Breakpoint

Every autumn, in a sort of seasonal ritual, the leaves start turning, the air turns chilly, and Christians argue over whether to celebrate Halloween. While I've never been a huge fan of the dark, sketchy costumes (and I'm talking about what adults wear), there's a whole history to this day, unknown to most people. In fact, there's an even more amazing history behind tomorrow, All Saints' Day.

Back in 2007, Chuck Colson described that history in a Breakpoint he called, "Honoring the Witnesses." Here's Chuck Colson:

"It is Halloween again, and to be frank, I really don't look forward to talking about it on Breakpoint every year. At best, Halloween has become an excuse to ask total strangers for candy. At worst, it's a celebration of the mindless paganism our ancestors wisely turned their backs on. So, this year, I'd like to turn your attention to the often overlooked celebration that Halloween calls to mind. In case you've missed it before, the name Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows' Eve and signifies the night before All Saints' Day. For centuries on All Saints' Day, the Church celebrated the lives of Christians who went before us. And rightly so: We can learn so much from those whom the author of Hebrews calls that great cloud of witnesses.

The tradition of remembering the Church triumphant dates back to the time of the first Christian martyrs. When soldiers of Marcus Aurelius Verus came to arrest Polycarp, a beloved church leader, Polycarp greeted them kindly. According to the third-century historian Eusebius, Polycarp 'ordered a table to be laid for them immediately, invited them to eat as much as they liked, asking in return a single hour in which he could pray.' When Polycarp later stood in the coliseum, accused and surrounded by the jeering crowds, the governor pressed him to recant his faith. Instead, this man, who himself had been discipled by the Apostle John, said this: 'For 86 years, I have been [Christ's] servant, and He has never done me wrong: How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?' As they were preparing to burn him alive, Polycarp offered up prayers of faith and praise.

In the years following Polycarp's death, Christians would gather annually to take communion beside his grave. There they would remember his brave witness and take courage from his example. As the years passed, the day shifted in focusing from remembering Polycarp to honoring all martyrs. By the seventh century, the Church created a holiday to honor all of God's saints—heroes of the faith. One of my favorite heroes was a woman named Monica, who lived during the fourth century. She would never face flames or jeering crowds, as did Polycarp, but she did face testing. That testing came in the form of her own longing for the return of her prodigal son, Augustine. His licentious lifestyle made this Christian mother weep. Later, when Augustine, who is now known as one of the foremost theologians of Christianity and scholars of Western civilization, did come to Christ, he wrote this prayer: 'My mother, Your faithful servant, wept to You for me, shedding more tears for my spiritual death than others shed for the bodily death of a son. You heard her."'

I could tell you story after story like this, from Justin Martyr to Martin Luther to Amy Carmichael. But let me encourage you to do something this All Saints' Day. Take the lead in your church to honor the great saints who set examples for us. Reacquaint your children with Halloween's Christian origins. Research together and talk about the lives of Christian heroes. Sure, go ahead and let the kids dress up like Batman and hit up your neighbors for candy. But when the hoopla of modern Halloween is over, encourage your kids to imitate some real heroes—not in what they put on, but in how they live their lives."

That was Chuck Colson, from October 31, 2007, describing the rich history behind All Saints' Day.

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

This Breakpoint was originally published on October 31, 2022.

In her new tell-all memoir The Woman in Me, Britney Spears reveals that she was pressured to have an abortion by Justin Timberlake when they were a celebrity couple. "Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives." She concluded, "If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn't want to be a father."

Her experience is shared by millions. As an article in Christian Newswire put it, "[N]early 70% of the women who had abortions described them as being coerced, pressured, or inconsistent with their own values and preferences."

Many feel like Spears, who wrote, "To this day, it's one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life."

Abortion is a lie. Far from securing the rights and autonomy of women, abortion pressures women to cater to male desire and irresponsibility.

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

Every year around this time, the ritual begins anew. The weather cools off, the leaves change color, and Christians start arguing about Halloween.

Many people love this night. It gives them an excuse to host parties, kick off the holiday spending season, and provide economic stimulus for the dental industry. Others use it as an excuse to flirt with things much darker than plastic skeletons and creative jack-o'-lanterns. Too many adults use Halloween as an excuse to throw out common standards of modesty.

What is the history behind Halloween? What's all the decoration and tradition really about? Is there something spiritual behind all the ghoulishness?

When I was a kid, a series of comic-book-style tracts went around claiming that Halloween was a pagan holiday called Samhain, when ancient druids used to carry out human sacrifice under a full moon. That story, as even modern pagans who love Halloween admit, is mostly made up.

The very name "Halloween" means "holy evening." It was a throwback to when Catholic Christians prepared for the Feast of All Saints on November 1. A few years back, Kirk Cameron urged Christians to make the most of Halloween's Christian origins, and to throw "the biggest Halloween party on [the] block." Not only is it a great way to make fun of the devil, he argued, but it offers Christians a wonderful opportunity to proclaim Jesus' victory over sin and death to our neighbors.

Our Christian forebears might have agreed. In his book, For the Glory of God, historian Rodney Stark argued that Christians in the early centuries of the Church frequently reacted to pagan practices like fortune-telling, alchemy, and even sorcery, by not taking them seriously. Augustine, for example, myth-busted astrology by pointing out how twins born under the same star sign were often very different in personality. St. Boniface taught that "to believe in 'witches' is un-Christian." Pope Gregory the Great even advised a missionary to Britain to destroy idols but to re-purpose pagan temples for Christian worship.

A few years ago, Steven Wedgeworth offered another perspective in an article at The Calvinist International. After providing a helpful overview of the history of Halloween, he concluded that though there are echoes of paganism and Christian re-purposing in Halloween, the holiday of today, especially the costumes and trick-or-treating, is a recent invention. Like the commercialized secular Christmas, Halloween as we know it has more to do with department stores than druids.

No matter what day it is, Paul's instructions in Philippians 4 should guide our celebrations. Christians should think on "whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable." Axe-murderer get-ups and sexually provocative costumes fail to pass that test. And, we should consider Paul's teaching on meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8. Idol worship is always wrong, but eating meat sacrificed to idols is a matter of conscience.

If you are unable to participate in Halloween with a clear conscience, there are plenty of other things to celebrate this time of year, from Reformation Day to All Saints Day, to the beauty of fall's changing colors, to, as always, the sovereignty of God and the victory of Christ over everything. And, if kids will be knocking at your door on Halloween night, you can always put on a wool tunic and nail 95 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to your door.

If you and your kids do enjoy a little spooky stuff, just remember, as Paul Pastor wrote over at Christianity Today, "monsters point us to God." "No story worth listening to," he says, "lacks a villain. And no villain worth fighting lacks monstrosity." No story has more monstrous villains or darker darkness than Scripture. We do have an enemy, an enemy of our souls. At the same time, Scripture describes evil as not just "out there," but also in our own hearts.

And yet, evil does not have the final say, either in the world or in our own hearts. Evil is a real foe, but because of Jesus Christ, evil is a defeated foe. So, fear not.

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

This Breakpoint originally aired October 31, 2014.

John Stonestreet and Maria Baer discuss the worldviews behind recent tragic headlines, including the shooting in Maine and the war in Israel. Alliance Defending Freedom is being targeted with a false narrative about their mission.

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Golda

The Narrative: Peace and War in Israel with Michael Mistretta

All Israel Will Be Saved

Segment 1: The Worldviews Behind Tragedies

U.S. Sees Spike in Anti-Semitic Incidents Since Start of Israel-Hamas War

ALVIN PLANTINGA: The Dawkins Confusion

Segment 2: Israel and Hamas at War

Israel, Hamas, and Just War: Interviews with Joel Rosenberg and Eric Patterson

Segment 3: NPR's Coverage of ADF

How One Christian Group is Shaping Policy, from Abortion to LGBTQ Rights

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

On October 22, 2020, 34 countries signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women's Health and Strengthening the Family. Though it lacked any legal obligations, the statement was intended to express that it was indeed possible to advance the health and wellbeing of women and protect the lives of the preborn at the same time.

The original list of countries included the United States. In fact, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo helped to architect the project. Eight days after becoming president, Joe Biden removed the United States from the list of signatories in line with the foreign policy of the last two democratic presidents, who used access to U.S. aid to advance abortion and LGBTQ ideology around the world.

On Wednesday in Washington D.C., seven U.S. Congressional leaders and ambassadors from Guatemala and Hungary hosted 36 original signatories to the Geneva Consensus Declaration, to reaffirm the commitment to protect "both the rights of women and unborn children." Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma put it bluntly: "When families are strong, nations are strong. When families are weak, nations are weak."

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

A new California law signed by Governor Newsom on October 7 will enable strangers to lead children 12 and older on matters of mental health and their home life without requiring any parental consent. It's a bizarre irony for a state that's also suing the corporation Meta for harming children under age 13 through its social media platforms, based on the assumption that children are too vulnerable to resist the effects of social media. Evidently, children can't resist their phones, but they should be able to make massive decisions about their minds, bodies, and family relationships without their parents' consent.

The new law, Assembly Bill 665, expands an existing law that only applied to minors aged 12 and older with private health insurance. The new law includes minors aged 12 and older who are covered by publicly funded health insurance. Additionally, this new law broadens the list of professionals able to treat such minors from not only mental health professionals, clinical psychologists, and other licensed counselors, but also a "registered psychological assistant, a psychological trainee, an associate clinical social worker, a social work intern," and more. The law also permits minors to pursue mental health services and residential shelter services without having to "present a danger of serious physical or mental harm to themselves or to others, or be the alleged victim of incest or child abuse."

LGBTQ activists are celebrating the law as a huge victory for empowering at-risk "queer" youth. Director of California Policy Kim Lewis commended Governor Newsom for signing the new law, which will address "disparities" and provide "critical mental health services" for youth, "especially youth of color and LGBTQIA+ youth."

However, far from empowering young people, California's new law is rooted in a lie about what it means to be human. At the core of this bill is an idea that humans, including young people, are self-determined, self-defined beings who should have no restraints on what they desire or believe. Most importantly, the bill undermines the parent-child relationship, the most vital relationship for a child's health and wellbeing. In its place, the law offers absolute autonomy to young people, despite their youth and immaturity.

This view of people, especially children, is deeply flawed. As Scripture teaches and reality confirms, our existence is owed to others–to God, first and foremost, and to mothers and fathers, according to God's design. Mothers and fathers are those tasked with and best able to provide care for children, who are born vulnerable creatures dependent on love and nurturing in order to become healthy, independent adults.

Policies like AB 665 are predicated on "empowering" children by denying this dependence on parents, as well as the limits imposed by our Creator. In between the parents and children, this bill places agents of the state, who are allegiant to ideologies about children rather than the children themselves.

One California mom, Abigail Martinez, lost custody of her daughter after school counselors and the Department of Children and Family Services determined that she was not properly supporting her daughter's transgender identity. The state agents claimed to know her daughter better than Abigail did, but they were tragically wrong. Months later, Abigail's daughter took her own life.

Similar stories are found in other states. In fact, according to a new groundbreaking study, states where minors are free to consent to health services without parental permission experience higher youth suicide rates. And the consequences won't end here. Bad ideas beget worse ideas. The only way to truly empower children is by protecting the rights of parents to protect their hearts, minds, and bodies. No other relationship can replace parental protection and guidance. Certainly the state cannot. This law leaves young people vulnerable to the malpractice of the Dr. Frankensteins of our cultural moment and will pave the way for further exploitation. The law claims to recognize that kids are capable of consent, but in reality it lets off the hook those adults who influence them.

Kids don't need "empowerment." They need parents. The way to help kids struggling with their mental health is by preserving and strengthening their relationships with those who, in most cases, know and love them best.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Eckert. 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

A parent of a six-year-old recently asked WIRED Magazine's advice columnist, "My kid wants to be an influencer. Is that bad?"

WIRED's answer, more or less, was that the concerned parent should relax. "All that collective angst about television, movies, newspapers, and theater," the author wrote, is "a lineage, a rite of passage through which all generations must proceed."

That's true. But just because "The Twist" was pretty harmless doesn't mean that TikTok is. Smartphones are an open door for pornography, sexual exploitation, peer pressure, mental illness, and abusive relationships.

Not to mention, fame is a dangerous thing. In a 2011 interview, Billy Ray Cyrus said the decision to let his daughter Miley become a pop star "destroyed [his] family," and if he could, he'd "take it back in a second."

In other words, before we let our kids become "influencers," we need to have an honest reckoning with just how much our platforms and technologies are influencing them.

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

In a recent article published by the Washington Institute, professor and lawyer Eric Treene offered a robust alternative way of understanding Christian Nationalism and its significance within American culture. Depending on who's doing the talking, Christian Nationalism is either the greatest danger to America or our only hope in resisting the onslaught of the progressive movement. But there is a better way. As Treene wrote, the current debate over Christian Nationalism is the most recent chapter of something that is an endemic part of the American story:

"[C]an Christians honestly look around and conclude that there is more nationalism melded with their faith than in the past? In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt distributed a pocket New Testament to soldiers throughout the Armed Services, with the inscription: 'As Commander-in-Chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States.'"

At the same time, according to Treene, there are reasons to be concerned about Christian Nationalism.

"The alarmism about growing Christian Nationalism is vastly overblown among some, and deliberately manipulated for political reasons among others. But there is a "there" there."

In the inaugural offering of Breakpoint Forums, the Colson Center hosted two of American Christianity's keenest voices about faith and the public square. Rusty Reno, chief editor of First Things, and Hunter Baker, newly appointed provost of North Greenville University, addressed the issue of Christian Nationalism.

Not only do Reno and Baker hail from different Church traditions, but they took somewhat differing postures in the forum on what faithful citizenship looks like in our cultural moment. Dr. Reno's seriousness about where a secular globalist perspective has left us leads him to embrace a "soft" Christian Nationalism, though he objects to the positions of some of its most outspoken advocates. As he put it,

"I would vastly prefer a Christian America to a secular America. … I think it's as simple as that. You have to ask yourself, what would you prefer, a Christian America or a secular America? I'd prefer a Christian America, and in that sense, Christian nationalism."

Dr. Baker, on the other hand, argued against using the title Christian Nationalism while affirming the largely Christian influence on our nation throughout its history. He insisted that the nation and the Church are better off without any kind of formal link, while the nation is helped by the intentional influence of the church.

"It's like George Washington and the Bible. These are the bulwarks of the United States in that period. But … for most of our history, it's not the case that the United States government is sort of the official partner of the Christian faith, nor is it seeking to officially establish the Christian faith or Christian institutions."

Their differences were illuminating, especially given their shared priority of Christian faith, grounded in Christian truth as revealed in Holy Scripture. Each warned against the danger posed by our increasingly intolerant, secular, and progressive gatekeepers who sit atop the cultural, academic, and political power structures of our society. And both Reno and Baker affirmed the basic responsibility believers have to bring their convictions to the ballot box.

The conversation was helpful and enlightening. While combatants on the extreme ends of the debate insist that it's their way or the highway, Christians must seek an increasing Christian influence without falling for the dangers C.S. Lewis warned us against in God in the Dock when he said, "By the mere act of calling itself the Christian Party it implicitly accuses all Christians who do not join it of apostasy and betrayal." We can do better than that. You can watch the recording of the Breakpoint Forum on Christian Nationalism on YouTube.

Working to see a nation become more Christian doesn't make one a Christian Nationalist in the breathlessly alarmed sense we hear about so often. Our goal is faithfulness. We can long for and we can work for Christian renewal in our time without, as Chuck Colson often warned against, looking for our salvation to arrive on Air Force One.

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

Recently, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley questioned President of the NCAA Charlie Baker about the association's policy regarding male athletes who claim they are women. As part of his questioning, Hawley repeated testimony he'd heard a few months prior from Riley Gaines, a U.S. swimmer who was forced, with no warning, to shower, change, and compete alongside a man. Neither she nor any of her teammates were notified beforehand, let alone asked for consent.

When Hawley asked Baker, who started his job after Gaines' experience, about current NCAA policy, Baker first deflected and then said he didn't believe what happened to Riley Gaines would represent current NCAA policy.

Politician-speak aside, when asked under oath, Baker backed away from the NCAA's previous approach. Of course, only time will tell if the NCAA actually stands up for women athletes. Hopefully, the days of men intruding on women's sports and private spaces is coming to an end.

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

A rarely stated but widely assumed myth of our "information age" is that access to information is the same thing as knowledge or, even worse, wisdom. Another is that time not spent accessing information is wasted, perhaps even immorally so.

This explains, at least in part, the extent to which people go in order to avoid boredom today. Even brief 30-second intervals at a red light have us grasping for our phones. Most of us are uncomfortable with having "nothing to do," even for a moment. However, the endless pursuit of feeling "productive," or at least "informed" is not satisfying. In a new book called Why Boredom Matters, Professor Kevin Hood Gary proposes a solution to this problem, which he summarizes in the subtitle: "Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life."

Today, "leisure" carries connotations of wealth and laziness, which makes it difficult for Christians to defend. However, since the early modern era, "leisure" has referred to the pursuit of curiosity for curiosity's sake. German philosopher Josef Pieper called leisure the "basis of culture," defining it as "everything that lies beyond the utilitarian world." In other words, to engage in leisure is to have the energy and the will to learn about the world, even when that learning isn't necessary for survival or wealth.

Leisure, when understood in this sense, pushes us further into what it means to be human. No other creature engages in leisure like humans do. Animals build dams and burrows to stay warm and survive. Humans need shelter, too, but we decorate them. Not to mention, we also build cathedrals, theme parks, museums, and restaurants. We write sonnets, compose operas, and make eight-course meals. This is the behavior of creatures made in the image of God, a Creator who loves beauty for beauty's sake.

Strictly utilitarian societies can be productive and efficient but are, in the end, unsustainable. The Communist experiment of the Soviet Union is an example of what happens when a society is built upon a wrong understanding of the human person. When creativity and imagination are suppressed and individuality rejected, the result is widespread dehumanization. (I'm not just talking about the architecture, although there's a reason it's called "brutalist").

Still, throughout human history and even under brutal regimes, humans have always found the will and the means to engage in leisure. One of my favorite paintings, by Russian artist Nikolai Yaroshenko, is called Life Is Everywhere. Three men, a woman, and a baby are crammed into a prison car but, through the bars of their window, they watch, amused, the fevered activity of a group of birds on the ground outside. The child is smiling.

Even in war-torn countries and in the poorest slums, there are people making beautiful things, inventing games and stories, and imagining a world different than what they know. This is because leisure is an insuppressible part of being human, made in God's image.

In most of the Western world, people have all the means and opportunity to pursue classical leisure but choose distraction instead. Lacking in motivation to go deeper, Kevin Hood Gary suggests the only solution is education.

He doesn't mean institutional higher education as it is currently, unfortunately built around a utilitarian approach. Highly specified academic programs teach students what they need to pass a test, obtain a license, or make money. A truly meaningful education instead capitalizes on the God-given capacity for leisure incorporating a broad survey of subjects–including those that seem to have nothing to do with "getting a job."

Often, those subjects assumed to be irrelevant to a job are the most consequential. Do we want geneticists capable of splicing genes and rewriting DNA who have never taken an ethics class? Do we want elementary teachers versed in all social-emotional learning theories of second graders, but who do not know even the basics of the history of Western civilization?

Education should be an antidote to boredom because it should teach us how to wrestle with the questions boredom brings up, such as: Who am I? Why am I here? What is life for? Am I living well? What should I love?

Philosophers call these the "ultimate" questions. Christians know that the source of these questions is God Himself, and that bearing God's image makes life inherently meaningful. To learn about God's world, through history, art, philosophy, mathematics, science, and literature, is to learn about Him. Thus, it is always beneficial, even if it accomplishes nothing more than giving us a wider glimpse of His glorious creativity.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.

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