Breakpoint

Last fall, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a study entitled “Reduction in Mental Health Treatment Utilization Among Transgender Individuals After Gender-Affirming Surgeries.” According to the study’s authors, people with “gender incongruence” (that means they struggle to identify with their biological sex) have higher risk of mental-health disorders. In fact, they are “more than six times as likely to have been hospitalized after a suicide attempt” as others.

This study was not the first to highlight the significant rates of depression and suicidal ideation among those who struggle with gender dysphoria. In fact, the high correlation between mental health struggles and the transgender community is agreed upon by all sides. Incredibly contentious, on the other hand, is the best way to help these people. These authors in the American Journal of Psychiatry claimed that their research unequivocally affirmed the benefits of “gender affirmation” surgery.

To be clear, “gender affirmation” is a backwardly defined phrase. It does not refer to attempts to align one’s thinking to the biological realities of the body. Rather, “gender affirmation” affirms the dysphoria, seeking to realign one’s body to feelings, either by dress, counseling, hormone manipulation, or physical mutilation. Not only is this kind of “affirmation” assumed to be the correct response to gender dysphoria, in many circles, doubting it, especially as a medical or academic professional, is not tolerated.

For these researchers to claim that their study “supports the decision to provide gender-affirming surgeries to transgender individuals who seek them” was no surprise. It likely wouldn’t have been published if they had not. Nor was it a surprise when the study received significant media coverage, touted as confirmation of the benefits of “gender-affirmation.”

On the other hand, writing at The Public Discourse, Paul Dirks has noted that some of the best-designed, most-rigorous, and time-tested studies suggest otherwise, specifically the efficacy of medical transition. Especially in the case of male-to-female transitions, other studies reveal much higher mortality rates due to suicide, AIDS, drug abuse, and even cardiovascular disease. In other words, the best studies tend to show the worst results when it comes to transition surgery. These studies, however, never seem to generate the same media coverage as those that confirm our current cultural predeterminations.

And now we learn, months after their study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, these authors have issued a correction. Contrary to their earlier claim, “results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care.”

In an explanatory note, the Journal called the 2019 study “promising,” and “exciting,” but admitted that there were “some issues with [their] interpretation” of the data. What kind of issues? The kind in which the data actually showed that “treatment for anxiety disorders was higher in persons …who had received gender-affirming surgery [than among those] . . . who had not received gender-affirming surgery.”

Another way to put it (in fact, the better way to put it) is that the initial report on the 2019 study was just wrong. As Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation bluntly put it, “So, the bottom line [is that] the largest dataset on sex-reassignment procedures—both hormonal and surgical—reveals that such procedures do not bring the promised mental health benefit.”

Like the other, better studies, this recent correction isn’t garnering nearly the same media attention as the original article. The neglect is not only misleading, it’s tragic given the incredible rates of mental and psychological suffering of those who struggle with gender dysphoria.  More committed to a narrative than helping people, this neglect subjects science, medicine, and cater to an ideology that tosses around phrases such as “gender-affirmation” and “gender incongruence” and “cisgender” as if made-up euphemisms could reconstruct reality.

Perhaps more evidence that transition surgery isn’t beneficial will, one day, open the eyes of educators, public health officials and legislators. Perhaps some will even have the courage to tell the truth at the expense of their careers, reputations, and Twitter feeds. Until then, I pray the rest of us would have the courage to say what is true, not out of anger and vindication, but from love and concern for those victims of our very bad ideas.

Last month, a WIRED Magazine story described a storm brewing in the world of sperm donation. As at-home DNA test kits become more popular, people all over the world are making unexpected family discoveries. These discoveries have a name, apparently: “NPE’s,” or “Non-Parental Events.” 

At-home DNA test-takers are discovering dads or half-siblings or dozens of kids they never knew about. And they’re mostly not happy about it. In fact, a growing subculture, complete with lobbying organizations, self-help literature, and support groups is emerging for people making these unwelcome genetic discoveries. One therapist, who has developed a podcast dedicated to walking people through these kinds of situations, told WIRED that people who uncover hidden family secrets through DNA testing often exhibit the classic cycle of grief. After the initial shock comes anger and depression. Their stories are all the reasons we need to take a sober-minded look at sperm donation, a practice that goes largely unquestioned in Western societies.

The 4-billion-dollar sperm donation industry is shockingly unregulated in the U.S. Children born from sperm donors are among the victims of the bad ideas of the sexual revolution. They do not have the legal right to request information about their biological fathers until they turn 18, which means that, in most states, these children don’t even have a right to their own family medical histories.

Anyone who opposes or questions assisted reproduction technologies, like sperm donation, are often called prudish, cast as the grumpy old grandpa huffing about a teenager’s blue hair. After all, we are told, it’s not really harming anyone. In reality, there are plenty of reasons to oppose sperm donation even if we don’t find the practice, well, icky.

First of all, the industry dehumanizes men. The God-given ability to procreate is transformed into a crude financial transaction. As is the case with egg donation, the way the “product” is marketed dehumanizes image bearers, reducing them to a list of so-called “desirable qualities, such as height, hair color; supposed athletic ability, or where they went to college. This isn’t some “enlightened” new way to make a modern family. It’s re-branded eugenics.

Sperm donation also dehumanizes children, robbing them of the right to know who their dad is and leaving them in the dark as to whether or not their dad even knows they exist. In fact, the industry relies on secrecy. The FDA places no rules on how many children a sperm bank allows to be born of just one donor. While some banks impose their own limits, the country’s largest sperm bank in California limit is 25 to 30 “family units” per man. A “family unit,” by the way, might include multiples, meaning a set of twins or triplets only counts as one unit.

While some activists have been calling for more regulation on the sperm donation industry for years, the problems inherent to a system that’s corrupt from the ground up cannot be regulated away. The corruption in the sperm donation industry is rooted in a warped view of human sexuality and family. God’s design for families is baked into the nature of reality, much like gravity. Children hunger for connection with their parents. Studies suggest that many adoptees do better emotionally and socially when they know who their biological parents are and understand the adoption process.

Of course, sperm donation doesn’t repair a fracture like adoption does. Rather, it creates a fracture, permitting and even incentivizing a view of children as products. In this country, eighty percent of customers who use sperm banks are either same-sex couples, who have intentionally chosen a sterile union only to demand children, or women intentionally pursuing single motherhood, despite the overwhelming scientific literature that shows kids do best with both a mom and a dad. Or as the headline of a New Yorker article put it years ago, Dan Quayle was right.

This WIRED article tells what is, in fact, an old story with new variables: of people who long for family but suffer in a culture where the family has become so broken. Whenever children and family-building are turned into big business, trails of grieving people are left, reeling from what we call “Non-Parental Events.”

The brokenness at the heart of the sperm donation industry begins with the man who views pornography to sell a genetic product and ends with a child shocked to learn his dad isn’t really his dad. All which serves to remind us that just because something is culturally normal doesn’t mean it should be. True moral clarity won’t come from whether or not we find something weird or icky, but only from God’s created intent for the world and for His image bearers which is, in His own words, good.

Last school year, educators were forced to pivot on the fly from in-person instruction to online planning and teaching, while still trying to get students to the end of the term and seniors to graduation. As this school year begins, they face the daunting task of communicating ever-changing plans and guidelines to students and families. To call it challenging is an understatement.

Christian educators, whether homeschool parents or teachers and administrators at private, classical, or charter schools, must navigate these challenges while still fulfilling their unique mission. T. S. Eliot maintained that this mission was training students “to think in Christian categories,” equipping them to see all of life through the lens of a Christin worldview, connecting the eternal truths of Scripture to the key issues and questions of a culture that seems to be morphing and devolving at incredible speed.

To be clear, truly Christian education is not just education with long skirts and short hair. It’s not just education with more rules. Or with chapel, or with Bible verses. It’s not, again to quote Eliot, the task of helping students learn to be pious. Christian education is a fundamentally different enterprise, educating students for eternity not for employment.

Of course, students must develop job skills, but Christian education begins with Christian assumptions about life and the world, aims for Christian goals, and is governed by Christian methodologies. In both their personal beliefs and their public lives, we hope to help students love God with heart, mind, soul and strength, and love their neighbors as themselves. It’s an enormous task. Like all of us, Christian educators need ongoing training and tailored professional development to serve the unique challenges of their vocation. 

To serve this incredibly important calling, the Colson Center has partnered with the Association of Christian Schools International and the International Alliance for Christian Education, two leading Christian education organizations, to offer a free, online, professional development program for schools and homeschool parents called “Worldviews and Cultural Fluency.”

The Association of Christian Schools International, the largest accrediting organization for K-12 Christian schools in the world, serves tens of thousands of schools in America and worldwide.  The newly formed International Alliance for  Christian Education connects Christian educational institutions, leaders, and teachers at every level of education, K-12 through seminary.

The Worldview and Cultural Fluency professional development program offers five modules for Christian educators in any context. Module 1 is “Worldviews for This Cultural Moment,” and equips teachers to address the most significant worldviews that have emerged in our world

The second module deals with the “The Imago Dei,” an essential Christian foundation for learning, especially in light of the challenges of our current culture. This module lays the groundwork for a completely different understanding of who we are, and especially who our students are as made in the image of God.

Building on this foundation, the third module addresses the “Cultural Flashpoints” of race, sex, gender, and technology. The fourth module, “Cultivating Christian Commitments in Students,” provides insights on worldview formation, offering the essential ingredients for forming students into confident and courageous followers of Christ.

The fifth module I find especially important: “Worldview Equipping for Elementary Students.” It’s critical that Christian educators who work with elementary age students learn to cultivate a strong Christian vision of the world in their students at the earliest ages. Two stellar educators, Elizabeth Urbanowicz and Dr. Kathy Koch, lead this module.

In fact, every speaker in the Worldviews and Cultural Fluency program are world-class Christian thinkers and educators, including Dr. John Lennox on science and faith, Os Guinness on cultural trajectories, and Dr. Bill Brown on worldview integration and formation.

Christian education is vital to the future of the Church, and the health of our students and our nation. The Worldviews and Cultural Fluency program is designed for in-service training for entire school faculty and staff to go through together, or for home educators to go through on their own. All participants also receive an incredible toolkit of teaching resources to supplement each session and each module.

The Worldviews and Culture Fluency professional development program is available, at no cost. You can find it at educators.ColsonCenter.org. Please, let the Christian educators in your community know about it.

John Stonestreet and Shane Morris discuss the massive explosion that has devastated Beirut. What do disasters--and the human response to disasters--tell us about human nature, and how does the Christian worldview account for them?

Also on today's episode: New, complicating body cam evidence in the death of George Floyd; a so-called breakthrough study supporting gender transition surgery is retracted, but the media ignores; and how are men who claim to be women getting away with harassing and doxxing women athletes who petitioned the NCAA to protect women's sports?

Finally, John Stonestreet announces a free, online professional development program for Christian educators: "Worldviews and Cultural Fluency."

Worldviews and Cultural Fluency, a free, online professional development program for Christian Educators

“Why George Floyd Died,” by Rod Dreher, the American Conservative

Join the Colson Center to Pray for Our Nation, every Wednesday between August 12 and the day after the November Election.  Register here.

Recently, Mexico’s Supreme Court refused a sweeping Roe v. Wade kind of ruling on abortion. The ruling was in response to a ruling by a lower court judge which ordered the state legislature of Vera Cruz to amend its penal code and allow abortion in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. In a 4-1 decision, the Court ruled that the Vera Cruz judge exceeded his authority.

According to Justice Norma Piña, allowing courts to dictate the meaning of laws written by state legislators would be “to fall into judicial activism.” The ruling was an unpleasant surprise for many Westerners (especially Americans) who believe judicial activism is what courts are supposed to do. And of course, progressives expect that as nations such as Mexico develop, they will expand so-called abortion rights and reject what left-leaning Guardian newspaper called Mexico’s “strong traditions of Catholicism and machismo.”

Over the last decade or so, Mexican states have repeatedly voted to maintain abortion restrictions. Western promoters of abortion, however, simply cannot imagine a society knowingly and willingly rejecting their ideas. Anyone who disagrees must be either brainwashed, backward, or both.

Obianuju Ekeocha, the founder of Culture of Life Africa, has appropriately labeled this attitude “ideological colonialism” and “cultural imperialism.” Ekeocha, a featured speaker for our recent Truth.Love.Together virtual event, has spoken out repeatedly against Western attempts to export a “culture of abortion” to developing countries.

“The issue of abortion,” says Ekeocha, “has already been decided by many African countries (who) have decided that abortion is an attack on human life at its earliest stages.” On top of that, African culture includes a strong preference for large families.

Rejecting African values and culture, Western abortion advocates instead parallel the worst colonialists of the 19th-Century who claimed to bring “Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce” to unenlightened natives.

The same dynamic can be seen in a bill currently being debated in the Kenyan Senate. The “Reproductive Health Care Act” is intended to reduce the number of women who die during pregnancy or childbirth, and addresses issues such as family planning, “free [pre]natal care, delivery care and postnatal care,” as well as “assisted reproduction services.” But the bill also permits abortion in cases where “in the opinion of the trained health professional … the pregnancy would endanger the life or health of the mother.”

While this might seem like a narrowly tailored provision, pro-abortion Western groups who support the bill reject any narrow interpretation of the phrase “the life or health of the mother” as a violation of a Western woman’s “reproductive rights.” Their intent is not to reduce the number of Kenyan women who die during pregnancy. Rather, it’s to increase the number of abortions in Kenya and other developing countries.

After all, loosely interpreted phrases such as “the life and health of the mother” have created a highly lucrative regime of abortion-on-demand in the West. The goal is to reproduce -- pun not intended -- that same outcome in places like Kenya.

The average Kenyan, like many non-westerners around the world, understand phrases like “the life and health of the mother” very differently, but a few activist judges are all that’s required to export what Ekeocha calls the “culture of abortion” to the rest of the world. Though the plan in Mexico was to ignore the expressed political choices of the Mexican people and enlist local elites, thank God that, at least in this case, the Court refused to impose the culture of death on the locals.

Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from our southern neighbors, that an advanced culture need not kill its children or compromise its integrity through judicial malpractice. With our own election looming, we should at least pray to such ends. That’s why we are hosting a weekly prayer time, beginning August 12 and continuing each Wednesday until November 4th, the day after the U.S. elections. You can join us via Zoom or Facebook Live each week. Just come to breakpoint.org for details.

And to watch Obianuju Ekeocha’s describe the West’s abortion imperialism, come to Conference.colsoncenter.org.

Christians should be among those most deeply concerned about the divided state of our nation. Left vs. right, masks vs. no masks, reopen vs. stay-at-home, virtual school vs. in-person, race, politics, police, abortion, religious liberty, not to mention the remainder of what’s certain to be a brutal presidential campaign.

The issues range from essential to non-essential. On the essential matters, we mourn and vow to fight deception. On the non-essential matters, we mourn and hope to overcome division. God’s people can neither stay on the sidelines nor run away from the struggle. Instead, knowing  there is no hope outside of Christ, we ask God to mercifully and powerfully mobilize His people to advance the true and good. 

If Christians are to speak with clarity, courage, and confidence and be voices of truth and love in a world of noise and echo chambers, we will need to be prepared. But even perfectly crafted arguments cannot replace, as Chuck Colson said, “the church being the church.” Speaking cannot replace being. To be the people God calls us to be, we must rely on prayer.

Each Wednesday morning between August 12 and November 4, which is the morning after the 2020 election, the Colson Center will host a national prayer time, via webinar. We invite you to join us, each week, to pray first and foremost for God’s mercy, that He would revive His church, that He would bring about renewal of righteousness, that He would empower us to courageously offer protection for the most vulnerable, to champion reconciliation across our deepest divides, and that He would allow us to be instruments in the sustaining of religious freedom and the national recovery of the family.

Each prayer time will feature a devotional challenge and prayer by Christian leaders such as Os Guinness, Joni Eareckson Tada, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly, Woodside Bible Pastor Chris Brooks and Watermark Church pastor Todd Wagner, as well as Ed Stetzer from the Billy Graham Center and Heritage Foundation president Kay Cole James.

Due to Zoom capacity, there will be limited live spots each week available to all who register. However, each week’s recording will be sent to anyone who signs up. Come to BreakPoint.org for more details.

In Ephesians, Paul tells us “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” When people see us as their enemies, it’s difficult to remember they aren’t our enemies.

We can only, as Paul instructs, put on the full armor of God --faith, truth, righteousness, peace, salvation, and the word of God--“praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication… keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints” (v. 18).

According to the book of Acts, the earliest church activity was prayer. Thousands of people, from completely different backgrounds, came together in one mind and one heart in prayer “with one accord” (Acts 1:14; 2:42–47). What happened? The Holy Spirit moved and the world was never the same.

Every spiritual revolution in history started with this kind of unified, persevering prayer. From the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts to the Great Awakenings to the Businessman’s Revival to the Welsh Revival, in story after story, we hear the same thing. People prayed and God’s Spirit moved. On the other hand, every Christian in history who persevered in righteousness, despite temptation or persecution, did so through prayer. 

Our prayer cannot force God’s hand, of course. But, our only way forward is to seek His will together. Our prayers don’t control God, but rather invite Him in to change hearts and minds, including our own. God is always working in our lives whether we realize it or not, but something powerful and world-changing happens when people pray for God’s Spirit to move.

The great Jonathan Edwards urged his fellow pastors to “be much in prayer and fasting, both in secret and with one another. … [I]t is God’s will that the prayers of His saints shall be great and the principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ’s Kingdom in the world. When God has something to accomplish for His church, it is with His will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayer of His people.”

Paul tell us to pray for all things at all times (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and specifically to pray for our leaders, both spiritual and secular. This is what the world needs from the Church right now, instead of the outrage we are too often known for. So that’s what we will do, together, each Wednesday until the election. I hope you will join us.

In what will now be a regular weekly feature of the BreakPoint Podcast, John Stonestreet and Shane Morris answer readers and listeners questions on a wide variety of topics. Today: What can we Christians do about the rise of anti-Semitism? A recent NBC article claimed that White Christians are more racist than non-religious people . . . what does John think? Finally, they respond to a question from a listener who works with abused children, some of whom are succumbing to gender confusion. These children want the listener to use pronouns that reflect their chosen gender, not their biological sex. What's the proper response?

“Anti-Semitism, the Oldest Hatred,” by John Stonestreet and Maria Baer, BreakPoint

“Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious,” NBC News

“The Roots of Wokeness,” by Andrew Sullivan, the Daily Dish

Physician-assisted suicide is sold to the public as a “compassionate” measure, necessary to spare those with no reasonable chance of recovery the unbearable pain and suffering of the last days of their life. In every context in which it has been made legal, however, what might be called euthanasia-by-another-name has never remained limited to the rare instances on which it was sold.

There are reasons this slope has proven so slippery, literally everywhere it has been made legal. Once it is decided that certain lives are not worth living, the list of people eligible for physician-assisted suicide inevitably grows. As the list of people without intrinsic value grows, it becomes impossible to not re-evaluate lives based on some other criteria, perhaps convenience or financial costs. It’s a small step indeed from “eligible to die” to “expected to die.” 

Wherever doctor assisted suicide is legalized, in a bait-and-switch from what is sold to the public, the category of “terminal” illness is often expanded to include “chronic” illnesses and permanent disabilities. Even mental illness and depression are now considered sufficient justification for suicide in places such as Belgium and the Netherlands. 

Given this trajectory, it’s only a matter of time before we dispense with the requirement of any illness whatsoever. In fact, that’s what has just happened in the Netherlands. A recently introduced bill there would “allow healthy individuals over the age of 75 to request assisted suicide, if they have had a ‘strong death wish for at least two months.’” The bill, which is expected to be up for a vote sometime in 2021, would, according to the bill’s sponsor, give the elderly “…the choice at an advanced age, if [they] consider their lives complete, to die with dignity, with careful help.”

Thankfully, the two Christian parties in the governing coalition are strongly opposing the measure, but it will not be easy to keep it from becoming law. After all, the bill is the next logical step in the Dutch trajectory. Having embraced what novelist Walker Percy called “Thanatos Syndrome,” every promise to limit euthanasia in any way has only been broken, and any so-called “safeguards” have been swept aside.

For example, the people were promised that only those certifiably in their right minds would be euthanized. That was a lie. Anyone who goes into an American emergency room and tells doctors they had a “strong death wish” and were “done with life” would be diagnosed with “suicidal ideation” and immediately admitted to the psych ward. To not do so, in fact, would be medical malpractice. Suicidal ideation is rightly regarded as a symptom of an underlying mental disorder. People with untreated mental illnesses are not allowed to make life and death decisions.

Or at least they weren’t. In Oregon, since doctor-assisted-suicide was legalized, over 96 percent of people given lethal drugs did not undergo a psychiatric evaluation. To not evaluate is neglect, but if this Dutch bill becomes law, any elderly person who admits suicidal wishes will be referred to those who will help them turn their desires into reality.

This is why, as our recent “What Would You Say” video so clearly explained, there’s nothing compassionate about physician-assisted-suicide. In fact, it is the exact opposite of compassion, the abdication of a civilized people’s responsibility to offer compassion to those who need it most when they need it most.

In his book The Thanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy described how a society devolves to the point of thinking that killing patients instead of healing them is compassionate. A psychiatrist, he wrote of well-trained and exquisitely credentialed doctors who “turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind.”

Percy literary prophecy, written in 1987, is becoming reality. Some form of assisted suicide is now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia. That number will only grow unless we convince people what true compassion is and make the idea that assisted suicide is compassionate unthinkable.

Come to WhatWouldYouSay.org for the latest video on assisted suicide, and be equipped to make the case. And please, share it with your pastor, community leaders, and legislators. It’s literally a life and death issue.

The United Nations “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” went into effect in 1951. At the time, the Convention defined “genocide” as actions “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” This definition includes “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

As in the case of any other activity deemed a crime, laws against genocide will not enforce themselves. People, or in this case nations, have to be willing to use the label “genocide” when necessary, and also to take action.

Tragically, since 1951, the international community is batting close to zero. Besides the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, there have been at least a dozen other campaigns of extermination that arguably met the Convention’s definition of genocide. With the possible exception of the horrific events in former Yugoslavia, no one did anything.

China, of course, has an atrocious human rights record. Given the lack of consequences the nation has faced time after time, it’s no surprise that the People’s Republic would flout the Convention and the international community. And they are.

Beijing’s treatment of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang Province qualifies, in every way, as genocide. Writing in Newsweek, Israeli Human Rights Lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky didn’t hesitate to call the Communist Party’s actions “genocide,” pointing especially to the “forced sterilizations, abortions and intrusive birth prevention.” These actions alone meet the requirement for genocide and have led to “the population growth rates in the two largest Uyghur prefectures [to fall] by 84% between 2015 and 2018.”

But there’s more.

According to the State Department, “Over a million Uighurs have now been detained by China in camps, where they are starved, abused, tortured, electrocuted, raped and even killed.” Recent video footage showed “Uighurs, with heads shaven, being blindfolded, shackled and herded onto trains, headed for these camps.”

Ostrovsky, who lost family in the Holocaust, admits that he is “loath” to draw comparisons, but in this case, finds it “impossible not to draw such parallels in the face of overwhelming evidence of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing and genocide by China's Communist regime.”

Of course, it was equally impossible during the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, when the world did next to nothing other than some hand-wringing and expressing regret long after it was too late.

This time, however, there are signs it may be different, though not from the Uighurs’ fellow Muslims, whose conspicuous willingness to be bought by Beijing should embarrass them. Instead, resistance to China’s genocidal policies are coming from countries finally fed up with China’s bad actions. Even some not concerned with China’s terrible treatment of religious minorities or its crackdown on Hong Kong, have concluded that Beijing must be knocked down a peg or ten.

For example, Japan is paying Japanese firms to move production out of China for reasons part economic, part national security and, part desire to reign in Chinese ambitions. Another example is India who, after a recent border clash in the Himalayas, is courting companies to relocate production from China. Apple is in the process of moving 20 percent of its production to India from China. India has also banned Chinese apps, including the insanely popular Tik-Tok, something President Trump also threatened to do for national security reasons.

Though none of these moves is in direct response to Uighur persecution, it illustrates that countries don’t have to appease Beijing. Civilized nations have both the means and the cause to punish China for its actions.  People of good conscience, led by Christians, must make it clear to our leaders that business-as-usual is intolerable.

Otherwise, we can never say the phrase “Never Again!” ever again. At least not with a clear conscience.

Pastoring is always a difficult job. I can’t think of another job, in fact, in which someone is hired to do one thing (typically, lead and disciple God’s people) but evaluated on a completely different thing (namely, growing the audience and the budget).

Pastoring during coronavirus seems even more unenviable. Zoom stock might be way up as the new preferred platform for corporations and schools, but there is no digital substitute for the sort of face-to-face work pastoring requires.

When to close down was a tough decision. When to reopen is even more difficult. If pastors choose to strictly adhere to state guidelines, they will upset people. If they ignore or relax those guidelines, they upset others. In almost every church I know of, pastors face a no-win proposition right now.

In addition to navigating a global pandemic, pastors must also deal with our already intense and only intensifying cultural firestorms. While we all must navigate the issues of race, sexuality & gender, criminal justice, political divisions, and other markers of our fallen human nature that dominate this cultural moment, pastors face expectations that many of us don’t. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this phrase on social media recently: “If your pastor doesn’t preach about X from the pulpit this Sunday, it’s time to find a new church.” Same phrase, but the X changes with the headlines.

Don’t get me wrong. As the true account of the human condition, the Bible has this quality of universal relevance. Pastors should make the connection between the timeless truths of Scripture and our particular context, both in their preaching and in their leading. There are times that to not address something from the pulpit is to be louder than addressing it, and churches that never address controversial issues risk giving their people the impression that the Bible is our own personal, private collection of encouragements rather than the personal, public and true account of the human condition. 

At the same time, the loud demands placed today on pastors to not only hold but to articulate our approved opinions reveals more about us than about our pastors. After all, if we are confident our pastor is called by God and entrusted by Him to lead us into His Word and His will, that leaves little room for making demands on what he teaches.

Also, our loud demands that a pastor “talk about subject X,” almost always means “say specifically what I want him to say about subject X.” But that also means we’re not really looking for a pastor or a teacher anymore. We’re looking for a parrot.

The demands pastors face can range from mountains to molehills, but, in too many cases, they are treated the same. To bring up the most common elephant in the sanctuary today, everyone has strong feelings about masks. I do too. But being asked to wear a mask in church by pastors seeking to comply with civic authorities or protect the health of parishioners is not a matter of orthodoxy. This is not a sufficient cause of outrage or of making demands for our pastor’s compliance. And it’s certainly not worth leaving a church over.

Keep in mind that pastors are called to shepherd specific congregations. Though the big cultural issues are always relevant, each community and each congregation find themselves in a specific time and place (as Paul told the Athenians) with specific people and circumstances all orchestrated by God. For example, a church connected to an addiction recovery center, as is the home church of a colleague, will be made of people with specific needs and challenges that others may not have. 

What is really at stake here is that we all need to foster a proper ecclesiology, (that’s a $.50 word for the doctrine of the church). When we view church like we do so much of 21st-century Western life, as consumers, we’ll see church as a place to be entertained or affirmed, in our feelings and in our views. That, rather than a fidelity to Christ and His Gospel, is what’s driving so much of the entitlement we feel, and pastors face.

Every church and every Christian, of course, ought expect and demand that pastors preach the true Word of God with passion and courage. We ought never allow a pastor to abuse his power or his position in exploiting the congregation.

Still, we ought never demand that our pastor never disagree with us. The holy willingness of a pastor to say what’s true is only matched by the holy willingness of Christ followers to hear what we may not like. And again, don’t leave a church over a mask.

This commentary originally aired July 7, 2020