Breakpoint

An argument cited often by propagators of transgender ideology is that ancient cultures across the world recognized so-called "third genders," those who did not fit neatly in categories of male or female. If they recognized this, the argument goes, then so should we.

The latest video in the What Would You Say? series engages this claim carefully, refuting it with three simple points. It begins by explaining the roots of the argument:

"According to advocates of transgender ideology, because so many ancient cultures recognized 'third' genders, we should reject the 'gender binary,' the idea that only two genders exist, and we should reject the notion that gender is essentially linked to one's biological sex. …

Among the most cited examples of 'third genders' are the Native American 'Two-spirit,' Thailand's 'Kathoey' (a word regularly translated as 'Ladyboy'), the 'Sal-zikrum' of Ancient Middle East, the 'Fa'afafine' of Samoa, the 'Hijra' of India, and the 'Muxe' of Southern Mexico."

If a handful of people throughout all human history and culture are proof that biological sex is fake, what do we make of the fact that the rest of the world throughout all human history and culture knew that biological sex was real? To suggest these cultures' understanding of "gender" bore any resemblance to today's transgenderism is to impose our culture's categories on theirs. I believe the term for this is "cultural appropriation."

"The label 'third gender' is an anachronism forced upon people who actually presumed the reality of biological sex, gender roles, and the so-called 'gender binary.' For example, the word 'Fa'afafine,' used in Samoan culture, means 'in the manner of women.' In Samoan culture, a Fa'afafine was chosen by his family at a young age to help his mother with household tasks, often because the family had no daughters. This boy was not considered a wife or mother but was assigned responsibilities often performed by women."

In other words, the Samoans and similar cultures have never claimed that young boys who might perform stereotypically "female" duties at home are actually female.

But even if that were their claim, it leaves open the central question Matt Walsh dedicated an entire documentary to asking: What is a woman? That unanswered question is at the heart of a modern contradiction.

"Like these so-called 'third genders,' modern transgender ideology also relies on the 'gender binary' that it claims to reject."

"At its root, the modern concept that someone can be 'transgender' or "born into the wrong body," depends heavily on rigid male and female stereotypes. If a little girl likes trucks or short hair or dislikes dresses, she must be a boy. If a boy likes pink or dressing up or playing house, he is really a girl. In other words, transgender ideology contradicts itself, promoting the very male and female stereotypes it claims to overcome."

Incoherence aside, capital-T Truth exists, regardless of which people-groups throughout history believed in it. So, even if ancient cultures did believe modern ideas about women, gender, or sex, that does not make their ideas any more true or any less absurd.

"Ancient cultures didn't always get it right. While some ancient cultures allowed or even expected some men to act like women, and vice-versa, many others didn't. To assume that only those cultures got it right is to make what is known as the 'noble savage' mistake. Imagine someone suggesting that because some cultures allowed slavery or cannibalism, we should too. That would be outrageous!"

A Christian worldview is big enough to handle the biological realities of male and female, while also allowing for and celebrating the beautiful variety of individual men and women.

"While the roles of males and females look different from one culture to the next, the biological reality that humans are male and female does not. That's been obvious in every culture until ours, and Genesis tells us why:

Because 'God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them.'"

To see this video and others like it, and to use them in classes or conversation, go to whatwouldyousay.org.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.

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

John and Maria discuss another sobering election night in America, specifically in Ohio. The Nashville shooter's manifesto was leaked but we noticed a stark difference with other mass shootings. And the number of newborn syphilis cases is becoming a crisis.

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Lighthouse Voices with Alisa Childers

Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

Why Prison Ministries Are Growing

Segment 1: Ohio Passes Abortion Amendment

How did abortion amendment pass in Ohio and what does it mean for future elections?

Segment 2: The Nashville Shooter's Manifesto

Leaked Nashville shooter manifesto shows motive behind attack

Nashville Shooter decried 'crackers' and 'white privilege' leaked manifesto reveals

Segment 3: Cases of Newborn Syphilis Cases Becomes a Crisis

Newborn syphilis cases have reached 'dire lelevs,' CDC says

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

Recently, Rolling Stone magazine reported on an emerging scandal involving the new speaker of the House of Representatives—not financial corruption, an illicit affair, or ties to foreign powers. No, it turns out that Mike Johnson and his son use the Covenant Eyes app to keep each other accountable about pornography and the internet.

According to Rolling Stone, this is weird. And, seizing on the article, others called it creepy, even grooming, as if they could not grasp that the point is to keep each other off of porn and out of addiction.

Not only did the whole episode reveal an utter ignorance of a basic belief of the world's largest religion, it also betrayed how much a view of normal can be upside down, as if porn is not a cancer on society or a curse on women and children, corrupting the souls of those who consume it.

If the Johnson boys' behavior is weird, then as historian Tom Holland has reminded us, let's stay "weird," Christians.

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

November marks the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989, this symbol of Communist tyranny came tumbling down, marking the end of a totalitarian nightmare. After the threat of Nazism was defeated, Communism turned a third of the world into a police state the likes of which had never been seen.

Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II recognized, in a clear-eyed way not shared by many other academic and political elites, that Marxism's blood-red banners meant not liberation but oppression. More than this, they saw that Communism was not only something that should be opposed, but that could be. Their collective strategies worked even faster than the most optimistic expected. As that deadly edifice of Communism tumbled down, its fractured walls meant a no-longer-divided Berlin, no more Stasi, no more secret arrests.

In the joy of that moment and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared the "End of History." He believed that the death of Communism was the final obstacle to the triumph of Enlightenment liberalism and democracy. He was, of course, mistaken.

Though we may not be living in Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, the abdication of freedom and the embrace of history's worst ideals continues, and not just in China, Russia, and Iran. In England, silently praying in front of an abortion clinic can get a person arrested. According to a Pew Research report, a majority of young Americans prefer freedom from offense over freedom of speech. In pro-Hamas parades across the West, thousands have proclaimed that violence, oppression, and censorship are acceptable if the "right" groups are being harmed, oppressed, and silenced. The ideals of diversity and dissent have been reduced to slogans to signal our virtue, not realities to live out in practice. As a result, more and more power is granted to state, academic, corporate, and media authorities to "rescue us" from "dangerous" ideas, ironically in the name of diversity and inclusion.

Those people who are tearing down the posters of kidnapped Israeli kids are not replacing them with other images. They are just denying a space to speak. The younger, leftist crowd increasingly thinks of core freedoms, such as the freedom of speech, as questionable at best and as a dangerous excuse for "hatred" at worst. In America, we now debate whether some speech should be coerced. In Britain, though silent prayer can be illegal, calls for genocide are protected. A world in which we are free only insofar as we agree with those currently in power is a world that's not free at all.

During the twentieth century, the world moved forward on the inertia and inheritance Christianity gave to the West. This momentum, however, only lasted so long. Somewhere, during the long fight against the twin tyrannies of Fascism and Communism, we lost those fundamental beliefs and insights into humanity that grounded our ideals about freedom in the first place. Now, well into the twenty-first century, with this Judeo-Christian foundation stripped from beneath us, nothing remains to sustain the passion for liberty. Without a vision of ordered freedom–what Os Guinness has rightly noted as a "freedom for" rather than just a "freedom from"– the claim to "rights" and "liberties" are reduced to squabbles between various groups vying for power.

President Reagan's epic call to "Tear down this wall!" will have been for nothing if something better is not built in its place. Western freedom cannot be preserved without a proper understanding of human nature, the understanding that birthed Western freedom in the first place. Only the description of reality offered in the Bible and confirmed by centuries of Christian reflection is robust enough for this task. If rooted only in the malleable ideas of the majority or on the passing fancies of those in power, our most precious liberties will collapse as surely as Communism's concrete boundaries did.

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

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

Tuesday, Ohio became the most recent conservative state to defend a "right" to abortion. Only a year and a half ago, pro-lifers celebrated the legal significance of overturning Roe v. Wade. Since then, voters in state after state have protected the right to end innocent, preborn life.

This is a "you are here" moment. Many people, even if personally opposed to abortion, are not willing to restrict anyone else's freedom. This is part of the legacy of Roe: Americans learned an absolute allegiance to absolute autonomy along with what Joe Rigney called the "cruelty of untethered empathy."

Andrew Walker tweeted,

"We won a generational legal argument in overturning Roe, but the teaching effect of a fifty year law to etch a lie about what human life is and when it begins has reaped tragic and generational consequences to reverse."

Political strategies are so important: timing, wording on ballot initiatives, etc. But most of our work to defend life is upstream from the ballot box.

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

Not even a decade ago, television personality Bill Maher had cemented his brand of snarky atheism and political leftism. His crass, snide, and often irrationally irreligious humor infuriated many and led to an earlier show being canceled, not to mention plenty of gigs. For a couple of years now, however, many of his former critics have noted something new: how often he's willing to say out loud what many on the left are not.

In a monologue on last Friday's episode of his HBO series, Real Time with Bill Maher, which I cannot officially recommend given the language and perverse humor, Maher offered a thorough defense of Israel and Western civilization:

"For all the progressives and academics who refer to Israel as an outpost of Western civilization, like it's a bad thing, please note: Western civilization is what gave the world pretty much every [expletive] liberal precept that liberals are supposed to adore. Individual liberty, scientific inquiry, rule of law, religious freedom, women's rights, human rights, democracy, trial by jury, freedom of speech. Please, somebody, stop us before we enlighten again."

He went on to note that Israel is the only place in the Middle East where these societal goods can be found and even said that the world would be a lot better off "if it had more Israels." The plight of marginalized peoples everywhere is better off, Maher noted, because of the supposedly toxic West that anti-Israeli protestors deride.

Maher then offered a mini-history on the evolution of human rights, detailing a host of thinkers through the ages that articulated, argued for, and built the freedoms we now enjoy. It was, after all, only from the ideals brewed in Western culture that people like Martin Luther King, Jr. were able to launch crusades against racial oppression and American segregation. It was from the writing of thinkers such as Jean Jacque Rousseau and Voltaire that the U.N.'s well-devised, even if poorly applied, Declaration of Human Rights was birthed. In a point dripping with his typical snarkiness, Maher pointed out that no one studies the great prophet of liberty, John Locke, anymore, "because he's so old and so white and so dead." He ended by noting how few of those he was critiquing would even take seriously what he said because they are too committed to a way of seeing everything through the lens of predetermined oppressors and the oppressed.

I, like many, disagree with Maher on multiple things, but I also find it fascinating the number of cynics and skeptics today who seem to be rethinking everything now that they've been confronted with the ideas that have replaced religion in the West. At a conference last week, former politician and human rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali described herself as a "Judeo-Christian" and atheist Richard Dawkins as a "Christian," not because either believe in a God per se or the resurrection, but because the values they want in the world rely on a specific kind of world, one created with moral norms inherent to it.

Which, in fact, brings up just what Bill Maher left out in his otherwise thoughtful and compelling monologue. As you might expect from the guy behind the faith-despising faux-documentary Religulous, he's not quite ready to admit the role of religion in cultivating liberty and human rights. Because Voltaire and Rousseau were anti-religious, they are safe to mention. Locke and King are often praised almost in spite of their deep faith, which Maher never mentioned.

In fact, Maher started his history of Western civilization too late, describing men who inherited a tradition as if they had started it. Put differently, to begin the story of Western civilization with Henry David Thoreau or John Locke is kind of like beginning the storied history of the Boston Celtics with Paul Pierce. Yeah, he was good, but Bill Russell!

In his book, A Brief History of Thought, Luc Ferry, also an atheist, identified and clearly articulated the true source of the West's most important and consequential ideas:

"Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity—an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance."

In other words, without the principles that emerge from Holy Scriptures, which simmered for centuries in Jewish and Christian thought, the world would never have benefited from the insights of a Jefferson or a Locke. The biblical view of the world, especially its description of the inherent value and moral nature of the human person, is the only basis for freedom in all of human history. The ideas Maher rightly celebrates are not only good ones, they are true. Without their religious roots, they cannot be sustained, certainly not from atheism. Maher is right to look to an earlier foundation for our civilization. He just needs to look back even further.

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

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

In one of his books, historian Tom Holland asked, "Who needs the Devil when there is Adolf Hitler?" Since the Holocaust, calling someone "Hitler" has been the quickest way to call someone "evil" and to short-circuit debate, even for those who don't know much about who Hitler was and what he did.

However, because of its constant use, calling someone a "Nazi" or "Hitler" is almost meaningless. Put differently, if everyone is Hitler, no one is.

But I say almost because any of our moral proclamations are made in a world infused with the moral law that stands over the behavior of moral beings, and all of this reflects the moral nature of the Creator.

In the so-called "Holocaust inversion" of recent days, Jews have been called "Nazis" while those committing and supporting their annihilation are called victims. This is because the whole tragic episode is being seen by those unattached from the realities of evil and history.

But even if a name becomes meaningless, morality does not.

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

Just War theory is one of the most significant contributions of Christianity to the world. On a recent episode of Breakpoint This Week, Dr. Eric Patterson, president of the Religious Freedom Institute and a political scientist who has done extensive work on the subject, discussed how the Just War tradition can help us think through the atrocities of Hamas and the retaliation by Israel. In fact, Patterson's new book, entitled A Basic Guide to the Just War Tradition, is among the best primers available on Just War theory.

In our conversation, Dr. Patterson argued that governments have a God-given obligation to defend the innocent. As he put it,

"There's a whole superstructure in the Bible on certain principles. One is governance. God created the family as a unit of governance. He created the Church as a unit of governance within its sphere. And we know in the Old and the New Testament, such as in Romans 13, there's a principle of government authority to protect and defend. The Bible has a lot to say about vocations, including those called the security and foreign policy vocations: Nehemiah, Joseph, in the New Testament, centurions and others. And so, there's never a teaching in the Bible that Christians are supposed to step outside of those public service vocations to protect and defend."

Still, some Christians who take seriously Jesus' command to love their enemies have a hard time seeing how that should play out when it comes to nations at war. Ultimately, it is the command to love our neighbors that grounds the Christian responsibility, of both individuals and governments, to oppose evil through proper channels of authority. The love of our enemies, which Christ commanded, should inform how we oppose evil. In as much, Dr. Patterson argues, intentions matter:

"I think what the Just War tradition helps us with is looking at Israeli politics, looking at leaders and things and asking the question, 'Is the reason you're doing this out of love of neighbor, love of country, or have you strayed over this line where you are full of hate and what you really want to do is out of wrath, out of hatred, out of bitterness?'"

When the enemy is dehumanized, Patterson argues, the war devolves away from justice. Of course, Hamas has never seen Jews as fully human. Israel, on the other hand, has placed itself under the obligations of international law, which has been shaped by the Christian Just War tradition. They've committed to be proportional in their response, though that is not measured mathematically. They've committed to distinguish between civilians and combatants, though that does not mean they are responsible every time a civilian is killed. They've committed to treat prisoners humanely and to wage war with a view toward peace in the end.

These commitments impose a heavy burden on those who fight, and they stand in direct contrast to Hamas, Boko Haram, ISIS, or the Taliban. Their way of waging terror and warfare comes, in the words of Philos Project founder Robert Nicholson, from "drinking from a different ideological well" of radical Islam.

Dr. Patterson put it,

"The reason that we've had a half dozen coups in West Africa in the past three years is because governments there, and often friendly Christians and Muslims working together, are so dispirited that the West and Western-supported governments have not been able to stop the black flag of Islamic State in West Africa. We see this with the Taliban and others. I think we have a lot of examples of this type of ruthless, violent Islamism that justifies violence against its neighbors."

Everyone, including Muslims, suffers at the hands of radical Islam. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims.

Christians have a different view of people, of our friends and of our enemies. We believe in justice and in peace, and most importantly, in the Prince of Peace. May His judgment come swiftly—and may Christians bear faithful witness until then.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander.

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

How many faces do you have?

Atheist comedian Stephen Fry once said (quite ironically) that you are who you are when nobody's watching. When social restraints are removed, when the cameras aren't rolling, what sort of person are you? What sort of choices do you make?

All of us—especially men—need to ask these questions of ourselves in the wake of the daily flurry of scandals from Hollywood and Washington. This isn't a problem "out there" in someone else's sound studio, office, or home. It's a problem "in here," at the depths of the sinful human heart.

Is the person we portray to others the same person we are when we're by ourselves—or more importantly—when we believe there will be no consequences for our actions?

This is sometimes called "living on your face;" in other words, making sure that what you present in public is the character you demonstrate in private. Only as Christians, we know that there's nowhere we can flee from the presence of God, who sees all, and who is always with us, and who promises that "our sins will find us out."

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

This Point was originally published on January 1, 2018.

In November of 1660, Puritan lay preacher John Bunyan was arrested and subsequently spent the next 12 years in prison. Under the restored monarchy of Charles II, dissent from the Church of England was once again illegal. Initially sentenced to three months, under the condition that he would stop preaching, Bunyan famously replied that he was willing to suffer "till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows, rather than thus to violate my faith and principles."

In prison, Bunyan completed one of the all-time, best-selling works of Christian literature, The Pilgrim's Progress.

Chuck Colson was deeply impacted by this book. Here's Chuck, in his own words:

"It has often been described as the most popular and most influential book ever published—after the Bible, that is. Yet many literary critics of its time treated it with scorn. Its author was simply a humble Puritan minister who wrote it while imprisoned for his faith. He was not even sure if he should publish it. If you have not guessed it yet, I am talking about The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. ...

Pilgrim's Progress is a powerful story of one Christian's journey through life. The people, encounters, and struggles he faces have become part of the English language: Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Vanity Fair, the Slough of Despond, and so many more. Yet Bunyan was not even trying to be particularly clever or original. As [Dr. Ken] Boa reminds us, Bunyan's thinking was so steeped in the Scriptures that his book is filled with 'literally hundreds and hundreds of allusions' to biblical references and concepts, and this is what makes its imagery so striking and memorable. As Charles Spurgeon, who used to read The Pilgrim's Progress twice a year, said of Bunyan, 'If you cut him, he would bleed Bible.'

The book's theological depth makes it almost suitable for a "catechesis" of the Christian faith. And something that has always amazed me about Pilgrim's Progress is just how real Bunyan's characters are. The pilgrims at the center of the story are no Christian supermen, no perfect moral heroes. Boa points out, 'There are many weaknesses in [the characters] Christian and Faithful … and we see that faith co-exists with failings.'

Just like any biblical hero, the Christian characters here must ask for God's help in fighting their own flaws and failures. Their intentions are good, but they are too easily lured away from their path or cast down by their troubles. As Boa says, 'It is Christian's actual frailty, his fallibility that arouses our sympathy for him and makes us wonder what is going to happen next.'

Unlike much Christian fiction of our own time, Bunyan's allegory does not try to tiptoe around the fact of sin. The wise Puritan preacher knew he would have been remiss not to deal with it. In many ways, his heroes, despite the seventeenth century setting, are just like us, which is why Pilgrim's Progress still fascinates us. Fascinates us and encourages us, as well—for as Boa goes on to say, Bunyan's book teaches us that 'any man, any woman, through grace, can become a Christian hero.'

It is a lesson that has carried down through the centuries and is just as powerful today as ever—not bad for a simple Puritan preacher."

Chuck Colson knew, of course, what it was like to not only be in prison but to experience the presence of the Lord in the midst of prison. In the epilogue of his autobiography Born Again, Chuck wrote, "I found myself increasingly drawn to the idea that God had put me in prison for a purpose and that I should do something for those I had left behind."

Among the lessons to be learned from the stories of John Bunyan and Chuck Colson is that suffering can produce the Christian's most powerful witness, and that God is faithful to His people everywhere, even behind bars.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.