Breakpoint

Several years ago, Roberto Rivera and I wrote a BreakPoint commentary we titled, “Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Pop Stars.” In it, we bemoaned the sad fates of so many young kids who, after growing up in Christian households, spiraled into stardom and then out of control. At the time, we were talking about Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.

If I were writing that same commentary today, I would change the title. Instead of “don’t let them” grow up to be pop stars, it would say “don’t deliberately turn them into” pop stars, either.

Case in point. Last month, 18-year-old Billie Eilish swept all four major Grammy categories: Song of the Year, Best New Artist, Album of the Year and Record of the Year. She’s the youngest person ever to win them all.

Miss Eilish is, like every one of us, made in God’s image and has a unique calling on her life. But her music isn’t exactly high art. Though she does have an impressive voice, this is not Mozart sitting down at the piano at four years old. Most of her songs consist of mumbling explicit lyrics over heavily synthesized back tracks.

Eilish’s parents are TV actors. She grew up in LA along with her older brother, who is also a movie actor and musician. They were homeschooled, but not in some sort of Classical Conversations way. In multiple press interviews, her dad has stated they went that route so that Eilish could have the freedom to pursue her own interests at all times.

Billie released her first song at 13 and, a few years later, got a publicist. And a stylist. And a modeling contract. According to Buzzfeed News, she then signed on to a talent management company that specializes in, quote, “craft(ing) a whole persona and distinct aesthetic” for up-and-coming artists.

In other words, it’s not exactly accurate to say Eilish was “discovered.” It’s more like she was invented.

It gets darker. Eilish’s so-called aesthetic, which was meticulously designed by industry professionals, is downright creepy. In one of her music videos, she eats a spider. The lyrics on “Bad Guy,” the track that won Song of the Year, which was released when she was just 17, says she’s the type of girl that might, quote, “seduce your dad.”

There’s “talent management,” and then there’s exploitation. Is it somehow ok to sexualize kids, as long as there’s money, a Rolling Stone cover, and a few Grammy’s involved?  If success in today’s music industry mostly marketing and barely talent, can we at least leave that to consenting adults?

Ours is a culture that increasingly views children if not as burdens, then as consumer products. We pay other women to carry our babies; we pay doctors to create and freeze them; we obsess over the “right or wrong time” to have them. Molding kids into money-making machines before high school graduation is a grotesque but certainly logical end to that worldview.

Children are not a means. They are ends in and of themselves. While God grants us joy in bringing them into the world, we bear and raise them for them, not as means for our personal fulfillment, and certainly not in order to re-make them into our own image.

How many so-called child stars must spiral into dysfunction? How many must end up in rehab, or with eating disorders, or with disturbing records of sexual or criminal deviance? Adults don’t know how to handle that much money, much less people always making them objects of desire. How is a child supposed to grow up understanding that there is Truth higher than herself, if half the western world says she’s “It?”

It may not be the “win” we think it is, if our kid is famous. Even if a toddler is the next Mozart, it’s far better for them to see the eternal meaning in their gifts, from God and for the good of the world, than if millions of people know their name. It’s far better they know that the God who created them takes infinite delight in them, whether or not there’s a Grammy on the shelf?

Given the track record of so many who have gone before, I can’t help but think this won’t end well for Miss Eilish. I hope, I pray, that I’m wrong. But in the meantime, parents please: Don’t let your babies grow up to be pop stars. Even more important, don’t force them to become pop stars.

In 2013, Rachel Campos-Duffy, a blogger on the Today Show’s “Moms” site, described watching Beyonce’s Super Bowl half time performance as a “parenting challenge.” The hyper-sensual show’s half-dressed performers had left her kids with quizzical looks on their faces. Her eight-year-old simply said, “She looks weird.”

I wish all of our kids were as confused by seeing something like that, but unfortunately, sexuality packaged as music and performance is an all-too-familiar part of our culture. After Beyonce’s version in 2013, Campos-Duffy snarkily commented, “I half-expected a stripper pole to pop out of the platform...”

Well this past Sunday, that’s exactly what happened. A stripper pole.

Sunday’s Super Bowl Halftime performance featuring Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, and was by far the raciest halftime since Beyonce. For the last several years, there’s been a notable de-sensualization of not only Super Bowl halftimes but also Super Bowl commercials. Even Lady Gaga was comparatively modest in her 2017 performance. It’s almost as if the NFL and its network producers got the message from Campos-Duffy and millions of moms who complained about the visual assault on their children and families.

Well, until Sunday, that is, when the Super Bowl became yet another chapter in the ongoing sexualization of American culture, of women, and of kids. In the midst of our culture’s ubiquitous calls to protect kids and women from abuse and harassment, especially in this #metoo era, we pretend that as long as we call it “art” or “female empowerment,” that this sort of overt sexualization will magically have none of the consequences we now complain about.

From the beginning, the sexual revolution has promised women that aggressively flaunting skin and sexuality was empowerment, and that divorcing sex from marriage and procreation would be a means to freedom. In reality, it was men that got what they wanted, sexual pleasure without the burden of commitment or requirement of chivalry.

For a brief moment a few years ago, it was almost as if that lie had been exposed. More and more women bravely came forward revealing how they’d been treated horrifically as “sexual objects” and such. But if Sunday’s performance is any indication, we have not learned our lesson.

It’s not only women who are victims of these bad ideas. Years ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron appointed a special adviser on the commercialization and sexualization of childhood because, “Our children are growing up in a very sexualized world.”

That was an understatement even then. A far-more accurate description is that this is an out-of-control social experiment, and the guinea pigs are primarily our children. In addition to the predatory, hardcore pornography that haunts their devices and online lives, experimental theories about gender and sexuality haunt their education, and, as we saw Sunday, stripper poles and outfits haunt their so-called “art” and “entertainment.”

Of course, JLo and Shakira were a throw-back to a couple decades ago, more for the Xers and Millennials than for the Gen Z’ers. Even so, remember that this performance was on prime-time network television. And check out the lyrics of Billie Ellish or Roddy or Lizzo to see if anything has changed.

As my friend Tom Gilson wrote years ago on BreakPoint.org, ethics require that subjects of social experimentation give informed consent. But in our culture, adults force young people, who have no say in the matter, to go along with their fantasies, theories, and so-called expressions of empowerment and freedom. It’s child abuse.

Just as with Beyonce back in 2013, there will be progressive voices, even so-called Christian ones, that will celebrate Sunday’s performance as “empowering women and Latinas” (particularly the child-in-cages part). But using sexuality for power is a triumph for men, not for women, and certainly not for children—it only leads to their objectification and victimization.

After all, I doubt there were very many wives watching their husbands watch, or moms trying to keep their children from watching, Sunday’s performance who felt empowered in any way.

This White House is certainly not the first to offer a proposal for resolving the nearly eight-decade conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. And, judging by the response so far, Trump’s proposal will likely not be the one to resolve this issue that has vexed American officials, and much of the world, since the 1960s. To understand why a solution has been so elusive, it’s less essential to understand the specifics of the current plan on the table, than it is to understand those things that the Israelis and the Palestinians have long considered to be at stake.

First, Israel’s chief concern is its own security, not only from conventional military attacks at the hands of its many hostile neighbors, but also from terrorist attacks at the hands of non-state actors like Hamas. 

A second, but just as central concern for both players in this conflict is the borders and nature of a Palestinian state.  

A third concern is the status of Jerusalem, specifically, whether it will be the undivided capital of Israel or divided between both parties.  

And finally, there is the question of what’s known as “the right to return,” namely whether the estimated 4 million descendants of the Palestinian Arabs who fled what is now Israel in the aftermath of the 1947 Partition and subsequent wars should have the right to return, not only to the West Bank, but also to pre-1967 Israel.  

Obviously, the questions of where to place borders and who ought to be considered security threats are interrelated concerns. And, making the already Herculean task only more difficult are the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Palestinian harboring of bad actors, and a history of (to put it mildly) hatred and distrust.

The Trump administration’s plan is formally known as “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.” It runs fifty pages and offers very specific proposals. First, it rejects the “right of return,” a concern essential to Israel because the potential influx of millions of Arabs threatens its identity as a Jewish state and homeland.  This makes the proposal a non-starter for the Palestinians.

Second, the plan would award virtually all of Jerusalem to Israel, while designating Abu Dis, a village bordering Jerusalem, as the capital of the Palestinian state. 

Third, the map in the plan details the contours of the Palestinian state, granting to the Palestinians about 70 percent of the West Bank, plus Gaza and parts of the Negev Desert.  However, the current Israeli settlements would remain. 

Also, according to the plan, the Palestinians would not be permitted their own military, and would be forced to renounce violence and disband Hamas. In exchange for this step toward Israeli security, they would receive $50 billion in economic assistance over 10 years. 

How has “Peace to Prosperity” been received? Dr. Gerald McDermott, Anglican chair of Beeson Divinity School, told Christianity Today that it was “a realistic opportunity for peace.” He also noted the significant Arab support for the proposal, including “UAE, Oman, Bahrain, and Egypt.”

Joel Rosenberg, co-founder of The Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem, told Christianity Today  that the plan was “generous” to the Palestinians while giving the Israelis almost everything they wanted.  

But others, including Arab Christians, disagreed. Dr. Salim Munayer of Musalaha Ministries, which promotes reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians based on biblical principles, told CT that “No Palestinian leader can accept this deal, because it doesn’t meet our basic needs.” 

Another Palestinian Evangelical, Daoud Kuttab, said that the plan “sounded more like a surrender dictate than a peace plan.” 

More importantly, the Palestinian Authority’s president Mahmoud Abbas called the plan a “conspiracy” and added “We say a thousand times over: no, no, no.” If this plan is conditioned on the Palestinians bringing Hamas in line, well, it’s difficult to imagine that happening.  

To paraphrase a former Canadian prime minister, if there was ever a place with “too much history” and “too little geography,” it’s this part of the Middle East. That’s why it’s difficult to imagine that this plan will succeed where others have failed. Still, it is possible that it can be a step, even if a very small one, in a better direction. And so, we continue to follow the dictate of Psalm 122, and “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.”

Given the make up of the Supreme Court, are we looking at the real possibility that Roe v. Wade will be overturned? What's the  ideal challenge to Roe? How should pro-life movement prepare for a potentially post-Roe world?  Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, Americans United for Life Senior Counsel Clarke Forsythe joins Shane Morris to discuss.

Visit the  Americans United for Life website

John Stonestreet and Shane Morris spend the first two segments of the show talking about  . . . mortality. The mortality of superstars like Kobe Bryant and, well, all of us. Speaking of mortality, they also talk about the spreading Coronavirus? Is the media fanning the flames of panic, or do we have a real crisis on our hands? Afterthat,  they discuss the banality of evil: how the evil that brought about the Holocaust is still possible because its perpetrators were human beings, just like we are.

The main segment of their discussion comes at the end: The Boy Scouts are nearing bankruptcy. In a way, the organization's steep decline signals another crisis: that of being a boy in a culture that is at best suspicious of masculinity, at worst, openly hostile. What can parents do who want to raise boys to be men? John and Shane, both dads of boys, have some suggestions.

Sign up for our Short Course: “Preparing for the 2020 Election”

“The Death (and Life) of Superstar Kobe Bryant,” John Stonestreet interview with Owen Strachan on the BreakPoint Podcast

“The Problem of (Mis)Remembering the Holocaust,” by John Stonestreet and David Carlson, BreakPoint

“Dangerous but Good,” The Point, John Stonestreet and Shane Morris

Check out Trail Life USA

You may have noticed that over the last couple of years, China has become a more frequent topic in the news and on BreakPoint commentaries. The reason is simple: its increasingly horrible treatment of Christians and other religious minorities.

While other countries rank higher on Open Doors’ recently released “World Watch List,” China’s economic might, global clout, and sheer population size makes its contempt for religious freedom and treatment of religious minorities an enormous concern.  In fact, the news from there in this regard is virtually all bad these days, and only getting worse.

In light of the devolving conditions for our brothers and sisters in Christ in China, this year’s Wilberforce Award winner is particularly fitting.

Pastor Bob Fu is founder and president of ChinaAid, a Christian “human rights organization committed to promoting religious freedom and the rule of law in China.” It does so by exposing the systematic persecution, harassment, torture, and imprisonment of Chinese Christians and human rights lawyers in China.

ChinaAid also “financially supports Chinese Christians and their families who have experienced persecution by the Chinese government,” and “provides leadership and rule of law training for Christians and church leaders in China to defend their rights.”

Now, if the biblical phrase “for such a time as this” comes to your mind too, it should.

Bob Fu never intended this would be his life. Born in Shandong Province to a disabled father and beggar mother, he enrolled in university, fully intending to join the Communist Party and become a government official.

God, however, had other plans. An American professor gave him a biography of a Chinese intellectual who converted to Christianity. As Fu told the Wall Street Journal, “that book changed my life.”

After graduation, Fu taught English at a Communist Party School in Beijing while he and his wife, Heidi, became active in the house church movement. They even established a Bible school, which used chairs he borrowed from the Communist Party’s school.

The Communist Party didn’t quite share Fu’s sense of irony. He and his wife were jailed.

About a year after their release from jail, Heidi became pregnant. It was their second child. Because the “One-Child Policy” was still being vigorously enforced in China, they emigrated to Hong Kong which, at the time, was still under British rule. Fu was granted political asylum by the Clinton Administration in 1997.

Just as the persecution of the Church has, at times throughout history, led to the unintended spreading of the Gospel, Pastor Fu’s forced emigration has only increased his impact. From his base of operations in west Texas, he operates what the Wall Street Journal has called “the most influential network of human-rights activists, underground Christians and freedom fighters in China.”

Some of what Fu and China Aid have accomplished is the stuff of movies: In 2009, Fu and his allies in China helped smuggle the wife and children of Christian human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, whom Amnesty International has called “the bravest lawyer in China,” out of the country.

More recently, Fu worked closely with another human rights lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, a.k.a., “the barefoot lawyer,” whose harrowing escape from China was the topic of a BreakPoint commentary a few years ago.

All of this has earned Fu a fitting nickname: “the Pastor of China’s underground railroad.”

For all these reasons and more, the Colson Center for Christian Worldview is pleased to announce that the 2020 William Wilberforce Award will be given to Pastor Bob Fu, a man who truly lives out his faith without fear—in truth and in love.

Join us this May 14-17, just across the river from Washington, D. C., for this year’s Wilberforce Weekend. We’ll honor Dr. Bob Fu and hear from other Christian thought leaders like Os Guinness, Lee Strobel, Andy Crouch, Obianuju Ekeocha, Max McLean, and more.

Just about every major movie release these days is scrutinized about whether or not it will feature an obvious LGBT character. Ever since the live-action remake of “Beauty and the Beast,” and a bit before, Disney has been sprinkling LGBT characters generously across its film properties.

Even the most recent installment of “Star Wars,” (now owned by Disney) features the franchise’s first, albeit strangely placed and obviously forced, same-sex kiss. And, Marvel Studios (also owned by, you guessed it, Disney) has joined the cause, including a gay character in its upcoming movie, “The Eternals.” The studio also recently announced a new film currently in production that will feature its “first ever transgender superhero,” marking what will likely become an endless parade of token “Ts” following in the wake of the “Ls” and “Gs.”

“Token” is the right word for what we are seeing. What most stands out about all these characters is just how tacked-on they feel. Few are essential to the stories being told. In some cases, they even detract or, at least, distract from them. Disney and other studios aren’t making movies about LGBT identity or lifestyle, they’re capitulating to character quotas—virtue signaling to the loud and influential LGBT lobby in order to keep protests down and ticket sales up.

The whole thing is reminiscent of Dave Barry’s satirical history of the U.S., “Dave Barry Slept Here,” in which he ends several chapters with the obligatory closer that “around this time women and minority groups were accomplishing a great many achievements, too.”

In no way am I suggesting that we shouldn’t expect more overt LGBT stories in the future. We certainly can. But in the meantime, the reality is that even a “woke” entertainment titan like Disney is not so much pushing a cultural agenda as they are bowing to it. Nor am I suggesting that their obvious capitulation to these imposed character quotas is ineffective sexual propaganda. As Brett Kunkle and I said in our book "A Practical Guide to Culture," ideas are often most powerful not where they are the loudest, but where they are made to just appear normal.

Since the TV show “Will and Grace,” the most commonly advanced message has been that gay people are just like everyone else and just want to live and love in peace. Cultural acceptance of same-sex relationships grew steadily until Obergefell was enshrined into law. From there the demands only grew, from cultural power to legal power. Though many in the “G” and “L” camp were satisfied with “living and loving in peace,” the movement itself was far more ambitious, first demanding affirmation, then conformity and even participation from charities, public employees, bakers, florists, schools, and t-shirt makers.

Now, that transgender characters are being introduced into big-budget films as characters who just want to live in peace. If this sounds familiar, it should. The “T,” which has almost nothing in common with the larger acronym and even contradicts the other letters in several places, has assumed enough soft cultural power to demand representation nearly everywhere. The question is: Will it also make the transition to legal power?

The strange tale of J. K. Rowling leaves some doubts. In early December, the multi-billionaire author of Harry Potter tweeted her support for a researcher in the U.K. who was fired from her job for saying that male and female are biological realities. When a judge at an employment tribunal upheld the firing, calling the researcher’s views “transphobic,” and “unworthy of a democratic society,” Rowling tweeted that while she supports loving whichever consenting adult you choose, firing Maya Forstater for insisting that women are real was a bridge too far for her. Despite the intense backlash and calls for boycotts, Rowling still hasn’t retracted the tweet.

As Rod Dreher points out, this raises an interesting question: If all the soft power in that movement can’t move Rowling, can’t other entertainers say “no,” too?  Maybe the claims of the transgender movement are just too radical. Maybe the “T” fails culturally where the “L” and the “G” largely succeeded?

We’ll find out soon enough. Until then, token transgender characters at the movies are an ironic reminder that this is a movement still trying to gain acceptance. Which means there’s still time for dissenting voices—even very influential ones—to say “no.”

Back in 2015, the state legislature of Montana created a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for individuals who donate to organizations that provide scholarships to private school students. In response, the Montana Department of Revenue ruled that such a tax credit would violate the state’s version of the “Blaine Amendment,” which prohibits state funding of religious education. So, the state terminated the program altogether.

Kendra Espinoza, a single mom who works extra jobs in order to send her kids to a Christian school in Kalispell, challenged the Department of Revenue’s ruling in court. The case is currently on the Supreme Court’s docket for this term.

During oral arguments, conservative justices like Alito and Kavanaugh brought up the Court’s decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, which held that forcing a church school to choose between “[participating] in an otherwise available benefit program or [remaining] a religious institution” violated the Free Exercise clause.

Unsurprisingly, the liberal justices disagreed.

What was surprising is that the editorial board of the Washington Post came out on the side of Espinoza. Using scholarships at private, religious schools was not only a parent’s right, the editorial board wrote, but using them didn’t “undermine” or “harm” public education or the state, “contrary to many of the tropes advanced by those opposed to school choice.”

The Post also called out the hypocrisy of upper-middle class opponents to these kinds of programs by noting that, “People with means take for granted the ability to choose their child’s school by paying tuition or moving to communities with quality schools.”  So why begrudge people like Kendra Espinoza the same opportunity?

It’s not often I find myself in complete agreement with the editorial board of the Washington Post! I’m old enough to remember when the very existence of Christian educational alternatives was threatened by government entities. Oh yeah, we all are old enough…such threats are still very much a reality, especially in California.

The truth is, government-imposed ideologies, especially so-called SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) legislation, very much threaten the future of Christian educational institutions. Still, I hold a great hope for their futures, and not only because this crucial Montana case is being heard in our recently remade Supreme Court. It’s because Christians are currently bringing an incredible amount of innovation and creativity to the realm of education.

In a Christianity Today article last August, Louis Markos described a home-schooling co-op in Kentucky that not only is “steeped in the Great Books,” but whose purpose is to glorify God, free “the mind(s) of students from the marketplace of idols,” and shape them into “virtuous, morally self-regulating citizens.”

Across the country, innovative classical schools like this one are exploding, some in the form of homeschool co-ops, others in the form of private and charter schools. Many private Christian schools today are thriving, some who have made the difficult but sound transition from only existing to keep kids sheltered from culture to effectively preparing them to engage the culture.

Also, excellent para-educational options abound, from the outstanding conferences for high-shoolers and college students offered by Summit Ministries, Worldview Academy, and Impact 360 to graduate and post-graduate training such as the John Jay Institute and ADF’s Blackstone Legal Fellowship. All of these point to a real rejuvenation in Christian education, and we are seeing their fruit.

Time and again, I meet Christian secondary students who are running their own businesses, digging much-needed wells for communities in Africa, or fighting to save preborn lives or victims of sex trafficking. I recently talked to a Christian school administrator who is actively seeking innovative ways to make sure that single moms, like Kendra Espinoza, can afford private Christian education for their children.

These believers are joining Christianity’s historic role in advancing education and taking the lead in solving our nation’s educational problems. Historically, Christians have seen education as a gift we can best offer, not only to our own, but to the world, as a vehicle to knowing God and to promoting human flourishing.

I’m not certain how the Court will decide the Montana case, but I do see reasons for optimism no matter what the justices decide. How refreshing. These days, that kind of optimism can be as rare as agreeing with the Washington Post.