Breakpoint

Robert Nicholson, founder of the Philos Project, discusses shocking statistics on Palestinian viewpoints. Over two-thirds reject a two-state solution, 93% reject Israel’s claim to the land, and 58% support armed confrontation. Radical Islamic ideology and the role of religion in shaping conflicts are also explored.

Jesus of Nazareth is one of those rare historical figures who nearly everyone wants to claim. You might say that just as God made us in His image, people return the favor and remake Jesus in our image. In fact, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became academically popular to claim to know what Jesus taught while assuming the Gospel accounts, especially the miraculous parts, were not true. An assumption that was simply taken for granted is that Jesus never claimed to be God.   Though the scholarly world has largely progressed past these scholars and their “scholarship,” Jesus is still reimagined by many as something other than Christ. He’s embraced as a political avatar or lifestyle coach, or in a role for which He was ill-suited: that of merely a “good teacher.” Christians know there’s more to the Jesus story. But how should we respond to false claims about Him, especially those based on little knowledge of what the Gospels actually say?   A recent video in the What Would You Say? series tackled this question and offered three points to keep in mind. First, the Scriptures clearly tell us who Jesus was and what He claimed to be.   "People who reject that Jesus was God have to reject some of the things that the Gospel writers claim about Jesus while accepting others. But how do we know which parts we can trust and which parts we should reject? Often, skeptics end up keeping those parts of the Gospels that describe the kind of Jesus they want to accept and end up with a Jesus they’ve pieced together. In other words, skeptics can be guilty of what they are assuming about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.   Not only is that inconsistent, but it ignores the fact that the Gospel writers have provided a reliable account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Not only are the books full of eyewitness accounts of His life and ministry, the authors had strong incentive to rightly preserve and pass on the details they contain. … At the very least, to dismiss the Gospels up front, and assume that they could not possibly be reliable accounts, means we are left with no real sources about His life to conclude He was even a good teacher." Second, the coming and work of the Messiah were long foretold, with prophetic details that were fulfilled in the life of Jesus.   "In 700 BC, the prophet Micah predicted the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem of Judea. The prophet Zechariah announced that the coming Savior would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Some Psalms point to a crucifixion-like death, centuries before this became a common means of execution under the Romans.   Some skeptics claim that these prophecies were read back into the Old Testament by those in power in the early Church. However, there are far too many details mentioned to be mere coincidence. The odds of one man’s life matching so many of these predicted details would be astronomical. In fact, according to Professor Peter Stoner, 'The probability that Jesus of Nazareth could have fulfilled even eight such prophecies would be only 1 in 10x17th power. That’s 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000.'" Finally, the Gospels record the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ ministry. One of the ways they confirm His identity as the Messiah is recording the miracles Jesus performed.   "In addition to the miraculous prophetic detail, Jesus performed miracles during His earthly ministry that were attested to by eyewitnesses and recorded in the Scripture and history. Even his enemies who denied that He was the Messiah never disputed that Jesus of Nazareth performed miracles and wonders. In fact, after the crucifixion and resurrection, Peter, in the Pentecost sermon to the crowd in Jerusalem, reminded his audience that Jesus had fed 5,000 people, had restored sight to the blind, and had raised the dead to life. Peter claimed that all these miracles were done by Jesus, 'in your midst' (Acts 2:22) " Jesus wasn’t just a nice guy who told stories and wanted others to be nice. He didn’t come to simply “show us the way.” He claimed to be the Way, the only way to God.  To see this video and others like it, and to use them in classes or conversation, go to whatwouldyousay.org.    This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The same day that Hamas militants murdered thousands of innocent men, women, and children, over 30 Harvard University student groups signed a statement of solidarity … not with the victims, but with the militants. “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence … [T]he apartheid regime is the only one to blame,” they wrote.   Harvard’s administration was deafeningly silent for days. Only after 500 faculty and over 3,000 university affiliates condemned the statement did leadership issue a “tepid” response, which it has since attempted to clarify.   Their moral inabilities stood in contrast to even Playboy magazine, which promptly cut ties with adult film star Mia Khalifa for statements celebrating Hamas’ attack.   You know things are upside down in education when an adult magazine reaches the moral clarity that a preeminent institution of higher learning does not. That some student groups finally backtracked, saying they never read the statement, only exposes just how broken their moral reasoning is.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Late last month, a large majority of Members of the European Parliament (MEP) voted to pass a regulation that will protect the donation and destruction of so-called “substances of human origin” for the sake of “patient health.” According to European media service Euractive, the regulation is intended to “set a framework to provide donors and patients with a future-proof and harmonised system for transplants and donations.” However, a group of European Union Catholic bishops warns that the language of “substances of human origin” (or SoHOs) includes not only donated blood or tissues from adults, but also embryos and fetuses.   The language is so broad, according to the bishops, not only would the donation of unwanted, artificially inseminated embryos and unfertilized cells be permitted, but also unwanted, naturally conceived preborn children prior to viability. And, because the regulation requires special steps to ensure that “genetic conditions” not be transmitted to SoHO recipients and offspring, the regulation could give researchers and practitioners license to destroy embryos with, say, Down syndrome or other disabilities diagnosed in utero.   Classifying embryonic human beings as “substances of human origin” erases the fundamental difference between embryos and other human cells. Unlike a skin cell or a blood cell, a zygote of an embryo is a whole, separate, valuable human being. Ignoring or disregarding that fundamental distinction is to remove all barriers from any person, born or unborn, being considered a mere “substance of human origin.”  Part of what is driving the increased interest in harvesting fetal tissue and embryos for use in medical treatment is to address what’s been billed as an “organ shortage crisis.” Though organ donation has only been medically viable for a few decades, it is now deemed a crisis that the demand for organs far outpaces the supply. As ethically fraught as that is on its own terms, around the same time as the new European Union regulation was passed, a group of American researchers suggested that neonatal organ donation could significantly mitigate organ “shortages.” That suggestion, especially in light of new regulations that categorize embryos as “substances of human origin” that can be used for medical purposes, more than opens the door to dangerous ethical ground.  Even treatments purportedly pursued for medical purposes can undermine the meaning of medicine, as well as accepted standards of medical care. Ever since the ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates, doctors have taken an oath to do no harm. Medical “care” that intentionally harms any person for no medical purpose contradicts the very meaning of “care,” and therefore medicine.   The recent, troubling regulations from the European Union are the latest expression of an anti-humanism on the rise in Western medicine. By treating whole, separate, valuable human beings as commodities, the new regulation will harm more than it helps. Like other examples of harm that pass in the name of “medical care,” whether Canadian doctors harvesting organs from medical-aid-in-dying (MAID) patients, or doctors in Denmark and Iceland claiming to eradicate Down syndrome by exterminating all children with Down syndrome in utero, or U.S. doctors perpetuating chemical, cosmetic, and surgical mutilation of minors with gender dysphoria, Western medicine increasingly serves a progressive ideological master. We may try to cover up these evils with Orwellian terminology, but the profoundly anti-human ideas at the root of what we call medicine will have consequences ... and victims.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

“Want to Believe in Yourself?” The New York Times asked recently. The key is to “matter.”  In the article, “mattering” was given a psychological twist, defined as adding value to a community and being valued in return.    On the one hand, this is an example of missing the point of the problem. Telling someone to choose to matter is like telling someone to make meaning out of an ultimately meaningless universe with their ultimately meaningless lives.   At the same time, the author isn’t wrong to imply that mattering to other people is far better than the kind of internalized self-affirmation that typically passes for therapy. Our world leads us to be inwardly focused and untethered from anything outside of our own feelings and will.   We were made to find meaning outside of ourselves, which is why deep connections and relationships matter, and help us know that we matter. This is the way God designed us. We only truly know ourselves in reference to our most important relationships—first with Him, and then others.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer unpack these ideas on Critical Theory and expose them in their new book Critical Dilemma. With a gift to the Colson Center this month, you can request a copy. The authors will join us on October 26 for our next Breakpoint Forum to discuss the ideas of Critical Theory in light of some of these current headlines. The forum begins at 8 p.m. EST and will be hosted by Colson Center resident theologian Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. The forum is free, but you must register at breakpoint.org/forum.  ___________ One of the more ridiculous images to make its way around social media sites in the wake of the horrific attack in Israel was a photo of four Westerners with a sign, “Queers for Palestine.” There’s also a Twitter page with that name. The banner photo insists, “Allah Loves Equality.”   Statements like these are so out of touch with reality, we can only hope that they are satire. Given what we know of Hamas, ISIS, and the Iranian regime, it’s safe to assume there won’t be any “pride” parades in Gaza or Ramallah anytime soon. Progressives looking for ideological sympathy among the rulers or people of Palestine are fooling themselves.  A week ago, all of this would have been sadly amusing. Now, it’s terrifying. Ever since the October 7 attacks, protestors across Europe, America, and Australia have denied, excused, justified, and even supported the murders, rapes, and beheadings of babies perpetrated by Hamas in Israel. It makes a kind of barbaric sense for radical Muslim groups to take such stands. It’s harder to fathom why Western progressives offer such affinity for radical Islamism.  After all, this is a religious ideology that is openly theocratic, misogynistic, violently anti-LGBTQ, opposed to free expression, free press, and nearly everything on the progressive agenda. The radical Islam that the far-Left wants to embrace is far worse than the morbid fantasies they hold about Christianity.   On the same American college campuses where you can be silenced for refusing to say that a man is a woman, Jewish co-eds tearfully begged school officials to stop speeches of those wishing their people dead. In Philadelphia, a speaker applauded “Hamas for a job well done.” At George Mason University, students chanted “They’ve got tanks, we’ve got hang gliders, glory to the resistance fighters!” Before they issued an incredibly paltry half-apology, the BLM organization chapter of Chicago tweeted an image of a Hamas killer parachuting into battle.   As strange of bedfellows as they make, radical Islam and the far-Left share hatred for the Western tradition. They cannot stomach free markets, objective morality and knowledge, or the uncompromising priority of human liberty, especially religious freedom.  Especially, in academic contexts, the Left’s hatred is grounded in the ideological capture of our ivory towers by Critical Theory. This way of thinking reduces the complexity of human existence to pre-determined categories of oppressed versus oppressor. Based on these categories, moral virtue and moral guilt are pre-assigned.   The matrix of this dynamic determines who is right and wrong. Anything done for the sake of the oppressed is just, even mass murder and rape. Anything done on behalf of the oppressor is vile, even warning civilians to get out of a war zone. In this case, all that matters is that Jews have been cast into the role of oppressor and their opponents as victims; all actions are either justified or condemned according to this simplistic schematic.  In his book on the Russian Revolution, Richard Pipes described a foreshadowing of this trend:   "For intellectuals of this kind, the criterion of truth was not life: they created their own reality, or rather, sur-reality, subject to verification only with reference to opinions of which they approved. ... It is only by reducing people of flesh and blood to a mere idea that one can ignore the will of the majority in the name of democracy and institute a dictatorship in the name of freedom."  Decades of Western decadence have numbed us to the power of beliefs. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. That’s true on college campuses and in Gaza. By rejecting objective morality as tyrannical, believers in the ideas of Critical Theory embrace tyranny as moral.  Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer unpack these ideas and expose them in their new book Critical Dilemma. With a gift to the Colson Center this month, you can request a copy. The authors will join us on October 26 for our next Breakpoint Forum to discuss the ideas of Critical Theory in light of some of these current headlines. The forum begins at 8 p.m. EST and will be hosted by Colson Center resident theologian Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. The forum is free, but you must register at breakpoint.org/forum.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The Washington Post loves to promote their reporting with the tagline, “democracy dies in darkness.” But in a published hit piece last month, designed to smear Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), they intentionally put readers in the dark with half-truths and thinly veiled insinuations, pointing to the fact that a number of ADF plaintiffs are no longer in business as evidence that ADF has “fabricated” religious freedom attacks on Christian vendors who cannot serve same-sex weddings.  Just because some of the cases have been pre-enforcement challenges doesn’t change the fact that Alliance Defending Freedom has defended bakers, florists, photographers, and graphic artists from stiff state penalties for refusing to violate their conscience. The attack on Barronelle Stutzman lasted for more than a decade, and Jack Phillips is still being targeted by a trans-activist lawyer enabled by the state of Colorado.  The Post’s hit piece obscures what’s at stake, who are the aggressors, and what freedom means. Missing all of that is how democracy really dies. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The despicable and horrendous attacks by Hamas against civilians last week, including beheading children and kidnapping the elderly, seems a throwback to some distant, barbaric past of human history. We may have thought the world had long ago outgrown such barbarity, but it hasn’t. In fact, as shocking as it is, the kinds of atrocities carried out by the Hamas terrorists are the norms of warfare, at least throughout most of human history. Modern notions of just war, proportionality, and distinguishing between civilians and combatants are exceptions to the kinds of warfare conducted by the Assyrians and Babylonians, ancient Greece, the Vikings, the Mongols, and the Aztecs. Massacre sites found by archaeologists in North America reveal how entire villages were slaughtered by Native Americans centuries before European contact.   Similar barbarity continues today, especially in modern undeclared wars such as the Rwandan genocide, the actions of terror groups like Boko Haram, and in African civil wars. Close parallels can be seen in the horrific treatment by government actors of the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Burma, and dissidents in North Korea.   Such brutality should sicken us, though it is far more common in human history, even modern history, than we admit. But, if it’s so horrifyingly and historically “normal,” where did the world get the idea that such barbarity is so wrong?   The idea that non-combatants should not be killed in war can occasionally be found in ancient discussions of warfare, typically due to pragmatic reasons such as needing peasants to work the conquered land. Christian Just War Theory, in sharp contrast, saw the protection of non-combatants as a matter of principle, not pragmatism. That principle was grounded in a view of human value unique and distinct to Christianity, that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God.  Despite the Enlightenment’s hostility to faith and the pervasive scientism of the nineteenth century, Christian ideas about Just War and the value of the individual retained a strong enough hold on Western culture to shape the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war. Also, Western domination ensured that countries and military officers would be held accountable for systematic violations of the Conventions as happened, for example, in the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.  As long as these core ethical ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition hold sway, they act as a check on the worst impulses of our fallen nature, impulses that quickly come to surface in time of war. Of course, war crimes and violations of human dignity still occur by Western actors and should never be accepted or tolerated. However, when barbarities are considered war crimes and violations, rather than norms, they happen far less than in cultures where that ethical tradition is missing.   Last Saturday, the world saw that, in no uncertain terms, that ethical tradition is missing in large parts of the Middle East. This is especially true of Islamic nations. Outside of a few reformers, Islam rejects as idolatry the idea that humans are made in the image of God. The Hadiths, a source of Islamic authority second only to the Quran, calls for the extermination of the Jews, a fact explicitly noted in the Hamas charter. Without grounding for the value and dignity of individuals, a group can be easily defined as “other,” which justifies all actions carried out against them.   It's important to note that the rejection of the value of each person also means that Hamas can use their own people as pawns and agents of propaganda. Thus, Hamas places missiles and military centers in hospitals and schools, knowing that any attacks will lead to civilian casualties that can be paraded before the rest of the world. In other words, dead women and children are the intended plan, not the unexpected consequence.   When attacks like what happened last Saturday occur, Israel has to target missile sites and other military targets to keep its own citizens safe. When doing so produces civilian casualties, it’s tragic, but it’s still an example of what Thomas Aquinas called “Double Effect.” In his example, it is ethical to take the life of another person, even though that’s usually sin, if it is the only way to prevent him from killing you or another person. This is the situation Israel faces. The only way to stop the attacks is to bomb important military sites and to break up the network. So, when civilians die, as an unintended but inevitable consequence, these deaths are on the heads of Hamas for intentionally placing their civilians in harm’s way.  Given the politics and history of the region, it is expected for many in the Middle East to cheer on Hamas’ massacres while decrying any response by Israel. Their reaction is shaped by a culture, a culture that has been shaped by an Islamist worldview.   On the other hand, many of those in Western nations who defended or even celebrated the massacre in Israel have been shaped by a different set of worldview assumptions, what might also be called a Critical Theory mood. This worldview is also antithetical to Christian ideals about human equality and the value and dignity of the individual. It sees people as belonging to groups, and some of those groups are evil by designation.   With the decline of Christian influence on the West, we should expect to see a resurgence of the kind of bloodlust and sadism that characterized most of human history. All this underscores why worldview is important. Christianity is and has been good for the world, and its decline will bring horrific consequences.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Glenn Sunshine.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Explore the shocking violence and moral implications of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Understand the origins of human rights and the challenge of maintaining values. Delve into just war theory and extreme viewpoints on the conflict. Discover the complexity of the conflict and evangelical perspectives. Examine the clash of civilizations between radical Islam and other civilizations.

Princeton professor Robert P. George reports how students respond when he asks them   "what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it."  It’s easy to look at past atrocities and think, “I never would’ve done that!” but that confidence is misplaced. Without some grounds for unusual moral clarity, most go along with whatever a culture declares to be right, even with things now known to be plainly wrong.   Of course, this is merely a mental exercise, until last Saturday. We now face an actual crisis. Following the massacre in Israel, “protesters” across the Western world praised the slaughter, vandalized Jewish sites, and, in a particularly egregious case in Sydney, Australia, chanted “Gas the Jews.”   If you’ve wondered if you have the moral courage to stand up when it counts, this may be our chance.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org