Breakpoint

Dr. Eric Patterson explores Just War Theory and its relevance in analyzing the conflict between Hamas and Israel, discussing biblical principles of governance, government authority, the duty to oppose evil, and the importance of intentions.

How many faces do you have?   Atheist comedian Stephen Fry once said (quite ironically) that you are who you are when nobody’s watching. When social restraints are removed, when the cameras aren’t rolling, what sort of person are you? What sort of choices do you make?  All of us—especially men—need to ask these questions of ourselves in the wake of the daily flurry of scandals from Hollywood and Washington. This isn’t a problem “out there” in someone else’s sound studio, office, or home. It’s a problem “in here,” at the depths of the sinful human heart.  Is the person we portray to others the same person we are when we’re by ourselves—or more importantly—when we believe there will be no consequences for our actions?  This is sometimes called “living on your face;” in other words, making sure that what you present in public is the character you demonstrate in private. Only as Christians, we know that there’s nowhere we can flee from the presence of God, who sees all, and who is always with us, and who promises that “our sins will find us out.”  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point was originally published on January 1, 2018. 

In November of 1660, Puritan lay preacher John Bunyan was arrested and subsequently spent the next 12 years in prison. Under the restored monarchy of Charles II, dissent from the Church of England was once again illegal. Initially sentenced to three months, under the condition that he would stop preaching, Bunyan famously replied that he was willing to suffer “till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows, rather than thus to violate my faith and principles.”  In prison, Bunyan completed one of the all-time, best-selling works of Christian literature, The Pilgrim’s Progress.   Chuck Colson was deeply impacted by this book. Here’s Chuck, in his own words:   "It has often been described as the most popular and most influential book ever published—after the Bible, that is. Yet many literary critics of its time treated it with scorn. Its author was simply a humble Puritan minister who wrote it while imprisoned for his faith. He was not even sure if he should publish it. If you have not guessed it yet, I am talking about The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. ...   Pilgrim’s Progress is a powerful story of one Christian’s journey through life. The people, encounters, and struggles he faces have become part of the English language: Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Vanity Fair, the Slough of Despond, and so many more. Yet Bunyan was not even trying to be particularly clever or original. As [Dr. Ken] Boa reminds us, Bunyan’s thinking was so steeped in the Scriptures that his book is filled with 'literally hundreds and hundreds of allusions' to biblical references and concepts, and this is what makes its imagery so striking and memorable. As Charles Spurgeon, who used to read The Pilgrim’s Progress twice a year, said of Bunyan, 'If you cut him, he would bleed Bible.'   The book’s theological depth makes it almost suitable for a “catechesis” of the Christian faith. And something that has always amazed me about Pilgrim’s Progress is just how real Bunyan’s characters are. The pilgrims at the center of the story are no Christian supermen, no perfect moral heroes. Boa points out, 'There are many weaknesses in [the characters] Christian and Faithful … and we see that faith co-exists with failings.'   Just like any biblical hero, the Christian characters here must ask for God’s help in fighting their own flaws and failures. Their intentions are good, but they are too easily lured away from their path or cast down by their troubles. As Boa says, 'It is Christian’s actual frailty, his fallibility that arouses our sympathy for him and makes us wonder what is going to happen next.'   Unlike much Christian fiction of our own time, Bunyan’s allegory does not try to tiptoe around the fact of sin. The wise Puritan preacher knew he would have been remiss not to deal with it. In many ways, his heroes, despite the seventeenth century setting, are just like us, which is why Pilgrim’s Progress still fascinates us. Fascinates us and encourages us, as well—for as Boa goes on to say, Bunyan’s book teaches us that 'any man, any woman, through grace, can become a Christian hero.'   It is a lesson that has carried down through the centuries and is just as powerful today as ever—not bad for a simple Puritan preacher."   Chuck Colson knew, of course, what it was like to not only be in prison but to experience the presence of the Lord in the midst of prison. In the epilogue of his autobiography Born Again, Chuck wrote, “I found myself increasingly drawn to the idea that God had put me in prison for a purpose and that I should do something for those I had left behind.”   Among the lessons to be learned from the stories of John Bunyan and Chuck Colson is that suffering can produce the Christian’s most powerful witness, and that God is faithful to His people everywhere, even behind bars.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. 

The Holy Spirit has been called “the forgotten God.” But He’s also, according to Scripture, at the heart of the Christian life.  “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” says the Nicene Creed, “the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is both worshiped and glorified, who has spoken to us through the prophets.”  Now, there’s a longstanding debate between Eastern and Western churches about whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from the Son as well.  What Christians agree on, however, is that the Spirit is God. He’s a Person, not a force. He inspired the Scriptures. He raised Jesus Christ from the dead. He is the Comforter sent by Jesus, the One who gives us ears to hear the Gospel, and who intercedes for us when we pray, indwelling us to this day.  We are His temples, and He is the Pledge of our inheritance and the guarantee that the faith we now confess in the Triune God will one day be sight.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Point was originally published on December 29, 2017.

In a viral post back in July, entrepreneur Robert Sterling described what many people feel:   "There is something deeply unwell in our society right now. … I’m sure social media, economic malaise, Covid lockdowns, fentanyl, and every other reason we hear about factor into it."  Yet, all these reasons, he continued, “in aggregate, still feel insufficient.” Something “metaphysical,” seems to have shifted.   A Breakpoint commentary in April described the mental health crisis of American teens, especially teenage girls. As The New York Times reported, “Nearly three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021 … and one in three girls seriously considered attempting suicide.” Boys aren’t doing much better, with so-called “deaths of despair” at an all-time high among the male population.    This widespread mental instability has culturewide consequences. In a recent documentary, filmmaker Christopher Rufo diagnosed what he calls our “Cluster B Society.” The rise of “woke” ideology and cancel culture, he argued, corresponds with the explosion of psychopathologies like narcissism and borderline personality disorder.  These “disorders of the self,” Rufo explains, wreck relationships and lead to profound social dysfunction. When they become “formalized and entrenched” in “human resource departments, government policies, cultural institutions, and civil rights law,” they lead to precisely the kinds of extremism and emotional instability that infects politics today, especially among the young.    What is this “metaphysical shift,” this feature of modern society, that is driving so many people into despair?  Writing for the Institute for Family Studies, University of Virginia sociologist Joseph Davis argues that our mental health crisis is the end of a long process that began well before the iPhone, social media, or fentanyl. The seeds of despair and derangement, he thinks, were sown when people stopped looking to timeless institutions and transcendent realities to give their lives meaning, and instead turned inward for answers.    Davis cites Jennifer Breheny Wallace, who in her book Never Enough notes that even successful and privileged young people often say they feel “utterly vacant inside.” The reason they are looking inward for meaning is because they’ve been taught for decades now, by everyone from Disney and Oprah to pop stars and professors, to reject external sources of meaning like God, family, or country. “Their truth” is found within, while external sources of authority are oppressive and stifle authentic individuality.    As a result, Davis argues, “the public frameworks that gave life direction and meaning—prescribed roles, rites of passage, compelling life scripts, stable occupational trajectories—continue to fade away.”  That’s why, as he puts it,  "We feel empty, inadequate, and adrift because we have been thrown back on ourselves, forced to face the challenge—at younger and younger ages—of trying to establish an identity, make commitments, live with conviction, desire life, and find meaning without the very sources that make these things possible in the first place."  As theologian Carl Trueman demonstrated in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, the idea that life’s greatest meaning comes from within and from there we express our authentic identity is a recent development. Our ancestors looked beyond self, to external sources of authority. In our culture of expressive individualists, many people are finding themselves, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, unchained from a sun.    Writing of the death of God in his famous Parable of the Madman, Nietzsche accurately predicted the chaos to come but also noted that people in his day could not realize the implications of doing away with fixed, transcendent meaning. “I have come too early,” says the Madman. “This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men.”   Perhaps today, in the ruins of the institutions, traditions, churches, families, and cultures once tied to belief in an unchanging God, Nietzsche’s prophecy has come true. We are adrift with only ourselves as gods. If the statistics are accurate, more and more people are finding this intolerable.    We were never meant to invent meaning for ourselves. The demands of our hyper-individualistic society feel unbearable because they’re unreasonable. We put the weight of defining the world on our shoulders, and it’s heavier than we ever imagined. The self is not big enough to define the truth.   This means that solving our mental health crisis will take much more than cutbacks on social media or crackdowns on opioids (though these are good ideas). It will take a return to older, less individualistic sources of identity and a willingness to stop treating “be yourself” or “you do you” as some kind of profound wisdom.    This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. To help us share Breakpoint with others, leave a review on your favorite podcast app.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org  

"Breakpoint" features Christian scholars Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer, discussing the cultural impact and worldview implications of Critical Theory. They explore its influence on education, economics, race relations, and the church. They also delve into critical race theory, queer theory, and the rise of critical theory in the church. The podcast explores the unsettling endorsement of antisemitism and how critical theory shapes perceptions of power dynamics. Don't miss Neil Shenvi at the 2024 Colson National Conference!

The podcast discusses the development of a baby in the womb, emphasizing important organ formation and the ability to determine the baby's sex. It challenges the reductionistic view of a pre-born baby as just a clump of cells.

One of the most beloved and quotable scenes in The Chronicles of Narnia is from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the children learn that Aslan is a lion, “the Lion, the great Lion.”    "'Ooh' said Susan. 'I’d thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.' 'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver ... 'Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.'"   Though we love the idea that God is not “safe,” we often live as if our safety or comfort marks the boundaries of our relationship with Him. Catechized by bad theology, captivated by our culture’s enablement of self-centeredness, or weary of an angry and fractious age, many Christians cannot conceive that God’s will for our lives could involve anything unpleasant or uncomfortable.    When it does and our expectations collapse, we wonder if God cares, having conflated God’s faithfulness with a painless, placid life of blessing and provision. We are quick to assume that pain or discomfort means that God’s will has been thwarted, or that His love and protection have been withdrawn. It’s difficult to accept that, rather than a sign of God’s absence, the presence of pain could be a sign of His sovereign care.   Throughout The Horse and His Boy, Aslan continually allows fear, hardship, and even physical pain for the main characters. When Shasta, one of the two main humans in the story, is fleeing from his abusive adoptive father on the Narnian horse Bree, a lion chases them through the darkness. Fleeing from the danger, he encounters another rider fleeing from, it seems, another lion. Aravis is also escaping her home on a talking Narnian horse. Their shared fear and confusion bring them together for a journey neither of them could have made without the other.   Later in the story, they’re riding as fast as they can to head off a threat to Narnia. Just as Bree claims he can go no faster, a “new” lion closes in on them. Lewis writes,    "His eyes gleamed red and his ears lay back on his skull. And Bree now discovered that he had not really been going as fast—not quite as fast—as he could. Shasta felt the change at once. Now they were going all out." The lion then badly wounds Aravis, before retreating unexpectedly.    Later, Shasta learns the full story. There was only one lion, not many. Aslan was “swift of foot.” Without the fears and the pain, Shasta and Aravis, Bree and Hwin, would have never met; their quest would have failed; the enemy would have been victorious; and Shasta would never have learned who he truly was. The pain wasn’t an afterthought on Aslan’s part, but a key element in his plan.   None of this implies that pain should be sought out. Pain is never the point of God’s plans, any more than it is the purpose of physical exercise. Never pushing ourselves to the point that it hurts means never improving our health. On the other hand, seeking pain is more likely to do harm than to aid our wellbeing.    In and of itself, pain is not good, but it is meaningful. Pain indicates that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Without pain, we’d never know. In the same way, breaking bad habits of the past requires pushing beyond our comfort levels, through the pain, and onward on the path to full restoration.   Pain is sometimes required to reorient us. What else can turn one away from a debilitating addiction or insatiable sexual impulse? Without discomfort, would we ever give up on our preferred source of “safety” for the faithful and sometimes painful love of God? Whether through sickness or sacrifice, in ending a dream or enduring hostility, we must remember that God’s faithfulness is not determined by how well our lives are going. In fact, it is often known only in the hardest things of life.   To deny that God could or would use discomfort for our good is to deny that He is present in our pain. He is. Just as, in His quest to restore the glory of His creation, He did not shrink back from inflicting pain on His dear Son, His love for His people often includes a level of discomfort and pain. In the end, it is part of His work to restore His image bearers to their intended dignity.    As Lewis wrote elsewhere, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”   This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org This Breakpoint originally aired November 4, 2021.

In November 1917, Scottish Bible teacher and evangelist Oswald Chambers died while serving as chaplain to British troops in Egypt. Ten years after his death, his wife Gertrude compiled her notes of his sermons into one of the most influential devotionals of all time: My Utmost for His Highest.   Chambers revered the Scripture. “God never fits His word to suit me;” he wrote, “He fits me to suit His word.”  But he also understood the kind of book the Bible was. Not something only to be looked at, but to be looked through. He once responded to a friend who said he only read the Bible that,  "When people refer to a man as 'a man of the book,' meaning the Bible, he is generally found to be a man of multitudinous books, which simply isolates the one Book to its proper grandeur. The man who reads only the Bible does not, as a rule, know it or human life." For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org  

Mark Twain famously said that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.” The new film, Golda, starring Helen Mirren, provides evidence of that maxim.   A surprise Arab attack is carried out on the nation of Israel in the first week of October. An embattled Israeli Prime Minister fights to secure American support. There are whispers of Russian involvement and atrocities in Ukraine. Golda is not a film about 2023, but it does recall the remarkably similar story of 1973.  In fact, the history of Israel and the wider story of the millennia-long persecution of Jews can feel somewhat like a broken record. No matter the era, no matter the region, no matter the culture, Jacob’s children find themselves in the crosshairs of their neighbors’ hatred.  In the 5th-century BC, the royal advisor Haman whined to his king: "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not to the king’s profit to tolerate them." Haman was, of course, speaking of the Jewish people.  Jewish historian Josephus described the tensions that simmered between Jews and Greeks in Egypt since the 4th century. Conflict erupted in his day into riots that, before the slaughter stopped, left some 50,000 Jews dead. In a remark that could be taken from today’s headlines, the historian declared,   "Some were caught in the open field, others forced into their houses, which were plundered and then set on fire. The Romans showed no mercy to the infants, had no regard for the aged, and went on in the slaughter of persons of every age." Over the next few hundred years, this antisemitism was, with some notable exceptions, sadly baptized by an emerging Christian culture. Some of this can be attributed to an accommodation to the cultural norms, some to seeking revenge for earlier Jewish persecutions of Christians, and some to significant theological issues that continue to affect Jewish-Christian relations even today.  In a tragic replaying of the persecution inflicted on the Early Church by Roman pagans, Christians scapegoated Jews for bad harvests, plagues, and political misfortune. Across Europe, especially Russian-controlled areas, pogroms were unleashed against victims with nowhere to go, at least until the rise of America and Israel.  Attacks against the Jews only increased with the evolving of a more secularized, modern age. Ancient prejudices took on modern forms, fed by conspiracy theories held across various segments of society. Jews were thought to be both in absolute control of world events and bent on world destruction. The horrifying capstone of antisemitism in the modern era was given the name the “Final Solution” by the Nazis.   Sadly, the story of Jew hatred continues today, in the conspiracy junkie who sees the Rothschilds behind every event and in the equally abhorrent Critical Theory claims about Israeli occupation and oppression. From these two ends of the Western political spectrum, the Jews have once again been cast into a villainous role they’ve never deserved.  Despite being an emotionally heavy movie, Golda ends with an optimistic note. Through the peace that ended the war between Israel and Egypt, steps began which, 50 years later, have led to an increasing number of treaties between Arabs and Israelis. Though we are rightly outraged by the vile comments of some in the West in support of the atrocities of Hamas, nearly every Western government has stood up for Israel in this situation. And many Muslim states have either stayed quiet or even voiced support.  Will this current crisis lead to greater stability as the crisis told about in the film? We don’t know. What we do know is that this history did not begin yesterday, nor will it be fixed tomorrow. But, even when history does rhyme, it doesn’t necessarily have to repeat. We live in God’s world. He promises to “make all things new.” That will be how the story ends.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org