Breakpoint

Imagine a pregnant mother, recently informed that her baby may have a rare genetic condition. She now faces a future caring for someone with an intellectual or physical disability, perhaps financial stress, and even a shortened life. Certain dreams and hopes she has harbored for her preborn child have been dramatically altered.

To make matters worse, many women in this challenging situation face intense pressure from medical professionals and family members to have an abortion. Some have even described having to defend the decision to not have an abortion to medical professionals who assume that a disabled child should not be allowed to live.

But what if the prenatal test that sparked this whole series of events was a false positive? What if this test returns false positives 85 percent of the time? According to a shocking new expose in the New York Times, a new investigation of companies manufacturing and promoting prenatal tests for rare and serious conditions concluded that certain prenatal tests, tests which lead countless women to get abortions, are "usually wrong." Up to a third of expectant mothers in the United States will face this scenario, claims the article, telling stories of mothers who received positive test results for debilitating chromosomal conditions. Many of these mothers considered abortion until they discovered through more invasive follow-up tests that the screening results were false, and their babies were fine.

Of course, even if accurate, test results do not in any way alter the inherent value of every human being. Still, many women do not bother with follow-up testing, trusting the results of these prenatal screenings, which manufacturers advertise as "reliable" and "highly accurate."

These tests are neither "reliable" nor "highly accurate." According to an analysis conducted by The Times, screenings for several rare conditions yielded false positives 85 percent of the time. A few screenings, such as the test for Prader-Willi syndrome, were wrong 90 percent of the time.

Millions of women, conclude the authors, have "been misled by a wondrous promise that Silicon Valley technology has made…that a few vials of their blood, drawn in the first trimester, can allow companies to detect serious developmental problems…" The false promises are made via incredibly dishonest advertising. Medical giants like Quest Diagnostics and Myriad Genetics use phrases like "total confidence," "clear answers," and "information you can trust." However, they fail to publish data on how well their tests perform, and even cherry-pick numbers to make them appear more accurate than they are.

However, in one case, The New York Times appears to join in on the deception. The authors repeatedly assure readers that prenatal tests for Down syndrome are reliable. Yet, a 2014 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that around half of the positive Down syndrome screenings for low-risk pregnancies turned out to be false. For trisomy 18, a similar condition, up to 60 percent of screenings yielded false positives.

The tragedy of this many false positives comes into focus in light of another number: Nearly 70 percent of babies in the US who test positive for Down syndrome in the womb are aborted. It's terrible that many of these children didn't even have the condition their parents so greatly feared. It's even more terrible that this culture has decided that people with disabilities are better off dead.

The real name for this way of thinking is eugenics, something that didn't end with Nazi death camps in Europe and forced sterilization in the United States. The deadly logic that follows the idea that some humans are "defective" and "not worthy of life" is still with us, only gussied up, sanitized, and medically justified for the 21st century.

Ours is the real-life version of the movie, GATTACA, in which a "perfect" society free is built, not by eliminating defects, but by eliminating people. While The New York Times deserves credit for exposing the eugenics underbelly of the prenatal testing industry, the authors of this article ultimately buy the same basic premise.

The problem, they suggest, is bad testing, not deciding some are "defective" and eliminating them. But both history and good science fiction warn where this kind of thinking leads. The issue is not the bad science behind modern eugenics but the bad idea behind all eugenics. It's an idea that's claimed victims throughout history and must be rejected no matter how accurate our tests are.

Christians have faced down dehumanizing cultures like ours before, since its earliest days when the persecuted church rescued abandoned Roman babies. They were inspired and animated by a better idea: that every human being is intrinsically valuable because they bear the image of God.

Recently, Medium's Tom Whitwell reported, "a study of 14,000 Australians over 14 years found that neither being promoted nor being fired has any impact on either emotional well-being or life satisfaction."

The fascinating study compares the emotional impact of a variety of life events, from retiring to going to jail, being robbed, getting married, or having a baby. Some of the results are what you'd expect. For example, major health issues hurt both emotional wellbeing and life satisfaction; and though getting married can be stressful leading up to the event, it brings distinct positives afterward.

But surprisingly, neither getting fired nor getting promoted have long-term effects. That certainly challenges the idea that climbing the corporate ladder is the secret to happiness.

Of course, other studies show the high value of work in general: as the Harvard Business Review summarizes, "being unemployed is miserable." All of which points a generation struggling with the meaning of work to the truth of how God made us. Work is a worthy endeavor … but not our ultimate identity.

We live at a rather unusual time in history when it comes to death. Not because there was ever an age when death was escapable, but because, until fairly recently, death was a much more present reality in people's lives. Infant mortality was high; women died in childbirth at much higher rates; different kinds of accidents claimed the lives of men, women, and children, not to mention infections, parasites, diseases.

A major difference is that, in the past, people tended to die in their own beds. In-home Funerals were common. In fact, many homes were built with a coffin door to facilitate moving bodies in and out of the house.

Much of this changed with the advent of antibiotics, which extended lifespans. The professionalization and institutionalization of medicine and the funeral industry changed the landscape. When people became gravely ill, they now went to hospitals. When they died, they were taken to funeral homes. Death was hidden from immediate experience, allowing us to ignore it and its inevitability.

Though in many ways, the pre-modern world had a far more realistic understanding of life and death than we do today, that doesn't mean they better grasped the hereafter. Although ancient cultures possessed various views about what happens after death, there are only a few basic options to choose from. Some cultures believed that, after death, humans became spirits, either as a ghost or an ancestral spirit to be worshipped. There is evidence that this belief may go back as far as the paleolithic period.

Other cultures believed in a more substantive afterlife, particularly those with more elaborate mythological systems. It was a dreary and desolate existence for some, even those not actively being punished for their sins. Others saw the afterlife in more favorable terms. This was especially true if one belonged to the elite or ruling class, though many visions of an afterlife included the prospect of judgment.

Asian cultures were among those who held to some form of reincarnation in which, generally, the quality of someone's next life was determined by how well they lived this one. The meaning of life, within these systems, was to grow spiritually to a point where one could escape the cycle of reincarnation and lose individual existence.

The only other real option, one typically held by philosophers and intellectual elites, was that death meant the end of personal existence altogether. This essentially materialistic view was held by diverse groups like the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers and the Sadducees of Second Temple Judaism.

These alternatives offered little hope for people facing the inevitability of death. Even those with a relatively positive vision of the afterlife sought to delay or prevent death. For example, Shi Huangdi, China's first emperor, built a magnificent tomb for himself, full of goods set aside for his use in the afterlife. But, he also sought to find an elixir that would allow him to live forever. (Ironically, the elixir contained mercury, which may have hastened his death.)

Overall, when it comes to death and the afterlife, the author's assessment in Hebrews sums up the ancients well: people were held in slavery by their fear of death (Heb. 2:15).

Christianity changed all this. The Gospel is about God becoming man to take upon himself the punishment due to us, to die on our behalf, and to be raised from the dead as its Conqueror. By faith, we are united to Him. His death, resurrection, ascension into heaven, and glorification are made ours. Death is a defeated enemy, no longer feared by those who follow the one who already faced it and was victorious. We follow the one who can lead us through the valley of the shadow of death without fear.

For the early Christians, these were not platitudes. Thus, many faced martyrdom with joy rather than renounce their allegiance to the One who died for them and rose again. Therefore, many tended the sick during terrifying epidemics, in complete disregard for their own lives, seeing death from sickness as simply another form of martyrdom and a doorway to a better life. Thus, they lived with a hope that stunned their pagan neighbors.

This is why second-century church father Tertullian would observe that "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church." The pagan world had never seen anything like this. Even the philosophers, who viewed death with such indifference, struggled to grasp how Christians faced death when simply burning a bit of incense to the emperor could avoid it.

In the modern world, the Christian tradition of the ars moriendi, the art of dying well, has been replaced with the art of ignoring death. Our technologies make this possible in all kinds of ways but, as was made obvious in our global responses to COVID-19, do nothing to help us face the fear of death. The world needs what only Christianity offers: the promise of resurrection, a guide who can lead us past the gates of death, a world beyond this one in which all that is sad is made untrue, and a hope that cannot be shaken by any of the circumstances of this world.

Last week John Stonestreet joined the Colson Fellows in Training in a special teaching webinar. These live presentations with a Q&A to follow are a staple for the Colson Fellows program. Last week, Dr. Bill Brown asked John for an explanation on the speed and direction of culture change and how it is impacting mediating institutions and why it matters.

For more on the Colson Fellows program visit www.colsonfellows.org

According to Fiona McDonald with Science Alert, "There's Evidence Humans Didn't Actually See Blue Until Modern Times"

Apparently, people tend to group or separate colors in different ways depending on their language. In a lot of languages, blue wasn't considered a separate color. it was thought of as a kind of green. So many ancient writers compared the sky to copper and the sea to wine.

Even today, Namibia's Himba tribe has several words for green, they lack any specific word for "blue," and have trouble even seeing it. At the same time, they could clearly see shades of green that are invisible to Western eyes.

Language is not just a passive tool humans use to describe the world. It's a proactive means through which we understand the world. It's not that blue didn't exist or even that ancient people couldn't see it. It's the role of language in shaping how we see and think.

In other words, when James talked about how important the tongue is, he meant it.

Though President Ronald Reagan signed into law a national holiday to honor Civil Rights Movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1983, it was not fully observed by all 50 states until the year 2000. This, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is an example of a law being upstream from culture rather than the other way around. Today, the day is recognized across the country and even by cities and nations worldwide.

In more recent years, King's legacy as a leader, minister, and powerful orator has been complicated by allegations of sexual misconduct. He also held certain theological views, specifically about the Divinity of Christ, the resurrection, and the Virgin birth, that were not orthodox. What Dr. King was clear about was the doctrine of the image of God. The way that this exclusively Christian idea shaped his leadership and activism demonstrates what a world-changing doctrine it is.

Specifically, it was King's outworking of the Imago Dei in legal theory, forged in the context of persecution and mistreatment, that led to what many think is the greatest legal work of the 20th century. Chuck Colson thought so. So, to commemorate Martin Luther King Day, here's Chuck Colson on Dr. King and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail:"

"A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is out of harmony with the moral law."

It was with these very words, in his memorable "Letter from Birmingham Jail," that Martin Luther King, Jr., threw down the gauntlet in his great Civil Rights crusade. King refused to obey what he regarded as an immoral law that did not square with the law of God.

All across America today, millions of people are celebrating the birthday of this courageous man, and deservedly so. He was a fearless battler for truth, and all of us are in his debt because he remedied past wrongs and brought millions of Americans into the full riches of citizenship.

In schools and on courthouse steps, people will be quoting his "I Have a Dream" speech today. It is an elegant and powerful classic. But I would suggest that one of Dr. King's greatest accomplishments, one which will be little mentioned today because it has suddenly become "politically incorrect," is his advocacy of the true moral foundations of law.

King defended the transcendent source of the law's authority. In doing so he took a conservative Christian view of law. In fact, he was perhaps the most eloquent advocate of this viewpoint in his time, as, interestingly, Justice Clarence Thomas may be today.

Writing from a jail cell, King declared that the code of justice is not man's law: It is God's law. Imagine a politician making such a comment today. We all remember the controversy that erupted weeks ago when George W. Bush made reference to his Christian faith in a televised national debate.

But King built his whole case on the argument, set forth by St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, that "An unjust law is no law at all." To be just, King argued, our laws must always reflect God's Law.

This is the great issue today in the public square: Is the law rooted in truth? Is it transcendent, immutable, and morally binding? Or is it, as liberal interpreters have suggested, simply what courts say it is? Do we discover the law, or do we create it?

Ever since Dr. King's day, the United States Supreme Court has been moving us step-by-step away from the positions of this great Civil Rights leader. To continue in this direction, as I have written, can only lead to disastrous consequences—indeed, the loss of self-governing democracy.

So I would challenge each of us today to use this occasion to reflect not just on his great crusade for Civil Rights but also on Martin Luther King's wisdom in bringing law back to its moral foundations.

Many think of King as some kind of liberal firebrand, but when it comes to the law he was a great conservative who stood on the shoulders of Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, striving without apology to restore our heritage of justice.

This is a story I tell in my book, How Now Shall We Live?: a great moment in history when a courageous man applied the law of God to the unjust laws of our time, and made a difference. And that is the lesson we should teach our kids on this holiday. It is not just another day off from school or a day to go to the mall.

That was Chuck Colson describing the important insights in Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Take a minute today to read through it, and to talk through it with your kids. Its central question is an especially important question today: "What makes a law just?"

John and Maria discuss a new report on the division in the American church. John outlines how it is helpful to have these kinds of reports, but Maria points out that statistics shouldn't be a determining factor on living out one's faith.

Maria then asks John a few questions that embody some of the feedback we've received from our January commentaries. John explains the approach BreakPoint has inside these tense politically-charged moments and thanks and welcomes feedback from listeners as we navigate societal issues together.

To close, Maria asks John for insight how to respond to church issues. John gives a perspective to help keep the story and the moment straight, while being the church.

** Story References **

THE THREE WORLDS OF EVANGELICALISM

American evangelicalism is deeply divided. Some evangelicals have embraced the secular turn toward social justice activism, particularly around race and immigration, accusing others of failing to reckon with the church's racist past. Others charge evangelical elites with going "woke" and having failed their flocks.First Things>>

Why Are Religious Conservative Parents More Successful at Passing on the Faith?

Children of religious conservatives have a 19% chance of attending worship services at least weekly. This may sound low, but it's higher than the 15% chance we see in people from moderate or liberal families. At the other extreme, an estimated 43% of the children of religious conservatives report no worship attendance at all in young adulthood, compared to 52% for everyone else.

Religious conservative parents are more effective at transmitting their faith to their children. We shouldn't overstate the effect here, though. Children from all groups are, on average, less religious than their parents. Religious conservative parents still face an uphill battle in passing on the faith. But they do fare somewhat better than their moderate or liberal counterparts, even those who are just as religiously committed themselves, belong to the same religious tradition, and are similar in other respects.

IFStudies>>

Remembering January 6 by Missing the Point

Neither our faith nor our despair belongs placed in the idols of political parties or candidates. God has called us to this time and this place. Therefore, we cannot abandon our political moment no matter how messy it gets. Conversely, we should never treat our politics as if it's greater than the One who calls us.

BreakPoint>>

God (Still) Loves His World

Bavinck lived and wrote amid a rapidly shifting cultural landscape. So, in many ways, his time resembled our own. Through his work, he sought to help Christians develop a robust "world-and-life view," one not only big enough to handle the vast changes of the emerging modern world but which would enable God's people to join His work in restoring all that's marred and misdirected by sin.

BreakPoint>>

** Recommendations **

The Lost Daughter

The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism

Activists in the mid-2000s coined the term "Latinx" as a gender-inclusive, non-binary way to describe anyone with Hispanic heritage. But According to one study, only 2% of Hispanic voters actually use the term, and almost 40% say it offends them. That might only be surprising to the academics, Hollywood stars, and policymakers who, for some reason, keep using it. Like other Romance languages, gendered language is woven into the fabric of Spanish. That's why the Royal Spanish Academy so fiercely resisted attempts to incorporate the term into its lexicon. Citing the swing of Hispanic voters away from the Democratic party in 2020, columnist Jamelle Bouie puts it this way, "No message, no matter how strong on the surface, will land if it isn't attentive to those forces and the other forces that structure the lives of ordinary people." Terms like Latinx assume a view of the world people don't actually live in: where "race" is all-consuming, and the daily reality of gender is ignored.

An old Chinese proverb says that if you want to know what water is, don't ask the fish. Why shouldn't we ask the fish about water? I asked that question to a group of high schoolers years ago, and they replied, "because fish can't talk?"

No, you don't ask fish about water because fish don't even know they're wet. Fish don't know anything other than the water.

Culture is to humans what water is to fish. It is the air we breathe, the environment we think is normal. Because of this, we often forget that culture could be different than it is, unless we travel to another culture or take note of a cultural change. That means we tend to accept culture as it is, rather than asking whether culture is good or bad.

That's why it's so important that Christians find ways to step out of culture from time to time, to intentionally look at and evaluate our cultural moment. Often, we get distracted by the noisier stuff in our culture, and lose sight of what's important. But, as Brett Kunkle and I discuss in our book A Practical Guide to Culture, the louder parts of our culture are rarely the most important parts of our culture.

In recent years, our cultural moment has become more and more relentless. We are pounded by issue after issue, such as addiction, the rise in suicidal ideation, the ever-growing list of identities and acronyms, and the onslaught of social media dominating every moment of every day. The issues are like pounding waves. They seem endless, and we feel them.

However, there are also aspects of culture that we don't feel. Like the ocean, in addition to the waves we see and feel, there are undercurrents we barely notice until they sweep us out to see. These currents lurk beneath the surface, dramatically altering the landscape of our culture.

One of the most significant cultural undercurrents is what historians and scholars call "the age of information." We live in a noisy world that is saturated with content. Today, you will likely encounter more information than someone who lived hundreds of years ago would have seen in their entire lifetime. The sheer amount of information available to us is stunning and historically unprecedented.

Information is not neutral. Information carries and communicates ideas. These ideas may be true or false, but they are not neutral. Ideas matter. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims.

In other words, the age of information is also the age of ideas. Ideas have a source. This means we also live in an age of competing authorities.

Certain existential questions become more important in certain cultural moments. One of the most significant questions that has emerged in our moment is, "who can I trust?" This is no small question. How can we glean the good when there are so many bad ideas floating around?

The obvious reaction to the age of information is to think that what we need is truth. And, of course we need truth. But, if true information is added to a sea of information, it can easily get lost, part of the white noise we experience on a daily basis.

The Apostle Paul's prayer for the church at Philippi is one we need to claim as our own in this cultural moment. Paul prayed for this church that "their love would abound more and more in truth and in all discernment." We need truth, and we need the skills to navigate all of the ideas, the competing authorities, and the information of this moment. The word for that is discernment, that ability to tell the difference between what is true and false, what is genuine and counterfeit, what is good and what is evil.

This is one reason I encourage families to have World Magazine in their homes. WORLD has proven to be, in my home, a reliable source of discernment in this age of information. In addition to the print magazine, their digital resources and podcasts are committed to analyzing the events of our world through the lens of Biblical truth.

WORLD is one of our closest Colson Center partners. For a gift of at least $20 this month to the Colson Center, we will provide a year's subscription to World Magazine, as well as access to their digital resources, podcasts, and the brand new World Opinions. If you're already a subscriber to World (and I hope you are), the subscription can be given to a friend, family member, or neighbor.

I contribute weekly to the WORLD podcast, The World and Everything in It. I'm grateful for our long partnership and grateful that they've made it possible for the Colson Center to extend this incredible offer to you.

By contrast, Dixit explains, an important half of our brain lights up and makes new connections when we're actually at rest, which helps foster innovation and creativity.

Because so many distractions preoccupy the modern world, we have to be intentional to have what previous generations did.

Perhaps it's because God knew this quirk of human psychology that He gave the world the Sabbath and a command to rest. He knows what we need because He made us.