Breakpoint

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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