Breakpoint

Research consistently shows that young people who wait until after the wedding have a better chance for a stable, fulfilling, happy marriage. They also do not have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. Though this does not fit with contemporary assumptions about human beings, obedience to the Lord's loving plan always works best, and brings incalculable benefits into our lives.

While we may or may not hear this kind of moral clarity in church, it's been quite a while since the government has admitted the negative consequences of unmarried sex, particularly for teenagers. However, a 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated clearly that young people who are virgins register much higher in nearly all health-related behaviors than those who are sexually active. These behaviors included everything from using seat belts to avoiding drug abuse, eating a healthy diet, going to the doctor, exercising, and avoiding riding with a driver who's been drinking. In addition, one finding that the media did not mention at the time is that while sexually inactive teens are healthiest, sexually active homosexual and bisexual teens fared significantly worse than their sexually active heterosexual peers.

At the time, the CDC conveyed the blockbuster conclusions of their report as drily and bureaucratically as possible: "Significant health disparities exist." A summary of the CDC study provided by Focus on the Family clarified just how significant these disparities are.

First, smoking. The study found that sexually active heterosexual teens were 3,300% more likely to smoke tobacco products daily than their virgin counterparts. "Same-sex/bisexual-active" teens were 9,500% more likely to smoke daily than the virgins.

Second, drug abuse. The study found that sexually active heterosexual teens were 500% more likely to have ever injected a non-prescription drug than the virgins, while a whopping 2,333% of the "same-sex/bisexual-active" teens were more likely than the virgins to have done so.

Now, as Focus noted at the time, correlation is not causation. The research did not prove that abstinence causes other healthy habits. However, the very fact that the CDC noted a relationship between sexual behavior and other habits is more than a little significant. Though the CDC would never put it this way, the summary offered by Focus on the Family was clear and succinct: "The sexual choices and values our young people hold have real-life consequences far beyond sexuality itself."

Parents who care about the health and well-being of their children should especially take note of this data and have confidence that they can make a difference for their child. Researcher Mark Regnerus highlighted in his book Forbidden Fruit that the intensity of teens' religious beliefs is more important when it comes to sexual activity than exactly what religious beliefs they claim.

The first thing, then, for parents to care about is our kids' faith. A strong, informed, and vital relationship with Jesus will help them resist the kinds of temptation and peer pressure—sexual and otherwise—that assault them every day at school and online.

In other words, worldview matters. The CDC report demonstrates there are consequences for a secular worldview that sees bodies as something we "own," something external to who we are, something we use (or abuse) depending on our desires, our will, or our "identity."

The Christian worldview, in sharp contrast, teaches that our bodies are integral to who we are, both in how humans were created and in that Christ took on flesh to make all things new. The extent that we and our kids truly embrace this will determine how we treat our bodies and the bodies of others.

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

This Breakpoint was revised from one originally published on December 9, 2016.

After a military junta seized power in 2021, the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar has seen an escalation of violence, ethnic conflict, and religious persecution. With a long history of internal conflict, observers have long hoped for democratic reform and increased freedoms. That now seems more improbable than ever.

The country's ruling junta is waging war against an opposition government consisting of multiple ethnic groups. Civilians are caught in the crossfire, and the religious—especially Christians—are convenient targets.

Though the brutality of Myanmar's government is not restricted to only Christians, they have endured a heavy share of the violence. In the western state of Chin, the junta military has destroyed over 85 churches by arson, ground artillery, and even air strikes.

Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Myanmar, that God would bring courage and swift and just resolution to this conflict.

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

Pixar's Wall-E has proven to be among the most profound and prophetic films of the last 20 years. After hopelessly polluting the Earth and leaving an army of robots to clean up the planet, humans now live aboard a giant ship built by a company that promises to take care of all its passengers' needs. Thus, humans are left with nothing to do but amuse themselves and eat a lot.

Many Christians wrote off the Pixar classic because of its hyper-environmentalist message. However, the film's commentary on human exceptionalism and vocation, specifically the inability of our machines to do our most important work for us, was spot-on. In the world of Wall-E, human beings have a purpose, or a telos that cannot be reduced to maximizing comfort, safety, and convenience.

In the biblical account of reality, humans exist to glorify and love God, and to serve as His special representatives and co-rulers in creation. Human inventions should help towards achieving those ends, extending our abilities, and mitigating the effects of the Fall. Wanting to replace ourselves with our devices assumes that humanity is the central problem of the world that needs to be solved.

Recently in First Things, Matthew Crawford argued that an anti-human worldview like the one parodied in Wall-E now dominates our tech and governing classes. Those who are behind everything from smartphone apps to pandemic policy share a basic belief that human beings are inferior to machines. We are, as he puts it, "stupid," "obsolete," "fragile," and "hateful."

Crawford opens his essay with an example of a driverless car created by Google that froze at a four-way stop. Apparently, the drivers around the car didn't behave as it had been programmed to expect. However, rather than admit the limits of the car's "artificial intelligence," one Google engineer remarked that what he'd learned from the incident is that humans need to be "less idiotic." The premise is that humans are not the crown of creation but problems to be solved.

Of course, it is quite possible that, once they've worked out all the bugs, driverless cars will lead to less accidents and road deaths. However, one of the bugs to be worked out are the programmers who hate humans, which makes the point of this essay ring true. So much of our high-tech culture, from the social media algorithms that tell us what we want to the transhumanist fantasies about uploading our consciousness to computers, assumes that humanity is an obstacle to be overcome.

Much of our public life also assumes the basic idiocy and inadequacy of humans: take health officials more concerned with controlling people than limiting the spread of a virus or legislation quashing parental rights in order to "affirm" gender-confused minors.

C.S. Lewis saw this impulse decades ago and recognized how it would grant growing power to certain people over and above others. In his masterpiece The Abolition of Man, Lewis warned of those he called "conditioners," who considered themselves above such common human frailties. Of course, as Lewis pointed out, the conditioners are also human, but in denial that they too are vulnerable to the same frailties as everyone else. Their danger lies in the fact that they are oblivious about their frailties, especially their moral frailties.

It is good that humans have bodies that limit us to one location and the need for food, sleep, and friendship. These limits are part of our design. Because we are designed, we must be guided by values and not merely algorithms. It is good that we take time to learn, to appreciate beauty, to feel wonder, and to have burning questions about what is behind all that we see. God made us this way, so that, eventually, our seeking would lead back to Him. Though He intends to redeem us from the ravages of sin, He never intends to optimize us into efficient machines. Apparently, He considers being human as something "good," even "very good." So much so, in fact, He took on flesh Himself.

Wall-E got it (mostly) right. Technology is good but needs a telos—a purpose for existing. That purpose cannot be to replace, transcend, or circumvent God's good design for human beings.

In short, technology and public policy should be human-shaped, not the other way around.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.

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

The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute recently released abortion estimates for the first six months of 2023. Using these numbers, media outlets quickly announced that pro-life laws after the demise of Roe have been ineffective. Ironically, abortion proponents lament restricted access to abortion while claiming pro-life laws don't work.

However, according to Dr. Michael J. New of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, these numbers "reflect a great deal of potential variance."

"[T]hese new abortion estimates are based on samples of abortion facilities, not comprehensive surveys. ... For Georgia, their upper abortion estimate is over 80 percent higher than their low estimate. For Florida, their upper estimate is more than 11,000 abortions higher than their low estimate. This much variation raises serious questions about the accuracy of their estimates."

According to Dr. New, "plenty of reliable data collected since the Dobbs decision show that thousands of lives have been saved by strong state-level pro-life laws."

So, as always, we should stay the course and not be discouraged by the latest alarm-seeking headline.

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

In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that to deny a church "an otherwise available public benefit on account of its religious status" is to violate the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution. In that case, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, a Missouri church that operated a licensed preschool and daycare facility, applied for state "funds for qualifying organizations to purchase recycled tires to resurface playgrounds."

Trinity Lutheran met all the qualifications of the program, but the state informed them that a grant would violate a state constitutional provision that "no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, section or denomination of religion." Trinity Lutheran sued, claiming that because of the Free Exercise clause in the First Amendment, a government benefit cannot be withheld solely because of religion. In his majority decision, Chief Justice Roberts agreed, writing, "the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand."

The Trinity Lutheran case was only six years ago but, in a case of "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," Colorado is the latest state to "forget" something about which the Court has been very clear.

This is the inaugural year of Colorado's Universal Preschool Program, which funds 15 hours of preschool per week for every child in the state. To be a part of the program, the state is requiring that preschools sign a "service agreement" that includes a commitment to "not discriminate" on the basis of sexual orientation or so-called "gender identity."

In August, the Denver Catholic Archdiocese, which operates 36 preschools and serves 1,500 kids a year, filed a lawsuit, noting that this "service agreement" would force them to hire teachers and administrators who do not hold to their faith commitments. Not only is this a case of "Trinity Lutheran all over again," but it is another chapter in the never-ending story of public officials pressuring Christians to keep their faith out of public life.

Recently in Massachusetts, state officials denied an adoption license to a Catholic couple, claiming their faith made them "unsupportive" of transgender ideology. The state of Oregon similarly denied an adoption license to a young, widowed mother because she would not commit to taking a hypothetically gender-confused child to a gender clinic.

Years ago in a Breakpoint commentary, Chuck Colson described the jury selection process in the trial of Jack Kevorkian, the doctor accused of helping at least 27 of his patients kill themselves. Kevorkian's lawyer attempted to bar anyone who said their Christian faith forbids suicide from serving on the jury, claiming that belief made them unfairly biased.

"Religion has been increasingly relegated to the private sphere. Christians are welcome to participate in public life only if they leave their faith at home … [but] [t]he logic of Kevorkian's defense attorney could be applied to any criminal trial. If potential jurors can be excluded for believing that assisted suicide is immoral, what will be the next step? Will the attorneys of accused murderers be permitted to exclude jurors whose religion teaches that life is sacred?"

More than 25 years later, that dismal hypothetical seems less hypothetical. As the Colorado, Massachusetts, and Oregon stories reveal, some public officials are so hostile to the Christian faith, they would rather allow children in foster care to sleep on office floors in government buildings and remain in juvenile detention facilities than go to a home with religious parents.

Of course, there must aways be moral restrictions around who can and cannot adopt children and operate a preschool. Restrictions are necessary to protect children. However, some states are now operating from a moral framework that is exactly backward. The biblical woes against those who call right wrong and wrong right apply as much to government programs as they do to individuals.

It is a grave mistake to use irrational and false moral claims as the basis for these moral restrictions. In this upside-down world, children must be protected from religion rather than ideologies that threaten their minds, hearts, bodies, and most importantly relationships. Claiming to protect children, they are instead put in danger, subject to irreversible physical, psychological, and emotional damage.

Given how clear the Supreme Court has been about states discriminating against religious institutions, I suspect the state of Colorado will be forced to change this policy. Given how willing the state of Colorado is to defy clear Court teachings and target people of faith, I suspect they will resist for as long as possible. In the meantime, children will suffer because of the state's bigotry. If people of faith are told they "need not apply" for adoption licenses, preschool programs, serving on juries, feeding the homeless, advocating for the preborn, or caring for the sick and dying, who do they imagine will take their place?

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Maria Baer.

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

The government of New South Wales in Australia is contemplating a bill that would make it illegal to counsel an individual to "change or suppress" their sexual orientation or gender identity. But the Anglican Diocese of Sydney is refusing to comply.

Last year, Anglican leaders there issued a statement on concupiscence, an aspect of the doctrine of sin having to do with fallen desire, clarifying its relevance to same-sex attraction. Archbishop Kanishka Raffel remarked, "Probably in our culture ... that sounds harsh. But this is basic Christian doctrine. … What we want people to know from a pastoral point of view [is] that there is God's help to help us live God's way."

Especially when it comes to sexuality, it is widely assumed today that our desires are inherently good and define who we are. But the Christian vision of sin implicates human behavior and human desire. Christ rescues us from our sinful acts and our sinful nature.

Thankfully, some Christians down under still have the courage to say so.

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

If all there was to go on were sitcoms, movies, and mainstream editorials, we'd have to conclude that marriage is a direct path to misery, the "old ball and chain" that only ties us down, limits our freedom, and cramps our sexual fun. Many people now think of marriage less as "settling down" and more as "settling." Young people are told, "You've got plenty of time, live a little, first," as if life ends after the wedding.

The truth about marriage, however, is that it is, statistically, the single best predictor of long-term happiness. Making this even more important to understand is that for at least the last 20 years now, Americans have been steadily getting less happy.

Writing at UnHerd, sociologist Brad Wilcox and the Institute for Family Studies' David Bass point to new research from the University of Chicago that suggests that "Americans who are married with children are now leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless." And not just a little bit happier, either. According to Wilcox and Bass there is a "startling 30-percentage-point happiness divide between married and unmarried Americans."

In other words, the happiness divide and the marriage divide are largely the same. Sam Peltzman, lead researcher behind the University of Chicago paper, isolated all other factors among thousands of respondents, including income, education, race, location, age, and gender. He concluded that "the most important differentiator" when it comes to who is happy and who is not is marriage. "Low happiness characterizes all types of non-married," Peltzman writes, whether divorced, widowed, or never married. "No subsequent population categorization will yield so large a difference in happiness across so many people."

In other words, the decline of marriage over the last several decades is causing the decline in happiness, or at least most of it. As Peltzman told The Atlantic in statistical hyperbole: "The only happy people for 50 years have been married people."

Olga Khazan, who wrote the Atlantic piece and has been cohabiting with her partner for 15 years, says these stats also struck her as counterintuitive. However, she then admits that "this is a fairly consistent finding dating back decades in social-science research: Married people are happier. Period."

Of course, happiness isn't the sole or even the best reason to get married. Many things in life carry deep meaning and significance that don't necessarily make us happy. A life lived only for happiness is a futile "chasing after the wind." Enduring suffering, overcoming trials and tragedy, or sacrificing time, energy, or even our lives for others are all richly worthwhile pursuits that yield rewards in eternity. Certainly, loving someone and raising godly children is worth it, even if it's not always fun.

And we should note, "happiness" is a malleable word. When survey participants say being married or having children made them "happy," they may often mean that these permanent connections give them lasting joy, something more profound than fleeting happiness, which surveys seldom quantify.

Still, these consistently stark results are unmistakable. They should challenge the entire way of thinking in sitcoms, movies, and editorials. Marriage is one of the chief sources of wellbeing and satisfaction in life. The fact that marriage rates have declined so dramatically over the last 50 years has had real, population-wide consequences.

Because the reasons people are not marrying at the same rates are so complex, different solutions will be required to raise the marriage rate. According to Wilcox and Bass, one of the most important reasons is the fact that, for many Americans who are living together and may already have children, getting married incurs a tax "penalty." The federal government needs to, in their words, stop "making marriage a bad financial bet for lower-income families."

That would be a good start. Ultimately, however, our bad laws are reinforced by a low view of marriage that has infected hearts and minds via entertainment, media, culture, and individual choices. We have a worldview problem, which has led to a conflict between the values and priorities of millions of people and the way they were actually created to live.

Marriage is part of God's plan for humanity and for His creation. No other human institution forges such lasting and consequential bonds. So, it should surprise no one—least of all Christians—that our nation's 50-year experiment with alternatives to marriage has left huge numbers of people deeply unhappy. Thanks to social science, we know the solution. The question now, for each of us and for all of society, is whether we're willing to commit.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris.

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

A law in St. Louis banning so-called transgender care for minors can now take effect after a judge struck down a lawsuit challenging it. In a two-page order, Missouri Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer wrote that the lawsuit, which was brought by the ACLU, lacked sufficient evidence to delay the legislation: "The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear. Accordingly, the evidence raises more questions than answers."

Activists claim that the science in favor of transgender "care" is settled. It's not true. Thankfully this judge was willing to say it out loud. This legislative push came as part of an investigation into the transgender clinic at St. Louis Children's Hospital. In February, a whistleblower alleged that the clinic had started transitioning more than 600 children between 2020 and 2022. In some cases, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones were prescribed after just two one-hour visits.

In summary, the threat is real, the "science" is false, and children's lives are at stake.

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

September 18 is the anniversary of the death of a mathematical and scientific genius, an outspoken Christian who defended the faith during the Enlightenment, when Christianity was under attack by much of the intellectual elite in Europe.

Leonhard Euler was the son of Paul Euler, a Reformed Church pastor in Basel, Switzerland. He began study at the University of Basel at 13 and completed a master's degree in philosophy at 16. Though he originally intended to become a pastor, once his mathematical genius became evident, he changed the focus of his studies.

In 1726, Euler completed a dissertation on the propagation of sound. The following year, he took second place in a prestigious Paris Academy prize competition, a competition Euler would win 12 times.

When he didn't get a professorship at the University of Basel, Euler went to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in Russia. Initially, he served in the medical department, working as a medic to the Russian navy. He was quickly promoted and, in 1731, was named a professor of physics. In 1733, Euler was named head of the mathematics department.

In 1741, partly due to a growing xenophobia in Russia, Euler accepted a position at the Berlin Academy. In the 25 years he spent there, he published over 380 articles, along with important books on mathematical functions and differential calculus. Frederick the Great asked Euler to mentor his niece, the Princess of Anhalt-Dessau. Euler wrote over 230 letters on science, philosophy, and religion to the princess, which were later compiled into a bestselling book.

Unfortunately, Euler's faith and conservative, hardworking lifestyle did not sit well with the atmosphere of Frederick's court. By 1766, the situation in Russia had stabilized under Catherine the Great, so Euler returned to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

That same year, Euler was diagnosed with a cataract in his left eye. Within a few weeks of its diagnosis, he was almost completely blind. Though for most people, this would have been a career-ending affliction, Euler became even more productive than before.

It helped that he had a photographic memory. For example, he could recite Virgil's Aeneid verbatim and could even tell the first and last lines from any page of the edition he had learned. Also, his ability to concentrate was legendary. According to one story, two of his students working on a series of highly complicated mathematical problems could not agree on the fifteenth decimal point. Euler settled the argument by doing the calculation in his head.

In addition to his remarkable abilities, Euler had a prodigious capacity for hard work. In 1775, he produced roughly one mathematical treatise each week for the entire year. By the end of his life, Euler had produced 886 academic papers and books that filled roughly 90 volumes, making him one of the most productive mathematicians in history. In fact, the last phase of his life was so prolific that the St. Petersburg Academy did not complete publication of his papers until 30 years after his death.

Amidst this prodigious output, Euler never left behind the theological commitments and interests of his youth. Like many Christian scholars of the time, he wrote against the anti-religious thinkers of his day, particularly defending biblical inspiration. He combined his mathematical and scientific interests with theology and used his skills in the defense of the faith, challenging the claims to knowledge of other philosophies as "heathen and atheistic."

Overall, Euler's mathematical work was an expression of his deep faith as a Christian who recognized Jesus as the logos, the sum of all knowledge and truth. His work was an expression of a worldview that recognized that every area of life is worthy of exploration as an act of worship and service to God.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine.

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

Hospitals across the nation are facing litigation concerns tied to their gender clinics. And John and Maria discuss the devastating effects of pornography on children.

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