Breakpoint

The United States has seen a dramatic increase in the number of syphilis cases among newborn babies, according to a recent report from the Center for Disease Control. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection that can be passed from moms to babies in utero. Last year, more than 3,700 babies tested positive for the disease, a 30% increase in a single year and a tenfold increase in the past 10 years.

According to the CDC, the situation is "dire." To reverse the trends, the report proposed, "[a]ddressing missed opportunities for prevention, primarily timely testing and appropriate treatment of syphilis during pregnancy." Likewise, a Houston-area doctor quoted in an NBC News article about the report said, "It is unbelievable how this could all be prevented if we just had patients get in for screening and treatment."

During the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, some acted as if the HIV virus could infect anyone at any moment, as if how it spread was a total mystery. This mentality is even more common today, especially among drug companies promoting medication to treat HIV. The recent biopic Bohemian Rapsody takes a similar approach to the story of Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock band Queen. Mercury hid the fact that he had AIDS from all but his closest confidants until the days before his death, despite continuing to have multiple sexual partners and possibly playing an outsized role in the AIDS epidemic. The movie, however, depicts Mercury as a hero of self-expression and a victim of horrible illness. His promiscuity is never morally evaluated and barely mentioned.

It's considered immoral, in this cultural moment, to limit anyone's self-expression. The diseases and dangers linked to irresponsible sexual expression are disconnected from the behaviors. Instead, they're often treated as evidence of injustice, as if the moral duty of medicine is to free sexual self-expression from any consequences. In this framing, risky sexual behavior is inevitable. Not only is it immoral to suggest that people stop doing those things that spread HIV and infect babies with syphilis, but to do so would be to suggest the impossible.

This pessimistic, deterministic view of humanity is demonstrably false. We often say politics is downstream from culture. The state has significant power to influence behavior. For example, in 1984, only 14% of Americans wore seat belts. I'm likely not the only one who remembers bouncing around unrestrained in the back of the family station wagon on long road trips. Just three years later, after 30 states enacted seat belt laws, that percentage tripled to 42%. Last year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than 90% of Americans faithfully buckled up while on the roads.

A similar phenomenon happened with drunk driving. Four years after the founding of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Congress raised the legal drinking age to 21. MADD then launched an effort to replace the word "accident" with the word "crash" in common parlance, predicting that this would reinforce in people's minds that drunk-driving collisions were crimes. These efforts to shift culture worked. Since 1982, the number of drunk-driving deaths in America has fallen by more than half.

Despite this success, most government-funded efforts to combat the spread of sexually transmitted infections never mention risky sexual behavior. Creators of proven, effective abstinence education resources testify how oddly difficult it is to even gain access to public schools. Even doctors concerned about the spread of congenital syphilis cannot seem to bring themselves to recommend sexual risk avoidance.

At the root of the selective outrage is a warped idea of what it means to be human. A worldview that says humans are fundamentally incapable of practicing sexual abstinence assumes that human beings are mere animals. This is a perfect example of what former President George W. Bush once called the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

God's design for sex is good, and the boundaries He designed with it are also good. Not only is it possible for humans to abstain from acting on all their desires, but it's also best, spiritually and physically, when we are able to delay gratification for some higher ends. When we violate God's created boundaries, we violate the design and put ourselves and others at risk. Sadly, the skyrocketing cases of babies born with congenital syphilis are just the latest example of kids paying the highest price for adults' bad ideas.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

I didn't think cancel culture would ever come for Anne Frank, but here we are. Parents of a German daycare center named after Frank proposed a name change because, they said, it was too difficult to explain the significance of Frank to their children. The director of the school agreed, and explained that a name "without political background" would be better.

After public backlash, the trustees reversed course, and for that we can be grateful. Anne Frank was a real girl who faced real horrors and met a real and horrible death. Erasing her memory helps no one.

History should not be edited to fit our comfort levels. Like real life, history has hard edges and unpleasant elements that don't budge for contemporary fashion or fragile feelings. Its value lies in teaching us those hard lessons, not in conforming to what we wish were true. Anne Frank deserves better, and so do the kids learning her story today.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

November marks the death of Johannes Kepler, one of the most important figures of the Scientific Revolution and a scientist who was motivated by his Christian beliefs. The significance of Kepler's work can only be understood in light of what he faced and risked. The settled science of his day was that the Earth stood at the center of the universe. To challenge that meant to challenge the entire, accepted understanding of physics.

When Copernicus published On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, he argued that the universe was centered on the sun rather than Earth. His motivation was to preserve the idea that planets traveled at a constant velocity in perfect circles. In other words, his motivation was more philosophical and aesthetic than it was scientific. Few scientists accepted these ideas that contradicted settled science. As a result, there were only a handful of committed Copernicans prior to 1600. Johannes Kepler was one of them.

Kepler was a devout Lutheran who planned to become a pastor. However, he excelled at mathematics and had an interest in astronomy. In seminary at the University of Tubingen, he became convinced by Copernicus and defended him on both scientific and theological grounds. After graduating in 1594, he took up teaching mathematics at the Protestant school at Graz (now the University of Graz) in Austria.

While in Graz, Kepler began to develop a theory about the number of planets and the relative size of their orbits. He found that his theory worked for all planets except Jupiter. Though he adjusted the theory to make it work, he was convinced the problem would be solved with better observations. As it turned out, the best observational astronomer in the world, Tycho Brahe, lived nearby.

In 1600, Kepler negotiated with Tycho for access to his data. Tycho recognized Kepler's genius and eventually agreed to work together. However, a year later, Tycho unexpectedly died. Kepler was appointed his successor as imperial mathematician, which enabled him to continue compiling and analyzing data on planetary motion in order to develop a more accurate model of the universe.

Tycho's observations were as good as was possible with the naked eye, and Kepler was determined to use them. Initially, he could not find a formula, whether geocentric or heliocentric, that would work.

Heliocentrism was close, but not up to the known margin of error of Tycho's observation. This led Kepler to give up on circles and try ellipses, which fit better, but not perfectly. After playing with some very complicated math, Kepler arrived at a solution that, in the end, proved Copernicus right about the Earth going around the sun. In the process, Kepler discovered his Three Laws of Planetary Motion which stand even to today.

Kepler's work was motivated by his Christian faith. He believed that since God is rational, the universe must be as well. Because humans are made in God's image, we can, as he said, "think God's thoughts after Him." In other words, understanding the universe is possible.

This commitment led Kepler to be a rigid empiricist. Because God had given him Tycho's data, he was responsible to use it as fully as he could. For example, the earth's orbit is less than .02% away from being a perfect circle. Even that small amount made Kepler willing to jettison the supposed perfection of circular motion favored by the scientists of his day. Though most others would have chalked that up to observational error, Kepler knew the margin of error of Tycho's observations and believed God expected him to honor the quality of the data, rather than conform it to his preconceptions about how it "should" be.

Kepler knew his theories would be rejected by scientists, but he didn't care. It had taken eons before anyone discovered how God had structured the universe, so Kepler figured he could wait another century or so to be proven right. His faith in the intelligibility of the universe was grounded in his belief that the world was governed by divine reason, the Logos. This led him to examine the world systematically, to not take shortcuts, to use what God gave him and, in the end, to lay the foundations for modern astronomy and physics.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently conceded that the kingdoms of David and Solomon may have actually existed. New studies have revealed that "[r]emains of gates, defensive walls and a large administrative building at Gezer date to the early 10th century B.C.E., putting them in the right time frame to have been built by King Solomon, just as the Bible claims."

In recent decades, skeptics suggested that these structures belonged to a later, supposedly more advanced time. Though the new studies don't prove the Bible's accuracy, the articles insist its reliability cannot be ruled out.

In other words, the thing that pretty much everybody thought was true until just a few decades ago turns out to be actually true. The more we dig, in fact, the more archaeological evidence suggests that the facts are on the side of the Bible, not its critics. And the more we dig, the more that skepticism of the Bible is shown to be not a sign of open-minded intelligence, but of close-minded assumptions of disbelief.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The Biden administration is accepting comments as it considers rule changes for foster care and adoption. The Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs was a year ago but the media keeps pushing a false narrative. And the devastating effects of the Covid lockdowns on education.

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Prepare the Way of the Lord – Advent 2023

The Promise by Michael Card

Joy of Every Longing Heart by Sara Groves

The Advent of Christmas by Matt Maher

Segment 1: LGBTQ Children and Foster Care

"Non-Affirmation of Child's "LGBTQI+" Identity Is Abuse Under Proposed Foster Care Rule"

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From Gender Clinic Caseworker to Whistleblower: Jamie Reed's Story

U.K. Transgender Clinic Forced to Close

Segment 2: LGBTQ Hoax Crimes

Segment 3: Covid and Education

"The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss"

New York Times 2020 article: "C.D.C. Calls on Schools to Reopen, Downplaying Health Risks"

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

In November of 1928, A.W. Tozer accepted a pastoral position at the Southside Alliance Church in Chicago, a move that launched a ministry career that would eventually impact thousands. A central theme of Tozer's work was recovering a sense of the holiness of God. In his book The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer wrote,

The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

Tozer's best-known quote is a fundamental premise of a truly Christian worldview: "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."

Years ago, Chuck Colson urged his friend, author and speaker Ken Boa, to write condensed, accessible introductions to the greatest works of literature and theology. Boa, one of the finest Christian thinkers of our generation, accepted the challenge.

In a Breakpoint commentary, Chuck commented on A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy, and Dr. Ken Boa's introduction:

Dr. Ken Boa speaks of A.W. Tozer as a man who "understood the ways of God." That understanding is amply demonstrated in Tozer's classic book The Knowledge of the Holy.

"This is really a meditative and a devotional approach to the attributes of God," Boa says. Those include more attributes than we're used to thinking about all at once. For instance, Tozer discusses God's omniscience and omnipotence as well as His love and mercy. But Tozer doesn't just show us the reality of those attributes; he also shows how they work together to form a harmonious whole. They are not contradictory, but complementary.

But our view of God, Tozer argues, is often "distorted" or "diminished" because we have embraced the prevailing mindset of our culture and imposed that mindset upon Scripture. So, we find ourselves unable even to begin to comprehend concepts like His holiness, power, and majesty. (Keep in mind, by the way, that Tozer wrote this nearly 50 years ago. The man wasn't called a prophet for nothing.)

Tozer's desire was to expand our vision and thus our capacity to worship God rightly. If we fail to do this, Boa says, that's when our understanding of God becomes distorted, and we move away from Him. "Imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God," Tozer believed, are responsible for all our errors in doctrine and in faith. Thus, he defines idolatry as "assuming that God is other than He is."

When you look at it that way, you can see just how widespread idolatry has become in our day and how much havoc it has created within the Church. Boa connects this kind of thinking to the modern prosperity gospel, which tends to turn our prayers into "strategy sessions" rather than true communication with God. Paradoxically, Tozer acknowledges the "incomprehensibility" of God, even as he is helping us to better understand His attributes. When we draw closer to God, you see, we begin to understand just how much greater He is than anything we can grasp.

Our instinct is to make God into something "manageable" and "controllable." That was the sin of the Garden—to be like God. But if you could do that, you wouldn't need Him. So instead of trying to manage or control God, we must surrender ourselves and place our trust in Him even though we can't fully understand Him. And when we do this, we are not groping in the dark, for as Tozer tells us, "[God] in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself. These we call His attributes." He has provided enough knowledge of these, Tozer says, "to satisfy our intellects and ravish our hearts."

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

Tough conversations on controversial topics don't have to be a disaster, even if had over holiday visits and meals. The key to civil and productive conversations is to ask good questions. The right question can turn monologues into dialogues, surface-level discussions into deeper ones, and might even open a closed mind or two.

Here are six questions I've found helpful for creating good conversations:

First: What do you mean by that? The definition of words shapes debate. Don't assume you are always using the same dictionary.

Second: How do you know that is true? Assertions aren't arguments, and this question takes you beyond comparing opinions.

Third: Where did you get this information?

Fourth: How did you come to this conclusion? Everyone has a story.

And the last two: What if you're wrong? And, What if you're right? Ideas have consequences. These questions take ideas to their logical conclusion. Oh, and the best question: What are you thankful for?

From all of us at the Colson Center, Happy Thanksgiving.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

This Point is republished from 11.28.19.

Revisionist attempts to reinterpret the first Thanksgiving have muddled the history of Plymouth Colony and the Pilgrims. Some on the right call the historical events a "triumph of capitalism," getting the chronology of events wrong. Voices on the left often accuse Thanksgiving of being a celebration of genocide against the Native Americans, citing the Mystic Massacre in the Pequot War, ignoring the context of that event, not least of which that it occurred 16 years after the celebration in Plymouth. Neither of these narratives accurately represents what actually occurred in Plymouth in the fall of 1621.

The Pilgrims were English Separatists who believed congregations should be independent, voluntary democratic institutions rather than part of the Church of England. In 1607 and 1608, they left England for the more tolerant Dutch Republic.

Life in the Netherlands, however, proved difficult. Some ran out of money and returned to England. Without further immigration from England, the congregation was in danger of collapsing. The Pilgrims were also unhappy with the libertinism of Dutch culture and worried that their children would grow up more Dutch than English.

After much discussion, they decided to try to establish a colony where they could worship and raise their families as they saw fit, and where they could spread the Gospel. In 1619, they received a patent to establish a colony in New England, north of the Virginia colony. In September of 1620, the Pilgrims, with other colonists, set sail on the Mayflower with 102 passengers, only 28 of whom were members of the congregation.

The Pilgrims debated whether it was safe to bring their wives. Most decided to do so, which accounts for the 13 adult women on board, three in their third trimester. There were also some younger women and children who joined the voyage. A baby who was born at sea was named Oceanus.

The Mayflower arrived in America in November after a difficult journey. A landing party sent to explore the land found artificial mounds that they excavated and discovered to be burial sites. In some, they found corn, which they took for planting before reburying the remains. They also found corn and beans in empty Native American homes, some of which they also took and paid for six months later when they met the owners.

Earlier English expeditions to the region had captured Native Americans and sold them as slaves or slaughtered them on their ships. Perhaps for this reason or because of the desecration of the graves, a Pilgrim landing party was attacked in December, though the colonists drove off the attackers.

Later that month, they found harbor at a place that was labeled "Plymouth" on their charts. They decided to winter there. The men went ashore to build houses, the first of which was used as a hospital. By the time spring came, only 47 of the colonists were still alive, and only 5 of the married women. Another would die in May of a broken heart after her husband died.

The Plymouth Colony only survived because of help from the Native Americans. The first contact came from Samoset, a minor chief from Maine who had learned English from fishermen who had set up a camp near his tribe. He then introduced them to Tisquantum, better known as Squanto. Squanto had been enslaved by English raiders but eventually was freed, became a Christian, and returned to his homeland. Unfortunately, his tribe, the Patuxets, were wiped out by an epidemic.

Squanto acted as both a translator and a mediator between the Pilgrims and Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoag tribe. Massasoit established friendly relations with the Pilgrims and, with Squanto, taught them how to farm the "Three Sisters"—corn, beans, and squash. With their help, the remaining Pilgrims survived and had a successful harvest that fall.

The Pilgrims decided to hold a harvest festival, probably around Michaelmas (September 29) 1621, which was a traditional date for such celebrations in England. Massasoit and members of his tribe joined them. In all, there were about 50 English and 90 Wampanoags. The four surviving wives, together with children and servants, prepared and served food over the three-day celebration.

Although much European contact with Native Americans featured disease, genocide, prejudice, and abuse, that was not the case with the Pilgrims. Rather than falsely maligning that first Thanksgiving, we should look at it as a model of how things should have been and by God's grace one day will be.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. Listen to his interview with the Strong Women podcasters about the women of Plymouth or hear how Thanksgiving was declared a holiday. 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

This Breakpoint was originally published on 11.24.2022.

Even before the Israel-Hamas war, there was an increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S.: 3,697 such incidents in 2022; in fact, a 36% increase from the year before. Now, it's just getting worse.

Jon Rettinger, a father of three, told CNN that one of his children asked if they were going to be kidnapped like the victims in Israel, "It's horrible for any family to have to explain to children that people hate them because of who they are," he said. "And to have to kiss your kids goodbye every day with worries."

Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, told CBS News, "People have got to name it and address it ... It can't be swept away." Christians should be first in line to condemn antisemitism, keeping in mind, as Francis Schaeffer wrote, "that our Lord Himself was a Jew—born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew."

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org

The month of November marks the death of John Witherspoon, one of the most important and most underrated of the American founding fathers. Born in Scotland in 1723, Witherspoon received a Master of Arts at age 16 from the University of Edinburgh, where he would continue his studies in divinity. In 1745, he became an evangelical minister in the Church of Scotland.

Witherspoon was no fan of the monarchy and was imprisoned the following year for opposing the royalist Jacobite uprising, an experience that damaged his health for life. After his release, he returned to pastoral ministry. In 1764, the University of St. Andrews awarded Witherspoon an honorary Doctor of Divinity.

Four years later, Witherspoon accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey, a Presbyterian college now known as Princeton University. Though the school's primary mission was to train Presbyterian ministers, Witherspoon found the school in quite a mess. The students were given poor teaching and an inadequate library. Through fundraising, reorganization, higher standards, and securing new resources–including donating hundreds of books from his personal library–Witherspoon transformed the college into a top-tier school.

In addition to providing leadership at a crucial time in the university's history, Witherspoon taught courses in rhetoric, history, divinity, and moral philosophy, a required course at the college. His ideas were anchored in his Reformed faith and the natural law tradition. He was also heavily influenced by Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid's Common Sense Realism. These ideas took deep root in Princeton and across American society generally. Witherspoon's teaching laid essential groundwork for both the American Revolution and the government that followed.

Leaning heavily on the Calvinistic tradition, Witherspoon promoted the rights of people to challenge governmental overreach, even by force of arms if necessary. Unsurprisingly, he strongly supported the American Revolution, especially concerned by a growing centralization of government and the Crown taking over responsibilities that were historically the prerogatives of the colonies. The final straw for Witherspoon was when bishops were appointed from England to oversee religious life in the colonies.

Like his Presbyterian forebearers in Scotland, Witherspoon saw these violations as justification for revolt. He served in the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1784, taking on a prodigious amount of work and serving on over 100 committees. After the war, he helped draft the Articles of Confederation and later shepherded the Constitution through the New Jersey state legislature.

Even with that impressive resume, Witherspoon's most important impact came from the students who took his moral philosophy classes at the College of New Jersey. Witherspoon taught James Madison the necessity of checks and balances in government. Among his other students were Aaron Burr, 37 judges, including several members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and three justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, 10 cabinet officers, 12 members of the Continental Congress, 28 U.S. Senators, and 49 U.S. Congressmen. Witherspoon was arguably the single most influential founder who shaped the early years of the Republic.

Despite all this, Witherspoon is mostly remembered today for owning two slaves. Like many of the founders, Witherspoon's attitudes toward slavery were complex and often contradictory, a fact that explains but does not excuse his stance. Witherspoon taught that slaves and employees should be treated with dignity and respect. He even spoke out against the institution of slavery at the college. However, he also opposed a measure by the state legislature that would have banned slavery in New Jersey. Like many others, Witherspoon believed slavery would die out within a generation, and thought the legislation was unnecessary and could interfere with the process he believed was inevitable.

Though there were a few consistent abolitionists among the founders, Witherspoon was among the many elites in the eighteenth century who owned slaves as domestic servants or to work land.

Witherspoon failed to extend his convictions about liberty for all to the slaves in his midst. That moral tragedy should not fully blot out the honor owed to him for his incredible contributions to the founding of the United States and the securing of the freedoms we enjoy.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, visit Colsoncenter.org