Breakpoint

In its most recent term, the United States Supreme Court strengthened free speech by ruling that business owners cannot be punished for expression consistent with their deeply held beliefs and by ruling that affirmative action practices in college admissions violates the constitutional prohibition of racial discrimination. All this on the heels of the landmark decision in the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion law to the states. Again, unsurprisingly, the Court is being accused of replacing justice and the Constitution with partisan politics by pundits who decry the Court’s conservative bias.  However, contrary to the critics, the Supreme Court’s record reflects more of a broad consensus than partisan politics. Despite the dramatic ideological diversion of the administrations that appointed the Justices, almost half of the cases decided by the Court each term are unanimous. Though there are certainly outlier years, this was not one of them, and the trend lines have been fairly consistent since the 1950s.  Many critics argue that last year marked the end of the Supreme Court’s “consensus,” pointing to the strong ideological divides on decisions like Dobbs, Carson v. Makin, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. After all, just 29% of the rulings were unanimous for the 2021-2022 term. Forty-six percent of the decisions, however, were ones in which at least eight of the nine justices ruled in agreement. That can hardly be considered a divided court.   During the 2022-2023 term, only six of the 57 cases considered were decided along ideological lines. Twenty-seven of the rulings, about 47%, were unanimous, and over half, 56%, were decided with eight of the nine members again in agreement. Even the New York Times didn’t totally misrepresent the reality of these numbers. Of the 12 cases featured in an article summarizing the most recent Supreme Court term, only a third were decided along ideological lines.  This year, in fact, a number of rulings featured unexpected alliances and disagreements. In one majority opinion and three concurring opinions, Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch and Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were in agreement, favoring limits on government power. In a recent case regarding the artwork of Andy Warhol, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—appointed by the same administration and both considered progressive—were in strong disagreement with one another.   The willingness of Justices to work together often extends beyond the courtroom and can even result in cultivated friendships. The conservative iconic justice Antonin Scalia famously shared a friendship (and even vacationed) with progressive iconic justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. On the current court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Clarence Thomas have cultivated a beautiful friendship despite their significant ideological differences. In her own words, Justice Sotomayor has “probably disagreed with [Justice Thomas] more than any other justice” but maintains a friendship with him because she considers him a “man who cares deeply about the court as an institution—about the people who work here.”  The current Court consists of justices appointed by four different administrations, two progressive and two conservative. Still, a general consensus remains. Whatever ideological fault lines exist within the Court are not always determinative of its rulings, as evidenced even in its past two terms. In other words, members of the Court have deep disagreements, but it should not be considered irredeemably partisan.   Often, those who bemoan the current state of the Court, consider it illegitimate, and call it a failed institution, only betray their own philosophical commitments. Namely, they have embraced a postmodern view of law and of the courts, which assumes that “to judge is an exercise of power,” not an exercise in the interpretation and application of the law. Thus, they cannot imagine that a ruling they do not like could be legitimate.  In contrast, we can be assured by the relevant facts that the recent legal victories for life and liberty are not the products of the Court’s corruption but a genuine realization of justice for the nation.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert. 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

Russell Brand’s “brand” is crass British actor, comedian, and freethinker. However, he recently offered a profound take on the Ten Commandments, human nature, and contemporary culture: "When it says in the Old Testament, ‘Worship no other gods than me,’ the implication ... is that we are a species that worships, and if you do not access the Divine, ... you will worship the profane. You will worship your own identity. You will worship your belongings. You will worship the template lai[d] before you by a culture that wants you ... relatively dumb." Wow. John Calvin called the human heart a “perpetual factory of idols.” St. Augustine wrote that the heart remains restless “until it finds rest in” the One Who made us. Pascal talked about the God-shaped hole in the human heart we are always trying to fill. I did not expect Russell Brand to join that esteemed list of keen observers of human nature ... but let’s hope God grabs a hold of his heart. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

If it is true, as Richard Weaver famously put it, that “ideas have consequences,” it is also true that bad ideas have victims. On no other contemporary issue today is the connection between a bad idea and its victims clearer than assisted suicide. In no other nation today are the bad ideas and their victims more aggressively embraced than in Canada.   In a lengthy and powerful essay at The Atlantic this month, David Brooks exposed just how monstrous Canada’s so-called “medical aid in dying” regime has become since it was enacted in 2016. Originally, Canada only permitted the request for medical aid in dying to those with serious illness, in advanced or irreversible decline, unbearable physical or mental suffering, or whose death was “reasonably foreseeable.” The criteria are vague enough. Since the law went into effect, however, the number of Canadians killed annually has gone from 1,000 to over 10,000. In 2021, one in thirty Canadian deaths was by assisted suicide, and only 4% of those who applied to die were turned down.   Were all these people terminally ill or suffering from serious and irreversible conditions? Hardly. In fact, Brooks tells the story of a man whose only physical condition was hearing loss yet who was “put to death” over the objections of his family. Another patient had fibromyalgia and leukemia yet wrote that “the suffering I experience is mental suffering, not physical. I think if more people cared about me, I might be able to handle the suffering caused by my physical illnesses alone.” One otherwise healthy 37-year-old who suffers from schizoaffective disorder and is unemployed said, “logistically, I really don’t have a future. … I’m not going anywhere.” As of Brooks’ writing, that man was awaiting approval for assisted suicide.   Simply put, Canadians who need help are instead being helped to kill themselves because they’re depressed, lonely, or mentally ill. And the slope keeps getting slipperier. Brooks described patients who have been pressured by doctors and hospital staff into killing themselves to avoid medical bills. Earlier this year, the Canadian Parliament’s Special Committee on Medical Assistance in Death recommended extending the program to “mature minors” as young as twelve.  Brooks observed, this is what happens “when a society takes individualism to its logical conclusion.” The core question “is no longer, ‘Should the state help those who are suffering at the end of life die?’” It is now whether any degree of suffering is worth living with. He concludes, “The lines between assisted suicide for medical reasons … and straight-up suicide are blurring.”  Brooks clearly identified the bad idea behind these victims: what he calls “autonomy-based liberalism.” In its place, he proposed something called “gifts-based liberalism,” which acknowledges that each of us is a “receiver of gifts … including the gift of life itself.” That life, Brooks insists, is “sacred” because each of us is endowed with “dignity,” and society has a duty to say, “No, suicide is out of bounds. … You don’t have the right to make a choice you will never be able to revisit. … We are responsible for one another.” At least, that is, in most cases, according to Brooks.  He is so close to getting this one right and articulating the sanctity of life in the way Christianity does. That’s why it’s frustrating that Brooks seems to think it’s possible to climb back up the slippery slope and re-establish assisted suicide only for “extreme” cases. He writes, “I don’t have great moral qualms about assisted suicide for people who are suffering intensely in the face of imminent death.”  But, David, the moment you begin setting criteria for when a life is no longer worth living, no longer sacred, and a person no longer deserving of love instead of lethal injection, you let the bad idea that led to all those victims right back in the cultural door! For all his admirable reporting on how bad it has gotten in Canada, Brooks never gets around to answering his core question: Why did Canada’s “medical aid in dying” law–which supposedly limited victims to only those he agrees should have the right to die–become government-sponsored mass suicide in just seven years?   The answer is simple: because the value of human life is not based on any extrinsic quality. Period. It’s instead based on the fact that humans are made in God’s image. We belong to Him, not to ourselves. This is ultimately why the slope from accepting some suicides to all suicides is so slippery. It’s also why “gifts-based liberalism,” until it acknowledges the one who gave us life, will never be able to keep its footing or help those intent on throwing away the very gift.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Local authorities in a coastal English town are dropping the threat of legal charges against Adam Smith-Connor for praying silently outside of an abortion clinic.  In a video of the incident, a police officer, obviously uncomfortable, asked Smith-Connor to describe the “nature of [his] prayer,” adding that she doesn’t “want to probe.” She suggested Smith-Connor might be violating the town’s “buffer zone” rule, which outlaws “acts of disapproval” outside of the clinic. Ultimately, the officers say they believe he is allowed to pray silently, but they still fined him. Smith-Connor refused to pay it.  People have to stand up to government overreach. It’s much easier to be a council member and pass an ordinance like this from safely inside City Hall than to be the police officer charged with enforcing it while their gut says, “No, this isn’t right.”   And Christians, who are called to “live not by lies,” as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, may have to make tough choices about what or Whom they must serve. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Despite having three daughters, I can’t say I ever expected to discuss the theological implications of a movie based on Barbie dolls. And yet, Barbie is dominating headlines, not only for bringing in a whopping 155 million dollars on its opening weekend, but also for garnering thought-pieces on the deeper meaning of its plot and for its cultural implications about the identity and value of women. A Vox article, for example, compared its plot to the biblical account of the Garden of Eden, with a primal couple living in a paradise before newly discovered knowledge about good and evil taints the world with corruption.   Whether or not director Greta Gerwig intended that particular angle, her “Barbie” not only engages with contemporary discussions about feminism but also the biggest of worldview questions, such as “What’s the meaning of life?” “What has gone wrong with the world?” and, “What will fix the world?” In the process, Barbie tells a story of the world that, beneath its shiny colors and self-aware snark, more closely reflects the tenets of postmodernism than the truths of Scripture.    In Barbieland, the meaning and purpose of life is to be happy, and happiness means a woman-run society of libertine freedom and unhindered expression. Lines repeated throughout the film include “Barbie is every woman, and every woman is Barbie,” and “Barbies can be anything, so women can be anything.” In this view, to be empowered is to be free of restraint and responsibility. Something that is also communicated in its view of motherhood.   Both Christian reflection and common sense betray what’s wrong with this subjective view of happiness. If happiness is what life is all about, and our experiences of happiness swing on such an extreme pendulum of circumstance, freedom, and expression, how can anyone be happy for long? True happiness, as C.S. Lewis taught, is a byproduct of a life well lived, rather than the goal. Happiness requires that we are connected to something larger than ourselves, ultimately God. We belong to the One who made us for Himself, and, in Him, we find true joy.   Barbie’s answer to the question, “What’s wrong with the world?”  is, well, men. When she is cast into the “real world,” she discovers that its brokenness is due to the actions and attitudes of men, primarily against women. As one character proclaims, “We can only agree on one thing. We all hate women. Men hate women, and women hate women.”   This is both an astute observation and an odd complaint in a society unable or, more accurately, unwilling, to say what a woman is (other than as a “non-man”). In the world of this movie, every man is both oppressive and oblivious. Barbie can outsmart them all while Ken only “slows her down” and “gets into trouble.” Rather than accept the female-ruling class of Barbieland, Ken longs to emulate the powers of middle-aged white men in the “real world.” So, he introduces his own brave new world, “Kendom.”   But in the world of Kendom, the ultimate obstacle to happiness and freedom is men. They are not good. Women are. This is, of course, the same framing of reality that shaped second- and third- wave feminism.  In the biblical account, sin is disobedience and the longing for autonomy. What’s wrong with the world is the conflict, pain, and death that resulted. Sin has infected the world ever since and has turned the sexes against one another. Men have screwed up the world. So have women. Both were created good by God. Both are not good because of sin.   In the film, Barbieland is fixed by expelling the patriarchy. Barbie calls on one of the “real” women from the “real” world to preach the gospel of oppression to brainwashed Barbies. The unthinking Kens turn against themselves. The Barbies are given a Barbie-fied version of Betty Freidan’s Feminine Mystique: Women are victims of oppression and can never win. They are even victims of their own bodies, shaped as they are by the design of motherhood. On this point, the movie is not subtle. In a scene from the film’s first two minutes, young girls, bored with their baby dolls, smash them on the ground until their heads explode. A pregnant Barbie is also hinted at as being “creepy” and is discontinued.    In the end, Barbieland is made new, restored to the paradisical, women-run society it once was. The Kens “find themselves” too, but apart from Barbie. In other words, men and women were not made for each other.     Or were they? Much of the film’s discussion has to do with the final scene, in which Barbie chooses to not live in the restored Barbieland utopia, but in the real world of humanity instead. As such, there’s a not-so-subtle acknowledgement of the reality of human bodies, especially the female body. It’s not clear if Gerwig intended this final scene as a sort of undermining of the subjective portrayal of Barbieland. What is clear, whether she intended it or not, is that this is a world of objective realities, and the answers to life’s biggest questions can only be found by first acknowledging that.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Michaela Estruth. 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

The Barbie Movie is setting attendance records. What messages is it sending? LGTBQ+ students are flocking to Ivy League universities. What’s driving the trend? And Russell Brand shares some insightful views about God and worship. — Recommendations — Focus on the Family's Radio Theatre How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk: The Foolproof Way to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind by John Van App Section 1 - Barbie  Check Breakpoint.org on Monday, July 31, for our official Barbie review. "'Barbie' Box Office to the World: The Pandemic is Officially Over" The New York Times "Mattel Needs Barbie's Movie Magic to Lift Toy Sales" The Wall Street Journal ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ Set Post-Pandemic Box Office High - The New York Times Section 2 - Ivy League Students Leaning LGBTQ "Ivy League LGBTQ+ numbers soar and students point to identity politics" New York Post "U.S. LGBT Identification Steady at 7.2%" Gallup Section 3 - Russell Brand on Worship Russell Brand on Worship "Jesus's plea to Russell Brand" Christianity Today "‘I Need God’: Actor Russell Brand Delivers Candid Admission About the Lord, ‘Spirituality’" Faithwire For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Despite cultural propaganda that sells marijuana as “harmless,” increasingly research finds that regular cannabis use is just the opposite. Not only have recent studies found that marijuana use is a leading indicator of workplace accidents and leads to schizophrenia among young men, but a new, peer-reviewed study tracking almost 30 years of medical records for over 6.5 million Danish citizens has found that marijuana use is closely associated with increased risks for depression and bipolar disorder.   Those previously diagnosed with cannabis addiction were almost twice as likely to develop clinical depression and up to four times as likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The increased risk for psychosis is more likely for men than for women, and the chances go up with use.   As U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse deputy director Dr. Wilson Compton noted, studies like these are rapidly exposing that “cannabis may not be the innocent and risk-free substance that so many people believe.” For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

190 years ago today, the great British parliamentarian and abolitionist William Wilberforce died at the home of his cousin near Westminster, London. Three days earlier, Parliament had passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which "abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada” on condition that the Crown compensated slave owners. When his friend Thomas Babington Macaulay delivered the news, Wilberforce allegedly responded, “Thank God that I should have lived to witness the day in which England is willing to give 20 million sterling for the abolition of slavery.”   Upon the news of his death, newspapers around the world proclaimed Wilberforce “as pure and virtuous a man as ever lived.”  During his life, however, he endured incredible opposition and even hostility. England benefited both economically and militarily from the transatlantic slave trade. Some 46,000 British families owned slaves, and during war with France, abolitionists were accused of being unpatriotic. In a private letter, legendary naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson wrote that he would never surrender Britain’s “West India possessions … whilst I have an arm to fight in their defen[s]e, or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable and cursed doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies.” One of Wilberforce’s most vocal opponents, a slave trader named George Hibbert, was a fellow congregant at his church, Holy Trinity Clapham.   Many years ago, Chuck Colson described Wilberforce as “biblical worldview in action”:   When Wilberforce came to Christ early in his political career, he thought about leaving Parliament and public life altogether. Thankfully, William Pitt—who went on to become Great Britain’s youngest prime minister—convinced him otherwise. Pitt wrote to Wilberforce: “Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple and lead not to meditation only, but to action.”  And for the rest of his life, Wilberforce’s Christianity meant action. His fiercely unpopular crusade against the slave trade consumed his health and cost him politically—but he could not stand idly by and see the imago Dei, the image of God, enslaved and abused in the holds of ships. He endured verbal assaults and was even challenged to a duel by an angry slave-ship captain.  When the French Revolution began, what had been merely an unpopular position became a dangerous one in Britain. Wilberforce’s detractors charged that the humanist revolution would sweep England, and Wilberforce, with his passion for the slaves, was made suspect.  Nonetheless, Wilberforce persevered. Writing about political expediency and whether to give up the fight, Wilberforce notes, “a man who fears God is not at liberty” to give up.  But Wilberforce’s worldview led him to engage in more than just the issue of slavery. He sold his home and dismissed servants to have more money to give to the needy. He fought for prison reform. He founded or participated in sixty charities. He convinced King George III to reissue a proclamation encouraging virtue and reinstated the Proclamation Society to help see such virtue encouraged. He cared for God’s creation, founding the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; and he championed missionary efforts, like the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society.  All of us would do well to take Pitt’s words to Wilberforce to heart: Surely the principles and practice of Christianity lead not just to meditation, but to action.  Chuck penned these words around the 2006 biographic film of Wilberforce’s life, Amazing Grace. Last week, one of our nation’s greatest leaders revealed that she watches this film at least once a year.  The life of William Wilberforce is a direct rebuke to a privatized faith. Having had a very personal experience with God through Jesus Christ, for Wilberforce, Real Christianity (which was also the title of his book) requires living out the full implications of the Gospel. For him that meant embracing conflicts with his culture, challenges to his reputation, and doing hard things if they were the right things to do. As he put it, “If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures … is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.”   Thank God that he was.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. 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

On this day 75 years ago, an elderly German couple living in the shattered remains of Berlin turned on the radio. This was Klaus and Paula Bonhoeffer, the parents of pastor, theologian, and resistance leader Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Because lines of communication had been devastated by the war, the first Klaus and Paula heard of their son’s death was his memorial service in London, organized by his good friend Bishop George Bell and broadcast over the BBC.   In the words of my former colleague Eric Metaxas,   "As the couple took in the hard news that the good man who was their son was now dead, so too, many English took in the hard news that the dead man who was a German was good."   Bonhoeffer’s faithfulness was a reminder to the world that, even in the face of radical evil, faithfulness to Christ is possible. As Bishop Bell would put it, “He represents both the resistance of the believing soul, in the name of God, to the assault of evil, and also the moral and political revolt of the human conscience against injustice and cruelty.” For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

To see Dr. Kristin Collier’s speech at this year’s Colson Center National Conference, go to colsonconference.org. To hear more about how her faith shapes her medical practice, check out her interview on the Strong Women podcast.   ______ Perhaps the most helpful framework for wrestling with moral issues comes from T.S. Eliot. To paraphrase, we can only know what we should and should not do with something if we first know what that something is for. For example, before we decide what we should do with human life (whether we should take it, make it, or remake it), we should know what human life is for.   Recently, Dr. Kristin Collier, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan and a speaker at this year’s Colson Center National Conference, published an important essay in the healthcare journal BMJ Leader. In it, she called doctors and the medical profession in general to return to this essential question. In fact, Dr. Collier entitled the piece, “What is Medicine For?”  Today, medical leaders are participating in an industry dominated by the production of science and technology. But what is scientifically possible for the body and what is humane for the person are different questions which medicine must answer together.  In other words, Dr. Collier says, doctors shouldn’t only ask what medicine can do. They must first ask what medicine is for. This is even more important in an age of increasingly complex ethical dilemmas in medicine.   For example, consider the abortion pill reversal regimen which, according to estimates, has led to the saving of more than 4,000 lives. Medication abortions consist of two pills, the first of which starves the baby by cutting off the mother’s production of progesterone. The abortion pill reversal is essentially a blast of progesterone, something commonly administered to women in fertility treatments. Abortion advocates in medicine and public policy oppose allowing women to even consider this option, even falsely claiming that supplemental progesterone is, or at least might be, unsafe.  So, is supplemental progesterone “good” or “bad”? On the one hand, it can be administered to save a child’s life. On the other hand, it can be used in a process that leads to the creation of an excessive number of embryos, many of which will be abandoned, discarded, or subjected to medical experimentation.   This is where Dr. Collier’s question is critically important. What is medicine for? Is the telos (or intended goal) of medicine to give us what we want, or to serve healing? And is health merely the “absence of disease or pain,” or something else?   Dr. Collier rightly points out that to answer these questions, we must first answer another, deeper one: What does it mean to be human? A holistic view, which integrates biomedical science with theological and philosophical realities, understands health as rightly ordered relationships with our bodies, with the world around us, with others, and with the God who made us.   Medicine has made many things possible. But it’s a profound and consequential mistake to assume that because we can, we therefore should.  We can cut off or carve up healthy body parts in a misguided attempt to relieve the psychological pain of gender dysphoria. We can use surgical instruments or chemical drugs to kill babies in their mothers’ womb or to create babies in laboratories to be sold to adults who will have no biological connection to them. We can even prescribe lethal drugs to patients who say they want to die. But to use medicine like this violates the moral boundaries of our relationships to our own bodies, our relationships with each other, and our relationship to God, who made our bodies, who Has a specific design for marriage and family, and who forbids the taking of human life.   A biblical view of health and healing presumes a few things: first, that the absence of disease and suffering is not the full biblical picture of living well; second, that while physical death is a reality for each of us, it has not rendered living meaningless, so we shouldn’t fight the end of life as if it has; third, that our obligations to God, to the world around us, to ourselves, and to each other may come into conflict with our desire to not be in pain—physical or mental—and when they do, we ought to prioritize those relationships.  The Christian witness in the next 20 years is going to not only involve Christian doctors practicing medicine well. It will also involve Christian patients suffering well, dying well, and helping others die well as human beings made in the image of God, whose ultimate hope is in His salvation, not medical technology.  To see Dr. Kristin Collier’s speech at this year’s Colson Center National Conference, go to colsonconference.org. To hear more about how her faith shapes her medical practice, check out her interview on the Strong Women podcast.   This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer. 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