Breakpoint

Our information-saturated world runs on news headlines, one after another, all calling us to shock or outrage. It's tempting to simply want to turn off the noise. It's almost like the world is constantly coming into our clean rooms and dumping a new pile of dirty laundry for us to deal with. So, we just shut the door in order to stop the madness. For Christians, simply closing our eyes and plugging our ears is not an option. We may choose silence or a sort of media fast for a while, but God has not called us to this time and place in history to disconnect from it. At the same time, we need to discern between what is noisy and what ultimately matters. All of the breathless headlines and news stories can distract us from the most critical issues we face. Christians believe that the specific stories of our culture don't ultimately reveal "what" we should care about, but they are the "when" and "where," the context where God has called us to live out our faith. Another way to put this is that this cultural moment is the stage of the play, not the plot. It's the moment, but not the story. The news is where we see ideas and their consequences expressed, both good and bad. It's where the philosophies that were born in ivory towers meet the reality of people's lives, dreams, and decisions. Confusing the noise and chaos of the headlines with the Story of the world is the most common way Christians stray. As Christians in this part of the story, it's essential to trust the Divine Script Writer. God hasn't called us to success as we see it in this moment, but he has called us to faithfully play out our part of the story. Like any great play, the actors can forget their role or lose their place in the storyline and miss their entrance or line. Thank God, our Director is as good as it gets. This year, the Colson Center is partnering with Focus on the Family to produce a series of events to offer Christians a deeper level of understanding about the issues that matter most in this time and place. This special speaker series will focus on some of the most confusing and controversial parts of our story right now, specifically at the intersection of family and culture. The series will be presented in three parts this spring and three parts this fall and will feature a who's who of thought leaders addressing areas where we need to refocus our attention on the roles and responsibilities we have as Christians in our community contexts. The series starts tonight, with Dr. Anthony Bradley of the King's College. He will address the very important issue of how we are failing young men. The tyranny of low expectations, soft relationships, absent fathers… ours is a culture failing to transition boys to men. In March, Katy Faust of Them Before Us will address the various ways that children's rights are being sacrificed for adult desire. I hope you'll join the Colson Center and Focus on the Family for this special series called "Lighthouse Voices." To register for the livestream, visit www.colsoncenter.org/events.

During an online school board call last month, Ontario teacher Carolyn Burjoski raised concerns over the literature given to K-6th graders. One particular novel, she argued, made it seem "simple and cool" to have a gender transition surgery. Mid-call, the Regional School Board chair Scott Piatkowski interrupted, and the board voted 5-4 to discontinue her presentation. "This person was speaking about transgender people in a way that was disrespectful, that would cause them to be attacked and I really needed to ensure it did not continue," Piatkowski later claimed. Under Canada's human rights code, gender expression is a protected status in housing, employment, unions, and trade or professional associations. Burjoski was given a "stay at home order," and told to refrain from speaking to staff or students. This kind of story is why Christians need to think through a theology of getting fired. In the short run, speaking the truth might cost us. But if we really love our neighbor, we'll find a way to do it—gently and graciously—but with courage.

What if the church became the new go-to source for singles to find a date, instead of an app? For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. This is BreakPoint. Years ago, would-be couples met at a dance, at church potlucks, or around a friend's dinner table. Even further back, due to the gender imbalance in Roman society because of selective infanticide, many young men found their spouses at church. Today, many singles (including Christian singles) search for a relationship online, scouring profiles in dating apps, debating whether to swipe right, swipe left, or just give up. Dating apps have re-conditioned how singles think about dating and relationships. Long gone are the times when a single young man walked into a community, noticed a young lady, and was forced to overcome his nerves to take a risk. On one hand, many dating apps have taken the first impression beyond appearances to other important relational factors such as interests, hobbies, and shared views on essential issues. On the other hand, apps enable relationships to be even further isolated from real community. That's often not healthy. It may also be that apps are another way our lives are being disembodied. Recent studies reveal that many young people are "explori-dating," interacting with someone from a different country, background, or faith, ditching these leading indicators of long-term relational stability in order to just explore. Some are now "hesidating," a term coined by the online dating site Plenty of Fish to describe mostly single females who struggle to choose whether to date seriously or casually because of how uncertain life feels. Tonight, in fact, many young people will choose to celebrate "Gal-entine's" or "Pal-entine's" Day instead of Valentine's Day, an indication of how difficult it is for so many to date and commit. And of course, there's the uglier side of dating apps: a world of sexting, secret connections, ghosting, and targeting. Online anonymity can lead singles to go farther than they wanted to, stay longer than they intended, and pay more than they were hoping. To be clear, dating apps have diversified and improved. Many young people find love online , and enter long-term committed relationships culminating in marriage. In one sense, apps now fill the significant relational gaps in our changing culture. Some suggest that given how difficult it is to date these days, apps have changed things in "positive ways." Helen Fischer, an anthropologist who's studied dating trends for over forty years, and is a scientific adviser to one of the largest dating apps, believes these opportunities create "historic turnarounds with singles. They are looking for committed relationships." What if the church has a role to play in creating contexts for relational connections, even romantic ones? What if the current relationship dearth being filled by apps could be filled by Christian matchmaking communities instead? Since it is Valentine's Day, it's worth reflecting on the day's namesake. Valentinus of Rome was a 3rd-century martyr, and though the specifics around his life are somewhat cloudy, the most widely accepted version of his martyrdom is that he ran afoul of emperor Claudius II for encouraging romantic love and marriage in his community. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families. So, he banned it. But Valentinus believed marriage was an essential part of human life, or like we say around the Colson Center, like gravity. So, he reportedly married couples in secret despite the edict from Rome and was caught and executed for his deeds. Today, to follow Valentinus' example by creating contexts for singles to meet, within a larger healthy community, is to offer the world something it needs but doesn't have. To celebrate marriage not just in word but indeed is to declare that committed romantic relationships are possible and good. To place these relationships, as the Christian worldview does, in the larger context of our God-given identity and purpose is to point young people to love for the good of others, as opposed to love as mere self-expression. As C.S. Lewis outlined in The Four Loves, a Christian view of passionate love, "eros," differs from mere sentimentality or sexual desire. Eros, when rightly ordered, causes us to toss "personal happiness aside as a triviality and [plant] the interests of another in the center of our being." Where else will young adults hear that definition of love? The Church has much to offer a lonely world on Valentine's Day and the rest of the year. The Church, of course, is to be a people that cultivate a community together. It may be that we should become a bit more intentional about cultivating marriages too.

Given the mounting tension at the Russian-Ukrainian border, Maria and John discuss insights on how Christians should think through Russia's preparation for conflict. A recent New York Times highlighted a phenomenon known as "Birds Aren't Real," leading to Maria and John commenting on the state of young adults in America. To close, John recommends the new series the Colson Center is conducting with Focus on the Family: Lighthouse Voices. -- Resources -- From Peter the Great to Putin the Bully — A Briefing on the Ukraine Crisis and the Russian Threat: History, Empire, Kiev, Moscow, Religion and Worldview The Briefing>> A Movement to Fight Misinformation…With Misinformation Birds Aren't Real, a conspiracy theory with an apparently absurd premise, has become surprisingly popular in the past few years. But its followers were in on the joke: The movement's aim was to poke fun at misinformation … by creating misinformation. Has it been successful? NY Times>> Our Christian Witness Since the contentious 2016 election, many have publicly questioned whether evangelical support for Donald Trump "hurts the Church's witness." Others assert that to vote for anyone but Donald Trump warrants excommunication. Over the last two years of the pandemic and all its associated controversies, some have confidently proclaimed that if Christians choose to not wear a mask or not be fully vaccinated they've harmed the cause of Christ. Others announced that to wear a mask or be vaccinated is to compromise the cause of Christ. BreakPoint>> -- Recommendations -- Lighthouse Voices Series - Colson Center and Focus on the Family>> Pandemic Board Game>>

An Atlantic reporter who visited last month's March for Life in Washington, D.C., painted an encouraging picture: This year's march was full of teenagers. "Liberals might not know just how young the March for Life crowd tends to be," the reporter wrote, describing groups of high schoolers and college students who'd come from several states away to march in the freezing cold. Statistics routinely show that younger people are the most pro-abortion demographic in the country. If that's true, the youthful March for Life crowd is especially encouraging: Young pro-lifers might be the minority, but they're more mobilized, more willing to face the cold and the criticism, and they're less quiet. In fact, the Atlantic reporter wasn't surprised only by the age of the marchers; she also called the atmosphere hopeful. Kids are good at hope. It's good to know there's a generation coming up with the energy to take on the cultural challenge of a post-Roe United States.

Before the Glasgow climate summit in November, British ecologist and futurist James Lovelock wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, entitled "Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth." "Gaia" is the ancient Greek goddess who personified Earth, and the theory behind it is one Lovelock pioneered in the 1970s. The idea is that Earth is a single complex organism with its vast amounts of life striving to balance and correct its ecology, sort of like a huge immune system. From that worldview foundation, Lovelock offers this extreme conclusion: "Covid-19 may well have been one attempt by the Earth to protect itself." He means, of course, that the earth was attempting to protect itself from humans. If people continue to egg on the planet he warns, "Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier." It's not clear whether Lovelock means for his theory to be taken literally or metaphorically. On one hand, this could be the musings of a materialist, talking in a colorful way about "natural systems." On the other hand, Gaia theory is the kind of belief a generation of spiritually hungry climate activists are tempted to latch onto. Gaia theory taps is one expression of an emerging spiritual trend among Americans. In recent years, number of people claiming to practice witchcraft in the U.S. has increased dramatically, as have the number of young Americans interested in astrology. The line between secular materialism and new age panpsychism is surprisingly thin these days. Just take "New Atheist" Sam Harris, who despite being an avowed materialist, advocates strongly for meditation to achieve "transcendence" and push past what he calls the "illusion of self." Beliefs like Gaia attempt to explain the improbability, complexity, and intentionality of our universe, something old-school Darwinism has always struggled with. They provide an avenue for spiritual feelings without demanding any significant responsibility or change in return. They can also serve—as Gaia theory clearly has for James Lovelock—as a sort of ideological battering ram, to help convince those who would otherwise oppose a certain ecological agenda. But beliefs within the Gaia ecosystem (pun intended) all have something in common: They're user-generated. Unlike organized religion, Gaianism (the name for the spiritual version of Gaia Theory) can essentially conform to any number of beliefs of the person holding it. It's not subject to any kind of empirical test or source of divine revelation. It doesn't require a lot of specificity as to what exactly believing it entails. For that reason, it not only buckles under close scrutiny, it evades scrutiny altogether. That's a red flag. First, because, short of just claiming it, there's no way to verify whether or not a belief like Gaianism is true or real. No tree, rock, or koala bear has ever said a word to me about Mother Earth's existence. In fact, outside of people attributing personality to nature, there's absolutely no way to prove that Covid-19 is the Earth's angry way of punishing us. But therein lies the huge conundrum for Gaianism: It doesn't know what to do with humanity. Are we a part of nature, a plague of nature, or something else entirely? If people are just another part of the system, then who's to say constructing massive cities, designing virtual worlds, dumping chemicals and sewage into rivers, or chopping down trees is anything other than natural selection working towards its logical end? If everything is Gaia, aren't we Gaia too? Of course, we all agree that people shouldn't do things like dump chemicals in rivers. But that's only true if we are qualitatively different from—and responsible for—the natural world. Otherwise, it's just nature conquering nature, which nature always does. There needs to be a true and distinguishable "we" in this scenario, something Gaia theory can't account for. Christianity can. In fact, Christianity gives us a grounding for every belief Gaia theory proposes but doesn't have grounding for. For one thing, the Christian story bases its entire existence on a potentially falsifiable event: the resurrection of Jesus. That gives an evidence test that New Age philosophies can't match. If Jesus rose from the dead, the whole thing is true. If Jesus didn't, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, then the whole thing is nonsense. Secondly, Christianity can explain the mind behind the cosmos: the infinitely wise, infinitely just Creator who made this world and cares what happens to it. It's not just blind forces of nature telling us to check ourselves, or illusions of physicality based on some kind of divine spirit. We have a Heavenly Father, the divine source of personhood. Third, Christianity tells us who we are, how we fit into the full story. We are special stewards of creation, capable of massive amounts of good and evil. We're made in the image of God with a divinely ordained job to do: Cultivate the created world. The thing Christianity doesn't do is subject people to is a constant dread of Mother Earth viewing us as parasites. One could easily ask a believer in Gaia theory: How many humans are too much? Would Gaia be satisfied with pre-industrial levels or only with the eradication of every last person? Is somewhere in the middle okay? Who's to say? Of course, we'll never know. But we get the sense Gaia is a capricious master, at least as brutal as what Tennyson famously labeled "nature, red in tooth and claw." My advice for would-be panpsychists is this: Ditch Gaia. Look at Jesus: Earth's creator, gardener, redeemer.

John and Shane answer a question on whether or not abortion rates are impacted by who is President. They also give context for how spending money on gambling is different from other forms of entertainment. Shane asks John for some worldview structures for a listener starting a worldview group in his church. To close, Shane asks John why it seems society doesn't recognize the LGBTQ movement as a religion or worldview? -- Resources -- Snopes: Abortion Rates Fall During Democratic Administrations and Rise During Republican Ones Politico: A graphic on U.S. abortion rates shows larger declines during recent Democratic presidential administrations, and says its due to the party's approach of making abortions unnecessary, rather than the Republican Party's approach of making the procedure illegal. - BreakPoint: Sports Gambling Is a Bad Bet BreakPoint: Gambling: A Plague We Can Do Without BreakPoint: Don't Bet on the Gambling Industry BreakPoint: The Cost of Digital Addictions? Josef Pieper: Leisure the Basis of Culture Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death - Subscribe to BreakPoint: https://breakpoint.org/subscribe/ AXIS - Connecting Parents, Teens, and Jesus in a Disconnected World: https://axis.org Os Guinness - Why The Cultural Moment is a Crucial Aspect of Our Calling As Christians: BreakPoint Podcast

According to The Washington Post, undergraduate enrollment nationwide dropped by over 3% last year—some 465,000 students. Maybe the pandemic led more students to stick closer to home, or maybe a job-friendly labor market tempted more to work instead. Either way, it's forcing the question of what college is actually for? In too many universities, true critical inquiry has been replaced by ideological conformity. For example, Republicans comprise just 4% of historians, 3% of sociologists, and 2% of literature professors. But the problem isn't just that there are more Dems than GOPers, but that there are more admins and "Diversity Equity and Inclusion" officers than students. It's that schools are indoctrinating instead of educating. Christians have a new challenge—and opportunity: to preserve the best of classical liberalism. After transferring to Hillsdale College, one surprised former Ivy Leaguer atheist liberal put it this way: "I was confronted with the fact that these religious institutions were, in practice, far more aligned with my values like individual liberty, critical inquiry, and diversity of thought than the place that explicitly claimed [those] things." That's a great report card—and an even better goal.

Since the contentious 2016 election, many have publicly questioned whether evangelical support for Donald Trump "hurts the Church's witness." Others assert that to vote for anyone but Donald Trump warrants excommunication. Over the last two years of the pandemic and all its associated controversies, some have confidently proclaimed that if Christians choose to not wear a mask or not be fully vaccinated they've harmed the cause of Christ. Others announced that to wear a mask or be vaccinated is to compromise the cause of Christ. Whenever cultural flashpoints are used to judge the faith of others, the same script tends to be followed. An appeal is made to the Church's witness and reputation in the wider world. Of course, the Bible is clear that Christians indeed bear some responsibility for how our faith is both perceived and received by those inside and outside the Church. After He washed His disciples' feet, Jesus told them that by loving each other in that way, "all people will know you are my disciples." When He prayed in the garden on the night before His crucifixion, Jesus asked God to unify His followers so that "the world may believe that you have sent me." When people see our good works, Jesus said, they may "glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). In other words, Jesus clearly tied together the love among fellow Christians with the plausibility of the Gospel message to the wider world. What's clear from these verses, and throughout the Bible, is that we bear responsibility for our reputation both inside and outside the Church, and that stewarding the Gospel message means protecting both the integrity of the message and demonstrating its impact on our lives and the world around us. The Gospel is both plausible and compelling, and we ought never do anything to make it seem less so. However, what the Church is not (and cannot be) responsible for, is the reaction a world will have, particularly a world that is unbelieving and even hostile to either Christian morality or Christian truth claims. "Loving our neighbor," for example, will mean very different things to someone depending on their definition of love. According to our constantly shifting, culturally dependent definition, an act of love can seem like intolerance or even hate. In the same way, we are not responsible if someone perceives the good news of the Gospel message as bad news. We are not necessarily at fault when it is rejected or hated, or when it offends as Jesus predicted it would offend. The good news, though, is that when the Gospel is believed, embraced, or heeded, the success belongs to God, not our clever methodology or presentation. According to Scripture, what "hurts our witness" the most is disunity. And this doesn't mean that unity comes at the expense of church. But what we're told "hurts our witness" the most in this cultural moment is violating the new moral consensus about sex, politics, or controversial public figures. So, in an effort to "protect the witness," we spend an inordinate about of time policing each other's behavior, often publicly, about matters prioritized within a wrong set of values. I've no doubt that much of the concern over the Church's witness is genuine and well-intentioned. We are responsible to live as if what we say we believe is real. At the same time, Jesus didn't rebuke the Pharisees for being "mean," but for being hypocrites. Whenever our well-intentioned concern for the Church's witness becomes a dressed-up purity test, what we're really saying is "You can't be a Christian and do that thing." And that misunderstands the Christian faith altogether. True belief always leads to regeneration, and sanctification takes time. Salvation is not forfeited every time a mistake is made or a theological error is committed. The patience and grace we extend to each other, even when a fellow believer makes a decision we disagree with, is a way of loving one another and advancing the witness of Christ to a watching world. In fact, imagine how compelling the Church's witness would be today if we prioritized forgiveness. Our wider culture has absolutely no time for it, and many of those most "concerned for the Church's witness" have little time for it either. To forgive, is considered complicity in evil. To accept any apology as sincere, or to extend grace, or even the benefit of the doubt is completely unacceptable. Christians should be different. We shouldn't just take different sides of an issue: We should take our sides differently. We might find out that forgiving easily and assuming the best of one another will compel a watching world to ask us for the reason for that kind of hope. We might find that forgiveness, not a purity test, is the best thing for the Church's witness these days.

Weighing just 11 ounces, newborn Hannah Stibbles is considered the smallest baby born in the U.K.—certainly in the last 20 years. Glasgow doctors told Hannah's parents she had "next to no" chance of survival, but delivered her by C-section anyway. For Hannah's mother, 17-year-old Ellie Patton and her partner Brandon, Hannah became a living miracle. "She came out fighting for her life and proved everyone wrong," says Ellie. "She is a wee smasher." Hannah's survival—and the natural joy so many feel at her fight for life—are just another moral paradox for those who maintain that the unborn aren't fully human. It's a fiction that is getting harder to maintain. Though the Roe v. Wade decision considered birth at 25 weeks "unviable," science is continually reassessing that criterion—and reaffirming what we should have known all along: It's a fantasy that the unborn aren't alive and human Hannah, and every child born or unborn, are worth fighting for.