Breakpoint

According to English teacher Tim Donahue, academic inflation is as real as economic inflation. In the 1960s, around 15% of grades given at colleges were "A." As of 2017, it was nearly 50%. Meanwhile SAT scores fell by 20 points and, by 2023, ACT scores reached the worst scores in three decades.

This, Donahue says, could explain why "65 percent of Americans feel they are smarter than average."

The purpose of grades is to provide feedback, a way humans learn and grow. But in a world where it is assumed that truth is found within, the purpose of grades becomes affirmation for doing the work, not to measure what was learned.

According to Donahue, "If everyone gets an A, no one gets an A," so teachers should "consider the B-plus." But that won't do any good unless students are taught that truth exists outside of themselves, can be found, and should be pursued over and above affirmation and self-expression.

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

According to modern retellings, the American story is one long tale of violence and oppression, with founders who should be universally condemned as hypocrites, thieves, and racists. Of course, our nation's history is, like all nations, about sinful and flawed people. However, in our modern attempts to deconstruct the past, it's easy to miss how remarkable the American experiment was.

In a Breakpoint commentary years ago, Chuck Colson described one especially significant part of our nation's history, the Mayflower Compact. Here's Chuck Colson.

In just a few weeks, Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday that people of all faiths observe. But between stuffing the turkey and watching football, we ought to make sure our children and grandchildren understand the Christian roots of this holiday, which are often downplayed in school. The first step is to brush up on the details ourselves.

On September 6, 1620, the Mayflower set sail from England. Ten perilous weeks later, the Pilgrims arrived on the northern tip of Cape Cod. As my friend Barbara Rainey writes in her excellent book, Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember, "This was about sixty miles north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River." Should they sail south, or stay put?

After much discussion and prayer, they decided to stay. But when the passengers learned of this, dissension broke out. The Pilgrims had a charter with a company that was effective only at the original landing site. As Rainey writes, "The bonded servants on board [who were not Pilgrims] argued that [the decision to stay] changed the terms of their work agreement." The Pilgrims were afraid that these men would declare their independence and deplete the labor supply. Something had to be done to restore unity.

As the Mayflower's captain worked his way around the Cape, searching for a place to drop anchor, an intense debate ensued. By nightfall, the leaders had drafted an agreement, called the Mayflower Compact. Among its key clauses were these words: "Having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith … a voyage to plant the First Colony … [we] solemnly … in the presence of God and of one another, Covenant … ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic."

As Rainey writes, the compact was a hedge against revolt, but it meant much more. The Pilgrims took it seriously; their Bible told them just how significant covenants were. In the Old Testament, God created covenants between Himself and His people, the Israelites. In the New Testament, God covenants with all who choose to follow Him through the life, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As Rainey writes, the Pilgrims "journeyed to this new land to proclaim by their lives this message of redemption, the New Covenant, and the light of Christ. This covenant that God established with His people became their model for the Mayflower Compact as well as for the peace treaty they established with Massasoit and his people. They knew a God who keeps His word, and therefore they were faithful to keep their word, their promises to one another and to others."

The Mayflower Compact became one of the most important documents in American history—and yet, its religious language may make some teachers reluctant to teach it. But that same language reveals the lengths to which the Pilgrims were willing to go to follow the Lord.

Ten years later and 40 miles to the north, John Winthrop would expound on the idea of covenant in his famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity."

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.

"City on a hill" is among the least understood phrases in American history. Winthrop was not encouraging arrogance or claiming invincibility with this idea. Rather, he was issuing a warning. Whether in Winthrop's speech to the Massachusetts Bay colonists or the Plymouth Colony's Mayflower Compact, these men and women saw what they were doing through the deeply Christian lens of covenant.

This Thanksgiving, it's appropriate to thank God for our heritage, to remember the warnings of our nation's forebears, and to pray for renewal in the church and in our nation.

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

Back in September, jiu-jitsu athlete Taelor Moore fought an opponent who was not only more than 60 pounds heavier than her, but was a male. She was not warned she would be fighting a man. Afterward, the North American Grappling Association clarified its policy to say that women should be informed when facing a male opponent who identifies as a female, and given the option to opt out. As policies go, this one isn't worth the paper it's written on.

In October, a man took four gold medals at a women's jiu-jitsu competition in Georgia, and some divisions consisted of more male competitors than females. This, one of the female competitors, said has left "[t]he majority of the women ... scared to even speak out about this matter. … There's so many girls just not signing up now because they are allowing this."

That much should be obvious. Allowing men to fight women is not only unfair, it's dangerous. How many men will take home medals or women will take home injuries before that message gets through?

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

In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton observed that even insane explanations for the world can have a perverse consistency. A madman who thinks he's the king of England has a ready explanation for anyone who denies his claim: They're conspirators trying to keep him from his throne. "His mind," wrote Chesterton, "moves in a perfect but narrow circle."

Chesterton's asylum example also applies to a recent article published at Phys.org about a scientist who has written a book to convince everyone that humans don't have free will. Neuroendocrinologist and MacArthur "genius grant" winner Robert Sapolsky has studied people and primates for over 40 years. In his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Dr. Sapolsky argues that humans are molecular machines, wholly determined by our genes, our environments, and our past. Thus, our behavior, even when condemned as criminal or evil, is no more a choice than "the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts."

Of course, the implications if this were true would be incredible. As a Los Angeles Times reporter memorably put it:

"This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane."

However, rather than justifying or enabling acts of violence, Sapolsky believes his deterministic view of human choices could actually make society better:

"The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over. We've got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn't there."

Sapolsky's argument isn't new. It is, in fact, the standard, reductive version of metaphysical naturalism, which teaches that all phenomena have material causes. Since these causes are themselves materially caused, nature is a closed system of dominoes. In this theory, an observer with perfect knowledge of the initial conditions of the universe could accurately predict every event that followed, right down to the choices individuals make about what to eat, where to live, who to love, what to believe, and even whether to kill.

The problem, which philosophers and writers over the years have pointed out, is that if everything is determined and humans do not have a free will, that would include the belief in metaphysical naturalism and every part of the thought process that led to it. Assuming this view, the reason Sapolsky believes what he does has nothing to do with what he has learned in his research or whether it's true. Instead, it is the predetermined result of a long process of material causes stretching back to the Big Bang. His book, his arguments, and his belief that they'll somehow make the world a better place are not meaningful. They're just the latest dominoes to have fallen, and it could never have been otherwise.

In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis critiqued this brand of reductive naturalism:

"[N]o account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished."

To his credit, Sapolsky seems aware of this absurdity but just accepts it: "It is logically indefensible, ludicrous, meaningless to believe that something 'good' can happen to a machine," he admits. "Nonetheless, I am certain that it is good if people feel less pain and more happiness."

But why is it good for people to be happier or have less pain if everything is determined? Why is it preferable to live in a society marked by peace and safety, instead of chaos and violence? And why appeal to people to make a meaningful choice between these options when their choice is already determined and meaningless?

Chesterton's answer to such small, reductive worldviews was to confront them with the immensity of the real world and human experience, and to notice how they do more explaining away than explaining.

We know our choices are not mere results of physical processes, and that they have a deep moral significance. We know it so deeply that even those trying to convince us we're mere machines must contradict themselves by treating some choices, such as their choice to write books to convince readers, as if they mean something.

In the very act of denying our moral responsibility in a moral universe, we must, in some sense, act as if meaning exists. It's a crazy effort to deny meaning, but that doesn't stop even geniuses from trying it. All the more evidence of our profound freedom, and of our ability to abuse it.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. 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

Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, announces she's now a former atheist and exploring Christianity. Also, the growth of homeschooling continues in the US. John and Maria look at some of the reasons why.

- Recommendations -

Bari Weiss: You Are the Last Line of Defense

Why I am now a Christian

HaTikva Project

Segment 1: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Converts

There Is No 'Second America' If This One Fails

Segment 2: Homeschool Growth

Experiencing God

Colson Educators

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

Last month, National Public Radio joined the growing fearmongering and dogpiling aimed at the Alliance Defending Freedom. The Fresh Air interview was hosted by Terry Gross and featured David Kirkpatrick, who authored an extensive expose about the religious freedom group in The New Yorker.

The article and the interview painted ADF as being against women's rights and LGBTQ equality, as if there were no progressive push to curb the freedom of speech or to standardize mail-order chemical abortions or to mainstream radical gender ideology for second graders.

In the article, Kirkpatrick sounded as alarmist as Terry Gross, implying that somehow ADF is part of the aggressive religious plot to take over America. In the interview, he was calm and thoughtful, reigning in her soft-spoken hysteria. In the end, it's a lesson in just how important our worldviews are. They make all the difference in what we see, what we conclude is wrong with the world, and how the world can be made better.

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

In their 2021 book The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession, Duke University professor of medical humanities Farr Curlin and philosophy professor Christopher Tollefsen argued that the Western approach to healthcare has shifted in recent decades from the pursuit of objective wellbeing to a consumer industry. In the process, doctors are increasingly seen as "service providers" whose main job is to help patients do whatever they want with their bodies. Just two years later, their analysis seems spot on.

For example, the healthy functioning of a woman's body during pregnancy is often treated and even labeled a "disease." Same-sex couples, who have chosen inherently sterile sexual unions, sue and then lobby legislatures to redefine their inability to procreate as "infertility." They act as if there's no difference between a man and woman unable to conceive due to some medical situation and a man and a man unable to conceive due to, well, reality.

This shift–from medicine as the pursuit of health to medicine as confirmation of our self-expression–is most evident in the transgender movement. In Virginia, a man who claims to be a woman is suing a county for placing him in the men's jail. He argues that prison officials should be legally bound to accommodate his gender dysphoria under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA was designed to address conditions in which a person was injured or disabled. In this case, a fully functioning and capable person is claiming "disability" because his local prison does not accommodate his individual wishes. The very existence of so-called "transgender medicine" is, in fact, a case in point. Hindering the body's natural development or cutting off healthy body parts in service of an inner sense of self is an abject perversion of medicine as a "healing profession."

According to Curlin and Tollefsen, the way back to a healthy (no pun intended) healthcare system is by recovering the definition of health as "an objective bodily norm for all living organisms."

"[L]iving beings have characteristic bodily activities and tendencies, and these activities and tendencies determine what is appropriate—the norm—for them in regard to the well-working of their organic bodies."

Though that seems obvious enough, restoring this understanding of health requires that the "well-working of our organic bodies" is understood to be a moral good:

"If health either is not real or is not good, patients have no intrinsic reason to choose health rather than other desired states; nor do physicians have any intrinsic reason to make health central to their practice and profession."

Of course, despite a great deal of moral confusion infecting medicine, an objective understanding of "health" remains uncontroversial in many areas. Physical pain is real. Hunger is real. Fatigue is real. Currently no one is demanding disability pay because they have to sleep at regular intervals when they'd rather not.

In the wake of the sexual revolution, doubts about the objectivity and goodness of health are aimed mostly at the makeup and function of our bodies that have to do with sex. That's not surprising given that the West has spent decades steeped in the idea that sexual activity can be disconnected from morality.

Once the normal and healthy functioning of human bodies are considered "oppressive" and "optional," healthcare is reduced to a highly consequential and potentially fatal art project. Gone from the equation are all givens, all purpose, and all moral limitations. If something can be done, and someone wants it to be done, then it should be done.

The biblical narrative, in contrast, describes human beings (and therefore human bodies) as created by God with purpose. This purpose implies the kinds of physical and moral norms that can undergird a stable understanding of health. The fall explains why things aren't as they were created to be, undergirding a helpful and objective understanding of "sickness" and disability.

The redemption provided in Jesus Christ aims at the restoration of God's creation, which means healing is possible. Thus, the work of medicine is a redemptive activity, with ethical possibility and moral boundaries. Medicine was built on this framework of reality and, without it, could devolve into a moral chaos, where up is confused with down, right with wrong, and health with "whatever we want." Canada's so-called "Medical Assistance in Dying" program is the most obvious case in point. There's nothing about the program that is medical, or assistance, or about dying. Rather, it's a harm done to unburden us of having to care by killing the one who needs it.

In a more rational age, MAiD would be seen as the horrifying evil it is. But in ours, evil and destruction are seen as good. This is how a society runs toward death: not only by denying God but by denying the obvious realities of the world He created.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.

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

The lawsuit against a member of the Finnish Parliament accused of violating a law prohibiting "War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity," has been dismissed. Päivi Räsänen's crime was quoting Bible verses in support of traditional understandings of human nature and sexuality.

According to a state prosecutor, the problem wasn't citing the Bible, but "Räsänen's interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that (were) criminal." In other words, what Christians have always believed ...

In an Alliance Defending Freedom International press release, Räsänen said:

"It isn't a crime to tweet a Bible verse, or to engage in public discourse with a Christian perspective. The attempts made to prosecute me for expressing my beliefs have resulted in an immensely trying four years, but my hope is that the result will stand as a key precedent to protect the human right to free speech. I sincerely hope other innocent people will be spared the same ordeal for simply voicing their convictions."

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

Last month, 20-year-old Isabelle Ayala filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, accusing the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) of civil conspiracy, fraud, and medical malpractice. Ayala claims to have been pressured by AAP-affiliated doctors into so-called "gender-affirming care" as a minor.

Like the many young girls who were subjected to experimental gender "transition" therapies, Ayala's story begins with significant emotional and mental distress during her adolescence. Sexually assaulted at age seven, she experienced early-onset puberty at age eight. Deeply uncomfortable in her own body, she began, at age 11, to cut herself. Around the same time, she was introduced to the concept of transgenderism through online social media platforms like Instagram, Tumblr, and Kik. At age 13, Ayala's parents separated, and she was moved from Florida to Rhode Island. By age 14, she became convinced that she had been born in the wrong body and that "transitioning" to living as a man was the only way to solve her problems.

Ayala's story is tragic and, tragically, not unique. The number of young women claiming transgender identities has increased dramatically in recent years and now outnumbers the young men with gender confusion (an increase of 5,000% at the Tavistock Clinic in the U.K.). The factors driving the spike in confusion among young women include childhood trauma, social contagion, and social media, or some combination of the three.

However, rather than treating the underlying factors and distress contributing to her dysphoria, Ayala's pediatricians treated their effects as normal. They ignored her family's history of anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and depression, as well as Ayala's formal diagnoses of ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Her pediatricians encouraged and facilitated her confusion with ideological blinders that treated what was, in reality, a pseudo-medical fad as if it would help a vulnerable young woman.

Desperate to help their daughter, Ayala's parents trusted these medical professionals who, while feigning objectivity, were, in fact, captured by gender ideology. Though her parents initially sought out interventions that were "totally reversible," her pediatricians claimed "cross-sex hormonal treatment" was the best option and accepted treatment for her distress and gender dysphoria. In an all-too-common bit of parental manipulation, these doctors asked Ayala's parents whether they would "prefer a dead daughter or a living son."

Doctors who say this are wrong. So-called "transition" treatments do not address core mental health problems, leave patients with additional, irreversible medical conditions, and fail to address the social factors driving the dramatic increase in body dysphoria among young women. Research suggests that after an initial "honeymoon" period in which patients embrace their new "identities" and harmed bodies, they remain at a disproportionate risk for serious mental illness and suicide. Chemical "transition" treatments are also not "fully reversible" as is often promised. Women who take testosterone experience irreversible masculinizing effects, such as deeper voices and facial hair, and commonly infertility.

Still, after just a few appointments, Ayala was placed on a rapidly increasing dosage of testosterone. However, contrary to what these doctors predicted, Ayala experienced no significant decrease in depression despite an accompanying prescription of antidepressants. Within six months, Ayala was hospitalized for a panic attack. Within eight months, she was hospitalized again following a suicide attempt. With no signs that her depression was abating, her doctors prescribed higher doses of antidepressants, while continuing to inject her with cross-sex hormones.

The following year, Ayala moved back to Florida. Initially, she continued to take testosterone. But, a year after moving, "she distanced from the control and influence" of the doctors who ushered her down this road of gender "transition." Eventually, she quit taking cross-sex hormones and "gradually grew out of her gender dysphoria," realizing that her distress over her identity as a female was the result of traumatic childhood experiences. Her reversal reflects the majority of adolescents who experience gender dysphoria. Research suggests that between 88% to 98% of young adults reconcile to their biological sex if allowed to go through puberty.

Thankfully, Ayala's story isn't finished. If successful, this lawsuit could protect many, many minors from these horrific, experimental chemical and surgical interventions. The many medical professionals who perpetrated this harm would be held accountable and, in the future, forced to do their job helping rather than harming. Young women like Ayala need to know that their hearts, minds, and bodies can find healing from their trauma and can learn to accept who they are as a gift of God.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert.

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

In roughly five months, it will be legal in Canada for doctors to kill patients struggling with mental illness or drug addiction who choose the country's so-called "Medical Assistance in Dying" program. Last year, 13,241 Canadians died by MAiD.

Supporters of MAiD for people with drug addiction promise that safeguards will be put in place, such as requiring multiple attempts at substance abuse treatment first. MAiD became legal for Canadians facing "imminent" natural death in 2016, and the "limits" set then have eroded every year since.

The evil of MAiD isn't just the false promises. It's the propaganda of redefining every word of the euphemism. What's being offered isn't medical, it isn't assistance, and it's not medical assistance as someone is dying. It's aiding and abetting someone to die—more and more people, in fact, who aren't terminal or even untreatable, but who are all valuable image bearers of God.

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