Breakpoint

John and Shane field two important questions from parents today. The first looks for guidance on training young people to value marriage and pursue having children in a culture that seems to devalue both. The second parental question is from a grandmother looking to have a shaping influence with her grandchildren in spite of a strained relationship with the parents due to the grandmother's commitment to Biblical standards.

Next week, Christians worldwide will celebrate, like the entire cloud of witnesses has before them, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrection is, of course, the central event in the Holy Scriptures, the pivotal moment of the story of Christ, and the foundational belief of a Christian worldview. Even more, if it happened, it is the pivotal event in all of human history. Still, it's not difficult to see why it's so hard to believe, especially today. Both science and experience tell us that corpses do not revive. The dead stay dead. Even more, some skeptics level the charge that the story of Jesus' resurrection was simply borrowed from pagan myths, who had their own "dying and rising" deity stories. So, was the resurrection story basically stolen from pagan religions? In the latest "What Would You Say?" video, my colleague Brooke McIntire tackles this issue. The next time someone says the idea that Jesus rose from the dead was borrowed from pagan myths, here are 3 things to remember: Number 1: Just because some stories are similar does not mean that one borrowed from another. A little more than a century ago, a story was first told about a passenger ship that was unsinkable. However, while steaming across the Atlantic Ocean on a clear April evening, it struck an iceberg and sank. And, more than half of its passengers died from a lack of lifeboats. The name of the ship was spelled "T-I-T-A-N . . ." Yes, "The Titan." Did you think I was talking about the "Titanic"? That tragedy occurred in 1912. However, I was referring to the fictional story in a novel titled Futility: The Wreck of the Titan, published in 1898, 14 years prior to the sinking of the Titanic. There are a striking number of similar details between the two stories, even in the ship's name! However, we would never claim that the similarities suggest the latter story was influenced by the former and that the Titanic did not actually sink. Similarities between stories do not prove that one necessarily borrowed from another. Number 2: It is utterly implausible that the early Christians would borrow major ideas from pagan myths. The earliest Christians were pious Jews who often debated over the minutia of the Jewish Law. For example, they debated over whether Jewish Christians were still required to maintain the temple purification rites, whether Christians could eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols, whether non-Jewish male Christians needed to be circumcised, and whether Jewish Christians could even eat in the same room with non-Jewish Christians. Jews believed that they had been chosen by God to be a people separated from paganism. Given this background, it would have been unthinkable for these early Christians with Jewish sensibilities to engage in wholesale borrowing from pagan religions for the foundational belief of their own new sect. Number 3: Stories of people surviving death are not unusual. Surviving death is a deep-seated longing in most humans. So, it should come as no surprise to find stories peppered throughout human history of people returning from the dead. Fictional stories of dying and rising gods in pagan myths do nothing to discredit the story of Jesus rising from the dead. We must decide whether or not Jesus actually was resurrected from the dead based on the evidence. And there's a lot of evidence. If you want to learn about it, check out Gary Habermas' book, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. To see the whole video addressing the question of whether the resurrection of Christ was based on pagan myths, go to whatwouldyousay.org. Or, you can go to YouTube and search for "Colson Center What Would You Say?" Subscribe and be notified each time a new "What Would You Say?" video is released.

A defining characteristic of pagan societies is the sacrificing the well-being of children on the altar of adult happiness and self-fulfillment. Our own pagan society is no different. In a single-minded pursuit of sexual pleasure, career, or lifestyle, we tell ourselves that "the kinds will be fine," even though they're clearly not. Throughout history, across cultures and time periods, Christians bringing the Gospel to pagan cultures found themselves defending and protecting abandoned and abused children as well. For example, 19th century India was not a welcoming place for girls. Considered inferior to men, women were not allowed to be educated or to work for a living. Child marriage was a fairly common practice. Though the practice of sati (burning widows on their husband's funeral pyres) had been abolished, the fate of widows in that culture was harsh. Considered to be cursed, they would often be subjected to terrible abuse at the hands of their husband's family. Pandita Ramabai's family was different. Pandita's father, a member of the priestly caste known as Brahmins, encouraged her to learn how to read the Hindu scriptures. Not only did she learn, her skills and mastery of the text earned her acclaim. Her study also fed her growing doubts about the truth of Hinduism. After she was married, Pandita found a copy of the Gospel of Luke in her husband's library. Drawn to Christianity, she invited a missionary to their home to explain the Gospel to her and her husband. Not long after, her husband passed away. And not long after his death, a child-widow came to her door looking for charity. Pandita took her in as if she were her own daughter. Moved by the young widow's situation, Pandita started an organization called Arya Mahila Samaj to educate girls and to advocate for the abolition of child-marriage. It was when she traveled to England that Pandita Ramabai formally converted to Christianity. Returning to India, she set up a school for girls and widows in what's now called Mumbai. At first, to avoid offending Hindus, she agreed not to promote Christianity and followed the rules of the Brahmin caste. Even these concessions weren't enough. Within a year the school was under attack, and her local financial support dried up. So, she moved the school to Pune, about 90 miles away. In 1897, after a famine and plague struck the area around Pune, Pandita Ramabai established a second school 30 miles away from there. Among the subjects taught to the girls in her school was literature (for moral teaching), physiology (to teach them about their bodies), and industrial arts such as printing, carpentry, tailoring, masonry, wood-cutting, weaving, needlework, farming, and gardening. At first, Pandita had only two assistants. So, she developed a system to help take care of and educate the girls. First, they would teach the older girls, who would then take care of and help teach the younger ones. In this way, they managed to care for the growing number of girls who made their way to the school and take care of. By 1900, 2000 girls were living there. In 1919, three years before her death, the British king awarded Pandita Ramabai the Kaiser-i-Hind award, the highest honor that an Indian could receive during the colonial period. Pandita's example is one of many that we must take seriously today. To live in a pagan society is to encounter victims of bad ideas. Often, especially in our culture, these victims are children. Whenever a Christian or a church decides that to speak up on controversial cultural issues is to "get too political," they leave these victims without protection and are out of step with Christian history. Whenever a Christian or a church claims that they avoid these issues because "it distracts from the Gospel," they are embracing an anemic, truncated Gospel. Christians today can join those who've gone before us, proclaiming the Gospel and caring for children. One way to do this is by signing the Promise to America's Children, pledging to protect the minds, bodies, and the most important relationships of children in our society. And learn all the ways children are being victimized and how the Church can help, by reading Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement, a vital new book by Katy Faust. Them Before Us is the featured resource from the Colson Center this month.

**REGISTER TO RECEIVE A FREE TRIP TO WILBERFORCE WEEKEND 2021** > We're not crying wolf with the proposed and mis-named Equality Act. Instead we're standing on the shore watching the tsunami of redefinition and rewiring of hearts, minds, and souls grow closer and closer. This version of the Equality Act presents with more support and more potential to be enacted than at any point in history. John is sounding the alarm, sharing a discussion he had with a number of educators regarding the potential cultural impact of the proposed bill. We have discussed at length the legal aspects of the Equality Act. However, today we consider the cultural impact the Equality Act could have on our communities and families. God has placed us in a special time and specific location at this point in history. John discusses our responsibility to communicate the Gospel with the resources He has given us to address the brokenness of the world, specifically in the face of the Equality Act.

This month, Congress halted the rollout of the Army's new Combat Fitness Test. Unlike the old test, which dates back to before combat roles were open to female soldiers, the new test requires men and women to meet the same standards of physical fitness. That's a problem, critics and activists say, since, so far, 54 percent of women have failed this new gender-neutral test. Service Women's Action Network CEO Deshauna Barber complained, "A fitness test that is so clearly biased simply cannot move forward without further review…" A letter from her organization to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees called the gender-neutral test "hasty" and "rash," and insisted that "too many otherwise qualified soldiers are failing." The test wrongly assumes that "every soldier is a warrior first," and that "superior physical strength is singularly critical in battle." Sadly, the Army eventually agreed and revised the test to reflect these complaints. To be clear, we are talking about testing for combat infantry roles, literally for the "boots on the ground." Isn't the physical strength of these servicemembers critical in battle? At least one notable voice thinks so. Writing at West Point's Modern War Institute, Captain Kristen Griest, the Army's first female infantry officer, argues that lowering the physical bar for women could have deadly consequences on the battlefield: "While it may be difficult for a 120-pound woman to lift or drag 250 pounds, the Army cannot artificially absolve women of that responsibility; it may still exist on the battlefield…each job has objective physical standards to which all soldiers should be held, regardless of gender…To not require women to meet equal standards in combat arms will not only undermine their credibility, but also place those women, their teammates, and their mission at risk." She's right. The bad idea behind lowering standards for female soldiers is the same bad idea behind putting transgender male athletes in the ring to fight women. Men and women are physically different. Just ask Tamikka Brents, who, back in 2014, had her skull fractured in two minutes by Fallon Fox, the MMA's first openly transgender fighter. Physical jobs require physical strength. There is no job in the world more physically demanding than combat infantry. Giving an assault rifle and a pair of boots to men or women unable to meet those demands is worse than madness. For them and their fellow soldiers, it could be a death sentence. Though the sexes were created with the same dignity as bearers of God's image, they were not created to be identical. Our differences are, in fact, where are greatest strengths lie. This truth was lost somewhere in the middle of feminism's second wave, when the movement went from being about equality in rights to equality in roles. While the exclusion of women from certain roles in society needed to be corrected, other roles are grounded in the differences that do exist between men and women. Recently re-watching Avengers: Endgame with my son, Hunter, I couldn't overlook that famous scene where all the female superheroes team up on the battlefield to kick alien keester and save the day. Of course, there's a lot of imagination involved in the entire Avengers world (and, Iron Man does end up being the one who actually saves the day, through an act of sacrifice), but cheesy "girl power" moments like this miss a remarkable truth Eric Metaxas highlights in the opening section of his book Seven Women. So often, women are portrayed as great despite being women, or because they act like men. But the greatness of women is as women, in ways that men are not, in and as the way God made them. It is in the "very good" way God created women that they have true strength. I was talking about that line from Eric Metaxas' book with my wife Sarah when she first had the idea of the "Strong Women" podcast, which she co-hosts with Erin Kunkle. If you haven't subscribed or listened, it will reset the thin narrative on women that dominates our world. By the way, the Friday Intensive at the upcoming Wilberforce Weekend, will offer a deep dive on the image of God as male and female. Speakers include myself, Ryan Anderson, Emilie Kao, and Rebecca McLaughlin. Come to WilberforceWeekend.org for more information.

John Stonestreet and Maria Baer discuss recent acts of desperation in two mass shootings in the past week. They discuss narratives coming from both secular and Christian sources. The two pull in some recent headlines having to do with Kristi Noem's veto of a bill that would protect female sports in South Dakota. They discuss the possible forces that pushed Noem, highlight the corporate pressure likely coming from the LGBT movement. -- Resources -- Win a Trip to the 2021 Wilberforce Weekend, including conference admission, travel, and hotel accommodations! "How Our Narratives Fail Us: Mass Shootings and a Culture without Conscience," by John Stonestreet, BreakPoint "The NCAA Tournament, Oral Roberts University, and Anti-Christian Bigotry," by John Stonestreet, The Point "Unexplained Light," by John Stonesteet and Maria Baer, BreakPoint "How churches talk about sexuality can mean life or death. We saw that in Robert Long," by Rachel Denhollander, Washington Post "Alone," Netflix "The Curious Case of Kristi Noem," by John Stonestreet and David Carlson, BreakPoint "What We Must Learn from Amy Carmichael, Missionary and Defender of Children," by John Stonestreet and Glenn Sunshine, BreakPoint Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story), by Daniel Nayeri, available at Amazon.com

A few weeks ago, South Dakota's Governor Kristi Noem Tweeted, "In South Dakota, we're celebrating International Women's Day by defending women's sports!" She was referring to the state's "Women's Fairness in Sports" bill, which would prohibit biological males from competing in female athletics. She then added, "I'm excited to sign the bill very soon!" As it turns out, she wasn't so excited after all. After the legislature passed the bill, the Republican governor vetoed it. More specifically, she issued what's known as a "style and form veto," asking the legislature to modify the bill. The changes she requested not only gut the bill, rendering it ineffective in its original intent of protecting girls and women, but does great damage to the legislative efforts in a number of other states. Portions of the bill, she claimed, "create a trial lawyer's dream and include lawsuit opportunities that don't need to be there . . . We could pass a law, get punished, and face litigation for nothing but a participation trophy." That claim is somewhere between dubious and disingenuous. The South Dakota bill is similar to laws already passed in Idaho and Mississippi and introduced in a number of other states. The Idaho legislation was also backed and defended by 14 states attorneys general by means of an amicus brief. Noem, however, is worried about the NCAA (the governing body for major college athletics). She told Tucker Carlson, "This bill would only allow the NCAA to bully South Dakota, and it would actually prevent women from being able to participate in collegiate sports." So, among the "style and form" changes she requested is that the bill would only prevent biological males from competing against girls in elementary and high school athletics, not at the college level. But the NCAA has no policy that the South Dakota bill would violate. While the NCAA allows men who have surgically or chemically transitioned to compete in women's sports (and offers regulations to ensure what they claim is "fair"), as Margot Cleveland points out at the Federalist, "nothing in … NCAA policy requires a college or university to treat a male student-athlete as female." If they did, they'd lose all the Christian colleges that are part of the NCAA. Also, the NCAA has no legal standing at the state level, nor do they prevent athletes from schools that do not allow males to compete as women from their events. When the Idaho and Mississippi laws passed last year, the NCAA offered a harshly worded denouncement, but nothing with legal bite. Further, as Alexandra Desanctis reports at the National Review, Gov. Noem "altered the bill's language to allow athletes to compete based on biological sex 'as reflected on the birth certificate' or an 'affidavit'…" In other words, all it would take for a male to compete against females is "appropriate paperwork changing his legal records to match his gender identity." Most pointedly, Noem removes a provision that gives female athletes a cause of action if they believe they have been "deprived of athletic opportunities as the result of having been displaced by a biological male." As a legal advisor told me yesterday, a right with no recourse is no right at all. Not to mention, the bill would also give South Dakota schools the ability to retaliate against female athletes who complain. The Alliance Defending Freedom's General Counsel Kristin Waggoner summed up the whole debacle this way: "Gov. Noem has offered a hollow substitute for the urgent protections for women's sports that the South Dakota Legislature sent to the governor's desk . . . By stalling her support, attempting to dodge the legal conflict, removing protections for collegiate athletes, and eliminating a female athlete's legal remedy when her rights are violated, Gov. Noem . . . has downplayed the injustices that girls and women are already facing when they are forced to compete against males." So, what's really behind this whole story? Time and again in states like North Carolina, Indiana, and elsewhere, we've seen the enormous corporate pressure brought to bear when it comes to LGBT issues, and we've seen state officials tempted to cave in face of that pressure. Now, the address on your credit card may very well be a South Dakota one. Since the 1980s, the banking industry has played a major role in South Dakota's economy. Many banks are committed virtue signalers on LGBT issues. Not to mention, South Dakota's tourism industry would be helped by regional and national NCAA tournaments. What's really at play here, most likely, is the same corporate pressure that other states have faced. But the pressure can be weathered. Governor Noem's about-face makes it that much harder for the governors in Arkansas and other states who are currently debating similar legislation. Even worse, it undermines several years of thoughtful, pointed effort to defend the rights of women in sports and elsewhere. If you are a South Dakota citizen, please, call the governor and ask her to do the right thing. If you're not a South Dakota citizen, be assured, this issue will be coming to a state near you, soon enough.

There have been two mass shootings in a little over a week, on opposites sides of the country by individuals who, from what we currently know, sit on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. Though quickly trotted out narratives have proven either obviously flimsy or flat wrong, Americans remains deeply entrenched in their corners and are seeing these issues through those lenses. All the while, yet another set of events reveals a country in moral crisis, with very little helpful guidance from media or from government officials. Mass shootings continue to be, tragically, a regular feature of American life. Each new attack on innocent children, students, church members, employees, concertgoers, and shoppers hits before we've recovered from the last one. May we never become numb to the horror of these crimes. After each shooting, the fury and passion to "do something" reaches a new level of volume and intensity. Certainly, those who wish to restrict guns are louder than ever, and the current political situation makes those restrictions at least a legal possibility. Now, in full disclosure, I'm a Second Amendment guy. I own guns, and I support the right to bear arms, which is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Gun ownership has been a consistent feature of American life since its founding, a reflection of the country's DNA – self-government, self-protection, self-provision. But I'm also enough of a student of history and worldview to know that rights always come with responsibility. People incapable of enjoying freedoms will inevitably lose them. Those unable to govern themselves will have to be governed. To be clear, this is not a statement of what ­ought to happen; it's a statement of what always happens when a culture morally breaks down. The choice for any people, as Chuck Colson often said, is between the conscience and the constable. If a people will not be governed by conscience, they will be governed by the constable. The loss of conscience, which is always a failure of moral formation, will lead to the loss of freedom. John Adams, the second President of the United States, famously said that the Constitution was meant for a "moral and religious people" and "is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." His observation applies as much to the Second Amendment as to any other. The shocking lack of conscience on display in America is producing behaviors that can largely be grouped into one of two categories. First, historic levels of suicide, opioid use, and overdoses, as well as epidemic levels of loneliness and isolation (especially among the most vulnerable) are together known as "deaths from despair." Second, the various and consistent acts of mass violence, such as shootings and rioting, are among those things that could be labeled "acts of desperation." With both deaths of despair and acts of desperation at epidemic levels, we are clearly not a people moral or religious enough to sustain the freedoms we've been blessed with. After his visit to America, Alexis de Tocqueville famously described the role that religion and local community groups played in uniting and directing the nation. If de Tocqueville were writing today, almost 200 years later, he'd instead describe a become a society of isolated individuals, and thus a place where addicts, the suicidal, the lonely, and too many disturbed young men are slipping through the cracks. Political conservatives, hear me on this: Freedom is unsustainable without virtue. Demanding rights without acknowledging responsibilities is a failing strategy. Political liberals, hear me on this: The problem isn't guns. Ban them without addressing the real problems of our society, and the next killer will choose some other weapon of mass destruction. The rest of us will be unarmed and unable to defend ourselves. America has become, to borrow words from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1978 speech at Harvard, a place with "little defense against the abyss of human decadence…such as the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror." Even stricter laws, Solzhenitsyn went on to say, would be powerless to defend a people against such moral corrosion. If the devolution of our collective conscience continues, the replacement of constitutional rights with constables might be inevitable. And even constables cannot truly govern, or protect, a people without a conscience.

A listener writes in to John and Shane following a recent BreakPoint commentary on restricting access to organ transplants for those with disabilities. The questioner expands the concept to talk about the challenges inside the organ transplant process. John also fields a question from a listener who wrote in to Arizona Senator Kirsten Sinema regarding the Equality Act. The Senator's office wrote to the listener claiming religious freedoms are protected inside the Equality Act. John responds, outlining the challenge in the Senator's interpretation of freedom. John and Shane also field a question from a listener who is challenged by a church plant that is targeting a racial profile for the congregation. John and Shane work through the foundational concepts of the church.

Each year as Easter approaches, pseudo-scholars, newspapers, and cable networks make headlines claiming to offer the real story about Jesus. Their accounts assume that much of the Jesus story contained in the Gospels, especially anything miraculous is largely a myth created and propagated by, first, His followers, and then, Church leaders seeking to expand their power. Despite the skepticism, few suggest that Jesus never existed. Online, of course, that is a different story. Though there are no serious scholars who question whether Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, it's still a claim you might encounter, either on the internet or from someone who believes their internet source. So, what if you find yourself in a conversation with someone who says: "No one really knows whether Jesus existed or not." The latest video in our "What Would You Say?" series tackles this question: Here's my colleague Shane Morris… The next time someone says they don't think we can be sure that Jesus ever existed, here are 3 things to remember: Number 1: Several non-Christian historians of that period mention Jesus. Josephus was a Jewish historian who had grown up in Jerusalem in the first century, the same city where Jesus was reported to have been crucified. Josephus' father was a Jewish priest who would have been a contemporary of Jesus, and almost certainly would have seen him if he had existed. Josephus mentions Jesus on two occasions in his History of the Jews: In one he reports his crucifixion at the demand of the Jewish leaders and in the other, he mentions the execution of James, the brother of Jesus who is called Messiah. Josephus would have known Jesus was a historical person and would have no reason to invent him if he didn't. Other non-Christian historians also mention Jesus, including the Roman historian Tacitus, the Greek satirist Lucian, and a prisoner named Mara bar Serapion. Number 2: The apostle Paul, someone who persecuted the Christian Church, would have been a contemporary of Jesus and claims to have known Jesus' brother James. It is very unlikely that Paul would have given his life to a movement he had once persecuted if it had been based on a fictitious man who had supposedly traveled and preached in the same area in which Paul himself lived. Jesus would have been publicly crucified at a time and location where and when Paul would have been present, in response to demands made by Jewish authorities whom Paul would have known. Paul claimed to personally know Jesus' brother James. Fictitious people tend not to have brothers who are personally known. Number 3: Most contemporary scholars think that at least some of the Gospels are closely rooted in the eyewitness testimony of Jesus' disciples. Although modern scholars differ in their opinions about the historical accuracy of the Gospels, most think the Gospels of Mark and John are closely based on eyewitness testimony of two of Jesus' disciples, who had traveled with him. It would have been easier to invent the existence of a mythical person that supposedly lived centuries prior to writing about them. It's much harder to invent a person that supposedly existed within the memory of living eyewitnesses. The accounts of Jesus are eyewitness accounts. Find the whole video of Shane answering the question "Did Jesus Really Exist?" at whatwouldyousay.org. Or, search for "What Would You Say?" on YouTube. The first result will be a music video from the Dave Matthews Band, but look for the icon with the blue question mark. That's the What Would You Say channel. Be sure to subscribe and be notified each time a new What Would You Say video is released. And look out for next week's video on "The Resurrection of Jesus and Pagan Myth," just in time for Easter.