Breakpoint

The Holy Spirit has been called "the forgotten God." But He's also, according to Scripture, at the heart of the Christian life.

"I believe in the Holy Spirit," says the Nicene Creed, "the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is both worshiped and glorified, who has spoken to us through the prophets."

Now, there's a longstanding debate between Eastern and Western churches about whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone or from the Son as well.

What Christians agree on, however, is that the Spirit is God. He's a Person, not a force. He inspired the Scriptures. He raised Jesus Christ from the dead. He is the Comforter sent by Jesus, the One who gives us ears to hear the Gospel, and who intercedes for us when we pray, indwelling us to this day.

We are His temples, and He is the Pledge of our inheritance and the guarantee that the faith we now confess in the Triune God will one day be sight.

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

This Point was originally published on December 29, 2017.

In a viral post back in July, entrepreneur Robert Sterling described what many people feel:

"There is something deeply unwell in our society right now. … I'm sure social media, economic malaise, Covid lockdowns, fentanyl, and every other reason we hear about factor into it."

Yet, all these reasons, he continued, "in aggregate, still feel insufficient." Something "metaphysical," seems to have shifted.

A Breakpoint commentary in April described the mental health crisis of American teens, especially teenage girls. As The New York Times reported, "Nearly three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021 … and one in three girls seriously considered attempting suicide." Boys aren't doing much better, with so-called "deaths of despair" at an all-time high among the male population.

This widespread mental instability has culturewide consequences. In a recent documentary, filmmaker Christopher Rufo diagnosed what he calls our "Cluster B Society." The rise of "woke" ideology and cancel culture, he argued, corresponds with the explosion of psychopathologies like narcissism and borderline personality disorder. These "disorders of the self," Rufo explains, wreck relationships and lead to profound social dysfunction. When they become "formalized and entrenched" in "human resource departments, government policies, cultural institutions, and civil rights law," they lead to precisely the kinds of extremism and emotional instability that infects politics today, especially among the young.

What is this "metaphysical shift," this feature of modern society, that is driving so many people into despair? Writing for the Institute for Family Studies, University of Virginia sociologist Joseph Davis argues that our mental health crisis is the end of a long process that began well before the iPhone, social media, or fentanyl. The seeds of despair and derangement, he thinks, were sown when people stopped looking to timeless institutions and transcendent realities to give their lives meaning, and instead turned inward for answers.

Davis cites Jennifer Breheny Wallace, who in her book Never Enough notes that even successful and privileged young people often say they feel "utterly vacant inside." The reason they are looking inward for meaning is because they've been taught for decades now, by everyone from Disney and Oprah to pop stars and professors, to reject external sources of meaning like God, family, or country. "Their truth" is found within, while external sources of authority are oppressive and stifle authentic individuality.

As a result, Davis argues, "the public frameworks that gave life direction and meaning—prescribed roles, rites of passage, compelling life scripts, stable occupational trajectories—continue to fade away." That's why, as he puts it,

"We feel empty, inadequate, and adrift because we have been thrown back on ourselves, forced to face the challenge—at younger and younger ages—of trying to establish an identity, make commitments, live with conviction, desire life, and find meaning without the very sources that make these things possible in the first place."

As theologian Carl Trueman demonstrated in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, the idea that life's greatest meaning comes from within and from there we express our authentic identity is a recent development. Our ancestors looked beyond self, to external sources of authority. In our culture of expressive individualists, many people are finding themselves, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, unchained from a sun.

Writing of the death of God in his famous Parable of the Madman, Nietzsche accurately predicted the chaos to come but also noted that people in his day could not realize the implications of doing away with fixed, transcendent meaning. "I have come too early," says the Madman. "This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men."

Perhaps today, in the ruins of the institutions, traditions, churches, families, and cultures once tied to belief in an unchanging God, Nietzsche's prophecy has come true. We are adrift with only ourselves as gods. If the statistics are accurate, more and more people are finding this intolerable.

We were never meant to invent meaning for ourselves. The demands of our hyper-individualistic society feel unbearable because they're unreasonable. We put the weight of defining the world on our shoulders, and it's heavier than we ever imagined. The self is not big enough to define the truth.

This means that solving our mental health crisis will take much more than cutbacks on social media or crackdowns on opioids (though these are good ideas). It will take a return to older, less individualistic sources of identity and a willingness to stop treating "be yourself" or "you do you" as some kind of profound wisdom.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. To help us share Breakpoint with others, leave a review on your favorite podcast app.

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

Dr. Timothy Padgett, Resident Theologian for the Colson Center, hosts a conversation at our latest Breakpoint Forum with Christian scholars Neil Shenvi, Ph.D. and Pat Sawyer, Ph.D. as they break down the roots of Critical Theory and how it's impacted our culture. Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer have delved into this important issue as a part of their general work and in writing a recent book entitled, Critical Dilemma: The Rise of Critical Theories and Social Justice Ideology—Implications for the Church and Society. The Colson Center has invited them to take part in our latest Breakpoint Forum to help you better understand what is right and what is wrong about this contentious philosophy.

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

Live Action recently posted a photo on X that shows that a baby developing in the womb is not "just a clump of cells," even at eight weeks gestation. Though the baby is only about half an inch long and roughly the size of a raspberry, retinas begin to form during this stage, as well as intestines and other organs. This is also the time when fingers and toes start to take shape and the baby gains the ability to flex at the elbows. In about 10 more weeks, the baby's sex can be determined.

To call a preborn baby that is growing and developing in the womb "a clump of cells" is as reductionistic as calling a born human "a clump of cells." I mean, in one sense it's true, we are all clumps of cells. However, it's an absurdly incomplete picture of what a human being really is.

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

One of the most beloved and quotable scenes in The Chronicles of Narnia is from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the children learn that Aslan is a lion, "the Lion, the great Lion."

"'Ooh' said Susan. 'I'd thought he was a man. Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.'

'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver ... 'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'"

Though we love the idea that God is not "safe," we often live as if our safety or comfort marks the boundaries of our relationship with Him. Catechized by bad theology, captivated by our culture's enablement of self-centeredness, or weary of an angry and fractious age, many Christians cannot conceive that God's will for our lives could involve anything unpleasant or uncomfortable.

When it does and our expectations collapse, we wonder if God cares, having conflated God's faithfulness with a painless, placid life of blessing and provision. We are quick to assume that pain or discomfort means that God's will has been thwarted, or that His love and protection have been withdrawn. It's difficult to accept that, rather than a sign of God's absence, the presence of pain could be a sign of His sovereign care.

Throughout The Horse and His Boy, Aslan continually allows fear, hardship, and even physical pain for the main characters. When Shasta, one of the two main humans in the story, is fleeing from his abusive adoptive father on the Narnian horse Bree, a lion chases them through the darkness. Fleeing from the danger, he encounters another rider fleeing from, it seems, another lion. Aravis is also escaping her home on a talking Narnian horse. Their shared fear and confusion bring them together for a journey neither of them could have made without the other.

Later in the story, they're riding as fast as they can to head off a threat to Narnia. Just as Bree claims he can go no faster, a "new" lion closes in on them. Lewis writes,

"His eyes gleamed red and his ears lay back on his skull. And Bree now discovered that he had not really been going as fast—not quite as fast—as he could. Shasta felt the change at once. Now they were going all out."

The lion then badly wounds Aravis, before retreating unexpectedly.

Later, Shasta learns the full story. There was only one lion, not many. Aslan was "swift of foot." Without the fears and the pain, Shasta and Aravis, Bree and Hwin, would have never met; their quest would have failed; the enemy would have been victorious; and Shasta would never have learned who he truly was. The pain wasn't an afterthought on Aslan's part, but a key element in his plan.

None of this implies that pain should be sought out. Pain is never the point of God's plans, any more than it is the purpose of physical exercise. Never pushing ourselves to the point that it hurts means never improving our health. On the other hand, seeking pain is more likely to do harm than to aid our wellbeing.

In and of itself, pain is not good, but it is meaningful. Pain indicates that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. Without pain, we'd never know. In the same way, breaking bad habits of the past requires pushing beyond our comfort levels, through the pain, and onward on the path to full restoration.

Pain is sometimes required to reorient us. What else can turn one away from a debilitating addiction or insatiable sexual impulse? Without discomfort, would we ever give up on our preferred source of "safety" for the faithful and sometimes painful love of God? Whether through sickness or sacrifice, in ending a dream or enduring hostility, we must remember that God's faithfulness is not determined by how well our lives are going. In fact, it is often known only in the hardest things of life.

To deny that God could or would use discomfort for our good is to deny that He is present in our pain. He is. Just as, in His quest to restore the glory of His creation, He did not shrink back from inflicting pain on His dear Son, His love for His people often includes a level of discomfort and pain. In the end, it is part of His work to restore His image bearers to their intended dignity.

As Lewis wrote elsewhere, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

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

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

This Breakpoint originally aired November 4, 2021.

In November 1917, Scottish Bible teacher and evangelist Oswald Chambers died while serving as chaplain to British troops in Egypt. Ten years after his death, his wife Gertrude compiled her notes of his sermons into one of the most influential devotionals of all time: My Utmost for His Highest.

Chambers revered the Scripture. "God never fits His word to suit me;" he wrote, "He fits me to suit His word." But he also understood the kind of book the Bible was. Not something only to be looked at, but to be looked through. He once responded to a friend who said he only read the Bible that,

"When people refer to a man as 'a man of the book,' meaning the Bible, he is generally found to be a man of multitudinous books, which simply isolates the one Book to its proper grandeur. The man who reads only the Bible does not, as a rule, know it or human life."

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

Mark Twain famously said that "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does often rhyme." The new film, Golda, starring Helen Mirren, provides evidence of that maxim.

A surprise Arab attack is carried out on the nation of Israel in the first week of October. An embattled Israeli Prime Minister fights to secure American support. There are whispers of Russian involvement and atrocities in Ukraine. Golda is not a film about 2023, but it does recall the remarkably similar story of 1973.

In fact, the history of Israel and the wider story of the millennia-long persecution of Jews can feel somewhat like a broken record. No matter the era, no matter the region, no matter the culture, Jacob's children find themselves in the crosshairs of their neighbors' hatred.

In the 5th-century BC, the royal advisor Haman whined to his king: "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not to the king's profit to tolerate them."

Haman was, of course, speaking of the Jewish people.

Jewish historian Josephus described the tensions that simmered between Jews and Greeks in Egypt since the 4th century. Conflict erupted in his day into riots that, before the slaughter stopped, left some 50,000 Jews dead. In a remark that could be taken from today's headlines, the historian declared,

"Some were caught in the open field, others forced into their houses, which were plundered and then set on fire. The Romans showed no mercy to the infants, had no regard for the aged, and went on in the slaughter of persons of every age."

Over the next few hundred years, this antisemitism was, with some notable exceptions, sadly baptized by an emerging Christian culture. Some of this can be attributed to an accommodation to the cultural norms, some to seeking revenge for earlier Jewish persecutions of Christians, and some to significant theological issues that continue to affect Jewish-Christian relations even today.

In a tragic replaying of the persecution inflicted on the Early Church by Roman pagans, Christians scapegoated Jews for bad harvests, plagues, and political misfortune. Across Europe, especially Russian-controlled areas, pogroms were unleashed against victims with nowhere to go, at least until the rise of America and Israel.

Attacks against the Jews only increased with the evolving of a more secularized, modern age. Ancient prejudices took on modern forms, fed by conspiracy theories held across various segments of society. Jews were thought to be both in absolute control of world events and bent on world destruction. The horrifying capstone of antisemitism in the modern era was given the name the "Final Solution" by the Nazis.

Sadly, the story of Jew hatred continues today, in the conspiracy junkie who sees the Rothschilds behind every event and in the equally abhorrent Critical Theory claims about Israeli occupation and oppression. From these two ends of the Western political spectrum, the Jews have once again been cast into a villainous role they've never deserved.

Despite being an emotionally heavy movie, Golda ends with an optimistic note. Through the peace that ended the war between Israel and Egypt, steps began which, 50 years later, have led to an increasing number of treaties between Arabs and Israelis. Though we are rightly outraged by the vile comments of some in the West in support of the atrocities of Hamas, nearly every Western government has stood up for Israel in this situation. And many Muslim states have either stayed quiet or even voiced support.

Will this current crisis lead to greater stability as the crisis told about in the film? We don't know. What we do know is that this history did not begin yesterday, nor will it be fixed tomorrow. But, even when history does rhyme, it doesn't necessarily have to repeat. We live in God's world. He promises to "make all things new." That will be how the story ends.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app.

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

As the world continues to learn the disturbing details of the Hamas atrocities against Israeli women, children, and other civilians, an added horror is the thousands of people around the world, even in the West, publicly supporting those doing the killing. While many have stood up for the Jews, many others have taken to the streets, celebrated the evils, protested Israel's justified retaliation, and even called for "Jihad."

As Lois McLatchie Miller noted, this is particularly galling in the U.K. where pro-lifers have been arrested for silent prayer while this rank antisemitism is protected:

"A police force that sends six officers to arrest a silently praying Christian woman, but lacks resources to stop our streets from flooding with violence, is not one that reflects the values of a Western democratic society."

Of course, that depends on which values are currently prevailing, something constantly in flux in societies that have rejected their moral foundations.

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

Few people, particularly in the U.K., have shown the kind of courageous, tenacious commitment to truth as media personality, minister, conservative commentator, and Anglican deacon Fr. Calvin Robinson. In 2020, after discerning a call to church ministry, Robinson left a career in teaching to pursue a degree in theology through St. Stephen's House, Oxford. In 2022, he applied for a curacy within the London Diocese of the Church of England.

Robinson, a British citizen of mixed race, learned that his application had been held up due to his opinions on Critical Race Theory. Earlier, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby declared that the Church of England was "deeply institutionally racist," a statement with which Robinson took issue. When it became clear that church leaders were dragging their feet over his placement, Robinson requested access to the files pertaining to his case. He learned that the Church of England, not the "broad church" many assumed, was rejecting him for his outspoken conservative views.

Describing a conversation with the Bishop of London, Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullally, Robinson reported:

"I said as a mixed race person I don't feel like the church is institutionally racist. I think it's wrong for the Archbishop of Canterbury to stand up on a pedestal to announce, 'We are racist.' I think that's wrong. I think individuals are racist and they need to be held to account for it, but to say that we as an institution are, that's unhelpful. I don't think it's statistically true.

And she said to me, 'Well I think we are, and as a white woman I can tell you that we are, and I've seen it.'"

His view on racial issues is not the only area in which Fr. Robinson found himself in conflict with the Church of England. As he put it,

"It seems the Church will affirm any liberal progressive secular view, but clamp down on conservative views, either political or theological. If you defend family values, the sanctity of marriage, all human life being sacred, or the fact that God made us male and female, you'll face opprobrium."

Ousted from the Church of England, Fr. Robinson became a deacon in the Free Church of England instead, a church that aligns with the Global Anglican Future Conference, or GAFCON, an international body committed to biblical orthodoxy. Until recently, he hosted a popular show on GB News and now serves as minister-in-charge in a local parish.

Fr. Robinson recently defended that the church should not perform or bless same-sex "marriages" in a debate at the Oxford Union, one of the world's oldest institutions of public discourse. His opponents were three progressive bishops. In each of these experiences, Robinson has demonstrated the kind of courage required for Christian faithfulness today. This begins, as Robinson put it, with a commitment to truth:

"People are looking for the Truth. It is our job as the Church to proclaim the Truth from the rooftops and let people know there is another way; that Jesus Christ is the truth and the way, and the life. If that means being counter-cultural, so be it. It is not our job to chase societal norms, it is our job to live a life rooted in the Scriptures. We cannot chase fads in order to attract numbers, bums in seats are a side-effect not the objective. … [W]e are called to disciple the nations—but I do not believe that means obsessing over attracting new demographics; that means obsessing over preaching the Good News, doing it well and faithfully. If we do that, people will come, and Christ will convert them."

Courage, specifically how Christians can have a courageous faith, is the theme of the 2024 Colson Center National Conference, to be held May 30-June 2 in Arlington, Texas. I'm very pleased to announce that Fr. Calvin Robinson will join us for this event as a speaker along with an amazing lineup of others, such as Drs. Sean McDowell, Kathy Koch, and Neil Shenvi.

To register, go to ColsonConference.org.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander.

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

Some 1,700 years ago, Armenia became the very first nation in history to adopt Christianity as the official religion of the state. That long history is fast disappearing. A photo recently posted by the Christian Emergency Alliance records the last clergy of an ancient monastery, forced to flee from the Azeri advances, which are often accompanied by desecrations of Christian sites by Muslim soldiers.

In ancient times, the Armenians endured a precarious existence, with Rome to the west and Persia to the east. Today, U.S. ally Turkey backs the Muslim Azeri while Moscow has been an unreliable protector of Armenia.

Whatever the causes of this strife, an ancient Christian society sits on the edge of destruction, which means that our prayers and political actions cannot be constrained only by geopolitics.

Pray to God for our brothers and sisters, and appeal to our political representatives for their relief.

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