Breakpoint

Scholars discuss a breakthrough discovery relating to King David, examining a 3,000-year-old artifact with faded letters that conclusively support the existence of the "House of David". The podcast explores the ongoing debate among historians and highlights how archaeology continues to confirm the historical accuracy of the Bible.

From a routine chapel service at Asbury University sprouted a remarkable revival, spreading to other Christian colleges like previous revivals in American history. Explore the impact and criticisms of revivalism, with a focus on the history and perspective of Jonathan Edwards.

In this year-end review, John and Maria discuss the attack on Israel and its cultural implications, top stories of 2023 including AI chatbots and UFOs, notable deaths of influential figures like Tim Keller and Henry Kissinger, challenges and opportunities for the American church, and the need for a non-political approach to culture with a focus on biblical critical theory.

In response to Critical Race Theory, Tennessee lawmakers have introduced a list of “divisive concepts,” which, under a law passed last year, are prohibited from being taught on college campuses.   The banned concepts include ideas that cause an individual to feel discomfort, guilt, or another form of psychological distress because of their race or sex, or the idea that the state of Tennessee or the United States of America is inherently racist or sexist. Students can report professors for corrective action.   Princeton University’s Robert P. George tweeted in response that the best way to counter bad ideas at the university level is to expose them, not ban them: “The right strategy is creating vibrant, intellectually serious new departments & programs.”  Especially at the college level, we need more discussion and serious debate of ideas, not less.   Young adults should be taught how to recognize, confront, and critique bad thinking, especially influential bad thinking. As C.S. Lewis said, “Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy must be answered.”  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point was originally published on April 21, 2023.

Examining the mental health crisis among young people, the influence of smartphones and social media, and the correlation between regular religious attendance and better mental health among young Americans.

When Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field Monday, several sports analysts called it the scariest scene they’d ever seen on a football field. Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest after a routine tackle and remains in critical condition. As ESPN analyst and former player Ryan Clark described in an emotional segment, no one had prepared for this, not Hamlin, not the other players, and not media personnel.   But ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky knew what to do when he didn’t know what else to do. Appearing on NFL Live Tuesday morning, he said,   "Maybe this is not the right thing to do but it’s just on my heart that I wanna pray for Damar Hamlin right now. I’m gonna do it out loud, I’m gonna close my eyes, I’m gonna bow my head and I’m just gonna pray for him." And that’s what he did. The other hosts on set joined, as did who knows how many viewers. Maybe some were comforted. Maybe others learned what it means to talk with God.   It was a powerful and courageous thing to do. After praying for healing and comfort for Damar Hamlin, Orlovsky closed with:   "If we didn’t believe that prayer didn’t work we wouldn’t ask this of you God. I believe in prayer. We believe in prayer. We lift up Damar Hamlin’s name in your name."  And to that we can all say, “Amen.”  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point was originally published on January 5, 2023. 

Not that long ago, culturally speaking, someone known throughout the world for being neighborly said some things that most likely would have gotten him fired today. And, believe it or not, he said these things on public television!  Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood often performed songs he wrote to address issues that confused children or caused them to struggle. One of these songs, “Everybody’s Fancy,” was featured in numerous episodes of his hit show from 1968 to 1991. He hoped to help children love and value their bodies and to respect other children, too. Rogers was, of course, completely unaware of the modern controversies over LGBTQ identities that would soon dominate the culture, but, in several lines of the song, he expressed truths that are no longer permitted to be said out loud.   Take a listen:   "Boys are boys from the beginning. Girls are girls right from the start. Everybody’s fancy, everybody’s fine. Your body’s fancy and so is mine. ... Only girls can grow up to be the mommies. Only boys can grow up to be the daddies." Can you imagine someone saying these things on PBS today? In fact, in a segment last year from the Let’s Learn TV series, PBS stations across the country featured a drag queen who goes by the stage name “Lil Miss Hot Mess” singing lines from his book, The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round.” “Hot Mess” is a grown man who dresses in flamboyant and exaggerated women’s clothing and makeup, and then seeks an audience with children.   The most obvious takeaway is that any trust previous generations of parents and kids had for public television was, long ago, squandered. A second takeaway is just how quickly some ideas have shifted from being unthinkable to unquestionable. Therefore, we should doubt anyone who tries to gaslight us into thinking we’re regressive bigots for believing male and female are realities built into human nature.   Only a short time ago, some facts were considered so obvious and universally accepted that Mister Rogers could sing about them to children on a publicly funded medium, and no one thought anything whatsoever about gender dysphoria, transgender identity, or drag queens when he did. Does that mean Fred Rogers was a bigot? Was he a transphobe? No. In fact, no one had ever heard of such accusations at the time.  As an ordained Presbyterian minister, Rogers viewed the world in a noticeably Christian way. Though he didn’t often discuss his faith publicly, his dedication to and concern for children was, in very real ways, Christ-like. For example, Rogers did not avoid difficult subjects if he believed kids needed to talk about them. So, he dealt with death, divorce, and racism, and he had a way of empathizing with the especially deep sorrow and confusion children can feel over such things.   “Everybody’s Fancy” was Rogers’ way of teaching children that they are fearfully and wonderfully made. For Rogers, that included talking about the human body as something good, as worth appreciating and caring for. Mister Rogers even taught children that one thing that made bodies special was that they were gendered, and that this gender had significance for who and what they would become in life. As he said, only boys can grow up to be daddies, and only girls can grow up to be mommies.   In this, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was unlike so many children’s shows that vaguely taught and sang about how “everyone is special.” Barney was not only irritating, it was gnostic. Mr. Rogers, at least in this song, had a robust applied creational theology.  That’s not to say Mr. Rogers always got it right. It seems, for example, that his compassion eventually got in the way of clear thinking on sexuality and gender, though he kept his views quiet for the sake of avoiding controversy.  Even so, his strong affirmation of the goodness and permanence of male and female—and the fact that he generated no controversy for saying these things—should make us think. What he sang then is no less obviously true now, and it’s absurd to suggest that Mister Rogers was some hate-filled bigot for holding these views, as our president seemed to imply recently.   No, it’s those who tell children that their “fancy bodies” may, in fact, be the wrong bodies and in need of social, chemical, or surgical alteration, who are living in the land of make-believe.   Today’s Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Breakpoint was originally published on January 3, 2023.

Canada’s campaign to normalize suicide as a viable and even preferred medical treatment continues to escalate. Already, patients have been pressured into physician-assisted suicide because of psychological pain, and even because they were too poor to pay for medical care. Last summer, Canadian Virtual Hospice released what can only be called “death ed” for kids 6-10. The Medical Aid in Dying Activity Book for kids explains why a loved one might want to die and how the process works. It’s thick with euphemisms, referring to lethal injections as “medicines,” to “bodies” dying instead of people, and assuring children their loved one is not really choosing to die but is in too much pain to live.    As Wesley Smith wrote at National Review, children have to be convinced killing is okay: “They are not stupid and will know that their loved one is being terminated.” They know what doctors are for, to help and not to harm.   The adults behind this ghoulish coloring book have forgotten that.   For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point was originally published on January 4, 2023.

Today, the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns seems, at least to most of us, like an extended nightmare of yesterday. However, some of the ways that our lives changed have stuck with us. For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans working primarily from home has tripled since 2019. Many people will never go back to full-time commuting, nor do they want to (though there are signs of a reset on the horizon).   Another change, one even more consequential for individuals and our society, is the large-scale exodus from in-person church services. According to Pew Research, though nearly all houses of worship had resumed regular, in-person services by this time last year, disappointingly few Christians had actually returned. There’s the church, there’s the steeple, open the door … but where are the people?   Researchers from the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that, last year, one-third of Americans admitted to never attending religious services, up from a quarter of Americans before the pandemic. They also found no lockdown-induced surge in atheism nor drop in religious affiliation. Instead, for the most part, “religious identity remained stable through the pandemic.”  Apparently, large numbers of people who once identified as Christians have decided they no longer need to attend church. While COVID may have been the impetus behind this exodus, the root causes are preexisting and go much deeper. Too many Christians think of church as they would an event, concert, or TED Talk, optional experiences that can just as easily be consumed remotely.   When combined with pastors and leaders who view the core purpose of church as evangelism rather than discipleship or worship and are therefore willing to do whatever seems to “work,” success is just as easily measured by logins and views after the pandemic as it was by attendance numbers and growth size before the pandemic.  Much is behind these shifting numbers. First and foremost, God continues to prune and winnow His Church, seeking the health of His Beloved. The broader cultural shift away from truth-claims and anything that smacks of traditional morality has only intensified in recent years. And, we should at least consider the possibility that the decline in both numbers and influence is, at least in part, a self-inflicted wound.  Like C.S. Lewis’ famous image of making mud pies in the slum when offered a trip to the seashore, we’ve baptized (and watered down) the habits of the world in place of the riches provided in the testimony of Scripture and the God-ordained practices of the Church. Why would our neighbors be drawn to warmed-over versions of the world’s leftovers?  To use a pair of homespun metaphors, the kind of bait used determines the kind of fish caught. Or, more prosaically, what you win people with is what you win them to. After decades of appealing first and foremost to whatever people want and editing to whatever they think, we’ve essentially discipled a generation that will only follow a Church that leads where they want to go.  In every age, a true and real Christianity finds much to critique as well as to affirm. If we aren’t willing to challenge the sacred cows of our day, if we aren’t up to preaching what Tom Holland called the “weird stuff” of our faith, we will find (and perhaps even now we are finding) that no one is interested in what we have to say because we aren’t saying much worth hearing.  Our embodied and relational nature, which required an embodied and relational salvation, is one of those things. Thus, the author of Hebrews warns his readers not to forsake gathering together “as is the habit of some.” And thus, when the Apostle Paul sought to explain the relationship between Christ and His Church, he invoked marriage. The love between a husband and wife symbolizes the love Jesus has for His Bride. The profound “mystery” to which Paul refers is the total union (body and soul) between the Savior and His saved people.   Our lives in Christ are just as physical as marriage. If you wouldn’t try a purely virtual relationship with your spouse, you shouldn’t try a virtual relationship with Christ or His people. Both require and deeply involve our bodies, and Christ could not have made this any clearer than He did by placing a family meal at the center of Christian worship, commanding us to “take and eat.”    Unless limited by a health issue, attending a house church, or using creative sanctuary furnishings, Christians should always choose pews over couches. And churches should choose the truth-claims and practices of Holy Scripture over market-driven research.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to colsoncenter.org.   For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Breakpoint was originally published on February 16, 2023.

It is typically entertaining when two popular intellectuals get into a public spat. Recently, Canadian psychologist and YouTube star Jordan Peterson called out the famous British biologist Richard Dawkins with an “I told you so!”   After Dawkins complained on Twitter about New Zealand elevating traditional Maori stories to the same level as Western science, Peterson retorted, “Welcome to the world of post-humanism, sir. A world which you sadly helped birth. … [I]t wouldn’t surprise me at all if the woke polytheistic neopaganists destroy science faster than they destroy Christianity.”   On one hand, Dawkins is right that the whole genius of “Western” science is that it isn’t just Western. But, as Peterson not so gently noted, Dawkins has spent his career tearing down the religious foundations upon which Western science is built. Without God and all that His existence implies, there is no solid ground for saying that any knowledge, scientific or otherwise, is true for everyone.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point was originally published on July 12, 2023.