Breakpoint

John clarifies the role of technology in worldview, specifically how it impacts the Church. He is asked how the Metaverse is problematic for Christianity when people from around the world are able to enter deep conversations inside the faith. Then, Shane asks a listener's question who is wondering if we're missing relevance in the Russian motivation for invading Ukraine. Later in the show, John explains the role of religion in the conflict.

Free speech is very much at risk on college campuses. According to one study, some 66% of students say that "it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus." And, over 80% of students report self-censoring their own viewpoints out of fear of saying the wrong thing. But as the Atlantic's Jennifer Miller reports, a new, grassroots movement of civil-dialogue clubs is offering a strong response in support of free speech. One such organization is Bridge USA. As one of their student leaders put it, "Not being able to speak openly [is] I think, one of the main problems. I just wanted to create this community where anyone could feel like they could express their ideas and actually be heard." This is a particularly worthy aim for a student, and for Christians, who should never be afraid to bring their best ideas to the table. Christianity, after all, is the best explanation for reality there is. Thus, we don't need other people to "self-censor" their opinions around us. We extend an invitation to all to join us in exploring truth in love, an invite God extends to us. And, when we do, it can be a tremendous witness in an age of stifled public discourse.

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Its message is more needed today than ever. Lent is a 40-day period of time (Sundays aren't included in the count), set aside in the Church calendar to reflect and to prepare. In a sense, the Season of Lent is for Easter what the Season of Advent is for Christmas, but even more counter-cultural in its assessment of the human condition. Plus, as a holiday, Easter is not nearly as popular as Christmas, and can come and go before we know it. Even so, for most Christians, all that's left of this season is the idea of "giving up something for Lent." The original idea of disciplining the body, repenting of sins, and preparing to remember Jesus' passion and death in order to celebrate His resurrection has been whittled down to an annual Christian weight-loss plan. It's a loss far greater than mere tradition. Implied in the disciplines of Lent, whether fasting from some indulgence or embracing some new habit of life and godliness, is the inherent connection between body and soul. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, when ashes are imposed by the clergy on the forehead in the shape of a cross, we are reminded of who we are with these words, "Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The ashes remind us that we are not less than physical beings, made from the dust of the earth, and therefore mortal. We will one day die. All of the above is easily forgotten in a society like ours, which suffers from a split personality. On one hand, tremendous emphasis is placed on physical appearance and meeting physical desire. We idolize sex, obsess over diet and how our bodies look, and rearrange the entire world in order to guard our physical health. On the other hand, we deny that our bodies have any say about who we are, instead demanding biological workarounds that will accommodate whatever it is we want. This is just the latest incarnation of an ancient heresy that will not die. Gnosticism arose at roughly the same time as Christianity. The name comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. Gnostics believed that through the acquisition of secret knowledge, one could escape the confines of the physical world. According to Gnostic cosmology, the invisible and immaterial are superior to the physical. Thus, the soul or spirit is superior to the body. At best, the body is irrelevant. At worst, the body is an evil, an hindrance to the spirit and thus to salvation. So, some Gnostics gave themselves over to hedonistic expressions of drinking, gluttony, and sexual abandonment since the body could not affect the spirit. Others turned to strict asceticism, rejecting sex, wine, meat, and other foods, denying the body to strengthen the spirit. Some even went so far as to starve themselves to death. Gnosticism as a formal religion largely died out by the end of the third-century A.D. Gnostic ideas, however, continue to show up in both conservative and progressive Christianity. Some Christians confuse the Bible's condemnations of the world and the flesh as a rejection of the physical world and the significance of our bodies. This shows up in forms of false asceticism, which in the words of Paul's letter to the Colossians "are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." Alternately, many progressive Christians embrace new cultural orthodoxies and deny that our bodies have meaning. Rejecting the natural purposes of God's good design, they deny sexual difference and that our reproductive systems are designed for procreation; they deny the inherent good and rights of children, the permanence of marriage, the morality that best protects sexual relationships, and other ordered goods of the human body. In particular, transgenderism is an explicit neo-gnostic rejection of human bodies, treating them as largely irrelevant to our identities. Instead, who we really are is determined by some non-observable, non-objective, non-empirical secret knowledge known only to ourselves, but to which everyone else and reality itself must adapt. Ash Wednesday and Lent directly challenge this way of thinking, reminding us that our bodies and souls are inextricably linked, that we are more but not less than physical beings, and that God's creation was, indeed, good. We will die, one day, a fact of life that so many in our culture perpetually try to distract themselves from. And, corrupted by our own sin, we are in need of God's mercy and forgiveness. Whether or not you receive the imposition of ashes today or participate in a Lenten fast, don't let Easter sneak up on you just yet. Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Embrace the significance of the body and its inseparable union with our spirits. This knowledge is revealed by God, and not kept in secret. Use it to draw near to God, who took on a human body, lived, died, and rose again so that we might rise with Him.

In Tuesday night's State of the Union address, President Joe Biden told young people with gender dysphoria that he will "always have (their) back." Though he didn't specify what exactly that means, presumably it had something to do with extending Title IX protections to include allowing men full access to women's facilities and sports; extending mandatory insurance coverage for "gender reassignment" surgeries; and restricting any counseling, treatments, or public advocacy that does anything less than fully affirm one's gender dysphoria. What makes it likely that the President's late-speech shoutout referred to these sorts of extreme positions on the issue is that it was quickly followed by a call to pass the so-called "Equality Act," something that remains (at least for now) dead in the Senate. The Equality Act would be a kind of legislative nuclear option, rendering about 250 so-called "anti-LGBTQ" bills under consideration across America pointless, leading to serious restrictions on religious liberty, especially for religious schools. Over the last few years, following a strategy that proved effective for pro-life protections, states like Texas have been laying creative groundwork to hold adults accountable for experimenting on young people struggling with gender identity. Having these laws in place is incredibly important, given the astronomical rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender, and how quickly transgender ideology went from being unthinkable to unquestionable in so many aspects of society. For instance, the field of so-called gender-affirming "medicine" is the only example of medical treatment that attempts to orient the body to the mind, as opposed to correcting the mind to align with biological reality. That was a $316 million industry in 2018. By 2026, it is projected to be a $1.5 billion industry. Children, in particular, are the subjects of this social experimentation, which is only one example of how reality has been reimagined along the lines of sexual autonomy. If the early days of the sexual revolution were about being free from the confines of sexual morality, these latter days are about being free from the confines of sexual reality. That these created realities were part of a biological, social, and religious package deal went largely unquestioned until recently. However, technological innovations such as the pill, IVF, and surrogacy; legal innovations such as no-fault divorce; and cultural innovations such as ubiquitous pornography and "hook-up" apps, have all made it increasingly easy to reimagine the world along the line of advancing our sexual happiness. Children are forced to go along. Pursuing social and legal equality without reference to reality has proven even more disastrous. It's one thing to say that men and women are equal before God and the law; it's quite another to say that they are the same or, like we are saying today, that any and all differences are either an illusion or unjust. So now, we talk without a hint of parody that men can bear children and that "not all women menstruate" and that love can make a second mom into a dad. None of this is true, but young people are expected to play along, to adapt and adopt these lies, pretending all is well, even if they're not. Of all of the lies of the sexual revolution, that's the most devastating. It was repeated at each new stage of the sexual revolution, in some form or another, in order to justify whatever way we were going to reimagine life in the world: "the kids will be fine," But, of course, the kids haven't been fine. Not even close. In her book, Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement, Katy Faust documents all the ways the kids aren't fine, and all the ways their wellbeing is sacrificed on the altar of adult happiness. On Tuesday, March 15, I will be talking with Katy Faust about all the ways that the kids aren't fine. We'll talk about how Christians can and must defend children from the myths, misnomers, and lies of the sexual revolution. This isn't a theoretical topic. In fact, I'm absolutely convinced that standing for the inherent dignity and rights of children against the innovations of our age is our version of "running into the plague and caring for victims" while everyone else is running away. It's what we're called to at this cultural moment. Katy's presentation will be part of the new Lighthouse Voices Speaker Series, a partnership between the Colson Center and Focus on the Family. We aim to help Christians think clearly and biblically, especially about the most critical, confusing, and important issues at the intersection of family and culture. If you're in the Holland, Michigan, area, you can join the conversation in person. If not, you can sign up for the livestream of this important discussion at www.colsoncenter.org/events

This past Wednesday morning, a man named Tedd Mathis announced that his father had died a champion. "Forty-eight hours before he died," Tedd wrote, "dad was wheeled to the nursing home chapel to preach his final sermon. Christ was worthy, even with a cracked hip, failing kidneys, and a 95-year-old body bruised and stitched together from numerous falls of late." There's something unusual and inspiring about a life lived faithfully to the very end. It's what we want for ourselves but see so rarely. Of course, really the only way to end well is to live well… What can be called "a long obedience." At funerals, we hear how someone "is in a better place." They are, but it's also true that God has called us here to make this a better place. So, like this godly man, let's live our lives in such a way that our end is the capstone of a life lived in restoring all things to God's will.

In ninth grade, I was a knucklehead. Even worse, I was a Christian school knucklehead. Those are the worst kind... Six days a week from as early as I could remember, between Bible classes and Sunday school, I was in the same building, often the same classrooms, hearing Bible lessons, often from the same people. I spent my time on basketball and girls (in that order) but didn't have much of a faith I could call my own. Around Christmas in December of 1990, I met someone who would change my life. Instead of a much-anticipated Christmas party, the boys senior high Bible class was sent out in twos to visit the elderly "shut-ins" of our church. I'm sure the intention was to bring Christmas cheer to folks not physically able to get out anymore, but as you might imagine, the only thing we wanted to do less than schoolwork on the last day of classes before Christmas break was to visit two old people we'd never met. I was paired with my friend Brian, who shared my disdain for the assignment. But he had an idea: "We'll go visit one person and say we couldn't find the other person's house. That way, we'll be done early and can go to the mall." That's how I met Ms. Buckner, who lived down a windy, rural Virginia road in a little apartment attached to her grandson's farmhouse. Ms. Buckner, an 89-year-old widow, came to the door and invited us inside. There was, shall we say, a pretty significant generation gap in that room. We didn't know what to talk about, and she didn't really know what to talk about. Just when we thought it couldn't get more awkward, Ms. Buckner said, "Let's sing Christmas carols together." After we stumbled our way through "Silent Night," she decided one carol was enough. "Well, Ms. Buckner," Brian said, "we'd best be on our way." "Yes," I lied, "we still have one more person to visit before heading back to school." And then she asked, "Well, before you go, let's pray together." So I prayed, and Brian prayed. That took about 45 seconds. And then, Ms. Buckner prayed. At that point in my life, I'd probably heard thousands of prayers. But there was something about this one. Ms. Buckner spoke to God as if she knew Him, with a confidence and humility that only comes when you're certain that Someone is listening. We left Ms. Buckner's house and headed to the mall, hoping to meet some girls. But Brian and I agreed that Ms. Buckner was a pretty cool old woman. Two years later, (and to this day, I have no idea why) I woke up thinking about Ms. Buckner. I was even less interested in spiritual things by then, but I ended up going back down the windy road to her house. When Ms. Buckner came to the door, I said, "you probably don't remember me, but two years ago I came here with my friend Brian." "John," she smiled. "I prayed for you this morning." Ms. Buckner became a close friend. She prayed for me every day for the rest of her life. I have no idea what she has prayed me into or out of. In so many ways, the gap between generations today is more pronounced than ever. And one way to bridge that gap is prayer. My friend Tony Souder has developed a set of prayer guides that will help Christians bridge that generation gap through prayer, just as Ms. Buckner did for me. According to the Barna Group, millennials who stayed in church were "twice as likely to have a close personal friendship with an adult inside the church." Tony's Pray for Me Campaign is a way to facilitate those relationships between generations through prayer. The Pray for Me Campaign offers simple, practical guides that equip adult believers to pray for children and students. There are guides aimed to jumpstart intergenerational prayer relationships between parents and their children, grandparents and their grandchildren, and adults and the students in their church. This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we will send you the prayer guide of your choice that best fits the relationship needs that you have with the next generation. Just go to breakpoint.org/February

INC.com's Jeff Steen has a new technique for anxiety management: schedule time to worry. Setting aside time to consider what worries us, he writes, clarifies our fears. It reminds us of what's important, what we can do about it, and (most importantly) what we can't. It's something he's encouraged business leaders to do for years, and it's seen results. There's a biblical term for Steen's technique: prayer. If that sounds cliché, it might be because we've lost one of the main things prayer is meant to be. "Cast all your anxiety on him," writes the Apostle Peter, "because he cares for you." The Psalmist also puts it beautifully: For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken. We aren't meant to muscle through our anxieties, but to bring them to God. That's important – because as good as Steen's advice is, it's still only self-help, a speaking into the void. Christians have something just as good and even better. We have Someone listening on the other end.

With the Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization expected this summer, panic is rising in pro-abortion ranks. There is real possibility that the Court could overturn or at least severely gut Roe v. Wade, curtail abortion rights, and throw the issue back to the states. Because abortion advocates see this as denial of basic women's rights, their arguments are increasingly shifting from legal ground to moral ground. Instead of claiming that abortion is a constitutional right, some are even arguing that it is a "theological right"—in other words, sacred. In 1939, Margaret Sanger recruited ministers for her "Negro Project," which sought to promote birth control and sanitized eugenics ideas to African Americans. Today, in an attempt to sanctify another cause rooted in eugenics, the killing of the unborn, progressive clergy are recruited to promote abortion. This has been going on for years, for instance, when mainline Protestant pastors hold "prayer services" outside of abortion clinics in order to bless the "work" going on inside. Earlier this month, The Washington Post intensified the effort to baptize abortion with a thinly veiled advocacy piece entitled, "The Threat to Roe v. Wade Is Driving a Religious Movement for Reproductive Choice." In it, Michelle Boorstein profiled a young pastor of a mainline church in Maryland who calls the practice "holy." The Reverend Kaeley McEvoy says she has "never felt more known and heard and loved by God than when [she] entered the doors of a Planned Parenthood." Two of those times, she entered for her own abortion. According to Boorstein, this pro-abortion minister is part of "an increasingly bold and more visible religious movement for reproductive choice, a hard shove back to the decades-old American narrative that a devout person sees abortion only as murder." And this really is her argument: that Christianity is not necessarily opposed to abortion, and that any perception otherwise is just a "narrative." As proof, she points to a gathering of "clergy and other advocates" back in January who met virtually for an event called SACRED. For these 450 pro-abortion advocates—again, mostly mainline Protestants and liberal Jews—abortion is "a theological right of women to bodily autonomy and health." To take away that "right," these clergy believe, is "theologically wrong," since it means choosing "a fetus over a woman." For Boorstein, the very existence of such gatherings, even if dramatically smaller than the many pro-life gatherings held across the United States each year, proves that pro-lifers have hijacked Christianity and that an honest look across Christian traditions yields "more nuanced and varied perspectives about abortion." She even (rightly) points to the sad history of some evangelical denominations, who signed on to pro-abortion statements in the days before Roe only to reverse course and join Roman Catholic ethicists later in opposing the practice. Boorstein's analysis, however, hinges on whether Christian history began in the 20th century. Of course, it didn't. A casual investigation shows that it is religious abortion supporters, not pro-lifers, who have radically departed from historical Christian morality. As early as the beginning of the second century, Christian documents condemned abortion. The Didache or "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" admonished readers, "you shall not kill a child by abortion nor kill it after it is born." The first- or second-century Epistle of Barnabas says, "Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born." The fifth-century Church Father John Chrysostom called abortion "worse than murder," asking, "Why then do you abuse the gift of God…and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given childbearing unto slaughter?" And Tertullian, who lived in the second century, even described an abortion using a copper instrument strikingly similar to what one might find at a Planned Parenthood—and he condemned such killing in the strongest terms. Throughout Christian history, far before modern, liberal theology came along, Church teaching was anything but nuanced on abortion. And it's little wonder, given Scripture's own testimony about the unborn: that they are "knit together" and "known" by God in the womb—that they sometimes "leap for joy," and that God, Himself, once came to dwell with us as an unborn Baby. It's true that Christians haven't always been faithful in upholding the value of unborn image-bearers of God. But such failures have been in spite of millennia of clear teaching, not because of them. Liberal clergy may call the sacrilege of abortion "sacred," but the evidence from Church history that Christianity was pro-life from the beginning is as clear as the evidence today that babies in the womb are human beings.

John and Maria consider the images and harsh reality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There's a call for Christians to pray, but is prayer really doing something? John responds. Then, Maria asks John to clarify a new religious liberty case before the Supreme Court out of Colorado. The case has a lot to say about free speech, but John pulls back and explains how religious liberty is really a primary liberty for all of humanity.

Two days ago, we talked about the possibility of war, the fear that maybe the long peace the West had enjoyed for nearly a century could be broken. Well, now that fear has been realized. As an American official told ABC News, "You are likely in the last few hours of peace on the European continent for a long time to come." After weeks of saber rattling out of Moscow, along with vain promises that they had no designs on Ukraine, the Russian army has invaded its neighbor. In retrospect, this isn't much of a surprise. After all, you don't roll 200,000 men up to the border just for kicks. And, of course, there have been theatrically executed meetings at the Kremlin where Vladimir Putin walked his advisers through a script of dubious historical grievances, justifying his nation's recognition of the independence of territory inside Ukraine that Russia already controlled. At the same time, especially this time in history where we actually see the effects of war up close and personal, and in real time, what we're seeing is really hard to believe. Up to the very end, pundits and politicians claimed that there was no way the Russians would take such a risk, with the Russians themselves calling warning of an invasion just American propaganda. It just didn't seem possible. There's an old military saying that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and Putin had to know that invading his neighbor would make his nation a pariah in the world community. So, surely, he wouldn't do it, would he? He would and he did. After an alleged call by the newly "independent" regions for aid against the "terrorist" actions of the Ukrainians, Putin ordered Russian forces into Ukraine. He claimed that this was to prevent a humanitarian crisis from the supposedly Nazi-inspired government in Kyiv, even though that government had a Jewish president. While pre-war estimates guessed that he'd go with a smaller attack, aimed to seize just part of Ukraine and to place a pro-Moscow puppet in charge, the Russian attack hit all across the nation. As of this writing, Russian forces are said to be in control of the Kyiv airport, to have seized the infamous Chernobyl nuclear plant, and to be making progress out of Crimea in the South and toward Kharkiv in the East. Our news feeds are showing this in real time. There's the low-flying Russian plane, flinging missiles into resident neighborhoods with a child crying in the background. The fathers saying goodbye to their children as they head back to the front. The massed helicopter attack, looking like something out of the 1980s movie Red Dawn. This is as chaotic as it gets, and we have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Maybe, somehow, Western sanctions will force the Russians to back down. Maybe the Ukrainians will show such a hardened resistance that they will outlast their foe. Maybe the Russian people will finally sicken of Putin's despotism and demand a new regime. Maybe it will all spiral out of control to the point that Europe and America will have to get involved. We do know that before it's all said and done, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people will be dead for the sake of Putin's vanity. Where can hope be found in such dark days? It's in the same place it's been since the beginning. When Christ was on Earth, He offered hope to people whose situation was more defined by fear than the affluence we're all used to. He also knew that their world was about to be further rocked by turmoil, the likes of which they'd never seen. And He knew He would not be with them, at least not in person. In fact, He issued a somewhat vague warning about how bad it could get. Wondering what His words meant, His disciples asked for direction, clarification, and hope. In Matthew 24, you can read his reply: "See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains." This is one of those places where Jesus doesn't pull any punches. He issues no false promises of world peace. He assures them that there would be wars, troubles, and calamities, and when they come, they'll just be the beginning. Despite the chaos, Jesus said that it's possible for us not to lose our way. Or, as He put it in John 16:33, "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." As we face these days ahead, I've been reminded of something about prayer. We often wonder at times like this, "Other than pray, what can I do?" Let's never forget that praying is doing something. In fact, it's doing the most important thing. The Anglican Church in Dublin, Ireland, has crafted a prayer quite fitting for this moment: O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world: We commend to your merciful care the people and government of Ukraine that, being guided by your providence, they may dwell secure in your peace. Grant to their leaders and all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do your will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness, and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve their people; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart in the nations of the world, that working and witnessing together, we may live in justice and peace and change the hearts of those who would make for conflict and war; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.