Breakpoint

A few years ago, a kids' book was published titled A is for Activist. On the book jacket is a tiny fist, raised, apparently, in solidarity. A quick stroll through any metropolitan library children's section will find more books like this one. There's Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi, The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish and, of course, Heather Has Two Mommies. There's Let the Children March and Woke Baby. There's even complete series, such as the "Little Feminists" and the "Citizen Baby" series, which include the titles Citizen Baby: My Vote and Citizen Baby: My Supreme Court. Anyone with actual children or who has been around actual children or who was once an actual child knows that "baby activism" is a misnomer. Little fists are used for temper tantrums and for fighting with dad, not for "solidarity." Chuck Colson advocated for classical education because of its understanding of and respect for the natural development of kids. Postmodern thinking in education was disrupting what he called the "order of learning" instead of recognizing that the right foundations, known as "grammar" and "rhetoric" in a classical vision, must first be established before children can move on to, for example, making coherent political arguments. Today, however, we've got it exactly backwards. Instead of teaching third graders their multiplication tables, we're teaching them to "express themselves." Instead of teaching high schoolers logic, we encourage them to share their opinion on every subject, as long as it aligns with our opinion, and that anyone who challenges them is a "threat." This approach is, in part, a downstream effect of postmodernism. If there's no absolute Truth, then anyone who believes they know something fixed about the world shouldn't be trusted. It's also a downstream effect of the sexual revolution, which prioritizes the needs and desires of adults over the needs, desires, and the design of kids. A is for Activist isn't really written for children. It's written for the adults that will buy it. Adults that buy it aren't really buying it for their children. They're buying it in order to be the kind of person who buys a book titled A is for Activist. The voting booth to dinosaur ratio in kids' books today is way off. Too many kids' books are being written by adults talking to other adults. This is an amazing opportunity for Christian creatives. However, there are plenty of bad "Christian" books for kids, too. Slapping a pastel-colored Noah's Ark on a book cover or a Bible verse on every page does not good literature make. C.S. Lewis, himself a master of children's literature, wrote that "the world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature." Elsewhere he implored Christians to write books on every subject: What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way around. Our faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defense of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. Good art paraphrases reality, describing the world as it truly is. Good art also respects the audience. Good literature for children will respect children. Jesus explicitly respected children as full human beings, with their own dignity and value. Kids should not be used as political pawns. They ought not be asked to shoulder the burden of advocating for our modern innovations, like proclaiming that Heather's "two mommies" replace a mom and a dad or that their bodies may be wrong or that they may be racist because of the color of their skin. They especially shouldn't be asked before they've learned the alphabet. Thankfully, a growing number of good books for kids is on offer. The Good Book Company produces a series of incredibly well-made picture books called "Tales that Tell the Truth." NavPress publishes a series called "God's Design for Sex," with a different book for each age that carefully and slowly teaches kids about their bodies. And there are fantastic children's authors whose books are not explicitly "Christian" but who tell good, true, and beautiful stories for kids in their own language. After all, if kids are full members of God's kingdom, they, too, deserve good books.

An early draft of Justice Alito's opinion was leaked from the Supreme Court. That's a big deal. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court confirmed the authenticity of a draft opinion from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito regarding the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case. Justice Alito's opinion is important and is briefly explained in our Breakpoint podcast by Erin Morrow Hawley. Here's a sample: The opinion sort of has a couple of parts. It looks first at, "is there any historical right to abortion?" Is it deeply rooted at our nation's tradition and history? That answer is clearly "no." Then the opinion talks about stare decisis. The idea is basically, even if Roe is wrong, even if Casey is wrong, should we still uphold them anyway? Justice Alito says clearly, "no." There's not the sort of alliance interest that would justify that. One thing Justice Alito's opinion focuses on is damage the so-called "right to abortion" and the Court's finding of it in Roe and Casey have done to this country. So, it's been damaging to our democracy, it's damaging to our institutions, and to the Court, so there's no reason to stick to it. Listen to the full conversation with Erin at www.breakpoint.org.

On Monday night, an initial draft of the Supreme Court majority opinion on the Dobbs case was leaked to news site Politico. As SCOTUS Blog tweeted: "It's impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff." Tuesday morning, Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the draft, and called the leak a "betrayal of confidences of the Court intended to undermine the integrity of our operations." Most likely, the leak was intended to pressure the Court's conservative justices to moderate their opinion before a final decision is published. That would be especially inappropriate if the source of the leak is a clerk of one of the Justices. One response would be for the Court, as National Review's Ed Whelan suggested, to announce the majority decision as soon as possible, allowing dissenting views to be published later. It's happened before in extenuating circumstances. What's not clear is how the leaked draft of the majority opinion will compare to the final draft. Unless it is somehow significantly gutted, Justice Samuel Alito has thoroughly and thoughtfully dismantled, at least in legal terms, the 50-year hold that Roe v. Wade has held on America. Here are three observations from the leaked draft. First, Alito thoroughly dismantles the claim that the right to an abortion is found anywhere in the Constitution. He states: "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision." Thus, Alito concludes, the 1992 follow-up case to Roe v. Wade, known as Planned Parenthood v. Casey would also be overruled. Quoting other cases, Alito insists that Casey's basis on Roe's precedent "is not an exorable command" and that it's time for the issue to "be settled right." Second, Alito dismantles what he calls Roe's "most important rule": "that states cannot protect fetal life prior to 'viability.'" When Roe was established, viability was considered to be at around 28 weeks of gestation. Today, it's at 24 weeks or younger. Viability, Alito further notes, is also based on the health of the mother and the hospital facilities where she lives. Given these multiple factors, Alito argues, "the viability line makes no sense, and it is telling that other countries almost uniformly eschew such a line." In a footnote, Alito notes that the U.S and the Netherlands are the only nations to rely on viability. He doesn't mention what others have recognized, that the U.S. is most in line with the authoritarian regimes of China and North Korea in its abortion policy. Third, if this decision holds, the Court would not be outlawing abortion but returning the decisions about abortion to the states. "In the years prior to [Roe v. Wade]," writes Alito, "about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process." Roe was, writes Alito, quoting the late Justice Ginsberg, an "exercise of raw judicial power." He then surmises that some states will expand abortion rights and other will limit them, but this is how states are supposed to work. State legislators will work out state regulations for abortion instead of a court, and voters will therefore have a voice in the process. Limiting abortion rights in any way, including moving the decision to the states, is intolerable for abortion advocates. In a tweeted response to the leak, Sen. Elizabeth Warren pressed for the elimination of the filibuster in Congress in order for the Women's Health Protection Act to pass. This extreme measure, which could be called the Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act, is not supported by a majority of Americans. According to a recent poll, 71% of Americans, including 49% of Democrats, want abortion limited to the first trimester. Warren also claimed that dismantling of Roe v. Wade would be an act of racism. In the same tweet about eliminating the filibuster, she alleged, If an extremist Supreme Court overturns Roe, wealthy women will still get safe abortions—by traveling to another state or country. But women of color, those with lower-incomes, and victims of abuse will suffer the most. And of course, the leaked draft of Alito's opinion also led to numerous Handmaid's Tale references and the tired old canard that pro-lifers care about babies only until they are born. None of these claims, of course is true. In fact, 4,000 pregnancy resource centers exist to help parents who may be in crisis. If this leaked opinion is indeed reflective of what the final decision will be, then we must do two things. First, we must thank God that this decades-long legal nightmare is over. Our efforts to protect babies and care for vulnerable women will no longer be pre-empted by an evil masquerading as an invented "right." Second, the Court has done its job. It cannot do our job. State legislatures now have very important jobs to do, but they cannot do the jobs that we are called to: to speak the truth in love and to create a culture of life and care. Next week we have a free event in Orlando, Florida, called Preparing for a Post-Roe World. If you're in the area or nearby, register for an evening with speakers such as Tim Tebow, Erin Morrow Hawley of Alliance Defending Freedom, Jim Daly of Focus on the Family, and Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life. Stephanie Gray Connors of Love Unleashes Life will be spending time in particular unpacking the slogans for abortion. Register now for this event preparing you for the cultural moment. https://wilberforceweekend.org/regional-bonus-event/ And while you're doing that, pray for the safety of our Supreme Court Justices from intimidation and unlawful acts. Pray that the intentions of whoever caused this leak will backfire, and God's true justice will reign.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court confirmed the authenticity of a draft opinion from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito regarding the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case. John Stonestreet visits with Erin Morrow Hawley, senior counsel to the appellate team at Alliance Defending Freedom. Erin explains the significance of the leaked draft opinion and helps us understand the circumstances surrounding the court. She also provides important insight on what this means for the pro-life community moving forward. John also interviews Dr. Ryan T. Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Founding Editor of Public Discourse. Dr. Anderson paints a picture of the pro-life movement in the wake of this leaked report and the possible decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood. This conversation happens on the heels of the Colson Center's upcoming event, "Preparing for a Post-Roe World." On Thursday, May 12th at 7:00pm at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando Florida the Colson Center is hosting a gathering looking at the future of advocating for the pre-born that is featuring Tim Tebow, Stephanie Gray Connors, Jim Daly, Erin Hawley, and Kristan Hawkins. This bonus session occurs in conjunction with our premier conference on Christian worldview, the Wilberforce Weekend. For more information on this special event visit wilberforceweekend.org.

In March, online magazine Vox ran a series of stories under the title "America's Struggle for Forgiveness." That's not a typical topic for a thoroughly secular outlet like Vox, but, then again, Christians should be talking about forgiveness more than they are too. "The state of modern outrage is a cycle," writes contributor Aja Romano: We wake up mad, we go to bed mad, and in between, the only thing that might change is what's making us angry. The one gesture that could offer substantive change, or at least provide a way forward—forgiveness—seems perpetually beyond our reach. Each contributor to the Vox series was a committed progressive, and it showed when they discussed who they considered most in need of forgiveness. Romano, for example, questioned how to forgive J.K. Rowling, for her repeated defenses of biological women against erasure. In even suggesting that what Rowling has done was so egregious, Vox only proved that the fantasy writer has a firmer grasp on reality than they do. Still, Vox asked a question that is on point. What is the place of forgiveness in modern society? Consider, for example, how quickly celebrities are cancelled, for reasons ranging from the trivial to the serious. Ellen DeGeneres created a toxic workplace environment. Aaron Rodgers didn't get vaccinated. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard engaged in domestic abuse. And, the jury is still out on Will Smith's future. The point here isn't to equivocate every public fall from grace since, obviously, some are more deserved than others. What is missing in contemporary debate is any way forward. What's missing in our culture is forgiveness. After all, forgiveness doesn't ask whether condemnation is deserved. It assumes it is. Forgiveness isn't about the virtue of the other person's actions. It's about our response to that action. In the Vox article, Romano quotes Elizabeth Bruenig, a writer at The Atlantic, who put it this way: As a society we have absolutely no coherent story—none whatsoever—about how a person who's done wrong can atone, make amends, and retain some continuity between their life/identity before and after the mistake. She's right, but clearly, we need something. Romano concludes her essay with a suggestion: Grace, the act of allowing people room to be human and make mistakes while still loving them and valuing them, might be the holiest, most precious concept of all in this conversation about right and wrong, penance and reform—but it's the one that almost never gets discussed. Powerful words. It's always fascinating when a culture has exhausted all the resources a secular worldview can offer, only to discover that Christianity always had the best option on the market. Christianity offers the perspective on forgiveness that so many are desperate for. Because we've been forgiven, we can forgive others. Because we've been loved, even when unlovable, we can love even the unlovable. But let's be clear. There is no grace without God. Nobody likes thinking of the ways they have failed, and we avoid it at all costs. With God comes a moral law that we are responsible to. It may be that our world is short on forgiveness precisely because it has rejected God and His moral law. That also will make it more difficult to extend forgiveness to others. In the words of C.S. Lewis, "Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive." In a fallen world, we are quick to forgive people we like … for things we don't see as particularly serious. But what if the wrong was serious? What if the person isn't on my team? In those moments, only a transcendent perspective makes forgiveness a live option. Like Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." That's every one of us. That's why He later said so strongly, as recorded in Matthew's Gospel: "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." All of which makes me think, again, about Chuck Colson, whose unexpected redemption during Watergate led to an amazing amount of forgiveness between him and his political enemies. He was forgiven much by God, and by those who had been forgiven much by God, so he also extended forgiveness to others. In the end, that perspective grounded his whole understanding of criminal justice reform. If the world indeed is looking for forgiveness, then once again, only Christians have what the world is looking for.

The Colson Center is offering a special short course featuring Dr. Carl Trueman and Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. In the BreakPoint Podcast today we are featuring the first session in a four-part series the Colson Center is offering this month. During this month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, you'll receive a wealth of resources that will be explored in a special short-course offering. For more information visit www.colsoncenter.org/april

This April, scientists confirmed the dimensions of the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet, the single largest comet ever recorded. Its core appears to be about 85 miles across. "It's 100 times bigger than the typical comets we've been studying for all these years," says astronomer David Jewitt: Finding this thing is a reminder of how little we know about the outer solar system. There's a vast quantity of objects out there that we haven't seen, and a huge number of things we haven't even imagined. Awe is powerful and humbling. As John Piper once observed, no one stands at the edge of the Grand Canyon and says, "I am awesome." Awe points us outside of ourselves, and the whole drive to know the universe is, in reality, a drive to know God. Seventeenth century astronomer Johannes Kepler, whose precise mathematics led to his groundbreaking laws of planetary motion once wrote, "I wanted to become a theologian, and for a long time I was unhappy. Now, behold, God is praised by my work even in astronomy." For the God who created everything, good science is more than good work. It's worship.

Recently, a colleague noted how a growing number of conservative-minded people he encountered on social media, some of them Christians, were refusing to believe stories about Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Some even reject that the invasion was an unjustified war of aggression by Russia. When he asked the reason for their doubt, it was simply because those stories were reported in the "mainstream media," which has done nothing but lie to us for years. I share suspicion for certain sources. Most reporters for the major networks and news outlets have forgotten the difference between journalism and opinion writing. And, of course, their biases tend to lean in the same direction. Christian conservatives rarely get a fair shake on self-described neutral outlets, such as CNN or The Washington Post, let alone overtly progressive outlets such as Vox or MSNBC. However, when our suspicion about truth-telling becomes suspicion that there isn't truth, we've become postmodernists. Christian writer Samuel James calls this bad habit "negative epistemology." This is the idea that we don't need to figure out what's true, we only need to believe the opposite of whatever our political enemies say. Of course, this is only part of the overall and pervasive collapse of trust throughout American society, specifically trust in institutions. We are rightly concerned about misinformation, the frequently shifting landscape of rationale for dealing with COVID-19 and claims about election fraud. But beneath all of these specific examples is a cultural landscape that treats truth and truth claims as nothing more than power plays. This isn't a new idea. During the confirmation hearings for current Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concern was raised over a speech she had given at UC Berkeley. In it, she stated that "to judge is an exercise in power." The same idea leads activists to dismiss opponents by pointing out the color of their skin instead of addressing their argument. We see it every time cancel culture comes for a speaker or author on a college campus who says something that doesn't support their team. In other words, behind the collapse of trust in American society is a collapse of truth, the very possibility of truth. For more than a century now, academics have been preaching this kind of extreme skepticism, suggesting that all truth claims are really impositions of power. This belief was at the heart of a worldview known as "postmodernism," initially conceived by mid-20th century French philosophers and most fully expressed in late-20th century pop culture. Today, Eminem and Nirvana are considered "classics," but the fact that so much of our culture is reduced to political power plays and so many people decide what's true by asking who believes the opposite only proves that, to some extent, we are all postmodernists, now. For people whose faith teaches that truth is knowable and that it doesn't depend on the source but a reality external to ourselves, this is a road we simply cannot continue down. Once we embrace the idea that all claims are mere power plays, there's no room for reason, for revelation, for persuasion, for thinking, or for looking at God's world to know something about it and Him. Instead, we employ a version of a tactic promoted by postmodern English professors called "the hermeneutics of suspicion." We become suspicious of everything and, in the process, destroy the possibility of knowing anything. I'm not the first to make this connection, but we'd do well to learn from the Dwarfs from C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle. Having been deceived once by their enemies, these sadly memorable characters decided they would never believe a non-Dwarf again. Terrified of being "taken in," they retreated into a tribalistic huddle, and ultimately became blind to the world around them. Their suspicion of everyone and everything became their prison, and in the end, it deprived them of Lewis' equivalent of Heaven. If we come to believe that truth is only a matter of who's talking, that Vladimir Putin must be a good man because CNN says he's not, or that an unjust war must be just if a president from the other party condemns it, we have retreated into that same, fatal huddle. We have lost our ability to talk meaningfully about right and wrong, and even to persuade others of these moral realities. We have traded a Christian worldview for a postmodern one. In our fear of being "taken in" by a lie, we have blinded ourselves to truth. Let's not make that mistake.

John and Maria discuss society's reaction to Elon Musk buying Twitter. Maria questions why many reacted the way they did, and John explains how and why words matter in culture. Then Maria asks John about an upcoming Colson Center event at the Wilberforce Weekend, where John will guide attendees to imagine a post-Roe world. A number of guest speakers will inspire us to consider the individual responsibility, as many states enact "trigger" laws in preparation for a dismantling of Casey and a weakening of Roe when the Supreme Court decides the Dobbs case, likely in June. To close, John highlights a number of Breakpoint commentaries from the week, specifically pointing out the human rights challenges in China, lately expressed in China's "no-Covid" policies.

A recent viral video shows thousands of people in Shanghai screaming in unison into the night to protest the Chinese government's brutal "zero-COVID" policy. Entire high-rises of people are confined to their rooms, locked in with green fencing that appeared overnight. Children, including babies, are separated from their parents in massive government quarantine centers, some of which lack basic medical equipment or even beds. Other videos show hundreds of pets being collected and euthanized as supposed carriers of the disease. In the meantime, many of the city's 25 million people find themselves on the brink of starvation, with government food deliveries unable to keep up with demand. If we're looking for a culprit, it's not just the lockdown. It's not even COVID-19. It's the ideology of China's ruling elites, which rejects the sacred value of the individual in the name of the "common good." Human dignity is a deeply Christian idea, one that China's communist leaders have been at war with for decades. We must pray that the voices of Shanghai's suffering people will wake them up to what is true and good.