Breakpoint

Fourteen-year-old Sage Blair had already been through a lot by the time she was legally adopted by her grandparents. When she entered high school, she began to experiment, as many of her friends were, with her "gender identity." All the while, the school deliberately withheld information from her adoptive parents. Sage was encouraged to adopt the name "Draco," claim male pronouns, and use the boys' bathroom. Only after Sage was physically assaulted by a group of boys in the bathroom did her parents find out what was happening.

Sage ran away. After connecting with an online "friend," she was drugged, trafficked, and sexually exploited. Nine days later, she was located by the FBI in Baltimore.

Testifying before a House subcommittee in Virginia, Michele Blair remembered the drive to pick up her daughter, only to find out that she and her husband had been summoned before a Maryland judge for their refusing to support their daughter's transition.

"They didn't even tell Sage that we came for her. … We finally enter the courtroom, and Sage appears on a huge Zoom screen from a prison cell. She looks tiny and broken, and I cry out, 'I love you, Sage!' Sage responds, 'I love you too, Nana!'"

Sage's state-appointed attorney rebuked Michele, saying "She is he, and his name is Draco, not Sage." The judge then accused the Blairs of emotional and physical abuse, though, in Michele's words,

"We just learned she claim[ed] to be trans and were willing to use any name and pronouns to bring her home. My husband was so tearful, he kept forgetting the new pronouns. So, the judge had the bailiff remove him from the courtroom.

I was pleading for my child to be returned and treated for her unspeakable trauma. Judge Kershaw told me if I used the word trauma again, he would throw me out too."

Judge Kershaw withheld custody from Sage's parents for over two months. During that time, Sage was transferred to a state facility for boys where, again, she was sexually abused. She ran away again and, once again, became a victim of human trafficking. When she resurfaced months later, in Texas, she was returned to Virginia where she spent more months in a court-appointed mental health clinic. The counselors at this center pushed her toward a double mastectomy as a solution for her mental health issues.

Nearly a year after the ordeal began, Sage was allowed to come home. Her parents were vindicated after a months-long state inquiry concluded that there was no evidence of abuse on their part. For Sage, however, the damage was done. Now with the loving support of her parents and having desisted from her trans identity, she still suffers from severe anxiety, panic attacks, and medical issues resulting from all she has suffered.

The most damning part of Sage's story is how tragically predictable all of it was once the state chose to ignore decades of research, the entire weight of human experience, common sense, and the rights of parents to their children. In no way should it be said that Sage "fell through the cracks." When dealing with ideologies that deny reality, failures are features, not glitches.

Still, Sage's example is about as plain as any of how trans ideology destroys our most essential relationships: of a child to her body, of a child to her parents, of a family to the wider community, of a judge to justice, of citizens to state authorities. When legal authorities embrace bad ideas, the consequences are all the more devastating for the victims.

For Christians exhausted by the "culture war," unsure of whether we engage in politics, and wishing only to "stay in our lane" of proclaiming the Gospel, Sage's story speaks. Every generation of Christians who have faced conflict within a pagan cultural context has had to protect children. Our pagan moment is no different.

We will answer before God about whether we remained silent or dared to speak on behalf of children like Sage and parents who face incredible opposition like hers did. May we be known for our love, expressed by a courage that challenges evils like Sage faced, until they are a thing of the past.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander.

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

John and Maria talk about Tuesday's Breakpoint Forum on Christian Nationalism and the latest examples of America turning its back on Christian refugees.

- Recommendations -

Colson Center National Conference 2024 in Arlington, TX!

Section 1 - Breakpoint's Forum on Christian Nationalism

Breakpoint Forum: Unmasking Christian Nationalism

Section 2 - America's Refugee Policy

"German Homeschoolers Face Deportation After 15 Years in the U.S."

"Admit Christian Refugees"

"Closed Doors: Persecuted Christians and the U.S. Refugee Resettlement and Asylum Processes"

"Help Armenian Christian Refugees as they Flee Nagorno-Karabakh"

Section 3 - Stories of the Week

"What Does it Mean to have a Courageous Faith?"

"Tolkien, Eliot, and the Power of Story"

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

In December 1938, British stockbroker Nicholas Winton canceled a ski vacation and instead traveled to Prague. There, as the German military began its occupation of Czechoslovakia, he worked with friends to save the lives of 669 Jewish children. When he returned to London, Winton raised money to purchase train tickets and passports, and cut through red tape so that the children could be placed in foster care once they reached Great Britain.

According to his daughter's account, Winton never knew what happened to the children and never believed he'd done something heroic ... until 1988, when Winton was invited to sit in the studio audience of the television show That's Life. On air, he learned that the people sitting around him were children he had saved, along with their children and grandchildren.

This January, a new biopic of Winton's efforts, titled One Life, will hit theaters, starring Anthony Hopkins. His story is a powerful reminder that faithfulness, not heroics, can change the destinies of thousands.

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

In September, most U.S. states released their public school "report cards." These reports are intended to evaluate for parents, community leaders, and policymakers the quality of education being offered across the state. By federal law, report cards must measure academic performance and graduation rates. Of course, these assessments are only helpful if they make sense. Many don't.

For example, Ohio's Department of Education, following a few other states, recently stopped using letter grades on its statewide school report cards. Among the reasons is that lawmakers thought that an "F" just sounded too harsh. Now, the Ohio school report card is based on a "star" system. However, like real stars that seem to float in midair, the star system is based on a made-up and confusing "point" system. According to the chart that "explains" the scores, 4.5 stars may be equal to 4.125 points but not lower than 3.625 points.

U.S. schools were struggling before the pandemic, and they haven't gotten much better. The White House recently sounded the alarm about the chronic absenteeism in public schools, something that skyrocketed during the pandemic and has not significantly improved since, and its strong correlation to worsening math and reading scores across the country. Only 32% of American fourth graders are considered "proficient" in reading.

Still, unless a problem is properly understood, it cannot be helpfully addressed. State report cards should be helpful in diagnosing the crises facing public education, but they aren't. In fact, they seem almost intentionally unhelpful. For example, last year's report card for Ohio rated almost 90% of school districts as "meeting state standards." However, the same report card, if you know where to click, reported that almost 40% of Ohio's third graders are not proficient in reading.

Ohio's school report card doesn't exactly evaluate student competencies in academic subjects at all. Three out of five stars instead marks (1) progress from the previous year's report card, (indicating that a terrible year was followed by a merely bad year), (2) a "closing the gap" for minority populations (which also could be an indication of an incremental gain rather than success), and (3) overall graduation rates, which includes "joining the military" or becoming an apprentice. In other words, not actually passing required exams.

Partly to blame is a shift in how we think about education across the board; a shift that trickled down from institutions of higher learning to now infect public schools. As T.S. Eliot observed, every philosophy of education emerges from a philosophy of humanity. In our context, educators spend an inordinate amount of their preparation on educational theory and pedagogy. This has shifted the focus of their preparation from the what and the why to the how. The result is a generation of teachers fully up on the "social and emotional dynamics of learning" but who nevertheless fail to teach their second graders basic phonics.

Recently in First Things, R.R. Reno described these "depressing results" out of Baltimore City public schools:

"In a number of schools, not a single student was doing math at grade level. In the system overall, only 7 percent of third through eighth graders were proficient. Meanwhile, at the July convention of the National Education Association, delegates committed the organization to working against legislation that limits LGBT propaganda in school. The kids can't do long division, but rest assured, they're fully catechized in the finer points of sexual liberation, learning to say 'birthing parent' and 'non-birthing parent' rather than 'mother' and 'father.'"

Of course, there are many admirable teachers in both public and private schools across America, teachers who are concerned about what matters most and who are skilled at passing this on to the next generation. What we're talking about here is a systematic problem, a crisis in public education that runs deep. Obscuring the problem to protect institutions whose administrators view an "F" as sounding too harsh won't help.

Rather, education will need to be rethought at a worldview level. If human beings are made in the image of God, then to know is to know the mind of the Creator. From this solid ground, ancient Christians gave the world the concept of universal education. If God has revealed Himself and wants to be known, and not just by the elite or the rich or the clergy, real knowledge is possible. And kids should be treated as knowers, not as social experiments, mini political activists, or trusted authorities on everything from gender to climate change.

The White House's press release on chronic absenteeism ended with the assertion that, "the road to recovery runs through the classroom." Obviously, kids will need to show up if they are to learn, but what happens when they do show up matters more. Specifically, the what and the why, not just the where and the how.

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

The Christian Post recently reported that the Bank of America closed the accounts of Indigenous Advance Ministries, a Christian nonprofit whose goal is discipleship and business training for young Ugandans. The bank denies closing the accounts based on the ministry's religious beliefs, claiming it instead closed them because of the kind of debt-collection business it has in Uganda.

Still, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco points out that, under an Obama-era policy, many large banks have leveraged risk tolerance policies to "box out disfavored but legal business operations." Often, that means conservative and Christian groups.

There are unknowns involved in this case, but debanking is a very real threat to religious organizations. There are too many examples for all of them to be coincidences. Some institutions will even refuse to allow charitable gifts to be made to some groups through a donor-advised fund.

Consider where you bank, and how those institutions treat Christian organizations, churches, mission groups, and nonprofits. There are other options.

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

Attempt to instruct a group of 12-year-old kids about the importance of duty, honor, perseverance, and friendship by means of a lecture, and the most likely result will be glazed eyes and tuned-out ears. If instead of a lecture, however, the lesson began with, "There once was a tiny creature called a Hobbit, whose name was Frodo. He had hairy feet and a magic ring, and whenever he put that ring on his finger, he'd disappear. But each time he put the ring on, the Ring exercised a dark power over him and attracted the attention of the Dark Lord Sauron."

That story, the plot of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, is more likely to capture the attention and the imagination of kids, as it has tens of millions before them. And, along the way, they'd learn about duty, honor, perseverance, and friendship. This is the power of great stories.

The best stories are not merely well told, they also wrestle with ultimate ideas. Tolkien remains popular today because his stories stand the test of time. They stand the test of time because they engage with us at the deepest levels of the human condition.

More than 2,000 years ago, Damon of Athens wrote, "Give me the songs of a people, and I care not who writes its laws." Christian musician and novelist Andrew Peterson has said, "If you want someone to hear the truth, you should tell them the truth. But if you want someone to LOVE the truth, you should tell them a story."

The power of storytelling should come as no surprise to Christians. After all, Jesus told lots of stories. So have Christians throughout history.

Tolkien and T.S. Eliot were two writers from the last century who exemplify the importance of stories. Because of the success of the Lord of the Rings films, Tolkien is better known today than Eliot, but Eliot stands shoulder to shoulder with Tolkien in terms of literary output and genius. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men," concludes with these better known, haunting lines: "This is the way the world ends / not with a bang but a whimper." Eliot's melancholy poem "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," which is still read by most college students, captures the despair of modern man facing this broken world without God. In many ways, Eliot was that modern man, isolated, spiritually lost, despairing.

A decade or so after he wrote "Prufrock," Eliot's life and art was transformed when he converted to Christ. He went on to write magnificent religious poetry, such as "Ash Wednesday" and The Four Quartets. For a time, his work even crossed over into pop culture. For example, his book of whimsical verse, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, became the smash-hit Broadway musical Cats.

Chuck Colson often said that "politics is downstream from culture." That isn't always the case, but it often is. This is why great storytellers and poets like Tolkien and Eliot continue to have such an impact on hearts and minds. Their work goes on to inspire.

In fact, a simple way Christians can impact culture is by simply sharing good stories with those around us. We may not be a Tolkien or an Eliot, but we can know and recommend their works. And we can tell the real-life stories of Christian heroes like William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of the incredible conversions of St. Augustine and Chuck Colson, and of the work of the Christian heroes of today who love God and neighbor by feeding the hungry and clothing the naked while enduring hardships and persecution.

We should share these stories because like all good stories do, they ultimately point hearts and imaginations to the Greatest Story of All.

This Breakpoint was originally published 1.3.17.

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

Abortion advocates are often dismissive on the question of fetal pain, but a recent article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics brought together pro-abortion and pro-life experts to clarify what we know about what the preborn feel:

"We consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self-reflection, is morally significant. We believe that fetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally."

According to research, preborn babies as early as 7.5 weeks will move to avoid unpleasant sensations, emit stress hormones, and experience an increase in heart rate and cerebral blood flow. As bioethicist Dr. Bridget Thrill concluded, "Denial of fetal pain capacity beginning in the first trimester, potentially as early as 8–12 weeks gestation, is no longer tenable."

Babies have also been observed attempting to escape procedures designed to kill them. We always should have known better, but we can't say we don't know anymore.

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

Not long ago, most non-Christians treated pornography as a harmless expression of sexual freedom. For half a century, Hugh Hefner's Playboy philosophy dominated, teaching people to wink at porn use. Children discovering a relative's "stash" became a popular trope in TV and film and was played off for laughs.

In the digital age, distribution and access became easier and instant, and the content grew darker. Finally, more people are admitting that, though it was never harmless, this content now poses a life-altering danger to those who stumble across it—especially children.

In 2021, singer-songwriter Billie Eilish confessed to being one of those children harmed by pornography. In an interview, Eilish described her first encounter at age 11: "I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn," she said. The things she saw on screen gave her nightmares and led to her "not saying no" to things she should have refused in her own relationships.

Eilish was hardly a voice crying in the wilderness. In the wake of our collective reckoning with abuse and addiction, it has become clear that most children are introduced to sex through pornography, and the porn they're encountering is like nothing previous generations knew. Even if you don't count what is being forced on them in elementary school classrooms, what they are being exposed to is extreme, degrading, and, in many cases, criminal.

For example, mainstream, left-leaning publications such as The Atlantic and The New York Times have recently featured essays grappling with the explosion of online pornography featuring children, and how devilishly difficult it is to separate this illegal content from what many view as the acceptable, consensual kind. Those who still attempt to tame or domesticate pornography need to wake up to the devastation it has inflicted on kids and teens. A good start would be to listen to what children and teens have to say about it.

Recently, theater director Abbey Wright at The Guardian, wrote about her project discussing this topic with 10,000 children and young adults. These kids, some as young as six, described a reality nothing like that one scene in Home Alone.

"I was exposed to porn before I'd had a proper sexual experience," one young man said. "[I]t is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You see something, and you re-enact it. That's what I like because that's what I did. That's what I did because that's what I saw."

The average age at which kids are first exposed to pornography is now 12, and there are plenty of outliers. According to Wright, parents can be naïve about this fact: "Whenever I mention to the parent of a child that age that many six-year-olds have seen pornography, they say: 'Oh, my child hasn't.'" In what might be the most haunting line of the article, one teenager simply scoffed at that assumption: "If you put a phone in a child's hand, you are putting porn in a child's hand."

Girls and young women described how warped their expectations and the expectations of boys about what's normal in a relationship are because of this content. "Young women told us about the pressure they felt from pornography. ... 'These porn women do it, so why won't you?'"

A young man from London summed it up this way, "I think pornography is a bit soul-sucking. …People can't do anything else. I don't want to get to a point where I feel like I'm not me any more."

"Destroyed my brain," "soul-sucking," "I'm not me any more." Are we listening?

Porn in any form is a radical distortion of God's design for human relationships, especially in how we are to treat each other. It's an attempt to force the transcendent into an immanent box and to pretend that something God intended as meaningful can be made meaningless.

It cannot. Any time something sacred is mocked and the image of God in all involved is denied, there will be victims. Now, a generation of young people are voicing sorrow and regret because of what we defended as "freedom" and "harmless fun."

This was true when Hefner mainstreamed porn in the 1950s. It is even more true today. The internet and smartphones have merely cultivated this hideousness for what it is. We must keep unsupervised devices out of unsupervised young hands. Do it.

As a society, we must end this systematic assault on young eyes. Now that so many seem to be finally "getting it," maybe the opportunity is here. To learn how you can join that cause, check out the terrific work of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.

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

According to Cara Buckley with The New York Times, a growing number of "tiny forests" are appearing across urban areas in the U.S.

In addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, reducing water runoff, and providing homes for wildlife, "[T]iny forests can help lower temperatures in places where pavement, buildings and concrete surfaces absorb and retain heat from the sun."

The concept was pioneered by Japanese ecologist Akira Miyawaki and suggests that people are the best stewards of nature. What the world needs is not some return to vast, unspoiled "wilderness" by massively reducing the human population, as so many suggest. Instead, we need more of this: creating space for people to use their ingenuity, resources, and innovation to increase creation's fruitfulness.

Our screens and concrete jungles disconnect us from God's creation, while bad ideas about "nature" and the environment treat humans as its biggest problem. But humans were created to care for the rest of creation. In fact, only humans can.

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

Given our need for courage, this year, we've centered the entire Colson Center National Conference around the theme of Courageous Faith. Please plan by saving the date and registering today. The conference is May 30-June 2 at the Loews Hotel in Arlington, Texas. To learn more, go to colsonconference.org.

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In 2020, January Littlejohn's daughter came home confused about her sexual identity after three of her close friends at school began identifying as transgender. Littlejohn, herself a licensed mental health counselor, did her best to support her daughter, opening the door to conversation and seeking out a mental health counselor. But as she relates, the real surprise came later:

"When school started, my daughter got into the car and said, "Mom, I had a meeting today at school and they asked me which restroom I wanted to use." … What we learned that the school had done was socially transitioned our daughter without our notification or consent. And then they did something particularly nefarious: They asked our daughter what name they should call her when speaking to her parents, and that was to effectively deceive parents that these gender support transition plans had ever taken place."

Along with thousands of parents across the U.S. and Europe, Littlejohn found herself in a battle for her child's life. Parents of kids struggling with gender dysphoria are often completely alone, braving attacks from schools, counselors, medical professionals, and other parents. They even face the possibility of being legally separated from their kids unless they go along. Too many acquiesce. But Littlejohn chose a different path. In her words,

"We know and love our children more than anyone in the world. We would die for our children 10 times over. So, the school has no right to then make critical decisions with minor children without parental involvement."

In 2021, Littlejohn and her husband filed a lawsuit against her county's school board for encouraging their daughter's transition without parental permission. She is now a parental advocate at Do No Harm, a nonprofit that aims to return healthcare to evidence-based practices and medicine to its original purpose of healing, ensuring to not isolate parents in the process. You can listen to her full story on their website, donoharmmedicine.org.

This story is just one of many reminders of the kind of courage Christians will need. As C.S. Lewis said, "Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality." I think we've hit a cultural moment where many of us will face that testing point at a new level. It's where the rubber hits the road in finding out where our faith really is. Given our need for courage, this year, we've centered the entire Colson Center National Conference around the theme of Courageous Faith.

Too many Christians have a privatized understanding of faith, believing it is enough to keep our heads down and avoid controversy at all costs. In some circles, controversy itself is a sign that we're doing something wrong. But this is not the life or kind of opposition that Jesus warned us about.

We need to remember that doing the right thing is seldom popular and never easy. From William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect to Egyptian Coptic martyrs kneeling on a Libyan beach, the commitment to a Gospel faith that impacts every part of life is going to cost us something. Courage is the commitment to both speak and live the truth about God, the world, people, and His plan for redemption—no matter what the consequences are for us. Without it, we'll end up with a shriveled and ineffective faith, one that has no power to impact the wider world.

Most importantly, courage doesn't just happen. Courage is a virtue, and virtues have to be cultivated. Our next annual conference is all about what it takes to cultivate courage. You'll be connected with likeminded believers who, just like you, are committed to living out their faith courageously in our time and place. Together, we can step into that same trajectory as that list of heroes in the book of Hebrews. We will be able to, as the author of Hebrews describes, spur one another on to "love and good works."

The lineup of speakers this year shows the same courage in the public square. From palliative care physician Dr. Margaret Cottle to apologist Sean McDowell to U.K. Anglican deacon Father Calvin Robinson, each of these individuals has demonstrated living out their faith in the public square while still treating others with decency and respect.

We will host an optional Worldview Intensive Thursday night on courageous citizenship, an important emphasis for the coming election year. On Saturday night, we'll present the 2024 Wilberforce Award to someone who exemplifies the same courage, principles, and passion exemplified by the great William Wilberforce.

Please plan by saving the date and registering today. The conference is May 30-June 2 at the Loews Hotel in Arlington, Texas. To learn more, go to colsonconference.org.

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