Breakpoint

John and Shane are asked how Christians can remain faithful with culture pressuring for compliance. A doctor and a parent have similar questions related to recognizing gender transitions. John provides a structure to think and live in challenging times. Another listener writes in to ask how Christians should respond with censorship challenging opportunities to live life with a Christian perspective. Shane provides some hard truths that provide an understanding on how Christians can move forward in the face of opposition. To close John engages the recent developments with online trading and financial markets. He pulls back from the issue to identify the root causes of sin and how we're seeing brokenness on display in the tumult of the financial markets.

In 2010, a company called Hanson Robotics spent more than a hundred hours interviewing a woman named Bina. They collected memories of her childhood, noted her emotional reactions and mannerisms, uploaded the data into a mechanical bust that looked like the real Bina, and then programmed the robot to answer questions in real time. Robot Bina now resides in a research lab. Real-life Bina's partner said the venture was a shot at "immortality." Recently, Hanson Robotics announced plans to release thousands of what they're calling "Sophia" robots. Sophia is a "social robot" that can perform rudimentary medical tasks, like taking a person's temperature, but can also make facial expressions and utter a few phrases. According to company CEO David Hanson, "Sophia" is programmed to offer "human warmth" and is being released this year in order to help especially elderly people who are living in isolation due to the pandemic. Back in 1984, in her provocative book The Second Self, MIT professor Sherry Turkle made a prediction. It was a prediction that seems obvious today but was pretty bold at the time. She predicted that computers would become more than just tools of mathematical calculation and increasingly become places where we live our lives. A decade or so later, in a book entitled Life on the Screen, Turkle predicted that we'd soon move beyond merely living some of our lives on the internet to creating entirely new, different, and multiple lives on the internet. So far, Turkle is two for two. Turkle's third book, titled Alone Together, wasn't written until 2011. In it, she made another prediction. She believed that a culture so accustomed to digital life and so bad at human relationships would not be able to resist replacing those relationships with artificial intelligence. Again, Turkle got it right. The difference between this book and her previous two was that Turkle's optimism about where technology was taking us was gone. Sophia the Robot is Turkle's prediction plugged in and turned on, with an important clarification: Hanson Robotics didn't make Sophia just because they could. They're capitalizing on something in our culture that needs to be recognized. We're failing each other. In Alone Together, Turkle predicted that a culture obsessed with convenience would grow increasingly averse to the inconvenience of love. The rise in family estrangement during 2020 is just one piece of supporting evidence. Why bear with people when a robot that looks like a person can give us everything we think we want without all the neediness? A booming market for human-like artificial intelligence isn't just a sign that we're expecting too much from robots. As Turkle says in her subtitle, we're also expecting too little from each other. Maybe that's because we're giving too little to each other. Also priming the global marketplace for companion robots are almost universally low birth rates. Japan's plummeting birth rate means an increasing number of citizens have no extended family or even siblings. Chuck Colson talked about this all the way back in 2005, when a Japanese company began selling lifelike baby dolls to the lonely elderly. A childless society, Colson said, learns too late that it's created a void no "toy" can fill. Neither can Sophia the robot. There's also a deeper moral problem with these "humanoid" robots. The sexual revolution separated body from soul, pretending to elevate the body but actually degrading bodies into mere objects to be used for pleasure. Christians also sometimes make a similar mistake when they treat the body as an "obstacle" to a truly "spiritual" life. An honest reading of the Bible, however, reveals Christianity to be what author Christopher West calls an "en-fleshed" faith. As he says in his book Our Bodies Tell God's Story, God created His image-bearers with bodies and souls. To try to separate the two is to reject His design. To replace a real human-to-human relationship with an artificially intelligent robot is to also separate body and soul. Except, instead of looking for bodies without souls, we're looking for souls without bodies. Of course, no collection of charming phrases, human-like movements, injected life memories, or empathetic facial expressions will be an image-bearer. Interactions with Sophia robots may be interesting or even impressive. Sophia 2.0 and 3.0 may be even more "life-like" in different ways. We might find a human facsimile that never ages, is never demanding, and always there when we need it quite convenient. However, more convenient isn't the same as better. The greatest commandments, to "Love God" and "love our neighbors as ourselves," are almost so familiar they're boring. But, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In the land of humanoid robots, someone who knows how to actually love another can change everything.

The more 2021 resembles 2020, the more Christians should be grounded in those unchanging truths given us in Scripture. We must rest on the revelations that make sense of our cultural moment: that Christ is risen, that Christ is Lord, and that Christ is making all things new. God has placed each of us and this time and in this place. It is here and it is now that He wants us. He wants us to participate with Him as agents of reconciliation in His larger story of redemption. To do this well, especially in light of the chaos of 2020, we are going to have to recalibrate. And as Paul told Timothy, this exactly the point of Holy Scripture. "All Scripture is God breathed," he wrote, "and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting and for training in righteousness." Isn't that exactly the trajectory we need right now? To know what's right, to be confronted when we are wrong, and to be turned around to start again on the right path? That's why each Wednesday at 10:30 Eastern until Easter, the Colson Center is hosting a time of guided prayer online with a particular focus on the wisdom of the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is straight-forward. That's one of the reasons I love it so much. It's not some kind of esoteric, hard to understand, "spiritual wisdom" that's offered in the holy books of many faiths. Proverbs gets right to the point and shoots you right between the eyes. Each week's prayer time begins with prayer, and then it ends with prayer. It's centered on how we can pray in light of the instruction of a particular proverb. For example, here's my good friend Sean McDowell, whose reflection on Proverbs 25:15 hit me right where I needed: One of the proverbs that has jumped out to me over the past year and a half, and one that I've been thinking about a lot as the temperature in our culture is increasing, is Proverbs 25:15. The ESV reads, "With patience, A ruler may be persuaded and a soft tongue will break a bone." I love that this is not an isolated proverb. There are themes throughout Scripture about kindness, about tenderness, and about patience. It seems to me that we've lost some of those lessons today in the Church. Rather than being patient, we are quick to anger, but in the letter to the Romans, it's God's loving kindness that draws us to repentance. Proverbs 15:1 tells us that a soft word turns away anger. Christianity is not only true, but what it offers to the world uniquely is truth and grace. I think Proverbs 25:15 represents a small step of showing grace to people in and outside the Church that, frankly, today people don't expect. It catches them off guard. Here are a couple insights about this proverb. First, this proverb reminds us that some change only takes place with patience. We should be thinking more about the long term than how do we fix this by tomorrow, or even next year, or maybe even five years. The second thing that it says patience is long-suffering, meaning that the process can be painful to see change take place. This is certainly true for athletes, but it's true spiritually. Now this proverb not only talks about patience but talks about "a ruler." I love this. Obviously, the writer was thinking more of a king or maybe the nobles of his day, but "ruler" today is really anybody with authority. Those in the government or those in the university system, or maybe those in Hollywood. These people, in a sense, rule our culture. The proverb says they may be persuaded. I don't know about you, but I look at certain leaders and I'm tempted to think they're beyond hope. They can't be saved; they're gone. But, then I started thinking, "This is such a human perspective." This passage says rulers can be persuaded. That's a good reminder. That was Sean McDowell leading a time of guided prayer with his reflections on Proverbs 25:15. To watch Sean's entire devotional, come to BreakPoint.org/Proverbs. While you're there, register to join us each and every Wednesday from now until Easter. All sessions are recorded, so if you can't join us during the live release, the video will be available to watch and share later. Tomorrow's session will be led by my friend Trevin Wax, followed next week Erin Kunkel and Sarah Stonestreet of the Colson Center's Strong Women Podcast.

Sean McDowell shares an important proverb in the Time of Guided Prayer led by the Colson Center. Dr. Sean McDowell is a gifted communicator with a passion for equipping the church, and in particular young people, to make the case for the Christian faith. In addition to his role as Associate Professor in the Christian Apologetics program at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, Sean travels throughout the United States and abroad, speaking at camps, churches, schools, universities, and conferences. Sean is the co-host for the Think Biblically podcast, which is one of the most popular podcasts on faith and cultural engagement. He has written, co-written, or edited more than twenty books and has a leading apologetics blogs at seanmcdowell.org. In April 2000, Sean married his high school sweetheart, Stephanie. They have three children and live in San Juan Capistrano, California.

Michael Agapito's recent book review at ChristianityToday.com vividly illustrates one of the challenges Christians face when trying to apply their faith to issues of injustice. After praising much about Thaddeus Williams' new book Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth, in particular his commitment to not diminish or dismiss Biblical mandates for Christians to work toward justice and to rightly prioritize social justice efforts in light of the salvation message, Agapito offers a lukewarm review. His concern, even after admitting Williams' book explicitly states otherwise, is that "some will use it as an excuse to remain overtly comfortable with the status quo." In other words, even raising (and much less) answering questions (as Williams' book brilliantly does) about the way social justice is defined and pursued today is to be guilty of enabling the detractors, even if you clearly and repeatedly state otherwise (as Williams' book brilliantly does). This kind of critique of those who want to be sure their efforts align with Scripture is unhelpful and far too common. Now, let me attempt to be as clear as Scripture is: God cares about justice. The prophet Amos proclaims, "let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." The prophet then cites very specific examples of injustice. He condemns Israel for its mistreatment of the poor. He cites corrupt practices such as false testimony, bribery, and favoritism in the courts. As is true throughout Scripture, "justice" is no abstract concept. Many of the prophets all but equate Israel's failure of justice with religious infidelity as reasons for the exile and other punishments they face. As Micah famously put it, "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what the Lord requires of you, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." One of the great contributions of Christianity to human history is the very idea that all people should be treated justly. As the influence of Christianity spread across the world, God's instructions for how Israel should treat the poor and the disabled and the unborn and the foreigner spread as well. Today, both inside and outside of the church, demands to address injustices are ubiquitous. The problem is that radical, problematic views undergird so many calls for justice today. Too many social "causes" assume things about justice, God, morality, and who we are as human beings that simply aren't true. And, most of these ignore or deny the only idea that has ever been able to ground human dignity, that every human is made in the image of God. Today, because of the legacy of postmodern ideas about oppression and the wide application of critical theory, justice is largely understood only in terms of power dynamics. Because words like "social justice" and "oppression" are so often wrongly defined, many Christians have abandoned the biblical call to care about victims of injustice or work toward addressing social evils. Not only is that tragic, not only does this compromise the message of Christianity to the world, but it puts us out of touch with biblical teaching, and Christians throughout history (think of individuals such as William Wilberforce). That's the dilemma, and I've honestly been waiting for a resource would clearly and carefully walk through how we can work for justice from the solid foundation that every person is made in the image of God. I'm pleased to say that Thaddeus J. Williams's new book, Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth is that resource. As Williams writes, "The problem is not with the quest for social justice. The problem is what happens when that quest is undertaken from a framework that is not compatible with the Bible. Today many Christians accept conclusions that are generated from madness machines that are wired with very different presuppositions about reality than those we find in Scripture." Williams addresses on our culture's preoccupation with "wokeness," critical race theory, and emotivism, without letting us off the hook from our Christian responsibilities to love God and to love our neighbors (all of them). After all, Christians are always at their best when running into the brokenness not away from it, when we are caring for the victims of bad ideas while we walk humbly with our God. During the month of February, I would love to send you Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth by Thaddeus Williams for your next gift to BreakPoint and the Colson Center. Come to breakpoint.org/February2021 to request your copy today. Again, that's Breakpoint.org/February2021 to get your copy today.

It's likely that there will be 300 million Christians in China by 2030, up from 75-100 million Christians estimated in China in 2020. That is a three-fold increase. When the Communist Party in China took over in 1949 there were only 4 million Christians in China.During the reign of Mao, the total number of Christians didn't exceed 4million. Since the death of Mao in 1976, Christianity has grown at the same rate as the Chinese economy, 7-8% per year. The church grows from a mustard seed. Christian's don't only live lives that are different from their neighbors, but better. John and Shane discuss how Communism isn't big enough to handle the holy spirit, neighborliness, and even grace. John and Shane also discuss new Presidential executive actions and the state of persecution in the church.

Earlier this month, in a piece for The Atlantic, Joshua Coleman described an epidemic that's not COVID but that's also afflicting America: family estrangement. As a psychologist who specializes in family therapy, Coleman reports that his practice is flooded with older parents mourning the loss of contact with their grown children and with grown children angry and hurt by conflict with parents. "The rules of family life have changed," he said. The more recent changes in family structures and dynamics he described have only added to the pressure already felt by earlier stressors. For example, the Industrial Revolution, which moved work from inside the home to out, completely upended family life in all kinds of ways. The more recent forces of family estrangement, on the other hand, don't come so much from the outside as from the inside. Coleman quotes Stephanie Coontz, the Director of Research at the Council on Contemporary Families, to clarify this point: "Never before have family relationships been seen as so interwoven with the search for personal growth, the pursuit of happiness, and the need to confront and overcome psychological obstacles." This shift is bigger than we might suspect. Coontz continues, "For most of history family relationships were based on mutual obligations rather than on mutual understanding. Parents or children might reproach the other for failing to honor/acknowledge their duty, but the idea that a relative could be faulted for failing to honor/acknowledge one's 'identity' would have been incomprehensible" (emphasis added). In other words, we used to understand our families in light of our duties to them. Now we are increasingly understanding our families in light of their duty to us. What's more, we increasingly think that their primary duty is to make us happy. Haven't we seen this same sort of approach play out in other areas of our lives? "My spouse and my marriage should make me happy." If not, divorce is the only answer, no matter how it impacts the children. "My church should make me happy (and agree with all of my opinions)." If not, I'll find another one, maybe online. "My work should leave me fulfilled." If not, it's my work's fault. The same pop psychology, self-care, find-your-bliss platitudes are plastered all over social media: get rid of "toxic" people in your life who make you feel unhappy. Surround yourself only with "positivity." Don't let other people suck the "energy" out of you. Not only is it good to ditch the people you don't like, social media will give you the impression that it actually makes you brave and laudable and strong. All of this is, of course, a nearly perfect inverse of biblical counsel. From Paul in Ephesians 4: "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Paul assumes that living with others requires some "bearing with," which probably implies that we require some "bearing with," as well. Family members make mistakes, of course. In cases of abuse, severing a relationship may be necessary and justified. Sometimes, however, our family members are simply annoying. Maybe they merely point out where we've gone wrong, and there are times parents warn children off a dangerous path because of their own painful experiences. To automatically confuse tough love or even disagreement with being "toxic" is not only to serve our own pride, it's foolishly to sacrifice an essential relationship. We need the wisdom and care that only comes from those who know us best. We need what Proverbs calls "the faithful wounds of a friend" (Prov 27:6). In this fallen world, families will never be perfect, but God designed them to be the first and best safety net we should all have. Over the last several years, the generation gap has clearly widened, especially over three issues: sex, technology, and Trump. Over the last year, COVID and masks have been added to that list. All of these issues matter, of course, and there aren't "two sides" to all of them, but these relational splits in our families – not to mention our churches and friendships – are too often not born out of wisdom, and certainly not out of the biblical instructions for how we should treat our families, but out of a social media, YouTube comments-section sort of mentality. The family is a sacred design that was gifted to us by God. We ought not squander it. We have duty to serve it. If we do, it will be another way for Christians to be counter-cultural, another way for us to live for something bigger than ourselves and our own happiness.

The new Netflix film, "My Octopus Teacher," is hard to categorize. It's not exactly a nature documentary, nor is it strictly narrative storytelling, and the title is strange enough by itself. Still, this movie by documentary filmmaker Craig Foster has garnered glowing reviews and has become extremely popular on social media. The movie follows Foster who, in the midst of a personal crisis, decides to snorkel in the kelp forest near his South African home every day for a year. I doubt I was the only one whose first thought was, "Wow, it must be nice to have a breathtaking coastal home where personal therapy takes the form of a year of snorkeling." And that's just the first thing that makes the show's popularity puzzling--especially in this culture, which analyzes all of our problems, every political issue, and even the identity and value of individual people in terms of who has privilege and who doesn't. Just last week, Kim Kardashian was widely panned for posting a picture of a beautiful beach with the caption "paradise," without duly noting how privileged she was to be there. Though it's difficult to see "My Octopus Teacher" without noting that cultural tension, it's also refreshing to see a person with clear privilege choosing not to dwell on it. Still, "My Octopus Teacher" isn't a movie about privilege. It's about, wait for it, an octopus! Foster first comes across the animal in the very early days of his year of snorkeling, and he's mesmerized. Thanks to the engaging narration and cinematography, it's hard not to be mesmerized along with him. Octopi are incredible. And strange. They have this ability to go from something solid to almost liquid in a matter of seconds. The thousands of suction cups on the outside of their bodies are like a second brain. In fact, two-thirds of their cognition happen there, according to scientists. Throughout the film, we see Foster's octopus friend swim like a fish, walk like a dog, and play games like a kid. She changes colors. When she loses an arm in a shark attack, we watch it grow back. In simpler terms, Craig Foster's true privilege is one that God uniquely endows on His image bearers: the opportunity to marvel at God's extravagant creativity and the fact that He lets us live in a world like this. The other lesson in "My Octopus Teacher" comes from Foster's attempts to explain his obsession. "I just wanted to know this octopus," he says. "I just wondered - what would happen if I went to the same spot, every day, for a year?" So, he does. He followed that octopus around every day, and each night, he went home to study more about her. His obsession seems strange, to be sure, but it's also a poignant picture of a person looking for something outside of himself in a culture where most voices tell us to look inside. Even more, what if we approached God in this way? What if we became so obsessed with knowing Him that we spent our time and energy essentially stalking Him every single day, through reading the Bible, prayer, and serving others? And, what if we came to God with the same sense of expectation Foster had underwater? He was painfully deliberate to not impose himself in the octopus's life. He wanted to know her, but he knew she had to decide whether to reveal herself to him. The good news is that God wants us to know Him. After all, consider the incredible lengths He has gone to in order to make Himself known, in His word, in His world, and especially in His Son. Still, it is a particular discipline to not approach God with what Jesus called "many words" (Mt 6:7), and instead to "be still and know" that He is God (Ps 46:10). Foster never really understood the octopus. Though God's ways are higher than ours, and our ability to understand Him will always be limited, God is knowable. We will never know Him exhaustively, but we can know Him truthfully. St. Augustine said, "You have formed us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You." "My Octopus Teacher" is a strange movie, but Foster's film is a fascinating portrayal of the "God-shaped hole" in every human heart. To become obsessed with God, to follow him around like He's the answer to our troubles, to wait for Him to show Himself to us, is the only way for our hearts to be filled and at rest.

John and Shane field a series of thought-provoking questions this week. One listener wrote in asking why Christians are concerned with how people of faith in important positions hold and communicate their theology. Another listener asked an important question about end-of-life care and advanced directives, looking for a Christian worldview thinking structure to hang all of the new technologies and realities we have with life and end-of-life care. The first question John and Shane fielded was from a professional whose current career may come into a conscience conflict. John and Shane provide strong understanding to stand strong in the culture stream.

In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote, "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how.'" Both the book and its most famous quote were products of an incredibly difficult experience. During World War II, Frankl and his family were deported from their native Vienna to various concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He was the only member of his family to survive. Frankl knew just how unbearable the "how" of life could be. And yet, as Frankl explained, humans are meaning-seeking creatures. We want to believe that there's more to life than meeting our basic survival needs of food, water, shelter, and safety. Even more, we need this to be true. Otherwise, ours becomes a purely animal existence. Despite all the zoo placards and biology textbooks assuring us that humans are just animals, we certainly don't act like survival and promulgating the species are all that matters. Without meaning, hope is difficult, if not impossible. At best, without meaning, we resort to a kind of detachment and resignation. At worst, we resort to self-harm, violence, or even suicide. On the other hand, the benefits of meaning extend well beyond psychological and spiritual health. As a recent article in the Washington Post reports, a sense of purpose and meaning brings physical benefits as well. Believing that one's "existence has meaning" is linked to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and lower levels of heart inflammation. One study found that having a "clear purpose in life" can slow the impact of Alzheimer's in older patients. Another metanalysis of various studies even suggested that having a purpose in life can lower risk of death equally as well as following the "Mediterranean diet." Of course, finding this kind of life-changing and life-extending purpose isn't as straightforward as changing a diet or starting a new exercise routine. An essential place to begin is the opening sentence of Rick Warren's The Purpose Drive Life: "It's not about you." Purpose is not found by looking inward; it's found by looking outward and is manifested in what we do for others. Among the examples cited by the Post article were volunteering, donating to charity, and "joining a group of people who share your values." What all of these ideas have in common is that they remove us, for however long, from the center of our personal universe. Of course, nothing turns our perspective outward (and upward) like faith in Jesus Christ. I don't mean the consumerist, therapeutic kind of inward-looking religion that too often passes for Christianity these days. I mean something along the lines of what Paul told the Corinthians: "And [Christ] died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them" (2 Cor 5:15). Living for the One who died and rose again not only removes us from the center of our own universe, but aligns our hearts and minds with what is actually true about the universe: that it belongs to God and that our purpose is given by Him not determined by us. True faith locates our lives in this cultural moment within the larger story of God, and how He is fulfilling His purposes throughout each chapter of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. When we no longer see our lives and actions as isolated, we realize they are part of the story and even the means by which God is restoring all things. Knowing this doesn't make the "how" any easier, as my colleague Shane Morris recently testified on BreakPoint. Paul told the Corinthians that toil, hardship, sleepless nights, hunger, thirst, and anxiety were his lot as an apostle of Jesus Christ. But he also knew that his suffering wasn't meaningless. Neither, for that matter, was his success. Despite and even through them, God's purposes were being fulfilled. This is the ultimate "why." This message is not only true; it's worth sharing, especially in a world where, for so many, meaning has been lost and the best efforts to manufacture meaning fall short.