Breakpoint

Dr. Anthony Bradley is mobilizing Fathers. His vision is to inspire dads to engage their children. He believes that in building strong fathering habits he can close prisons.

Bradley is the director of the Center for Human Flourishing at the Kings College. As a professor he mentors young men. He finds unique ways to use Twitter and other social media to inspire dads around the country to practice good fathering habits.

Bradley references the power of dad-play in the interview. He highlights what wrestling with a son does to their mental, emotional, spiritual, and social development.

John Stonestreet presses Bradley to identify the key benefits fathering has on society. Bradley calls dads to have friends. He references statistics along with real world stories to guide listeners to see the power of friendship inside the life of young and old men alike.

John Stonestreet welcomes WORLD Magazine, Christianity Today, and Colson Center contributor Maria Baer to "BreakPoint This Week. John and Maria (sitting in for Shane Morris) discuss the recent election and the loss of trust in not only the outcome, but in our public institutions themselves.

On today's episode: Presidential elections do matter when it comes to abortion -- case in point, presumptive President-elect Biden's plans to undo an executive order prohibiting funding abortion efforts abroad. Also, are megachurches best equipped to survive the surging pandemic and its aftermath?

John and Maria end the episode with their suggestions for the week: A storytelling podcast for children, and a beautiful painting for Advent.

This past weekend in Florida, 21-year-old Chris Nikic completed one of the most challenging feats in all of sports. The Ironman triathlon is a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bicycle ride, topped off by a full marathon, a 26.2 mile run. At one point, Nikic fell off his bike. During a nutrition stop, he was attacked by ants. Still, he completed the race in 16 hours 46 minutes and 9 seconds, 14 minutes under cutoff time. Oh, and Chris is the first athlete with Down Syndrome to finish an Ironman competition.

Nikic now joins the annals of others with intellectual disabilities doing the improbable. In 2006, Jason McElwain sank six three-pointers in the last four minutes of a New York district basketball championship game. McElwain has autism. Then there is Tim Harris, who with his parents help, opened a restaurant in New Mexico named "Tim's Place," known for its "breakfast, lunch, and hugs." My family visited Tim's place in 2013, where we got lunch and hugs. At the time, the hug counter in the restaurant already topped 1 million. The restaurant closed a few years ago when Tim and his family moved, but he still has an impressive social media following and his written articles for CNN and other national news outlets.

Stories like these are much-needed reminders that people, especially those with disabilities, are often capable of far more than we can imagine. At the same time, if we're not careful, while we rightly celebrate stories like Nikic, McElwane, and Harris, in no way do they imply that a person's worth is dependent on their accomplishments and abilities. That very bad idea has created countless victims, especially for people with Down Syndrome.

For example, a recent Christian Post article described how women, 69% of the time, are immediately offered an abortion when their child is diagnosed with Down Syndrome in utero. If they decline, they are asked again. And often, again. One woman reported being asked fifteen times! Government policies in countries like Iceland and Denmark have resulted in only a handful of children with Down Syndrome born each year. In fact, about 90 percent of children diagnosed with Down Syndrome in Europe are aborted. In the U.S., the best estimates are about 65%.

Parents of children with intellectual disabilities, who have already exhibited love and moral fortitude in resisting the social pressures to abort, have chosen a path that is not only difficult, but profoundly counter-cultural. Increasingly, having and raising children is evaluated in terms of personal fulfillment and validation, with a minimal amount of inconvenience and never suffering.

To judge an individual's worth by what they can achieve or contribute is fundamentally inhumane, and to put it bluntly, children just don't "pay off" in the end. There's no legitimate method of doing a cost-benefit analysis of kids based on their success or our self-fulfillment. Completing an Ironman contest, running a restaurant, and sinking three-pointers is amazing for anyone, especially those with disability. We celebrate their accomplishments especially because they've proved the cynics and skeptics wrong. Still, we must be clear: the dignity of any human life is inherent, not acquired. The value of every life is priceless already, and not increased one cent by an amazing accomplishment.

It's a wonderful thing when the talents of people like Chris Nikic are celebrated, or when a baby with Down Syndrome is named the official Gerber baby, or when an actor like Zack Gottsagen in the movie "Peanut Butter Falcon" is recognized for delivering an incredible performance. At these times, Christians should be cheering more loudly than anyone else.

But remember, and Christians should be saying this more loudly than anyone else, it's not what can do that matters. Its Whose image we bear.

"Stressful" doesn't really begin to describe a year like 2020. Between the pandemic, the lockdowns, cancelled classes, lost jobs, and an election to rival trench warfare, you would expect a heavy toll on marriages and families. But A recent piece in the Washington Post offered some of the best news we've gotten in quite a while. Divorce rates in the United States have declined, and marriages have grown stronger--during the pandemic.

Predictions of a COVID-induced divorce surge never materialized. And according to Dr. Bradford Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project, divorce filings are down between 10 and 20 percent since last year. While Wilcox admits that these numbers may also reflect "deferred" divorces, unhappy couples unable to get to the courthouse during lockdown, more and more data trickling in suggests trends more surprising and encouraging than initially assumed.

Last year, according to the American Family Survey, 40 percent of married Americans surveyed reported their marriages were in trouble. This year, that number is down to 29 percent. According to the same survey, 58 percent of married people between the ages of 18 and 55 report that their appreciation for their spouse has increased during the pandemic. 51 percent report a deepened commitment to their marriage during COVID, while only 8 percent report a weakened commitment to their marriage.

Recently on the Upstream podcast with Shane Morris Dr. Wilcox discussed these surprising and welcome findings. As counterintuitive as it may sound, marriages tend to benefit during times of historical stress, such as during the Great Recession a decade ago. This is partly financial, since divorce is both expensive and stressful. In other words, some choose to stay with a spouse they'd rather leave to keep from breaking the bank.

Still, Wilcox, believes there is more to it. For instance, during the pandemic, fathers have spent more time at home and have helped out more with household chores. The marital benefits of a father's presence go far beyond the division of labor. Wilcox believes that the increased time men spend engaging in home life makes an incredible difference relationally with both spouse and children. Even more, for many during this pandemic, the home became the center of work, play, meals, and even worship, a trend far more significant than it sounds. In effect, COVID has at least temporarily reversed a long-term trend in which the home has been largely de-centered from modern life.

As Aaron Renn, a researcher with the Institute for Family Studies, pointed out back in March, pre-industrial families organized shared lives around shared labor, shared meals, shared recreation, and shared education. During the pandemic, however, families were forced to stop treating their homes as nothing more than shared bunk space and food repository. As Renn predicted, many families have now rediscovered what he calls "the productive household." And as Wilcox believes, a backyard garden, renovations, cleaning the garage, family projects, and even board games can re-center families.

And, maybe, instead of just leaving when conflict started, couples were forced to stay together. Maybe, they experienced the long-term relational and personal improvements that comes when conflict is faced and resolved, as opposed to running away from each other.

Shane's conversation with Brad Wilcox is available on the Upstream podcast. The good news Wilcox shares should also be taken as a challenge. When things go back to "normal," our marriage habits shouldn't. When it comes to family, the most important things are cultivated, not felt. Love, loyalty, gratefulness, growth, depth…these are things chosen and habitually formed. Not to mention, the home is ground zero for fulfilling the creation mandate: to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

This pandemic has exacted significant costs from us. Wouldn't it be something if the forced investment of our time and attention to our marriages and households paid dividends for years to come?

"Stressful" doesn't really begin to describe a year like 2020. Between the pandemic, the lockdowns, cancelled classes, lost jobs, and an election to rival trench warfare, you would expect a heavy toll on marriages and families. But A recent piece in the Washington Post offered some of the best news we've gotten in quite a while. Divorce rates in the United States have declined, and marriages have grown stronger--during the pandemic.

Predictions of a COVID-induced divorce surge never materialized. And according to Dr. Bradford Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project, divorce filings are down between 10 and 20 percent since last year. While Wilcox admits that these numbers may also reflect "deferred" divorces, unhappy couples unable to get to the courthouse during lockdown, more and more data trickling in suggests trends more surprising and encouraging than initially assumed.

Last year, according to the American Family Survey, 40 percent of married Americans surveyed reported their marriages were in trouble. This year, that number is down to 29 percent. According to the same survey, 58 percent of married people between the ages of 18 and 55 report that their appreciation for their spouse has increased during the pandemic. 51 percent report a deepened commitment to their marriage during COVID, while only 8 percent report a weakened commitment to their marriage.

Recently on the Upstream podcast with Shane Morris Dr. Wilcox discussed these surprising and welcome findings. As counterintuitive as it may sound, marriages tend to benefit during times of historical stress, such as during the Great Recession a decade ago. This is partly financial, since divorce is both expensive and stressful. In other words, some choose to stay with a spouse they'd rather leave to keep from breaking the bank.

Still, Wilcox, believes there is more to it. For instance, during the pandemic, fathers have spent more time at home and have helped out more with household chores. The marital benefits of a father's presence go far beyond the division of labor. Wilcox believes that the increased time men spend engaging in home life makes an incredible difference relationally with both spouse and children. Even more, for many during this pandemic, the home became the center of work, play, meals, and even worship, a trend far more significant than it sounds. In effect, COVID has at least temporarily reversed a long-term trend in which the home has been largely de-centered from modern life.

As Aaron Renn, a researcher with the Institute for Family Studies, pointed out back in March, pre-industrial families organized shared lives around shared labor, shared meals, shared recreation, and shared education. During the pandemic, however, families were forced to stop treating their homes as nothing more than shared bunk space and food repository. As Renn predicted, many families have now rediscovered what he calls "the productive household." And as Wilcox believes, a backyard garden, renovations, cleaning the garage, family projects, and even board games can re-center families.

And, maybe, instead of just leaving when conflict started, couples were forced to stay together. Maybe, they experienced the long-term relational and personal improvements that comes when conflict is faced and resolved, as opposed to running away from each other.

Shane's conversation with Brad Wilcox is available on the Upstream podcast. The good news Wilcox shares should also be taken as a challenge. When things go back to "normal," our marriage habits shouldn't. When it comes to family, the most important things are cultivated, not felt. Love, loyalty, gratefulness, growth, depth…these are things chosen and habitually formed. Not to mention, the home is ground zero for fulfilling the creation mandate: to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

This pandemic has exacted significant costs from us. Wouldn't it be something if the forced investment of our time and attention to our marriages and households paid dividends for years to come?

"Stressful" doesn't really begin to describe a year like 2020. Between the pandemic, the lockdowns, cancelled classes, lost jobs, and an election to rival trench warfare, you would expect a heavy toll on marriages and families. But A recent piece in the Washington Post offered some of the best news we've gotten in quite a while. Divorce rates in the United States have declined, and marriages have grown stronger--during the pandemic.

Predictions of a COVID-induced divorce surge never materialized. And according to Dr. Bradford Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project, divorce filings are down between 10 and 20 percent since last year. While Wilcox admits that these numbers may also reflect "deferred" divorces, unhappy couples unable to get to the courthouse during lockdown, more and more data trickling in suggests trends more surprising and encouraging than initially assumed.

Last year, according to the American Family Survey, 40 percent of married Americans surveyed reported their marriages were in trouble. This year, that number is down to 29 percent. According to the same survey, 58 percent of married people between the ages of 18 and 55 report that their appreciation for their spouse has increased during the pandemic. 51 percent report a deepened commitment to their marriage during COVID, while only 8 percent report a weakened commitment to their marriage.

Recently on the Upstream podcast with Shane Morris Dr. Wilcox discussed these surprising and welcome findings. As counterintuitive as it may sound, marriages tend to benefit during times of historical stress, such as during the Great Recession a decade ago. This is partly financial, since divorce is both expensive and stressful. In other words, some choose to stay with a spouse they'd rather leave to keep from breaking the bank.

Still, Wilcox, believes there is more to it. For instance, during the pandemic, fathers have spent more time at home and have helped out more with household chores. The marital benefits of a father's presence go far beyond the division of labor. Wilcox believes that the increased time men spend engaging in home life makes an incredible difference relationally with both spouse and children. Even more, for many during this pandemic, the home became the center of work, play, meals, and even worship, a trend far more significant than it sounds. In effect, COVID has at least temporarily reversed a long-term trend in which the home has been largely de-centered from modern life.

As Aaron Renn, a researcher with the Institute for Family Studies, pointed out back in March, pre-industrial families organized shared lives around shared labor, shared meals, shared recreation, and shared education. During the pandemic, however, families were forced to stop treating their homes as nothing more than shared bunk space and food repository. As Renn predicted, many families have now rediscovered what he calls "the productive household." And as Wilcox believes, a backyard garden, renovations, cleaning the garage, family projects, and even board games can re-center families.

And, maybe, instead of just leaving when conflict started, couples were forced to stay together. Maybe, they experienced the long-term relational and personal improvements that comes when conflict is faced and resolved, as opposed to running away from each other.

Shane's conversation with Brad Wilcox is available on the Upstream podcast. The good news Wilcox shares should also be taken as a challenge. When things go back to "normal," our marriage habits shouldn't. When it comes to family, the most important things are cultivated, not felt. Love, loyalty, gratefulness, growth, depth…these are things chosen and habitually formed. Not to mention, the home is ground zero for fulfilling the creation mandate: to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

This pandemic has exacted significant costs from us. Wouldn't it be something if the forced investment of our time and attention to our marriages and households paid dividends for years to come?

"Stressful" doesn't really begin to describe a year like 2020. Between the pandemic, the lockdowns, cancelled classes, lost jobs, and an election to rival trench warfare, you would expect a heavy toll on marriages and families. But A recent piece in the Washington Post offered some of the best news we've gotten in quite a while. Divorce rates in the United States have declined, and marriages have grown stronger--during the pandemic.

Predictions of a COVID-induced divorce surge never materialized. And according to Dr. Bradford Wilcox, director of the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project, divorce filings are down between 10 and 20 percent since last year. While Wilcox admits that these numbers may also reflect "deferred" divorces, unhappy couples unable to get to the courthouse during lockdown, more and more data trickling in suggests trends more surprising and encouraging than initially assumed.

Last year, according to the American Family Survey, 40 percent of married Americans surveyed reported their marriages were in trouble. This year, that number is down to 29 percent. According to the same survey, 58 percent of married people between the ages of 18 and 55 report that their appreciation for their spouse has increased during the pandemic. 51 percent report a deepened commitment to their marriage during COVID, while only 8 percent report a weakened commitment to their marriage.

Recently on the Upstream podcast with Shane Morris Dr. Wilcox discussed these surprising and welcome findings. As counterintuitive as it may sound, marriages tend to benefit during times of historical stress, such as during the Great Recession a decade ago. This is partly financial, since divorce is both expensive and stressful. In other words, some choose to stay with a spouse they'd rather leave to keep from breaking the bank.

Still, Wilcox, believes there is more to it. For instance, during the pandemic, fathers have spent more time at home and have helped out more with household chores. The marital benefits of a father's presence go far beyond the division of labor. Wilcox believes that the increased time men spend engaging in home life makes an incredible difference relationally with both spouse and children. Even more, for many during this pandemic, the home became the center of work, play, meals, and even worship, a trend far more significant than it sounds. In effect, COVID has at least temporarily reversed a long-term trend in which the home has been largely de-centered from modern life.

As Aaron Renn, a researcher with the Institute for Family Studies, pointed out back in March, pre-industrial families organized shared lives around shared labor, shared meals, shared recreation, and shared education. During the pandemic, however, families were forced to stop treating their homes as nothing more than shared bunk space and food repository. As Renn predicted, many families have now rediscovered what he calls "the productive household." And as Wilcox believes, a backyard garden, renovations, cleaning the garage, family projects, and even board games can re-center families.

And, maybe, instead of just leaving when conflict started, couples were forced to stay together. Maybe, they experienced the long-term relational and personal improvements that comes when conflict is faced and resolved, as opposed to running away from each other.

Shane's conversation with Brad Wilcox is available on the Upstream podcast. The good news Wilcox shares should also be taken as a challenge. When things go back to "normal," our marriage habits shouldn't. When it comes to family, the most important things are cultivated, not felt. Love, loyalty, gratefulness, growth, depth…these are things chosen and habitually formed. Not to mention, the home is ground zero for fulfilling the creation mandate: to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

This pandemic has exacted significant costs from us. Wouldn't it be something if the forced investment of our time and attention to our marriages and households paid dividends for years to come?

Crows are pretty clever creatures. This is part of the reason they figure so prominently in mythology as messengers and tricksters. Crows are smart, as far as animals go. Their problem-solving abilities are impressive, as long as the problem being tackled has to do with food (which is the key factor of the whole "as far as animals go" part).

C.S. Lewis once observed that the most important philosophical statement of all time was, "In the beginning, God," because, if that were true, the universe is a different place. Even crows are different. The belief in God is often the difference between marveling at the beauty and design displayed in animal intelligence and seeing animal intelligence as proof that there is nothing special about humans.

A recently announced study of crows' basic sensory awareness is a case in point. While "measuring brain activity in crows performing a visual task," researchers came upon activity they believed to display "another layer of awareness."

What they found was, essentially, unexpected neuron activity. What they concluded, however, was "that these two layers of perception constitute a form of what humans call subjective experience," or in other words, consciousness.

After speculating about the possible consciousness of crows, the authors then shifted from science to philosophy. "Humans," they wrote, "have tended to believe that we are the only species to possess certain traits, behaviors, or abilities, especially with regard to cognition. Occasionally, we extend such traits to primates or other mammals—species with which we share fundamental brain similarities. Over time, more and more of these supposed pillars of human exceptionalism have fallen."

To say that "supposed pillars of human exceptionalism…" is a loaded phrase is quite an understatement. What it's loaded with, of course, is a worldview, one which motivates both this research and these researchers to scientifically justify knocking homo sapiens sapiens off its pedestal.

Worldviews function like glasses. We rarely think about them, but we always think with them. A false worldview, such as materialism, offers both an explanation of reality (in this case, that the material world is all there is and that there's nothing metaphysical about us to uniquely set us apart from other animals), and provides the lens through which we formulate interpretations of reality. Or, in this case, crow research.

Despite the incredible amount of research into human consciousness, it remains a mystery to us. If we are not even certain how best to understand or define human consciousness, how can we possibly know whether what crows or other animals possess should be thought of as consciousness, much less that theirs is comparable to ours?

What's at work here are worldview assumptions. Scientists who assume that human exceptionalism is a religious hang-up will see any animal spotted resembling human behavior as evidence that there's nothing exceptional about humans. A classic example is the "mirror test." An animal, such as a chimp, a dolphin, a cat, or even a fish, seems to recognize itself in a mirror, and it's taken as proof of self-awareness. The problem is, as an evolutionary biologist Alex Jordan put it, "Honestly, the test [stinks]." No one knows what is going on when animals stare at their reflection. Calling it "self-awareness" is, as Jordan puts it, "a stretch."

Nevertheless, scientists continue exploring animal behavior and cognition, and make their determinations of what they are seeing, not from a commitment to science or animal welfare, but to a materialistic worldview.

This same commitment to disproving human exceptionalism, as my colleague Shane Morris has pointed out, is also at work in the search for extraterrestrial life. We are often led to believe that "any day now," conclusive evidence will demonstrate that we are not alone in the universe. The urgency of the breathless reporting is instructive. Partly assuring lonely earthlings that we could have a plan B if we destroy our planet (an idea also chock full of worldview assumptions) and partly pointing that life could evolve elsewhere, the end result is that the inherent dignity of human beings is compromised.

The view that best corresponds to reality is the Biblical view, described by the audacious proclamation of Psalm 8, that humans were created "little less than God . . . and crown[ed] with glory and honor," and the audacious job description described in Genesis, that humans have "dominion" over all creation, including the "birds of the air." Even crows.

John and Shane are challenged on their pro-life position. A listener asked if they defend the lives of those who might later identify as gay. The pair define what it is they are defending in the pro-life position and try to answer a larger issue that they perceive is behind the question.

John starts out the show leaning in to the internal and external unrest many are feeling. He identifies some challenging realities that are impacting how we feel about our security as citizens of earth and heaven. He closes with a charge from Chuck Colson that the church should be the church in times like these.

Shane works through a listener's question regarding science and God. The listener asks how to respond to those who believe that science disproves God's existence. Shane and John provide strong structure in their response, establishing ground to hold tightly to Scripture, respond in love to a challenging question, and respect observable science.

In addition to national, state and local leadership, voters made incredibly consequential decisions on over 100 ballot initiatives. The results of these direct-to-voter policy races, about 3/4 of which involved potential changes to state constitutions, reveal much about the electorate, perhaps even more than the Presidential and congressional races.

Though ballot initiatives are often written in legalese that is impossible to understand and can address mundane topics, increasingly in recent years, voters have been deciding on weighty moral questions. It's one thing to vote on best means to achieve a shared vision of reality. It's another to ask voters to decide between competing visions of reality. Americans are, state by state, doing more and more of the latter these days.

In Louisiana, voters overwhelmingly passed a measure clarifying that the Louisiana state constitution does not include a right to abortion. Called the "Love Life Amendment" by supporters, this lays critical groundwork for challenge to Roe v. Wade. Note also that this ballot initiative was already in the works when the Supreme Court issued a disappointing ruling in the June Medical Services case. I'd say those pro-life Cajuns are showing a level of tenacity the entire movement might learn from.

Oregon voters also showed tenacity, but without the virtue, by decriminalizing the possession of hard drugs, including LSD, Meth, and heroin. This ballot initiative was sold to Oregonians not by questioning how harmful these substances are, but with the promise of reducing the number of people of color in prison and ensuring that addiction recovery is more widely available for those who (and I quote) "need and want it."

Of course, those two goals could have been achieved through better policies without advancing a flawed and dangerous view of freedom. The idea that legal progress involves being freed from anything that restrains our will or behavior is at the heart of many ballot initiatives, and only ends with people enslaved by their passions or addictions. The kind of freedom that allows fallen people to flourish, on the other hand, necessarily involves common-sense restraints from government and other authorities.

Speaking of casting off restraint, voters in Washington state decided that kindergarteners should be taught so-called LGBTQ-inclusivity, and that the corresponding behaviors should be taught to students beginning in fourth grade. In this case, voters decided to cast off not so much the restraints of government as to use the government to cast off the restraints of reality, including the created goodness of our human bodies and the moral consequences of sexual brokenness.

Meanwhile, voters in Colorado soundly rejected a measure that would have outlawed abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion advocates raised an incredible amount of money to defeat Prop 115 and protect in law the killing of nearly born children. Dressed like "handmaids," they spread lies about the "safety of the mother" and about pro-lifers only caring about babies until birth. But mostly, they took advantage of a state deeply committed to this libertarian view of freedom, which just four years ago voted in doctor-assisted suicide, also by ballot initiative.

Still, to be clear, Prop 115 failed in 2020 and Prop 106 passed in 2016, not because of the clever and vocal arguments of one side, but because the world's largest grassroots organization just didn't show up. Most churches in Colorado, not all but most, would not summon the resources or moral courage to get involved. Colorado pastors, including some who marched with Black Lives Matter just a few months ago, didn't want to "get too political." Thunderously denouncing racism from their pulpits, rightly so, they then refused to even mention the killing of hundreds of thousands of babies each year in this country, or even the hundreds of later-term babies killed each year in this state.

My guess is that a similar silence afflicted Oregon and Washington as well. If so, those shepherds missed an incredible opportunity to teach congregants a vision of the world that has nothing to do with partisan politics, but everything to do with seeing and valuing each human life as created by God. They missed an opportunity to put faces and flesh on the parable of the Good Samaritan, discipling their flocks in loving their preborn and school-age neighbors. Instead, unwittingly, a false vision of freedom, one driving so much of our culture, went unchallenged and maybe even encouraged.