Breakpoint

Truth, Love, Together. That’s the theme of the Colson Center’s 4-week long virtual event featuring 20 of the leading Christian worldview thinkers.

We’re now into module 2: And today on the BreakPoint Podcast  we have  an astounding, moving presentation by Joni Eareckson Tada: “The Love of God, or How We Know What Love Is.”

To see and hear all of our "Truth Love Together" presentations, come to Conference.ColsonCenter.org. And when you register, you'll be able to join in live sessions and be notified each time we post a new presentation.

And the entire event is free.

Join in our “Truth. Love. Together” virtual event

Just about a year ago, voters in Hong Kong sent a loud and clear message to Beijing: They would not lose the freedoms they enjoyed. In fact, pro-democracy forces there won 389 of 452 parliamentary seats in that election--more than 3x their previous total. Even more, the results were seen as overwhelming support for the pro-democracy protesters that had been filling the streets of Hong Kong for weeks.

At the time, I wondered out loud how Xi Jinping and his Communist cadres would respond. I feared then, and even predicted, that Beijing would not sit idly by. Though distracted for a few months by the global pandemic they largely caused, it’s become clear that Eye of Sauron has turned its attention back to Hong Kong.

On Thursday, China’s National People’s Congress announced it will “deliberate” a new law for, and I quote, “establishing and improving the legal system and enforcement mechanisms" for Hong Kong in order to, and of course they would claim this, "safeguard national security." What this means in plain English is that Communist dictator Xi Jinping has had enough of Hong Kong’s trouble and has decided to put an end to their independence.

Unfortunately, there is little the rest of the world can do about it. At least, Beijing thinks so, and it’s hard to blame them. After all, it already dictates terms of surrender to global corporations like Apple and the NBA. It can apparently cow the European Union into changing its findings on COVID-19 so not to criticize China. It’s able to silence any protest from Muslim nations about its cultural and physical genocide of millions of Chinese Uighurs. No wonder they expect to get away with this, too.

To review how we go to this point, when the British handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, a unique “one country, two systems” regime was established that would make Hong Kong part of China, but also maintain its own local government, economic and social systems, etc. At the time, China and the UK agreed the arrangement would last for 50 years. I’m no mathematician, but we’re not even halfway there yet. It’s hard to imagine that anything short of an unprecedented global outcry will cause China to back off.

The natives of Hong Kong have no doubt about the seriousness of this threat. As Hong Kong lawmaker Tanya Chan told NBC news, "I recall the time when I was young, and I believed in 'one country, two systems,' and we were going to showcase to the world that Hong Kong people can rule Hong Kong. But now, I'm not yet 50 years old and suddenly all is gone."

Despite this show of force and so much that we hear, China is a lot weaker than it appears. Economic growth there is at “its slowest pace in nearly three decades of modern record-keeping.” Throw in a sinking labor force and the added economic impact of COVID-19, and China’s Communist Party has a big problem on its hands. Their only source of legitimacy has been economic growth. For the past forty years, the Chinese people have been asked, over and over, to trade certain freedoms away for increasing prosperity. The fragile balance is sure to collapse if that prosperity goes away.

It’s no coincidence that Xi Jinping doubled down on his own cult of personality and cracked down on religious freedom just as China’s economy began to slow.  The renewed call to Chinese nationalism from Beijing effectively distracted the population from growing economic worries and offered an effective pretext for cracking down on Hong Kong protestors, many of whom see their protesting as an outworking of their Christian faith and as something for which they are willing to die. Because so much of the Christian activity in China flows through Hong Kong, an assault on Hong Kong is rightly seen as part of the larger war on Chinese Christianity.

We must pray for Hong Kong, including the hundreds of thousands of Christians there. We must pray against the power of Beijing and Xi Jinping. We must pray that world leaders will show the backbone that has been sorely lacking when it comes to China relations over the past decade. There must not be “business as usual” with such a brutal regime.

Before the coronavirus, Memorial Day meant a day off, maybe staying at home, relaxing, grilling out with neighbors, family, and friends.

Since the coronavirus, “being home” is more like “being stuck at home.” So perhaps we can redeem this day by recapturing the essence of Memorial Day: honoring those who, out of love of country, sacrificed their lives on our behalf.

Years ago, Chuck Colson honored Memorial Day by telling this story of sacrificial love:

It was February of 1945—three months before the end of World War II in Europe. Eighteen-year-old Sergeant Joseph George of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, was stationed in Lorient, France. It was evening, and George was preparing to go on patrol.

Sergeant George had been on patrol duty the night before. As he told his friend, Private James Caudill, he was tired—tired and scared. Private Caudill offered to take the patrol on his behalf. He pointed out that, at age 36, he was nearly two decades older than George. He told George—who had already been blown off a torpedoed ship in the English Channel—“You’re young. Go home. Get married. Live a rich, full life.” And then Private Caudill went out on patrol. A few hours later, he was killed by a German sniper.

The actions of Private Caudill echo the values and valor of generations of military men and women we remember today.

So what of Sgt. Joseph George? He returned safely home. He married, fathered five sons. One of them—Princeton Professor Robert George—is a good friend of mine. He’s devoted much of his life to fighting the moral evils of our time: abortion, embryo-destructive research, and efforts to redefine marriage in a way that would destroy it.

In John 15:13, Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that [he] lay down his life for his friends.” The story of Private Caudill and Sergeant George makes one realize more deeply what a tremendous gift this is.

Chuck reminds us that Memorial Day is really about love. Love of country, love of others. Sacrificial love. This week, Module 2 of the Truth.Love.Together virtual event answers the question, “What is Love?” Here’s a brief clip from the amazing Joni Eareckson Tada, talking about the only love that defines all other loves: the love of God…

The love of God cost something.

I recall decades ago when I was in the hospital lying in bed paralyzed. I was so depressed. My mother would stand by the guard rail of that hospital bed for hours on end holding books up so that I could read them. . . Those sacrificial hours my mother spent by my bedside. It displayed a far deeper love than I ever imagined.

I think that is such a sweet picture of the love of God and its greatness, all because of what it costs. What it cost Him, His precious Son... So you have to think: What could God the Father possibly prize so much that it would be worth assigning His own dear Son to brutal torture?

What could possibly be worth the excruciating death of the apple of His eye?

How about your salvation and mine?

… The measure of God's love is clearly stated in Ephesians 5:2. Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. There you have it.

Because today, Memorial Day is about sacrifice, it is, ultimately, about love. The rest of Joni’s presentation on “The Love of God, or, How We Know What Love Is” is available, today, in Module 2 of the Truth.Love.Together event at Conference.ColsonCenter.org. It’s free along with the rest of the event, which includes 20 other wonderful Christian thinkers and speakers.

RZIM's Abdu Murray joins John Stonestreet and Shane Morris to share his warm personal memories of Ravi Zacharias.

To watch and hear Abdu Murray’s presentation at our “Truth. Love. Together” virtual event, come to Conference.ColsonCenter.org.

The Constitution is pretty clear: Freedom of Religion is not negotiable. Yes, governments can restrict religious freedom, but only under very special circumstances and only for a limited time. That's why, as  Shane Morris and John Stonestreet discuss, the Department of Justice is telling California it cannot single out churches restrictions it does not apply to other entities.

Also on today's episode: Thoughts on Ravi  Zacharias; when hospital restrictions go too far; evolutionary psychology's fairy tales.

And this week, on the podcast only, Shane and John begin a new segment: Answers to listeners questions. This week: surrogacy. We also include a segment of Pastor Chris Brooks's outstanding "Truth, Love, Together" presentation.

Join in our free online virtual event, “Truth. Love. Together.”

“Justice Department tells California to re-open churches,” by Jeremy B. White, Politico

“Evolutionary Psychology, Natural Selection, and Human Misbehavior,” by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, BreakPoint

“Adoption Is Beautiful, Surrogacy Isn’t,” by John Stonestreet and Maria Baer

“Anderson Cooper and the New Normal: Why Surrogacy Is Oppression,” by John Stonestreet and Maria Baer

Restaurants, theatres, sports teams, and theme parks are scrambling to figure out if and how they can get people back to business. At the same time, and far more important for many of us, churches are trying to figure out how to reopen, too. Not only are such plans complicated by official regulations and recommendations that differ from state to state and even county to county, but different theologies and worship styles matter as well. More sacramental churches that emphasize participatory worship and weekly communion face certain challenges, and massive congregations with huge crowds face others. Some congregations consist of a high number of “at-risk” members due to age or other factors. Some don’t.

After navigating all of these challenges, it’s still not clear just how many people will be willing to show up. And, all of this is being navigated in the context of differing opinions. Just about every church is made up of some members who are fearful, others who are convinced that the threat of Covid-19 was overblown, and others somewhere in-between. Everyone has their opinions, and some think theirs are matters of orthodoxy.

All of this means, according to Baylor historian Philip Jenkins, people in the future will think about church in terms of “BC…Before Coronavirus,” and after.

The key factor in Jenkin’s fascinating analysis is what we might call “pre-existing conditions.” In other words, in many ways, the coronavirus hasn’t so much created problems for the Church as it has revealed and accelerated them. One particular “pre-existing condition” that Jenkins believes will be accelerated by this crisis is secularization, especially in the United States.

To be clear, “secularization” is not the same as atheism or even “a decline or destruction of faith.” Rather, as Jenkins writes, it’s “a decline of religious institutions, and a decisive shift in religious practice to individual and privatized forms.” In other words, secularization takes personal faith and makes it private, often by making us more and more religiously unaffiliated.

So, Jenkins thinks it is quite possible that “the U.S. in the 2020s [will] witness a rapid secular trend comparable to Western Europe in the 1960s,” in which church attendance declines and religious conviction is seen as less appropriate for the public square.

“Historically,” writes Jenkins, “pandemics and diseases have often played a major role in shaping religion, in undermining older religious establishments,” and we live in a time where institutions are already weak. Even if the coronavirus sparks a revival in personal piety or privatized faith, Jenkins suggests that institutions will be weakened, not strengthened.

Part of the challenge is, of course, financial. That alone, Jenkins predicts, will lead to “a new age of church closures and mergers.” A recent Washington Post article described the severe financial effects of this pandemic already felt by churches.

Churches that are able to weather the economic storm face the very real possibility that people will prefer watching services online instead of being physically present. It’s a poor substitute for the real thing, but our culture’s veneration of personal choice plus performance-driven church services that were already largely experienced on screens could prove a deadly combination to Sunday morning church attendance.

Another way to say this is, for many Christians, church was already considered “non-essential.” That official label, though given for purposes of efficiency and categorization, should concern anyone who thinks of the Christian faith as the truth.

Jenkins predictions, he admits, are controversial. As historian Kyle Harper reminded Rod Dreher, the third century “Plague of Cyprian” weakened Roman institutions and helped paved the way for the triumph of Christianity. Another plague in the sixth century indirectly lead to the Christianizing of Britain. This virus is changing all kinds of different aspects of culture, besides the Church. So, it remains to be seen just what might come of all this.

More importantly, there are other “preexisting conditions” that pre-date late-modern Western culture. For example, Paul warned Timothy of persecution and tribulation, and that some would “fall away” from the faith during those times. Yet, the most important pre-existing condition is the resurrected Christ who promised the gates of Hell could not prevail against His Church.

From that solid foundation we can best think about this cultural moment and what the future will hold, but we mustn’t assume that life After Coronavirus will be the same as life before it, especially for the Church.

Why are people so attracted to beautiful “natural scenes like green fields, trees, and rivers?” Nostalgia, maybe? A sense of wonder? Some inherent draw to what is aesthetically pleasing?

Nah. According to some thinkers, “science” has figured out that we are drawn to natural beauty because for our ancestors, such scenes “represented survival." By “science,” I mean what’s known as evolutionary psychology or, as my colleague Shane Morris calls it, “Sabretooth Psychology.”

Evolutionary psychology is a field specializing in hypothesis in which natural selection explains all human behaviors. According to this way of thinking, all of our modern behaviors are best understood as carryovers from those ancient behaviors that offered our ancestors evolutionary advantage over others. So, those who didn’t appreciate beautiful natural landscapes had less access to food and water and, therefore, produced less offspring. Eventually, their line died out while those who liked lush natural scenes survived.

However, not everyone is persuaded by this sort of hypothesizing, including psychologist Dr. Steve Taylor. Writing at Psychology Today, Taylor says that “evolutionary psychology is largely based on assumptions rather than evidence, and as such it is debatable whether it should be referred to as a 'science' (since its hypotheses are generally unfalsifiable).” Or, as philosopher Subrena Smith recently told Gizmodo, “we don’t have the relevant evidence about how our ancestors behaved to make any substantive claims.”

Even so, evolutionary psychology continues to enjoy a popularity in many academic circles, the media, and other segments of culture that far outweighs its scientific credibility.

According to evolutionary psychologists, “mate selection, parental care, predator avoidance” and other behaviors result from natural selection working on our brains.  They further assume that our brains haven’t changed in the tens of thousands of years since.

But there is no evidence for these assumptions. On the contrary, as Smith told Gizmodo, brain science (not to mention history) shows that, “Our brains are dynamic, our behaviors are dynamic, we’re imaginative, we generate novel behaviors in contexts that never exhibited themselves.” This helps explain why only humans have spread to every continent.

Evolutionary psychology is built on what we might call “just-so stories,” conclusions that “must be so” because they are required by the assumptions that must not be questioned. While the constant hypothesizing might cause the people at Gizmodo to “roll their eyes,” the ideas of evolutionary psychology have real consequences and victims.

For example, according to evolutionary psychology, rape is a behavior of natural selection, “one potential strategy for males for achieving reproductive success.” It is, according to this framework, not a moral abomination, but an “aberration,” “an alternative gene-promotion strategy that is most likely to be adopted by the ‘losers’ in the competitive, harem-building struggle.”

While no evolutionary psychologist would conclude that rape is somehow justified, it’s not at all clear on what moral grounds they refuse to do so, since rape must be considered both “natural” and “hardwired.” They also must ignore much of human history, in which rape was used as a weapon to subjugate entire populations during wartime, such as in the 1937 “Rape of Nanjing” or, more recently, ISIS’s wave of terror. Survival of the fittest anyone?

On a related issue, evolutionary psychology struggles to conclude whether humans are evolutionarily adapted to mate for life, like birds, or to be promiscuous, like our other “ancestors.” Either can be “concluded” by appealing to “evolutionary adaptation,” otherwise known as the dynamic imaginations of evolutionary psychologists.

As atheist philosopher David Stove wrote in his book Darwinian Fairytales, however well these imaginative explanations describe “sponges, snakes, flies, or whatever,” they are a “ridiculous slander on human beings.” That’s because, as Chuck Colson said years ago, “they cannot account for what is most essentially human . . . things like altruism and music,” the love of beauty and that most un-survival- of-the-fittest human behavior: self-sacrifice.

So, remember, the next time you see an article or TV special ready to explain the natural origins of human behaviors, you might want to pull up a chair and get out some popcorn. You’re about to hear a fairy tale.

One of the last interviews I did with Chuck Colson, back when we started “BreakPoint this Week” as a weekly interview program on radio, was with Ravi Zacharias. I began that interview apologizing for all the times I had plagiarized him throughout the years, probably many times without even knowing it.

Though I've since become much more sensitive about identifying sources, Ravi's teaching was profound for me. He was someone I cut my teeth on, a lifeline really, when my faith was undergoing an intellectual awakening.  Somewhere in college I came to realize that Christianity wasn’t just something you did, and it wasn’t even just something you felt. Even more (though certainly not less) than a personal relationship with Christ, I was realizing that the Christian faith was, in fact, true.  From Ravi, I began to understand the extent to which you could not only think about faith, but actually think with faith.

Of course, that was the stated mission of Ravi’s life and ministry: to help thinkers believe and believers think. I was among the believers he helped to think.

Ravi and Chuck Colson had a very special relationship. Chuck deeply respected Ravi’s unbelievable ability to communicate. I spent hours listening to recorded talks from Ravi, over and over again, enraptured by just how vastly applicable Christian truth is to real life.

Ravi is a real-life example of what Paul told the men of Athens, that God places us in particular times in history. Ravi emerged at a time when many needed to see that faith could be deep, connected to the existential challenges of life while not only answering the skeptics and cynics, but challenging their assumptions and conclusions.

Ravi also seemed to have a great respect for Chuck Colson. When Prison Fellowship and the Colson Center lost our giant of a founder, Ravi’s wonderful tributes for Chuck were so kind, and a few years later, Ravi spoke for the 2017 Wilberforce Conference along with several members of the RZIM team. Ravi’s support is among the many ways God provided for the Colson Center in the years since Chuck passed.

When I heard the news yesterday that Ravi had died, I reached out to a friend, one of the many that Ravi really poured into, mentoring and building, who is part of the growing and dynamic team of apologists, speakers, and authors at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.  He told me that he was struggling to imagine a Ravi-less world.

I know that struggle. In 2012, when Chuck Colson passed away, many of us struggled to imagine a world without Chuck’s strong and stable voice of moral authority. God graciously gives us leaders like Chuck and Ravi, and we are better because of them. Yet, there will be a world without them.

Chuck and Ravi were giants, not only for me but for many others, who needed to know if Christianity could really stand up to the world of ideas and the challenging assaults of culture. In different ways, with different points of emphasis, different abilities, different back stories, they were able should show us it can. Christian faith can take the shots of skeptics, cynics, and cultural forces and still emerge as true and beautiful and good. It's worth mentioning they both had amazing personal stories of God’s grace. Chuck, of course, came to faith in the midst of political scandal, and Ravi in the midst of personal despair.

Losses like this remind us that Christianity is not ultimately a set of abstract truths, but the true Story of the world that precedes us and survives us. Certain characters in the story are elevated by God's grace and His choosing. They run the race, and then the baton gets passed to the next generation.

That so many wonderful people are already in place at RZIM and ready to run is a tribute to Ravi’s life and ministry. At the same time, I know the feeling they must have, since there’s no such thing as filling shoes like his. Instead, to paraphrase Isaac Newton, we stand on his shoulders, seeing further because of his stature.

As for Ravi, his thoughtful and so-well-articulated faith is now sight. Still, as immense as his life and influence were, it’s only getting better for him. Or as C.S. Lewis put it, it was only  “the cover and the title page: now at last (he is) beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Truth, Love, Together. That’s the theme of the Colson Center’s 4-week long virtual event featuring 20 of the leading Christian worldview thinkers.

The first of five modules for the event is called “What Is Truth?” And today on the BreakPoint Podcast, to give you a taste of Module 1, we’re sharing with you the presentation by Os Guinness called “The Roots of the Present Crisis.”

Os traces our nation’s current political and cultural crises back to two competing views of government and humanity. One is rooted in the American Revolution and its biblical foundation, the other is rooted in the French Revolution and subsequent Marxist revolutions in Russia and China.

Which view will prevail, one that acknowledges man’s fallen nature and so insists upon the biblical idea of separation of powers, checks and balances, and yet preserves ordered liberty and “unalieanable rights”?  Or one that believes that man is perfectible, and that utopia can be reached by liberating the oppressed from the oppressor?

Register for the Colson Center’s free virtual event: “Truth. Love. Together.”

Last week, 40-year-old Joyce Lin, an American missionary with Mission Aviation Fellowship, lost her life when her plane crashed. Lin was taking COVID-19 medical supplies to a remote Indonesian village. The region where she was flying is notoriously difficult to navigate, but Lin went anyway. As her colleagues attested, her great joy was serving the Lord by serving others.

Lin joins generations of missionaries who committed their lives to taking their faith to people in other cultures. Yet, that is the task of every Christian, not just missionaries. We too are called to live out our faith in the middle of this culture, in our communities, where we work, seeing every area of life and every culture as the mission field to which we are called.

Part of being equipped in this calling is understanding and articulating a distinctly Christian worldview. This involves not only knowing what the Bible says, but thinking biblically.

Years ago, Chuck Colson described what this means:

While we have to be immersed in scripture and understand it fully, we also have to know when and how to use it in public discourse.

Let me give you an example. G. K. Chesterton, the famous British writer, was once invited to a meeting of the leading intellectuals in England. They were asked if they were shipwrecked on an island, what would be the one book they would want to have with them. Everybody expected Chesterton, a prominent Christian, to say “the Bible.”

When it came his turn to speak, however, Chesterton said that if he were shipwrecked on a desert island, he’d like to have “Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.”

The point is that oftentimes we need to understand things that aren’t covered in the Bible. And we need to understand things that help us apply biblical teaching to all of life. This is why I teach biblical worldview.

A man once told Oswald Chambers that he read only the Bible. Listen to what Chambers said:

“My strong advice to you is to soak, soak, soak in philosophy and psychology, until you know more of these subjects than ever you need consciously to think. It is ignorance of these subjects on the part of ministers and workers that has brought our evangelical theology to such a sorry plight…The man who reads only the Bible does not, as a rule, know it or human life.”

And when it comes to making a biblical case on any hot topic—taxes, the deficit, homosexuality, whatever—we need to understand the issue and how to make that case in a way that is accessible to believers and non-believers alike.

The sad fact is that today, starting a conversation with “the Bible says” will often cause the listener to stop listening.  So what you do is make arguments based on what the Reformers called common grace, or what historically has been known as natural law.

This is what Paul did when he gave his famous sermon at Mars Hill, his first foray into the Greek culture. He quoted Greek poets; he referred to Greek artifacts. He thoroughly engaged their culture.  And then he used their beliefs to lead directly into the gospel.

This is why we’ve got to study biblical worldview, to compare how the Bible works out in life versus how other systems of thought do. I assure you: You will see that the biblical way is the only way to make sense of the world, to live rationally in the world, and eventually, your friends will see this as well.

This vision of applied faith led Chuck Colson to launch an exclusive ten-month training program for Christians that is now known as the Colson Fellows. Today, that program has grown into communities of Christians in 40+ local cohorts or online, studying Christian worldview, apologetics, cultural renewal and leadership together. Colson Fellows read through a carefully curated list of books, articles, and commentaries, learn from top Christian leaders, and ultimately craft a three-year plan to live out what they’ve learned.

The call of Christ in our lives, to join Him in His work in the world, is the same across cultures and eras. What that call looks like differs for people and communities. If your heart is being tugged to prepare for the life Chuck described, we are taking applications for our next class of Colson Fellows right now.

Learn more at ColsonFellows.org.