Breakpoint

Listeners write in this week asking how they can support students who are in public schools, what are the best C.S. Lewis books to introduce a new Lewis reader, and what resources are best for a small church youth group to teach worldview with. Additionally, John and Shane answer how to present worldview and apologetics in a personal way in a person's "voice", and how the image of God was marred after the Fall.

A California couple is suing a fertility clinic after discovering they gave birth to someone else's daughter. Apparently, there was a mix-up during their in vitro fertilization procedure in 2019. After a DNA test proved the mistake, the couple returned their baby girl to her genetic parents in return for their genetic daughter, whom they'd never met. It's a mind-boggling story about a tragedy made possible by a culture quick to accept technology based on if we can do something instead of whether we should do it. The focus of the news coverage so far has been on the parents, whom we're all meant to assume are the story's victims. While this was certainly heartbreaking for them, no one seems to be asking what this will do to the children. However we choose to engage assisted reproductive technologies, we will never do it well if our focus is on adult happiness over and above what is best for the children. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

Last week, the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced the "Pride Coalition." The coalition is a partnership with the "Log Cabin Republicans," an organization that describes itself as "LGBT conservatives and straight allies who support fairness, freedom, and equality for all." Although many find the move disheartening, it will only shock those who haven't been paying attention. Al Mohler once described the relationship between Republicans and evangelicals as a "marriage of convenience," with marriage, in this case, being a particularly painful and ironic metaphor. To be clear, the convenience in this marriage goes both ways. For many within the RNC, evangelicals are just one of several voting blocs, albeit an important one. For many evangelicals, the Grand Old Party (GOP) is simply a better fit than the alternative, given their stance on social issues like abortion, gender, and religious freedom. Then there are those from both sides taken in by what quirky French theologian Jacques Ellul called "the political illusion." When all problems and all solutions are reduced to politics, all hope rests in gaining political power. The challenge for Christians is always to keep straight what are the means and what are the ends. A decision to partner with an LGBTQ group only makes sense if the "end" is to regain political power. The same decision makes no sense if power is understood as the means, and something else, like limited government, is the end. The problem with this coalition isn't that some in the LGBTQ camp support a political party of limited government. That's been true for a long time. In contemporary politics' pragmatic exercise, it never hurts to have unexpected allies vote for your candidate. However, welcoming voters to a political party is different than creating an alliance with a group that wishes to advance its goals within a political platform. This particular coalition signals a change in the GOP's platform and party positions, as well as broader changes in what it means to be "conservative." A core element of the GOP platform has long been "family values." That's sardonic shorthand for an inconsistently expressed and lived-out set of political beliefs built around a traditional moral framework, especially the idea of the nuclear family being core and significant. The belief that marriage is between one man and one woman who get married and stay married is not a mere social construct but is actually essential for a healthy society and the wellbeing of the next generation. Therefore, it is the government's role to protect the family, not redefine it. The more the government protects the family, the more non-governmental entities can secure our future. Any moral consensus around the nuclear family is only possible if it rests on grounds other than government. That requires grounding for truth outside the government. Today, however, our culture is what Os Guinness calls a "cut flower society." We still have the trappings of so-called "family values," seen in Hallmark movies, Veterans Day parades, and Little Leagues, but there is no real moral foundation for the family. The quest for freedom is devolving into the pursuit of radical autonomy, especially in sexual matters. And now we're back to the RNC's decision. The GOP is mistaken to think that it is possible to be fiscally or politically conservative for long without being, on some level, culturally conservative first. You can't have limited government by embracing a redefinition of marriage and family, because the family is the only institution able to produce the kind of citizens able to govern themselves. Whenever family fails, it compels the state to step in. The Founders, for all their flaws, understood that. John Adams said, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net." Chuck Colson was fond of saying: "The Kingdom of God will never arrive on Air Force One." Meaning, in many ways, that Christians cannot be politically expedient. We vote how we must, and do what we can, to love our neighbors in political ways, but we must not put our hope in candidates or parties as if they're the ends and our support is the means. In a Christian view, political ends simply aren't ultimate ends. Christians must maintain a clear-headed vision of the importance of social issues in the public arena. That means determining what is true theologically, first, and then letting political chips fall where they may. As my friend, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly put it, "We must, lovingly and winsomely, never stop contending for the things that matter to God." Family and marriage matter to God.

Young pro-choice writer Kathleen Walsh recently published a conversation about abortion she had with her mom. The exchange, which ran at "The Cut," is both fascinating and frustrating. Walsh's mom gets right to the point—the fact that the unborn are babies: "Whether you want it or not," she says, "doesn't change what it is." Walsh insists that "because it's in my body, it's still a part of me…it's not a person. It's a theoretical person." Her mom points to her daughter's own time in the womb: "Before I decided you existed," she says, "you still existed." "But it wasn't me," says Walsh. "I exist because you chose for me to exist." She doesn't seem to appreciate that she's only around to make this absurd argument because her mom rejected it. It's sad to hear someone so committed to abortion that she denies her own existence in the womb. But "theoretical persons" are the logical outcome of a worldview that says humans only have value if they're wanted. May this mother-daughter conversation have the opposite effect its author intended.

November marks a pair of important anniversaries, bookends to one of the darkest periods in human history. In the first week of November (often dated as October by the older Julian calendar) 1917, Russian revolutionaries under Vladimir Lenin overthrew the moderate socialist government of Alexander Kerensky and established the first Marxist regime. Almost precisely 72 years later, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, symbolically taking with it a diabolical worldview that had trapped and enslaved a third of humanity. You would think that, considering its extensive and deadly track record, the demise of communism would be celebrated by everyone: conservatives could rejoice in the casting down of a belief system intent on desecrating the wisdom from the past, and liberals could cherish the freedom from tyranny that the fall of the Wall represented. However, far too many people, particularly in academia, continue to see the legacy of Communism through rose-colored glasses. A few weeks ago, I mentioned the high school AP Government teacher in Sacramento who was suspended for encouraging his students to take up far Left activities. Hanging in his classroom was a poster of Mao Zedong who, if you recall, was responsible for over 50 million deaths in the 20th century. That's more than anyone else, including Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. While this may be an extreme case, it's unsettling how history's greatest killers are so often remembered. We've all seen the Che Guevara posters and t-shirts, a great irony itself given his views on race and sexuality, as well as, pun intended, the capitalization of his image. The selective memory goes beyond pop culture. According to the Acton Institute, about 30 percent of the rising generation has a favorable view of Marxism. How can an ideology that animated oppressive control over billions, inspired Soviet Gulags and East European secret police, and instigated mass starvations in Europe and Asia seem positive to anyone? Some blame can be placed on our lack of historical memory. It's been 32 years since the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall. An entire generation of adults lacks a personal connection to Communism's horrifying history. Often, what little history we hear about the Cold War is filtered through pop culture, or delivered in a volatile mix of paranoia, nationalism, and ignorance. We'd do better to listen to voices such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or Ukrainian protestors, or Chinese dissidents like Bob Fu, who actually experienced the terrors of a worker's paradise. Another reason Marx and his ideals get a pass is that it's easy to romanticize a reality we can't see. When Nazism, Communism's evil twin, collapsed in the wake of war, its beliefs were repudiated before the entire world. Hitler's name and movement became shorthand for evil. His dreams died in the rubble of Anglo-American bombs and Russian tanks, and his crimes were exposed in court. Not so with Marx nor his disciples. Historians may comment on their crimes and their statues may be toppled after the fact, but Lenin, Stalin, and Mao died in their beds, secure in their power, without ever having to face defeat or the wrath of their victims. Without this, it's all too easy for those in the comfortable, capitalist West to imagine that they weren't as bad as they truly were. Finally, Marx slides in a culture that judges ideas on whether they sound nice. The Nazis literally had skulls on their caps. The Marxists, on the other hand, sold utopian dreams of bread and land and unity and equality and progress. They might have been sending millions to die in the Gulag for the crime of having a wealthy ancestor, but that's not what the Che Guevara fans of today think about. They're thinking about slogans that look great on a bumper sticker or a tweet, but those same slogans mean death and tyranny when put into practice. Perhaps the most important lesson we can take from this cultural folly is that when it comes to the ideas that populate our worldviews, it's not enough that they sound nice and feel right. Ideas wouldn't matter if they stayed in slogans and manifestos. But they don't. They grow feet and hands, drive armies and policy, and have consequences for real people in the real world. Too much is at stake to root our worldview in the latest recurring ideological fad. Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. We must not ignore the horror or the victims of bad ideas just because we found them on the road of good intentions. Intentions and worldviews are good only insofar as they are true.

According to a recent article in The Economist, the digital revolution is poised to "up-end the practice of macroeconomics." With so much life lived online, it's now possible to know nearly everything about an average person's consumer behavior - from the amount of produce they buy to what they are watching on Netflix. The technical term for this is "econometrics." In the extreme, it treats people like predictable robots. With enough data, the theory goes, we can reliably predict consumer behavior in any given scenario. It's one thing to predict purchases, but people should never be reduced to mere statistics. Maybe that's why The Economist warns that "The biggest danger (with this approach) is hubris." Like in Mao's China, reducing people to numbers dehumanizes them. The Christian worldview is bigger. People are not programmable cogs in a global marketing machine. We're not units of the state. We're more than just our material appetites, too. Humans are capable of glorious heights and catastrophic falls, made in God's image and in need of redemption.

Certain lifestyle choices strongly correspond to long-term success: staying in school; avoiding pregnancy outside of marriage; regularly attending church; and abstaining from drug abuse, heavy drinking, and risky sex. Decades of research show these choices correlate with physical health, economic prosperity, and personal happiness. They also correlate more with the traditional and religious sides of the values aisle. Tech billionaires, Hollywood celebrities, and CEOs of megacorporations like Disney and the NFL tend to hold far more progressive views about sex, marriage, drugs, and religion. Along with media elites and progressive politicos, they often loudly reject those values that lead to health, wealth, and happiness. Why then do they not suffer the consequences of their views? According to one Cambridge academic, permissive attitudes about sex, marriage, drugs, and religion are "luxury beliefs, more status symbols for cultural elites than they are blueprints for the way they live. Rob Henderson first floated the idea of "luxury beliefs" in an essay in the New York Post, later at Quillette, and most recently in a podcast. He argues that holding beliefs that tend to be disastrous for poor and middle-class communities has become the modern equivalent of buying expensive clothes or hiring servants. It's a way of showing off your wealth and signaling your status to fellow members of the upper class. Having grown up in multiple foster homes before enlisting in the Air Force and later attending Yale, Henderson has personally experienced much of the socio-economic spectrum. He knows first-hand how destructive the progressive behaviors held in reverence by many elites are to ordinary people. In his attempt to reconcile these facts, Henderson turned to 19th-century economist Thorstein Veblen's theory of the "leisure class." According to Veblen, rich and connected people once advertised their status mainly through luxury goods—things that were expensive and served no practical purpose. Today, they've switched to expensive ideas, or notions about how to live which, if adopted by everyone, would wreck society. Henderson cites some of the luxury beliefs he has encountered among his Yale and Cambridge peers: "…when an affluent person advocates for drug legalization, or anti-vaccination policies, or open borders, or loose sexual norms, or uses the term 'white privilege,' they are engaging in a status display. They are trying to tell you, 'I am a member of the upper class.'" These beliefs and others work as signals, he says, because if anyone but a privileged elite were to act on them, it would be disastrous. For example, polyamory is a lifestyle in vogue among wealthy liberals whose financial resources can bail them out of defaulted leases, surprise pregnancies, and therapy bills. When such behaviors are adopted by the less privileged, however, the results include spiraling poverty, disease, an epidemic of single motherhood, and suicide. The costs incurred by luxury beliefs, writes Henderson, are borne by ordinary people. Richard Weaver famously said "ideas have consequences," to which we add, "and bad ideas have victims." If God's design for sex, marriage, society, and the human soul are in fact built into the fabric of the universe, we can no more ignore them without consequences than someone can walk off a ten-story roof and ignore the consequences of gravity. Those who adopt "luxury beliefs" often have a parachute of trust funds, good lawyers, and social connections. Even so, as Nicholas Kristoff wrote a few years ago in the New York Times, many upper-class progressives don't actually preach what they practice, instead choosing to live fairly traditional, monogamous, drug-free, generally moral lifestyles… which makes their "luxury beliefs" even more like fashion accessories. In the end, however, the bill for luxury beliefs comes due. If Henderson and plenty of social scientists are correct in their analysis, it's usually charged to those who can least afford it.

Certain lifestyle choices strongly correspond to long-term success: staying in school; avoiding pregnancy outside of marriage; regularly attending church; and abstaining from drug abuse, heavy drinking, and risky sex. Decades of research show these choices correlate with physical health, economic prosperity, and personal happiness. They also correlate more with the traditional and religious sides of the values aisle. Tech billionaires, Hollywood celebrities, and CEOs of megacorporations like Disney and the NFL tend to hold far more progressive views about sex, marriage, drugs, and religion. Along with media elites and progressive politicos, they often loudly reject those values that lead to health, wealth, and happiness. Why then do they not suffer the consequences of their views? According to one Cambridge academic, permissive attitudes about sex, marriage, drugs, and religion are "luxury beliefs, more status symbols for cultural elites than they are blueprints for the way they live. Rob Henderson first floated the idea of "luxury beliefs" in an essay in the New York Post, later at Quillette, and most recently in a podcast. He argues that holding beliefs that tend to be disastrous for poor and middle-class communities has become the modern equivalent of buying expensive clothes or hiring servants. It's a way of showing off your wealth and signaling your status to fellow members of the upper class. Having grown up in multiple foster homes before enlisting in the Air Force and later attending Yale, Henderson has personally experienced much of the socio-economic spectrum. He knows first-hand how destructive the progressive behaviors held in reverence by many elites are to ordinary people. In his attempt to reconcile these facts, Henderson turned to 19th-century economist Thorstein Veblen's theory of the "leisure class." According to Veblen, rich and connected people once advertised their status mainly through luxury goods—things that were expensive and served no practical purpose. Today, they've switched to expensive ideas, or notions about how to live which, if adopted by everyone, would wreck society. Henderson cites some of the luxury beliefs he has encountered among his Yale and Cambridge peers: "…when an affluent person advocates for drug legalization, or anti-vaccination policies, or open borders, or loose sexual norms, or uses the term 'white privilege,' they are engaging in a status display. They are trying to tell you, 'I am a member of the upper class.'" These beliefs and others work as signals, he says, because if anyone but a privileged elite were to act on them, it would be disastrous. For example, polyamory is a lifestyle in vogue among wealthy liberals whose financial resources can bail them out of defaulted leases, surprise pregnancies, and therapy bills. When such behaviors are adopted by the less privileged, however, the results include spiraling poverty, disease, an epidemic of single motherhood, and suicide. The costs incurred by luxury beliefs, writes Henderson, are borne by ordinary people. Richard Weaver famously said "ideas have consequences," to which we add, "and bad ideas have victims." If God's design for sex, marriage, society, and the human soul are in fact built into the fabric of the universe, we can no more ignore them without consequences than someone can walk off a ten-story roof and ignore the consequences of gravity. Those who adopt "luxury beliefs" often have a parachute of trust funds, good lawyers, and social connections. Even so, as Nicholas Kristoff wrote a few years ago in the New York Times, many upper-class progressives don't actually preach what they practice, instead choosing to live fairly traditional, monogamous, drug-free, generally moral lifestyles… which makes their "luxury beliefs" even more like fashion accessories. In the end, however, the bill for luxury beliefs comes due. If Henderson and plenty of social scientists are correct in their analysis, it's usually charged to those who can least afford it.

John and Maria discuss a recent commentary on Haiti before exploring an article by Trevin Wax on the lean toward politics by progressive Christians. That discussion leads into a new development from the Republican National Commitee to create a "Pride Coalition". John shares the challenges this brings to the Christian worldview of politics.

I recently watched a video of Pakistani tribesmen trying cheesecake for the first time. I know that might sound random, but it was kind of awesome. Though "diversity" has morphed into an ideologically loaded buzzword, it was God's idea first. But His idea wasn't moral or cultural relativism. It was the beauty of difference, anchored in eternal, created truths about how He made us. In Amos 9:7, God asks the Israelites, "Are not you the same to me as the Cushites? [Did] I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?" All people are made in God's image and all will one day answer to Him. Christ's Kingdom is composed of humans, redeemed and united under His authority. The image we glimpse in Revelation is beautiful because it is one of unity and diversity, where people of every "tongue, tribe, nation, and language" are gathered before the throne of God, all dressed in white for the wedding feast of the Lamb. And who knows, maybe we will all enjoy some cheesecake together there, too.