Breakpoint

John and Shane field a question on adoption. A listener wrote in to ask if adoption to a homosexual couple is better than a child being parentless. They then work through a question on if a Christian should marry if the marriage looks to be childless. John and Shane close the question and answer time looking at immigration. A listener asks for a worldview perspective on a topic that has become strongly politicized.

The term "political football" is a perfect descriptive for how the executive branch of the federal government handles abortion. There are two "teams," pro-life and pro-choice, who toss the issue back and forth from administration to administration. Neither decisively win, at least in the long run. While state level legislation and federal court decisions have moved the ball in real ways, executive orders and legislative rules are barely temporary, depending entirely on who is in the White House. After President Biden's first 100 days in office, it is clear that the football is in the hands of the pro-abortion team. Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a new rule that would restore a major source of federal funding for abortion clinics. This rule would undo the Trump administration's "Protect Life" rule, which withheld money designated for low-income family planning from any clinics that "perform, promote, refer for, or support abortion…" The "Protect Life" rule also required clinics to keep their abortion and non-abortion services physically and financially separate. The rule made a difference. Planned Parenthood, which drew an estimated $60 million in annual federal funding just from Title X, dropped out of the program rather than attempt to meet the new requirements. Now, under the Biden Administration, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are back on the federal dole. Bizarrely, the Biden Administration claims that its new rule will not lead to federally funded abortions. When Owen Jensen, a Catholic reporter from Catholic network EWTN asked why the President would "insist that pro-life Americans pay for abortions and violate their conscience," White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied, "that's not an accurate depiction of what happened." She then quoted from the Public Health Service Act, which stipulates that no Title X funds "shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning." That isn't a real answer, of course, as Jensen pointed out. Money is easily moved around. In a fiscal shell game, Planned Parenthood can simply divert funding they don't have to spend on non-abortion services back to abortion,. Speaking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, Archbishop Joseph Naumann agreed: "In spite of explicit prohibitions in federal law and clear congressional intent that abortion may not be a part of this program, it has repeatedly been coopted by abortion supporters as a funding stream for organizations, programs, and facilities that directly promote and provide abortions." What might we learn from all of this? First, though elections do have consequences, at least when it comes to who is President, they're short-lived. This means that putting the right person in the White House matters, but is not the highest or best goal of pro-lifers. For example, President Trump's most significant contribution to the pro-life "team" are not his executive orders, but a thoroughly remade judiciary. At the same time, many more millions of tax dollars are given to Planned Parenthood by Congress. The most effective legislation to limit abortion and fund alternative care has been at the state level. Those elections matter too. Second, the battle for unborn lives will be won or lost in the larger culture. It is encouraging that though Americans are very much divided on abortion itself, they strongly oppose government footing the bill. A Marist Poll earlier this year found that almost three-fifths of Americans oppose taxpayer funding for abortion. In other words, a lot of folks who want abortion to remain legal don't want to coerce their neighbors into paying for them. That's at least a start. The finish line, however, is when abortion is as unthinkable as other grave evils like slavery and child sacrifice. Until then, this political football will continue to change hands with each and every election.

Recently, researchers at State University of New York determined that descendants of immigrants to the United States from places such as Asia typically lost the ability to speak their mother tongue by the third generation. Something similar, but more serious, seems to be happening with Christians in an increasingly post-Christian culture. Each successive generation is losing the understanding of, not to mention the will to live by, Christian sexual morality. Two years ago, a Pew Research survey found that half of American Christians think casual sex is "sometimes or always" morally acceptable. The slight silver-lining in that survey was that evangelical Protestants were by far the least likely group to express acceptance of casual sex. Unfortunately, a new analysis calls into question just how committed the children of evangelicals are to Christian teaching in this area. These numbers reflect a larger trend among evangelicals: with each generation, American evangelicals increasingly adopt the attitudes of the wider culture toward sex and marriage. This time, the behavior in question wasn't casual sex, but cohabitation. In 2019, Pew Research reported that a majority – 58 percent – of white evangelicals said cohabitation is acceptable if a couple plans to marry. View on cohabitation become noticeably less Christian among younger respondents. As early as 2012, the General Social Survey found that over 40 percent of evangelicals in their 20s agreed that cohabitation is acceptable even if a couple has no express plans to marry. And, earlier this month, David Ayers at the Institute for Family Studies found that nearly half of evangelical Protestants aged 15-22 who were not currently cohabiting or married, said that they would probably or definitely cohabit in the future. Still, as dismaying as the attitudes of young evangelicals are toward sex, behavior is what most effectively erodes the Christian norm. Among those ages 23-44 who had already cohabited, a whopping 65 percent indicated they would likely or definitely do so again. An important caveat, as is typically the case with these kinds of surveys, is that religious commitment makes quite a difference. Young evangelicals who attended church at least twice a month before the pandemic were the least likely to approve of "shacking up." Yet, even they were a minority for their age group. Across all groups analyzed by Ayers, cohabitation had become, as he put in an article at Christianity Today, "a new norm." How can this cultural assimilation be slowed? How can the next generation be convinced of the sacredness of marriage, as a norm worth preserving and living? Again, the experience of immigrants offer an analogy. Research by one immigrant grad student at the University of Alberta found that "speaking the [native] language regularly at home" is the crucial first step in passing the mother-tongue from parent to child. That may sound simple, but it is. The word for passing on moral values and behavior through regular instruction in the faith by parents and pastors is catechesis. The kind of catechesis necessary for this cultural moment not only involves the "what" of biblical morality, but the "why" and the living out of the "how." According to Ayers the lack of a reason given for God's rules is a key factor behind young evangelicals drifting into behaviors common in the wider culture. Whenever I teach worldview to students, I like to draw a triangle with three levels. Worldview is at the foundation of the triangle, values is at the middle level, and behavior is at the top. The idea is that one should evaluate what is true and good, build their values from that, and allow that to shape behavior. Today, however, too many Christians live "upside down." The unthinkingly embrace behaviors common in our culture, those behaviors shape their values, and they land with an ultimately non-Christian worldview. We need to approach teaching the next-generation, especially when it comes to areas where the Christian vision is so different than the "new normal" in a "bottom-up" way. We must teach what is true about male and female, sex, and family, offering the what and the why. From there, we can work cultivate a strong set of values, by talking openly about what they are and living them out together. Only from there will countercultural behavior blossom. For any parents, grandparents, teachers, or pastors who want to see the next generation follow Christ in this culture, catechesis isn't optional. Today, the Christian view of sex and marriage is like a foreign language, and the wider culture is actively catechizing them.

John and Maria review President Joe Biden's speech to congress. They discuss the role of government and the stretch it has had into our lives. The two share how government expansion creates thin fabrics in society, trying to hold weight it was never intended to hold. Maria shares a story from Seattle, where staff and faculty at Seattle Pacific University vote no confidence in their board. The vote was made due to frustration with the school's hiring policies that uphold a traditional Biblical ethic in regards to sexuality. John and Maria begin their conversation revisiting some of the top stories from BreakPoint this week. They discuss the character of Trevor Lawrence and his opportunity to impact standards for player character. They also talk about an unknown trend in human trafficking involving young boys before revisiting a story from last week where President Biden appealed a court order that could cause doctors to perform genital mutilation surgeries.

When John McCain was running for President in 2008, Saturday Night Live ran a recurring skit about his running-mate, then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Tina Fey, playing Gov. Palin in her trademark red suit, delivered the memorable line, "I can see Russia from my house!" It was pretty funny. It also wasn't real. Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house. Today, however, a surprising number of people believe she did. This is a testimony to the power of lies. A few weeks ago, Georgia state legislators passed a bill that added additional days for early voting, limit the number of ballot boxes that had (for the first time) been set up across the state during the pandemic, and changed the requirements for voting by mail. Rather than rely on matching signatures by eye, mail-in ballots will now be verified using a voter's ID. The partisan backlash over the bill, even though it expanded voting access in many way, wasn't surprising. The lies about the bill, how quickly they were spread, by whom, and the corporate reactions to them are worth noting. President Biden likened the bill to laws that oppressed African Americans, calling it "Jim Crow on steroids." Major League Baseball announced it was moving the 2021 All Star Game out of Atlanta in protest, and even Stacey Abrams caught heat for not calling for economic boycotts of Home Depot and Delta Airlines. Of course, people sometimes lie. But the stakes are higher when millions of people – including those with no interest in or loyalties to politics– believe those lies. Now, millions of people in Georgia and elsewhere are needlessly anxious, fearful, and angry. That's cruel. In James 3 the apostle calls the tongue a "fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body." The tongue can, James says, "corrupt the whole body, set the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." Among the reasons that Christians cannot sit out our culture-wide conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity is that it is based on a lie about the human person, a lie that has convinced many. To relinquish the belief in a reality that exists outside of ourselves is to give up more than we might realize. If men can be women, if laws which expand voting access in Georgia can be renamed as bringing back Jim Crow, then what is real? If Christians give in to lies, why would we be trusted to tell the truth about God? Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel once said, "words create worlds." Words do not change created reality, but they do reshape culture and therefore what people think is reality. Among the sources of the deep fracture in American culture right now is the loss of trust in our institutions and information sources. No matter how normal as a practice or successful as a strategy of influence, Christians must never, at least intentionally, partake in misinformation. While we are just as susceptible as anyone to believe lies that reinforce our views and to disregard facts that challenge them, the very practice of not compromising on truth will be an increasingly important part of our cultural witness. Even if we have good intentions, for example "weeping with those who weep," we still can't afford to lie. We can't love our neighbors and lie to them. So, it's imperative, even if inefficient, to take the time and find out what is true before speaking, especially when it comes to complicated, often heated political matters. God's words made reality. As image bearers, our words can create worlds too, at least perceived worlds. As followers of Christ, let's commit to using our words to build the Kingdom of God, where lies have no place.

Most people (at least those paying attention) expect quarterback Trevor Lawrence to be the first player selected in this year's NFL Draft. Frankly, his draft stock has been a foregone conclusion since his heralded arrival at Clemson in 2018, and was only strengthened after he led the Tigers to the National Championship as only a freshman. He's a team leader who can read a defense and flat out throw the ball. In fact, the only doubts that exist about Lawrence's potential in the NFL have nothing to do with talent or poise, but only concern his character. Let me be clear. Some pundits worry Lawrence has too much character. In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Lawrence said, "I don't have this huge chip on my shoulder, that everyone's out to get me and I'm trying to prove everybody wrong." As if that were not troubling enough, he clarified, "[T]here's also more in life than playing football." As a committed Christian, who is very public about his faith and the way it shapes his life, one of the things Lawrence considers more important than football is Jesus. He also apparently has a thing for family. Recently, Lawrence skipped an NFL pre-draft event to marry his high-school sweetheart. This crazy behavior fed a narrative that Lawrence, like other Christian athletes, is probably too "soft" and lacks the kind of monomaniacal focus required to succeed in football. Given that there's never been a shortage of Christian players who possessed deep faith and achieved great on-field success, this narrative is baseless. No one who was the receiving end of a hit by Steelers' great Troy Polamalu thought his faith made him somehow "soft." Not to mention, Lawrence has proven his competitive zeal. In three seasons at Clemson, he lost only two games. Still, the presumption that the perspective and balance and priorities shaped by a sincere faith are somehow liabilities, and obstacles to athletic success, persists. So, when Lawrence tweeted, "I am secure in who I am, and what I believe. I don't need football to make me feel worthy as a person," the critics pounced. Their critiques, in reality, say nothing about Trevor Lawrence. They only expose how absurd discussions of character have become in our culture. Scarcely a week goes by without a story featuring an active or former NFL player in trouble with the law. In the weeks leading up to the draft, a former NFL player killed five people before killing himself. That same day, police arrested another former player on charges of first degree murder in connection with a shooting that injured one and killed another. A few days after that, a current player ended up behind bars on weapons charges. The local news report of that story began tellingly: "Another pro football player has been arrested in Northeast Ohio on a weapons charge." The NFL has learned about character the hard way. Whenever a player is selected in the draft later than their abilities suggest, the reason is nearly always a concern about character. Teams spend a lot of time and money up front assessing a prospect's character because they've learned how costly it can be. In 2013, after tight end Aaron Hernandez was charged with murder, the Patriots became the first NFL team to hire a "character coach." All of which makes concerns that a player like Lawrence has too much character simply bizarre. If anything, what the Bible calls the "fruit" of faith and character would make him a safe choice. But, in a world of "expressive individualism," things like character and virtue and integrity seem old-fashioned. Still it's these old-fashioned ideas our ailing young men, and our ailing society, need the most.

John and Shane field a sobering question from a ministry-minded family. A daughter informed her mother that the daughter identifies as pansexual. John and Shane provide a host of resources and encouragement for the mother and her family as they walk a road of love, support, and guiding their family to hope in Jesus Christ in the midst of confusion. Another listener seeks insight on what they're seeing as an agenda play out in the business community. Specifically, the listener identifies shifts in power where agendas are guiding the business community to a socialistic and communistic ideal. The listener asks how Christians should respond to soft movements of coercion we see inside our economy. With graduation approaching, another listener asks for resources for a teen's parents unsure what their daughter should do next year. Rather than attend a university, where a level of maturity is essential, the listener suggests a link or gap year. She asks John and Shane for their recommendations.

Scripture says woe to those who say that good is evil and that evil is good. That's a culture-wide feature of our world. Each day, it seems, brings new and audacious ideas aimed at unravelling and misordering God's very good creation. Our first impulse might be to "blame the culture," but it should be, instead, to take a hard look in the mirror. If the Church exists to proclaim and bear witness to the rule and reign of Christ, we may find that our culture's woes aren't as much the result of a secular occupation as they are the result of a Christian evacuation. Francis Schaeffer noted how Christians think about life in terms of "bits and pieces" instead of "totals." For example, many Christians able to recite core beliefs of the Christian faith struggle to see all of life as it truly is, the Story of creation, fall, redemption and restoration. To see what we are missing, consider who the Book of Acts describes Apollos. A man "fervent in spirit," Apollos "spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus." And yet, he missed certain things related to the full life and work of Jesus. It's not that he had wrong ideas, but that he didn't understand where they fit within the larger Story of Jesus the Christ. This is similar to our situation today. What we often miss, as Christians today, can be thought of in three broad categories: the past, the present and the future. Or, to put it another way, what was, what is, and what is to come. To clarify what was, recall that first calling of God for His image bearers, a calling that has never been removed, is what might be called the "creation mandate." God didn't create His world in all of its glory to simply destroy it. He created the world to glorify Himself. He created His image bearers to glorify God by living out what He intended for us, where He intended us live. This created purpose, for humanity and the world, God called very good. God's created intent is restored, renewed in Christ. Another way to say this is that Christ has not come to save us from our God-given humanity, but to save us to it. To confess Christ as Savior from sin but to deny His relevance in society and culture is to miss, or perhaps even reject, His kingship over the entire world. Working to restore the world to its God-given order is itself gospel ministry. The what is of the present is nothing less than the most extraordinary event in all of history, the Incarnation. Jesus atones for the sins of the world by His obedience and death, and launches the new creation by His resurrection. Thus, His Gospel, the good news, is not less than how we can be saved from our sin and be in heaven when we die, but it is more. The good news of Christ is, in reality, the Gospel of the Kingdom. In Christ, the Kingdom of God has come and will one day be fully realized in the full and final defeat of the enemies of God. Finally, we must recover a biblical understanding of what is to come. Theologian N.T. Wright described what Christians should look forward to this way: "In the New Testament, we do not find a life after death in heaven, but a life after life after death. In other words, a newly embodied life in a newly reconstituted creation. And ... all the great Christian teachers for centuries after that, taught the same thing: that what God did for Jesus on Easter, he will do for all his people at the end, raising them to new bodily life to share in the life of the new world." Together, the Christian vision of what was, what is, and what is to come, offers a broad and rich understanding of God's Story. Unless Christians, especially in this time of cultural chaos, rediscover our place in that story, we'll be confused and often ineffective, our witness diminished. There is no greater task, then, in the church today than to re-catechize, to rethink what the Gospel is and what it means for us to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to champion the rule and reign of Christ in this cultural moment. Hundreds of Christians will be joining us this year to dig deep into Christian worldview, cultural analysis and restorative leadership as Colson Fellows. If you'd like to join them, and rediscover your place in the Great Story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, consider joining the Colson Fellows program. To learn more, please visit www.colsonfellows.org

Last fall, California governor Gavin Newsom signed The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, a bill which, among other things, would "allow incarcerated transgender, non-binary and intersex people to be housed and searched in a manner consistent with their gender identity." Since this law went into effect back in January, in a new case of "rapid onset gender dysphoria," over 200 prisoners have requested to be transferred from men's prisons into those detaining women. As of April 6th, not a single request has been denied. Imagine attempting to argue for this law 20 years ago. Imagine trying to convince anyone that biological males, specifically males who'd already demonstrated a willingness to break the law, should be incarcerated with women. Even if abuse of all sorts wasn't a real problem for America's prison population, this would be a bad idea. Until quite recently, California's law (not to mention the ideology upon which it is based) would have been unthinkable. Even more, all of the warnings (and there were plenty of warnings) that embracing certain ideas about sex and marriage and gender would make laws like this inevitable earned accusations of exaggerations and "slippery slopes." Yet here we are. And, if the Biden Administration succeeds in making the Equality Act federal law, an unlikely but no impossible prospect, California's idiosyncrasies would be national law. This whole thing is a case study in how the unthinkable becomes first inevitable and then unquestionable. In reality, of course, perceptions of or claims to gender identity do not change chromosomes, nor do they eliminate male desire or weaken male physical strength when compared to women. To ignore these realities of the physical world, is not only to our peril but to the peril of the women who will be trapped with biological males against their wills. This isn't sound or compassionate policy. This will be, for many women, the definition of cruel and unusual punishment. To ignore biological reality in the context of punishment and rehabilitation is not wholly different than a doctor or nurse treating a patient according to a perceived identity that conflicts with biological reality. Such medical care would not be helpful or loving. It would be malpractice. Two thousand years ago, the pagan worldview of Gnosticism proclaimed a denigration of physicality. Greco-Roman thinkers often thought that the material world was less valuable, or even contrary to the good of the spiritual realm. Gnosticism's condemnation of the physical even snuck into the Church, proclaiming that Jesus could not have been fully human or have a real body. The Church, in light of Scripture's robust view of creation, soundly and repeatedly condemned Gnosticism as heresy. Yet, elements of this hyper-spirituality clung to Western thought throughout the centuries and popped up again and again in the church, proclaiming that the fleshly concerns of the physical world did not matter or, even worse, should be fully rejected. Gnosticism in its latest form can be seen in this new California law and in these California prisons, not to mention across the country in so many other areas. The reality of the physical male body and the bodily danger posed to female inmates, not to mention the bare essentials of physical biology (one warden announced that this law would mean new maternity wards in female prisons), have been dismissed by the new Gnosticism. The Colson Center was founded as part of a ministry devoted to extending love and dignity to the men and women behind bars. Chuck founded Prison Fellowship to take seriously Christ's words in Matthew 25. Placing female prisoners in physical danger isn't a way to love them or care for them. Enabling men to hate and even desecrate their own bodies through surgery and chemical restraints isn't treating them with dignity as image bearers. Truly loving any image bearer of God, including those who are incarcerated, must involve loving them as they truly are including the creational goodness of their physical bodies.