Breakpoint

Recently, ADF International’s Lois McLatchie Miller tweeted out her “radical takes” for 2023: “1. Biological men shouldn’t compete in women’s sports. 2. Silent prayer is not a crime. 3. Ending the lives of babies in the womb is wrong.”   She then offered this conclusion: “Radicals of the past got to say things that were groundbreaking. We’re stuck with defending the obvious.”  She’s right. We ought not underestimate, at least if we take seriously Paul’s description from the first chapter of Romans, how prone fallen humans are to deny what is obviously true and embrace what is obviously false. That’s why, in this cultural moment, stating the obvious is so “radical.”   Still, reality eventually wins. For example, many Western nations are backing away from trans-extremism. Tragically, until they do, many lives will be ruined. Ideas have consequences; bad ideas have victims. Thus “radical” Christians must be ready to combat bad ideas and care for their victims. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A few years ago, a Philadelphia area Apple store featured a display in which a vibrant rainbow of the latest iPhones broke through a greyscale crowd of people. What was particularly striking about the advertisement wasn’t the use of contrast nor that this was not some thinly veiled “Pride” month display. The multi-colored iPhones were positioned like veils, so that no face, or even part of a face, could be seen.  If Apple hoped the display would inspire new eagerness to join the technicolor life awaiting customers behind their screens, instead, by veiling human faces, the campaign unveiled the depersonalizing effects of our most ubiquitous technologies, especially smartphones, social media, and the internet. This combination–which makes up our brave new world of new media–regularly functions as a barrier to other people and to the outside world, behind which we hide. Think of the socially anxious teen whose face is “glued” to the screen or think of the man who surfs for sexually explicit content online. New media offers them and others a place of anonymity, where they can live and move and have their being, unencumbered by others.   Our “digital veils” also function as a source of power and control, in a way depicted long ago in C.S. Lewis’s classic, Till We Have Faces. The main character and narrator in the story is Orual, the unattractive and tomboyish older sister of the goddess Psyche. Orual convinces Psyche to disobey her husband, the god Cupid, who then banishes Psyche and ends their marriage. As a result, Orual decides to live out the rest of her days wearing a black veil.   The veil, which starts off as “a sort of treaty made with [her] ugliness,” quickly becomes a form of power and control. Whereas her ugliness and mannishness caused others to disregard her, the veil gives her a kind of power over others. Her father, the king, takes her seriously, suitors flock to her, and enemies respect her. By shrouding her face in mystery, the veil even led some to imagine she was a dazzling beauty or even a spirit.  Like Orual’s veil, new media can become a kind of digital veil that enables us to hide from others, influence their perceptions of us, and control our personal images. Social media especially functions in this way. We build profiles of perfectly lighted and cropped snapshots, snippets of the latest vacation, nights out with friends, and personal projects. Through this, we shape others’ perceptions of us, giving them the impression that our lives are constantly happy, fun, and productive. Through the process, some even become online “influencers,” influencing what others post, buy, or do.    Ultimately, the veil’s power and control are short lived. Despite their apparent advantages, digital veils leave us anxious and unknown. As one popular YouTuber, Samuel Bosch, shared in a video earlier this year:   "I sometimes think that many of you have this very wrong impression that I’m always happy, traveling, and productive, that I can buy anything I want to, get any job I desire, or date whoever I want to." Yet, for all his success as an online influencer, MIT Ph.D. student, and tech entrepreneur, Bosch is, admittedly, unhappy.   This is because we were made by God to be known. It is, in fact, a central conclusion of the psalmist David that, wherever we go, we are known.    Where shall I go from your Spirit?     Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there!     If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning     and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me,     and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,     and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you;     the night is bright as the day,     for darkness is as light with you.  The psalm begins with the definitive statement that God has indeed searched and known him and ends with an invitation to God to search and know him. That’s the tension, isn’t it? Years ago, as I wrestled through Psalm 139 with a group of college students facing graduation, they articulated that tension, of both comfort and fear, that they are always known and always seen.  Ultimately, all veils are an illusion. They may hide us from others, but they cannot hide us from God, who not only sees us and knows us, but created us to be seen and known both by and for others.    Toward the end of Lewis’ masterpiece, Orual visits the widow of her beloved servant Bardia. Upset that the widow might be jealous of the time Bardia spent with her, Orual jumps up in a burst of rage and lifts her veil to show the widow that she had nothing of which to be jealous. However, rather than being met with fear or hatred or disregard, Orual is met with the widow’s compassion and kindness. Orual finds herself no longer alone, no longer unknown, no longer unloved.  Like Orual, we can lay down our digital veils. When we do, we will find that we are already truly seen, truly known, and truly loved by God, and we can be truly seen, known, and loved by others.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Last month, the Colson Center hosted a conference from Bay Harbor, Michigan on our changing culture. John Stonestreet was joined by Kristin Waggoner from Alliance Defending Freedom and Jim Daly with Focus on the Family to discuss how Christians should respond to everything from critical theory to the Barbie movie.  Find more information on the event and watch the full recording at greatlakessymposium.org.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org    

According to an article in Vancouver’s Globe and Mail, after years of struggle and a recent traumatic event, Kathrin Mentler sought medical care at a local hospital for her suicidal ideation. Like America, Canada has spent millions on public service campaigns encouraging those contemplating suicide to seek professional help.  Katherine, however, was not offered help. Instead, she was offered death. The hospital staff told Katherine that it would take a long time to see a psychiatrist and suggested she consider Canada’s Medical Aid in Dying program instead.  A story like this might be funny if the consequences weren’t so severe, but they are. In this brave new world, killing is called “medical aid,” harm passes for help, and healthcare professionals recommend suicide to deal with suicidal ideation. The so-called “right to die” becomes an “option to die,” then an “expectation to die,” and eventually the “duty to die.”   And people like Kathrin Mentler are in grave danger exactly where they should be able to find help.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

On August 19, 1662, French philosopher, mathematician, and apologist Blaise Pascal died at just 39 years old. Pascal, despite his shortened life, is renowned for pioneering work in geometry, physics, and probability theory. His most powerful legacy, however, involves the ways he engaged with life’s biggest questions.   Pascal’s intellect garnered attention at an early age. At 16, he produced an essay on the geometry of cones so impressive that René Descartes initially refused to believe it could possibly be attributed to a “sixteen-year-old child.” Later, Pascal advanced the study of vacuums in the face of a prevailing (and misplaced) belief that nature is completely filled with matter, and thus “abhors a vacuum.”   In 1654, his work on probability took a new turn when he was sent a brainteaser by a friend. Applying mathematics to the problem, Pascal laid out rows of numbers in a triangle formation, a formation that now bears his name. As author John F. Ross described,   Here was the very idea of probability: establishing the numerical odds of a future event with mathematical precision. Remarkably, no one else had cracked the puzzle of probability before, although the Greeks and Romans had come close.  In 1646, Blaise Pascal encountered the kindness of two Jansenist Christians caring for his injured father. Their love in action earned Pascal’s admiration. Then, on the evening of November 23, 1654, Pascal experienced God’s presence in a new and personal way, which he described on a scrap of parchment that he sewed into his jacket and carried with him for the rest of his life:   FIRE—God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certitude, certitude. Heartfelt joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. My God and thy God. Thy God shall be my God.   In his writing, Pascal’s notions of probability met his faith in God. A compilation of his collected manuscripts was published after his death in a volume entitled, Pensées, or “Thoughts.” Best known is his famous “wager” that, facing uncertainty and in a game with such high stakes, it makes far more sense for fallen human beings to believe in God’s existence than doubt it. “If you gain,” he wrote, “you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”  Pascal also offered among the keenest diagnoses of humanity:   The human being is only a reed, the most feeble in nature; but this is a thinking reed. It isn't necessary for the entire universe to arm itself in order to crush him; a whiff of vapor, a taste of water, suffices to kill him. But when the universe crushes him, the human being becomes still more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and the advantage that the universe has over him. The universe, it does not have a clue.  Or, even better:   What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.  He also described our moral conditions as human beings,  “[W]e hate truth and those who tell it [to] us, and … we like them to be deceived in our favour” (Pensées 100).  Apart from God, Pascal observed, people distract themselves from the reality of death. But the diversions run out, and then mankind   feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair. (Pensées 131)  “Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world” (Pensées 213 ).  With a poetic nod to his work on vacuums, Pascal concluded:  What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace …? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.   A generation later, as waves of the Enlightenment swept over Europe, the continent’s most prominent thinkers could not escape Pascal’s brilliance. According to philosopher Dr. Patrick Riley,  Holbach, as late as the 1770s, still found it necessary to quarrel with the author of the Pensées, Condorcet, when editing Pascal's works, renewed the old debate; Voltaire throughout his life, and even in his last year, launched sally after sally at the writer who frightened him every time he—a hypochondriac—felt ill.   On the human condition in particular, the French Revolution would prove Pascal right and Voltaire wrong. Divorced from God and instead committed to the worship of “pure reason,” France devolved into a violent, anarchic wasteland.  Even today, Blaise Pascal’s intellect, passion, and eloquence have lost none of their fire, dedicated as they were to the God who claimed his total devotion. As he wrote on the parchment sewn into his jacket,   Jesus Christ. I have fallen away: I have fled from Him, denied Him, crucified him. May I not fall away forever. We keep hold of him only by the ways taught in the Gospel. Renunciation, total and sweet. Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director. Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on earth. I will not forget Thy word. Amen.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. If you enjoy Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

We often hear of folks forced to endure “sensitivity training” for holding opinions everyone did five years ago. But, in an unusual turn of events, a U.S. District court judge has ordered corporate lawyers for Southwest Airlines to undergo training with the Alliance Defending Freedom about the nature and importance of religious liberty.  On August 7, a U.S. District Court ruled that Southwest Airlines violated Charlene Carter’s rights when they fired her for posting pro-life opinions on her personal social media. The ruling also declared that Southwest notify their flight attendants about protections for their religious views. Southwest did not follow through, and instead notified their flight attendants that the company policy did not violate their religious freedom. To say the least, the judge wasn’t happy, ruling that more training was in order and that ADF was the group to provide it.     Not surprisingly, Southwest appealed the decision while media outlets feigned disbelief and expressed outrage. Hopefully the inconsistency will be obvious to everyone.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In her book Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, apologist Alisa Childers breaks down widespread mantras of culture and their consequences. One of these is a misunderstanding of Jesus’ words so common that, for many, it may be the eleventh commandment that supplants the other ten: “You shouldn’t judge.”   Over the last 60 years, studies have confirmed that Americans have become more tolerant of alternative sexual lifestyles, non-traditional beliefs about God, and certain political identifications, such as Communism. According to the most recent State of Theology report from Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, some 56% of self-described evangelicals believe that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.” Upon closer examination, this shift has far more to do with losing convictions in these areas than about gaining tolerance.   In fact, accepting the “do not judge ethos” has been a primary corrosive agent to those convictions, and this is what Childers addresses in her new book. In addition to identifying the obvious contradiction in saying “it is wrong to judge,” which is itself a judgment, she reminds Christians what Jesus’ words mean in context.   [J]ust after saying, “Judge not,” Jesus lets his audience know that when they judge, they should be very careful to make sure their judgment isn’t hypocritical. “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye,” Jesus instructs in verse 5. In other words, don’t point out a sin in your brother’s or sister’s life before you confront the bigger sin in your own. But the whole point is to help your brother or sister take the speck out of their own eye, which requires you to judge that it’s there. … If there is still any confusion, just a few verses later, Jesus tells us to recognize wolves, or false teachers, by their fruit (verses 15-16). Again, this requires us to judge whether these teachers are speaking truth or deception. Then, in John 7:24, Jesus couldn’t say it more plainly. He directs his listeners to “not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”  The point of these verses, she concludes, is not to prevent moral discernment, but to help believers instead judge “carefully, rightly, humbly, and without hypocrisy.” Childers then offers a powerful illustration from her time with ZOEgirl, when her struggle with body image eventually led to a secret eating disorder of binging and purging.   On some tour in some town somewhere, I shared a hotel room with one of my bandmates. She is a sweetheart—gentle, deeply intelligent, and thoughtful. … She was also a natural peacemaker, and confrontation did not come easily to her. So when she worked up every last bit of courage to ask me what I was doing in the bathroom, it surprised me. And it also made me angry. To put it lightly, the conversation didn’t go well. I not so politely invited her to stop “judging” me and back all the way off. That didn’t stop her. …   Looking back, am I thankful that my bandmate “judged” me? That she dared confront me about the self-harm I was guilty of? Absolutely! She was the catalyst that first brought the darkness into the light. To this day my eyes mist with tears when I think about how much she loved me to do such a difficult thing.  Childers’ example not only calls Christians to do similarly difficult but right things, it reveals the consequences of relativism when lived in the real world. What begins as a desire to not judge others turns into the narcissistic demand that no one, under any circumstances, judge us. But that also renders healing and forgiveness impossible. After all, with no way to say that we’ve been wronged, neither is there means or reason to forgive those who harm us. Any culture that rejects objective morality lacks any way to counter evil.   Alisa Childers’ book reclaims truth from the empty slogans that dominate our culture and our thinking. This August, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we’ll send you a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Just go to breakpoint.org/give to learn more.   This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A feature of life in Colorado is the prevalence of pot. There are dispensaries on virtually every corner, and everywhere I travel I hear a pot joke. Something else my adopted state is becoming known for is the harmful aftereffects of legalized marijuana. According to state statistics, the drug was found in the system of some 42% of teen suicides, a rate nearly twice as much as with alcohol and four times of any other substances.   Of course, correlation doesn’t mean causation, but it can mean connection. If nearly half of stroke victims were taking the same medicine, would we wonder if there was a link? Why the reluctance to connect the dots here?   Marijuana might not cause suicide, but numbers don’t lie. It encourages or exacerbates problems that lead down that deadly road, especially for a group at high risk. The link is there for those willing to see it. Since suicide rates have risen every year that it has been legal, we’re far past giving the benefit of the doubt. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Few voluntary associations in American history have had as deep and wide an influence as the Boy Scouts of America. The training ground of soldiers and senators, pastors and presidents, the organization effectively instilled values like trustworthiness, loyalty, courteousness, thrift, bravery, and reverence in many of the over 100 million young men who joined in its over 100-year history. In fact, for much of the 20th century at least, “Scout’s honor” was among the highest assurances one could give of their honesty and integrity.   However, if the only evidence considered was the Boy Scouts of 2023, it would be hard to imagine that this long and storied history ever took place and that the organization ever helped boys mature into virtuous manhood. Ten years ago, the Boy Scouts of America allowed openly gay members for the first time. Soon thereafter, an avalanche of sexual abuse allegations, many of them decades old, forced the Scouts into bankruptcy and a 2.5-billion-dollar settlement. Since then, the organization has been in membership free fall.   This year, for the first time since 2017, the Scouts held their National Jamboree in the hills of West Virginia. Reporter Mike De Socio attended and, writing in The Washington Post, described the shell of an organization he encountered. This year’s Jamboree drew only 15,000 scouts compared to 40,000 at the previous Jamboree in 2017. Between 2019 and 2021, the Boy Scouts lost 62% of its membership, and there’s no sign of a post-COVID recovery. As Carnegie Mellon’s student newspaper put it, the Boy Scouts “is a dying institution.”  Despite this, De Socio, who identifies himself as gay, praised the progressive palooza the Jamboree has become. Specifically, he touted the pride tent, complete with “LGBTQ Pride flags and a string of multicolored lights, … tables covered with bowls of rainbow bracelets, pronoun stickers and diversity patches” and that a diversity merit badge is now required to become an Eagle Scout.  According to De Socio, the blame for the organization’s near collapse should fall on the abuse scandal and the pandemic. Certainly, these factors hastened the demise we now witness, but it’s as if the author cannot imagine how the Scouts’ enthusiastic embrace of LGBT ideology over the last 10 years sealed its fate. In the same period, a Christian organization for boys called Trail Life USA saw a 70% increase in membership.  In fact, the pattern matches the long-term dwindling of mainline Protestant denominations. When an organization, whether a church or a youth association like the Boy Scouts, forgets or rejects why it exists in the first place, it soon stops existing. Once liberal mainline churches stopped offering anything distinctly Christian and offered the same progressive, all-accepting, therapeutic talking points as Oprah and NPR, why go to church?  Much the same can now be said for the once venerable organization we call the Boy Scouts. The sexual abuse scandal may have fatally undercut the group’s claim to trustworthiness and integrity, as well as the perception that they provide a safe and wholesome place for boys to grow into men. However, throwing open the doors to LGBT ideology changed the very nature of the organization.   Not only did the Scouts begin (ironically) promoting sterile lifestyles that would deprive the organization of future members, it also became a place where evil is called good and children are herded into life-destroying behavior and beliefs. This not behind closed doors as with the scandals, but proudly in the open, on charter documents, and at Jamborees. By the time the Boy Scouts decided to undermine their name by admitting girls, I imagine most families had already asked themselves, “What’s the point?”  To be clear, the loss of the Boy Scouts, despite its flaws, is huge. What other institution shepherded generations of boys toward responsibility, self-mastery, and moral living? Our whole society would be a poorer and less trustworthy place had it never existed. I hope that churches and Christian programs like AWANA and groups like Trail Life USA seize the moment and make up for this profound loss. I also hope all organizations learn that they only remain good as long as they remember their purpose. When they succumb to trendy ideologies and the spirit of the age, they not only lead their members astray, they also make themselves unnecessary and, in this case, leave their very necessary work to someone with conviction.   This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Recently, NBC news shared an article entitled, “Pope says church is open to everyone, including gay people, but has rules.” Asked if it was inconsistent for him to say that Christianity was open to “everyone” when some, including gay people, were apparently excluded, Pope Francis replied, “The church is open to everyone but there are laws that regulate life inside the church.” To anyone even vaguely familiar with the Roman Catholic Church or Christian teaching throughout history, the only newsworthy item here is that reporters thought it was newsworthy.   The rest of us may not have been sure that the Pope would be as forthright as he was. What he said was not an innovation.   St. Paul was pretty clear when he described Christians and their sin, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org