Breakpoint

What does it say about American society that when a justice of the Supreme Court gets hammered for defending the first freedom guaranteed under the Bill of Rights? John Stonestreet and Shane Morris discuss the media and political reaction to Justice Samuel Alito's speech hat the National Lawyers Convention, in which Justice Alito described the current threats to religious freedom.

Also on today's episode, some 92,000 complaints of sexual abuse have been filed against the Boy Scouts of America. While the decline--and demise?--of the Boy Scouts is a huge loss for American boys, there are, thanks to Christians across the country, alternatives such as Trail Life USA.

And Belgium has come under fire from Amnesty International for its shabby treatment of the elderly during the COVID crisis. But has anyone noticed that Belgium's lax euthanasia laws have been killing the elderly for years?

On a brighter note, John and Shane end the episode with their recommendations of the week. Shane going with "Adventures in Odyssey," and John recommending Melanie Kirkpatrick's book, Thanksgiving: The Heart of the American Experience.

Resources:

Address by Justice Samuel Alito at the 2020 National Lawyers Convention, YouTube

"Justice Alito is Right: Freedom of Speech and Religion Face Real Threats," Keith D. Stanglin, Newsweek

"The Fury of the Fatherless," by Mary Eberstadt, First Things

"The Last Children of Down Syndrome," by Sara Zhang, The Atlantic

"When COVID Hit, Many Were Left to Die," New York Times

"Adventures in Odyssey"

Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience, by Melanie Kirkpatrick, available at Amazon.com

John Stonestreet's Interview with Melanie Kirkpatrick on Thanksgiving, The BreakPoint Podcast

Acts 4 describes how, after throwing Peter and John in jail for "teaching the people (and) proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead," the Sanhedrin demanded that they "not speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus." Peter bluntly replied, "We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."

Throughout history, Christians have faced demands to be silent. Throughout history, they refused. The word "martyr," in fact, is derived from the Greek word that means "witness."

In Live Not By Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents, blogger and author Rod Dreher thinks Christians in the West are entering a season where we will not only have to decide whether we will be silent; we will have to decide whether we will allow ourselves to be forced into going along with what is not true, with lies. Like those who endured the hardest days of Communist Eastern Europe, Western Christians face a totalitarian future.

Though he admits the totalitarianism of today is different in a number of ways, Dreher thinks it is the correct word to describe the "all-encompassing ideologies" of our day that "seek to control not just the actions, but the thoughts of those under its power." Of course, we don't face the sort of state-sponsored violence, persecution, and physical coercion many others have throughout history. One doesn't end up in a Gulag for criticizing the new sexual orthodoxy or refusing to use the demanded pronouns, but some have lost jobs, some have lost their futures, and some have lost their degree programs. Others, like cake artist Jack Philipps or florist Barronelle Stutzman, have all but lost their livelihoods.

In our current context, what Dreher calls "soft" totalitarianism is mostly administered not by the state but "by corporations and other institutions run by managerial elites." Our social media profiles, smartphones, and smart speakers provide these managerial elites and corporations with an unprecedented ability to monitor what we say and do.

China, already an expert in hard totalitarianism, is an example of how soft totalitarianism could proceed, especially the social credit system which "determines who is allowed to buy, sell, and travel, based on their social behavior." Here, even as more and more instruments of technological surveillance are put in place, an additional layer of enforcement comes from corporate America. In our recent conversation for the BreakPoint Podcast, Dreher pointed to the corporate reaction to Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which dates to 2015, as a key moment of cultural transition.

Though Indiana's legislation was essentially identical to its federal counterpart, corporations responded by threatening economic sanctions. Some corporations closed down offices in the state. The NCAA, which is based in Indianapolis, threatened to move the Final Four basketball tournament. And, when the Christian owners of Memory's Pizza expressed support for the measure, they were bombarded with negative online reviews and had to close temporarily due to threats of violence.

During the controversy, a man whose mother had grown up under the "hard" totalitarianism of Communism, told Dreher that his mom saw parallels to what had happened in Eastern Europe. Since then, others from across Europe shared their own observations, and many of these moving stories are included in the book. In fact, the interviews with Christians who remained faithful under Communist tyranny are worth reading, even if you aren't convinced by Dreher's comparisons between their day and ours.

Above all, these dissidents, such as Father Tomislav Kolaković, a Jesuit priest responsible for an underground church network in Czechoslovakia, have a great deal to teach us about what it means to "live not by lies." We have much to learn from the Benda family in Prague about how to catechize our children when everything, it seems, is pointing them away from truth. And from Russian Christian dissident Alexander Ogorodnikov. And, of course, from Solzhenitsyn and Havel and so many others who will go down in the annals of Church history.

My conversation with Rod Dreher, author of Live Not by Lies is available now on the BreakPoint Podcast. Come to BreakPoint.org or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. There's also a video of the interview on YouTube which you can watch and share.

While, as Hebrews says, we've not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood, the most tempting thing is not to resist at all. Live Not by Lies is, in my view, a vital book, and we have it for you at our online bookstore at BreakPoint.org. We may not be called to loudly protest or shout the truth from the rooftops. But we must not be forced to say what isn't true.

The fundamental idea of the sexual revolution, the one that has led to so many of the sweeping social changes of recent decades, is that sex, marriage, and babies are separable from one another. Prying these created realities apart, realities that went biologically, historically, and religiously unquestioned until quite recently, wasn't as inevitable as it now seems. Without technological innovations like the pill and legal innovations like no-fault divorce, it would have been impossible to imagine sex not inherently connected to childbearing or the normalization of childbearing outside of marriage.

The stage that we now enter, after separating sex from marriage and marriage from children, is separating childbearing from sex. Once again, technological innovations, such as in-vitro fertilization, and legal innovations, such as the Uniform Parentage Act, have made thinkable what was previously unimaginable.

And now, the UK Guardian reports on the rise of something that is being called "platonic co-parenting," couples who connect in order to fulfill their mutual desire to have a baby, but who have no romantic or relational commitment otherwise. These couples aren't actually couples, at least not at first. They're not seeking love or romance. They don't want to "waste time" on dating or marriage.

"You're looking to achieve a common goal" described Stephan, a camera operator that had recently fathered a baby girl with a geologist named Jenica. "I really didn't want a romantic connection," agreed Jenica. Their daughter was conceived naturally, but the intent from the beginning was to co-parent, without living together or marrying.

They're not the only example. Co-parenting apps and so-called "mating sites" like "Coparents," "PollenTree," and "Modamily," are rapidly growing, with some already boasting thousands of members. The main clientele for reproductive matchmaking services are, it appears, wealthy professionals, some who hear their biological clock ticking and others who wish to skip love and marriage and proceed directly to the baby carriage.

Though the pretense, even in the Guardian's headline, is that these relationships will remain strictly platonic and clinical, perhaps assisted by artificial insemination or IVF, couples aren't finding it so easy to treat each other as reproductive vending machines.

Most of the couples interviewed by Linton chose "natural conception" over artificial fertilization as a cost-cutting measure. At least one couple formed a lasting relationship and settled down. Most, however, endured painful and confusing breakups after having the baby, before settling into various kinds of arrangements, the kinds that children from broken homes know all too well.

One mother who went through a "breakup" said, in an attempt at self-reassurance, "I think there are far worse ways to bring a child into this world. I've got my baby and the love of my life, but through two different men. Our son doesn't see mummy and daddy kissing and cuddling in the same house, but he sees that he's loved and wanted, very much, by both of us."

The vast and conclusive data we have on children from broken families makes it difficult to think her words are anything less than wishful thinking. The Guardian article quotes a family researcher at Cambridge who admits that "the quality of parents' relationships with one another and their level of intimacy have a large bearing on children's welfare." Incredibly, she then immediately adds, without any evidence, "It is possible though, that taking away romantic baggage could even make for a more stable environment."

So, all the data we have says that kids suffer when mommy and daddy are not committed to each other, but if mommy and daddy are participants in a reproductive business transaction, the kids will be fine?

Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. Disconnecting sex from childbearing gave us abortion and abandonment. Disconnecting childbearing from marriage gave us a generation of fatherless children. The idea that we can have children without sex gave us rented wombs and robbing them of either a mom or a dad. That children should be created out of contractual arrangements without the burden of mutual love is also a bad idea. Once again, the victims are children.

John and Shane field important conversations downstream from worldview. A scientist asks how to frame gender identity. Another listener asks how to engage fundamental worldview questions in the classroom.

John references the need for building a theology of getting fired. He notes that we must continually ask fundamental questions in building a worldview.

John and Shane help listeners consider some survival tactics of consciousness of self-interest. The encourage listeners to hold self-preservation in engaging worldview battles hand-in-hand with truth. John rests his thought on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's work on Live Not By Lies.

Shane closes with a question about Bible translations. The two wrestle the question while also driving listeners to simply read the Bible. They provide recommendations on strong translations. They also build confidence that the Bible is reliable.

Resources:

Solzhenitzyns Live not by lies

Colson Center - Worldviews and cultural fluency

Tactics - Greg Koukl

Earlier this month, when celebrity chef Thomas Keller was interviewed by NPR about his new cookbook, his interviewer wasn't all that interested in the recipes. Instead, he wanted to talk about the $850-per-plate price tag at Keller's recently reopened San Francisco restaurant.

With so many people struggling financially due to the pandemic, asked the reporter, is it really "fair" to charge that much per plate? Or is it, to use his words, "tone deaf."

That an interview, which was likely intended to be a puff piece, turned into a social justice diatribe, is further proof that worldview affects everything.

To be clear, I cannot imagine ever spending $850 for a meal, but the reporter's problem had nothing to do with prudence or financial stewardship. The problem with the price tag, according to the reporter, is not that some people would not have access to food, but that everyone would not have equal access to Thomas Keller's food. In other words, his was a problem with the free market. And, of course, having a problem with the free market is all the rage these days.

Often called capitalism, a term popularized by Karl Marx and intended to be derogatory, the free market is an economic system. Unlike communism, it is not a complete worldview. In other words, it doesn't try to answer questions about the nature of reality, who we are, why we're here, what's right and wrong, what's ultimately wrong with the world, and how it can be fixed. That's a significant distinction.

The failures of communism (everywhere it has been tried) is due to the fact it assumes wrongly about reality, morality, and human nature. Its failures are intrinsic. A free market, on the other hand, is premised on allowing consumers and entrepreneurs to make their own decisions. Its failures are the failures of the human beings it involves. Economic freedom for a largely moral people leads to the explosion of wealth, innovation, and generosity. Economic freedoms outside a moral framework can lead to exploitation. Thus, instead of the totalizing control of a communist framework, a free market leans on the state to provide legal protections and religious institutions to provide moral instruction.

Arthur Brooks, President Emeritus of The American Enterprise Institute and a professor at Harvard Business School, once said that he supports the free market because not because he cares about the rich, but because he cares about the poor. After decades of studying global poverty, he found that "four-fifths of starvation level world poverty has been eradicated since 1970." How did that happen? It wasn't through additional federal aid, or by throwing money at a problem that fundamentally wasn't a money problem.

Poverty is addressed through opportunity, innovation, and people benefiting from their hard work and expertise. Thomas Keller can charge more because he sources the best produce and meat, buys the best kitchen tools, pays the best chefs, and tosses in his own innovation and skill set. I'm not saying that he should charge what he does, or that people should pay what he asks. I'm just explaining why his work and product deserves more value than a Big Mac

Imposing absolute financial equality, on the other hand, doesn't lift anyone to ingenuity or wealth. Rather, it lowers everyone to the lowest common denominator, economically as well as in creativity and quality.

A free market works not because wealth is valued, but because labor is. Jesus said we can't serve both God and money and that it's more difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus never said accumulating wealth itself is sinful. Exploitation of the poor is sinful. Looking to wealth for salvation and meaning is sinful. Failing to steward what we've been given and failing to care for those in need are sinful.

When these potential downfalls are mitigated or avoided, a free market inspires people to give more. According to data from The Philanthropy Roundtable, Americans give to charity at a rate seven times higher than continental Europeans. The top one percent of all earners in the U.S. give a full one-third of all charitable donations.

Once NPR finally asked Thomas Keller about what was in his new cookbook, the interview took an ironic turn. Keller cautioned that his recipes aren't necessarily for home cooks. His recipes require a certain amount of previously obtained skill. Interestingly, the reporter didn't seem to think that was unfair.

I won't be buying Keller's book, and I likely won't be eating at his restaurant. Still, I respect what his labor and skill has created. All that's ok. That's how freedom works.

For more on why a free-market economic system tends to be the best option for human flourishing, you can view our newest What Would You Say video at whatwouldyousay.org.

Perhaps the most helpful framework I know of in wrestling with moral issues comes from T.S. Elliott. Before we can know what to do with something, we must know what that something is for. For example, before we decide what we should do with human life (whether we should take it, make it, or remake it), we should know what human life is for.

The opposing sides of contemporary debates around bioethics, i.e. abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, in-vitro fertilization, and other assisted reproductive technologies, often proceed from very different beliefs about what it means to be human and, therefore, what it means for humans to flourish.

That is essentially the very important argument made by Notre Dame Professor O. Carter Snead in his new book What It Means to Be Human, which was recently called "the most important book of moral philosphy so far this century" by public intellectual Yuval Levin.

(Now, if you've already checked this off as too academic because of phrases like "moral philosophy" and "public intellectual," I will have failed. My interview with Snead on the BreakPoint Podcast should change your mind.)

Our laws and policies and debates about beginning and end-of-life technologies are proceeding these days, says Snead, without a shared or articulated vision of "what it means to be human." Or, to use T.S. Elliot's framework, we are greenlighting incredible technologies and freedoms about how to begin life and how to end life, without a foundation for understanding what humans are for.

Absent any official conversation, contemporary bioethics merely assumes the dominant cultural narrative about human existence: that we are autonomous individuals living in moral isolation from everything and everyone. As Snead profoundly argues, "everything" includes our own bodies. In other words, some of the most profound moral decisions are made as if people are "disembodied wills." Philosopher Alisdair McIntyre put it simply, "We have forgotten our bodies."

Here's why that matters. If we aren't bound by our bodies, then we aren't bound by the bodies of others, which means we have no responsibility for anyone for anyone or for any obligations that are not chosen. No relationship, not with fellow citizens, not with family members or friends, not with tradition or religion, can define for us who we are or how we live.

This view of what humans are for, or perhaps what humans are not for, has been dubbed "expressive individualism," and is the dominant worldview shaping our laws and our cultural imagination when it comes to what humans should do, and what we should be able to do with humans (including those not yet born, or who are infirmed and elderly, or who perceive themselves to be "born in the wrong body," or who are fertile or infertile when they don't want to be).

This caricature of real people and the way we live fails to take into account one of the most basic realities of human existence: that we live and encounter each other as bodies, not just as desires and wills. And our bodies are vulnerable. They are fragile. They get sick, and they eventually die. This reality creates mutual obligations within families, friends, and neighbors. Namely, to give without expectation of getting anything back and, also, and this is important, to receive without being able to give back.

In What It Means to Be Human, Snead makes clear that simply debating the morality of abortion, euthanasia, and assisted reproduction is not sufficient. Moreover, it's not enough to train our kids or disciple Christians just in the morality of these issues. We have to ground our definitions, debates, and catechisms in anthropology, in what it means to be human.

If we are to love our weak, vulnerable, and dependent neighbors, if we are to defend them, we ought also remember that we, too, will be weak, vulnerable, and dependent someday. This is what being human is, and our laws and policies should reflect it.

My interview with Professor Snead can be heard on the BreakPoint podcast. Please listen, and then buy two copies of What It Means to Be Human: one for yourself and one for your pastor. Both the Podcast and the book are available at BreakPoint.org.

Before the election, there was a lot of discussion in evangelical circles about single-issue voting when it comes to president. And the single issue was, of course, abortion.

Some argue that after six Republican administrations, Roe v Wade still stands. And even if it's overturned, abortion becomes a state issue. So when it comes to abortion, it doesn't really matter who's in the White House.

I disagree. And here's just one reason why. Team Biden has already announced that he will undo the so-called "Mexico City Policy" in his first 100 days

Since the days of Ronald Reagan, Republican presidents issue an order prohibiting US funds to go to NGOs overseas that promote abortion. And every Democratic president repeals the order.

In fact, Biden will likely push legislation to repeal the Mexico City rule permanently. And, to be clear, that's just one way the U.S. has, under Democratic presidents, promoted abortion overseas.

When it comes to abortion, Presidential elections do matter.

The country faces another surge of COVID-19 infections, with as many as 120,000 new cases a day. According to WORLD magazine, "New cases and deaths from the coronavirus in the Midwest are climbing among record-setting days for the whole United States . . ."

The good news is that a vaccine is on the horizon and, as treatment plans have dramatically improved, the overall death rate has plummeted. One physician at the Mayo clinic described to WORLD the new ways doctors think about treating COVID: "administer steroids, if appropriate. Don't rush to put patients on ventilators. Be judicious with fluids. Put patients in a prone position to take pressure off their lungs. In short, stick with . . . the 'bread and butter' of critical care."

In light of these new protocols and the updated information, medical experts, local officials, governors, and especially media outlets need to rethink the language they use, the panic they incite, and the policies they enact.

Still, the spike in emergency room admissions, especially in the Midwest, is a legitimate concern. Dr. Ben Daxon, a Mayo Clinic ER physician in Minnesota, described the patient load as "a constant surge." In addition to the unique challenge of treating COVID cases, the influx of COVID patients compete with "heart attacks, appendicitis, injuries and the other maladies… for limited hospital beds."

It remains to be seen whether or not things here will revert to the chaos of the early pandemic. Because on-the-ground realities in most cities across the country never reached predicted disaster levels, folks are burnt out on lockdowns and more than a little skeptical. Understandably so. However, in Italy, hospitals that were forced to ration medical treatment back in the spring, with doctors openly questioning whether limited resources should be spent on the elderly, are once again facing what the AP calls "a breaking point."

It's certainly possible that a second wave of the pandemic could get really bad in more places than it already has. Unfortunately, even though we are more knowledgeable about the virus in terms of therapies and treatment plans, it doesn't seem we are better prepared this time around to answer a number of critical questions. For example, state officials and individual citizens have dramatically different views on the limits of personal freedoms, and those state officials that decided to not let a "crisis go to waste" will face a much tougher sell job this time around. Also, I hope, but am skeptical, that local officials will have figured out by now that neither churches nor workers should be thought of as "non-essential." I also hope, but am skeptical, that Christians have figured that out.

Another question, if things get really bad and medical treatment resources become scarce, are any we better prepared to deal with the sort of ethical questions a crisis like this could demand? By necessity, in times of acute crisis, care must be triaged, to ensure the "efficient use of resources." The crux of the issue is found in the word "efficient," not because limited resources shouldn't be wisely stewarded, but because we are a culture with a tendency to devalue human life and call it "efficiency."

Wesley J. Smith has documented the rise of "futile care theory," in which doctors withhold medical treatment deemed "too burdensome" or "too expensive." According to Smith, this is a rising trend, not only in areas around the world with limited resources, but in pre-pandemic America too. "Futile care theory" rethinks care in financial terms. This way of thinking is devastating for human dignity, especially in a pandemic.

There's also the increasing popularity, and not only among euthanasia enthusiasts, of "quality of life" language. As I've said before, in practice, who decides the "quality of life" often shifts from patient to family members to bureaucrats. As a result, the "right to die" quickly becomes the "duty to die." Economic pressures only grease this already slippery slope.

All of which is why Christians everywhere should be thinking about medical ethics, joining hospital ethics boards, running for office, and becoming health care workers. And every Christian should embrace our God-given and culturally-escalated task, in this crisis and beyond, of bearing witness to certain eternal truths: that every human being has inherent dignity and value, and no one should ever be sacrificed on the altar of "efficiency."