Breakpoint

Now, apartment therapy probably isn't the first place you look to find insight into God's design and His intent for Creation. But just a few weeks ago, a writer described going through her late grandmother's possessions and was surprised by how many candleholders her grandmother had owned. These were no ordinary candle holders. They were for Shabbat, Hebrew for "Sabbath." On a Friday afternoon, after looking at her grandmother's menorah and other Jewish art, the writer lit the candles, and for the first time in quite a while observed Shabbat. What followed for her was a rediscovery — actually a discovery of the wisdom and the blessings associated with keeping the Sabbath, or setting clear boundaries, as she put it, between work and non-work time. Not to mention the opportunities for rest and reflection that it brought. Thanks to her Jewish heritage this author discovered one of the most important things that we've lost as a society: the ordinances that God wrote into Creation, such as the Sabbath. Trying to live while ignoring these ordinances is trying to live while ignoring gravity. You might pull it off for a while, but eventually you'll come crashing back down to earth. Now, if you doubt the importance of Sabbath, just run a quick Google search for terms like "exhaustion" or "burnout" or the various mental disorders that accompany exhaustion and burnout in our society. This is what crashing back down to earth looks like for a society. It's a recurring blight on our culture. Now, you don't have to have a Jewish grandmother to gain an appreciation for God's gift of the Sabbath. All you need is a willingness to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, God has written down what we need for genuine human flourishing and built it into the actual fabric of the created order. In his book 24/6: A Prescription for a Happier, Healthier Life, physician Matthew Sleeth notes that the Third Commandment is the only one of the ten that begins with the word "remember." Sleeth adds, "It's almost as if God knew we would forget." And of course we have forgotten. As individuals, as families, and as a society, we keep forgetting the Sabbath. Not only do most of us work longer hours in the office than ever before, we take our work with us. Our phones are no longer primarily phones, they are computers keeping us tethered to our work. Even our watches keep us tethered to our phone, which keeps us tethered to the world of work. This rhythm, this pace, that we keep in our culture, is many, many steps away from what we read in Scripture. On the Seventh Day God finished the work He had done. And He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. Six days you shall labor, He commanded, and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall not do any work, you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. Recovering the Sabbath and living, as Dr. Smith puts it, 24/6 instead of 24/7 is maybe the only way we have to escape the cultural rhythm. This rhythm seems to be just lift-off after lift-off, followed by painful crash after painful crash back to Earth. Just like gravity begins by acknowledging that gravity exists and that it's pointless to defy something as powerful as gravity, God's creational plan for human flourishing is like gravity. It's not just random instructions that He gave based on arbitrary thoughts; it's literally how He created the world. Now, recovering the Sabbath, setting loving boundaries and safeguards isn't easy. But both the article's author and Dr. Sleeth gives us a model. They begin with one step, one commitment at a time. These steps include following rules that we've been trained to find arbitrary (or we might call them l legalistic), like for the author in the case of Shabbat, lighting candles at precisely 18 minutes before sundown on Friday night. But that kind of precision, that kind of obedience, is kind of the point. These are God's ordinances for human flourishing. They come from Him, not from us. The Sabbath isn't a social construct. Left to our own devices, we'll crash and burn every single time. Only when we're willing to conform ourselves to God's ordinances and His intent, not expecting for Him to change His rules and His policies to ours, we will find ourselves happier, and healthier. Starting these new rhythms can be as simple as taking the time to intentionally light a candle or to turn off our phones on Saturday night, in full expectation that God's ordinances are true and good altogether.

The integrity of a Christian worldview becomes most evident whenever the timeless truths of Scripture collide and intersect with the issues of our contemporary moment. That happened for one of our recently commissioned Colson Fellows named Kirsten. Kirsten's story about speaking up at a pro-choice rally is the stuff of movies. It's also the stuff of ordinary Christians everywhere who choose to join in God's story, in the time and place where He has put them. The following is a transcript of Kirsten's story. Note how God brought her into His larger work in this particular cultural moment, and where she's now headed. Kirsten's story: I was homeless, living in Berlin, Germany. I had just checked myself into an orphanage. I came from a background of not having been planned. My mom had an unplanned pregnancy. I was not desired or planned. I had a difficult childhood and then ended up checking myself into an orphanage. And at that point I was invited to a pro-choice rally. Out of curiosity, I decided to go since I was a Christian already at the time. I arrived at the rally about 15 minutes late. It was in a big conference room with a huge oak door, and behind the door I could already hear that the rally had started. I was going to sneak in quietly and sit in the back, but as I opened the door, it slammed shut really loudly and everyone turned in my direction, including the speaker. And I just thought, well I've got everyone's attention. I might as well ask the question that's burning on my mind. So, I addressed the speaker and said, "What makes abortion a good thing in your mind?" And he was surprisingly gentle and calm as a person. He replied in a very kind tone, saying, "Imagine a child, a child that was not planned And that has a difficult childhood and ends up living in an orphanage. Wouldn't we be doing that child a favor by not exposing it to such a miserable existence?" I looked at him and I blurted out, "I am that child. I'm that child you are talking about right now. I was not planned. I had a really hard childhood and I'm living in an orphanage right now and I'm glad to be alive. I'm glad to be alive because God made me, and He has a plan for me and that's all that matters." There was complete silence in that room. Even though the meeting had just started, it was already over. All you could hear was chairs moving and people getting up and leaving the room. There was nothing left to be said. I realized how powerful the truth was, how powerful my own story was. Many years later, I moved to South Carolina, married, and had children. I decided to google: "Is there anything pro-life near me." There was a pregnancy center. I contacted them to ask if I could volunteer. They responded by saying, "Well, to be quite honest, we're not even able to pay the electricity bill. We are not known. Churches don't even know we're here. Girls don't know we're here. Things are just not going well." I ended up becoming the director of the crisis pregnancy center. One of the things I was asked to do was to equip people with pro-life apologetics. So, I contacted Scott Klusendorf (of Life Training Institute) and said, "Scott, can you give me a print-out of one of your speeches? I can learn it by heart and then I can start going to schools and teaching." He said, "No, definitely not. You will not be able to do that because as soon as someone asks a question, you won't be able to answer it. The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle. I've got a stack of 10 books. Read those and then get back to me." I got a group of friends together and we read and discussed the books for six months. Then I went through public speaking training for three months. And afterwards I felt well equipped to start speaking at churches, youth groups, and schools. And I felt more and more passionate that this was really what I wanted to do. I trained someone else to take over the director role of the crisis pregnancy center and started doing more of the speaking full time. Before I was trained in the Colson Fellows program, I was batting pro-choice arguments on a surface level. Then I realized that abortion is just a symptom of underlying worldviews. To address those root issues is so effective when talking to someone who says, "My body, my choice," or "It's just like mercy killing at an animal shelter" (something I heard the other day). You look at all the different arguments. Instead of just answering the arguments (it was like batting mole hills before), now I can understand that wow, these are the different worldviews that align against the biblical worldview. So now, I can go deeper and address those worldviews. That's what Colson Fellows program did for me. That's Kirsten and her testimony of the impact of the Colson Fellows program on her life, the impact that it's had on her, and is having on her right now. She is in the first few months of carrying out her three-year ministry plan, a significant part of the Colson Fellows program training. If you'd like to join a Colson Fellows cohort near you, be mentored to understand a Christian worldview, and like Kirsten, live it out in this cultural moment, visit colsonfellows.org.

John and Shane discuss two significant questions dealing with mankind discerning their role as subduing the earth and making it flourish. They first field a question related to contraception, discussing the impact of mankind remaking the purpose and design of sex. Then, John is asked to provide some resources on parenting and the role of moms and dads. John and Shane give a plethora of resources to equip the listener to understand the power and role of moms and dads instead of simply parents. -- Resources -- On the Family and Marriage BreakPoint on Psychedelics – Cashing in on Psychedelics The Economics of Sex and Power of the Pill – Mark Regnarus – The Economics of Sex on Youtube Humane Vitae – Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul VI – Humane Vitae What is Marriage – Ryan Anderson – What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense The Problem with Surrogacy – Jake Meador – The Problem with Surrogacy: A Brief Sketch On the Body and Sex Our Bodies Tell God's Story – Christopher West – Our Bodies Tell God's Story: Discovering the Divine Plan for Love, Sex, and Gender Same Sex Marriage – Sean McDowell and John Stonestreet – Same Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God's Design for Marriage Chasing Love – Sean McDowell – Chasing Love: Sex, Love, and Relationships in a Confused Culture Theology of the Body for Teens – Ascension Press – Theology of the Body for Teens: Middle School Edition For the Body – Timothy Tennent – For the Body: Rediscovering a Theology of Gender, Sexuality, and the Human Body The Campaign to Discredit Mark Regnerus – Peter Wood – The Campaign to discredit Regnerus and the Assault on Peer Review On Being a Dad Bringing Up Boys – James Dobson – Bringing Up Boys: Shaping the Next Generation of Men Future Men – Doug Wilson – Future Men: Raising Boys to Fight Giants

In the 1987 flick starring Tom Selleck and a few other guys called Three Men and a Baby, a trio of bachelors share a New York apartment and they take turns bringing home one-night stands. All seems to be going according to this hedonistic plan until one of their one-night stands leaves a baby at their doorstep. Jack is the father, but he's out of town and hilarity ensues as his two roommates rearrange their lives to care for this little baby named Mary after bumbling their way through bottles and diapers and bedtime and babysitting. Something surprising happens: these clueless cads find themselves actually acting like dads. The bond they form with this little girl brings mom and dad together in the end for something that looks more like a family than just a casual fling. Now, I'm not recommending this movie or this lifestyle, but I do think that it illustrates the power of parenthood — especially the power of parenthood to transform both the attitudes and the priorities of men. Fathers are more than just sperm donors. They have a connection with their children beyond contributing DNA. In fact, that whole myth is losing credibility in the face of scientific and medical evidence. For instance, we know now that fathers bond physically and emotionally with their children in a way that complements a mother's bond. That's why skin-to-skin contact with dad is now a common practice in delivery rooms. And the connections don't end there. Recent discoveries suggest that dedicated fathers, like dedicated mothers, undergo dramatic hormonal and neurological shifts upon the arrival of a baby. Some experts now even think that those shifts and the father-child bond that creates them begin even before birth. Writing recently in The Atlantic, Ariel Ramchandani describes a bizarre condition that sometimes afflicts expectant fathers. What's known as Couvade Syndrome is a poorly understood set of symptoms in which a man experiences physical changes that mirror those of his pregnant partner. Things like weight gain, vomiting, aches and pains, even cravings — understandably. Dads who go through such things are often embarrassed to talk about it. It sounds like one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's worst movies, Junior. Until recently, the go-to explanation was that Couvade Syndrome is psychosomatic. In other words, it's all in your head. But Ramchandani marshals evidence that something physical could be at work when men are experiencing so-called pregnancy symptoms. The key is probably hormones triggered by living with a pregnant partner, and caring for a child. "Becoming a dad is associated with declines in men's level of testosterone," she writes, "and those declines are linked with greater paternal investment. Hormonal changes could explain fathers' weight gain as well as their pre- and postnatal depression." According to one psychology professor at the University of Southern California, Couvade Syndrome is still a mystery, but less dramatic. Hormonal shifts among fathers are well documented and biologically important. We celebrate a vision of men as high-testosterone, aggressive and manly, said this professor. And that's inconsistent with the parenting role, and these few men who feel pregnant may simply be experiencing an extreme form of the natural shifts in body chemistry that prepares them to become good dads. Unlike mothers, however, fathers don't undergo these shifts automatically. It comes after investment. And time research at the University of Michigan points to a feedback loop in which fathers become better suited hormonally to nurture the more time they actually spend nurturing. According to one University of Notre Dame anthropologist quoted in The Atlantic,, the degree to which fathers physically adapt to their new role can even depend on cultural norms of fatherhood. Now given all this, it's not surprising that Tom Selleck and company slipped into their paternal roles so easily. Men who behave like dads, science seems to suggest, become better dads. But this research also understates an enormous difference between mothers and fathers in that they each contribute to child-rearing in unique, distinct and important ways. Ironically, the fact that some men experience symptoms reminiscent of motherhood could be proof that mothers aren't the only thing that children need. Male bodies respond to the call to nurture in their own way. This supports the claim that Dr. Ryan T. Anderson often makes, that there's really no such thing as parenting; there's only mothering and fathering. The fact is that we have a day set aside to recognize Father's Day, and even a few movies that describe it, even bad ones. Hence that on some level, we knew this all along.

Imagine a software engineering class that doesn't make students learn computer code. That should give you some idea how ridiculous it is that Princeton University is no longer requiring classics majors to learn Greek or Latin. Not zoology students or English majors, but classics students. You know, the folks who study Greek and Latin culture. Why this departure from centuries of academic standards? The head of undergraduate studies in Princeton's classics department explains that this change will bring "new perspectives," and make for "a more vibrant intellectual community." Not every student of language agrees. Writing at The Atlantic, Columbia University linguistics professor John McWhorter argues that buzzwords like "new perspectives" and "vibrant community" are code for forced racial diversity. Of course, as a black academic, McWhorter values diversity in higher education. But he argues that the study of classics is under assault from a twisted and condescending view of diversity — one that sees minority students as incapable of learning and reading ancient languages, and which requires colleges to dumb down their curricula. If anything, he's understating the problem. Not just Greek and Latin, as languages, but the study of classics itself is under attack by those who see racism behind every rock and ionic pillar. In his Atlantic piece, McWhorter quotes one of Princeton's classics faculty, who said in 2019 that the whole discipline of classics is "explicitly aimed at disavowing the legitimate status of scholars of color…Far from being extrinsic to the study of Greco-Roman antiquity," he claims, "the production of whiteness" resides "in the very marrows of classics." In other words, requiring students who want to study the Greeks and Romans to learn their languages is racist. In fact, studying the classics at all may be racist. If this sounds just as absurd as a recent Washington Post editorial that argued the names of North American birds are racist, well, that's because it is. Writing in The New York Times Magazine, Rachel Poser observes that "Some classicists have come around to the idea that their discipline forms part of the scaffold of white supremacy…" At America's universities and schools, this kind of claim is becoming alarmingly common — and it's not just Homer and Virgil in the crosshairs. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported on proposed revisions to the framework for California's mathematics curriculum, which would make "dismantling racism in mathematics instruction" a top priority. Among their suggestions? Stop correcting students' mistakes in a direct way. Apparently, that's what passes for white supremacy. The point here is less about Greek, Latin, or algebra than it is about the way modern ideologies (like the always nebulous "anti-racism") are gobbling up everything else that's worth learning. At the heart of this feeding frenzy is an attitude Owen Barfield dubbed "chronological snobbery,"the notion that we're smarter and better than our ancestors simply because we're modern. Writing at the Circe Institute, Austin Hoffman notices the same attitude. He argues that by abandoning classical languages, "We have cut ourselves off from the past and the wisdom which it has to offer us." As this sheltered thinking stunts our minds, we come to believe that "[o]ur modern concerns are the only real problems and our own insular discourse is the only hope of rescue." That's why one of the duties of Christians in a culture like ours is to be people who live in — but are not trapped in — the moment. To do that, we need to be well educated. First and foremost, of course, in Scripture. But we should also become fluent in age-old wisdom, in the books, ideas, and art that have stood the test of time and nurtured civilization. Reading the classics is worth doing for its own sake, of course. But as C. S. Lewis points out in his essay, "On the Reading of Old Books," ancient ideas can be a powerful antidote to modern errors, like the obsessions currently consuming higher education. Only by keeping "the clean sea breeze of the centuries" blowing through our minds, he argues, can we learn to recognize where contemporary thinking has become stagnant. Subjecting every discipline to woke racial ideology will only stifle true diversity, and buzzwords like "vibrant" and "new perspectives" can't conceal that. Still, I guess students ought to study the new jargon well. It may be the only language they learn at Princeton.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a much-anticipated ruling in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In 2018, the city of Philadelphia barred Catholic Social Services (CSS) from placing foster children, as it had been doing for over 200 years, unless it changed its policy on same-sex households. Rather than compromise Church teaching, CSS challenged the city's action in court. They lost at the Third Circuit, but in a 9-0 decision, CSS and religious freedom won the day at the Supreme Court. The win at the Supreme Court was expected, but many hoped the justices would use this case to overturn Employment Division v. Smith, a 1990 ruling which held that state and local law could restrict religious freedom, if it did so in a way that applies equally to everyone. It is because of Smith that so many religious freedom cases are argued on the grounds of either free speech or (as was the ruling of the Masterpiece Cakeshop case) that a law wasn't applied equally. Consistent with the aversion of the Roberts Court to issue sweeping rulings, the court didn't use this case to overturn Employment Division. Instead, all nine justices agreed that Philadelphia didn't apply its ant-discrimination laws equally, thus rendering Employment Division inapplicable. Philadelphia's anti-discrimination provision "permits exceptions [its requirements] at the 'sole discretion' of the [Human Services] Commissioner." According to the court, a law that "invites the government to consider the particular reasons for a person's conduct by creating a mechanism for individualized exemptions," cannot, by definition, be called "generally applicable." What's more, once exceptions are permitted for other reasons, exceptions in cases of "religious hardship" cannot be dismissed "without a compelling reason" In the unanimous opinion of the Court, the city didn't "have a compelling interest in refusing to contract with CSS." Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the court's opinion, put it like this:, "CSS seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else." So, the court ruled that Philadelphia did not have a basis for its actions against CSS and, further, "violate[d] the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment." Immediately, media headlines attempted to spin the outcome as the court privileging religious freedom over LGBTQ rights. It wasn't. No LGBTQ "rights" were in any way diminished by this decision whatsoever. The media outlet Vox, chided the court for failing to settle the significant issues raised by the case (which is true), claiming that "an epic showdown between religion and LGBTQ rights ended with a whimper." That's only true if you consider a decisive victory for religious institutions over forces that would force them to choose between their beliefs and their mission to be a whimper. The Human Rights Campaign made it sound like the court's real objection to Philadelphia's law was that it was badly drafted and, had it been better-written, might have survived scrutiny. Perhaps. But as the National Review noted, a majority of the court sees Employment Division v. Smith as something that needs to be addressed. While it's not clear which standard they'd accept as a replacement, it is reasonable to assume they could make it harder for government entities to justify infringements on religious freedom. Chief Justice Roberts' words, that there was "no compelling reason" for the city to refuse to contract with Catholic Social Services, is true whether or not Employment Division is applicable. Despite its narrow scope, the Court's ruling in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia is very good news. In addition to being a win for Catholic Social Services, it means the court is taking seriously Justice Kennedy's warning in his otherwise terrible Obergefell decision: Religious organizations need protection "as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths." As Micah J. Schwartzman of the University of Virginia told the Washington Post, the "court's signal for social service providers is clear enough: It will grant them religious exemptions, even when doing so entails allowing them to violate anti-discrimination laws." Two additional observations: First, the Supreme Court will eventually have to address the conflict between religious freedom and LGBTQ rights, including for business owners like Jack Phillips. Jack lost this week in a Colorado court, when a judge ruled that Phillips discriminated against a transgender lawyer who has been targeting his business. Second, the court now has an even stronger track record of protecting the freedoms of religious organizations. So, there's no need to compromise biblical morality, even on these most controversial of issues.

John and Maria explain the significance of to important court cases that were decided this week. One case involving Jack Phillips challenges religious freedom in the public life. The other is a protection of the freedom of non-profit organizations to conduct businesses guided by religious convictions. Maria introduced a segment on Juneteenth, a recently minted holiday by the Biden administration that helps us recognize the challenges Americans faced at the hands of slavery. John then gives commentary on a recent canceling of a Nigerian author who recently referred to a trans-woman as a trans-woman.

Since I wasn't even alive in 1968, I'll defer to Boomers and historians to tell us whether the country was more divided back then or today. In my lifetime, however, I can confidently say that the racial, political, economic, and ideological polarization has never been worse, nor has the violence and outrage. No matter the issue, from public policy to personal morality to global health, people seem to immediately run to their ideological and political corners: No discussion, little charity, less concern about the requirements of a common life together, but a lot of yelling. It's difficult to imagine a people less able to accomplish a life together than us, with no shared vision and no shared memory. Tomorrow, however, offers us an opportunity to come out of our ideological and political corners and agree to commemorate a significant day in American history. Every American, regardless of politics or background, should reflect on a day marked in many African American communities for over 150 years. Tomorrow, June 19th, is Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day in 1865 in which the particularly vicious evil of chattel slavery effectively came to an end in this country. Here's the history. In 1862, President Lincoln issued the most famous executive order in history, known as the Emancipation Proclamation. "…on the first day of January," read the order, "in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State … in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward and forever free." With this order, Lincoln only declared the emancipation of slaves within the Confederacy. Pro-Union border states and even areas in the South controlled by Union troops were not "in rebellion against the United States." Practically speaking, the Emancipation Proclamation was more symbolic than effective. The surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in April of 1865 signaled the end of the Confederacy and foresaw the final end of slavery. Even then, however, pockets of resistance persisted. Emancipation would have to be enforced. On June 19, 1865, "more than two thousand Federal soldiers of the 13th Army Corps arrived in Galveston [Texas] and with them Major General Gordon Granger . . . Granger's men marched through Galveston reading General Order, No. 3," which informed "the people of Texas… that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free." That is a moment worthy of commemorating. In fact, African-Americans in Texas began commemorating Juneteenth the very next year, 1866. As African-Americans migrated north and west, they took the commemoration with them. Even today, though officially recognized in hundreds of cities and in 47 out of 50 states, Juneteenth remains largely an African-American celebration. But it's a day all Americans should commemorate. Juneteenth was the culmination of the efforts of men and women across race and social standing to put an end to a particularly shameful practice on our shores. Last year, my Colson Center colleague Tim Padgett wrote an outstanding column on Juneteenth at BreakPoint.org,. In it, he described how American abolitionists "were driven by the understanding that the realities of American Slavery were irreconcilable to their Christian beliefs about the dignity of humanity and their American dreams about the centrality of liberty. They saw that the slave was as made in the image of God as anyone else and therefore as deserving of honor as themselves." Juneteenth 1865 is an important event in our national timeline, an attempt to live up to what Chuck Colson liked to call our American creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." We've not yet lived up to that creed. We still have a long way to go. Perhaps remembering Juneteenth together could remind us of the type of nation we say we are, and compel us to keep trying.

In a rather stunning op-ed at CNN a couple of weeks ago, a medical doctor offered an answer to one of the great worldview questions: "What is the highest good?" Bodily autonomy, wrote Dr. Alexis Drutchas, is the highest human right, and should trump all other considerations in medical decision making: "Adults with capacity should hold the ultimate authority over their own bodies and the medical decisions for their minor children." The obvious context of this op-ed, which should be especially obvious to anyone who's ever attempted to actually disagree with their doctors, is gender transition. Smartly, this doctor offered a philosophical take on the matter, since medical justifications for cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating surgeries are lacking. In his most recent book, What it Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics, bioethicist Dr. Carter Snead addresses the growing influence of expressive individualism over medicine. This vision of the human being "as an atomized and solitary will" which "equates human flourishing solely with the capacity to formulate and pursue future plans of one's own invention" is, according to Snead, causing "mission creep" in the medical community. Instead of treating sick bodies with a view to heal, bodies are seen as arbitrary physical matter that should bend like clay to our wills, and medical ethics and science should follow suit. If expressing our own wills is the first duty of expressive individualism, accepting everyone else's expression is the second. Even doctors should comply, even if a patients' desired "expression" requires killing a healthy baby, cutting off a healthy body part, or causing death upon request. This philosophical shift is leading to dramatic practical changes in how medicine is practiced, in many cases leading to literal opposite ideas of concepts like "treatment," "illness," and "healing." Medicine has long balanced "bodily autonomy" against other interests. We've just spent a year and a half wearing masks, socially distancing ourselves away from airplanes and crowded restaurants, and zooming church services in order to fight a virus. Doctors don't give narcotics to anyone who asks, or perform weight loss surgery on dangerously thin patients with eating disorders. They can be prosecuted if they do. To get around this problem, Dr. Drutchas adds the caveat that full autonomy should only belong to "adults with capacity." What's not clear is what counts as "capacity," how to define it, and who gets to decide who has achieved it. In reality, the medical community is increasingly paying lip service to a philosophy it doesn't intend to keep to and can't actually live by. For starters, not all "expressions" are treated with the same degree of fanfare, as this doctor implies. Consider how "de-transitioners," those who've undergone gender transition but later regret it, are treated by both medical institutions and the media. They are treated as either non-existent or dishonest. How often do we hear of women in crisis pregnancies who heroically choose life rather than death for their preborn children? Or what of those who face suffering or disabilities and choose to live lives of courage, influence, and grace rather than accept what is being called "aid-in-dying?" Will these decisions also be applauded, or will they be used as an excuse to claim that these patients have "lost capacity"? The very concept of "bodily autonomy" was originally a Christian contribution to an often cruel and barbaric world. Far from suggesting that our bodies are mere heaps of matter for us to do with what we will, the Christian view was that to defile the body, either our own or another's, is to violate the image of God. Regardless of how old, how young, how healthy, or how sick, a Christian view is that our bodies are not our own. "You were bought with a price," Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, "therefore glorify God in your body." A fundamental difference between the kind of bodily autonomy Christianity gave the world and what is assumed today lies in whether or not the body is designed. A Christian view of bodily autonomy (or perhaps "integrity" would be a better word) is shaped by the larger telos, or purpose, for which we were made. Our bodies are created, not self-determined, for the larger purpose for which we were made: to glorify God, to love Him, and to love our neighbors. This is why medical ethics matters for the Church. If Christians suffer the "mission creep" of treating our own bodies as if they should bend to our own wills, whether by abusing assisted reproductive technologies or mutilating healthy body parts or treating medically assisted suicide as a tenable option, our witness to God's greater purpose for our bodies will be compromised. The world needs this witness — especially now. Without it, everyone will suffer.

John welcomes Michael Craven, Director of the Colson Fellows program, to facilitate the BreakPoint Q&A this week. John answers questions ranging from what parents should prioritize in fostering faith to how people who weren't mentors can mentor others. John also fields a question on a recent BreakPoint. A listener writes in to ask if being anti-surrogacy is like being anti-life.