Breakpoint

Since October 7, the world has seen a resurgence of antisemitism, open and raw. In America, this has come especially from institutions of higher education though also from secondary schools and at city council meetings in Oakland. In New York, highschoolers brandished signs that read "keep the world clean" with an image of a Star of David in a trash can.

If anything, the past few weeks should put an end to our decades-old illusion that history won't repeat itself. Looking back on the horrors of the Holocaust and the historic sickness of antisemitism, we asked questions like, "How could anyone, let alone an entire culture, be overtaken by Jew-hatred?" Many assumed that kind of evil could never happen again. We now know that assumption to be wrong.

According to University of Massachusetts professor of criminology Arlie Perliger, "The U.S. is currently experiencing one of the most significant waves of antisemitism that it has ever seen." This wave predates the October 7 massacre that initiated the war between Israel and Hamas. In 2022, "[i]ncidents of harassment rose 29 percent compared to 2021; acts of vandalism surged 51 percent; and physical assaults jumped 26 percent" to an average of 10 reported incidents a day. The week after Hamas terrorists attacked Israeli civilians, antisemitic incidents tripled compared to the same week in 2022.

Even among historically high immigration numbers in those countries, the immediate plight of Palestinians in the Middle East can hardly explain attacks in Europe, Russia, Africa, and America. This contemporary crisis is the latest chapter of a hatred that goes back centuries, even millennia. Today, what's often called the world's "oldest hatred" is found at both ends of the political spectrum. We certainly should not overlook the power of envy. Setting aside the irrational claims about Jewish wealth over the centuries, a simple glance at Nobel Prize winners displays the cultivating power of Jewish culture.

While envy might explain some of the insanity, there's more to it. No other groups have faced so many attempts at eradication by so many: Persians, Romans, Crusaders, Nazis, and Islamists. How did the Jewish people survive when history is filled with tribes, nations, and peoples that endured for a time, only to disappear, some with barely a trace of evidence that they'd ever existed? The Jews were already an ancient people by the time of ancient Rome. Yet they remain, though what was considered at the time to be an eternal empire is now a relic.

A Christian worldview offers additional resources by which to understand historical developments. Beyond sociological and anthropological realities are unseen ones. Whatever one's views of the end times, the Jewish people embody the promises of God to redeem His world and destroy the works of the devil. They are a painful reminder to Satan that his spoiling efforts to mar God's good creation will inevitably fail in the end, and that he will be defeated. The prince of darkness can never win his fight with heaven, but in defiant desperation, he incites people to commit evil and inflict pain, especially on those through whom God works His redemption.

The Jews are also a tangible reminder that humanity's story is not ultimately a tragedy. They are a link to the apostles and the prophets, to King David and the deliverance from bondage in Egypt. Even when rejecting the Messiah that fulfills God's promise to them, they're a reminder to the world that God wins.

Especially as we approach Advent, the continued existence of the Jews is a powerful witness of God's faithfulness to His world and to His promises. These promises, given in Eden to our first parents and reaffirmed in Revelation to the saints, declare that He is making all things new, and that nothing, even the insatiable hatred of hell itself, can stop His restoration of all things.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett.

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

When it comes to public controversies, a handful of phrases have become de facto "conversation stoppers." One of these is "scientists say ..."

Well, last year, a quantum physicist named John F. Clauser won the Nobel Prize. If anyone has earned the right to make debate-stopping claims about science, it's a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. However, according to The Washington Post, Clauser does not believe humans are facing imminent extinction due to fossil fuels. This view puts him at odds with what the Post calls the "scientific consensus," implying that he's lost all authority as a scientist.

This is the danger of the postmodern habit of making truth claims dependent on the community that makes them. "The science says" isn't a mic drop if a scientist says something else. Consensus, even scientific consensus, should not shortcut the pursuit of truth. A better and more honest approach is the scientific method, in which our theories and ideas are constantly questioned and tested to discover what is true.

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

Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2010, has a distinct reputation different from baby boomers, Gen X, and millennials. Exactly what the differences are and why they exist is a growing area of interest in research. For example, a new report from the American Enterprise Institute's Survey Center on American Life analyzes data collected from a survey of baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z about their experiences during adolescence. One finding is that Gen Z—or Zoomers—are less likely to hold a part-time job, attend religious services, have a romantic relationship, and use drugs. They also spend more time online, are more likely to identify as LGBTQ, and report being more lonely than previous generations.

One factor behind these differences—and a defining difference itself between Gen Z and the adolescent experiences of previous generations—is the role and use of technology. Gen Z has never known a world without social media and smartphones. Seven out of 10 Zoomers report using social media daily (a number that still seems suspiciously low), and 56% of Gen Z adults report playing video games in the past week.

Though increased social media and video game use does not necessarily mean that less time is spent with friends, it typically does. So, it is unsurprising that Gen Z, as a whole, reports greater loneliness and less time spent with friends during their teen years than older generations.

Gen Z is also more progressive in political views and more likely to identify as lesbian, bisexual, gay, or trans than previous generations. Today, almost one in four Zoomer adults identifies as LGBTQ, which is about five times more than baby boomers. Additionally, about four in 10 identify as politically liberal, while only 26% identify as politically conservative. Given that virtually every social media platform champions LGBTQ images, behavior, and ideology and that LGBTQ ideology has become a defining creed of left-leaning politics, this is not surprising. Individuals who identify as LGBTQ are celebrated, especially online, whereas those who dissent from the reigning sexual orthodoxies are easily reported and often, quickly de-platformed. Having grown up more online than outside, Zoomers' politics, values, and loyalties have been shaped by the narratives preached in their social media worlds.

At the same time, Gen Z avoids some of the risk-taking and moral vices of older groups. Perhaps because they spend so much more time online, only 32% of adult Zoomers reported drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or smoking weed as a teenager, and only 56% reported having a boyfriend or girlfriend. Also, only 58% reported having a part-time job, the lowest number of the four generations surveyed. While less substance abuse is certainly better, when considered along with fewer part-time jobs and romantic relationships, this is likely not due to better morals but to an overall aversion to even healthy risk-taking.

Finally, though Zoomers are the least likely to attend religious services, the common thread to church attendance across all generations continues to be family life. For all generations, the majority (68%) of those who grew up in a two-parent household, participated in religious life during adolescence, whereas those growing up in a single-parent household were less likely to attend religious services (53%). Among older generations, less troublemaking and risk-taking often coincided with more participation in religious services, but that statistical link is broken when it comes to Zoomers. Whereas 71% of baby boomers attended religious services during their teens, only 52% of Gen Z attended religious services during theirs.

Gen Z's generational differences indicate that a shared way of life consisting of both physical presence and family life deeply matters. Unless these things are recovered, decreased religious observance and increased loneliness will only continue. Human beings, no matter the generation to which they belong, are embodied beings. None of us are our avatars, our online personas, or our social media feeds. When our lives are stripped of tangible connections with our neighbors, our neighborhoods, and our families, we lose sight of many things that matter.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert.

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

A week before Thanksgiving, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a new public health crisis. While it's great that global leaders are recognizing the dangerous social and even physical risks of social isolation, this crisis is anything but new.

The WHO's new declaration will lead to more research into the detrimental effects loneliness can have on our health and a new "Commission on Social Connection," to "promote social connection as a priority and accelerate the scaling up of solutions."

Bureaucracy-speak aside, any successful efforts to "promote social connection" must take into account what it means to be human. We aren't defective machines or problems to be solved. We are persons created in the image of God, made for connection with Him and with one another. We need families. We need dads. We need to be the kind of people who bear with one another, even across distance and relational tension. This means we need hearts of flesh that only God–not statecraft–can give us.

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

A few years ago, when professional athletes were criticized for kneeling during the national anthem, it wasn't always because critics disagreed with the cause that athletes were claiming or because of the irony of multi-millionaires denouncing the nation to which they owed their success. Many fans just didn't want to see football turned into yet another stage for political activism. Even when a cause is just, healthy societies have spaces where differences can be put aside in pursuit of a common experience, whether it's something as trivial as a televised sporting event or something as important as forming the next generation of civic leaders.

High school debate has long served this second role. The National Speech and Debate Association is the largest league of its kind in the nation. For nearly one hundred years, it has trained students to reason and speak effectively about issues significant to people and society. According to its Wikipedia page, the NSDA serves more than 140,000 students and coaches each year. It would be reasonable to think that the debaters who rise to the top of this league have become masters of reason and argument, able to speak persuasively on a range of topics. That is no longer the case.

In a clip that recently went viral, the final round of the NSDA's 2021 Tournament of Champions at the University of Kentucky featured two young women of Team A, one of whom identifies as transgender, and who apparently decided they would win the round by "out-woking" their opponent. They began the round by refusing to debate the resolution, which was about the costs and benefits of the International Monetary Fund. Instead, they highjacked the forum to protest the plight of transgender debaters, made the round "a debate about debate," and promised to "occupy the debate space until trans debaters can participate safely."

In a saner time (and league), such behavior would result in an immediate loss. However, that did not happen at this prestigious tournament. Instead, the young men of Team B immediately conceded the round and joined a 45-minute discussion on how debaters who misgender their opponents should automatically lose. One even offered, "It's important to recognize that debate is not about winning an argument. It's about making sure everyone feels okay and making sure everyone feels safe." The judges then praised Team A for their "courage" and crowned them the national Public Forum Debate champions.

It would be easy to criticize these students for making a joke out of a competition that generations of their peers worked hard to win. However, that would miss the point. These debaters didn't invent these tactics or the ideology upon which it is based. They were taught to turn every forum into an opportunity for activism, to dismiss and denounce anyone who questions their claims, and to play the victim to be rewarded. It's the same training that taught the "Just Stop Oil" activists to deface and destroy priceless works of art to draw attention to their cause. Most recently, a pair of Just Stop Oil climate vandals took hammers to a famous painting in the National Gallery in London.

The painting had about as much to do with fossil fuels as the IMF has to do with transgender debaters. To activists, however, that irrelevance is irrelevant. Their ideology, they've been taught, is the only thing in the world worth talking or doing anything about, and they will actively hijack or destroy all other human pursuits until everyone shares their singular obsession.

This reveals why such an all-consuming ideology is dangerous, no matter what you think of the causes behind it. The notion that no one should be able to do, pursue, appreciate, argue, or think about anything else but your cause is a form of intellectual tyranny that, if tolerated widely, can quickly erode the foundations of a free society. If everything must be sacrificed to your ideology, then it's much more than a cause that demands justice. It's an idol that demands worship.

"Good philosophy must exist," wrote C. S. Lewis, "if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." Such bad philosophy, he warned, doesn't always take the form of "cool intellect" arguing wrongly, but often manifests as "muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether." I can think of few better descriptions of a debate tournament won by "out-woking" your opponent.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.

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

If you find your mind darting from one thing to the next and struggling to concentrate for even short periods of time, there are two things to know. First, you're not alone and, second, it's probably related to technology.

In an article published at Motherboard, Kaleigh Rogers described her experiment banning all screens from her home for a month: no TV, no tablet, no smart phones, no computers.

The results were dramatic, and unlike with exercise or dieting, immediate. She experienced better concentration, found more time in her day, felt closer in her relationships, and gained a renewed sense of creativity. A Facebook commenter who conducted the same experiment described an almost "superhuman" focus and productivity.

Screens have profoundly shaped our lives, especially our minds and relationships. We need not be Luddites, but we can create boundaries and stick to them. Rather than allowing notifications, games, and texts to control our schedules and attention, we can control them, making time for relationships, concentration, and creativity. That doesn't sound so superhuman...

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet.

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

This Point was originally published on February 14, 2017.

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