Breakpoint

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.

Fertility is a gift, not a problem. According to an NPR report, more women are seeking sterilization. For example, at Bozeman Health Deaconess Hospital in Montana, more women in their twenties and thirties are asking not for their tubes to be tied—a reversible procedure—but to be removed, a permanent procedure. This is another sign that women's fertility has been largely pathologized, treated as a bug rather than a feature of being a woman. It's as if a woman's body is presumed better when more like a man's—without the ability to bear children... somehow in the name of "women's rights." But studies cited in the article suggest these women may regret their decision. Dr. Kavita Arora, the chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Committee on Ethics, described a patient: "She wanted to have autonomous control over her body, and this was her way of ensuring she was the person who got to make the decisions." Rather than practice sexual self-restraint, the patient's desire for "control" led her to deny the potential of motherhood.

On this Labor Day, here are some important ideas from Chuck Colson on the importance of work. Americans are rethinking work, at least in the sense of employment. While there are many factors behind what has been called "The Great Resignation," "The Great Quit," and "The Great Reshuffle," we shouldn't underestimate the connection between how people see work and our culture-wide crisis of meaninglessness. Christian ethicist Oliver O'Donovan has written: "In work we make a difference to the world, not merely the kind of difference that any event must make … but a purposeful difference. In work we not only affect things; we effect things…. To work well is to bring intelligence and love to bear upon the grain of our worldly material, whether that is inert stuff, living beings or abstract relations of things." In other words, our work, whether physical labor or intellectual pursuits, matters. Here is a recording of Chuck Colson, from many years ago, explaining a Christian vision of human work. "In American society, most of us spend more of our waking hours at our jobs than in any other activity. While that may or may not be a positive commentary on our culture, it's a fact that's got to be considered by churches and ministries seeking to equip Christians to live faithfully. Yet, in our work cultures today, most of us have been trained to separate our faith lives from our work lives. The chasm between the two worlds disturbs us, signaling that something is wrong. And this comes at a time when the single most common demographic among people in the church is work, and at a time when the culture of that workplace is most foreign to our faith. For years we've lived with the belief that the real work of God's kingdom was done by missionaries and members of the clergy. Others work to make money to support the 'real work.' Yet, Scripture insists that our work is good. The ancient Greeks thought of work as a curse; Christianity gave meaning to work. Work, for the Christian, is a calling. After all, Jesus grew up with the callused hands of a carpenter, and the very fact that He worked gives dignity to our work. The Reformation, as I wrote with Jack Eckerd in Why America Doesn't Work, 'struck at society's dualistic view of work. Just as they saw the church comprised of all the people of God, not just the clergy, so the Reformers saw all work—sacred and secular, intellectual and manual—as a way of serving God.' Work embraced as a calling expresses the glory of God, and it's part of—very literally—following Jesus. Through our work God provides for us and for our families, contributes to the common good, and also gives us a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. He has given us work as the way to fulfill His mandate to us as humans—to take dominion over the world he has created. As we work, we extend God's reign and influence as his agents or stewards. And the way that we take that dominion, confronting the challenges and difficulties that "go with the job," is, in itself, our witness to the reality of God and our faith in Christ. Excellence in our calling, which the Bible calls for, makes the most powerful witness for us in the workplace. Sure, we could wait for those who are seekers and skeptics to come into our church buildings, but the vast majority never will. We could wait for them to seek out a pastor, but most don't know any. Now more than ever the "indigenous believers," those Christians already in the mission fields of accounting, sales, software, construction, and other honorable vocations, need to be equipped to work with integrity and thus share their faith in actions as well as words." That was Chuck Colson. I hope that this Labor Day can be a sabbath from your work today.

John and Maria focus in on the factors contributing to the remarkable rise in mental health issues for young people, including the crisis of authority that results from the barrage of information online. Afterwards, they discuss how the Church has always led in innovative education and must continue to do so. They end on a recent win and two losses for religious liberty in the lower courts.

It's been a year since the U.S. military's disastrous pullout from Afghanistan left allies, colleagues, and up to 1,000 American citizens there to fend for themselves. Though the new Taliban government promised to respect human rights, especially the rights of women, it's turned out as many expected. Universities and primary schools are open to women, but girls over age 11 are locked out of secondary schools, women are only permitted to work in education and health, must keep their faces covered, and must be accompanied by a male guardian for long-distance travel. And, swift and cruel punishments for breaking these rules also have returned. Though the Taliban deny it, a division is growing between a political wing that wants better relations with the outside world (and therefore wants to relax restrictions on women) and clerics in Kandahar who, like the Ayatollahs in Iran, dictate policy on the ground. We often hear that all worldviews are equal, all religions the same, and we shouldn't impose our values on anyone else. The truth is that our ideas about the world and human beings have real consequences and real victims.

Three days before the first day of school in Columbus, Ohio, the teachers' union went on strike, leaving 47,000 students with nowhere to go. School board officials promised that schooling would move forward "online," but on what was supposed to be the first day, the website suffered hours-long outages. It was chaos. Even as this teachers' strike was brewing, a new school, in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Columbus, was preparing to open its doors for the first time. Westside Christian School will serve kindergarteners through second graders this year, using Sunday school classrooms and the gym inside a local Baptist church. Thanks to funding from donors and Ohio's school voucher program, which allows kids who live in failing school districts to use their tax dollars for private schooling, students can attend Westside Christian School without paying tuition. This is just one example of the kind of creativity that has animated Christians all over the country for decades now, with the goal of offering different and better educational options for families. While some consider the idea that Christians are involved in education, especially public education, controversial, it didn't use to be. In a filmed conversation a few years ago, I asked Dr. Vishal Mangalwadi, a philosopher who has studied the historic impact of Christianity on the world, why Christians should engage in educational work, especially in a pluralist society like ours. His answer was that Christianity is education. The Christian account of reality, from creation in Genesis to the New Creation in Revelation, is the true story of the world. The biblical mandate to tell that story to everyone, rich or poor or clergy or not, is the foundation of the entire Western world's concept of universal schooling. For example, a chief complaint of the Reformers was that Rome kept a tight rein on education and learning, most notably in limiting Bible translations to Latin. The Reformers' view that everyone should hear God's Word led to Bibles in a common language and widespread education for those previously left out. The ability for everyone to read God's Word for him- or herself led to the dramatic expansion of literacy and learning, not to mention commerce. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church was also a great champion of education, founding universities and parochial schools everywhere the Church expanded. That's because of the fundamental view that all Christians share: that God has revealed Himself and wants to be known. Therefore, learning is a high calling of being human. A few hundred years after the Reformation, the American founders established public education as the right and duty of every citizen. Thomas Jefferson even suggested that an uneducated citizenry would neither flourish nor long be able to self-govern. Unfortunately, public education was isolated from religious faith long ago and therefore untethered from its moral foundation. Today, most people, including Christians, think of education as a secular arena. Religion, we're told, should be kept personal, private, and above all, outside the classroom. This bad idea has had real consequences. Far from neutral on issues of religion and morality, public schools instead push dangerous religious and political ideologies, like critical race theory, and harmful, irrational ideas about sex and gender. Administrative costs have ballooned while teachers strike over salary demands. Many American schools aren't even succeeding in the basics. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education found that almost 20% of American high school graduates could not read. In many communities, that number is far higher. Lockdowns and Zoom classrooms made parents more aware of these things, and so now in many communities, public school enrollment is in a free fall. In contrast, private, Christian school enrollment has gone up, and a record number of households are homeschooling. This is a moment for Christians to love our neighbors through education, like our forebears did. We do this by pressing public schools to do better and by providing as many other options as possible, and by making those options financially and otherwise feasible. We should also advocate for new school choice policies, like the one just implemented in Arizona which allows parents to use their own tax money for the schooling that's best for their kids. There's a lot that we can do, and when we do it, we give good gifts to the world. While grown-ups stalk picket lines, there are real kids who need a real education right now. The Church has always been more than up to the task.

Recently, in a speech at a Georgia church, rising progressive star Stacey Abrams, after noting that her parents had been pastors, declared, "I was trained to read and understand the Bible, and I will tell you this, there is nothing about the decision to eliminate access to abortion care that is grounded in anything other than cruelty and meanness." However, the way the Bible speaks of preborn children eliminates abortion as a moral option. In Psalm 139, the psalmist declares, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." The Prophet Jeremiah was told by God, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." And in one of the most beautiful moments in Holy Scripture, John the Baptist, still in Elizabeth's womb, leapt when in the presence of Jesus, still in Mary's womb. Test everything, the Scripture says. Especially those who claim to speak for God.

Recently, at The Celebration of America's Promise to Parents event, hosted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, Abigail Martinez, a grieving mother, shared a story that every single parent, pastor, and lawmaker in America needs to hear. Abigail's daughter Yaeli began to struggle with depression when she was in the 8th grade. Without communication with her mother, Yaeli was quickly funneled by personnel at her school towards the LGBTQ group, and then to an outside psychologist. Soon, Yaeli was being led by these adults towards a "social transition," going by the name "Andrew" and increasingly presenting as a boy. All the while, she was urged to keep the details hidden from her family. Once she caught wind, Abigail protested both the secrecy and the strategy of this counseling, urging the counselors to instead look into underlying issues of Yaeli's mental health. Instead, she was told that by refusing to call her daughter by her new name and pronouns, she was the problem. If anything happened to Yaeli, the school said, it would be Abigail's fault. From that moment on, the system boxed her out at every turn. When Yaeli was 16, the school psychologist urged the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services to intervene, arguing that because her mom was "unsupportive" of her social transition, Yaeli would be better off living elsewhere. Yaeli was moved to a group home, where she started taking cross-sex hormones. Abigail was only allowed to see her daughter for one hour each week, supervised, and strictly warned not to bring up anything relating to her daughter's transition, including their Christian faith. If she did, her visitation rights would be revoked. "If we keep [Yaeli] out of your home," Abigail remembered being told, "she [will] have more chance to survive. She's not going to try to commit suicide." Instead, all the while, Yaeli's mental health continued to decline. The testosterone caused her constant pain, for which a doctor prescribed CBD oil. "She was taking the [cross-sex] hormones; she was not happy," her mother said. "She changed her name, [but] was not happy, she adopted a dog because that was going to make her happy. None of it, everything that they've done, didn't work." At age 19, having moved out of the group home and pursued her new identity for about three years, Yaeli took her own life. As Abigail later told The Daily Signal, "I don't want any parent to go through this, because this pain never goes away. … You breathe and you can feel the pain." It's hard to imagine a tragedy like this could happen. It's hard to believe that a parent could lose custody to the state, simply for holding to a child's biological sex. What's not hard to imagine is that Yaeli Martinez will not be the last victim of these bad ideas, indoctrinated by state power. Local governments like Los Angeles County aggressively promote the doctrine of "gender-affirming care," even if it means tearing a family apart. On a state level, one California senator has proposed a bill empowering courts to remove children, not just from California residents, but from anyone who travels to the state and whose children claim their parents do not support them in their gender identity or sexual orientation choices. A similar case recently unfolded in Ohio, where a county prosecutor charged a couple with "abuse and neglect" for seeking counseling instead of transition for their daughter. And in Michigan, it is very likely that a ballot initiative will be taken to the voters this November utilizing the language of "reproductive freedom" to usurp parental rights in similar ways. Through these laws, the state perpetuates grave evil. In the case of Yaeli Martinez, the silence of her church was even more tragic. When at the state-assigned group home, Yaeli repeatedly asked her mother when a pastor or youth leader might come visit. She had felt close to these leaders and was eager to see them. "[They] know I'm here, right?" Abigail remembered her daughter asking. As Abigail said, "I asked them. I gave them the address." But they never visited. Not Abigail. Not Yaeli. No public support from the pulpit. No private support either. Abigail Martinez has walked this path all alone. In this, Abigail was the victim of a church culture designed around making people feel good and dodging difficult issues. Shame on them. Yaeli Martinez will not be the last teenager in crisis. That's why I'm grateful for churches that, with truth and grace, do show up for parents in need. Nobody wants this culture war over sex and gender, but we didn't choose this moment. To oppose state-sponsored trans ideology in law and in school is a necessary act of love. No child should be harmed by state-sponsored lies. No parent should go through what Abigail Martinez went through. And absolutely no parent should go through what Abigail Martinez went through alone.