Breakpoint

As if the last few years were not strange enough, the United States Congress recently held hearings on the subject of UFOs. As NBC News reported, numerous claims were made by those called before the subcommittee, including by former military or intelligence personnel.  Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this otherwise earth-shattering story was how it has largely been greeted, at least on social media, with a collective “meh.” If so much information was kept hush-hush for so many years, why the sudden transparency now? Isn’t this just another chapter in red herrings tossed out to distract us from what’s “really” going on?   As tempting as it is to think of these hearings as an unaired episode of The X-Files, the virtue of stories like this, and of the whole genre of sci-fi, is that they bring up questions about the deeper things of life. Who are we? Are we alone in the universe? What would it mean if we weren’t? What makes us special as human beings?   Noted sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” Religious people are less likely than others to believe that aliens exist. Or, if they think something is “out there,” they are less likely to think of extra terrestrials as E.T. as they are to think of them as demons trying to deceive us for one reason or another. On the other hand, those with a materialist outlook tend to see the world as just a “pale blue dot” in the heavens and humanity as nothing more than the consequence of chance and chaos. In fact, it’s become almost an article of materialist faith that if we are here, someone else must be too.  All of which suggests that there’s more to how we view these matters than what we have seen or not seen. For instance, despite being supposedly a planet-wide concern, nearly all UFOs sighted tend to show up in the English-speaking world. Or, as someone on Reddit noted, “they sure love the US.”    A similar phenomenon can be seen in the variations of “bigfoot” stories, depending on from what region they are. The stories out of the Pacific Northwest tend to resemble a Harry and the Hendersons vibe. Sure, the creature might seem a bit scary but, in the end, they are one with nature, like a kind of extra furry Bill Walton. The stories out of Texas are all about these super aggressive creatures that are ready to fight and kill and steal your children. Tennessee bigfoots, on the other hand, are just downright neighborly, knocking on doors to ask for some garlic. These together suggest it’s clear that, even when it comes to urban legends and outer space, the stories we tell ourselves make a big difference in what we see in the world.  Anyone who has read C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy can tell you that the great apologist used his own imagination to tell wonderful stories where very plausible aliens lived and interacted with his human heroes. The inhabitants of Mars and Venus, or as Lewis named them, “Malacandra” and “Perelandra,” were fellow creatures born of the artistry and care of the same God we encounter in the Bible.  Yet, in one of his last books, he noted the subjective element in people’s belief in the extraordinary. Right at the end of his study of the medieval worldview, he wrote:   "Fifty years ago, if you had asked an astronomer about “life on other worlds,” he was apt to be totally agnostic about it or even stress its improbability. We are now told that in so vast a universe stars that have planets and planets that have inhabitants must occur times without number. Yet no compulsive evidence is to hand. But is it irrelevant that in between the old opinion and the new we have had the vast proliferation of “science fiction” and the beginnings of space-travel in real life?"   What we believe about alien life and other mysteries says more about our beliefs, or what Charles Taylor called our “social imaginaries,” than it does about their existence. The culture around us affects our view of the world in profound ways. Our worldview is a pair of belief “glasses” that help us understand the nature of reality, but it can also be a kind of blinder, too.   This doesn’t mean we are completely lost in the fog of our own precognitive assumptions, only that we should follow Francis Schaeffer’s advice about checking our presuppositions “after a careful consideration of which worldview is true.”  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy D. Padgett.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Massachusetts is rejecting would-be adoptive parents if those parents are Christian and thus denying a home to children in need, according to a new lawsuit. Mike and Kitty Burke went through all the classes, background checks, and home assessments required to become adoptive parents, and scored highly. Yet, they were rejected because, as state officials wrote in their report, the couple’s Christian faith meant they are “not supportive” of kids who identify as LGBTQ.  Right now, in Massachusetts more than 1,500 kids are in need of a foster home. Not only do advocates deny biology and sexualize children by suggesting their sexual preferences are their identity, but they also deny kids loving parents as if it is better to not have a home than to be in a home with a religious mom and dad.  This is not an isolated incident. A mom in Oregon was also rejected from fostering kids for the same reason. Again, it’s the children who are harmed. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In the 22nd week of surrogate Brittney Pearson’s pregnancy, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Because the necessary treatment could harm the baby, her doctors recommended inducing labor early and allowing the baby to be cared for in neonatal intensive care while she started chemo. However, the gay couple paying Brittney Pearson to serve as their surrogate did not want a premature baby with potential developmental or health problems. They wanted her instead to have an abortion.  Pearson offered to put the baby up for adoption, but the men refused because, according to Pearson, they did not want a child who was genetically related to one of them somewhere “out there.” According to Pearson, the men threatened both her and her doctors with a lawsuit if she did not abort her child. Because of California’s radical surrogacy laws, which allow financiers of a surrogacy arrangement to be granted legal parental rights of the baby before he or she is born, they likely would have prevailed.   In an interview with Jennifer Lahl of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Pearson told her story. Her son was born at 25 weeks of pregnancy, a gestational age that, thanks to advances in maternal medicine, children have survived. Though she has not publicly stated whether her son was killed before or after delivery, or whether he was given or denied the medical treatment a premature baby needs, she has confirmed that her son died the day he was born, which was Father’s Day.  Though, of course, not every surrogacy contract ends this way, Pearson is not the first surrogate mom pressured to kill her baby by those paying for it. However, it would be a profound mistake to think of hers as a case of “surrogacy gone wrong,” as advocates of the practice claim about stories like hers. Each and every moral violation that occurred along the way was not exclusive to Pearson’s unique circumstances. Rather, they are violations endemic to surrogacy itself, a practice that denies children the right to their mother and, at times, their father, and denies a mother the right to her own child. Children are treated as products to be purchased and arranged, subject to property laws and other legal realities long used to dehumanize certain individuals.  It’s jarring to hear these men talk of Brittney Pearson’s baby as if he were a lamp ordered off Amazon that was delivered broken. However, it is the surrogacy contracts signed ahead of time that treat human babies as commodities. If it seems like an obvious violation of human rights and God’s moral order for two men to demand that a woman have her baby killed, what should we make of the legal contract governing the baby’s creation, gestation, and delivery in the first place? If babies are treated like products and pregnancy like the means of production at the beginning of the surrogacy process, ought we not to expect things to be different at the end?  Human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Thus, they should never be treated like any other thing.   Like the social research that shows how extended exposure to violent video games and media can desensitize people to actual violence, surrogacy is among those cultural realities that reveal how much our view of children has been desensitized by all that constantly reduces them to “things.” As one gay man who sued his employer last year for refusing to pay for him and his husband to hire a surrogate put it, children are just one of the modern “trappings” of “marriage,” like a “house, children, [and] 401k.”  The willful death of Brittney Pearson’s son is a tragic, but logical, escalation of the moral errors fundamental to surrogacy. As marriage and family are increasingly deconstructed, reimagined, and replaced in law, the demand for surrogacy will only increase, and more babies will face the same kind of danger as Pearson’s baby. If we don’t stand up for them, who will? And if we do, it will require standing against this practice, which is fundamentally disordered and always wrong, and not merely against selective cases.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Millions of Americans have stopped going to church creating the biggest social shift in our lifetime. We’ll look at the reasons Ohio’s Issue 1 failed giving pro-life voters another defeat. And suicide rates in America are at levels not seen since the Great Depression. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Distressed by the onset of puberty, California teenager Chloe Cole was fast-tracked to a double mastectomy at age 15. Recently, on her 19th birthday, Chloe appeared before Congress, passionately describing the harm of so-called “trans-affirming” medicine, which is anything but.   After Chloe’s remarks, a mother who had transitioned her 18-year-old daughter told her story. Given a chance to respond, tears filled Chloe’s eyes, and she replied to the committee chairman:   "I just want to set the record straight that I don’t hate her. … In fact, I see my own mother and my own father in her. … That being said, I don’t wish for a child to have the same result as I did. … It comes with its own difficulties, and it’s not easy. And I hope that her child gets to have a happy and fulfilling adulthood." Without sacrificing truth, Chloe offered love, as well as a reminder to all of us that it is possible to speak the truth in love.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Fifty years ago this week, Charles W. Colson became a follower of Jesus Christ. Chuck would subsequently become one of the most respected evangelical leaders of the 20th and early 21st centuries, founding both Prison Fellowship Ministries and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and authoring bestselling books such as Born Again, How Now Shall We Live?, and Loving God.   Chuck Colson’s influence came about because of how deeply and thoroughly Jesus Christ changed his life. Certainly, he was an incredibly gifted person (after all, not everyone lands in a White House office as special counsel to the President of the United States in their thirties!). Yet, Chuck’s giftedness before he found faith was corrupted by pride, which led to an incredible public fall.  On the thirtieth anniversary of his conversion, Chuck Colson described it in detail. Here, in his own voice, is Chuck Colson:  "Thirty years ago today, I visited Tom Phillips, president of the Raytheon Company, at his home outside of Boston. I had represented Raytheon before going to the White House, and I was about to start again.  But I visited him for another reason as well. I knew Tom had become a Christian, and he seemed so different. I wanted to ask him what had happened.  That night, he read to me from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, particularly a chapter about the great sin that is pride. A proud man is always walking through life looking down on other people and other things, said Lewis. As a result, he cannot see something above himself immeasurably superior—God.  Tom, that night, told me about encountering Christ in his own life. He didn’t realize it, but I was in the depths of deep despair over Watergate, watching the President I had helped for four years flounder in office. I had also heard that I might become a target of the investigation as well. In short, my world was collapsing.  That night, as Tom was telling me about Jesus, I listened attentively but didn’t let on about my need. When he offered to pray, I thanked him but said, no, I would see him sometime after I had read C.S. Lewis’s book. But when I got in the car that night, I couldn’t drive it out of the driveway. Ex-Marine captain, White House tough guy, I was crying too hard, calling out to God. I didn’t know what to say: I just knew I needed Jesus, and He came into my life.  That was thirty years ago.  I’ve been reflecting of late on the things God has done over that time. As I think about my life, the beginning of the prison ministry, our work in the justice area, our international ministry that reaches one hundred countries, and the work of the Wilberforce Forum and Breakpoint, I have come to appreciate the doctrine of providence. It’s not the world’s idea of fate or luck, but the reality of God’s divine intervention. He orchestrates the lives of His children to accomplish His good purposes.  God has certainly ordered my steps. I couldn’t have imagined when I was in prison that I would someday go back to the White House with ex-offenders as I did on June 18—or that we would be running prisons that have an 8% recidivism rate—or that Breakpoint would be heard daily on a thousand radio outlets across the United States and on the internet.  The truth that is uppermost in my mind today is that God isn’t finished. As long as we’re alive, He’s at work in our lives. We can live lives of obedience in any field because God providentially arranges the circumstances of our lives to achieve His objectives.  And that leads to the greatest joy I’ve found in life. As I look back on my life, it’s not having been to Buckingham Palace to receive the Templeton Prize or getting honorary degrees or writing books. The greatest joy is to see how God has used my life to touch the lives of others, people hurting and in need.  It has been a long time since the dark days of Watergate. I’m still astounded that God would take someone who was infamous in the Watergate scandal, and soon to be a convicted felon, and take him into His family and then order his steps in the way He has with me. God touched me at that moment in Tom Phillip’s driveway, and thirty years later, His love and kindness touch and astound me still."  Chuck Colson’s life and legacy continues to be a testimony to God’s amazing grace.   For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

It’s an experience that drives many young mothers crazy. After carrying a child for months, enduring labor and childbirth, nursing through many sleepless nights, what are the first words she hears from the kid? “Dada!”   It isn’t always the case, but across time and cultures, babies are more likely to name their father before their mother. However, rather than a preference for dad or a slight to mom, according to a tweet by Dr. Dan Wuori, it more likely reinforces how important mom is. At that young age, the mother/child bond is so tight that babies simply can’t see her as “other.” She is the world, with Dad more of a visitor.   This is a reminder of what Ryan T. Anderson has said. Kids don’t need just “parents.” They need a mom and a dad, and each provides unique and distinct gifts by their presence to children.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In 1973, evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote that “nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.” Almost 50 years later, an increasing number of scientists are asking whether evolution makes any sense in light of what we now know from biology.   A recent long-form essay in The Guardian signals just how urgent the problem has become for the most dominant theory in the history of the sciences. In it, author Stephen Buranyi gives voice to a growing number of scientists who think it’s time for a “new theory of evolution.”    For a long time, descent with slight modifications and natural selection have been “the basic” (and I’d add, unchallengeable) “story of evolution.” Organisms change, and those that survive pass on traits. Though massaged a bit to incorporate the discovery of DNA, the theory of evolution by natural selection has dominated for 150 years, especially in biology. The “drive to survive” is credited as the creative force behind all the artistry and engineering we see in nature.    “The problem,” writes Buranyi, is that “according to a growing number of scientists,” this basic story is “absurdly crude and misleading.” For one thing, Darwinian evolution assumes much of what it needs to be explained. For instance, consider the origin of light-sensitive cells that rearranged to become the first eye, or the blood vessels that became the first placenta. How did these things originate? According to one University of Indiana biologist, “we still do not have a good answer. The classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time,” he says, “has so far fallen flat.”   This scientific doubt about Darwin has been simmering for a while. In 2014, an article in the journal Nature, jointly authored by eight scientists from diverse fields, argued that evolutionary theory was in need of a serious rethink. They called their proposed rethink the “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” and a year later, the Royal Society in London held a conference to discuss it.    Along with Darwinian blind spots like the origin of the eye, the Extended Synthesis seeks to deal with the discovery of epigenetics, an emerging field that studies inherited traits not mediated by DNA. Then there are the rapid mutations that evade natural selection, a fossil record that appears to move in “short, concentrated bursts” (or “explosions”), and something called “plasticity,” which is the ability we now know living things have to adapt physically to their environments in a single generation without genetically evolving.   These discoveries—some recent, others long ignored by mainstream biology—challenge natural selection as the “grand theory” of life. All of them hint that living things are greater marvels and mysteries than we ever imagined. And, unsurprisingly, all of these discoveries have been controversial.   The Guardian article describes how Royal Society scientists and Nobel laureates alike boycotted the conference, attacking the extended synthesis as “irritating” and “disgraceful,” and its proponents as “revolutionaries.” As Gerd Müller, head of the department of theoretical biology at the University of Vienna helpfully explained, “Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships. It’s a whole industry.”   Such resistance isn’t too surprising for anyone who’s been paying attention. Any challenges to the established theory of life’s origins, whether from Bible-believing scientists or intelligent design theorists, have long been dismissed as religion in a lab coat.   The habit of fixing upon a dogma and calling it “settled science” is just bad science that stunts our understanding of the world. It is a kind of idolatry that places “science” in the seat of God, appoints certain scientists as priests capable of giving answers no fallible human can offer, and feigns certainty where real questions remain. The great irony is that this image of scientist-as-infallible-priest makes them seem like the caricature of medieval monks charging their hero Galileo with heresy for his dissent from the consensus.   As challenges to Darwin mount, we should be able to articulate why “settled science” makes such a poor god. And we should encourage the science and the scientists challenging this old theory-turned-dogma and holding it to its own standards. After all, if Darwinian evolution is as unfit as it now seems, it shouldn’t survive.  This 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 August 3, 2022. 

The award for the weirdest and most misleading headline of the year goes to a recent article in the Washington Post that announced, “An abortion ban made them teen parents.”   The article tells the story of Billy and Brooke High and describes her pregnancy at age 18 as something that just “happened” because they were hanging out after meeting at a skate park. Brooke gave birth to twins soon after the Dobbs decision. She wanted an abortion but would have had to drive 13 hours to get one. Instead, she kept the babies and married their father.   Because all of this is hard, the Washington Post implies, neither the children nor the marriage should have ever happened. Billy’s and Brooke’s perspective on the other hand is that day-to-day life is really hard. And being parents is growing them up, though they didn’t have great examples.  What we can learn from the Post article is not where babies come from, but what young families need. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, request a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa Childers. Visit colsoncenter.org/august to learn more.   ___ In her new book, author and apologist Alisa Childers targets the lies that often masquerade as cultural proverbs today. In Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, Childers offers just what the title promises. She exposes the bad ideas at the center of slogans we hear all the time. You can receive a copy of the book with a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month. Just go to colsoncenter.org/august.  Though the mantras that dominate our world can seem harmless, they are not. “Our culture,” Childers writes,   is brimming with slogans that promise peace, fulfillment, freedom, empowerment, and hope. These messages have become such an integral component of our American consciousness that many people don’t even think to question them. … The problem? They are lies.  In fact, Childers argues, slogans like “You are enough,” “authenticity is everything,” “Put yourself first,” “It’s all about love,” or “God just wants you to be happy,” commonly redefine words like love and hate and happy. What’s left is a modern-day “tower of Babel” (or “Babble”) situation where those with the most social media followers are granted authority and assumed to have expertise on life and how to live it.   At the root of these destructive slogans is a view of the self. For example, Childers cites Glennon Doyle, whose New York Times No. 1 best seller Untamed centers around her decision to leave her husband for a woman she saw at a local zoo, all while quoting Carl Jung: “There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.”   Alisa compares Doyle’s story with that of Elisabeth Elliot, the missionary famous for bringing the Gospel back to the same Waodani people who killed her husband, Jim. With a toddler in tow, Elliot lived in the Waodani village for two years before returning to the United States to speak, write, and appear publicly with some of her husband’s killers who had become dedicated followers of Jesus:   Elisabeth Elliot laid hold of deeper strength. … She rejected the urge to defy God’s Word or redefine his holiness. … How did she do it? She once wrote, “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”  Childers openly admits to struggling with these ideas, including what it means to be truly authentic, during her time as a popular and successful Christian musician:   [A] therapist I began seeing toward the end of ZOEgirl’s run (who had the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job) looked at me intently and gently asked, “What if you got throat cancer and could never sing again?” I was dumbstruck. She had stumped me. After all, I was made to sing, and if I couldn’t sing, who was I?  That question pushed Alisa away from the shallow definition of authenticity that is widely embraced today, and toward a deeper grounding in the truth of who we are—made in the image of God, and yet fallen. This makes all the difference in how we think about ourselves and how we choose to live life:   Today I write. Maybe tomorrow I will wash feet, clean toilets, or start a food blog. God knows. He is trustworthy. My identity is grounded in him. True biblical authenticity is glorifying Christ with whatever gifts and talents he has given me. As my friend Teasi says, this is my calling whether I find myself in a palace or in a prison.  Another commonly repeated, highly consequential lie is that there’s such a thing as “your truth” and “my truth”:   Christian, your truth doesn’t exist. Your truth won’t bring hope or save anyone. ... The Cross is the answer to every lie that tells me I can find everything I need inside myself. … The Cross is not just a symbol of salvation. It’s a place of rest.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org