Breakpoint

The last few years have felt like a real-life version of the popular board game "Pandemic," in which players cooperate to contain the spread of infectious, often imaginary diseases. The latest disease to grab real-world headlines sports a name that sounds like it came straight out of this board game: monkeypox. Our nation's response to this new outbreak has been far from a winning strategy, mainly because some public health officials have been more focused on sexual politics than protecting public health.

Monkeypox is rarely fatal but reportedly excruciating. It is "overwhelmingly" transmitted by sexual contact between men. According to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine and reported by NBC News, 95% of monkeypox cases have so far occurred in the "gay community," and evidence strongly suggests that behaviors distinctive to that community are primarily responsible for spreading the virus.

The public health response to monkeypox, which many are now describing as a complete disaster, has been largely shaped by officials who are unwilling to offend gay rights activists. Despite more than 6,000 cases reported nationwide, a figure The New York Times says is probably low, major cities like New York and San Francisco have hesitated to make clear exactly how the disease spreads, or to urge those primarily at risk to stop spreading it.

In June, as The Washington Post described, officials in San Francisco stood by as "thousands of gay men clad in leather, latex—and often much less—descended on the city for an annual kink and fetish festival.'" According to the Post,

"Even after the city had just declared the monkeypox outbreak striking its gay community a health emergency—one day after the World Health Organization urged men to sleep with fewer men to reduce transmission—San Francisco public health officials made no attempt to rein in festivities or warn attendees to have less sex."

Officials in New York, Chicago, and other metro areas were also "avoiding calls for sexual restraint." Why? Well because they were "wary of further stigmatizing same-sex intimacy" and wanted to limit "government intrusion into the bedroom."

"Officials and activists who spent decades on the front lines of the battle against HIV/AIDS," the Post article continued, "say they have learned it is futile to tell people to have less sex."

There has, at least, been some pushback to this suicidal public health strategy. Gay sex columnist and polyamory advocate Dan Savage slammed cities that refused to tell the truth, saying "It was devaluing gay men's lives and health" not to warn them. And writing in The Atlantic this month, Jim Downs argued that it's not homophobia to warn gay men to be careful: "Public-health officials don't need to tiptoe around how monkeypox is currently being transmitted."

Along with an incompetent rollout of vaccines and medications, which The New York Times' Daily podcast blamed for the crisis, these muted warnings may prove to be too little, too late in preventing more patients from suffering this painful and humiliating illness. Against the backdrop of two years of COVID lockdowns, mask mandates, mandatory quarantines, and "two weeks to stop the spread," the display of political priorities is breathtakingly hypocritical.

While even the World Health Organization urges gay men to temporarily curb their lifestyle for the sake of safety, many American officials practically begged for an outbreak, afraid to place any limits on the expression of politically favored sexual identities. Doing so, they claim, threatens to revive the "stigma" and "homophobia" our culture has so successfully suppressed.

In an echo of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, the disease itself is treated as discriminatory, as if it's unfair of the monkeypox virus to target gay men. The solution, many seem to believe, is to let it tear through the gay population unchecked as if sexual tolerance and progressive attitudes can make up for bad public health policy.

In the end, all these sick men point to a sick worldview, one that would rather sacrifice people's wellbeing than treat them as moral agents capable of choice, whose actions have consequences. Monkeypox is only the latest damaging effect of this broken view of people and sex, but as long as our country is willing to play games with pandemics and people's lives, it won't be the last.

This month in The Atlantic, writer Kaitlyn Tiffany described a conflict with a friend over which Lorde album was best. A slammed door signaled the end of the relationship, and a text to Tiffany's boyfriend described her as "toxic."

"I had rarely heard [the word] used offline, and then only semi-ironically, or in regard to people who were objectively terrible," she wrote. "I had never had to consider whether it was a word that could be applied to me."

The story epitomizes the relational crises that face our culture. Of course, there are plenty of situations that require boundaries, distance, and healthy confrontation. But our culture-wide turn inward, which prioritizes one's own sense of self over everything else can escalate conflict quickly.

Next comes an accusation of "toxicity," which tends to lack specificity or meaning. Missing are three virtues: humility (an awareness that all is not centered on us), resilience (the courage to face challenges rather than avoid them), and forgiveness (the expression of grace for the good of the other).

Without these things, there's no way forward.

Perhaps the strongest antidote for optimism or for misplaced faith in our fellow man is watching the news. Of course, much of the media we consume is voyeuristic, so in a sort of supply-and-demand scenario, bad news makes headlines more than good news. At the same time, this is more than a problem of clickbait filling our newsfeeds. A series of events in recent years suggests that our cultural center cannot hold much longer.

Not decades but just a few days ago, prominent novelist Salman Rushdie was stabbed, not in some "shady" part of the world, but in public at a lecture in upstate New York. Also, dogs in San Francisco are becoming hooked on meth. Apparently, human excrement is so common in public areas, pets have learned where to go for a quick high from the residue of addicted residents. Radical ideologies continue to dominate headlines, which few outside of ivory towers had heard of until a few years ago. They are now compulsory at some schools. And, those who challenge the new orthodoxy are often ostracized from what is an increasingly impolite society. Healthcare now involves practices that, until yesterday, would've rightly been considered abuse, including children having otherwise healthy organs turned inside out.

Clearly, the state of our world is largely rotten. For some Christians, this indicates that the end is nigh. Particularly in the last century or so, many books and sermons have declared that we are living in the last days, so the best we can hope for is to go down fighting this increasingly fallen world.

It's easy to forget in all these headlines that things have been bad before, in some ways even worse than today. In that time and place, God called His people to keep the faith, commit to the tasks at hand, and steward the time they were given by remaining faithful. Sometimes they won against the forces of darkness and death. Sometimes they lost. Either way, their calling remained the same, and God's Kingdom marched on.

William Wilberforce was among those followers of Christ who faced down great obstacles. He deserves all of the recognition he receives as an archetype for faithful Christian engagement in the world. Eventually, because of his efforts, he won a long battle over the entrenched power of slavery in the British Empire, what he called one of the great aims that God had set before Him. But none of it happened in a day.

Wilberforce began his fight against human bondage in the late 1780s, but he did not see the fruit of his work for decades. The slave trade wasn't banned until 1807 across the British Empire and was not fully brought to an end until 1833, just days before he died. How often must he have wondered at his impossible task? How often did he consider giving up?

Closer to our own time and less well known is a story out of Russia. Detailed in a new book by Matthew Heise, The Gates of Hell: An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the Early Soviet Union tells of the trials of Lutheran Christians living under the newly founded Communist tyranny. The book is encouraging and heartbreaking at the same time. The constant determination of these Christians to be faithful to their Lord in the midst of some of the 20th century's most intense persecution is encouraging. Yet, by all earthly terms, their resistance absolutely failed. They fought to retain their freedom and their faith, but few managed to even retain their lives.

They had no way to know their story's end—that all were wiped out by atheist totalitarianism. Regardless, they were faithful to the end.

Our task is no different. We don't know if ours is a Wilberforce moment, when the enduring faithfulness of God's people standing athwart the tides of history will push this world back to reality. Or if this is a Russian Lutheran moment: We will lose our lives in our quest to be faithful. What we do know is that Christ has called us to this time and this place. As Gandalf said to Frodo, when he wondered why he should have to live in such times, being meant to be here and now "is a very encouraging thought."

So, whatever comes, great victories or the full evaporation of progress, our task is the same: faithfulness, not success.

In this special episode of Breakpoint This Week, John talks with theologian and professor Carl Trueman about the challenges that affect us in this cultural moment. They discuss how technological advances have placed a "burden of self-creation" on us, influencing transgenderism, transhumanism, and artificial intelligence but also the loss of meaning and cultural institutions like the family.

Christians are often accused of "forcing our faith on others." But the idea that we shouldn't do that comes from the Church.

Early Christians were persecuted because they refused to cater their faith to imperial power. Across Rome, people could worship whatever god(s) they wished, as long as their worship did not preclude the empire, the emperor, and the Roman gods.

When Constantine the Great granted toleration with the Edict of Milan in 313, a new level of freedom extended not only to Christians but, with a few restrictions for public order, to others as well. Even when Christianity became the "official" faith of the empire, pagan worship remained legal.

Of course, Christians have not always recognized religious freedom for others, but the fact remains, it came from the Church. This month, for a gift of any amount, join a Breakpoint online course called The Essential Church: Why the World (and Christians) Still Need the Body of Christ, featuring Drs. Timothy Padgett, Glenn Sunshine, and Peter Leithart as well as Collin Hansen. Go to colsoncenter.org/August

In June, a Google employee who claimed the company had created a sentient artificial intelligence bot was placed on administrative leave. Blake Lemoine, part of Google's Responsible AI ("artificial intelligence") program, had been interacting with a language AI known as "Language Model for Dialogue Applications," or LaMDA. When the algorithm began talking about rights and personhood, Lemoine decided his superiors and eventually the public needed to know. To him, it was clear the program had become "sentient," with the ability to feel, think, and experience life like a human.

Google denied the claim (which is exactly what they would do, isn't it?). "There was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it)," said a spokesperson. The Atlantic's Stephen Marche agreed: "The fact that LaMDA in particular has been the center of attention is, frankly, a little quaint…. Convincing chatbots are far from groundbreaking tech at this point."

True, but they are the plot of a thousand science fiction novels. So, the question remains, is a truly "sentient" AI even possible? How could code develop the capacity for feelings, experiences, or intentionality? Even if our best algorithms can one day perfectly mirror the behavior of people, would they be conscious?

How one answers such questions depends on one's anthropology. What are people? Are we merely "computers made of flesh?" Or is there something more to us than the sum of our parts, a true ghost in the machine? A true ghost in the shell?

These kinds of questions about humans and the things that humans make reflect what philosopher David Chalmers has called "the hard problem of consciousness." In every age, even if strictly material evidence for the soul remains elusive, people have sensed that personhood, willpower, and first-person subjective experiences mean something. Christians are among those who believe that we are more than the "stuff" of our bodies, though Christians, unlike others, would be quick to add, but not less. There is something to us and the world that goes beyond the physical because there is a non-material, eternal God behind it all.

Christians also hold that there are qualitative differences between people and algorithms, between life and non-living things like rocks and stars, between image bearers and other living creatures. Though much about sentience and consciousness remains a mystery, personhood rests on the solid metaphysical ground of a personal and powerful Creator.

Materialists have a much harder problem declaring such distinctions. By denying the existence of anything other than the physical "stuff" of the universe, they don't merely erase the substance of certain aspects of the human experience such as good, evil, purpose, and free will: There's no real grounding for thinking of a "person" as unique, different, or valuable.

According to philosopher Thomas Metzinger, for example, in a conversation with Sam Harris, none of us "ever was or had a self." Take brain surgery, Metzinger says. You peel back the skull and realize that there is only tissue, tissue made of the exact same components as everything else in the universe. Thus, he concludes, the concept of an individual "person" is meaningless, a purely linguistic construct designed to make sense of phenomena that aren't there.

That kind of straightforward claim, though shocking to most people, is consistent within a purely materialist worldview. What quickly becomes inconsistent are claims of ethical norms or proper authority in a world without "persons." In a world without a why or an ought, there's only is, which tends to be the prerogative of the powerful, a fact that Harris and Metzinger candidly acknowledge.

In a materialist world, any computational program could potentially become "sentient" simply by sufficiently mirroring (and even surpassing) human neurology. After all, in this worldview, there's no qualitative difference between people and robots, only degrees of complexity. This line of thinking, however, quickly collapses into dissonance. Are we really prepared to look at the ones and zeros of our computer programs the same way we look at a newborn baby? Are we prepared to extend human rights and privileges to our machines and programs?

In Marvel's 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron, lightning from Thor's hammer hits a synthetic body programmed with an AI algorithm. A new hero, Vision, comes to life and helps save the day. It's one of the more entertaining movie scenes to wrestle with questions of life and consciousness.

Even in the Marvel universe, no one would believe that a mere AI algorithm, even one designed by Tony Stark, could be sentient, no matter how sophisticated it was. In order to get to consciousness, there needed to be a "secret sauce," in this case lightning from a Nordic hammer or power from an Infinity Stone. In the same way, as stunning as advances in artificial intelligence are, a consciousness that is truly human requires a spark of the Divine.

The cultural crisis of loneliness is more acute than ever, partly due to factors like technology, and COVID-related protocols. And one researcher has identified another factor that should not be overlooked: isolation by choice.

Time spent talking to other people, Dr. Jeffrey A. Hall has argued, has declined steadily for nearly 30 years. What's behind this trend?

"Self-care regimes focus on cultivation of a mindful, inwardly focused life," he wrote. "There are increasing efforts to cut out other people in the name of removing toxicity. And all these tendencies are pushed forward by frictionless technologies that remove social obligations to leave home, talk to others and engage in our community."

In response, Hall suggests that we develop a "social regimen that trains our atrophied muscles, even if there is some short-term discomfort, and even if it means encountering people with disagreeable or uninteresting opinions." It doesn't sound complicated, but it won't be easy in a culture that rewards the opposite. There is simply no substitute for real relationships, with real people.

Though we tend to think that Europe is less "Christian" than the United States, in some ways, that's not true. Certainly, per capita, church attendance is lower throughout most of Europe than it is here, and religious Americans enjoy certain political freedoms that Europeans do not. However, on at least two major social issues, America has, for a while now, been more extreme than Europe.

In the case of abortion, the Supreme Court's recent decision in Dobbs reversed nearly 50 years in which Roe v. Wade kept states from passing meaningful abortion restrictions. States are now free to set their own rules on abortion and many are actually coming into line with the vast majority of European countries restricting abortion to the earliest weeks of pregnancy. America has long been a more progressive (and dangerous) place when it comes to the preborn.

Another issue in which America remains extreme and dangerously out of step with the rest of the Western world is childhood gender "transitions." This became more apparent last month when Britain's National Health Service closed its largest and most influential center for childhood gender "treatment."

Writing recently at Common Sense, Lisa Selin Davis chronicled the last days of the Tavistock clinic, which was shuttered after its "gender-affirming" treatment methods came under serious scrutiny. Thousands of children have been treated at Tavistock which, in the last 10 years, had seen a 4,000% increase in referrals for girls alone. The vast majority of younger patients were prescribed puberty blockers, drugs that are now known to cause brain swelling and vision loss.

During the clinic's heyday, numerous voices raised the alarm about its gung-ho approach to altering children's bodies. Mental healthcare employees like Sonia Appleby and Sue Evans, both of whom worked at the clinic, warned that vulnerable minors were being rushed through transition without efforts to properly discern other mental health issues they may have had. Keira Bell, a young woman who received treatment at Tavistock, won a lawsuit in 2020 that temporarily halted referrals for puberty-blockers in children under 16. Bell is just one of a rapidly growing community of "de-transitioners" who were fast-tracked through medical transitions only to regret them later.

For Tavistock, the final straw came when respected physician Dr. Hilary Cass concluded that the clinic's approach to gender dysphoria in minors had no convincing evidence to back its claims of effectiveness or safety. As she put it, there is "a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response."

Following her recommendation last month, the NHS permanently shut down the clinic. "In effect," wrote Davis, Britain has rebuked "the common American medical approach" of "gender affirming care…. There will be no more top-down, one-size-fits-all transitioning for kids with gender dysphoria in the UK."

And then last week, as The Times of London reported, around 1,000 families are expected to join a lawsuit filed against the Tavistock clinic for rushing their children into life-altering puberty blockers.

Other European countries are also pumping the brakes on these sexual experiments on children. Davis pointed to "uber-progressive" countries like Sweden and Finland that have pushed back "firmly and unapologetically" against such interventions. The American approach, on the other hand, is now "at odds with a growing consensus in the West to exercise extreme caution when it comes to transitioning young people."

In fact, despite absence of evidence for benefits and real evidence of harm, medical establishments in the U.S. and both state and federal government powers are doubling down on so-called "affirming" treatments, calling puberty blockers "safe and reversible." Groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics not only endorse chemical interventions but actively work to block state bans that would protect kids from them.

All critics of runaway gender ideology, but especially Christians, have an urgent duty to speak up against our nation's dangerous experiments on children. All who love to look to Europe as a model for progress need to pay close attention to Europe's reversal on childhood gender interventions. Together, we should consider that progress in this area means taking a big step (or several) back from the edge of the abyss.

The closing of Tavistock and the impending lawsuit are powerful reminders that there is nothing inevitable about the triumph of bad ideas. They can be challenged. They can even be toppled. Protecting their would-be victims is all the motivation needed. A quick glance across the pond should dispel us of our doom and gloom and inspire us to take a stand.

Pleas for tolerance and inclusion are often pretext for intolerance and exclusion. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. This is the Point.

"If you don't like gay marriage, don't get one." Remember that one? These days it ought to say, "If you don't like gay marriage, kiss your job goodbye."

At least that's what happened to U.K. mayoral candidate Maureen Martin last month. Martin published a campaign leaflet describing her views, including that "natural marriage between a man and a woman" is the "building block for a successful society, and the safest environment for raising children."

LGBTQ activists swiftly complained that this was "hate speech" and got Martin fired from her day job at a housing association. Notice, she said nothing about gay people or same-sex marriage. All she did was state fundamental truths about the importance of man-woman marriage to society—truths central to her Christian faith and shared by millions.

Still, like Martin, Christians must speak the truths that get us in trouble and show any way we can that God's idea of family is the best idea.

Far from being an otherworldly religion, Christianity teaches both the importance and goodness of life in this world. In fact, from Jesus' healing ministry to the work of modern missionary doctors, a consistent feature of the work of the Church in the world has been to care for the sick and needy, and not just point them to the life to come.

The early Church understood Jesus' ministry to be a paradigm for their own work. So, just as Jesus set believers free from their bondage to sin, early Christians purchased slaves specifically to free them. Whereas Jesus used miraculous power to heal people from physical effects of the Fall, Christians used more ordinary tools to care for the sick and disabled. These activities are not merely good deeds in themselves but serve to advance the Kingdom. Though the Gospel is a message and must be proclaimed, the early Church saw works of mercy and preaching the Gospel as two sides of the same coin.

The first major epidemic faced by the Church was the Antonine Plague (A.D. 166-189). In fear of their lives, the Romans threw the sick out of their homes to die in the streets. Galen, the most prominent physician of the age, knew he could neither heal its victims nor protect himself. So, he fled Rome to stay at his country estate.

Recognizing that all persons were made in the image of God and that Jesus came to make all things new, body and soul, many Christians ran the other direction. They fought the Fall by tending to the sick, at risk (and often at the cost) of their own lives.

Since even basic nursing care can make a significant difference during an epidemic, Christian action saved lives. Their courage and self-sacrifice contributed to the rapid growth of Christianity. For example, when Irenaeus arrived in Lyon from Asia Minor, there were very few Christians. By the time the plague ended, there were 200,000 believers in Lyon.

The Plague of Cyprian, which took place the following century, was named after the bishop of Carthage who documented the epidemic. Dionysius of Alexandria, also a bishop, described what happened this way:

At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treating unburied corpses as dirt...

But, he continued...

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ.

From the earliest centuries, Christians embraced the medical theories and practices of the day. Contrary to stereotypes, the early Church did not attribute illness to demons, though they did recognize demonization as a real phenomenon. The real difference between Christians and physicians of the day was the willingness to risk death in order to treat the sick, convinced that if they died it would only mean a transition to a better life. The physicians, on the other hand, fled.

Christians also founded the first hospitals in history. By the late fourth century, there were hospitals in both the eastern and western halves of the empire. By the Central Middle Ages, hospitals and leprosaria (leprosy hospitals) could be found throughout most of the Christian world. When universities began granting medical degrees during the period, church-affiliated institutions continued to provide much of the care.

By the 18th century, the medical field had become increasingly professionalized and separate from the clergy. Though monasteries still provided care for the poor and nursing was almost entirely in the hands of sisters and nuns, professional physicians increasingly handled medical issues for those who could afford to pay. Clergy attended to the dying and contributed to discussions of medical ethics but had few other responsibilities for the sick.

However, medicine was an integral part of the modern mission movement of the 19th century. Because Christianity has always affirmed the importance of the body, hospitals soon followed wherever missionaries went. This is another way the Church has been essential throughout history.

Many Christians and critics today are skeptical that the Church is essential or necessary in the modern world. It is. To learn how and why, please join the new online Breakpoint course The Essential Church: Why the World (and Christians) Still Need the Body of Christ. Hosted by Colson Center theologian-in-residence Dr. Timothy Padgett, the course will feature thought leaders Dr. Peter Leithart, Dr. Glenn Sunshine, and Collin Hansen. Go to colsoncenter.org/August.