Breakpoint

The sports world was rocked earlier this week with the death of NBA Superstar Kobe Bryant. Today on the BreakPoint podcast, basketball fan John Stonestreet talks with Dr. Owen Strachan about the impact a celebrity’s passing can have on all of us—even Christians. What does that say about us? Can, or maybe how, do sports and athletic achievement reflect the image of God? And what made Bryant the superstar he was?

“Kobe Bryant Made Los Angeles Feel a Little Smaller,” by Chris Gayomali, GQ

“A years-old video of Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan is going viral in the wake of Bryant’s tragic death,” Business Insider

Reenchanting Humanity by Owen Strachan

Back in December, conservative voices on Twitter had a heated debate over whether or not the government should get involved in the fight against pornography—particularly because of how it impacts our kids.

Writers like Catholic Matt Walsh at the Daily Wire made the case that porn is no longer an issue of private morality, if it ever was. Today, porn is a public health crisis. Mountains of evidence reveal not only its addictive power but also its devastating consequences for women and children. Walsh argued that free market solutions have been exhausted, and so banning pornography and prosecuting those who distribute it is the only way to contain this scourge on our families and our society. Others argued for at least increased governmental regulation.

Some libertarians pushed back, insisting that although porn is harmful, the government should not regulate what consenting adults look at on their computers or phones. As one commentator memorably put it, “Social conservatives need to realize that we can handle pornography...without turning America into a Christian version of Saudi Arabia.”

Really, how’s handling it going so far? As much as that comment makes me want to scream, at least a long overdue debate is happening. So, let’s have it.

First, the idea that the government addressing something so dangerous to the public, especially to children, is somehow akin to theocratic tyranny is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. Even us limited government folks think government has a role to protect citizens. This clearly falls into that category.

Second, the idea that pornography falls under free speech protections is also ridiculous. It’s a stretch to consider the selling of digital flesh as a political or artistic endeavor worthy of protection, but the dissemination of the depraved abuse of real live human beings, which is what so much porn is today? No way.

Third, bondage to pornography isn’t an expression of freedom, especially when victims are children. Porn is predatory. Because it is unregulated, it assaults citizens not looking for it. Even worse, kids are being targeted at shockingly early ages. Studies say the average age of first exposure is eleven. For many, it’s as young as five.

That’s why I was so grateful to learn of a letter by Princeton University’s Robert George, considered to be one of America’s foremost conservative intellectuals, to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, pleading with him to take action against Internet pornography.

Dr. George was a close friend to Chuck Colson and the recipient of the 2015 William Wilberforce Award. In his letter to Barr, excerpted at the Daily Wire, George points out that laws already on the books forbid the distribution of “obscenity,” especially to minors. If there’s any question whether or not modern-day porn counts as “obscenity,” let’s just say that the days of “Playboy” magazines at gas stations are long gone. George unflinchingly describes the dark, depraved world of increasingly brutal, abusive, and twisted content, bluntly concluding: “A 13-year-old with a smartphone now has unlimited access to his own personal theatre of sexual horrors.”

Because so-called “adult” entertainment targets those who aren’t adults, Dr. George believes existing laws can at least curb this madness. Still, as he described in an interview with me that you can hear on today’s BreakPoint podcast episode, it’s only a start. Much more is required.

In the letter, Dr. George asked Attorney General Barr to clarify what types of pornography fall under the legal definition of “obscenity,” and what his Department of Justice is doing to prosecute violators.

Thankfully, this request is not likely to fall on deaf ears, as it probably would have under previous administrations. Attorney General Barr is a devout Catholic and an outspoken critic of the secular view of freedom. In fact, in a tremendous speech on religious liberty at Notre Dame Law School, Barr condemned the “unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good.”

I’m eager to hear Barr’s response. If any U.S. Attorney General in my lifetime thus far is likely to do something about the porn epidemic, it’s him. And if anyone is likely to get a reply to a request, it’s Dr. George.

      In our interview on the BreakPoint Podcast, Dr. Robert George passionately describes why he wrote the letter to the Attorney General, the possibility of existing laws curbing this epidemic, and how you can stand with him in fighting an evil that enslaves millions and actively preys on children.

Today, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the infamous Nazi death camp known as Auschwitz, the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The millions who each year visit Auschwitz, as well as the Holocaust museums in Jerusalem, Washington D.C., and elsewhere become witnesses to an era of almost unimaginable cruelty. They, and we, are told to “never forget.” And we shouldn’t. But, it is crucial not only that we remember, but how we remember.

Last week, in the online magazine TLS, Nikolaus Wachsmann reflected on the plea of camp victim Zalman Gradowski that future generations would “form an image” of the “hell” of Auschwitz.

“But,” Wachsmann writes, “the Auschwitz of popular imagination often bears little relation to the Auschwitz Gradowski had lived and died in. As a global emblem of evil, the camp has become unmoored from its actuality.”

For example, Wachsmann relates that “It is often said . . . that Auschwitz was a different planet, so alien that even birds did not sing there.” But that’s not true. The camp’s surroundings were “rich in wildlife.” So rich, in fact, “that employees of IG Farben, the German firm that enslaved thousands of prisoners, went birding together, while a trained ornithologist among the SS guards meticulously surveyed the local species… for scholarly publications.”

In other words, there is a very real human tendency to mis-remember the grave evils of history: to imagine that they happened in a different world; to think that those who perpetuated such evil, or those who scandalously remained silent and complicit, were somehow different kinds of people than we are.

Exacerbating this tendency is the modern illusion of moral evolution. That somehow we are more enlightened and tolerant than they, having moved on from the bigotry of our human past.

That moral chronological snobbery is not only wrong, it’s dangerous, creating a blind spot to the evils and horrors of which we are capable.

In his 1993 Templeton Prize address, Chuck Colson described the realization that came to Holocaust survivor Yehiel Dinur at the trial of Adolf Eichmann:

“Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man  . . . who had presided over the slaughter of millions. The court was hushed as a victim confronted a butcher. Then suddenly Dinur began to sob and collapsed to the floor. Not out of anger or bitterness. As he explained later in an interview, what struck him at that instant was a terrifying realization. ‘I was afraid about myself,’ Dinur said. ‘I saw that I am capable to do this . . . Exactly like he.’”

Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote about the Eichmann Trial in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. She found Eichmann neither “perverted nor sadistic,” but “terrifyingly normal.” She called this the “banality of evil.”

Hidden evil flourishes. Throughout history, evil has often hidden in plain sight, enabled by it’s terrifying normalness and the moral blind spots we self-inflict. And it continues today… Consider how the world is mostly silent as China sends Muslim Uighurs to concentration camps. Or, why the voices of so many victims of sexual abuse in Hollywood, in corporate America, in homes, and churches are only now, decades later, being heard? Just last Friday, hundreds of thousands of people marched, for the 47th time, to draw attention to the government-subsidized slaughter of millions of pre-born babies.

Hans Scholl who, along with his sister Sophie was executed in 1943 for founding an anti-Nazi student group called the White Rose, once described his struggle to understand evil. Marveling at the beauty of the German landscape he wrote in a line reminiscent of the Psalmist, “Does God take us for fools, that he should light up the world for us with such consummate beauty . . . And nothing, on the other hand, but rapine and murder?

Then Scholl asked a question we should all ask: How ought we respond to evil? “Should one go off and build a little house with flowers outside the windows … and extol and thank God and turn one’s back on the world and its filth? Isn’t seclusion a form of treachery of desertion? I’m weak and puny, but I want to do what is right.”

In Christ, God entered the world in order to confront, and ultimately defeat, evil. He calls us to confront evil as well, but let’s be clear: The world Christ entered was this world. The evil He confronts is the evil we too are capable of. As we remember, let’s be sure to remember that.

Last week, Professor Robert George of Princeton wrote an impassioned letter to US Attorney General William Barr urging him and the Justice Department to take on the pornography epidemic ravaging lives across the country.

Professor George joins John Stonestreet today on the BreakPoint Podcast to talk about the letter and the devastating effects of pornography—sex trafficking, broken marriages, abused children, addiction, broken families, and on and on.

What role should the government play in combating the porn industry? And what can ordinary people do in the face of such a widespread epidemic?

“EXCLUSIVE: Iconic Conservative Leader Requests AG Barr Address Pornography Epidemic,” by Josh Hammer, Daily Wire

John Stonestreet and Shane Morris discuss the release of the Open Doors USA World Watch List, which documents the ever-growing wave of persecution against Christians. Each year it seems, the number of countries where Christians face "very high" levels of persecution continues to increase.

They also discuss how some liberal mainline churches are adopting seeker-friendly strategies to attract new blood; how President Trump became the first president to speak at the annual March for Life, and how, as President, when it comes to pro-life causes, he's backed his words with actions; and they wrap up the show discussing the disturbing new trend of "self-managed abortions" through medication.

Open Doors World Watch List 2020

Open Doors USA website

The Voice of the Martyrs

“Trump becomes first president to speak at March for Life,” by Tyler Olsen, FOX News

“DIY Abortions,” by John Stonestreet and Shane Morris, BreakPoint

Even now, 47 years after the deadliest Supreme Court decision in our nation’s history, we must update our battle plans for defending preborn lives. Especially now, in fact, given the following developments.

First, appointments by President Trump to the Supreme Court have made it more possible that for the first time since Roe v. Wade, the courts could revisit and maybe even overturn the grisly ruling.

Second, demand for abortions is in decline. Abortions in the United States are at their lowest point since 1973. The abortion market (and make no mistake, it is a market) in America is shrinking, and is increasingly dominated by Planned Parenthood, who reported a record number of abortions performed in 2019.

Now no one should think that the overall decline in abortions, (which can be traced to a number of factors including widespread contraceptive use, state level abortion restrictions, and surprisingly, that young people today are having less sex) means the issue is going away anytime soon. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the most recent year we have abortion statistics for (2017) is also the year with the fewest abortions on record, but, there were still over 800,000 abortions that year. Let that sink in: 800,000 human beings, killed.

The third way the abortion issue has shifted also makes it increasingly difficult to track the actual number of abortions happening in our country. The headline of a recent article in VICE says it all: “How Women Are Training to Do Their Own Abortions.” The euphemism for the new trend described in the article is “self-managed abortions.” Medication-induced abortions aren’t the back-alley, coat-hangar procedures we used to hear so much about. The routine, in which a pregnant woman in her first trimester takes two drugs—mifepristone and misoprostol—to induce a miscarriage, is recommended and taught by the World Health Organization as well as a growing group of pro-choice activists here in America.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than a third of abortions in 2017 were performed using medication instead of surgery—and those are just the ones we know about.

Activists are holding events to educate women on how to use these deadly drugs on their own. Their urgency is no accident. As one activist told VICE, do-it-yourself abortions are a kind of “insurance policy” in case Roe gets overturned. Put simply, abortion is now being privatized.

This is only one of a package of pro-abortion strategies now in play. Moving the abortion medications from prescription-only to over-the-counter is another. And, another recent piece at VICE describes how activists are working with progressive lawmakers to create “abortion sanctuary cities,” urban centers where prosecutors agree not to enforce federal or state laws against abortion in a model similar to so-called immigration “sanctuary cities.”

A forthcoming paper in the California Law Review describes “self-managed” abortions as the option-of-choice for these sanctuary cities, precisely because this method is so low-profile. The author even recommends that city officials set up 311-style abortion hotlines staffed by activists who can walk women through ending their pregnancies.

Though medication-induced abortions may not involve surgery, that doesn’t make them less traumatic. The child’s life is still taken. And, it’s not necessarily easier on women either.

Writing at Christianity Today, Maria Baer describes how mothers taking pills to kill their unborn children must face the aftermath alone. One post-abortive counselor described it in stark terms: “intense cramping, hemorrhaging, delivery of a [dead] baby.”

What other so-called “medical procedure” of this magnitude is conducted without medical supervision? And do we think the emotional trauma of a miscarriage will be less intense if the miscarriage is intended and caused instead of not?

What all of this means for the pro-life movement is that overturning Roe isn’t the finish line. If we see that day that we’ve prayed for so long, our work will continue. Privatized, under-the-radar abortion will require we win more than just court cases. We must win hearts and minds. The more abortion is privatized, the more personal our advocacy must become. Of course, the pro-life community has excelled at that over the years. But it must continue if abortion in all of its forms is to be not just illegal, but unthinkable.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: Archaeologists digging in Israel discover artifacts buried for about three millennia. Upon close examination, their find either confirms the biblical narrative or at least undermines a long-accepted dismissal of a biblical claim.

Okay, don’t stop me. After all, it won’t matter if you try, because I never get tired of telling stories like these.

Archaeologists from Azusa Pacific University and Hebrew University excavating at Tel Abel Beth Maacah (a 3,000 year old site about four miles west of Dan, which is as far north as you can go and still be in Israel) found a room dating back to the ninth century before Christ “that contained broken jars.”

That may not sound particularly exciting or newsworthy, but stay with me here.

During the reign of King Ahab, Abel Beth Maacah was where the kingdoms of Israel, Aram, and Phoenicia met. The city is mentioned in 2 Samuel 20 as a “city that is a mother in Israel” and part of “the Lord’s inheritance.” Now, some scholars have disputed that Abel Beth Maacah was an Israelite city, as the Bible claims. In their reckoning, the biblical authors were “reading back” subsequent events to more ancient history.

However, some of the jars contained residues that suggested that the room was “an ancient wine cellar,” and at least one of the jars had an inscription which was so faint that it required special equipment to see it. The inscription read “ibnayo,” which means “belongs to Benjamin.”

“Benjamin? Benjamin who?” you might ask. “Who cares?” Well, the important detail here is that the inscription was written in Hebrew.

As Biblical Archaeology Review put it, this finding suggests “that Abel Beth Maacah was an Israelite city at the time when Ahab was the Israelite King.”

Obviously, it’s important to be cautious and not over-interpret the data here. The field of biblical archaeology, and archaeology in general, is a human endeavor subject to human failings like most other areas of study. Sloppiness, bias, fraud, or simple good-faith errors can lead to flawed interpretation of findings.  Caution is advised.

Unfortunately, what has long passed for caution in archaeology is what would be better identified as a “hermeneutics of suspicion.” In other words, there is often a taken-for-granted assumption that the Bible can’t be trusted. Because it deals with religion and morality, it must be exaggerating, if not outright lying on its historical claims.

On the other hand, it’s more than a little annoying that the Bible’s contemporaries always seem to get the benefit of the doubt, especially if their claims contradict the Bible.

The classic case is the Exodus. Since no mention of the Exodus exists in contemporaneous Egyptian documents, many scholars assume the Biblical account is fictional. Such an assumption is willfully naïve, ignoring that records were more royal propaganda than neutral reporting. Anything that made the ruler look bad wouldn’t be memorialized by a monument or a mention in official records.

As one writer snarkily suggested, how would such an official Egyptian mention of the Exodus sounded if written in typical royal language? “. . . Ramses the Great . . . before whom all tremble in awe . . . announced that the man Moses had kicked his royal [posterior] for all the world to see, thus proving that God is Yahweh and the 2,000-year-old culture of Egypt is a lie . . .”

Good luck finding that kind of inscription buried in the sand.

Though the kind of caution that accompanies findings like the one at Tel Abel Beth Maacah is prudent, make no mistake. Such caution is seldom about the quality of the evidence behind the historicity of biblical accounts, and more often about a predisposition to treat the Bible like any other religious text. Time after time and way after way, the Bible proves it is not like any other book, religious or otherwise.

Because the Bible actually tells the story of God’s actions in human history, it “sweats” the historical details in ways other religious texts just don’t. And that’s why I never get tired of reporting when these historical details are discovered and validated.

Deaths from despair, mass shootings, acts of desperation, what is going on with young men in this country?

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, John Stonestreet talks with Greg Stier about how the Church—especially older men--must help young men deal with issues like fatherlessness, the culture’s turn against masculinity, secularism, the collapse of mediating institutions like the Boy Scouts, and so much more.

Stier, the founder and CEO of Dare 2 Share Ministries and who himself was raised without a father, argues that we must first call this generation of young men back to a relationship with God through Christ—and also challenge them something bigger than themselves, to a life of discipleship.

In his book “When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi,” David Maraniss tells a story about how the legendary coach opened the Green Bay Packers’ 1961 summer training camp. The year before, the favored Packers had surrendered a fourth-quarter lead to the Philadelphia Eagles to lose the championship, but rather than focus in on what had gone wrong then, Lombardi took his team back to the basics. “’Gentlemen,’ Lombardi said, holding a pigskin in his right hand, ‘this is a football.’”

I was reminded of this Lombardi story recently after a discussion at one of our regional Colson Fellow gatherings. The conversation was trying to get at the root of why younger Americans are increasingly attracted to socialism. One of the Colson Fellows, a member of the millennial generation, offered two reasons I found particularly insightful.

First, the church has largely avoided a whole host of controversial issues, fearful of telling people what to think, but in the process failing to help them think through them at all. The vacuum has been filled by many other voices, including from media and education, telling them what to think.

Second, the historical memory of millennials doesn’t reach back to the Cold War and the existential struggle against communism. They came of age just before 2008 and the Great Recession. In their earliest economic and political memories, the bad guy was what was then called capitalism.

Add to those two realities that the emerging generation was never taught history or civics or economics, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that socialism has re-emerged as a live option for younger Americans.

Our best response to this, for all of the issues that lie at the intersection of faith and public life, will have to be Lombardi-like. When it comes to politics, to what it means to be a citizen shaped by Christian faith, to those issues that matter most right now, it’s time to go back to the basics.

This will include reflecting on what God intended for human governance, what we can and should expect from those who lead us, and what the limits of government should be. We’ll need to relearn the pitfalls of what Jacque Ellul called “the political illusion,” the belief that all problems are political and therefore require only political solutions. Today, the political illusion is seen most clearly in those who think elected officials are either the sole source of our best hope or the sole source of our imminent doom. Ellul wrote about the political illusion more than fifty years ago. I can only imagine what he might make of our politics today in which people on both sides of the political spectrum, including Christians, treat political leaders with near-messianic deference.

At the same time, political realities matter. Elections have consequences. The stakes in November’s election seem higher than ever, and everywhere we turn, we’re being told to pin all our hopes and fears on its outcome.

So, what is a Christian to do?  Is there only one legitimate Christian view on all issues? What does the Bible say about the Christian’s role in politics? What is Christian citizenship? To which ideas must we remain faithful no matter what?  Does God prefer one candidate over another, and how do we know?

Our next Colson Center Short Course, which we are calling “Preparing for the 2020 Election,” will wrestle with these questions and more, and features an amazing lineup of instructors. Phoenix Seminary’s Wayne Grudem will launch the course, discussing “Politics according to the Bible.” This is the “Gentlemen, this a football” session to open the course. Then Bruce Ashford, Provost of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, will talk about Christian citizenship. Mindy Belz will walk through the most critical policy issues right now, both domestic and international, and Dr. Jay Richards, of the Catholic University of America, will critique socialism in all of its modern forms.

This Colson Center short course begins February 4 and is held for four consecutive Tuesdays. Each session begins at 8 PM Eastern and includes a half-hour Q&A session with the instructors. Each session is also recorded and provided to anyone who signs up, so don’t worry if you can’t make a live session.

Register at BreakPoint.org Most of our Colson Center Short Courses sell-out, so please sign up soon.