Breakpoint

John Stonestreet and Shane Morris discuss the news of the week from a biblical worldview perspective. As expected, riots broke out in Louisville and across the country in the wake of the grand jury's decision in the Breonna Taylor case. Are we caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of violence and injustice--real and perceived?

John and Shane also discuss a new bill in Congress to protect women from having to compete against biological male athletes--even if it doesn't pass, it opens a debate that transgender activists insist on shutting down.

They start the show, however, with a discussion of the legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the implications of replacing her before the election.

The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Roe v. Wade, and the Future of the Court: A BreakPoint Podcast interview with Kim Colby

“Repentance Sunday,” by John Stonestreet, BreakPoint

Life, Liberty, and the Supreme Court: A Panel Discussion Hosted by the North Carolina Family Council

Register for the National Prayer Webinar here

“How Biblical Illiteracy Is Ruining the Humanities,” by Luther Ray Bell, National Review

“The King’s English: 100 Phrases in 3 Minutes” Media Speak Life, YouTube Channel

Until his death in 2011, Dr. Bernard Nathanson was a champion of the pro-life movement. His 1979 movie “The Silent Scream” helped dispel the idea that the fetus was only a clump of cells, and his pioneering work with ultrasound technology paved the way for its widespread use by the pro-life movement.

Part of his authority came from his personal history. A co-founder of NARAL, Nathanson had worked alongside people like Betty Freidan to liberalize abortion laws. His eventual change of heart was big news.

A new Bernard Nathanson may have just stepped onto the world stage. Dutch physician Bert Keizer was euthanizing patients nearly 20 years before it became legal in the Netherlands. In fact, he played a significant role in its legalization. As Al Jazeera put it, “When somebody wants to die in the Netherlands, Bert Keizer is often the man they call.”

Like Nathanson, Keiser seems to be having second thoughts about the deadly system he helped create. He is especially alarmed at the developments in Great Britain, where Conservative member of parliament Andrew Mitchell predicted that euthanasia could be legal there by 2025.

Mitchell, a Conservative MP who chairs an “all-party” commission looking into the issue, told Sky News that he wasn’t talking about “a massive change,” but, instead, “very, very tight reform.” The law he would propose, says Mitchell, would contain “very strong safeguards,” such as limiting euthanasia to those with less than six months to live. Patients would also have to get permission from a high court judge and two doctors before proceeding.

Of course, everywhere euthanasia has been legalized also had “very strong safeguards,” which are eventually ignored, violated, or even discarded. Dr. Bert Keizer, having witnessed this up close and personal, is now warning British lawmakers to think twice before legalizing assisted suicide.  Writing in the Dutch Medical Journal, Keizer admitted that his British colleagues were correct two decades ago when they warned that countries like the Netherlands, “who embark on euthanasia, venture down a slippery slope along which you irrevocably slide down to the random killing of defenseless sick people.”

Far from being confined to the terminally ill, Keizer admits that the practice, for the Dutch, has expanded to include older people who “find that their life no longer has content.” Eventually, Keiser predicts, the Dutch will expand euthanasia to include disabled children and prisoners serving life sentences. In his own words about his own country, “every time a line was drawn, it was also pushed back.”

The same lines have also been eliminated in Belgium. In Canada, doctors have advocated expanding that country’s “Medical Assistance in Dying” law to include children, even without parental consent. At least eight U.S. states have some form of so-called “death with dignity” laws, and abuses, like in Oregon, are well documented. Inevitably, what starts as legalized suicide ends in legalize homicide.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s change of heart about abortion eventually led him to become a Christian. Perhaps God has something similar in store for Bert Keizer. Let’s pray He does.

In the meantime, however, let’s pray his warnings are heeded. The honesty Keizer brings to the discussion about euthanasia is scandalously lacking in the debate, starting with his use of the word “euthanasia.” Phrases like “physician-assisted suicide” and, especially, “assisted dying” are Orwellian euphemisms that only obscure what is really happening: the taking of an innocent human life based on someone’s judgment that it’s no longer worth living. The Third Reich called it: lebensunwertes Leben, “lives unworthy of life.”

Dr. Keizer has given the world some much needed clarity. Let’s pray the world listens.

Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck gave, perhaps, the most fundamental reason that, as God’s people, we should prioritize prayer: not just because we are Christian but because we are human. Bavinck said:

Prayer is fitting for us because God is God, because of all his attributes: faithfulness, grace, omnipotence, goodness, and so on. Furthermore, we also depend on him for everything; having nothing from ourselves we need to receive everything from him. Prayer is therefore deeply grounded in human nature...a necessity for its being…

The idea here is of course the dependence creatures have, by definition, on their Creator. And, another aspect of our creatureliness spoken of in Scripture is not only that we exist, but when and where we exist. God has, according to Paul’s teaching found in Acts 17, placed each and every one of us in particular times and particular places. The chaos of the cultural moment is all the reason we need to pray that we could possibly need.

Each Wednesday since early August, the Colson Center has hosted a National Prayer Webinar, via Zoom and Facebook Live, to pray for our country and the Church. Thousands have joined us.

When Focus on the Family President Jim Daly led our prayer time a few weeks ago, he said, “When it gets rough [in times] like this, it’s time for Christians to show the confidence we have in what we believe. And as the body of Christ, we must bring true hope to the world – using the best “weapons” we could ever have – the fruits of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” The kind that only comes through prayer.

Since we’ve started to pray together, I’ve sensed with many others that God most wants to reform, not the culture, but His church. He is graciously stirring His Church to action, especially by calling His people to repentance.

This Sunday, September 27, hundreds of churches throughout America will be participating in a time dedicated to prayer and repentance. What’s being called “Repentance Sunday” has been organized and endorsed by the leaders from more than 50 churches and ministries. I know this is somewhat late notice, but repentance is always a good thing to do, isn’t it? You can still join in.

This Sunday is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, among the most sacred days of the year in the Jewish calendar. For the church, it’s an opportunity to practice what Revelation 2 and 3 require, a return to our first love, seeking forgiveness for personal and corporate sins (by the way, that’s a theme that has come up repeatedly in our Wednesday prayer times). Scripture is clear that the best next step for a nation experiencing division and calamity can only be taken by the Church. The first step for us is repentance, something we often talk about but, outside of liturgical services, rarely actually do.

To learn more about Repentance Sunday and request resources, just come to BreakPoint.org and we’ll link you to them. And, please, join us for prayer each Wednesday between now and the day after the election. Again, you can register at BreakPoint.org. This week, we will be led by Pastor Bob Fu, founder of China Aid.

Though as Bavinck said, prayer reflects our creatureliness, it is also the means by which we participate in God’s ongoing work in the world. As American theologian and philosopher Johnathan Edwards said, “so [it] is God’s will, through His wonderful grace, that the prayers of his saints should be one great and principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ’s kingdom in the world.”

What an astounding thought. We so often say things like, “but other than pray, what can we do?” Praying is doing something.

Prayer changes our hearts, aligning us with God’s will and love. Repentance is offered to us, Scripture says, out of God’s kindness so that realignment is possible. As Peter Kreeft said, “For those on the edge of the moral abyss, the best way forward is backward.”  Prayerful repentance is that opportunity to turn around and realign.

Gaby Lyons who’s been the driving force organizing Repentance Day told many of us recently, “Something is surely afoot. God is on the move.” I’ve sensed that too.  Please, come to BreakPoint.org to find out more about Repentance Sunday and to register for our weekly National Prayer Webinar.

Why have so many Christians taken to social media to praise legacy of Justice Ginsburg--a monumental figure no doubt, but a person who championed many causes contrary to what Christians know to be good?

And what is the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of expression? More fundamentally, what is freedom itself?

John and Shane tackle readers questions from a Christian worldview.

How Abortion Poisoned Our Politics (and Everything Else), by John Stonestreet, BreakPoint

The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Roe v. Wade, and the Future of the Court: A Special BreakPoint Podcast Interview with Kim Colby

Matt Hawkins Twitter Feed

Robert George Twitter Feed

President Trump has promised that his nomination to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be announced on Saturday. And, now that Senator Mitt Romney has committed to support the process, it looks probable, perhaps likely, that Mitch McConnell could succeed in seating a new justice before the November election. Democrats will, of course, fight against this with, to quote Nancy Pelosi, “every arrow in their quiver.”

The death of Justice Ginsburg raises an incredible number of questions on a ton of issues, from the rules and norms of Supreme Court nominations to the legacy of this historic member of the Court to just how a Justice becomes a pop-culture icon to the future of Roe v. Wade. Earlier this week, Kim Colby, director of the Center of Law and Religious Freedom for the Christian Legal Society, joined me on a special edition of the BreakPoint Podcast to talk through each of those questions. Come to BreakPoint.org to listen or subscribe to the BreakPoint podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Justice Ginsburg was truly an historic figure as a pioneer for women’s rights and women’s equality. A towering intellect who relentlessly followed her worldview, she was also among the political left’s most effective champions. As Dr. Albert Mohler put it recently on The Briefing, “This is for the left as big a loss as was several years ago experienced by the right with the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia.”

Her legacy, however, will always be, to quote Kim Colby, “very much tarnished by the fact that she equated women’s advancement” with abortion, something “not good for women or the little girls who are aborted.” Deeply committed to the sexual revolution’s version of feminism, in which the procreative capacity of women is seen not as a good to be celebrated but as a problem to be solved, Ginsburg fiercely protected legalized abortion, including later-term, sex-selective, and disability-targeted abortions. In 2019, she even chided Justice Clarence Thomas on the topic, saying “(A) woman who exercises her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy is not a ‘mother’.”

Ginsburg was very much a protector of the dark and destructive legacy of Roe v. Wade, at least part of which has become the kind of brutal, divisive, and cruel confirmation hearings we are all now bracing for. As the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson has said, not only are abortion and Roe great evils against children, but they poison our entire political and judicial systems. Like the dreadful Dred Scott decision on slavery, Roe is a decision that deals with the very heart of what it means to be human. And like Dred Scott, the court got Roe wrong. This country, especially African American communities, are still paying the price for getting Dred Scott wrong, as we’ve seen even this summer. And, this country is still paying the price for the Court getting Roe wrong, both in terms of millions of lives lost and families destroyed, as well as our deeply poisoned political system.

Both Republicans and Democrats will appeal to “principle,” selective histories, and suddenly important so-called “norms” in order to blame the other side for the awful vitriol called “Senate confirmation hearings.” But make no mistake, it wasn’t about principle in 2016 when Republicans refused to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland, and it’s not about principle now when Democrats wish they could refuse to consider the nomination of Ginsburg’s replacement. There’s nothing unconstitutional about bringing a nominee before the Senate 40-some days before an election, any more than changing the 60 vote rule to 50, or refusing to consider a nomination in an election year. 

It’s never been about principle. It’s always been about politics. And our politics have been deeply poisoned by abortion. 

Amy Coney Barrett, thought to be among the finalists for the nomination, already experienced just how poisonous the nomination process is, when her Catholic faith was attacked by Senator Diane Feinstein during her confirmation hearings for the 7th Circuit Court. “When you read your speeches,” said the liberal Senator from California, “the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

At a 2006 speech to the graduating class of Notre Dame’s law school, Barrett said, “Your legal career is but a means to an end, and . . . that end is building the kingdom of God. . . . [I]f you can keep in mind that your fundamental purpose in life is not to be a lawyer, but to know, love, and serve God, you truly will be a different kind of lawyer.”

That’s the kind of loudly living dogma that alarms her critics.

Catch my conversation with the Christian Legal Society’s Kim Colby on the BreakPoint Podcast. And pray for the nominee whoever she is, as she will face personal attacks and blistering opposition. But most of all pray for our nation--and for the lives at stake.

Kim Colby, Director of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom, joins John Stonestreet to discuss the legacy of a truly historic figure, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As Colby tells us, Ginsburg was a champion of women's equality, who, sadly, equated women's advancement with abortion.

What happens next with the Court? What are the precedents for Supreme Court nominations so soon before a presidential election? And why does abortion and the Court's disastrous ruling in Roe v. Wade loom over every judicial appointment?

Christian Legal Society, website

In the 2016 election, only about 61% of voting-age Americans cast a ballot. The percentage of self-identifying Christians who voted, both evangelical and non-evangelical, was pretty similar. In other words, though faith does seem to greatly influence the voting decisions of American Christians who vote, it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference in whether or not American Christians vote.

Of course, if our faith should make a difference in every aspect of our lives (and it should), it should shape how we think about and live out citizenship, too. To put it bluntly, Christians have both a civic and a Christian responsibility to vote. As my friend Tim Goeglin, vice-president of external and governmental relations for Focus on the Family, put it recently, to vote is the beginning of our civic duty of Christians.

Here are three reasons why:

First, voting is an act of obedience. Both Jesus and St. Paul described our responsibility to defer to the governing authorities, and to “render to Ceasar” what is due to Caesar. Both Jesus and Paul navigated the realities of the various political authorities they faced differently, depending on the nature of their political authority and their rights as citizens. For example, Jesus never went to Rome, but He often confronted Jewish political powers and structures. Paul claimed and appealed to Roman citizenship when he was arrested.

In our context, the people are the political authorities. We don’t submit to political authority, we grant political authority to the representatives we elect. So, in our context, voting is the most fundamental way there is to “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

Second, Scripture describes sin not only as doing wrong, but also failing to do the good we can. Voting is an opportunity to do some good. Christians should see voting as an opportunity to steward what is good.

Finally, voting is a way to fulfill both what Jesus called the greatest commandment, and “the second one like unto it.”  To love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength means, to some degree, loving what God loves: justice, righteousness, truth, and hospitality are all things that God loves, and they can be reflected in law and policy.

And, to love our neighbors as ourselves means more than person-to-person niceness. Voting in ways that will limit or end abortion is a way to love our preborn neighbors. Voting in ways that will uphold the family and stop sexual experimentation on children is a way to love kids. Voting for policies that provide real opportunities for the poor and needy is a way to love them.

Of course, fulfilling our civic and Christian duty involves not only voting, but voting in a right way. While I don’t think there’s just one right way to vote in every election, on every race, about every issue, there are certainly wrong decisions to be made.

Because voting between candidates, whether for President or for dog catcher, will always involve choosing between the better of imperfect options, the best we can do is make comparisons. First, we should compare their worldview, because that is the basis of both their personal character and their public policy.

A candidate’s worldview, by the way, is not the same as their professed faith. For too many candidates, faith is not only personal, it’s private. A candidate’s worldview, on the other hand, reveals those beliefs fundamental to how they will govern, specifically, what they think needs to be fixed and whose job they think it is to fix it.

Second, we should compare their company, because every candidate comes with others. In particular, every president comes with a few thousand others: appointees who run departments, advisors who offer counsel, and judicial nominees who will be on the bench for decades. And just about every candidate comes with a political party, which has their own set of rules and expectations not to mention a platform that party intends to advance.

Finally, we should compare candidates’ stated policies, because policy matters. Policies are based on ideas. Ideas have consequences. Bad policies built on bad ideas have victims.

Of course, most Americans will not just choose who will be President. We won’t just be choosing between Congressional candidates. Choosing on ballot initiatives is every bit as important is choosing between candidates. In Colorado, we’ll be choosing whether to end the over 200 later-term abortions that occur in this state every year.

Finally, while it is critical and necessary, Christian involvement in the public square cannot stop at voting. The issues we face, such as abortion, assisted suicide, religious freedom, loneliness, and so many others, cannot be solved by government alone. The Church has plenty of work to do upstream from politics, in communities and families, not to mention plenty of praying to do too.

Though our responsibilities certainly include more than voting, they certainly do not include less.

On today’s episode, we  present a recent panel discussion held by the North Carolina Family Policy Council examining the Supreme Court’s most recent decisions dealing with religious liberty, abortion, and gender identity. What are the implications for the Church, for law, for our culture?

The host is John Rustin of the North Carolina Family Policy Council, with panelists John Stonestreet, Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation and Matt Sharp of the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Our thanks to the North Carolina Family Policy Council

“Making Sense of the 2020 Supreme Court Term,” by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

The North Carolina Family Policy Council

Millions of religious and ethnic minorities—men, women, and children—herded on to trains, hauled away to concentration camps for “reeducation,” used for slave labor, their heads shaved and hair used for products sold to support the government. Women forcibly sterilized, babies forcibly aborted. All of this sounds familiar doesn’t it?

It should, but according to a survey released last week, it likely will not.  A significant number of U.S. adults under 40 lack "basic" knowledge of the Holocaust, which left 6 million Jews dead during World War II, as well as millions of members of other ethnic and social groups. This 50-state poll, commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, found that 63 percent of U.S. adults between 18 and 39 years old did not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Forty-eight percent could not name even one of the more than 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos operating in Europe in the 1930s and '40s.

In other words, for a growing number of Americans, the words “Auschwitz” and “Dachau” don’t ring a bell, much less what happened behind their gates.

Does it really matter that a generation has emerged lacking basic history? After all, it actually makes for some pretty funny man-on-the-street interviews on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Of course, it’s a bit more serious than that. Just in the past several months, for example, among the statues torn down and defaced by rioting mobs include statues of Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment statue in Boston. The 54th Regiment, by the way, was a Union Regiment in the Civil War made up of African Americans, many of whom gave their lives fighting for freedom and the end of slavery.

In other words, the ignorance of history means the inability to distinguish between heroes and villains. But it’s even worse than that. Earlier, when I was describing trains and camps and forced labor and torture and death, I wasn’t talking about Germany or Poland from the 1940’s. I was talking about China’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs and other religious minorities right now.

Historical ignorance not only prevents us from learning from the evils of the past, we risk not even being able to recognize the evils of the past when they reemerge in our time.  In Nigeria, for example, tens of thousands of Christians have been and, as recently as last week, are still being abducted, raped, and murdered by militant Islamists. The word that describes this is genocide, historically coined along with the phrase “never again.” Yet, in China and Nigeria genocide is happening again.

Last week, at a media-awareness event sponsored by the International Committee on Nigeria, former U.S. Representative Frank Wolf called on President Trump to create a special envoy on Nigeria, to coordinate with other nations and NGOs to bring pressure to bear on the Nigerian government to put an end to this hideous persecution of Christians by Boko Haram and Fulani militants.. This is the sort of external pressure that can put an end to the suffering of Christians there.

Simply put, there is a connection between our national ignorance of history and the lack of a public outcry about the attempted genocides in Nigeria and China.

The refusal to learn history, at least in our case, is a form of arrogance that C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” This idea we moderns are morally superior to our forebears and have nothing to learn from the past can be clearly seen in the certainty so many young people have that they certainly would’ve been on the right side of history. Princeton Professor Robert George has noted that his students, particularly the more progressive ones, are nearly certain that they would never have supported slavery or remained silent about Adolph Hitler.

That, of course, is nothing but hubris.  Hannah Arendt, at the trial of Adolph Eichmann in 1961, noted just how ordinarily human he was. And, at the Nuremburg trials after WWII, Nazi war criminals were quick to point out that many of their eugenics ideas came from American intellectuals, and that the country sitting in judgment over them practiced their own eugenics experiments, such as forced sterilizations. (That story is told in Edwin Black’s masterful book, The War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race.)

Just last week, a disturbing, horrifying accusation was leveled against a private ICE facility in Georgia, about an unusually “high rate” of hysterectomies performed on women without their understanding and consent. On its face, the story seems unbelievable. In truth, it’s only unbelievable if you ignore history.

And if history is ignored, we are doomed to repeat it.

John Stonestsreet and Shane Morris discuss the murders of hundreds of Christians in Ethiopia--one of the most ancient of all Christian lands--at the hands of militant Muslim youth, as well as the growing awareness of genocide against Christians in Africa's largest nation, Nigeria.

They also discuss the disturbing lack of basic knowledge about the Holocaust among Americans--especially those 40 or younger.

Also on today's episode, the dark history of eugenics in America, President Trump's foreign policy success as Israelis and former Arab enemies sign agreements normalizing relations. John and Shane also give their recommendations for the week.

“50o Ethiopian Christians Murdered in Door-to-Door Attacks,” Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post

International Committee on Nigeria–Stop the Slaughter

The War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, by Edwin Black

The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, by Fred Sanders

Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, 75th Anniversary Edition, by Anette Dumbach