Breakpoint

Emilie Kao is the director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. She is presenting at the Wilberforce Weekend. She will share her passion for protecting and defending the rights of children and how her campaign reflects the image of God. Emilie has defended religious freedom for the last 14 years. Kao has worked on behalf of victims of religious freedom violations in East Asia, the Middle East, Europe and South Asia at the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom and Becket Law. Previously, she worked at the United Nations and Latham and Watkins. Kao also taught international human rights law at George Mason University Law School as an adjunct law professor. She earned an A.B. degree in Near Eastern Civilizations and Languages at Harvard-Radcliffe College and a J.D. at Harvard Law School. Kao is a member of the Supreme Court Bar and the bar associations of California and the District of Columbia.

In 2018, comedian John Mulaney closed out his opening monologue as host of Saturday Night Live with this quip about one of the strangest new normals today which didn't exist just a few years ago: "You spend a lot of your day telling a robot that you're not a robot." Artificial intelligence is one of the new normals of contemporary life. Every time we access data on the web, every customer service call we make, every ordering process we start involves not just using, but communicating with, a machine. Smart phones, smart cars, smart networks—artificial minds are now the gatekeepers of information, transportation, and commerce. In sci-fi, the story always ends with computers evolving past and outclassing human minds. Sometimes they're dangerous; sometimes they're helpful; and sometimes, most unsettlingly, they cannot be differentiated from humans. Lurking behind the fantasy is an important question: What happens if we create something that's smarter than us? Still, computer engineers and neuroscientists continue to push science fiction to science fact. The problem with these efforts, a recent article in the online magazine Salon notes, is that the quest for artificial intelligence tends to "treat intelligence computationally." Attempts to recreate and even surpass the computational abilities of the human brain have succeeded. Computers can now play games and analyze images faster and better than humans. At the same time, there's real doubt as to whether machines are anywhere near matching wits with their creators. According to a piece last year in The Guardian, "Despite the vast number of facts being accumulated, our understanding of the brain appears to be approaching an impasse." It's estimated that about 95 percent of brain activity involves what are called spontaneous fluctuations, or neural impulses, independent of both conscious thought and outside influence. That's a problem that shuts machines down. As the Salon piece puts it, "For computers, spontaneous fluctuations create errors that crash the system, while for our brains, it's a built-in feature." Uniquely human thought arises from this chaos, unpredictable and unreproducible. What we think of as intelligence—reason, logic, and processing—may instead be the end result of consciousness, not the means of achieving it. While Salon's analysis is helpful, it misses something essential. Their analysis assumes that the mind and the brain are identical, that there's nothing more to our minds than "meat." While this is a common assumption of a naturalistic worldview, it's a worldview that will never be big enough to explain human cognition, much less motivation and behavior. David Gelernter's analysis , given 20 years ago after the chess playing program Deep Blue beat the world's top player, says it better: How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing and cares about nothing have a mind? … What are its apres-match plans if it beats Kasparov? Is it hoping to take Deep Pink out for a night on the town? It doesn't care about chess or anything else. It plays the game for the same reason a calculator adds or a toaster toasts: because it is a machine designed for that purpose. Or as philosopher Mortimer Adler noted over thirty years ago: "[T]he brain is not the organ of thought … an immaterial factor in the human mind is required." We've made great strides in understanding certain elements of our biology as well as our ability to imitate certain behaviors with machines. But, it's just that. Only an imitation. As Gelernter put it, "Computers do what we make them do, period. However sophisticated the computer's performance, it will always be a performance." The more we learn of the brain and of human consciousness, the more it affirms that humans are not just meaty machines.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. In this particular book, Charles Darwin addressed the questions he raised about human beings in his earlier book On the Origin of Species, specifically "whether man, like every other species, is descended from some pre-existing form . . ." Not surprisingly, Darwin's answer was "yes." At that time, in 1871, genetics as we understand it now was completely unknown. Even paleontology was still in its infancy as a field of science. So, Darwin's work was, essentially, speculation based on very limited physical evidence. Darwin's successors were to find the evidence needed to support his conclusion. That task, as it turns out, hasn't gone all that well. At least that's the conclusion of a recent study published in the journal Science. Researchers from The American Museum of Natural History conducted the study and summed up its findings with this devastating headline: "Most Human Origins Stories Are Not Compatible with Known Fossils." According to the study's lead author, "When you look at the narrative for hominin [bipedal apes including modern humans] it's just a big mess—there's no consensus whatsoever … People are working under completely different paradigms." In other words, multiple explanations for human origins are all held as true, but many are incompatible and contradictory. They simply can't all be true. The problem is not a shortage of fossils. It's that, as the article put it, "many of these fossils show … combinations of features that do not match expectations for ancient representatives of the modern ape and human lineages." In other words, the fossils are so different that they cannot be ancestors of modern primates, much less human beings. And, this isn't just the reality when it comes to human evolution. As my colleague Shane Morris noted, "The more you look at the tidy evolutionary stories linking one group of organisms to another, the more you see this same pattern unfold." To be clear, this sort of thing just shouldn't happen in any scientific field. It certainly doesn't happen in other fields, at least not to this degree. The real-world "mess" described in the article flatly contradicts the unshakeable confidence that often characterizes naturalistic evolutionary statements about human origins. Almost every pronouncement ends with some version of "The science is clear about this," a sort of materialist equivalent of "Thus saith the Lord!" When asked how we can know that the current evolutionary narrative is true, scientist explainers quickly point to the fossil record and our nearest animal relatives, the great apes. However, as this study in the journal Science points out, the actual physical evidence for what the late philosopher Michael Stove has called "fables of evolution" is in scant supply. Given the lack of actual physical evidence, a bit more humility is in order. Paleontology isn't like physics or chemistry where the proof is in the laboratory pudding. There is ample physical evidence that it's called the atomic bomb. The best paleontology has to offer is an inference to the best explanation, with "best" being a relative term and (should be) subject to change depending on the state of the evidence. Bluntly, the evidence simply does not warrant the level of confidence that often accompanies Darwinian explanations of human origins. It certainly doesn't warrant what Michael Stove called the "calumny" that reduces human beings to little more than lucky apes, or even less. To their credit, the authors of this study on the science of human origins, just in time for the 150th anniversary of Darwin's book on human origins, acknowledge the state of evidence and admit the "mess." Darwinian evangelists should do the same.

John and Maria discuss the rising tensions in the Middle East. They explain some of the finer points related to the conflict and why it requires sober thinking and a worldview big enough for the world. Maria then asks John for greater context on a number of stories from the week, and they discuss the sad state of many in the transgender community through the lens of a recent interview Ellen Page conducted with Oprah. John also provides additional commentary on a new movement calling some Christians to leave their churches. The movement is called the #LeaveLoud movement, and it urges people to leave churches they don't feel are encouraging them specifically related to race.

For the last several years, China has become more aggressive to both the outside world and to its own people, particularly the people of Hong Kong, the Muslim Uyghur population, and, of course, Christians. While other countries may rank higher on Open Doors' "World Watch List," the economic might, global clout, and sheer population size of China make its treatment of religious minorities a matter of enormous concern. The history behind this growing and troubling reality was one that forged the life, testimony, and word of Pastor Bob Fu. Next weekend, Pastor Fu will become the latest recipient of the William Wilberforce Award, a recognition established by Chuck Colson to honor modern day heroes committed to Christ and just causes as was the famous British abolitionist. Pastor Fu is founder and president of ChinaAid, a Christian "human rights organization committed to promoting religious freedom and the rule of law in China." ChinaAid works to expose systemic persecution, harassment, torture, and imprisonment of Chinese Christians and human rights lawyers in China. It offers financial support to Chinese Christians persecuted by the Chinese government, and training for Christians and church leaders in China to help them defend their rights. Pastor Fu was to be recognized a year ago at the Wilberforce Weekend. That event, like every other live event of 2020, was a casualty of Covid-19. I wish that somehow, through God's gracious working in that difficult nation, Pastor Fu's life and work would've become less relevant to the headlines. Instead, the work of ChinaAid is more important than ever. In fact, when you think of Pastor Fu, the biblical phrase, "for such a time as this," should come to mind. Still, Bob Fu never intended that this would be his life. Born in Shandong Province to a disabled father and beggar mother, Pastor Fu fully intended to join the Communist Party after graduation and become a government official. God, however, had other plans. An American professor gave Pastor Fu a biography of a Chinese intellectual convert to Christianity that, he told the Wall Street Journal, "changed my life." After graduation, Fu and his wife Heidi became active in the house church movement. They even established a Bible school, using chairs he borrowed from a Communist Party school where he taught. The Communist Party didn't quite share Fu's sense of irony. He and his wife were jailed. Then, about a year after their release from jail, Heidi became pregnant with their second child. Because the one-child policy was still being vigorously enforced in China, they emigrated to Hong Kong which, at the time, was still under British rule. Fu was granted political asylum by the Clinton Administration in 1997. Just as the persecution of the Church has, at times throughout history, led to the unintended spreading of the Gospel, Pastor Fu's forced emigration expanded his impact. From his base of operations in west Texas, Fu operates what the Wall Street Journal has called "the most influential network of human-rights activists, underground Christians and freedom fighters in China." In fact, some of what ChinaAid has accomplished is the stuff of movies, including smuggling human rights lawyers and their families out of the country to safety. Through it all, Pastor Fu has earned a fitting nickname: "the pastor of China's underground railroad." The Colson Center is pleased to recognize the life, the work, the courage, and the testimony of Pastor Bob Fu, and to present him as the William Wilberforce Award recipient at the Wilberforce Weekend next week. If you aren't able to join us in person, we invite you to attend our online offering which features all of the sessions from the weekend, plus some additional online-only content, all for only $49. For more information, visit www.wilberforceweekend.org/online

Last fall, the Black Lives Matter organization quietly deleted a section of its website in which it professed an intention to: "disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement." The statement was removed after public backlash, but the sentiment behind the statement seems to endure among some activists. Earlier this week, The National Council on Family Relations hosted a webinar entitled "Toward Dismantling Family Privilege and White Supremacy in Family Science." According to researchers, structures of public life in the United States—such as government support, healthcare, and education—that implicitly advantage nuclear families (two people committed to by marriage raising children) disadvantage other family arrangements. For these scholars, this is an example of privilege rooted in white supremacy. These scholars are correct in noting that families with a married mom and dad raising their children tend to fare better. In fact, kids with married parents are far less likely to experience poverty, social problems, emotional problems, and even incarceration. The problem is why these outcomes exist. A Christian worldview contends that these benefits are inherent to a nuclear family because it is God's design for the family. Stronger bonds, better social outcomes, better health, and higher rates of happiness are more common in the context of these relationships because that is how He created humans to do life together. Within a worldview that sees everything in terms of oppressor/oppression, these outcomes must be the results of a system that advantages some and disadvantages others. This increasingly influential worldview is derived from Marxist philosophy, which denies the idea of a given "human nature." Human behavior, Marx believed, is determined by the structures (particularly the economic structures) of a society. These structures tend to be oppressive. So, if the nuclear family tends to be the given arrangement of the bourgeoisie, it is bad by definition and oppresses other arrangements. What's not considered are the implications if there is such a design to human relationships, given by our Creator. For example, the nuclear family works for the good of women. No amount of webinars on "dismantling family privilege" can erase the fact that women exclusively bear children and women are disproportionately disadvantaged when families break down and they are left to care for children on their own. Why would these webinar scholars want to disadvantage women on purpose? Of course, those who wish to "dismantle" the nuclear family would agree that women raising children need support. If the most natural and obvious source of that support is old-fashioned, oppressive and dismantled, then this support must come from somewhere else. Obviously then, this becomes the state: a disastrously poor substitute for family. This reminds me of a progressive woman who tweeted: "If abortion is illegal then men abandoning their child should also be illegal. If this was a permanent decision for me then it is for you as a father also." To which someone replied: "Congratulations, you invented marriage." Eliminating families as antiquated or even (somehow) racist is not merely illogical for pragmatic reasons. It's cultural suicide. It's an idea that sociologist and philosopher Philip Rieff might call a "deathwork," one that exclusively tears down. It cannot build anything. It offers nothing in place of the family. Accordingly, we can and must distinguish between helping those in tragic family situations and incentivizing these situations as "alternative family arrangements." The answer is to recognize the truth about reality, truth that is available not only in Scripture but in everything we know about how families function and work. The goal is to do family better and to welcome more people into it, not to dismantle it. The Church should be the loudest voice celebrating and defending marriage and the family as God intended it. To do so is not to make an idol of it, as some claim, but to point to what is true and good. The church of today lives by lies when it pretends that God's design isn't important. We can celebrate this very good gift of God while also encouraging and supporting single parents and children in other situations. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Indeed, we must.

John and Shane field a listener response to a BreakPoint Shane authored last week. The BreakPoint discussed problematic points for Christians inside a new trend of casual sex in the Christian community. John and Shane go point-by-point to provide a strong Christian worldview foundation to the listener's concerns. Shane then presents a sobering topic from a listener who is looking for encouragement as her daughter is expressing gender dysphoria. John provides helpful resources for a growing community inside the church, and Shane closes their response in a time of prayer for the specific mother and daughter as well as those who are facing this challenging issue. To close, John invites Shane to revisit a piece on Christians and media consumption. A listener writes in to ask if there is a problem in the church when a pastor finds recreation in watching a Netflix series that celebrates infidelity and leads his church to abhor the practice. -- RESOURCES -- Alliance Defending Freedom Story From Mother Pulling Daughter Out of School Due to Transgender Ideologies Helena Kerschner - Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria at Q Ideas with Gabe Lyons

For the first time since the Gallup organization started to track the data, fewer than 50% of Americans now belong to a church, synagogue or mosque. Behind these numbers are, among other factors, the trendiness of not only leaving church, but announcing it on social media with a bit of shaming and blaming thrown in for good measure. And many are not only leaving a particular house of worship but joining a growing demographic known as the "nones," rejecting all religious affiliation. The Christian version of those who grew up in the church but have become "nones" often go by another label: "exvangelicals." Sometimes, these exodus narratives center around hurt committed by people inside the church. Other times, these narratives center on hurt that exvangelicals claim comes from the truth claims of the Christian faith. For example, many exvangelicals cite the Bible's teaching on sexuality as the primary reason for their exit. In reality, however, many of the folks in this camp have already rejected other cornerstones of orthodoxy, such as the authority of Scripture, the reality of sin, the necessity of Jesus' atonement, and the deity and exclusivity of Christ. Tragically, high profile figures who have for years publicly broadcast their deconstruction stories, now often have unravelling lives. Divorce, marital unfaithfulness, or newly professed homosexuality are disproportionately found (or at least revealed) in the wake of faith deconstruction. I share these details not to point fingers or to celebrate brokenness, but to surface the all important chicken-and-egg question for Christians committed to persevere in the faith. Namely, are those who leave church and lose their faith more susceptible to bad habits and decisions? Or does practicing bad habits and making bad decisions leave one more susceptible to losing one's faith? Biblically speaking, the answer is "both." In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul issues a dire warning. "If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall." Of course, every "leaving church" story is different. Sometimes, real harm has been done. Sometimes, there's been a failure of catechism and teaching. Sometimes doubt results from the impression that the Bible doesn't allow Christians to ask tough questions. Other times, however, bad behavior, bad habits, or even the neglect of good habits, can breed unbelief. Years ago, Pastor Tim Keller was widely criticized for reporting that whenever a student returned from college claiming no longer to be a Christian, he'd ask them who they were sleeping with. I've worked with enough students over the past two decades to know, it's a good question to ask. And not just to college-aged students. We may look at the trendy exvangelical stories and conclude that that could never happen to us. That would be foolish. To follow Jesus is to embrace the humility that we can surprise ourselves with our own sin, just as Peter was shocked to hear himself deny the Messiah mere hours after promising he never would. James challenged believers to "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." This is not a quid pro quo. It is a promise. God has given His people habits of faith, such as prayer, fasting, study, loving our neighbor, fleeing from sin, and struggling against bad habits and complacency. He will never leave us. He is never distant. These exercises strengthen our faith to better see Him. Another essential that Christ has given us is His church. Imagine someone heckling your bride as she walks down the aisle toward you. How would you respond to that person? The Church is not above our critique, of course, but too many who embrace the habit of criticizing her soon find themselves as no longer part of her. Make no mistake, the Church is Christ's bride. She will outlast the world. As her members, we work toward her sanctification, but we should be incredibly wary about shouting her imperfections from the pews, especially to those outside the building. We heckle this Bride at our eternal peril.

Given the global pandemic, this seems like a particularly bad time to run a survey on church membership. Nevertheless, Gallup recently released a poll suggesting that the number of Americans who belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque has fallen below 50 percent for the first time since 1937, when the organization began tracking those numbers. In fact, more than half the respondents to this poll didn't merely give up their church membership. They gave up their religion, and now identify as "none," as in "no religious preference." Or, as my colleague Shane Morris put it in a recent podcast conversation with writer Samuel James, these folks haven't just left the room of denominational preference, they've left the house of collective faith. A number of separate but related cultural trends are at work. For example, an organization called The Witness, an online community of African-American Christians, recently launched the hashtag "#LeaveLoud." Through podcast episodes and online articles, The Witness encourages black Christians to not only leave "predominantly white or multiethnic" churches if they've been dishonored, but to be vocal about it inside and especially outside the church. Of course there are such things as abuse or crooked doctrine that warrant leaving a congregation. Specifically, plenty of our African-American brothers and sisters have been neglected or hurt by fellow Christians, either directly or indirectly. And, depending on the context, church leaders should be made aware of things that justify a departure. Still, much of what we are seeing is part of an I'm-leaving-church-and-please-watch-me-leave movement. Being noisy about joining the "exvangelicalism" movement is not only a popular thing to do, it's a way to be popular. In fact, after a few years of watching people "leave loud," I see at least a few troubling themes emerge. Almost without fail, a person leaving a church loud will cite bad or hurtful behavior by the people or leadership at the church. And of course no one wants to stick around where they are mistreated. However, in a culture that has widely embraced moralistic therapeutic deism, many think that being morally challenged, or anything that falls short of all-out affirmation, counts as "personal harm." This Gallup poll also points to interpersonal strife as a significant reason for leaving church. However, the number of people leaving a particular church over interpersonal strife is lower than the number leaving an entire faith tradition over interpersonal strife. According to the poll, the primary driver of plummeting church memberships is people renouncing religion altogether. To reuse the metaphor, people are leaving the house while blaming folks in one particular room. To publicly denounce a particular congregation, not to mention a particular denomination (not to mention an entire faith tradition), because of how people behaved is to misunderstand what Christianity is. It is first and foremost a commitment to Jesus Christ which, second, involves a set of claims about reality. Who Jesus is and what Christianity teaches must be evaluated on their own merit. Many churches have failed to prepare young people to do this. Considering these two factors makes me wonder if leavers who blame people in the Church for their own leaving are in reality just upset with God. So many "exvangelicals" and progressive Christians who begin by lamenting the bad behavior of fellow church-goers end up rejecting the Bible's moral claims about sexuality, or God's judgment of sin, or the lordship of Jesus. The more that the wider culture finds Christian teaching outdated and outrageous, the harder it is to distinguish between the various motivations of those who leave the church, and/or the faith. What is clear is that it is essential, at least for anyone who intends to persevere in the faith, to know what "the faith" is. For example, Scripture is clear that followers of Christ should "live peaceably with everyone, as far as it depends on you." Anyone who takes that teaching seriously, not to mention the many others that directly apply to our lives within the body of Christ, will find it difficult to "leave loud," or to justify leaving over silly disputes, or to neglect praying for those who have left.

John Stonestreet visits with Ryan T. Anderson on the image of God presented in the physical make up of male and female. Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Founding Editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author of When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment and Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom. He is the co-author of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination, and the co-editor of A Liberalism Safe for Catholicism? Perspectives from "The Review of Politics."

Mary Slessor was born to a Scottish working-class family in 1848. At an early age Mary joined her parents in the Dundee mills, working half a day while going to school the other half. By age 14, Mary was working 12 hour shifts. Ever an avid reader, Mary kept a book propped up on her loom so she could read while working. Mary's mother, a devout Presbyterian with an interest in missions, saw that her children were raised in the Faith. When a local mission to the poor opened in Dundee, Mary volunteered to be a teacher. Her sense of humor and sympathy made her popular. At age 27, Mary learned of the death of famous missionary, David Livingstone. Inspired to join her church's mission in what is now southern Nigeria, Mary taught and worked in the dispensary. With her devotion to learn the local language, plus by cutting her hair and abandoning the traditional Victorian dress as impractical in the hot climate, Mary quickly set herself apart from the other missionaries. She began eating local foods as a cost-cutting measure. Finding the mission hierarchy frustrating, she welcomed opportunities to go upriver into inland areas. The need for workers in these regions with fewer missionaries was significant, so she asked to be stationed there. However, since male missionaries had been killed in those areas, her request as a single woman was turned down as too dangerous. After a medical furlough for malaria, Mary was stationed in a region where shamans dominated much of life. These men conducted trials in which guilt or innocence was determined by whether or not the accused died after taking poison. Slavery was also rampant among the powerful, and slaves were often sacrificed on their owner's death to be their servants in the afterlife. Women's rights were virtually nonexistent. Despite these challenges, Mary was able to integrate into the community and earn the trust of the local people. As a woman, she was not seen as the threat that male missionaries were. And, her ability to speak Efik and her embrace of local lifestyles in clothing, housing, and food endeared her to the native peoples. It was in Okoyong that Mary began the work for which she is now best known. The locals believed that when twins were born, one of them must be the child of a demon. The mothers were ostracized and, since there was no way to tell which was cursed, both children would be abandoned to death by starvation or wild animals. Like the earliest Christians who rescued victims of attempted infanticide by exposure, Mary began rescuing twins. She saved hundreds of children and, against the advice of her mission agency, adopted nine as her own. Like the earliest Christians whose example she emulated, the actions of Mary Slessor not only saved lives but played a major role in changing the local culture. Her understanding of the language, history, and customs, plus her standing in the community, enabled her to work as a mediator and give judgments in local tribal courts. When the British attempted to set up a court system in the area, Mary warned them it would be a disaster. So, the British consul appointed Mary as vice-consul in Okoyong, making her the first female magistrate in the British Empire. In this position, Mary continued to mediate disputes, while acting as liaison with the colonial government, continuing to care for children and continuing her work as a missionary. At age 66, Mary finally lost a long fight with malaria. She was given a state funeral, which was attended by many people who travelled from the tribal regions in order to honor her. She was nicknamed the "Queen of Okoyong." Mary Slessor's story is a wonderful part of the larger, ongoing Story of restoration, accomplished by Christ through His people within the time and place they are called. Slessor offers yet another example for Christ-followers that taking the Gospel to pagan cultures will typically involve protecting children. Our calling is no different.

John and Maria breakdown some trends in the news during BreakPoint This Week. They discuss how our response to the pandemic can cause us to despair. They discuss the importance of keeping our eyes on Christ and building our hope around a Christian worldview. Maria turns from a segment of looking to Christ to a segment looking at the challenges in our thinking about childrearing. John highlights two recent podcasts where the hosts share concern in birthrates and how that is impacting our culture. All of these topics follow a quick tour through BreakPoint commentaries from this week where Maria asks John for greater insight on what he's seeing going on in the culture. // Resources // Is Christian Cohabitation the New Norm? - BreakPoint - President Biden Called a Good Catholic - The Point - Biden Scraps the 'Protect Life' Rule: We Need Cultural Change, Not Political Games - BreakPoint - The Liberals Who Can't Quit Lockdown>> Millions Are Saying No to the Vaccines. What Are They Thinking? - The Atlantic - A Shrinking Society in Japan A Population Slowdown in the U.S. - The Daily Podcast - >

More and more, we're hearing about the promises of gene editing. It's a scientific technology that literally allows us to rewrite our DNA. Still in the experimental stage, with technologies like CRISPR, we've seen how the technology can be used wrongly. It can put humanity at risk. Many Christians are not aware of the biological challenges until it's too late. In this week's What Would You Say? video, my colleague Brooke McIntire walks through how Christians can think about gene editing. Here's Brooke McIntire. You're in a conversation and someone says, "Gene editing can help us wipe out disease and will improve life for everyone." What would you say? In recent years, talk of gene editing has become extremely popular. Gene editing technologies like CRISPR promise not only to eradicate disease and disability, but also to provide human enhancement and designer babies. But this powerful technology comes with a host of major ethical issues that need to be carefully considered and addressed. You may wonder what ethics has to do with gene editing – after all, doesn't eradicating disease and disability sound like a no brainer? It's true that we can and have used technology to alleviate suffering in the world, and that is a good thing. But sometimes our well-intentioned actions can have devastating unforeseen consequences. The next time someone says, "gene editing can help us wipe out disease and will improve life for everyone," here are 3 things to remember: Number 1: Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. When we hear about the exciting advances in technology and genetics, it's easy to believe the promise that it will make our lives better or healthier. But, as countless stories in science fiction have taught us, simply pursuing innovation for innovation's sake can have dangerous consequences. That's why it's important to ask not only "can we" do something, but "should we" do something. As technology continues to advance, the question of "should we" will get more and more weighty. For example, a group of researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London used CRISPR technology to edit 18 human embryos. But when they finished, they found that around half the embryos ended up with what they called "major unintended edits." These "major unintended edits" are more harmful than they sound. They can actually lead to birth defects or life-threatening medical problems like cancer. And, those issues could permanently enter the gene pool and affect future generations. Sometimes, our finite minds don't always foresee the potential dangers or ramifications of these innovations on human life. This is why it's dangerous to separate science from philosophy and ethics. These decisions shouldn't just be left up to scientists or experts who may be preoccupied with scientific advancement without a larger, ethical perspective and boundaries. Number 2: Treating human life as disposable doesn't make our society more humane. Humans aren't simply problems to be fixed or objects to be experimented on. Those 18 "edited" embryos are actual human lives that have been permanently altered in the pursuit of innovation and science. Many embryos will simply be discarded or destroyed because their usefulness has expired. But defining the value of a human life by their utility is not advancing society in a desirable or worthy direction. The sincere desire to eradicate genetic diseases is understandable, and the longing to heal reflects God's image in us. Ethically sound and medically safe treatments that don't dehumanize other human beings should be pursued. But we must proceed with an ethical framework, and an awareness of the human temptation to "become like God" with our own ideas about what is good and evil. Which leads to our third point. Number 3: Gene editing can't deliver on its promise of control. In the ethics of biotechnology, there's a fine line between healing and enhancement. Healing is fixing something that's broken. Enhancement is trying to improve something that isn't broken. It can be tempting to want to just "upgrade" healthy people or give our children a leg up in the world through various biotechnical enhancements. But this desire to "enhance" humanity misinterprets what it means to be human and exposes the urge to have complete control over our lives. We like to think that we have everything under control, that we can protect ourselves from any kind of pain, and decide what is moral on our own. But technology and human "enhancement" can't deliver on its promise to meet those deep desires for control. As we discussed earlier, this search for control often descends into a chaos of unintended consequences. As long as we keep looking to technology to solve our need for control or security or hope, we'll find ourselves disappointed. What we're missing can't be provided by technology. In reality, our craving for purpose, security, and the freedom to create and invent without hurting others is best met when we lo

The idea of a politically neutral Supreme Court is one of our nation's persistent and appealing myths. The Court's job, at least according to our founding documents, is to interpret existing legislation and arbitrate disputes about that legislation. In practice, especially over the past several decades, the Court hasn't always stayed in that lane. In a crucial chapter in his important book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman shatters the notion of political neutrality within the Court, as well as the notion that the Court is impervious to cultural pressure. For example, in the landmark 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania vs. Casey, which struck down abortion restrictions, the court famously offered this incredibly consequential line: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." The justices went on to say that for the Court to define those concepts (i.e. to define reality) would be for the Court to deny freedom itself. Though this sort of thinking is largely taken for granted today, it would have been utterly unrecognizable to America's founders, not to mention much of the world throughout all of human history. As Trueman points out in the book, this script was first espoused by Romantic-era philosophers like Jean Jacques-Rousseau. Rousseau suggested that true reality is found not in something bigger-than or outside-of ourselves, but merely in what we feel. This radical notion is, of course, entirely incompatible with the idea of a Creator who had a purposeful design for what He made. Yet, when the Court issued their opinion in Planned Parenthood V. Casey, the idea of self-determining meaning, identity and reality itself had so deeply seeped into our collective imaginations that the supposedly neutral U.S. Supreme Court took it for granted. Even more, the Court appealed to the centrality of precedent in its reasoning. Roe V. Wade, after all, had already been decided, said the justices, as if to ignore other landmark cases in which precedent was rightly overturned. In 1954, the Court overturned the awful "separate-but-equal" Plessy vs. Ferguson decision from 1896 that legalized racial segregation. Precedent should be respected, of course, but an appeal to precedent is not an argument. Wrong decisions that do not align with reality should be overturned. On the other hand, Trueman points to the 2003 case Lawrence v. Texas, in which the Court struck down anti-sodomy laws in Texas. This decision overturned precedent set in 1986. In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia specifically pointed to Planned Parenthood v. Casey, noting how the Court claimed precedent should be respected above reason. Scalia's concern is instructive for all of us today. The Court has a history of showing itself susceptible to cultural tastes. Justice transcends culture. It is not best served when based on the latest social fads. This history, especially in light of the major and more contemporary shifts in cultural tastes about selfhood and sexuality, reveal how vulnerable the Court is to cultural fashions. The 2013 decision in United States v. Windsor, which effectively struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, and the 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which imposed same-sex "marriage" on the nation, were clearly driven more by cultural winds than some "long arch of the universe that bends toward justice." The only real way forward is by finding an anchor for meaning, justice, purpose and dignity. In just a few weeks, at the Wilberforce Weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, we will spend a weekend looking at the only notion that's ever been big enough to ground any of these eternal concepts: the Image of God. This audacious idea is both crucial within a Christian worldview and central for our cultural witness. And the incredible lineup of speakers and thinkers includes Dr. Carl Trueman, author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Get your tickets at wilberforceweekend.org.

John and Shane field a question on adoption. A listener wrote in to ask if adoption to a homosexual couple is better than a child being parentless. They then work through a question on if a Christian should marry if the marriage looks to be childless. John and Shane close the question and answer time looking at immigration. A listener asks for a worldview perspective on a topic that has become strongly politicized.

John and Shane field a question on adoption. A listener wrote in to ask if adoption to a homosexual couple is better than a child being parentless. They then work through a question on if a Christian should marry if the marriage looks to be childless. John and Shane close the question and answer time looking at immigration. A listener asks for a worldview perspective on a topic that has become strongly politicized.

John and Shane field a question on adoption. A listener wrote in to ask if adoption to a homosexual couple is better than a child being parentless. They then work through a question on if a Christian should marry if the marriage looks to be childless. John and Shane close the question and answer time looking at immigration. A listener asks for a worldview perspective on a topic that has become strongly politicized.

The term "political football" is a perfect descriptive for how the executive branch of the federal government handles abortion. There are two "teams," pro-life and pro-choice, who toss the issue back and forth from administration to administration. Neither decisively win, at least in the long run. While state level legislation and federal court decisions have moved the ball in real ways, executive orders and legislative rules are barely temporary, depending entirely on who is in the White House. After President Biden's first 100 days in office, it is clear that the football is in the hands of the pro-abortion team. Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a new rule that would restore a major source of federal funding for abortion clinics. This rule would undo the Trump administration's "Protect Life" rule, which withheld money designated for low-income family planning from any clinics that "perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion…" The "Protect Life" rule also required clinics to keep their abortion and non-abortion services physically and financially separate. The rule made a difference. Planned Parenthood, which drew an estimated $60 million in annual federal funding just from Title X, dropped out of the program rather than attempt to meet the new requirements. Now, under the Biden Administration, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are back on the federal dole. Bizarrely, the Biden Administration claims that its new rule will not lead to federally funded abortions. When Owen Jensen, a Catholic reporter from Catholic network EWTN asked why the President would "insist that pro-life Americans pay for abortions and violate their conscience," White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied, "that's not an accurate depiction of what happened." She then quoted from the Public Health Service Act, which stipulates that no Title X funds "shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning." That isn't a real answer, of course, as Jensen pointed out. Money is easily moved around. In a fiscal shell game, Planned Parenthood can simply divert funding they don't have to spend on non-abortion services back to abortion,. Speaking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, Archbishop Joseph Naumann agreed: "In spite of explicit prohibitions in federal law and clear congressional intent that abortion may not be a part of this program, it has repeatedly been coopted by abortion supporters as a funding stream for organizations, programs, and facilities that directly promote and provide abortions." What might we learn from all of this? First, though elections do have consequences, at least when it comes to who is President, they're short-lived. This means that putting the right person in the White House matters, but is not the highest or best goal of pro-lifers. For example, President Trump's most significant contribution to the pro-life "team" are not his executive orders, but a thoroughly remade judiciary. At the same time, many more millions of tax dollars are given to Planned Parenthood by Congress. The most effective legislation to limit abortion and fund alternative care has been at the state level. Those elections matter too. Second, the battle for unborn lives will be won or lost in the larger culture. It is encouraging that though Americans are very much divided on abortion itself, they strongly oppose government footing the bill. A Marist Poll earlier this year found that almost three-fifths of Americans oppose taxpayer funding for abortion. In other words, a lot of folks who want abortion to remain legal don't want to coerce their neighbors into paying for them. That's at least a start. The finish line, however, is when abortion is as unthinkable as other grave evils like slavery and child sacrifice. Until then, this political football will continue to change hands with each and every election.

Recently, researchers at State University of New York determined that descendants of immigrants to the United States from places such as Asia typically lost the ability to speak their mother tongue by the third generation. Something similar, but more serious, seems to be happening with Christians in an increasingly post-Christian culture. Each successive generation is losing the understanding of, not to mention the will to live by, Christian sexual morality. Two years ago, a Pew Research survey found that half of American Christians think casual sex is "sometimes or always" morally acceptable. The slight silver-lining in that survey was that evangelical Protestants were by far the least likely group to express acceptance of casual sex. Unfortunately, a new analysis calls into question just how committed the children of evangelicals are to Christian teaching in this area. These numbers reflect a larger trend among evangelicals: with each generation, American evangelicals increasingly adopt the attitudes of the wider culture toward sex and marriage. This time, the behavior in question wasn't casual sex, but cohabitation. In 2019, Pew Research reported that a majority – 58 percent – of white evangelicals said cohabitation is acceptable if a couple plans to marry. View on cohabitation become noticeably less Christian among younger respondents. As early as 2012, the General Social Survey found that over 40 percent of evangelicals in their 20s agreed that cohabitation is acceptable even if a couple has no express plans to marry. And, earlier this month, David Ayers at the Institute for Family Studies found that nearly half of evangelical Protestants aged 15-22 who were not currently cohabiting or married, said that they would probably or definitely cohabit in the future. Still, as dismaying as the attitudes of young evangelicals are toward sex, behavior is what most effectively erodes the Christian norm. Among those ages 23-44 who had already cohabited, a whopping 65 percent indicated they would likely or definitely do so again. An important caveat, as is typically the case with these kinds of surveys, is that religious commitment makes quite a difference. Young evangelicals who attended church at least twice a month before the pandemic were the least likely to approve of "shacking up." Yet, even they were a minority for their age group. Across all groups analyzed by Ayers, cohabitation had become, as he put in an article at Christianity Today, "a new norm." How can this cultural assimilation be slowed? How can the next generation be convinced of the sacredness of marriage, as a norm worth preserving and living? Again, the experience of immigrants offer an analogy. Research by one immigrant grad student at the University of Alberta found that "speaking the [native] language regularly at home" is the crucial first step in passing the mother-tongue from parent to child. That may sound simple, but it is. The word for passing on moral values and behavior through regular instruction in the faith by parents and pastors is catechesis. The kind of catechesis necessary for this cultural moment not only involves the "what" of biblical morality, but the "why" and the living out of the "how." According to Ayers the lack of a reason given for God's rules is a key factor behind young evangelicals drifting into behaviors common in the wider culture. Whenever I teach worldview to students, I like to draw a triangle with three levels. Worldview is at the foundation of the triangle, values is at the middle level, and behavior is at the top. The idea is that one should evaluate what is true and good, build their values from that, and allow that to shape behavior. Today, however, too many Christians live "upside down." The unthinkingly embrace behaviors common in our culture, those behaviors shape their values, and they land with an ultimately non-Christian worldview. We need to approach teaching the next-generation, especially when it comes to areas where the Christian vision is so different than the "new normal" in a "bottom-up" way. We must teach what is true about male and female, sex, and family, offering the what and the why. From there, we can work cultivate a strong set of values, by talking openly about what they are and living them out together. Only from there will countercultural behavior blossom. For any parents, grandparents, teachers, or pastors who want to see the next generation follow Christ in this culture, catechesis isn't optional. Today, the Christian view of sex and marriage is like a foreign language, and the wider culture is actively catechizing them.

John and Maria review President Joe Biden's speech to congress. They discuss the role of government and the stretch it has had into our lives. The two share how government expansion creates thin fabrics in society, trying to hold weight it was never intended to hold. Maria shares a story from Seattle, where staff and faculty at Seattle Pacific University vote no confidence in their board. The vote was made due to frustration with the school's hiring policies that uphold a traditional Biblical ethic in regards to sexuality. John and Maria begin their conversation revisiting some of the top stories from BreakPoint this week. They discuss the character of Trevor Lawrence and his opportunity to impact standards for player character. They also talk about an unknown trend in human trafficking involving young boys before revisiting a story from last week where President Biden appealed a court order that could cause doctors to perform genital mutilation surgeries.

When John McCain was running for President in 2008, Saturday Night Live ran a recurring skit about his running-mate, then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Tina Fey, playing Gov. Palin in her trademark red suit, delivered the memorable line, "I can see Russia from my house!" It was pretty funny. It also wasn't real. Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house. Today, however, a surprising number of people believe she did. This is a testimony to the power of lies. A few weeks ago, Georgia state legislators passed a bill that added additional days for early voting, limit the number of ballot boxes that had (for the first time) been set up across the state during the pandemic, and changed the requirements for voting by mail. Rather than rely on matching signatures by eye, mail-in ballots will now be verified using a voter's ID. The partisan backlash over the bill, even though it expanded voting access in many way, wasn't surprising. The lies about the bill, how quickly they were spread, by whom, and the corporate reactions to them are worth noting. President Biden likened the bill to laws that oppressed African Americans, calling it "Jim Crow on steroids." Major League Baseball announced it was moving the 2021 All Star Game out of Atlanta in protest, and even Stacey Abrams caught heat for not calling for economic boycotts of Home Depot and Delta Airlines. Of course, people sometimes lie. But the stakes are higher when millions of people – including those with no interest in or loyalties to politics– believe those lies. Now, millions of people in Georgia and elsewhere are needlessly anxious, fearful, and angry. That's cruel. In James 3 the apostle calls the tongue a "fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body." The tongue can, James says, "corrupt the whole body, set the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." Among the reasons that Christians cannot sit out our culture-wide conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity is that it is based on a lie about the human person, a lie that has convinced many. To relinquish the belief in a reality that exists outside of ourselves is to give up more than we might realize. If men can be women, if laws which expand voting access in Georgia can be renamed as bringing back Jim Crow, then what is real? If Christians give in to lies, why would we be trusted to tell the truth about God? Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel once said, "words create worlds." Words do not change created reality, but they do reshape culture and therefore what people think is reality. Among the sources of the deep fracture in American culture right now is the loss of trust in our institutions and information sources. No matter how normal as a practice or successful as a strategy of influence, Christians must never, at least intentionally, partake in misinformation. While we are just as susceptible as anyone to believe lies that reinforce our views and to disregard facts that challenge them, the very practice of not compromising on truth will be an increasingly important part of our cultural witness. Even if we have good intentions, for example "weeping with those who weep," we still can't afford to lie. We can't love our neighbors and lie to them. So, it's imperative, even if inefficient, to take the time and find out what is true before speaking, especially when it comes to complicated, often heated political matters. God's words made reality. As image bearers, our words can create worlds too, at least perceived worlds. As followers of Christ, let's commit to using our words to build the Kingdom of God, where lies have no place.

Most people (at least those paying attention) expect quarterback Trevor Lawrence to be the first player selected in this year's NFL Draft. Frankly, his draft stock has been a foregone conclusion since his heralded arrival at Clemson in 2018, and was only strengthened after he led the Tigers to the National Championship as only a freshman. He's a team leader who can read a defense and flat out throw the ball. In fact, the only doubts that exist about Lawrence's potential in the NFL have nothing to do with talent or poise, but only concern his character. Let me be clear. Some pundits worry Lawrence has too much character. In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Lawrence said, "I don't have this huge chip on my shoulder, that everyone's out to get me and I'm trying to prove everybody wrong." As if that were not troubling enough, he clarified, "[T]here's also more in life than playing football." As a committed Christian, who is very public about his faith and the way it shapes his life, one of the things Lawrence considers more important than football is Jesus. He also apparently has a thing for family. Recently, Lawrence skipped an NFL pre-draft event to marry his high-school sweetheart. This crazy behavior fed a narrative that Lawrence, like other Christian athletes, is probably too "soft" and lacks the kind of monomaniacal focus required to succeed in football. Given that there's never been a shortage of Christian players who possessed deep faith and achieved great on-field success, this narrative is baseless. No one who was the receiving end of a hit by Steelers' great Troy Polamalu thought his faith made him somehow "soft." Not to mention, Lawrence has proven his competitive zeal. In three seasons at Clemson, he lost only two games. Still, the presumption that the perspective and balance and priorities shaped by a sincere faith are somehow liabilities, and obstacles to athletic success, persists. So, when Lawrence tweeted, "I am secure in who I am, and what I believe. I don't need football to make me feel worthy as a person," the critics pounced. Their critiques, in reality, say nothing about Trevor Lawrence. They only expose how absurd discussions of character have become in our culture. Scarcely a week goes by without a story featuring an active or former NFL player in trouble with the law. In the weeks leading up to the draft, a former NFL player killed five people before killing himself. That same day, police arrested another former player on charges of first degree murder in connection with a shooting that injured one and killed another. A few days after that, a current player ended up behind bars on weapons charges. The local news report of that story began tellingly: "Another pro football player has been arrested in Northeast Ohio on a weapons charge." The NFL has learned about character the hard way. Whenever a player is selected in the draft later than their abilities suggest, the reason is nearly always a concern about character. Teams spend a lot of time and money up front assessing a prospect's character because they've learned how costly it can be. In 2013, after tight end Aaron Hernandez was charged with murder, the Patriots became the first NFL team to hire a "character coach." All of which makes concerns that a player like Lawrence has too much character simply bizarre. If anything, what the Bible calls the "fruit" of faith and character would make him a safe choice. But, in a world of "expressive individualism," things like character and virtue and integrity seem old-fashioned. Still it's these old-fashioned ideas our ailing young men, and our ailing society, need the most.

John and Shane field a sobering question from a ministry-minded family. A daughter informed her mother that the daughter identifies as pansexual. John and Shane provide a host of resources and encouragement for the mother and her family as they walk a road of love, support, and guiding their family to hope in Jesus Christ in the midst of confusion. Another listener seeks insight on what they're seeing as an agenda play out in the business community. Specifically, the listener identifies shifts in power where agendas are guiding the business community to a socialistic and communistic ideal. The listener asks how Christians should respond to soft movements of coercion we see inside our economy. With graduation approaching, another listener asks for resources for a teen's parents unsure what their daughter should do next year. Rather than attend a university, where a level of maturity is essential, the listener suggests a link or gap year. She asks John and Shane for their recommendations.

Scripture says woe to those who say that good is evil and that evil is good. That's a culture-wide feature of our world. Each day, it seems, brings new and audacious ideas aimed at unravelling and misordering God's very good creation. Our first impulse might be to "blame the culture," but it should be, instead, to take a hard look in the mirror. If the Church exists to proclaim and bear witness to the rule and reign of Christ, we may find that our culture's woes aren't as much the result of a secular occupation as they are the result of a Christian evacuation. Francis Schaeffer noted how Christians think about life in terms of "bits and pieces" instead of "totals." For example, many Christians able to recite core beliefs of the Christian faith struggle to see all of life as it truly is, the Story of creation, fall, redemption and restoration. To see what we are missing, consider who the Book of Acts describes Apollos. A man "fervent in spirit," Apollos "spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus." And yet, he missed certain things related to the full life and work of Jesus. It's not that he had wrong ideas, but that he didn't understand where they fit within the larger Story of Jesus the Christ. This is similar to our situation today. What we often miss, as Christians today, can be thought of in three broad categories: the past, the present and the future. Or, to put it another way, what was, what is, and what is to come. To clarify what was, recall that first calling of God for His image bearers, a calling that has never been removed, is what might be called the "creation mandate." God didn't create His world in all of its glory to simply destroy it. He created the world to glorify Himself. He created His image bearers to glorify God by living out what He intended for us, where He intended us live. This created purpose, for humanity and the world, God called very good. God's created intent is restored, renewed in Christ. Another way to say this is that Christ has not come to save us from our God-given humanity, but to save us to it. To confess Christ as Savior from sin but to deny His relevance in society and culture is to miss, or perhaps even reject, His kingship over the entire world. Working to restore the world to its God-given order is itself gospel ministry. The what is of the present is nothing less than the most extraordinary event in all of history, the Incarnation. Jesus atones for the sins of the world by His obedience and death, and launches the new creation by His resurrection. Thus, His Gospel, the good news, is not less than how we can be saved from our sin and be in heaven when we die, but it is more. The good news of Christ is, in reality, the Gospel of the Kingdom. In Christ, the Kingdom of God has come and will one day be fully realized in the full and final defeat of the enemies of God. Finally, we must recover a biblical understanding of what is to come. Theologian N.T. Wright described what Christians should look forward to this way: "In the New Testament, we do not find a life after death in heaven, but a life after life after death. In other words, a newly embodied life in a newly reconstituted creation. And ... all the great Christian teachers for centuries after that, taught the same thing: that what God did for Jesus on Easter, he will do for all his people at the end, raising them to new bodily life to share in the life of the new world." Together, the Christian vision of what was, what is, and what is to come, offers a broad and rich understanding of God's Story. Unless Christians, especially in this time of cultural chaos, rediscover our place in that story, we'll be confused and often ineffective, our witness diminished. There is no greater task, then, in the church today than to re-catechize, to rethink what the Gospel is and what it means for us to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to champion the rule and reign of Christ in this cultural moment. Hundreds of Christians will be joining us this year to dig deep into Christian worldview, cultural analysis and restorative leadership as Colson Fellows. If you'd like to join them, and rediscover your place in the Great Story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, consider joining the Colson Fellows program. To learn more, please visit www.colsonfellows.org

Last fall, California governor Gavin Newsom signed The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, a bill which, among other things, would "allow incarcerated transgender, non-binary and intersex people to be housed and searched in a manner consistent with their gender identity." Since this law went into effect back in January, in a new case of "rapid onset gender dysphoria," over 200 prisoners have requested to be transferred from men's prisons into those detaining women. As of April 6th, not a single request has been denied. Imagine attempting to argue for this law 20 years ago. Imagine trying to convince anyone that biological males, specifically males who'd already demonstrated a willingness to break the law, should be incarcerated with women. Even if abuse of all sorts wasn't a real problem for America's prison population, this would be a bad idea. Until quite recently, California's law (not to mention the ideology upon which it is based) would have been unthinkable. Even more, all of the warnings (and there were plenty of warnings) that embracing certain ideas about sex and marriage and gender would make laws like this inevitable earned accusations of exaggerations and "slippery slopes." Yet here we are. And, if the Biden Administration succeeds in making the Equality Act federal law, an unlikely but no impossible prospect, California's idiosyncrasies would be national law. This whole thing is a case study in how the unthinkable becomes first inevitable and then unquestionable. In reality, of course, perceptions of or claims to gender identity do not change chromosomes, nor do they eliminate male desire or weaken male physical strength when compared to women. To ignore these realities of the physical world, is not only to our peril but to the peril of the women who will be trapped with biological males against their wills. This isn't sound or compassionate policy. This will be, for many women, the definition of cruel and unusual punishment. To ignore biological reality in the context of punishment and rehabilitation is not wholly different than a doctor or nurse treating a patient according to a perceived identity that conflicts with biological reality. Such medical care would not be helpful or loving. It would be malpractice. Two thousand years ago, the pagan worldview of Gnosticism proclaimed a denigration of physicality. Greco-Roman thinkers often thought that the material world was less valuable, or even contrary to the good of the spiritual realm. Gnosticism's condemnation of the physical even snuck into the Church, proclaiming that Jesus could not have been fully human or have a real body. The Church, in light of Scripture's robust view of creation, soundly and repeatedly condemned Gnosticism as heresy. Yet, elements of this hyper-spirituality clung to Western thought throughout the centuries and popped up again and again in the church, proclaiming that the fleshly concerns of the physical world did not matter or, even worse, should be fully rejected. Gnosticism in its latest form can be seen in this new California law and in these California prisons, not to mention across the country in so many other areas. The reality of the physical male body and the bodily danger posed to female inmates, not to mention the bare essentials of physical biology (one warden announced that this law would mean new maternity wards in female prisons), have been dismissed by the new Gnosticism. The Colson Center was founded as part of a ministry devoted to extending love and dignity to the men and women behind bars. Chuck founded Prison Fellowship to take seriously Christ's words in Matthew 25. Placing female prisoners in physical danger isn't a way to love them or care for them. Enabling men to hate and even desecrate their own bodies through surgery and chemical restraints isn't treating them with dignity as image bearers. Truly loving any image bearer of God, including those who are incarcerated, must involve loving them as they truly are including the creational goodness of their physical bodies.

John Stonestreet visits with Monique Duson about the image of God and how it is challenged inside critical race theory. Monique spent 2 decades advocating for Critical Race Theory (CRT), but through a series of events began to see the contradictions of CRT with the historic Christian worldview. She is now convinced that CRT is not the best way to achieve racial unity and actively speaks out against the use of CRT within the church. Monique's vision is to promote a vision for racial healing based on the historic Christian worldview. We invite you to watch John's discussion with Monique as they talk about the Image of God, the theme of the 2021 Wilberforce Weekend. Monique has a special perspective to share and we are excited to have him in our lineup for the conference. www.wilberfoceweekend.org

On April 19th, the Biden administration filed an appeal in a case that could force "religious doctors and hospitals to perform potentially harmful gender-transition procedures against their conscience and professional medical judgment." The case involves an Obama administration rule interpreting the Affordable Care Act. The rule was issued in 2016, and prohibits insurance companies and health-care providers from discriminating against people on the basis of sex. The rule anticipated that discrimination on the basis of sex would soon legally include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Biden administration has repeatedly pointed to the 2020 Supreme Court decision in the Bostock case, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, as now legally requiring this new way of seeing categories of sex. If this new way of reading the rule stands, insurance companies and providers "may not deny access to medically necessary medications, surgeries, and other transition-related treatments for transgender people if similar services—a hysterectomy, for example—would be covered for non-transgender people." This would, of course, redefine the concept of "medically necessary," ignoring the obvious difference between removing perfectly healthy organs and removing organs riddled with cancer. Also, the rule contains no conscience protections for doctors or hospitals. Therefore, Catholic hospitals, which do not perform hysterectomies except to preserve the life or physical health of a woman, would be forced to violate Catholic teaching. Various legal challenges to the rule by faith-based groups, all of whom claim that the regulation violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, have been unsuccessful. Courts did, however, block Trump administration attempts to eliminate the mandate. So, the litigation over the rule continues. In January, a federal district court in North Dakota ruled in favor of the Sisters of Mercy, a group of nuns who believe "that every man and woman" including transgender individuals, "is created in the image and likeness of God, and that they reflect God's image in unique—and uniquely dignified—ways." They also believe that "performing gender-transition, abortion, and sterilization services . . . [violates] their religious beliefs regarding human sexuality and procreation," and object to "providing insurance coverage for abortions, sterilizations, and gender transitions." If this case sounds a lot like the Little Sisters of the Poor case, it does.In fact, the district court cited the Little Sisters case several times in ruling that the mandate violated RFRA. Like the Obama administration, who couldn't leave a group of nuns in peace to serve people in need, the Biden administration has decided that it can't leave this other group of nuns in peace, either. So, it appealed the district court ruling to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Sisters of Mercy, as Luke Goodrich of the Becket Fund put it, "joyfully serve all patients regardless of sex or gender identity," and "routinely provide top-notch care to transgender patients for everything from cancer to the common cold." They also provide "millions of dollars in free and low-cost care [provided] to the elderly, poor, and underserved." Still, the Biden administration is ready "to punish [the Sisters] with multi-million dollar penalties" even though, as a federal appeals court wrote, "There is no medical consensus that sex reassignment surgery is a necessary or even effective treatment for gender dysphoria." In fact, there is ample evidence that gender reassignment surgery makes matters worse, not better. Given both precedent and the makeup of the federal courts, it's difficult to imagine the Biden administration will prevail in this case, especially at the Supreme Court. However, that is not the primary concern. Upstream from the courts is the larger culture, one not only quick to embrace and advance observably wrong ideas about the human person, but to sacrifice religious freedom in order to do it.

John Stonestreet and Maria Baer recount the challenging aspects of what happened in America this week. After recalling the details of the events surrounding the Derek Chauvin verdict following the death of George Floyd, John and Maria discuss a recent shooting in Ohio. They close with the challenging situation Planned Parenthood finds itself in as the organization works to distance from racist roots and the current reality that their abortion services overwhelmingly impact people of color.

John Stonestreet and Maria Baer recount the challenging aspects of what happened in America this week. After recalling the details of the events surrounding the Derek Chauvin verdict following the death of George Floyd, John and Maria discuss a recent shooting in Ohio. They close with the challenging situation Planned Parenthood finds itself in as the organization works to distance from racist roots and the current reality that their abortion services overwhelmingly impact people of color.

Seven years ago, Bloomberg Businessweek's cover story told professional women, "Freeze Your Eggs, Free Your Career." The story told of a woman in her late 30s, single and successful in her career, who spent $19,000 to have her eggs frozen. She planned to focus on a career now and keep open the possibility of marriage and kids later. It didn't turn out that way. Still single on her 45th birthday, she decided to have a child with the help of a sperm donor. However, her eggs failed to produce a child. She was crushed. This experience isn't uncommon. Writing at Evie Magazine, Molly Farinholt reports that, "a woman who freezes 10 eggs at age 36 has only a 30-60% chance of having a baby with them." Whatever "freeze your eggs" might accomplish for a woman's career, it's just wrong to say that it enables a woman to "have it all." Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. This unnamed woman was sold a bill of goods. She is not only the victim of bad ideas widely assumed in our culture about sex, about babies, and about parents. Countless other victims, in fact, have been left in their wake. These ideas have reshaped imaginations, redefining what many think to be possible. Based on these remade imaginations, people make decisions. Often, what they have been promised fails to materialize. The central idea that has reshaped the cultural imagination is that sex, marriage, and babies are fully separable from one another. The "pill," shorthand for artificial birth control, gave tangible form to this idea. Separating sex and procreation drove the sexual revolution which, in turn, culturally accomplished separating sex from marriage. Bereft of its God-ordained unitive and procreative purpose, sex became, at best, an expression of personal affection or, at worst, a form of exploitation. The rise in out-of-wedlock birthrates, which accelerated in the late 1960s, signaled the final dissolution of childbirth and marriage. Still, the link between sex and childbirth remained, for obvious reasons. That link was severed by artificial reproduction technologies, such as IVF, sperm donation, and egg-freezing. Now, people could produce a child without sex or, for that matter, even having met one other. So, first we wanted sex without marriage. The only way that was possible was to secure sex without babies. Artificial reproduction accomplished that. Then, along the way, we wanted to remove any stigma from wanting babies without marriage or wanting marriage without babies. Finally, with artificial reproductive technologies, we want babies without sex. The divorce is complete. Even worse, it's complete and uncontested in the cultural imagination. So many Christians, especially Christian young people, simply cannot imagine the idea that sex, marriage, and babies are a package deal, or that separating them is a recipe for cultural chaos. The false narrative of the sexual revolution about sex, marriage, and babies is now deeply embedded even in the Christian imagination. Another bad idea is also implicated in this story about the failed promises of our technology. Businessweek's insistence that technology enables woman to "have it all" on her terms assumes that true freedom is doing whatever we want, free from any and all consequences. Tragically, biology didn't get that memo. Our cultural narratives do nothing to change underlying biological realities. Whatever promises we make, age remains "the single biggest factor affecting a woman's chance to conceive and have a healthy baby." Believing otherwise, or expecting that technology will rescue us from the consequences of our decisions, changes nothing. It still remains true that all of us, men as well as women, must make difficult choices. The first one may be reimagining and embracing a radically different vision of the good life than the one our culture peddles, especially when it comes to sex, marriage, and children. In particular, those called to marriage, and not all are, may need to recalibrate. After all, our priorities and our timeline may not match God's.

For years, abortion rights activists have attempted to downplay or even deny that Margaret Sanger, the closest thing the movement has to a patron saint, was motivated by racism. Planned Parenthood, the organization Sanger founded, widely celebrated her (even naming an award after her), as if her troubling words and actions could be somehow separated from the causes she championed. To be clear, Sanger considered abortion to be barbaric, but the organization that carries on her vision has embraced it as their primary strategy and largest source of revenue. In the wake of the "racial reckoning" of the past year, denying what the historical record plainly reveals about Sanger is no longer tenable. After all, many others, including those with a far less damning paper trail, have been denounced as racists. Sanger's re-evaluation was long past due. In a recent New York Times' op-ed, Planned Parenthood president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson, acknowledged Sanger's sordid history of racism, white supremacy, and eugenics. She acknowledged that "Sanger spoke to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan at a rally in New Jersey to generate support for birth control." She admitted that Sanger supported the Supreme Court's decision in Buck v. Bell, which upheld mandatory sterilization for those deemed "unfit" and which infamously proclaimed that "three generations of imbeciles is enough." She told her readers about something a colleague of mine knows as family lore: "The first human trials of the birth control pill — a project that was Sanger's passion later in her life — were conducted with her backing in Puerto Rico, where as many as 1,500 women were not told that the drug was experimental or that they might experience dangerous side effects." It's past time, Johnson wrote, to "take responsibility for the harm that Sanger caused to generations of people with disabilities and Black, Latino, Asian-American, and Indigenous people." However, wouldn't "taking responsibility" necessarily include evaluating whether Sanger's racist disdain for people of color and the marginalized lives on in Planned Parenthood's work? It does. In fact, Planned Parenthood is the most obvious example there is of systemic racism, a concept many people reject out of hand but shouldn't. Certainly, the idea of "systemic" or "institutional racism" is controversial. Too often, the accusation is a convenient blanket condemnation for anything a pundit or politician doesn't like, a way to demand policy changes or to subvert debate. Theologically speaking, it shouldn't be controversial to suggest that sin can take systemic or structural forms. That much is obvious throughout the Scripture and human history. Systems and structures often operate, with either intention or inertia, in such a way that certain groups are harmed. This is possible even if no one associated with the "systems and structures" harbors any ill will towards these groups. In the same way, just because Ms. Johnson is an African American or workers at Planned Parenthood aren't personally racist doesn't mean the organization isn't systemically and structurally targeting people of color. The abortion rate for African American women is nearly three times as high as that of white women. The rate for Hispanic women is nearly two times as high. By one estimate, 79 percent of Planned Parenthood facilities are located within walking distance of African American or Hispanic neighborhoods. Whereas the average white woman might live her whole life without coming within 25 miles of one of these facilities, for many women of color, it's far easier to find an abortion clinic than a bank branch or a decent grocery store. Whether by design or not, it reveals a system or structure that disadvantages people of color in the most basic way possible, by depriving them of life. I can't say it any better than did former NFL star and human rights advocate Benjamin Watson: "Whether they personally identify with Sanger's ideology or not, they continue to carry out her mission, by serving as the leading executioner of our children. The same Sanger they claim to disavow would applaud their efforts and results, as a disproportionate percentage of Black children have been killed in Planned Parenthood's abortion clinics. Acknowledging a racist history does not absolve them of the blood on their hands, as they continue to take full advantage of victims of the racism they decry. Quite frankly, how much of a racist or eugenicist Sanger was or wasn't is of no real consequence right now as children die daily. The issue is that the profitability of abortion makes it a difficult cash cow to forgo. I urge Planned Parenthood to continue this 'reckoning,' not simply by calling out racism and combating white supremacy, but by using their wealth to meet the needs of mothers and their influence to halt, not perpetuate, the ultimate goal of a eugenic agenda, extermination of an undesirable's offspring." He's right. If Planned Parent

John and Shane field a question from a listener whose workplace is hostile to the Christian faith. Hear how John encourages the committed Christian to live not by lies. Another listener writes-in to ask for resources for the elders of his church. He is looking to help his church respond with truth and love to culture issues, helping the church leadership understand immediate social challenges. To close, John fields a critique on a BreakPoint commentary related to Jack Phillips. The listener seeks to help frame the issue without falling into traps set inside legal structures. John provides a response to help Christians respond without compromising on Biblical truth.

Today, on the ninth anniversary of his death, I want you to hear from Chuck Colson about his birth. His new birth, that is. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. This is BreakPoint. Chuck Colson was one of the great evangelical leaders of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. He had an enormous influence on so many different organizations, so many different Christians leaders, and, of course, so many individual people. I can't tell you how many times I meet someone who tells me, "Chuck Colson was my mentor," even if they had never met him. They then go on to identify a book that Colson had written or a talk that he had given at some particular event. One of the striking things about it is that when someone names a book, it's almost inevitably a different book each time. Make no mistake: Colson's influence came about because of how Jesus Christ had changed his life. He was an incredibly gifted person. You have to be incredibly gifted to find your place just down the hall from the most important man on the planet some time in your thirties. Yet, this giftedness accompanied by what he would often admit was his pride, led Colson to an incredible fall, one that was public and in front of the entire world. But, he came to Christ, and that changed the trajectory of his entire life. He founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, and he also founded the Colson Center. So, today, on the ninth anniversary of his passing, I want you to hear Chuck Colson describe his own conversion, as he did on a BreakPoint that was on the thirtieth anniversary of that conversion. Here's Chuck Colson: Thirty years ago today, I visited Tom Phillips, president of the Raytheon Company, at his home outside of Boston. I had represented Raytheon before going to the White House, and I was about to start again. But I visited him for another reason as well. I knew Tom had become a Christian, and he seemed so different. I wanted to ask him what had happened. That night he read to me from Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, particularly a chapter about the great sin that is pride. A proud man is always walking through life looking down on other people and other things, said Lewis. As a result, he cannot see something above himself immeasurably superior — God. Tom, that night, told me about encountering Christ in his own life. He didn't realize it, but I was in the depths of deep despair over Watergate, watching the President I had helped for four years flounder in office. I had also heard that I might become a target of the investigation as well. In short, my world was collapsing. That night, as Tom was telling me about Jesus, I listened attentively, but didn't let on about my need. When he offered to pray, I thanked him but said, no, I would see him sometime after I had read C. S. Lewis's book. But when I got in the car that night, I couldn't drive it out of the driveway. Ex-Marine captain, White House tough guy, I was crying too hard, calling out to God. I didn't know what to say; I just knew I needed Jesus, and He came into my life. That was thirty years ago. I've been reflecting of late on the things God has done over that time. As I think about my life, the beginning of the prison ministry, our work in the justice area, our international ministry that reaches one hundred countries, and the work of the Wilberforce Forum and BreakPoint, I have come to appreciate the doctrine of providence. It's not the world's idea of fate or luck, but the reality of God's divine intervention. He orchestrates the lives of His children to accomplish His good purposes. God has certainly ordered my steps. I couldn't have imagined when I was in prison that I would someday go back to the White House with ex-offenders as I did on June 18 — or that we would be running prisons that have an 8 percent recidivism rate — or that BreakPoint would be heard daily on a thousand radio outlets across the United States and on the Internet. The truth that is uppermost in my mind today is that God isn't finished. As long as we're alive, He's at work in our lives. We can live lives of obedience in any field because God providentially arranges the circumstances of our lives to achieve His objectives. And that leads to the greatest joy I've found in life. As I look back on my life, it's not having been to Buckingham Palace to receive the Templeton Prize, or getting honorary degrees, or writing books. The greatest joy is to see how God has used my life to touch the lives of others, people hurting and in need. It has been a long time since the dark days of Watergate. I'm still astounded that God would take someone who was infamous in the Watergate scandal, and soon to be a convicted felon, and take him into His family and then order his steps in the way He has with me. God touched me at that moment in Tom Phillip's driveway, and thirty years later, His love and kindness touch and astound me still.

The practice of foot binding, tightly wrapping the feet of young girls in order to reshape them and prevent them from growing too large, began sometime during the ninth or tenth century in China. Small feet on women were considered attractive in Han Chinese culture and, over time, the practice grew increasingly extreme. In fact, by the sixteenth century, the foot binding process broke the bones in young girls' feet. The goal was to produce "lotus feet," with the ideal feet being no longer than 4 inches. Women with "lotus feet" were able to only manage small steps and would sway as they walked, something considered alluring by Chinese men. By the end of the nineteenth century, foot binding was deeply embedded as a cultural norm. Nearly half of all women in China and almost all upper-class Han women had their feet bound. Though a painful, debilitating, and abusive practice, having "lotus feet" was essential to securing a good marriage. In the space of one generation, foot binding disappeared. The successful campaign against foot binding was jointly led by Western missionaries and native Chinese Christians. In 1875, John Macgowan, a Belfast-born missionary with the London Missionary Society, was a key figure, and called a meeting of Chinese Christian women to oppose foot binding. Nine of these women agreed to not bind their daughters' feet, to not allow their sons to marry women with bound feet, and to undergo the painful process of unbinding their own. This was the beginning of the Quit-Foot-Binding Society, the first anti-foot binding society in China. Macgowan also convinced Chinese intellectuals, including the Buddhist reformer Kang Youwei, to oppose foot binding. In 1885, Kang founded the Foot Emancipation Society. In 1898, he wrote a memorandum to the Emperor urging him to abolish foot binding, arguing that it made China an object of international ridicule. Other anti-foot binding societies developed rapidly, some who were part of Kang's movement and others led by or inspired by foreign and Chinese Christians. In the end, Chinese Christian women took the lead to end foot binding. For example, Shi Meiyu was the daughter of a Methodist pastor who refused to allow her own feet to be bound. As the first Chinese woman to receive a medical degree from an American University, she founded two hospitals in China and labored tirelessly to abolish foot binding. The campaigns to end foot binding were remarkably successful. In 1902, the Empress Dowager Cixi banned foot binding, though her edict was rescinded. Then, in 1912, the newly founded Republic of China issued a ban. By 1949, at the start of the Communist revolution, the practice had stopped completely in all but a few rural areas. Social scientists have learned crucial lessons from the success of these campaigns. For example, the missionaries that began the fight against foot binding did not try to lead the movement. Instead, they recruited and helped organize indigenous Chinese to lead the movement. Though not all of these indigenous leaders and participants in the campaign were Christians, many were. The movement effectively drew in non-Christian intellectual leaders like Kang Youwei by using arguments grounded in the understandable Chinese desire for respect from other nations. In Shanghai, Alicia Little recognized the importance of basing her work against foot binding on ideas that made sense to non-Christians, instead of simply appealing to her Christian faith. Of course, Christianity is true and therefore aligns with reality. Thus, Little was able to find appropriate prudential arguments in order to make her case. Another important lesson from these anti-foot binding movements is how essential it is to form institutions that can preserve and promote core ideals. The success of these campaigns was largely due to the organizations Macgregor and others founded. In fact, establishing institutions may have been the critical factor in this campaign's success, compared to the failures of earlier attempts to end the practice. And, of course, these campaigns point to something seen repeatedly throughout history. Christians bringing the Gospel to pagan societies have always – always – found themselves defending children from bad ideas and abusive cultural norms. In our pagan times, stopping the assault on children about their God-given sex is a calling. We'd do well to learn from the Christians in China who worked to end foot binding. Start by making the Promise to America's Children, pledging to protect the minds, bodies, and the most important relationships of the children in your life. Come to BreakPoint.org to learn more and to sign your name to this important promise.

John Stonestreet visits with Dr. Carl Trueman, a Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, Pa, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Faith and Freedom. Dr. Trueman's book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, has been called the most important book of the past decade and is the featured resource for the Colson Center this month. Make any gift to the Colson Center during the month of April and we'll send you a copy of Dr. Trueman's book. We invite you to listen to John's discussion with Carl Trueman as they talk about the Image of God, the theme of the 2021 Wilberforce Weekend. Dr. Trueman has a special perspective to share and we are excited to have him in our lineup for the conference.

Stop and think about this statement, "I'm a woman trapped in a man's body." How did a sentence like this become not just common, and not even just plausible, but unquestionable? Even more, how did it happen so fast? In his new book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, Grove City College professor Carl Trueman explains the answer as thoroughly and clearly as possible. According to Trueman, the transgender moment – along with its claims about sex, gender, and human identity – is just a symptom, or an expression, of a much deeper and older cultural revolution. If Christians are to have any hope of responding effectively and faithfully, it is essential to understand how that revolution took place. (Dr. Trueman is one of the featured speakers at next month's Wilberforce Weekend in Fort Worth, Texas. Recently, on a special Colson Center webinar, he offered a preview of what's in the book and what he'll be talking about in May.) Trueman's central point is crucial and unlocks virtually every one of our culture's most controversial and significant issues. The view of human identity that is now taken for granted is radically different from the view most people throughout history (not only Christians) have long held. In the Christian view of the human person, we are more than the stuff we're made of. We have a telos, a moral shape, a created purpose, a design. Just as a plane is made to fly, a book is made to be read, and a fish is made to swim, our purpose is to image and glorify God. If we hope to thrive as individuals and as a society, we must live in alignment with that design. Otherwise, we're fighting not just against God, but against our very natures. Sadly, that idea, which is fundamental to life itself – not to mention to a biblical worldview – would be considered "too deep" for many Christians and churches. In the book, Dr. Trueman describes how freshmen entering his classes usually know what the Bible teaches about sexual morality but have no idea why the Bible teaches it. So, when a gay friend asks why they shouldn't be able to marry someone of the same sex, or when a transgender relative claims a new name and demands new pronouns, these students are often at a loss to justify their convictions. For the record, my experience with students and, too often, their parents, educators, and even pastors is often identical. All contemporary Western people, to one degree or another, are unwitting disciples of an ideology that Trueman identifies as "expressive individualism." This view, which is as much caught as it is taught in our culture, declares human beings to be a kind of "living playdough." Not only can we mold and remake ourselves according to our feelings, but the highest purpose of our lives is to look within, determine an identity, and then express it to the world, while demanding that everyone comply. Of course, this also means that our highest duty to each other (after discovering and expressing our own identities) is to recognize and affirm their chosen identities, no matter how impossible or contrary to nature they may be. There is a reason that so many people, yours truly included, consider Dr. Trueman's book the essential explanation of our cultural moment. In astonishing detail, he traces the history of selfhood in Western culture up to the present moment and describes how the ideas of men like Rousseau, Freud, and others became the cultural water in which we all swim. Still, the best part of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is that it does more than describe what has gone wrong. Trueman helps prepare Christians to respond in grace and truth. You can get a copy of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self for a donation of any amount to the Colson Center this month. Just visit BreakPoint.org/April2021, to request a copy. Again, that's BreakPoint.org/April2021. Also, please join me, Dr. Carl Trueman, and others at the Wilberforce Weekend conference next month in Fort Worth. The focus of the event is understanding and applying, from a variety of angles, who we are as made in the image and likeness of God. The imago Dei is an essential doctrine in the Scriptures, and central to our cultural witness. For more information, go to WilberforceWeekend.org.

John and Maria discuss the fatal shooting of Dante Wright in Minneapolis. Maria shares how a compassionate response is effective to step forward in love as a community. Maria then introduces a new take on the saga in transgender athletes in collegiate athletics. New actions by the NCAA are putting states in a challenging position to say what isn't true and redesign women's athletics. John and Maria close the program reflecting on the Supreme Court's decision regarding a case out California. Pastor Jeremy Wong and California resident Karen Busch sued the state after being barred from holding Bible studies and prayer meetings in their home. The court upheld lower court rulings, allowing the pair to continue prayer meetings, in a 5-4 decision by the High Court.

Who's your favorite poet? Do you even have a favorite poet? Even before COVID, when did you last attend a concert or visit an art museum? When did you last draw a picture, or photograph something beautiful, or write a song, or cook a fancy dinner, or just make something? Enjoying, engaging in, reflecting on, and creating art is a profoundly divine activity. God is, as theologian T. M. Moore puts it, "the Great Artist." His universe was made with "such wonder, diversity, order, color, sound, dimension, scope and harmony that He could confidently pronounce Himself pleased with what He had made." Made in His image, humans are also creators. Artistic creativity is, in fact, an integral and distinguishing capability of being human. The works of our imaginations and of our hands have the potential to reflect the very nature, purpose, and character of God in the world. Not only that, but as the folks at Engage Art explain, art is one way that Christians can cultivate a culture of community: "All of the individual artworks being made by filmmakers, musicians, potters, and all the rest; all the museum collections and comic books; all the dance crazes, songs, poems, etc.—they all get mashed together to create the culture we all get to live in." For the last few years, Engage Art has sought to cultivate, celebrate, and reward artistic creativity by inviting artists of all ages and backgrounds to submit original music, short films, drawings, paintings, photographs, and more. Winners of the Engage Art contest in each category receive cash prizes and have their works displayed with the performing and visual arts at the EngageArt.org. (Submissions to the contest are made through the Engage Art app, which can be found on the website or at the Apple and Android app stores.) The contest is itself an artistic creation of longtime art appreciators and philanthropists Bill and Linda Bantz. They have structured this contest not only to encourage human creativity, but to increase engagement with Scripture. The whole approach reflects an important belief – that a new generation of artists can find inspiration in the Bible's rich and accurate description of reality, just as so many great artists have throughout history. The theme of this year's contest, open as of April 15th, is based on Ephesians 6:10-20, which is often called the "Spiritual Battle" passage. Thus, submissions are encouraged which "discuss the broad and evergreen theme of good vs. evil, as well as the idea that unseen forces have an impact on our world." As Paul explains in that passage, we battle "not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." All the information and requirements for submitting a work for the 2021 Engage Art contest can be found at the website EnageArt.org. There's also a gallery of past contest entries, including paintings, illustrations, sculptures, films, and music videos. Years ago, Chuck Colson said, "For the Christian, the arts are an important way to understand God and His creation. In a post-Christian culture, those who blend artistic gifts with Christian faith can help lead us back to a biblical worldview. That is why the Church should encourage them." I encourage you to share your own artistic talents with the world. Enter the Engage Art contest, and please, tell any Christian creative you know about this opportunity. Details can be found at EngageArt.org, or come to BreakPoint.org for a link.

One of the most important effects of embracing a deliberate, self-conscious Christian worldview, as well as losing the sacred-secular distinction too many Christians have absorbed from the world around us, is seeing the depth, the breadth, and the width of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every sphere of life. Once we see life this way, our vision of serving Jesus is radically re-shaped in light of the unassailable, undefeatable, and advancing Kingdom of God. Once Chuck Colson embraced this vision of the Christian life, he poured it into every single BreakPoint commentary. Each and every day, in every speech, in every book, and in every visit to every prison he ever took, he was eager to help Christians think clearly about cultural issues and trends from a Christian worldview. During the last decade of his life, Colson decided that the best way he could advance this vision would be replication. That is why he invited Christians to study with him through what is now called the Colson Fellows Program. Inviting Christians to take a deep dive into Christian worldview over a ten-month course of study, trained and mentored by top Christian authors and thinkers. He saw class after class of Christians become the kind of culture-shaping leaders who could look at the world around them, think clearly about it, effectively analyze, critique, and discern what was happening in the world and champion the Kingdom of God in whatever time and place God had called them to. What makes the Colson Fellows Program so different and so vital is that it is not just an exercise in learning new things, as important as that is. Commissioned Colson Fellows are, well, commissioned. Because the training includes a teaching project, a three-year planning process, and self-inventory on who God has made Fellows to be, they are able to apply a Christian worldview in real-world, practical ways. Here's how the program works: Colson Fellows-in-Training learn how to articulate and defend biblical truth in the marketplace of ideas through intensive instruction on worldview and cultural analysis. They read both Christian classics and the best contemporary writers, many of whom they interact with on twice-monthly webinars. Colson Center faculty includes folks such as Os Guinness, Joni Eareckson Tada, Dr. Glenn Sunshine, J. Warner Wallace, Jennifer Marshall, and Scott Klusendorf. What may be the best part is that Colson Fellows study together, in community, in one of our 55 Regional Cohorts around the country, a time-zone specific Online Cohort or one of five International Cohorts. So, we have doctors and business professionals learning alongside of academics and lawyers, who are also learning alongside homeschool moms and everyday Christians who are passionate about living faithfully in this cultural moment. The cross-pollination of applied faith is rich, indeed. Those who complete the program join a network of more than 2,000 commissioned Colson Fellows, who have studied with us and are living out a deeper faith in a broken world. This network includes people like pastors and religious freedom attorneys, educators, college presidents, entrepreneurs – you name it. Colson Fellows Program Director S. Michael Craven likes to say that as people study with the Colson Fellows, many have this moment of "conversion." Serious-minded Christians who have been walking with the Lord for many years discover more clearly, some for the first time, that they are a part of a much larger story—one that certainly includes but goes beyond our personal salvation in Jesus Christ. Christians often say, "I've invited Jesus into my life," but the reality is that Jesus is inviting us into His life. His purpose. His restoring work in the world He created. To this life, His Life, we are invited to join Him in the work of making all things new. If you are stirred in heart and mind for this kind of faith, this kind of life, come to ColsonFellows.org to learn more. We respond to all inquiries and are happy to answer any questions you may have. We're accepting applications now for next year's class of Colson Fellows.

John Stonestreet is joined by Dr. Bill Brown, Dean of the Colson Fellows program that equips attendees with Christian worldview and a ministry plan to reach their communities. Dr. Brown brings questions from the Colson Fellows class of 2021, along with a few questions we've received at the Colson Center related to neighborliness.

In the 1992 dystopian novel, The Children of Men, P. D. James tells the story of a world where no child has been born in 26 years. It's a world without hope or purpose. Mass suicide of the elderly is common, and the not-yet-elderly are urged to watch pornography in vain hopes of stimulating libidos and reproduction. Mind you, the story is set in, that's right, 2021. In the book, male sperm counts collapsed in 1994 — called "Year Omega" in the novel — with the last children being born in 1995. While James' story is fiction, in the real 2021, life may be imitating art – male sperm counts around the world are in decline and, by one estimate, a real "Year Omega" could arrive in 2045. According to a new book by Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, between 1973 and 2011 sperm counts in Western males dropped by 59 percent. In the ten years since then, things have gotten worse. As Swan writes, "If you look at the curve on sperm count and project it forward — which is always risky — it reaches zero in 2045 . . . That's a little concerning, to say the least." The decline in male sperm counts coincides with a precipitous decline in fertility rates, not only in the West but increasingly in the developing world, too. Half of the world's countries have fertility rates below replacement level. By 2050 two-thirds of the world's countries are expected to have fertility rates below replacement level. The obvious questions are, one, what role do declining sperm counts are playing in this fertility drop? And two, what's behind the declining sperm counts? Swan acknowledges that nonbiological factors, such as "contraception, cultural shifts and the cost of having children are likely" to have contributed to declining birth rates. But she insists that there is ample evidence for biological reasons, as well. Besides the decline in birth rates, she points to things such as "increasing miscarriage rates, more genital abnormalities among boys and earlier puberty for girls." As for the cause in declining sperm counts, Swan and others single out "endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment, including phthalates and bisphenol-A" better known as BPA. These chemicals are found in "plastics, pesticides, cosmetics and even ATM receipts." In addition to the environmental factors, there are lifestyle factors, such as tobacco and marijuana use, and obesity that might also be affecting sperm counts. Regardless of what's causing lower sperm counts, the drop is real. Throw in cultural attitudes towards marriage and childrearing, and the trend is indeed "concerning." While it's difficult to imagine a Children of Men-like scenario, we are already seeing the effects of the decline in fertility around the world: aging populations, a shortage of working-age adults, and 70 million men in China and India without a reasonable prospect of getting married. Between our treatment of the environment and our cultural attitudes and practices, it is almost as if we are following the recommendations of an "extinction consultant." If we asked this consultant the best way to disregard and even rebel against God's command to "be fruitful and multiply," his answer would likely have resembled what we are currently doing. We can do something, of course, about the chemicals Swan and others point to as being factors in the declining sperm rate. That, at best, would only slow the trajectory of our demographic demise. There are cultural factors that are far more important and would remain untouched. Not to mention, for many people, especially in the West, the answer to every environmental and social problem from climate change to poverty is "fewer people." That makes the Guardian's headline about Swan's book so ironic: "Falling sperm counts 'threaten human survival,' expert warns." Given the Guardian's track record, and that of similar publications, you would expect them be cheering for our possible extinction, or at the very least to look on the bright side: "At least the polar bears will be OK." The only way forward is somehow reversing the anti-human and anti-natalist worldview that is driving us towards a demographic crisis. In James' 1992 novel, hope takes the form of a miraculous birth and a baptism. That's a pretty good summary of what hope could look like or us in 2021. Certainly, it will require a lot more than banning chemicals from water bottles. It will require from us, including those of us in the Church, what the New Testament calls metanoia, a change of mind that results in a transformed way of life.

In 1996 American political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote a book called The Clash of Civilizations. In it, he proposed a remarkable thesis, that while in the past, especially in the 20th century, global conflicts had been primarily between nations, countries, and kingdoms, in the future, especially in the 21st century, global conflicts would increasingly be between not nation-states but between cultures, between civilizations. These cultural fault lines, as he called them, sometimes existed within a country or existed across regions. It didn't take very long within the 21st Century to prove his theory correct. In fact, in The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington went on to predict that the hottest of these conflicts would be between religious and non-religious cultures, specifically, that what you might call the hottest of the hot would be between Islam and the West. In the time since 9/11, his predictions have largely played out. But there has been another story dealing with Islam that has played out at almost the same time. In fact, just over the last three decades or so, we have seen a remarkable number of Muslims coming to Christ. Individuals from the Islamic world are reporting conversions – sometimes through dreams, sometimes through missions, sometimes through other means. Regardless of the means, it has been what one missiologist called a remarkable movement of the Holy Spirit. The reports are so numerous, in fact, that a foundation recruited a friend of mine, a scholar named Dr. David Garrison, to investigate. They sent him for several months to visit various corners of the Muslim world and to figure out where these stories were coming from. They wanted to know how legitimate these reports were. Garrison put together his findings in a book called A Wind in the House of Islam. You see in the whole history of the Islamic faith, there have been few reports of large movements of Muslims becoming Christians – very few in fact. But about 80 percent of all the movements recorded in history of large groups of Muslims becoming Christians have taken place in just the last three decades. There's something else that's taken place over the last three decades: Each and every year for the last 28 years, during the season of Ramadan, the most holy period in the Islamic calendar, a group of Christians led by a prayer guide, have together prayed for Christ to draw Muslims to Himself. Ramadan is a very good time to keep our Muslim neighbors and Muslims around the world and prayer. Since 1993 to be precise, the "30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World" prayer guide has been equipping Christians to pray for Muslims during this season of Ramadan. It is an international movement that calls on, "The church to make a deliberate but respectful effort to learn about, to pray for, and to reach out to our world's Muslim neighbors." There is even a "30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World Prayer Guide" for kids which I have used with my own family. The "30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World" is available both in a print booklet and as a digital download. You can find it by going to 30DaysPrayer.com. Or come to BreakPoint.org, and we'll tell you how to pick up a copy. James tells us that the effectual prayer of a righteous man avails much. This has been a movement of prayer of hundreds of thousands of Christians for decades. Let's be a part of it.

John Stonestreet visits with Alisa Childers, author of Another Gospel: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity. Alisa is a featured speaker at the upcoming Wilberforce Weekend, May 21-23 in Fort Worth, Tx. Alisa shares how progressive Christianity is working to steal the image of God, providing context for her upcoming presentation at the Wilberforce Weekend. For more information on the Wilberforce Weekend, including a drawing where you could win tickets, hotels, and flights to the conference, visit www.wilberforceweekend.com

Back in January, at meeting held at the Royal Society in London, a team of scientists and investors announced the largest prize ever offered to solve a scientific mystery. Organized by engineer and business consultant Perry Marshall, the whopping prize of $10 million (ten times the Nobel Prize payout) will be given to any person or team who can "arrange for a digital communication system to emerge or self-evolve without…explicitly designing the system." The point of the contest is to learn where genetic code came from, and how it became the basis for all life. The winning experiment, according to their website, "must generate an encoder that sends digital code to a decoder," and transmit at least five bits of information, or roughly half as much as a comparable segment of DNA. In other words, to claim the prize, you must bring into existence the functional equivalent of the first living cell, without intelligently designing the system. Judges include Oxford and Royal Society biologist Denis Noble, Harvard Geneticist George Church, and philosopher of science Michael Ruse. According to Noble, a scientist whose work led to the first pacemaker, the prize is so big, because evolution "leaves two things completely unexplained: How did life get going in the first place, and what is the origin of the genetic code." With surprising honesty, he continued: "I cannot see personally how DNA could have been there at the beginning. After all, it requires the cell to enable it and to reproduce, and it requires the cell also to correct errors in that reproduction and replication process." Perry Marshall explained why he organized the prize by recalling a debate about the origin of life he once had with his brother. Sons of a pastor, Marshall offered a standard argument from design, but his brother retorted that natural processes were sufficient to explain all of life's complexity. Marshall wasn't convinced. As he was writing what would later become his bestselling book on computer networks, he realized that "mathematically [DNA and ethernet] are identical. It's encoding and decoding. It is a communication system…Genetics is digital communication." Intelligent design theorists have been making this point for decades. From a variety of angles, authors such as Michael Behe, William Dembski, and Steven Meyer have argued that information, like what is stored and communicated in DNA, has only one known source – an intelligent agent. To produce a system like DNA through unguided processes would not only be to do something that's never been done; it would be to do something never before observed in the history of science. But, it gets even worse of those hoping to snag that $10 million. As Dr. Noble reminded press and colleagues, DNA requires a cell to function…and cells, as far as we know, require DNA. To get one, you need the other. In other words, to win the money, competitors must not only put together the equivalent of functioning genetic code "without cheating," they have to create the molecular machines that use, replicate, and edit that code. How difficult is it to produce a living cell from scratch? A while back, my colleague Shane Morris asked synthetic-organic chemist James Tour this very question on the BreakPoint Podcast. Dr. Tour replied that anyone who claims we're close to building a cell, even in the most ideal of circumstances, "has no idea what they're talking about." In fact, he said, "ask them for details, and you see them start to sweat." The bottom line? The origin of life and of the information that makes it possible remain the most significant challenge to a naturalistic worldview. The only plausible explanation for how these incredible systems came into being is intelligent design, precisely what those competing for this prize are forbidden from using. Don't get me wrong. $10 million is a lot of money. But, it's still not enough to make the impossible possible.

John Stonestreet and Maria Baer discuss the ramifications of Major League Baseball moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta as a result of Georgia's new voting law. How do Christians respond when corporate activism falls for a non-factual narrative? And how is it that politics has overtaken every sphere of public life? They also tackle Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison's surprising veto of legislation that would ban transgender surgery and hormone treatment for minors (the veto was immediately overridden)--and just how detached from reality our language over biology, sex, and gender has become. John and Maria wrap up this week's episode discussing how it is that Gallup has found that--for the first time--fewer than half of Americans are members of a church. Is this a failure of the Church? The result of what John calls "an anemic ecclesiology?" As for their recommendations of the week: "The Chosen" TV series and, for young people, the Impact 360 Institute and Summit Ministries.

It's easy to think that the story of the last several decades, at least as it comes to Christianity and society, is the story of moral shifting. In other words, things that were once considered wrong are now considered right, and things that were once considered right are now considered wrong. That certainly explains an awful lot, and certainly there have been moral shifts in Western society. However, that's not enough to explain everything. More accurately, maybe we should say that the moral shifts that we see, which are obvious and which have indeed happened, are the fruit of the issue, not the root. They are the effect, not the cause. The deepest and more fundamental shifts that have taken place in Western culture over the last several decades have not been in our definition of what's right and what's wrong. They've been in our definition of reality itself, specifically our understanding of what it means to be human. Starting with that framework, we can answer some questions that for many of us seemed to be nearly unanswerable. What's wrong? It's been in our definition of reality itself, specifically our understanding of what it means to be human. Maybe you find yourself in the same cultural boat as Carl Trueman: a little dizzy, like so many of us, about how quickly things went from unthinkable to unquestionable. It is one thing for someone to say something like, "I am a woman trapped in a man's body." Certainly, throughout history, there have been people that have thought that sort of thing, and maybe even said that sort of thing out loud. The difference, as Trueman puts it, between those times and today is that that statement has now come to be regarded as coherent and meaningful. There is an essential question for Christians to answer. If we are to frame our worldview without being pulled here-and-there by the various deceptions of our culture while also having a strong enough cultural witness that is big enough for the questions of the challenges of this time in human history, then answering this question must involve a deep dive into the issue of the image of God. In other words, the Christian view of what it means to be human. That is why we are going to be spending an entire conference in May on that question at the Wilberforce Weekend in Fort Worth. If we want to understand the degree to which our culture is lost, if we wish to see how far our society has strayed from the truth, and if we wish to understand where they are and go to them with the answers to the questions that they have, then we need to understand this shift. Where did it come from? How did we change our minds? Not just about what is right and wrong and not only even questions about whether there is a God or not. How did we change our minds on what it means to be human? That is what this remarkable book by Carl Trueman offers: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Consider the subtitle: "Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism and the Road to Sexual Revolution." The sexual revolution has gone so far – further than even its original progenitors could have ever imagined – and at the root of that is an idea that Trueman rightly defines and identifies as expressive individualism. In other words, when who we are as human persons is completely disconnected from any design and from any creator, then the only thing there is left to us is whatever I express about myself. With this framework, when anything – whether it's religious, moral, or social norms or even laws and public policies – gets in the way of me being whatever it is that I say or that I want to be, it is here that the greatest oppression, the greatest discrimination, comes. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is a must-read book. My friend Bruce Ashford, a remarkable scholar in Christian worldview and theology, calls this book the most significant analysis and evaluation of Western culture written by a Protestant during the last 50 years. That is some serious praise. Rod Dreher calls this without question one of the most important religious books of the decade, saying, "Carl Trueman explains modernity to the Church with depth, clarity, and force. The significance of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is hard to overestimate." I think this book is absolutely essential reading for any Christian who wants to make sense of this cultural moment and do it in such a way that they know better how to take their faith into the public square. As we have said so many times over the last couple weeks, our understanding of the image of God is central to a Christian worldview, and it is crucial for our cultural witness. More than that, it is the pivotal place where our faith collides with Western culture because of expressive individualism. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is the featured resource for the Colson Center this month. For a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, I will send you a copy of this book, and, trust me, you will not be sorry to get the depth of

The most recent incarnation of the Equality Act is also the most radical version we have yet seen. It's also worth noting that it's closer to becoming law than any version so far put forward. As a friend of mine would say, this isn't magic; it's math. This Congressional term, the Equality Act passed the House of Representatives. Though unlikely at this point, a 50-50 tie in the Senate broken by a Democratic White House is feasible, making the Equality Act a live option. Last year, it simply wasn't. Who knows what the next round of midterms will do to these numbers? In light of the very real threat posed by the Equality Act, a number of Christians have offered compromise solutions, most notably the Fairness for All Act. FFA would carves out exemptions for churches and certain religious organizations, though it's unclear which ones, but it would not protect the religious freedoms of private Christian citizens who are medical professionals, business owners, bakers, florists, photographers, and so on. These attempts to preserve legislatively whatever religious freedoms we can, while well-intentioned, are actually premature attempts at deal-making. Tactically unwise, compromise solutions will almost certainly make things more difficult in the future. Rather than carving out a place for Christians in an increasingly hostile culture, this appeasement shrinks the space available to believers, both now and in the future. Even so, political gamesmanship is only part of the problem with compromise solutions such as Fairness for All. In fact, there are at least three reasons not only to oppose just the Equality Act but all attempts to compromise in its direction. First, the Equality Act, even in a compromised form, says what is not true about the human person. Specifically, the Equality Act suggests that when it comes to human beings, questions of sexual and gender identity are equivalent to categories race and ethnicity. In other words, something largely determined by behavioral choice and personal expression is treated as an essential characteristic of a person. (Though in the past, LGB advocates may have used the "born this way" argument to explain sexual identity, that argument does not serve the new letter, T, in the acronym. Therefore, it has been largely abandoned). Attempts to compromise with the Equality Act not only affirm this same, false way of thinking about who we are for everyone else but "us," it relegates Christian belief in this area to subjective personal opinion. Second, by hijacking the history and categories of the Civil Rights movement, the Equality Act says things that are not true about the plight of those who are LGBT. The Civil Rights Act ensured that African Americans could participate in civil society, when at times they could not. Decades ago, for example, an African American family could not take a cross country trip since so many hotels, gas stations, and restaurants refused service. Effectively, an entire segment of the population was excluded from society. This is not the case for LGBT people. When Jack Philips refused to bake a cake celebrating a "same-sex marriage" (in a state that, at the time, didn't even recognize "same-sex marriage") dozens of bakeries nearby would have gladly taken the business. To compare the refusal to participate in a same-sex marriage or a "gender affirming" surgery with the Jim Crow South is obviously false, given the wide availability of services in any of these arenas. In fact, this reveals the Equality Act for what it is: an attempt to force citizens to comply with the government's point of view. Which brings up the third way in which attempts to compromise with the Equality Act fail. Compromise solutions wish to protect ministers and Christian institutions from being forced to comply with the government's point of view. Everyone else is left fully unprotected. While advocates of compromise might say we should secure whatever protections we can, we ought not stand for anything short of the full dignity and full rights every human possesses to continue holding and living from their deeply held convictions. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote decades ago, we don't have to join every protest or hold every sign. However, at the very least, we must not say what is not true. Thus, even for a good cause, we cannot lend voices in support of our culture's falsehoods about what it means to be human. And, we should tell our religious and political leaders not to, either.

John and Shane deal with a series of questions related to the image of God. John has referred to our inability to articulate the image of God as a debilitating oversight. The first question looks at the issue of immigration and what a Christian perspective of immigration should be. John and Shane then field a question seeking understanding in how we continue to bear God's image, even though we are sinners. To close, John and Shane work through a question on the presence of evil in God's good creation.

I have a hunch that if I went from one church to another, or one Christian school to another, or one Bible study to another, and I stood in front and challenged these followers of Christ, saying, "Fill in the blank. The Bible says that humans are made . . . ," my guess is that I'd get a pretty solid answer: "In the image of God!" However, if we followed up that question with another one, asking, "What is the image of God? What difference does the image of God make?" I think the response would be far more crickets than clarity. Our lack of understanding and our inability to articulate what the image of God means, and what difference this doctrine makes, is an incredibly debilitating oversight in the Church right now, and this for at least three reasons. First, the image of God is essential to understanding the story of Scripture. Today when we talk about identity in churches and especially youth group Bible studies and things like that, we use this phrase, "identity in Christ." But to fully understand what identity in Christ is, we need to understand our identity in creation. Many people have rightly summarized the biblical story in four chapters: Creation (how God made the world); Fall (what went wrong with the world); Redemption (the work of Christ to redeem what God made); and Restoration (when all things will be made new again). Before we were Christians, we were made in the image and likeness of God. The Fall impacted not only our behavior and what we do, but who we are. That's what Christ restores in His death and resurrection. In other words, we're not saved from being human, were saved to be human. The image of God is essential to understanding the notions of human equality, human dignity, and human value. We all know that the Declaration of Independence says that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Well, if you look around a room full of people, the most evident thing is not that we're equal. The most evident thing is that we're actually quite different. If there's anything about our humanity that grounds equality and dignity and value, it can't be any quality that we share on the outside, because, well, there is no quality that we all share on the outside. Some of us are older. Some of us are taller. Some of us have higher IQ's. And so on. Even atheist thinkers have recognized that the only source in history that's grounded equality, dignity, and value and given us an understanding of a shared humanity is the image of God. Not only is the image of God essential to understanding the story of Scripture and essential to grounding notions of human equality, dignity, and value, but the image of God is essential to our cultural witness right now. That's why we're going to focus our attention at the upcoming Wilberforce Weekend Conference, May 21st through the 23rd in Fort Worth, Texas, on this one doctrine of the image of God. From a dizzying variety of angles, we will look at this cultural question and this biblical question, "What does it mean to be human?" And we will bring a level of clarity so that we can have confidence for this cultural moment. To learn more about the conference, go to WilberforceWeekend.org. I cannot think of a more important question for Christians to lock in on right now, than the idea that every single person is made in the image and likeness of God. Again, go to WilberforceWeekend.org to learn more about this incredible event in Fort Worth, May 21st through 23rd.