Breakpoint

Several years ago, Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from Southern California into Washington State by herself. In her memoir, Strayed described the trek as a search for self-fulfillment after several family tragedies, including her own divorce. In 2014, Strayed's story was made into a movie.

In 2010, Julia Roberts starred inEat Pray Love, a movie adaptation of another memoir about a post-divorce self-fulfillment trip, this one across Europe. Last year, The New York Times published the essay "Divorce Can Be an Act of Radical Self-Love.," and last month, The Atlantic published a nearly identical piece claiming divorce was an exercise of "self-improvement." Everything was fine at home, the author claimed, but she just wanted 'something else.'

Though it may not qualify as a trend just yet, a surprising number of Christian social media influencers, writers, and even pastors are announcing their own divorces using similar language. They describe the end of their marriages as a positive step in their own self-discovery, a matter of self-expression or, even, just another normal part of life. Last month, one pastor tweeted that his divorce was "the next best chapter in the evolution of our love."

Of course, every marriage story is unique and, in a fallen world, marriages end for all kinds of reasons. However, the recent volume of stories publicly framed in similar ways using similar reasoning is worth noting. Not only are we struggling to do marriage well these days, we've also lost sight of what marriage actually is.

Announcing divorce on social media is odd in and of itself, but most people sharing these sorts of testimonies will claim that, despite the pain and disruption of divorce, it is the right decision for them. It's not unusual for someone to refer to their decision to leave a marriage as being "brave," even if there was no infidelity or abuse. In light of the Bible's description of marriage as permanent and the dramatic harm, divorce inflicts on children; there's clearly a way of thinking about marriage at work here.

In many of these stories, a sense of dissatisfaction, the pressure of family responsibilities, or even just boredom constitutes a marital crisis. What marriage actually is and what it is for, is irrelevant. Rather, marriage must accommodate our own self-expression. The highest good is found in minimizing personal pain and maximizing personal pleasure. Therefore, we must be true to ourselves over and above anything else.

The sense that discontentment or anxiety is an emergency is both radically new and exclusively Western. Dr. Carl Trueman, in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, sees this as a symptom of the modern philosophy of expressive individualism.

This way of thinking imagines marriage as a speed limit instead of gravity. A speed limit is a social construct, something relatively arbitrary that was invented to order our lives together. Suppose something changes, such as an improvement in braking technology or additional houses built in the neighborhood. In that case, a speed limit can be altered or changed with relatively minor effort. Gravity, however, is not a social construct. It's built into the fabric of reality. It cannot be changed or altered. A speed limit might be broken without consequence (as long as you don't get caught), but gravity won't.

In so many ways, from "no-fault divorce" to the trope of the "brave" divorce to calling same-sex relationships "marriage," we treat marriage like a speed limit. But it's not. Marriage is like gravity. A society constantly reimagining marriage in law will catechize its citizens to do the same. Up becomes down. Leaving becomes brave. What I want becomes right, even if it's not.

In The Atlantic article mentioned earlier, the writer admits to leaving her husband and kids to focus her time on her career as a public defender. Because that's what she wants to do and likes the most, she theorizes she'll do more good in that role than by staying in her marriage. The logic breaks down. People suspected of crimes need good public defenders. Children who grow up in broken homes are vastly more likely to commit crimes than kids with married moms and dads. We may not like that it is this way, but gravity is still gravity. Marriage is still marriage, even if we want it to be different.

Marriage is a real thing. God created it to last, by love and in mutual submission, until death. God created it to protect children and the good of the world. Christians should define and approach marriage as the Maker of marriage intended it to be, not as a speed limit that changes from one cultural moment to the next.

John and Shane respond to listener feedback that critiques John's commentary on the Woke Rebuilding of Notre Dame. John and Shane walk through why they believe the rebuild has problems, while also offering that it might not be as bad as it seems.

Then Shane asks what resources are beneficial in pre-marital counseling, as a mom is asking how to come alongside her children in that area, and also in the area of race relations.

Another listener wrote in to ask how she should talk with her daughter who is adopted from China about her birth country. The mother is trying to celebrate the culture her daughter comes from, while also being honest about the problems coming out of China right now.

To close, a listener asks John and Shane to comment on the best process for mentorship in the church. John outlines the Colson Center approach, with an encouragement for listeners to consider joining the Colson Fellows program this year. For more information on Colson Fellows, visit www.colsonfellows.org

Last week, The Wall Street Journal published the heartbreaking story of a 27-year-old man who died from a drug overdose back in 2020. Steven Gunner was conceived through the use of a sperm donor. He also struggled with schizophrenia.

After his death, his mom and adoptive dad reached out to other children who were also fathered by Steven's donor, in order to let them know that their son's mental illness may have been genetically inherited.

Their research confirmed that the sperm donor — known to them as just a number — had also suffered from schizophrenia, had also died by a drug overdose, and had not disclosed his mental health issues on health history forms - which American sperm clinics are not required to verify.

The Gunners' research also revealed that Steven's father has at least 18 other children.

It's unknown whether they also inherited schizophrenia from the father, but the Gunners' tragedy is yet another chapter in the larger story of assisted reproduction: when we rip apart God's design for families, there is pain in every direction.

BreakPoint with John Stonestreet

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God Loves His World: Leavening Grace in Herman Bavinck

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Shane Morris

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So, does God love the world or not? Does He plan to overcome it or restore it?

Christians have long struggled to understand the various ways the Bible, especially the New Testament, talks about "the world." In John 16:33, for example, Jesus tells His disciples that "in this world (they) will have trouble," but to "be of good cheer" because He has "overcome the world." The Greek word here for "world" is "kosmos," often used by New Testament writers to present the world as an enemy of God and God's people, alongside the flesh and the Devil.

However, in His famous conversation with Nicodemus (recorded a few chapters earlier), Jesus says that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son" to save it. The same word is used here, "kosmos."

Understanding God's posture to His created world was a central part of the thought and work of a 20th-century theologian whom every Christian should know. Herman Bavinck, who died a century ago, was a Dutch Reformed theologian and statesman who served alongside the more famous Abraham Kuyper. Theologian and Colson Center board member Jennifer Marshall Patterson recently wrote about Bavinck's work in a WORLD Opinion column. As she explained, God's love for His creation and His plans in Christ to restore it, rather than replace it, was central to Bavinck's theology. It also makes a world of difference within a Christian worldview.

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.

Bavinck was especially fond of the oft-used biblical metaphor of leaven. According to Patterson, he saw the Christian worldview as an "activating agent that enables everything to expand to the fullness of its created potential." Jesus likened the Kingdom of God to leaven, which works through the dough, turning it into bread. In other words, leaven works according to the nature of the dough, not against it. In the same way, Christ works to redeem God's creation, a creation He declared to be "very good," though now marred by the Fall of humanity. Simply put, the Gospel does not work against creation but according to God's intent for it.

At the same time, Bavinck never downplays the damage of the Fall. He describes it as a brokenness manifested in our four most fundamental relationships, relationships we were created with by God: our relationship with God, our relationship with self, our relationship with others, and our relationship with the created order. As Patterson put it,

"Sin fractured each of these relationships. God's grace operates to restore them. In our context today, the challenges that individuals and communities face—from divorce to opioid addiction to suicide—have to do with brokenness in one or more of these relationships."

Among Bavinck's most import and powerful insights is that instead of seeing the full scope of these relationships as largely irrelevant, as many Christians do, we are called to announce Christ's redemptive work for each of them. Even further, we are to advance this redemptive work in any way we can. This is what real "human flourishing" looks like.

Our culture presents very different, competing ideas of human flourishing: material possessions, self-expression, sexual fulfillment, etc. A Christianity that only addresses the so-called "spiritual" stuff, with no understanding of God's original design for His world, cannot compete with or critique these false worldviews.

As Bavinck's fellow Dutchman Abraham Kuyper famously said, Christ claims lordship over "every square inch" of life. Thus, a fully-formed Christian worldview will see no relationship, calling, or sphere as outside of the jurisdiction or redemptive power of Jesus.

The Bible sometimes uses the term "world" to refer to a realm broken and corrupted by sin, which threatens to take captive the hearts and minds of humanity. Other times, it refers to the realm God created as good. However, as Bavinck taught, Scripture is clear that God loves the world He created, and He intends to make it new, redeeming and glorifying it and His image-bearers. Or, as one commenter on Bavinck put it, echoing the carol "Joy to the World," God's intent to restore His creation reaches "as far as the curse is found."

The work of Herman Bavinck should be better known and studied. Patterson's WORLD Opinion piece is a great place to start. A recently compiled and translated version of his work is available by the title The Wonderful Works of God. This approach to God's world is the kind of leaven this cultural moment needs.

Canada has just adopted a new ban on so-called "conversion therapy" that criminalizes any "practice, treatment, or service" designed to change, repress, or reduce a person's same-sex attraction or transgender identity.

According to WORLD, the ban covers even the mildest forms of "talk therapy," including counseling for adults who want to de-transition.

So, in effect, Canada is denying that people even exist who detransition or who may legitimately want help reconciling themselves with their biological sex. And offering that service is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The lack of science behind this law is staggering. As Canadian clinical psychologist James Cantor points out there's not a single study showing harm from so-called "transgender conversion therapy." It could, in fact, be desperately needed, since up to 80 percent of minors with gender dysphoria will desist at puberty.

This Canadian law isn't designed to protect patients. Rather, it is designed to protect the convenient fiction that transgender feelings are unchangeable. We know this narrative is false.

Though Canadian lawmakers may want to pretend de-transitioners don't exist, that's as much a denial of reality as believing someone can change their biological sex in the first place.

"What people once expected from the Almighty, they now expect from the almighty bureaucracy. That's a bad trade for anyone, but for the Christian, it's rank idolatry." This observation, made by Chuck Colson in his book, God and Government, is as true today as when he wrote it. In fact, all the evidence needed to prove that America has made the "bad trade" Chuck described, was on full display last week.

Most of the commentary reflecting on the anniversary of the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol was basically as expected. Voices on the left, most notably the Vice-President, attempted to place the day within the pantheon of America's darkest hours alongside 9/11 and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course, this was more rhetoric than reality, less about "never forgetting" and more about advancing progressive agenda items and attempting to preemptively salvage the midterms.

Though many on the right denounced the violence from January 6, others repeated the widely discredited theory that it was a "false-flag" event. Others went as far as to describe it as something to celebrate. Senator Ted Cruz applied the term "terrorism," before backpedaling furiously on Tucker Carlson's show.

In other words, a discouraging number of voices, pundits, and leaders chose to reduce the day to a pre-determined set of political talking points, and therefore largely missed the point. At a moment where we so desperately need better thinking about our national experiment, we were served breathless partisan outrage instead.

The irony, of course, is that breathless outrage may be the only bipartisan activity remaining in this deeply divided age. Two-thirds of Americans now doubt the integrity of our elections, which means that cynics come from either side of the aisle depending on who wins. And, according to these same voices, each and every news story, whether political or not, must be understood as a referendum on our very democracy, which is at stake.

Of course, democracies are put at risk by bad policies and politicians and, in many ways, ours is up for grabs at the moment. Still, whenever that happens, much bigger problems, that are upstream from whatever election, policy, candidate, or riot of the moment, are revealed. Politics is an unavoidable part of life, but it's never good when politics becomes life… not for an individual nor for a society. A few decades ago, the slogan "the personal is political" was coined as a way of calling the state to enlarge personal freedoms. Today, our slogan may as well be the reverse. "The political is personal," especially when the state and the political process is expected to determine morality, humanity, or reality.

Politics, however, cannot carry that kind of weight. Only what is transcendent can determine what is good, what is just, and what is true. As Christianity fades in our nation's collective memory, we increasingly look to politics as its substitute. It's a poor one because the pragmatic can never replace the transcendent.

Put differently, politics makes for a lousy worldview. Like lenses through which we see reality, worldviews either enable or prevent us from seeing the world clearly. Any worldview built on the political alone will be the wrong prescription and will leave us with blind spots. For example, we'll imagine individual leaders as either demi-gods or devils. In reality, they simply lack the power to bring either the glory they promise or the ruin we fear.

"To think of everything as political," wrote Jacques Ellul in The Political Illusion,

"to conceal everything by using this word…, to place everything in the hands of the state, to appeal to the state in all circumstances, to subordinate the problems of the individual to those of the group, to believe that political affairs are on everybody's level and that everybody is qualified to deal with them—these factors characterize the politicization of modern man and, as such, comprise a myth. The myth then reveals itself in beliefs and, as a result, easily elicits almost religious fervor."

In our case, it's no longer "almost." In many ways, politics is all that's left. The state is increasingly inseparable and often indistinguishable from the rest of culture. The vast variety of pre-and non-governmental life, from family to neighborhoods to worship to what Edmund Burke called "the little platoons" of society, have all become quite thin. That's neither healthy nor sustainable.

In response, some have called Christians away from politics altogether, and even away from the love of country. However, we must not trade one error for another. We are not called to a pietistic, disembodied love of the human race. God calls His people to love particular neighbors in particular communities of particular nations within a particular cultural moment. To love our neighbors, to seek the welfare of the city, and to live faithfully to God in the time and place to which He has called us, will require more of us than just political engagement, but certainly not less.

As Brian Mattson recently put it in a helpful essay, "it's 'walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time' time again." 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.

According to the British news outlet The Guardian, it wasn't a happy holiday for many Christians in India. Radical Hindu activists raided Christian churches - smashing statues, burning Bibles, and threatening believers. This capped off an already bad year for Christians in India, a year that averaged 100 attacks on Christians in each of its first three months.

It's vitally important that we remember our brothers and sisters around the world face great trials and tribulations. In totalitarian regimes like China, in hostile Islamic states like Iran, and even in ostensibly democratic nations like India, a public profession of faith in Christ is an invitation to harassment, persecution, and even death.

Thinking of our brothers and sisters around the world also reminds us that we need to maintain a bigger perspective about life. There's much more to the world than what happens on social media. As important as controversies might seem, and sometimes are, the strength and suffering of Christ's church is more important our Twitter feed.

Let's pray for the church around the world.

"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter," writes the author of Proverbs, "(and) to search out a matter is the glory of kings." The Biblical account of reality—that God created a world that was knowable and His image-beares to be knowers—powerfully explains the human drive to learn and investigate the world around us. It also justifies the utilization of general revelation as we pursue knowledge of the created order through various branches of science.

To put it bluntly, the Bible is not anti-science. Rather, the Bible explains why science works.

And, every once in a while, the Bible offers an insight that shed further light on an unsolved question of science. That seems to be the case with the Assyrian destruction of Lachish, an event recorded in the book of Kings. The accurate Biblical accounting of this event has provided scientists with a reliable anchor from which to better answer two tricky dilemmas: one having to do with geophysics and the other with archeology.

A recurring question of geophysics is how to measure changes in the Earth's magnetic field over time. The Earth's magnetic field acts like a massive cosmic shield, protecting us solar winds that could disrupt navigational equipment, introduce harmful radiation into the atmosphere, or perhaps even blow our atmosphere away completely.

The earth's magnetosphere is not a perfect shield, however. For years, scientists have known of gaps in the magnetosphere over certain regions, which drift over time. However, since measurements have only been collected since the 1850s, there is also a significant gap in our knowledge of how the magnetosphere has changed in the distant past. Though it's possible to take sizeable measurements from the magnetic record in rocks, localized measurements are much harder to obtain. Or, at least, they were harder to obtain until research found a way to use burned-out ruins from ancient archeology.

Tel Aviv University's Yoav Vaknin recently led a team to Tel Lachish to measure magnetism. When the Assyrian King Sennacherib burned Lachish in 701 BC, he unknowingly reset the magnetic charges in the minerals found in floors, tools, and pottery pieces. As they cooled, these artifacts re-attuned to the Earth's magnetic field, forming a snapshot of the Earth's magnetic field in that particular location at that specific moment.

With enough snapshots like this one, scientists could much better piece together how the magnetic field has changed over time. If, of course, the Biblical dating of this event is accurate.

The consensus from historians is that it is. "In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah's reign," 2 Kings 18:13 tells us, "Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah." By providing accurate dating of Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian conquests of the region, the Bible gives scientists the kind of helpful "data footholds" they can reliably use.

And this is connected to a second advance enabled by the Bible in archeology. For reasons not fully understood, radiocarbon dating isn't accurate around the years 800-400 BC, an historical period known as the "The Hallstatt Plateau." The curve of carbon-generated dates around this time is distorted, flattening out where it seemingly shouldn't. As a result, scientists cannot reliably carbon-date objects within a sizeable and important stretch of history.

Breakthroughs like the one at Lachish give us a new way to find those dates through archaeomagnetism, a process that uses the magnetic readings from archeological sites to help determine their age. As with the advance in geophysics, archaeomagnetism is dependent on reliable, independently established dates from ancient history. That's the kind of thing Scripture offers over and over again

This isn't the first time the Bible's accuracy has been vindicated, of course. The Old Testament predicted the existence of ancient groups like the Hittites long before anyone discovered evidence of their culture. Its description of the assassination of the same Assyrian king Sennacherib matches the one his son, Esarhaddon, provides in his records. At the ruins of Jericho, many archeologists believe there is evidence of a sudden structural collapse, which would align with how the book of Joshua describes the city's destruction.

Of course, many mysteries remain about how the many pieces of the archeological record fits with the Biblical one. But in the words of archeologist and Jewish scholar Nelson Gluek, "[It] may be clearly stated categorically that no archeological discovery has ever controverted a single Biblical reference." Yet, "scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible."

This is what we should expect from a religion grounded in history. The Bible describes real things that happened to real people. We should expect it to provide accurate data about the events it reports, even events from the ancient past. And if true, the data it presents could help us solve puzzles about the world around us

John and Maria reflect on the commemorations of January 6th. They outline how that event marked who we are, highlighting the summer riots and breakdown in cities that led up to the incident in Washington D.C.

Then Maria asks John for further explanation of a BreakPoint commentary on the Woke influence in the renovations of the Notre Dame cathedral in France.

To close, John explains to Maria how marriage is a reality, like gravity, in our world as Maria reflects on recent high profile divorces and the way marriage is being explained in their wake.

-- Story References --

SEGMENT 1: President Biden and Vice President Harris Speak on Capitol Incident Anniversary President Joe Biden on Thursday addressed the nation on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection.ABC NEWS TRANSCRIPT>>

SEGMENT 2:

The Woke Plans to Rebuild Notre Dame

The 2019 fire in Notre Dame reminded the world of the importance, the history, and the beauty of this magnificent structure. As we mourned the damage, many hoped the building would be repaired to remind the world of its original purpose. Recently, the cathedral's reconstruction plans were announced and, unfortunately, the news isn't good.

BreakPoint>>

SEGMENT 3:

Honor Jones chronicles "How I demolished by Life," celebrating her feminist divorce

The Atlantic

Much environmentalism today assumes that humans are always the problem, and our activity is always harmful. But the more we study, the more we realize how resilient living things are.

Recently, USA Today and the BBC reported that the infamous Pacific Ocean garbage patch—an area of more than 610,000 square miles littered with manmade trash—has become a thriving habitat for small marine animals.

Scientists have found arthropods, crabs, and mollusks on more than 90% of debris—some of the species that would never live so far out to sea.

This story is similar to a report a few years ago that peregrine falcons are now more common in some major cities than they are in the wild, primarily due to the abundance of tasty pigeons.

Of course, litter is very bad for the ocean and the environment, but these reports remind us how resilient life is… it's almost as if it wasn't an accident that shouldn't be here, but a carefully designed part of how God made the world.