorado guilty of animus toward the religious beliefs of Jack Phillips, in the very similar Masterpiece Cakeshop case, it vacated the decision by the Washington court, effectively asking it to re-examine Barronelle's case and look for the kind of religious animus condemned by Kennedy in the Masterpiece decision. Unsurprisingly, the Washington Supreme Court, not about to admit it had decided anything wrongly, ruled again against Barronelle. So ADF, on behalf of Barronelle, appealed again to the Supreme Court. By refusing to hear Barronelle's case, the Supreme Court has left her, after seven years of fighting for her rights of conscience, without justice. It has left her without a significant part of her business. It has left her weary but amazingly hopeful after a seven-year battle to save it. It has left her with the potential of financial ruin, and largely at the mercy of the ACLU. And, the Supreme Court has left America in the lurch, unsettled as to what definition of religious freedom it will recognize and protect. By ruling in favor of Catholic Social Services a few weeks ago, the Court made it even more clear that religious organizations will be protected. However, by refusing to take up Barronelle's case, the status of religious freedom for individuals outside of religious organizations to live and order their public lives according to their deeply held convictions, is decidedly not clear. Even if the Supreme Court is not clear, we all should be. First, LGBT advocates should be clear about whether or not this is what they are fighting for? Is the goal really to destroy people like Barronell Stutzman and Jack Phillips, neighbors who have served you and the community so well for so many years? Churches, Christian organizations, and Christians everywhere need to be clear too. Where will we stand? Will we make the sort of hard, life-altering choices as Barronelle, even if it costs us everything? And, will we choose to stand, in prayer and financial support, to those forced to pay a high cost for their Christian convictions? I'm no prophet, but I suspect Barronelle is among the first of many who will be forced to choose between their convictions and their livelihoods. The least that the rest of us can do is to stand with them, pray for them, support them, carry whatever burdens we can, and take our place alongside them, if and when the time comes.

The term cancel culture evokes images of screaming undergrads, D-platform speakers, fired employees, and demanding protesters. However, the cancel culture ethic doesn't simply exist "out there" in the larger culture; it has infiltrated our homes. Our dinner tables have become personal social media platforms. Increasingly, this doesn't merely take the form of political ideology, it is quite simply a fading ability to forgive. In a recent essay at Comment magazine, Pastor Timothy Keller articulated this current feature of our hyper-politicized atmosphere. Not only is there a race for victimhood status and an inability to find any common ground with people across ideological lines, and not only does this make school board meetings and Thanksgiving dinners more awkward (to say the least), but it has turned us into a society without forgiveness. For example, Keller points to the dramatic shift in tone on issues of race relations since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, when leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasized forgiveness and reconciliation. This stands in stark contrast to the tone of the modern movement for racial justice that frequently erupts into destructive violence and open antipathy toward fellow Americans. Opinion pieces are released in major news outlets that increasingly urge black Americans to stop forgiving white Americans altogether. Think of how this advice contrasts with the behavior of the members of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina a few years ago. Activists now argue that not only has there been a history of white racism, but that all white people are racist; that even whiteness itself is akin to a plague. Women's rights advocates have also soured on forgiveness. Keller cites an opinion piece in the New York Times, in which Danielle Berrin argues against forgiving perpetrators of sexual assault. One commenter distilled her message well: Forgiveness is overrated. In fact forgiveness is not only overrated, the argument goes, but it perpetuates further evils such as sexism, abuse, and oppression. Keller writes, "…[T]he emphasis on guilt and justice is ever more on the rise and the concept of forgiveness seems, especially to the younger generations, increasingly problematic." In these observations, Keller joins authors like Gregory Jones, Bradley Campbell, and Jason Manning to conclude that what we're witnessing is nothing less than the birth of a new honor-shame society. Increasingly it is victimhood status, not God's mercy or Christ's imputation that is seen as the source of our righteousness. As a result, our culture values fragility over strength, and embellishes a constant good-versus-evil conflict, even over the smallest of issues. From elections to Facebook posts to hygiene practices — almost everything takes on the emotional temperature of a religion. It's especially true with anything that is or can be related to politics. Absolution for moral guilt was once secured in church. But today our moral status and our identity hang on our credentials as victims. Being oppressed or mistreated brings moral absolution. And the oppressor is left without even the possibility of forgiveness or restoration. "It's no wonder," writes Keller, "that this culture quickly becomes littered with enormous numbers of broken and now irreparable relationships." It's as if there is a race to hold the most grudges and grievances, to be the people most wronged, and therefore the people with the greatest moral authority. But as Christians who have been forgiven much, we should be among the first and especially the quickest to forgive. Instead, too many of us have absorbed the very worst habits of cancel culture — withholding forgiveness ourselves, refusing to extend any dignity or respect to someone who is a political or ideological opponent, and writing others off completely for infractions of any kind. This is not the Christian way of doing life together. This is not the way of life and birth in Christianity that brought about the best of the modern world. Cultivating habits of forgiveness will not only reorient our priorities to the core truths of the Gospel, but it will also awaken and re-awaken us to the common good. As figures like Hannah Arendt, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Desmond Tutu have attested, forgiveness of the gravest of evils can end the otherwise perpetual cycle of grievance and revenge. When we let go of wrongs, both perceived and real, we acknowledge the reality of Divine justice. When we surrender these matters into God's hands, we demonstrate that He is the One who will "square all accounts" in the end, as Keller puts it. Even more, extending forgiveness tacitly acknowledges that we, too, are in need of forgiveness. The Psalmist put it this way: "If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness." A world without forgiveness is simply an awful prospect. The only way forward in our increasingly vindictive age is f

Freedom is not just a governmental endeavor; it is an image-of-God reality. One that we citizens have a responsibility to defend, retain, to advance, and support. Not only here in America but also around the world. Ambassador Sam Brownback is doing incredible work in this field. John discusses the issue of freedom worldwide, how governments around the world need to be called to account and held accountable for their work in recognizing and protecting Freedom. Samuel Brownback is an attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from 2018 to 2021. He is now the leader for the International Religious Freedom Summit (https://irfsummit.com/)

The greatest enemy of freedom can be freedom. One of the most important observations that I gleaned from one of Os Guinness's books is that celebrating the acquisition of liberty and freedom (what we celebrate this weekend is our acquisition of freedom) is typical in the world's history. But what is really unusual is sustaining freedom. When freedom becomes not a freedom for good, truth, or justice but a freedom from — freedom from restraint, from consequences, from any rules or responsibilities — then freedom devolves into license, and license can actually put us in slavery to our own passions and desires. This misguided definition of freedom presents a challenge to one of the core freedoms of the American experience and one built into human beings by God as our Creator: the freedom of religion. Recently, I spoke with former Senator and former Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, about the issue of religious freedom. He has been at the forefront of advocating for religious freedom not only in the United States, but especially around the world. As Islamic radicals in Nigeria clamp down on Christians' freedom there, and so many scenarios like this around the world, here is Ambassador Sam Brownback in his own words about religious freedom. An edited audio transcription of our interview follows: Most of the world's population lives in a country of significant religious persecution. It actually gets worse than that. The Chinese government now is standing up and saying it has an ideology that should legitimately compete with U.S. democracy, Western democracy, and capitalism on the world stage. China says that theirs is an equally viable system that people can adopt. They put forward an authoritarian, mercantilist type of system yet they say it's equal to democracy and free market capitalism. There is now a competing globalized system that goes right at the heart of religious freedom. It says the State controls this space and we say no, God controls this space because it's a human right; it's the dignity of the individual. I think the Ambassador is dead right here. We don't oppose foreign governments like China because of their progress, or their economic power, or their rising military might. We oppose their system of governance because it is frankly dehumanizing. What's happening right now to the Uyghur population is nothing short of genocide. We are responsible to defend not only religious freedom in America, but to defend it around the world — anywhere that our influence stretches. In fact, we have a responsibility to defend religious freedom in America because America is one of the few nations in world history with both the core beliefs and the capacity to expand religious freedom around the world. We believe as Christians that religious freedom is an image-of-God issue. It's not a political one. In fact, Ambassador Brownback believes that, too: I see religious freedom as God's freedom to us. He gave us the right to do with our own soul whatever we choose. And He knew ahead of time that if we did do that, He would have to send His Son to clean up the mess. And He still did it. He did it knowing how much it would cost Him. So, there must be something extraordinarily precious about this particular liberty given to humanity, such that we should not allow any government to interfere with it, and everyone should be allowed to freely exercise it. It's about a common human right and one that I believe was given to us by God. The American founders in particular saw its preciousness, and the need for it, and went so far as to protect it at the first order. We must protect this right first. Freedom is not just a governmental endeavor; it is an image-of-God reality. One that we citizens have a responsibility to defend, retain, to advance, and support. Not only here in America but also around the world. Ambassador Brownback is doing incredible work in this field. Listen to my full conversation with Ambassador Brownback on the Breakpoint podcast. The conversation will also be posted on Breakpoint's Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram pages, as well as on breakpoint.org. Incidentally, on July 13th through 15th in Washington, D.C., Ambassador Brownback will join with 70 different organizations, including the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, to host the International Religious Freedom Summit 2021 (IRF). IRF is the most comprehensive event to date on the status of religious freedom around the world. For more information visit irfsummit.com.

John and Maria start by making sense of the tragedy in Miami. With the Champlain Towers collapse there are many questions. John discusses a few ways to consider tragedies, and how Christians can respond with a worldview large enough to hold the brokenness we're experiencing. Maria then shares a commentary she wrote related to Gwen Berry, an athlete who recently turned her back to the American flag while standing on the podium during Olympic trials. John highlighted the importance of protecting liberties to dissent, even when dissent seems egregious to unity and the purpose of the Olympics. John provides clarity on a recent letter sent from the IRS to a Christian organization that was seeking tax exempt status. The letter essentially told the organization they can't receive the status due to their practice of communicating a voting guideline that aligns with a religious perspective. Maria then shared new data that shows a striking rise in deaths to young people. The data highlighted that the rise in deaths was not related to the Coronavirus. John outlines a few key points to help Christians not only think well on the issue, but potentially stand in support of young people who are suffering in light of the pandemic. To close Maria shares how a recent beauty queen, Miss Nevada, is actually a biological male. The man identifies as transgender, competing in the beauty pageant and taking the next step in the competition to Miss America. -- Story References -- The Champlain Towers, a Condominium Highrise, Collapsed Last Friday The northeast portion of the building, facing the beach, fell to the ground, while other units were left standing. But after days of intensive searches, the scene appeared quiet on Thursday, with cranes frozen above the rubble. The silent scene froze heroes who are digging through rubble working to find the over 100 people still missing. New York Times>> Why You're Free to Hate America Last week at the U.S. Olympic Trials, an American hammer thrower turned away from the flag while the United States National Anthem played. Gwen Berry later told reporters that the national anthem "doesn't speak" for her. BreakPoint>> IRS Denies 501(c)3 status to Conservative Group in TX The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has denied tax-exempt status to a Christian group in Texas on the grounds that "the bible [sic] teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican] party and candidates." The Texan>> Young American Adults Are Dying — and Not Just From Covid Nearly 19% more Americans died in 2020 than in 2019, according to data that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is the biggest such increase since 1918, when deaths rose 30%. Bloomberg>> Transgender woman wins Miss Nevada USA pageant, "making history" A transgender woman has been crowned Miss Nevada USA — for the first time in the pageant's history. NY Post>> -- Cites and Recommendations -- Overwhelming Majority of Americans Support Religious Freedom, Oppose Key Provisions of Equality Act - Summit Ministries Survey - https://www.summit.org/about/press/new-poll-overwhelming-majority-of-americans-support-religious-freedom-oppose-key-provisions-of-equality-act/ Wilberforce Weekend Online Common Sense - Thomas Paine John Adams - HBO Series on Former President John Adams The Patriot - Roland Emmerich Directed Movie Liberty's Kids - Children's Series on America Hamilton - Broadway Musical

Chuck Colson would often say that the greatest gift Christianity gave the world other than the message of salvation is the idea of the image of God. It is important for Christians to know and understand the image of God for three distinct reasons. First, the image of God has been among the most consequential ideas in all of human history. Even atheists like Friedrich Nietzsche or the modern-day philosopher Luc Ferry, have acknowledged that our ideas about human dignity, human equality and human value were not present across cultures and civilizations, but were introduced to the world in Christianity. Why? Because of its core belief that humans were made in the image and likeness of God. Second, the image of God is central to a truly Christian worldview. Scripture has been given to us in a grand, sweeping narrative: the story of creation to new creation, from the heavens and earth to the new heavens and new earth. And one of the central characters in the Christian story is the image of God. We see this right away in Genesis 1, in which God creates the heavens and the earth; then He creates His image bearers to rule over them in His place and for His glory. Finally, the image of God is critical if we are going to understand the issues and challenges of our day. The most significant challenges we face in our culture are not fundamentally moral ones. We do face moral challenges but the ones we face are the fruit of the problems, not the root. It's the effect, not the cause. At the root of the issues of our culture has been a dramatic shift in how we think about the nature and value of the human person. At the recent Wilberforce Weekend, Rebecca McLaughlin talked about the significance of the image of God. This idea is in all of human history. She referenced the Declaration of Independence, went on to highlight how the image of God directs our hearts to freedom, and how the greatest freedom ever won is the freedom we find in Christ. Here is an edited excerpt of Rebecca's talk: John [Stonestreet] brought up that time when your country threw my country out. And I just want to say, I find that offensive, especially as I live in Boston, and I drink tea. I have it rubbed in my face day after day. So, if you guys could just leave it at that, I would appreciate it! In all seriousness though, I am going to bring us back again to the Declaration of Independence because I enjoy the pain. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Now, people often talk about the New Testament as if it condones and justifies slavery, and I can understand why they do. Slaves are addressed in the New Testament because they were part of the early Church. In fact, from very early on, Christianity was mocked as being a religion of slaves and women and little children. Slaves are given instructions about how to live for Jesus in the condition that they find themselves. We look at Paul's letter to Philemon and think, okay, the Apostle Paul wrote a letter sending an enslaved person back to his master. Of course, that means the Bible condones slavery. Right? Not if you read the letter. Paul sends Onesimus back and tells Philemon to receive him as a brother. That's not all. Paul tells Philemon that Onesimus is his very heart. He loves him that much. He tells him to receive him back as he would receive Paul himself, his most respected mentor. In the New Testament there are ways that we are called to relate to each other as fellow image bearers of God, which is a radical undermining of the idea of there being masters and slaves. There were those whose lives were valueless and could be exploited by the more powerful. We see that in Jesus' own life as He takes on the slave role himself and dies a slave's death for us and for every enslaved person in history. As Christianity starts to work its way through the West, we see slavery being progressively abolished. One of the earliest explicit arguments against slavery comes from Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century. He asks, how much does rationality cost? How many obols (currency at the time) did you pay for the image of God? How many staters did you get for selling the God-formed man? It's ridiculous. It is absurd for somebody to think that he can own another human being who has been made in the image of God. We're celebrating Wilberforce Weekend and it's right and good that we look back to folks like William Wilberforce, whose Christian faith drove him to fight tooth and nail against the evils of slavery. But we have to recognize as well that if Christians had truly believed that black people were made in the image of God, just as much as white people were, that Africans were made in the image of God, just as much as Europeans were, there wouldn't have been anything to abolish at that point. It's right for us to look back at the heroes of the faith, who fought for biblical values when it comes to human equality and who fought against slavery. But we must also reckon with the