Breakpoint

One of the features of the sexual revolution, especially in these latter days, is a steady stream of new words that were invented to justify increasingly incoherent ideas. For example, the word "cisgender," coined by sociologists in the 90s, refers to "those who continue to identify with the sex they were assigned at birth." The definition itself is loaded with ideas, such as sex being assigned at birth, but it basically means boys who identify as boys and girls who identify as girls. Only a culture committed to normalizing dysphoria and de-normalizing biology needs a word like that.

More recently, but in the same spirit of social engineering through nomenclature, some activists have suggested a new take on infertility, one not based on biology or health but on lifestyle choices. The suggested term is "social infertility," and refers to the state of those who intentionally choose sterile relationship arrangements, such as same-sex relationships, but still want children.

Proponents Lisa Campo-Engelstein and Weei Lo describe it this way: "Expanding the current definition of infertility to include social infertility will elevate it to a treatable medical condition, justifying the use of ART [assisted reproductive technologies] for such individuals… States with infertility insurance mandates should provide the same infertility coverage to socially infertile individuals as physiologically infertile heterosexual couples." [emphasis added]

Assumed here is that everyone has a right to babies. So, if you want one but are in a relationship unable to procreate, technology and the government should be employed to force employers, hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies to help you have one. To be clear, this is not yet law, but this same "universal parentage" line of thinking was used to legalize commercial surrogacy in the state of Washington a few years ago, and the Department of Health and Human Services has indicated this kind of language may find its way into new mandates.

The irony is that the very concept of "social infertility" undermines the "love is love" slogan that has so effectively advanced the social innovations of the sexual revolution, such as same-sex marriage. Clearly, same-sex love – even when committed, sincere and monogamous – isn't the same as heterosexual love in terms of what intercourse means and its procreative potential. Therefore, some words need to be invented, and others redefined.

Redefining "infertility" in this way involves redefining a slew of other important words, too, such as "medical condition." If an otherwise healthy man and woman fail to conceive a child, it's reasonable to suspect a deeper medical condition, but two men (or two women) will never be able to conceive a child. And, when they can't, nothing has gone wrong. No one suspects their inability to conceive is due to a disability or sickness. All that's left is to create a new category of discrimination.

Advocates of so-called "social infertility" suggest it is unjust when two men or two women cannot conceive, and therefore the government should step in. This assumes, of course, that conceiving a child is a "right" even when biologically impossible, an idea only plausible in a culture in which the value of children is tied wholly to whether or not they are wanted. If terminating preborn life is justified when a child is not wanted, then all it takes to justify conceiving a life is that it is wanted. This leaves words like "rights," "discrimination," "equality" (not to mention "men" and "women") up for grabs.

Imagine if I demanded insurance coverage for leg augmentations in order to sprint as fast as Usain Bolt. Is not being able to sprint as fast as Bolt a medical condition? Do I have a right to claim discrimination because I want to sprint like Bolt but can't? Do I have a right to force others - like religious hospitals and employers - to cover the cost to give me what I want? Using the logic of "social infertility," the answer to each of these nonsensical questions would have to be yes.

What comes under the guise of social fertility is just as nonsensical but far worse, for two reasons. First, for most of us, not being as fast as Usain Bolt is not directly related to a life choice we've made. That dream has never even been a remote possibility for me. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of those who claim "social infertility" have intentionally chosen naturally infertile relationships. Had they chosen a different relationship, conceiving a child would be possible.

Second, most artificial reproductive technologies today are justified by adult desires, while children's rights are forgotten in our ethical reasoning. So increasingly, we behave and pass laws as if children are something we have a "right" to have or, even worse, as if they are products to be obtained.

This whole conversation reveals our society to be at odds with nature and itself. The inherent connection between sex and procreation has been thoroughly severed. Abortion enables us to have sex without babies by killing the natural result of human sexuality. So-called "universal parentage" acts leverage artificial reproductive technologies to have babies without sex.

To be clear, the invention of "social infertility" as a concept is just the latest fruit of this thinking, the inevitable result of denying moral and biological realities. The church will not be in a place to respond unless we get our own thinking and our own decisions in line with reality.

In Scientific American, physician Carolyn Barber describes a new condition: "texting thumb."

"The patient's right thumb knuckle is inflamed, swollen, and often painful," she writes, "especially toward the end of the day… Her middle finger intermittently has a new 'catch' to it when bent.

The patient she's describing? Herself. An emergency room physician, Barber took to working more on her phone. At the same time, she started seeing an increased toll on people's musculoskeletal systems from phone usage. "Let's face it," Barber concludes. "Our hands weren't really made for all of this."

Digital technology is a necessary part of life, but it also plays into what some have called the "gnostic impulse:" the ancient temptation to ignore our bodies in favor of our incorporeal selves. It's an impulse that is alive and well today.

But, of course, we're not just spirits. God created our bodies, they matter, and He cares for them. That makes Barber's recommendation a good one: "Take a walk," she says. "Pocket your phone. And give your tweeting digits the break they deserve."

A young woman recently commented to a friend, "I feel like once you have kids, your life is just done." So, despite pressure from her mom, she was in no rush to settle down. "I've got too much living to do. I want to wait a while before I'm finished."

It's not uncommon to hear people suggest that things like marriage and family and parenting are, at best, distractions from what life is really about (like a career or amusement or travel), or at worst, a sort of death sentence that marks the end of all of our fun. Despite the research showing otherwise, there's a clear message in sitcoms and romcoms that the quickest way to become miserable and end a good sex life is to get married. Single means free and unencumbered, the story goes, especially for women.

Similarly, in our recent conversation about the Dobbs case currently before the Supreme Court, Dr. Ryan Anderson described how the pro-abortion movement advances the claim that women "need" abortion in order to fully participate in society. As he put it, "If that statement is true, that is a condemnation of our society." If we're only fully human when we're "free" from loving and caring for those closest to us, then we have a puny vision of humanity.

But how much of the American dream centers on pleasures and possessions, career paths and vacations, seeing the dirty work of diapers, tending to a sick spouse, or making a meal for a neighbor as something between a necessary and avoidable evil? Even Christians are tempted to imagine that in "real" Christian life and ministry, a big platform is preferable over caring for actual people. Or that those involved in "full-time Christian ministry," serving the "people," are doing the real work of God, while those of us caught up in ordinary life comprise the B-Team?

If anything, this way of seeing things has it all backward. Christians in the "ministry" do play a vital and important role in God's plan, but that role is to support those faithfully living everyday life in obedience to Christ.

Marriage and family and children, or loving our neighbors and caring for our elders, really is "the end of life," just not in the sense those two young women thought. Those things are among the ends - the intended purposes - for which God created and called us.

Families and communities are the real work, and through them, God works on us, and in us, and through us. What if the ordinary tasks of life were the front lines of the kingdom of God? What if it's in the relationships that seem to be mundane that we are most fully serving God? Many in the Church are ready to die for the Faith, but are far less willing to live for it.

It's important to remember that in Genesis, God didn't say that it is not good for man to be lonely. Rather, He said it's not good for man to be alone. Our chief end is to glorify God, but most of our time and effort in glorifying God is spent loving and caring for others, and that's what he intended, particularly to members of the human race who make up our families and communities. To love, marry, raise children, and live the lives God intended for us; it's in these endeavors that the true radical lives, and it's by them that true change will come to the world.

In 1955, C. S. Lewis wrote to a woman struggling to find meaning in her work as "just" a housewife. The great writer challenged her to turn the entire perspective around. Instead of being a nonessential worker in the economy of God's work on Earth, hers was the center. Here's how Lewis said it:

"We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist."

Now, he was talking specifically to what we call "stay-at-home-moms," but the principle applies across areas of life that the world and the Church are too quick to pass over as being insignificant or getting in the way of our true selves.

Caring for one another, particularly when few see what we are doing, isn't God's back-up or second-best plan for human life; it's what He designed for us to do from the beginning. This is the end of life.

John and Shane are asked how to respond to church leadership who feels speaking about culture topics will cause ripples in the church.

Later, the two are asked how they can speak with love to those who are confused about where their true sense of identity comes from?

To close, John and Shane provide an understanding of how worldviews shape perspectives of the end times, and how Christians should handle those perspectives in living this cultural moment.

Christian history is full of incredible stories: Origen, Augustine, Wilberforce, Joni Eareckson Tada, Hudson Taylor… In fact, any life lived for Christ, is historic, significant, and inspiring. Success is never guaranteed, but we can be faithful.

Each week, I hear from followers of Christ committed to living for Christ in this cultural moment, also an important time in history. In fact, a recent email just blew me away: "I found your podcast about one year ago, and it has been quite influential in my role as husband, as an elder in our church, in my role as parents of adult children, like grandparents, and owner of a small business. Having a correct worldview and then communicating it in love to the world around us and interpreting events biblically, helps me to live out my faith as I occupy this time and this place, (Acts 17) for God's Kingdom."

The Colson Center exists to help Christians live out their faith in this time and this place. Join us in this work by making a year-end gift. You can do this by visiting www.colsoncenter.org/givehope

President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Act, which passed in the U.S. House last month, is expected to be passed by the Senate before Christmas. Adding this big-ticket "social spending and climate" bill to the trillions already passed in the name of COVID relief certainly won't thrill fiscal conservatives. Depending on which version passes, about $360 billion dollars would be added to the federal deficit.

The plan is being hailed as good for families, since it extends the enhanced child tax credit by a year and provides assistance for childcare. However, as the saying goes, we need to read the fine print, especially the parts about childcare. As Tim Carney writes at The Washington Examiner, the bill will likely include a large new daycare entitlement and universal pre-k program, but neither apply to family members or homeschooling parents. In other words, the administration only wants it to be easier for families to get childcare if it's from the "professionals." Moms and dads, grandmas, aunts, and neighborhood co-ops need not apply.

And as Carney points out, many parents (particularly those in households where both have to work) would prefer "an opportunity for one parent to stop working or work less." A long-term tax credit could help many achieve that, but not a one-size-fits-all daycare subsidy which, as he put it, seems designed "to change [parents'] minds about who should raise their children."

Of course, there's a debate to be had about whether or not the government should be spending taxpayer money to incentivize families at all. But, in this case, how it is proposing to spend the money says far more. Again, here's Carney:

"The question is this: If you wanted to spend money to help parents and children, and you were already willing to just hand cash to parents in the form of "tax credits" or a child allowance, then why would you specifically subsidize daycare instead of giving parents money and let them decide how to use it?"

Carney's reading of the bill is not unfair, especially if you consider the President's own words. Last month, the President tweeted, "Nearly 2 million women in our country have been locked out of the workforce because they have to care for a child or an elderly relative at home. [The Build Back Better Act] will make caregiving accessible and affordable and help [women] get back to work."

Of course, plenty of women do feel stuck at home and would prefer to return to work, but plenty of others would rather stay at home with their kids if they can afford it. In fact, a 2019 survey by Pew Research found that almost 20 percent of women think "not working for pay at all" is the ideal situation for mothers, and about half overall would prefer not to work full-time. These women are not "locked out of the workforce," as the administration put it. Rather, they'll be "locked-in" by a plan that subsidizes only "professional" childcare and not family care.

This kind of state paternalism not only suggests that, ultimately, life is about building a satisfying career, participating in the economy, and making more money. It suggests that to prefer a family life that is reliant on a spouse's income is, to quote one progressive New York Times writer, "retrograde" thinking. And it serves a more insidious agenda item of cultural progressivism, that "government knows better than a parent" about what's best for children.

This spending bill must be considered in light of other actions by the administration. Recently, we learned that Xavier Becerra, who heads up the Department of Health and Human Services under the Biden Administration, is looking for ways to keep faith-based children's service programs out of foster care. That's despite the fact that, as U.S. Senator from Oklahoma James Lankford tweeted, this move almost certainly runs afoul of the Supreme Court's decision in Fulton v. Philadelphia, in which justices ruled unanimously that the city could not discriminate against a Catholic adoption agency in placing children.

Each case, childcare subsidies and foster care, reflects the belief that the state is the most important and competent sphere of society, and the one that should decide how all the others run. That's not how things were designed to work.

God first and foremost entrusted the family, not the state, with raising the next generation. Our nation's long history of working with religious organizations to care for kids has resulted in services the state could never have provided without help. Any plan that's designed to "build back better" should recognize that parents and religious organizations are are solutions, not problems to be solved.

John and Shane respond to feedback and a question on why culture blames the church for a myriad of social, cultural, environmental, and many other ills. They then explain a few resources to help listeners think well on the topic of sexual immorality after fielding a question in response to a recent commentary.

To close, John explains the idea of Sphere sovereignty.

On Black Friday, a surrogacy agency in Ukraine called BioTexCom offered a fun new deal: three percent off your next baby. The discount, according to the ad, applied to hiring Ukrainian women to be surrogate mothers, to IVF, or whatever mixture thereof.

If the name BioTexCom sounds familiar, it's because this is the agency saddled with nearly 100 stranded babies in a Kiev hotel, to be cared for by a handful of nurses, at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. That happened because the babies legally belonged to the wealthy Western couples who bought them but couldn't pick them up due to travel restrictions. The babies' Ukrainian mothers weren't allowed to care for the babies after the birth - they weren't their "property" anymore.

That situation, and this tacky Black Friday discount, illustrate something crucial. Whatever feels icky about "three percent off a new baby" is still there when it's full price. Industrialized assisted reproduction turns both women's bodies and babies into commodities on Black Friday and every other day. God made us for so much more.

Women in Afghanistan have been barred from participation in civil society. There are families hunted for their involvement with the U.S. military, and brothers and sisters in Christ have been tortured and killed for their courageous faith. Any faith in early signs of Taliban moderation was misplaced; all skepticism was well-founded.

We have the testimony of many who've endured similar oppressions in the past. This can point us to what is true and good amid evil.

For example, Hunayn ibn Ishaq was born in al-Hira, Iraq, in 809, the year of Caliph Harun al-Rashid's death, the same Caliph whose story birthed the Arabian Nights and Aladdin. A Nestorian Christian, Hunayn grew up speaking Syriac and Arabic. As a young man, he went to Baghdad to study medicine under the famous physician and fellow Christian Yuhanna ibn Masawayh.

Hunayn's insatiable curiosity exasperated his instructors, to the point that Yuhanna kicked Hunayn out of school. Hunayn promised himself he would return to Baghdad, but he went abroad to learn Greek in the meantime. When he returned, he was able to recite Homer and the famous physician Galen in their original languages. His new knowledge impressed Yuhanna, and the two reconciled and started working together when Hunayn returned.

Hunayn's new language skills enabled him to translate Greek works into Syriac and Arabic. This skill earned him a position at Bayt al Hikmah (the House of Wisdom), an institution dedicated to translating Greek texts and making them available to Arab scholars. Hunayn was sent into the Byzantine Empire to obtain works by Aristotle and other authors unavailable in the Caliphate. His work was so highly valued that he was paid the weight of the books he translated in gold.

Hunayn is credited with translating the works of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Galen, Plato's Republic, several works by Aristotle, the Old Testament from the Septuagint, along with works on agriculture, chemistry, stones, and religion. Hunayn's son Ishaq was a primary aide and became the principal translator of Aristotle into Arabic.

Hunayn developed a close relationship with the Caliph al-Mutawakkil. Recognizing Hunayn's skills as a scholar and translator, the caliph appointed him as his personal secretary. However, a rift developed between al-Mutawakkil and Hunayn when the caliph asked Hunayn to make poison to kill one of his enemies, and Hunayn refused. The caliph grew angry and had Hunayn thrown in prison for a year.

After serving his sentence, Hunayn was brought before the caliph and replied, "I have skill only in what is beneficial, and have studied nothing else." The caliph, claiming that he was only testing Hunayn's personal integrity, asked him what kept him from complying with the order and facing certain death. Hunayn responded, "Two things: my religion and my profession. My religion decrees that we should do good even to our enemies, how much more to our friends. And my profession is instituted for the benefit of humanity and limited to their relief and cure. Besides, every physician is under oath never to give anyone a deadly medicine."

Hunayn was released.

Despite his support for translation, al-Mutawakkil was concerned about foreign ideas influencing Islam and about Muslim scholars who advocated a less literal interpretation of the Quran. As a result, he enforced a rigid Sunni orthodoxy on the state and began persecuting more liberal Muslim thinkers as well as increasing the pressure on Christians in the caliphate. This would be a harbinger of things to come both in the Muslim world and for the Christians in the Middle East.

In the first dynasties of the caliphate, Christians played important roles in government and scholarship in the Muslim world. However, that is not to say that they were generally treated well. There were periodic outbreaks of violent persecution, including widespread destruction of churches, and they were clearly second-class citizens subject to ever-increasing oppression as the decades moved forward.

These Christians played a far more central role in developing the medieval Muslim intellectual and medical tradition. Western Europe would eventually benefit from this, as works of Aristotle translated by Hunayn and his son would pass to scholars from the Latin world via Islamic Spain.

Hunayn himself played the role of a Daniel in many ways, serving in the court of non-Christian rulers who were at times openly hostile to his faith. His scholarship, medical skills, and personal integrity born of his faith enabled him to survive and serve there, leaving an enormous and wide-ranging legacy in his own era and beyond.

All of this reminds us that God has His people everywhere, even in the most hostile nations. We should pray that he grant those in hostile places the character and courage of Hunayn and Daniel to be motivated by their love and submission to Jesus Christ. And may the same be said of us, as we serve the Lord in an increasingly hostile culture.

Recently, a Switzerland-based euthanasia clinic posted that, going forward, anyone seeking so-called "death with dignity" must be fully vaccinated first.

It isn't quite as crazy as it sounds. They aren't saying you have to be healthy before they kill you. Instead, they're taking precautions for the sake of the people who provide "assistance in dying." They don't want patients infecting the medical professionals tasked with killing them.

Even so, there's plenty of tragic ironies here. For two years now, we've been talking about "doing what it takes" to save lives in the face of Covid. "If it saves just one life" then, we were told, that the masks, the mandates, and the lockdowns were all worth it. At the same time, proponents of doctor-assisted dying tell us that people should have full autonomy over death.

Inconsistencies like these remind us that as much as we suppress eternity in our hearts, it's still there. Even when our worldviews deny it, life is a wonderful gift of God, and dignity is intrinsic to who He has made us to be.