Breakpoint

Recently, an impressive development in embryology was reported by the Israeli Weizmann Institute of Science. Using only stem cells, without the presence of sperm, eggs, or even a womb, researchers successfully created functioning mouse embryos, complete with beating hearts, blood circulation, brain tissue and rudimentary digestive systems. Carolyn Johnson in The Washington Post described the discovery as "a fascinating, potentially fraught realm of science that could one day be used to create replacement organs for humans." For the more than 100,000 people currently waiting for a life-saving organ donation, that kind of breakthrough would indeed seem like a miracle. However, since scientists are still years away from creating human organs in a lab for the purpose of transplant, the technology raises serious ethical questions, none of which should be taken lightly. One of these questions is, in fact, an old one. Do the promises of embryonic stem cell research justify it? While some stem cells can be harvested from a variety of non-embryonic sources such as bone marrow, others are harvested from so-called "unused" embryos that have been donated to science. The lives of these tiny, undeveloped human beings are taken in the process. For context, the research conducted by the Weizmann Institute uses embryonic stem cells. Though, for the time being, this implies only embryonic stem cells harvested from mice, the move to human research would involve the harvesting of stem cells from human embryos and involve tissue derived from already living human beings. The Christian stance on when life begins is the same as the science. Human life begins at conception, and every single human life is worthy of protection. If we would not take the life of a born child in our research for a cure for some medical condition, neither the anonymity of an embryo nor the confines of a laboratory justify doing the same thing in the process of embryonic stem cell research. Science is a process of trial and error, but we should never employ "trial and error" with the lives of thousands of human beings, in particular human beings who cannot consent to our actions. A rule of thumb is this. If you wouldn't try an experiment on an adult or small child, don't do it to human embryos at any stage. The breakthrough at the Weizmann Institute, however, takes this old debate a step further. On one hand, lead researcher Dr. Jacob Hanna was quick to clarify that the goal is not to make complete, living organisms of mice or any other species. "We are really facing difficulties making organs," he said, "and in order to make stem cells become organs, we need to learn how the embryo does that." Given the history of science, including the last chapter involving breathless promises of what embryonic stem cell research would bring, the grandiose predictions of scientists should be taken with at least a grain of salt. The process of growing organs for mice, for example, involved the creation of entire embryos. Should the technology be perfected in mice, what ethical or legal limits are there to prevent the creation of synthetic human embryos for the purpose of harvesting their organs? Our first concern should be what these embryos would be created for. The answer is, inevitably, "science," devoid of any consideration for human purpose, relationships, worth, or dignity as equal members of the human species. All societies that treat people as a means of scientific advancement, instead of infinitely valuable ends in-and-of themselves, have a track record of perpetrating atrocities. A second concern is what these embryos would be deprived of. Though not all do, every human should enter the world with the love and commitment of their biological mom and dad. The very design of human development suggests this, and societies have long recognized that those born without these relationships have had something priceless taken from them. Creating children from cloning or stem cells intentionally makes them orphans, ripping them from the vital context of parental relationship. It is a grave injustice. Bringing children into the world as a product of pure science without the possibility of relationship with their biological parents or relatives is enough an ethical consideration to oppose such research, but we should also consider the implications of recklessly creating humans for future experimentation and of dismantling them to see how their components work. Science is, in many ways, blind to what should be ethical bright lines. Creating organs for transplant in order to save lives is a worthy goal. But such work should only proceed in an ethical manner, one which does not require the death of other distinct, valuable, human beings. Unfortunately, such ideas have not shaped the society we live in today.

John and Maria discuss the life and legacy of Queen Elizabeth II and her longstanding sense of service to her nation. Afterwards, they stress the correlation—not the causation—between deaths of despair and decline in blue laws, laws against commerce on Sunday. They end by touching on commentaries from this week, in particular one highlighting the rebuttal of a false narrative that the religious right was founded in racism.

Yesterday, after the world had learned that her family had been called to her side, Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch in British history, died at age 96. It's simply impossible to articulate just how much the world, Britain, the British Empire, Western civilization, and the monarchy changed during her reign. Many Americans were fascinated by her and the royal family, as demonstrated in the popularity of shows like The Crown. She seemed to navigate a changing world by not changing, something that at times stabilized and at other times infuriated the British people. Perhaps the most consistent features of her tenure, which seemed out of step with the modern world, were her sense of duty and her consistent expression of faith and religious observance. Her annual Christmas messages reflected theology that was mostly orthodox and a faith in Jesus Christ that seemed personal. Convinced that Divine Providence had brought her to the throne, she seemed to see the crown as a calling and not an entitlement. In both of these things, her death marks the end of an era.

A few weeks back, Twitter banned a user for violent language. The offending tweet was, "I will out sword drill any Christian man." For anyone not familiar with evangelical subculture, a "sword drill" has nothing to do with blades. It's a game to see who can find a particular Bible passage first. Had the protectors of Twitter taken the time to investigate or, even better, had some Christians on their staff to ask, they may have spared themselves the ridicule which rightfully followed. Unfortunately, it's a habit of academic and media circles to either not understand or not take evangelicalism's claims for itself at face value. Sexual ethics, we are told, are novelties, due more to patriarchy than anything Jesus taught. The priority that evangelicals place on the home, family, and gender norms is more the product of 20th-century cowboy movies than any enduring truths about men and women. And, most commonly, political involvement by conservative Christians is nothing more than a naked grasp for power and maintaining the status quo. Recently, a handful of political commentators have claimed that the rise of the so-called Religious Right was rooted more in racism than in concern for the unborn or the spiritual fate of our nation. Though conservative Christians claim that the 1970's-era increase in political action was birthed in opposition to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and removal of prayer and Christian symbols in public schools, it was really about segregation. White Christians did not care about saving the lives of unborn children as much as they wanted to make sure their kids did not have to attend school with African Americans. This contention is now part of most formal analyses of evangelical culture, including from mainline and progressive Christianity. As one recent book put it, "In the end…what changed their mind wasn't abortion or school prayer, but tax-exempt status for segregated schools." Jonathan Whitehead, writing at The Gospel Coalition, dates this story to a book published in 2006 which claimed that conservative Christians got into politics in response to the 1975 action by the IRS against the (overtly) segregationist policies of Bob Jones University, a view the school later recanted. Whitehead goes on to argue that this supposed smoking gun turns out, in reality, to be an urban legend. Rather than being agitated that the IRS had attacked segregationism, conservative Christians found that the Feds were using the situation with Bob Jones University as a pretext to move against other religious schools that weren't segregationist. This was at a time when school choice and homeschooling were far from established options, and anyone who did not comply with state schools was suspect. The segregation narrative fails in other ways, as well, most notably in timing. One of the first political action groups expressly formed by evangelicals in 1972 supported Democratic Senator McGovern's ultimately failed presidential campaign. Christians, especially Roman Catholics, were already organizing for political action in the wake of Roe in 1973, and evangelical standard bearers like Christianity Today were talking about abortion before Roe and speaking out against segregation even earlier than that. In the end, the racist history rumor is an example of "nut-picking," when the worst-case example of a vast movement is held up as normative while any example to the contrary is ignored. It only contributes to our culture's increasingly uncivil discourse but is convenient for rhetorical purposes. Throughout his career, the late, great Michael Cromartie declared that there needed to be a dramatic improvement in the relationship and understanding between secularly minded Americans and their religious neighbors. "We're like an anthropological project for them," he once said, summarizing the approach of secular elites to religious believers as "We'll go study these people, because I've never met one." Without any first-hand knowledge about the intricacies of Christian culture, or at times, having an axe to grind for being raised evangelical, too many are quick to assign the worst of motives to Christian actions and words. Billions of people rely on the professionalism of journalists and academics to discover and share the truth. The truth is never served by a convenient story that happens to neatly coincide with the popular narratives of the day. If pundits and professors are going to continue to regain any authority to speak into our lives, they've got to do better.

Recently the University of Washington published research into whether hormones and puberty blockers improve the mental health of kids with gender dysphoria. According to the PR team for the university, pretty much every media outlet that covered the study, and the study's authors themselves, the answer was yes. Except it wasn't. The numbers actually revealed no difference between kids' mental health before taking hormones and after a year of the treatment. At both moments in time, kids were suffering from dramatic mental health problems. If anything, the study suggested that kids who did not start taking the medications got a little worse. The university refused to officially respond when an independent journalist challenged their conclusions—though the study's authors admitted their findings had been misrepresented. Internal emails showed the university's communications team wasn't concerned the story was not accurate. They liked that it was popular. Among the casualties of the politicizing of scientific research is public trust in our institutions. Still, the most vulnerable casualties are the kids.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature," wrote Karl Marx, "…the opium of the people." Decades of often painful historical experience has proven his observation both right and wrong. Believing in God does ease pain and suffering of faithful followers, but he was wrong in thinking that religion, especially Christianity, leaves them with nowhere else to go from there. A recent article in The Economist put it this way: "Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty." Although there is a correlation between poverty and decreased mental health, the article highlighted German sociologist Dr. Jana Berkessel's recent findings that religion significantly mitigates this effect. A variety of similar studies confirm this. Regular attendance at religious services consistently correlates with longer life spans, stronger immune systems, and lower blood pressure, as well as decreased anxiety, depression, and suicide. Kids raised in religious households have a lower incidence of drug addiction, delinquency, and incarceration. They're more likely to graduate high school. In short, the nearly unanimous scientific consensus is that religious belief is good for you. Of course, Marx's point was that these benefits only serve to keep people content in their chains and to keep them distracted so much by the next world that they do nothing to change this one. Many critics today take the critique even further. Religion, especially Christianity, has not only been used to pacify people in their oppression but is the very source of it. Of course, the charge that Christianity has been co-opted, corrupted, and weaponized to justify all kinds of abuse, conquest, and enslavement, is undeniable. At the same time, it's also undeniable that Christianity has been a global force for the kinds of goods now so pervasive, it's hard to even imagine the world without them. Many of the rights and principles we consider to be naturally occurring features of the world only came to be by the influence of Christianity. In the ancient pagan world, violence, rape, infant exposure, and prostitution were rules, not exceptions. Almost immediately, Christianity began to revolutionize pagan ethics, particularly in its view of the poor and the outcast. Roman Emperor Julian famously wrote that when the "impious Galileans support not only their poor, but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us." To a world with no reason to believe in the equality of all people, Christianity taught that "there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all, and is in all." This belief was grounded in the Christian view of the human person, which had no parallel in the ancient world and which created an explosion of literacy, social mobility, and human rights that we now take for granted in the modern world. Christianity's unique contributions in humanizing the modern world are yet another reason to not simply lump all "religious beliefs" into the one blanket category. All religions are simply not the same, not in substance nor impact. Economist Robin Grier, for example, conducted a cross-national survey of 63 formerly European colonies. She found that, across the board, Protestant Christianity, in particular, was "positively and significantly correlated with real GDP growth," and that "the level of Protestantism is significantly related to real per capita income levels." A National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper found that only certain religious beliefs—notably beliefs about heaven, hell, and an afterlife—are linked with economic growth. In other words, it's not just about having a "religion," but about what your religion teaches. Consider Africa. A recent paper from NBER analyzed educational outcomes among religious children. Though Africa is becoming increasingly religious across the board, the paper found that in many countries, "primary school completion for Christians was more than double that of Muslims or Africans adhering to local religions." Christian communities far outpace others when it comes to intergenerational educational growth. Writing in 1843, Karl Marx couldn't have anticipated how thoroughly science would analyze his claims about religion. He'd likely have been among the modern theorists surprised that the world is becoming more religious, not less. As one writer with The Brookings Institution put it, "While weak state structures collapse and aid agencies switch priorities, one group of actors persist against all odds: religious institutions." Of course, this isn't why anyone should believe the truth claims of Christianity. They should be believed if they are true. At the same time, the fact that Christian belief has been an educational, social, and economic ladder for millions suggests these beliefs ought to be taken seriously.

Hope Resource Center, a Christian crisis pregnancy center in Knoxville, Tennessee, offers free pregnancy tests, well-women exams, STD testing, and ultrasounds. If you search for Hope Resource Center on Yelp, a "consumer notice" pops up with a warning: "Crisis Pregnancy Centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite." Last week, Yelp announced that these notices will appear at the top of listings for every crisis pregnancy center—even when they don't apply. If Yelp truly were worried about women's access to "real" medical care during pregnancy, they'd put a consumer notice above every Planned Parenthood listing. A few years ago, Live Action found that fewer than 5% of Planned Parenthood facilities in the country actually offer prenatal care, even though Planned Parenthood openly pretends and advertises otherwise. It's these practices by Planned Parenthood that make crisis pregnancy centers so necessary in the first place. Women—especially those in crisis pregnancies—deserve accurate information and actual care, which they can't find from Planned Parenthood or, for that matter, on Yelp.

The Institute for Family Studies has published a list of legal and policy recommendations to protect teens from the dangers of social media. Among the recommendations are age-verification laws, parental consent requirements, and shutting down social media platforms at night for teens. Other nations have already attempted to restrict young people's access to technology. For example, a couple of years ago, France banned cell phone use in schools up to age 15. Monitoring teens' engagement with social media should be a no-brainer. Anyone still not convinced that something needs to be done need only consider the teens on TikTok exhibiting Tourette-like tics, not to mention the rapid onset gender dysphoria crisis initiated within social media communities. However, the fact that government may now be the last line of defense in providing some boundaries for social media means that the other lines have failed. Most notably, families have failed to protect children from that which threatens them the most. This is a modern-day application of one of the most helpful ideas of Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, who lived at the turn of the 20th century. Kuyper has jokingly been called the Colson Center's "patron saint." Near the end of his life, Chuck Colson described how influential Kuyper's thought was to his own, specifically in understanding how Christians were called to interact with and influence the culture around them. Christians could best influence society, according to Kuyper, through the sphere of our family, the basic building block of society. During his lifetime, Kuyper worked across various spheres of culture, not only writing as a theologian but founding a university, leading a newspaper, and eventually becoming prime minister. Throughout his various careers, Kuyper proposed and championed a concept called "sphere sovereignty." "Spheres," as Kuyper understood them, are the social groupings, or domains, that keep society running. He saw them as interlocking "cogs" that work together. In his message at the inauguration of the Free University in the Netherlands, he explained that each sphere—such as science, art, business, government, and family—has "its own law of life" and "its own head" or leadership. Ultimately, Christ is sovereign over all of life. His most famous quote is, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human life of which Christ, Who is Sovereign of all, does not cry: 'Mine!'" It is Christ who moves "the wheels to turn as they are destined to turn. Not to oppress life nor to bind freedom, but to make possible a free exercise of life for and in each of these spheres, is not this a beckoning ideal for every noble State Sovereign? [or leader]." His idea, that the duty of the head of a state is to facilitate "free exercise of life," reveals that, in many ways, Kuyper lived in a time period similar to ours—a time when people were calling for revolution. Kuyper was so uncomfortable with this lawless approach that he called his political party the "Anti-Revolutionary Party." According to the author Michael Wagenman, Kuyper believed, "Human beings are called to responsible human agency in which 'the course of our historic development may be altered only through gradual change in a lawful way.' But this is accomplished through responsible reforms rather than outright revolution that seeks to usher in a manufactured utopia." If the language of ushering in a "manufactured utopia" doesn't sound familiar, just search for "antiracist" and "revolution" on Twitter. The crisis in the state, Kuyper believed, revealed a crisis of family. Kuyper saw family leadership as "responsible for the good order in the family," rather than the "head of the state." Government should only step in if parents did not do their job. He insisted that "the central government may only take on and carry out what is not (and for so long as it is not) properly taken care of in the smaller spheres of life." If government control of the good order of the family has to occur, it should be only temporary. Thus, the government can incentivize good family order, such as tax deductions for college saving plans, but a secular government controlling family life can get weird fast, such as removing a child seeking a transgender identity from a Christian family's home. It's one of the reasons Christians should recognize and champion parental rights. Coming back to the topic of teens and social media, we can say that restricting their access to social media is a good idea. But this is the job of the family, not the government. When families fare well, society fares well. That's those cogs of spheres working together well. A society is only as virtuous as its families. This month, if the Colson Center has helped you understand the sphere of the family better—if it's helped your thinking to be big enough for this world and for living in your place in it, would you consider giving a gift of any amount? Go to colsoncenter.org/september.

Recently The New Yorker profiled a nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor. The piece described, in admirable terms, the Catholic nuns' reputation for treating the elderly with dignity and compassion, as well as the Little Sisters' founder, a French nun known for personally taking in the homeless. Such behavior is not strange for followers of Jesus. What is strange is The New Yorker's about-face. Not long ago, the magazine covered the Little Sisters for a very different reason. Writing about the nuns' lawsuit against the federal government's Obamacare mandate, which would have forced them to pay for contraception and abortion, The New Yorker called the nuns "irrationally passionate." There was not a word about the Little Sisters' love for the elderly or their courageous founder. Instead, reporters suggested they didn't care about women. In a secular society, Christ followers will sometimes be loved and sometimes subjected to baseless accusations. That's OK. We were told this would happen. Our job is to keep loving our neighbors while never compromising our convictions.

Teen mental health has never been this bad. As New York Times journalists Michael Barbaro and Matt Richtel discussed last week on The Daily podcast, we're facing an unprecedented crisis in teen mental health. Mere decades ago, the major threats to the health and well-being of young people in the West were nearly all external, such as illness, car accidents, risky sexual behavior, alcohol, or smoking. Today, the greatest threats to the health and well-being of young people are internal. As Richtel reported, in 2019, 13% of all adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60% increase from 2007. Teen suicide rates, which had been stable for nearly a decade prior to 2007, "leapt nearly 60% by 2018." In 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced, "Mental health disorders have surpassed physical conditions as the most common reasons children have impairments and limitations." The factors behind this tsunami of depression, anxiety, and self-harm are many, one of which is the internet. In 2017, Dr. Jean Twenge of San Diego State University noted that the spike in adolescent mental health problems reached a crescendo in 2012. That year, the percentage of Americans who owned smartphones surpassed 50%. Exposing developing brains to an overwhelming amount of social information, she argued, was contributing to a massive, unprecedented uptick in mental health issues. On one hand, social media has brought the near constant experience of social comparison to the developing minds of 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds. On the other hand, the sheer amount of panicked, hyperbolized, and truly frightening headlines a student must navigate is unprecedented in human history. We might forgive students who are convinced the world is completely out of control. Richtel and Barbaro also noted other factors in the podcast. For example, the average age for the onset of puberty has become earlier and earlier since the 1980s, especially for girls. Experts are unsure as to exactly why this is the case, but there are plenty of correlations having to do with early exposure to sexually explicit material, fatherlessness, and family breakdown. Whatever the cause, the impact is real. In the face of this exploding mental health crisis among young people, the demand for care is outpacing the number of trained counselors and psychologists. Pediatricians and emergency rooms have become first responders. As Richtel observed, "Every night, in emergency rooms across the country, there are at least 1,000 young people spending the night waiting in a room to get to the next level of care where they can be helped." More and more frequently, medication is seen as the only answer. While an important tool, Ritchie notes why that is far from adequate. "We are prescribing medications in the absence of dealing with… fundamental structural changes that we have not addressed as a society." In every generation, followers of Christ have seen protecting and caring for vulnerable children as a crucial part of their calling. Today, children are vulnerable to radically changing social conditions, harmful ideas about their minds and bodies, the loss of institutions crucial to their health and well-being, and a barrage of bad news. The first step in fulfilling our calling is, in the words of my friend Dr. Matthew Sleeth, to Hope Always. Children need the truth about life and the world, about themselves and God, and we can give it to them. Of course, parents must limit and help guide children in their digital interactions, as nearly all experts recognize. But this is not merely a crisis of media: It's a crisis of meaninglessness. That's one reason a Harvard psychologist writing in Scientific American argued that "Psychiatry needs to get right with God." To that end, we've developed a new Colson Center Educators course taught by Dr. Matthew Sleeth to equip parents, pastors, and educators, with the tools to meet the current crisis. Also, tonight, is the latest in our Lighthouse Voices series. "Despair, Mental Health, and the Crisis of Meaning: How Christians Can Speak Life to a Lost Culture" is a live event featuring Dr. Ryan Burkhart of Colorado Christian University. To register for the live event in Holland, Michigan, or the livestream, visit Colsoncenter.org. Christians have an obligation to care. When we see the brokenness of the world around us, we are to imitate the work of Christ. In His name, we can be a force for good in our lifetimes, and, God willing, reverse the tide.