Breakpoint

A law in St. Louis banning so-called transgender care for minors can now take effect after a judge struck down a lawsuit challenging it. In a two-page order, Missouri Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer wrote that the lawsuit, which was brought by the ACLU, lacked sufficient evidence to delay the legislation: "The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear. Accordingly, the evidence raises more questions than answers." Activists claim that the science in favor of transgender "care" is settled. It's not true. Thankfully this judge was willing to say it out loud. This legislative push came as part of an investigation into the transgender clinic at St. Louis Children's Hospital. In February, a whistleblower alleged that the clinic had started transitioning more than 600 children between 2020 and 2022. In some cases, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones were prescribed after just two one-hour visits. In summary, the threat is real, the "science" is false, and children's lives are at stake. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

September 18 is the anniversary of the death of a mathematical and scientific genius, an outspoken Christian who defended the faith during the Enlightenment, when Christianity was under attack by much of the intellectual elite in Europe. Leonhard Euler was the son of Paul Euler, a Reformed Church pastor in Basel, Switzerland. He began study at the University of Basel at 13 and completed a master's degree in philosophy at 16. Though he originally intended to become a pastor, once his mathematical genius became evident, he changed the focus of his studies. In 1726, Euler completed a dissertation on the propagation of sound. The following year, he took second place in a prestigious Paris Academy prize competition, a competition Euler would win 12 times. When he didn't get a professorship at the University of Basel, Euler went to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in Russia. Initially, he served in the medical department, working as a medic to the Russian navy. He was quickly promoted and, in 1731, was named a professor of physics. In 1733, Euler was named head of the mathematics department. In 1741, partly due to a growing xenophobia in Russia, Euler accepted a position at the Berlin Academy. In the 25 years he spent there, he published over 380 articles, along with important books on mathematical functions and differential calculus. Frederick the Great asked Euler to mentor his niece, the Princess of Anhalt-Dessau. Euler wrote over 230 letters on science, philosophy, and religion to the princess, which were later compiled into a bestselling book. Unfortunately, Euler's faith and conservative, hardworking lifestyle did not sit well with the atmosphere of Frederick's court. By 1766, the situation in Russia had stabilized under Catherine the Great, so Euler returned to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. That same year, Euler was diagnosed with a cataract in his left eye. Within a few weeks of its diagnosis, he was almost completely blind. Though for most people, this would have been a career-ending affliction, Euler became even more productive than before. It helped that he had a photographic memory. For example, he could recite Virgil's Aeneid verbatim and could even tell the first and last lines from any page of the edition he had learned. Also, his ability to concentrate was legendary. According to one story, two of his students working on a series of highly complicated mathematical problems could not agree on the fifteenth decimal point. Euler settled the argument by doing the calculation in his head. In addition to his remarkable abilities, Euler had a prodigious capacity for hard work. In 1775, he produced roughly one mathematical treatise each week for the entire year. By the end of his life, Euler had produced 886 academic papers and books that filled roughly 90 volumes, making him one of the most productive mathematicians in history. In fact, the last phase of his life was so prolific that the St. Petersburg Academy did not complete publication of his papers until 30 years after his death. Amidst this prodigious output, Euler never left behind the theological commitments and interests of his youth. Like many Christian scholars of the time, he wrote against the anti-religious thinkers of his day, particularly defending biblical inspiration. He combined his mathematical and scientific interests with theology and used his skills in the defense of the faith, challenging the claims to knowledge of other philosophies as "heathen and atheistic." Overall, Euler's mathematical work was an expression of his deep faith as a Christian who recognized Jesus as the logos, the sum of all knowledge and truth. His work was an expression of a worldview that recognized that every area of life is worthy of exploration as an act of worship and service to God. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Hospitals across the nation are facing litigation concerns tied to their gender clinics. And John and Maria discuss the devastating effects of pornography on children. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

After claiming the U.S. Open's Women's Singles championship this week, Atlanta-born tennis star Coco Gauff paused to, in the words of ESPN's SportsCenter, "soak it all in." What she was really doing was kneeling with eyes closed and head bowed. In other words, she was praying, or as she told reporters later, "just saying thank you." At just 19 years old, Gauff is only the third American teenager to win the U.S. Open, the most recent being Serena Williams in 1999. She broke onto the tennis scene by defeating Venus Williams at Wimbledon when she was 15. All the while, her faith in Jesus Christ has been clear. She told The New York Times last year that she prays with her dad before every match—not for victory, but for the good health of both players. As she told reporters this week, "I don't pray for results. I just ask that I get the strength to give it my all." Amen. That's a prayer we should all soak in. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

For over 30 years, my friend Greg Koukl has taught Christians how to engage with people across worldview lines by asking questions. His first book Tactics has equipped thousands of Christians to communicate with wisdom and passion. This month, Koukl is releasing a follow-up to that book, entitled Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity's Toughest Challenges. Among the goals of the book is to make evangelism a less intimidating and more successful endeavor: "There are few things that cause more nagging guilt for Christians than sharing their faith. They feel guilt because they don't witness enough. They don't witness enough because they're scared. And they're scared for good reason. Sharing the gospel and defending it—apologetics—often feels like navigating a minefield these days. For most of us, engaging others on spiritual matters does not come easy, especially when people are hostile." Koukl helpfully distinguishes what he calls "harvesting," and "gardening." Because God brings the harvest, our goal is simply faithfulness to what is true about the world and about people. According to John's Gospel, some Christians harvest and others sow, so "that sower and reaper may rejoice together." A singular focus only on "harvesting," Koukl argues, leads to a number of problems. For example, the very important "gardeners" are encouraged to sit out the evangelism process, in favor of the "harvesters." This is often the case when Christians fail to understand the power of the cultural forces shaping the worldview of non-believers, one reason our Gospel seeds seem to only bounce off "hard soil." Christians, therefore, must also commit to "spadework," or digging up the faulty preconceptions about life, God, and humanity that people hold, often unknowingly. One great way to do this "spadework" is by asking questions. "Ask questions. Lots of them. Your first step in any encounter should be to gather as much information as possible. It's hard to know how to proceed—or even if to proceed—unless you first get the lay of the land. You need intel, and friendly queries get it for you. When you need to buy some time to catch your wits, ask a question. When you face a challenge you're not sure how to deal with, ask a question. When the conversation bogs down and you think it best to move in a new direction, ask a question. Whenever you're in doubt about how to move forward, ask a question." In Street Smarts, Koukl teaches the kinds of questions that are most effective while also providing sample conversations on the most common topics, which is another very important contribution of this book. In addition to answering the misconceptions about faith that people often have—from God's existence to the divinity of Jesus—Street Smarts helps believers engage others on the moral and social issues at the center of our cultural discourse, such as abortion and gender and the many topics related to human sexuality. Koukl provides the questions, the talking points, and the examples that can open up significant conversations, invite skeptics in, and challenge presuppositions. In the process, Christians will develop confidence in what is true. Our job is to jump in. The results are up to God. "You may be serving quietly, in the dark, often not knowing the true extent of your impact—going out in obedience, doing what is right, speaking what is true, laboring faithfully. The course of history is often changed by small things done by ordinary people at opportune times, even though they never realize it. We take what we have—our skills, our gifts, our capabilities, our opportunities—then place everything in the hands of the Savior. … A person may rebel at what you share, but if you're thoughtful in what you say and gracious in how you say it, chances are good you'll give him something to think about." This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we will send you a copy of Greg Koukl's book Street Smarts. As Koukl writes, both knowledge and action "breed courage." His book cultivates both. To receive a copy of Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity's Toughest Challenges, visit colsoncenter.org/September. As Koukl writes, "Now is not the time for fear of any kind. It's not the time to circle the wagons or to pull up the drawbridge. It's the time for ambassadors equipped with knowledge, tactical wisdom, and character to seize the moment as agents of change for the kingdom of heaven when the world needs them most."  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

A California law decriminalizing loitering went into effect in January. When Governor Gavin Newsom signed it last year, neither its supporters nor its opponents attempted to hide what it was really about: prostitution. Police previously could stop and question people they suspected of soliciting. This led to, advocates agreed, discrimination against so-called "transgendered adults." What wasn't said out loud is that transgendered adults apparently present themselves in ways that lead them to be confused for prostitutes. According to a recent story in the Times of San Diego, the new law has led to an explosion in prostitution and sex trafficking in California. After all, the law says that police cannot try to identify prostitutes. It does not say that customers and traffickers can't. Often, laws that are put forward as "safety" measures for the LGBT community endanger other people. It's what happens when up is down, wrong is right, and all kinds of other really important words are redefined. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper, a black professor from Bates College, argued that so-called "anti-racism" has gone too far. "In their righteous crusade against the bad color-blindness of policies such as race-neutral college admissions, these contemporary anti-racists have also jettisoned the kind of good color-blindness that holds that we are more than our race, and that we should conduct our social life according to that idealized principle. Rather than balance a critique of color-blind law and policy with a continuing embrace of interpersonal color-blindness as a social etiquette, contemporary anti-racists throw the baby out with the bathwater." The term "anti-racist" came from a recent explosion of writing such as Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility and Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist, and it carries enormous ideological implications. According to Kendi, "One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist.'" For figures like Kendi and DiAngelo, anti-racism isn't just the commitment to combat racism wherever we happen to see it, it's the commitment to see racism everywhere, entrenched in the heart of society and present in all its aspects. Even more, to be "anti-racist" requires the adoption of a very narrow set of policy prescriptions, all of which come from an increasingly left side of the political world. In this world, white people must move from a position of "neutrality" to actively "centering" race in all their discourse. Only then can "whiteness" and "implicit bias" be identified, admitted, and confessed. In practice, Harper warns, this only obliterates any distinctions between "structural" racism, a term referring to racial injustices embedded in wider society, and the interpersonal interactions with people of different races. "It tends to rest on a troubling, even racist subtext: that white and Black Americans are so radically different that interracial relationships require careful management, constant eggshell-walking, and even expert guidance from professional anti-racists. Rather than producing racial harmony, this new ethos frequently has the opposite effect, making white-Black interactions stressful, unpleasant, or, perhaps most often, simply weird." This weirdness that Harper described is the fruit of Critical Race Theory, a wrong way to diagnose and respond to racism, because it makes racial injustice "a theory of everything." Sixty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a world in which his own children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." However, "anti-racism" reverses that, presuming to know one's character, a priori, based only on the color of skin. Another important insight from Harper's article is that our racial dialogue has been shaped by the "triumph of the therapeutic," which social critic Philip Rieff described as the "self, improved, (as) the ultimate concern of modern culture." In a moment in which everything is about the self, Harper believes that racial dialogue is often not about making real progress, but making ourselves feel better through confession and activism. Throughout the biblical narrative, people are described as having a common parentage and heritage as image bearers. The Apostle Paul told the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens that God "made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth." Those who are in Christ, no matter which tongue or tribe or nation or language they represent, are reconciled to their Creator and thus, to each other. Only Christianity can anchor this beautiful vision of the human condition on solid ground, and it has incredible implications for individuals and nations, for people and for social structures. Harper rightly concludes that we must see each other, first and foremost, as people, a kind of colorblindness that will prove far more effective than performative racial confessions or racialized division. That, however, is only true if there is something universal to our identity, dignity, and value. If there is, it must be an intrinsic reality of the human person, given rather than acquired. Only one vision of the human story, the biblical account of people and creation, offers anything like that. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

For a lot of people, writes Angela Chen in The Atlantic, "[s]ibling bonds are the longest relationships of our lives. We know siblings before we meet our partners (and before we have our own kids), and we'll know them after our parents die." Some research even suggests that siblings have a higher impact than parents on whether teens do drugs and alcohol. Another study found that "subjects who had conflict or distance in their relationships with siblings before age 20 were more likely to be depressed at age 50." What G.K. Chesterton once wrote about neighbors describes siblings even better, "We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbor. Hence, he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain." The fewer children that Western couples have, the fewer siblings there will be in the world. And that will be a poorer world indeed. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

According to the Associated Press, nearly 50,000 people committed suicide last year, an absolute record in terms of raw numbers and the highest rate in nearly a century. Though, as one scholar noted, there's always the chance that the numbers are up on account of better reporting, that doesn't explain the consistent increase in these numbers over the last two decades. Something is broken in the United States, and it's us. Why, in the most prosperous time to be alive in human history, do so many think that they would be better off dead? Nor do these numbers about suicide tell the complete story. Along with the dramatic increase in substance-abuse-related deaths, particularly opioids, deaths related to alcohol abuse and other addictions, and the suicide-by-slaughter of mass shootings, we face an outbreak of what is being called "deaths of despair." Some of this could be the result of an increasingly vitriolic cultural environment. After all, it is hard to be hopeful when everyone is yelling at everyone else. Students in particular are victims of the ubiquity of smartphones and their amoral algorithms. And although the economy has, over the same period, seen incredible expansion overall, places like the Rust Belt now mirror the frustrations of inner cities as industries disappear along with opportunities for meaningful labor. In addition to these structural concerns, we're also living downstream from particularly destructive ideas. For decades, American society has been steadily stripped of those meaning-making stories that made it, specifically the religious framing that placed our lives as part of something bigger. For even longer, we've been telling ourselves that transcendent things like truth, beauty, and goodness are imaginary, and that we are nothing more than matter in motion on a "pale blue dot" adrift in the heavens. The more recent orthodoxies of Critical Theory preach self-loathing as the only means of salvation, while at the tail end of the sexual revolution, our identities have been uprooted, tethered only to what we feel and are willing to self-determine. In the process, we've created a culture of victimhood, much of it fabricated, and have positioned it as the goal of life. All of this is a powerful recipe for social and individual instability, but that's not all. Voices of the state and media have, in the last several years, marketed suicide as a positive choice, the final solution to life's problems, and the final expression of autonomy and, thus, dignity. A growing number of U.S. states and the nation of Canada have embraced and now sell suicide to their citizens, using the language of "medical assistance." Though what they provide is neither. Argued with language of autonomy and avoiding suffering, the end result is always more death. By making it an option, we've made suicide more likely. All this weighs most of all upon our neighbors and friends struggling with mental illnesses. In a culture broken and enmeshed by meaninglessness, double damage is done to these hurting souls. If we hope to prevent our neighbors from dying too soon, we'll first have to help them answer the question: "What is there to live for?". A life without meaning will remain empty, no matter how much we try to fill it with prosperity, status, technological gadgets, "autonomy," infinite choice, and distraction. To borrow from Thomas Aquinas, an increasingly secular culture removes any real conviction we have that it's even possible to "share in the goodness of God." Thus, it'll take the Church, both as an institution and as individuals, to reach those who are hurting. Remaining open to our own pains and struggles, we can place them within a larger framework of meaning and hope. Christians, too, battle with despair but while knowing it will not have the final word. Christ does, so hope does. To better prepare to offer this hope in this fragile moment, please consider our "Hope Always" course featuring Dr. Matthew Sleeth. This course is available online, can be accessed anytime, and can be studied alone or as part of a community committed to providing healing to hurting neighbors. Go to educators.colsoncenter.org for more information. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

According to the editors at The Economist, "Republicans used to extol the benefits of free trade and free markets," but now, many support barriers to international trade, generous government spending, and condemn corporate America. At least part of the shift is corporate America's leftward lurch, especially the trend to enlist the marketplace in woke causes while threatening the freedom of speech. Still, the urge to paint capitalism as the root of all evil is misguided. As civic education in the U.S. declines, fewer Americans on the left and the right understand how much better free markets are than every other alternative. Capitalism aligns better with the human condition than other systems, especially in seeing people as not only "consumers" but also "producers." Not merely as problems to be solved but as the best potential to solve the problems. That's why the market has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system in history. Throwing that away would be a serious mistake.