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In his book, “The Triumph of Christianity,” (which, by the way was one of Chuck Colson’s favorite books) historian Rodney Stark describes the Roman world of that first Christmas Eve.

The gods, Stark writes, “were everywhere and thought to be undependable.” Apart from “some magical powers” and “perhaps the gift of immortality,” there was little to distinguish them from their human worshippers: “they ate, drank, loved, envied, fornicated, cheated, lied and otherwise set morally ‘unedifying examples.’”

And, not surprisingly, they didn’t care one bit about those who worshipped them. All they wanted was to be propitiated.

In other words, Christ entered into a culture in which the gods of the age were not worthy of worship.

And Roman society was just as oppressive and undependable as its gods. For most people, life in the empire’s cities could be fairly described, to borrow a phrase from philosopher Thomas Hobbes, as “nasty, poor, solitary, brutish, and short.”

This was world into which Christianity was born. And still Christianity triumphed, not least of which because it offered an alternative to the oppression of Roman society.  It offered another way than the dead-end of paganism, a way so compelling that it outweighed the obvious social disadvantages of being identified as a Christian.

As Stark writes, “in the midst of the squalor, misery, illness, and anonymity of ancient cities, Christianity offered an island of mercy and security.”

I hope that when you hear Stark’s words, you realize that we also have something far more compelling to offer our contemporaries as well.

Many of our contemporaries also worship deities that are undependable and scarcely distinguishable from their worshippers.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “worship” as “the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.” Worship transforms the worshipper. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “the Gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that . . . thus, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

Emerson wrote that without even foreseeing the age of “social media,” in which we increasingly worship what we’ve become or at least what we imagine ourselves to be. Many pages on Facebook and Instagram can, with almost no exaggeration, be called “shrines.”

Our deities are as much of a dead end as the pagan gods of Rome. And like all idol worship, self-worship can be a lonely activity. Just like the Greek gods, who didn’t play well together, today’s pagans are far from anonymous, but just as isolated as their ancient predecessors. A 2011 Cornell study found that the average American has only two “good friends.”

What Christians today have to offer is remarkably similar to what the early Christians had to offer: what Stark called an “intense community,” a place where, instead of being surrounded by strangers, they are surrounded by “brothers and sisters in Christ.” A place that when the hard times come, as inevitably they will, “there [are] people who care -- there are people who have the distinct responsibility to care.”

Stated succinctly, what Christians have to offer is a better way of being human than anything currently offered in contemporary society.

That’s why, despite the often-distressing state of our culture, I remain hopeful. The Christian alternative is just as desperately needed today as when the early Church offered it to the Romans. Like them, we must proclaim and embody that alternative.

And if we do, it could be another Christmas Eve all over again.

And friends, as we prepare to gather with our own friends and family to exchange gifts and celebrate the light of Christ coming into this world, I would ask you remember BreakPoint and the Colson Center in your year-end giving. Thank you so much. And have a very merry Christmas.

Today we have a very special Christmas-time BreakPoint Podcast for you. Back in 2012, John Stonestreet welcomed recording artist Michael Card to “BreakPoint This Week” to discuss Michael’s outstanding and powerfully moving album “The Promise: A Celebration of Christ’s Birth.”

We hope you enjoy this special presentation as Michael Card walks us through the Nativity, the promises of God in the Old Testament, and the story behind his seminal album.

The Promise, by Michael Card (music download)

In the early 2000s, across the digital and print world of Christian apologetics, the so-called “New Atheism” was a central topic of conversation. Authors like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens generated quite an audience by attacking religion in general, and Christianity in particular, portraying both as irrational, evil forces in society. Books like “The God Delusion,” “God Is Not Great,” and “The End of Faith” argued that belief in God was unscientific, and that unbelief would make us all better people.

You may be thinking to yourself, “I haven’t really thought of those guys in quite a while.” Exactly. The movement has grown strangely quiet over the last decade. Message board debates have petered out, rallies and debates have been cancelled, and book sales flatlined.

In fact, the New Atheism has been largely replaced. Some folks who once joined in on the outrage against religion got woke instead, and now aim their outrage at privilege, oppression, and perceived inequalities. Others migrated from Rational Wiki to alt-right online hubs like 4Chan and Reddit. Today, those sites are full of former Dawkins fans who swallowed so-called “red pill” ideas about race, sex, and politics, not to mention heaping doses of conspiracy theories.

It's fair to say now, as Steven Poole did earlier this year in The Guardian, that the New Atheist moment has ended. But what killed it?

Poole makes a strong case that it just became old news. Authors like Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens rode the wave of 9/11 and the War on Terror. In the aftermath of the deadliest attack in American history, it was easy to make the claim that religion itself, and not just certain religions, posed unique threats to world peace, despite obvious differences between Christianity and radical Islam. According to the New Atheists, to quote Christopher Hitchens, religion “poisons everything.”

But with Al-Qaeda and ISIS in retreat and a generation coming of age that can’t remember 9/11, the New Atheism is out of tracks to run on and have failed to convert a younger audience.

And I also think that Patrick Henry College professor Gene Veith offers another helpful angle on the decline of the New Atheists in a piece he recently wrote at Patheos. Militant unbelief has faltered, he suggests, because it cannot adequately explain sin.

Atheism is a reductionistic worldview and is forced to either deny the existence of real evil or to blame religion for it. After watching institutions and industries drown in sex scandals and innocents mowed down in nihilistic mass-shootings over the last ten years, it’s clear that the fanatically religious certainly do not have a monopoly on violence and evil.

In another “autopsy” of the New Atheism at Arc Digital, Ben Sixsmith suggests that those once preoccupied with arguing against the existence of God have moved on “to more intense areas of rhetorical dispute” like racial and gender oppression, while those who bang on about atheism now look—in his words—“increasingly monomaniacal, irrelevant, and dull.”

So where does this leave us? With the New Atheism in its twilight years and more fashionable false worldviews taking its place, Christians need to keep apologetically focused. All false ideas need to be answered.

Today, we might best serve our neighbors by pointing out the lies of identity politics or oppression politics, explaining the evolutionary roots of modern racism, and caring for the victims these bad ideas leave behind. And as we do, we’ll need to point out how inadequate every other worldview is in accounting for sin and evil, which—as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it—runs “through every human heart.”

In place of the numerous and varied failed accounts of what’s wrong with our world, we’ll need to continue to proclaim the truth the New Atheists denied and today’s fashionable ideologues ignore: that the problem with the world, that the source of evil, is “in here” not “out there.” And because we are, at root, the source of the world’s problems, salvation can only come from without not within.

As one wag put it, “In the orchestra world, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is every bit an annual Christmas tradition as eggnog and overworked shopping mall Santas.”

Handel’s magnum opus is one of the supreme wonders of human genius, especially if you keep in mind that the genius on display isn’t only Handel’s.

We’re so used to calling the work “Handel’s Messiah” that we fail to notice that he only wrote the music. And as good as the music is, what’s being said, or in this case, sung, is every bit as inspired and inspiring.

The text, or “libretto,” as it is properly called, was written by Charles Jennens. Chances are you’ve never heard of him. You’re not alone. Even in his lifetime Jennens was “utterly unknown” to most of his contemporaries.

But obviously not to Handel, who, in a letter to Jennens, referred to their collaboration as “your Messiah.” As the director of the Handel House said a few years ago, “Without Jennens there would be no Messiah.”

That being the case, it’s worth knowing more about Jennens. He was an English landowner and patron of the arts. He wasn’t only a patron: He collaborated with Handel on other works such as “Saul,” “Israel in Egypt,” and “Belshazzar.” As with “Messiah,” his contributions were anonymous.

As these titles suggest, Jennens’s specialty was librettos based on biblical subjects. This was the direct result of his devout Christian faith. And that brings me back to “Messiah.” Jennens was concerned with the emergence of Deism within the Church of England. Deism rejected the idea of God’s intervention in human affairs and, with it, the inspiration of scripture.

His response to the threat was what he called a “scripture collection” that demonstrated that the Scriptures had predicted the coming of the Messiah, which he desired Handel to set to music. Unlike his other “scripture collections,” every word in the Messiah’s libretto is taken directly from scripture. As Albert Mohler wrote a few years ago, “Jennens understood the Bible to reveal a comprehensive and unitary story of God’s salvation of his people.”

But, Jennens knew that it would take more than a pamphlet to combat Deism. He had to appeal to people’s emotions and imaginations, as well as their intellect. In other words, he needed art.

Thankfully, he knew just the right man to undertake the challenge. In July 1741, he wrote a friend saying “Handel says he will do nothing next winter, but I hope I shall persuade him to set another Scripture collection I have made for him . . . I hope he will lay out his whole genius and skill upon it, that the composition may excel all his former compositions, as the subject excels every other subject. The subject is Messiah.”

A month later, Handel began work on the music and finished it in only twenty-four days. At the end of the manuscript, he wrote the initials “SDG,” Soli Deo Gloria, “To God alone be (the) Glory.”

Since its first performance in Dublin in 1742, Jennens’ exercise in what can accurately be called scriptural apologetics has become the most beloved choral work in history. No one knows how many times it has been performed. Counting the recordings alone is exhausting.

And every time we listen, we are told “For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” And that, as Mohler reminds us, was what Jennens wanted us to understand: God has spoken.

Can a republic this polarized survive in the long run? No matter what you think of President Trump’s Ukrainian phone call, what does it mean for our nation’s future if political parties and groups can’t even talk to each other, can’t agree on certain principles and constantly question the legitimacy of elections? These are just a few of the questions John Stonestreet and Shane Morris raise in light of the impeachment of President Trump, which seems to have become little more than political theater—or circus.

Also on today’s program: It seems that the L’s and T’s in the LGBT movement are at loggerheads. Actually, do the T’s really belong in that acronym? A growing number of LGBs don’t think so. Throw in the “F’s” (for feminists, like author J. K. Rowling), and we are witnessing an interesting and potentially significant cultural moment.

Finally, how many times will the Hallmark Chanel reverse itself on same-sex advertising? And are Christmas Trees rooted in paganism? Shane and John discuss Senior Colson Fellow  Glenn Sunshine’s decisive answer to that question.

Please support BreakPoint This Week and The Colson Center. Thank you!

“O Christmas Tree” by Glenn Sunshine, BreakPoint.org

In early December, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Specifically, the Norwegian Committee cited Ahmed’s “decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea.”

Prime Minister Ahmed is a Pentecostal Christian and the second African Evangelical in a row to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Kenyan physician Denis Mukwege won in 2018.

Ahmed’s story is only the latest chapter in the ancient history of Ethiopian Christianity, which began in Acts 8 when an angel told Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”  On that road, Philip met an Ethiopian court official puzzled over the meaning of Isaiah 53.

Philip told the man known as the Ethiopian Eunuch the good news about Jesus, and when the official professed faith, Philip baptized him. Afterward, the “Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.”

Where he went, of course, was Ethiopia. According to second century church father Irenaeus of Lyon, “This man . . . was also sent into the regions of Ethiopia, to preach what he had himself believed.”  And according to church historian Nicephorus, Matthias, the one chosen to replace Judas, also preached the gospel in Ethiopia.

Over the next two centuries, Christianity continued to spread in the region. Then in the early fourth century, in another momentous chapter in Ethiopian Christian history, a Christian boy from Tyre named Frumentius was shipwrecked and sold into slavery at a port along the Red Sea. His new master was the king of Axum, a region in what is now Ethiopia. Like Daniel and Joseph before him, Frumentius gained the trust of the pagan king who, upon his death, freed Frumentius. But Frumentius remained as a tutor to the new king, Ezana.

When Ezana came of age, Frumentius returned to Tyre to be trained as a priest. From there he went to Alexandria and asked the great theologian and patriarch Athanasius to send a bishop and missionaries to facilitate the further conversion of Ethiopia. Athanasius decided that the best man for that job was Frumentius himself, and so he was consecrated as the new bishop.

The most historically significant of Frumentius’ converts was King Ezana himself, who was baptized shortly after Frumentius returned to Ethiopia. Within a decade of his return, the majority of the people in Ezana’s kingdom had become Christians. Christianity became the official religion of what is now Ethiopia in about 330A.D., which makes Ethiopia the second oldest Christian nation on earth after Armenia.

“What about Rome?” you ask? Rome didn’t officially become Christian until 380 A.D.

Recent archeological finds confirm this story. As recently related at Smithsonian.com, archeologists have discovered the remains of a church that date back to the early fourth century.

This discovery reminds us of three things. First, even before Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, the faith had already spread far and wide from Ethiopia to the south and India to the east.

Second, the Christian faith originated at the crossroads of Asia and Africa. The modern explosion of Christianity on both those continents is, in reality, a homecoming. Ethnically and linguistically, our Lord was more closely related to people like Frumentius and the people of Ethiopia, who speak a Semitic language, than He was to the people of Europe.

And finally, Ethiopia’s two-thousand-year legacy of Christianity all began with Philip’s simple act of obedience. So when the Lord bids any of us, “Rise and go,” we’d better do it. After all, who knows if He might bless an act of obedience today, in order to change history and to glorify His name for centuries to come.

Five years ago, photographer Eric Pickersgill and his wife, Angie, were lying in bed, backs turned to one another, looking at their phones. When Pickersgill dozed off, his phone slid from his hand and hit the floor. The sound jolted him awake.

As he told the BBC, he saw the scene from the perspective of the ceiling fan in his mind’s eye. There he was, hand frozen in the same position, only minus the phone. He and his wife were “so close physically but psychologically and emotionally so separated from one another.”

This inspired a project that depicts how technology dominates our lives, often to the detriment of our most important relationships. The remarkable series of photographs is called “Removed.”

The pictures run between startling and comical. In one, a newly married couple sits on the hood of a car marked, “Just Married” staring at non-existing phones instead of each other. In another, a crowd at auction sit gazing into their empty hands as if they were at a palm-readers convention.

The photos are all posed, but this project ought not be dismissed as a mere stunt. As Pickersgill told the BBC, he didn’t know the people in the pictures beforehand. He saw people looking at their phones, explained his project, and asked them if they would be willing to pose. Perhaps the reason they agreed is that they saw themselves in the point he was trying to make.

Of course, if any of us were photographed throughout our day, chances are we’d be caught in similar poses. Who among us is not, at some level, hitched to our glowing rectangles? As the display’s curator put it, “Removed” lifts “the veil of contemporary technology’s hold on our devotion.”

It also reveals how much this “devotion” isolates us from other people.

In her 2011 book, “Alone Together,” MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle wrote about how the technology we think gives us more control actually controls us. Our phones are, as Pickersgill graphically illustrated, the last things we look at every night and the first things we check every morning.

In “Alone Together,” Turkle describes teenagers who are actually afraid of phone calls because they require a level of “intimacy” and spontaneity they cannot control. Texts and social media are conducted by us, on our own terms, and can be stage-managed and honed to ensure that others see only what we want them to see.

In the eight years since Turkle’s book was published, our “together aloneness” has only become more entrenched, and the psychological impact Turkle described more pronounced and more tragic.

According to a recent study by the American Psychological Association, “rates of mood disorders and suicide-related outcomes [among adolescents and young adults] have increased significantly over the last decade.”  And, the researchers directly state that “The increase in adolescent major depressive episodes began after 2011, concurrent with the increased ownership of smartphones and a concomitant increase in digital media time in this age group . . .”

Our devotion to our glowing rectangles isn’t giving us the control we thought it would. On the contrary, it has been a key ingredient in the spread what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called an “epidemic of loneliness,” which is, according to Murthy, as bad for our health as smoking.

Perhaps that’s why people were so willing to pose for Pickersgill. Like smokers who know they should quit for their own good, maybe we understand we really would be better off without a phone in ours hands all the time.

Maybe we should give it a try, even if no one is taking our picture.

If the Christmas story is a cosmic drama, we would do well to know all we can about the cast of characters onstage at Bethlehem and beyond. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, of course. But what about the innkeeper? The angels and the shepherds? Simeon and Anna. And even “the surprising people” Jesus’ family tree.

What does God’s selection of this cast of supporting characters say about the star Himself, Jesus the King? Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, John Stonestreet welcomes Dan Darling, the author of the beautiful and insightful book “The Characters of Christmas: 10 Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus.”

“The Characters of Christmas: 10 Unlikely People Caught up in the Story of Jesus,” by Dan Darling

Help  BreakPoint and the Colson Center meet our year-end financial goal. Thank you!

It’s a little late to still be doing Christmas shopping (like I am), especially for anything that needs to be shipped. Even so, books that pass on Christian worldview are worth the hassle, and I’ve got four to recommend for you this Christmas. In fact, you might want to self-gift some of these…

The first is the best book I know of that teaches the “how” of communication in a tough culture: “Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions” by my friend Greg Koukl. Every Christian needs this book because every Christian, in this day and age, will find themselves in conversations about controversial topic, called upon to defend their beliefs, and even Christianity itself. “Tactics” teaches, well, tactics. In other words, this book gives you the rhetorical strategies you need to speak up in such a way as to generate light, not heat.

If you’re thinking, “Wait, hasn’t that book been out for a while?” Yes, it has. Ten years, in fact. And now, it’s been expanded and re-released in a 10th- anniversary edition. This edition not only has updated stories of Greg’s tactics in action (which are very helpful), it has more tactics. Honestly, I didn’t think this book could really be improved, but Greg has.

He and I discussed the book on the BreakPoint podcast at BreakPoint.org. As I told Greg, the book should come with a warning: Anyone who reads it no longer has an excuse for not sharing their beliefs and convictions, even on the tough topics.

The second book is for children, especially for little girls: Rachael Denhollander’s “How Much Is a Little Girl Worth?” Denhollander, as you might remember, is the force of nature that bravely and persistently worked to expose the hundreds of cases of abuse by U.S.A. Gymnastics doctor Larry Nasser.

Rachael Denhollander understands that in a culture that victimizes little girls in so many ways, they need to know who they are, as made in the image of God. Her beautifully written and illustrated book teaches that their worth is beyond price, and that they can meet any challenges they will face with God’s help. It’s an especially important gift for the little 4- to 8-year old girl in your life, but I bought it for my daughters, who are older.

My third recommendation is a bit self-serving...  “A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World,” which I co-authored with Brett Kunkle, is an ideal resource for parents, grandparents, teachers, and youth pastors who are in the cultural deep end with their kids. The book unpacks the major issues in our culture, from the obvious ones like LGBT issues, social media, drugs, and smartphones, to the unseen undercurrents in our culture that parents often miss, such as identity struggles and the overwhelming amount of information students face today.

The best part is that “A Practical Guide to Culture” is exactly that: practical. In fact, it’s proven especially helpful for grandparents, believe it or not. There’s always been a generation gap, but many sense that the gap is more vast today – especially when it comes to technology, sexuality, and politics. We hear consistently from parents and grandparents that “A Practical Guide” has helped them make sense of the culture their kids face, so that they can connect with the students in their life and help them to navigate the tricky cultural waters.

And speaking of students and culture, I’m pleased to announce that on January 1, a student edition of “A Practical Guide to Culture, called A Student’s Guide to Culture,” will be released.  This book is written directly for junior high and high school students, and covers the same crucial issues in our culture from a Christian worldview.

It’s not yet released but is available for pre-order.

Why not give a great book this Christmas? You can find these books at our online bookstore. Whenever you purchase books at our online store, it benefits the ministry of the Colson Center.

A year ago, the MIT Technology Review broke the news that a Chinese scientist used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR to genetically modify human embryos.

The scientific community called Dr. He’s actions “profoundly disturbing” and “monstrous,” among other things.

Their hypocritical response was reminiscent of a scene from “Casablanca,” where Captain Renault claimed to have been “shocked, shocked” that there was gambling on the premises.

For starters, the claim that Dr. He succeeded in producing embryos “resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera,” was labeled “a deliberate falsehood” by Berkeley geneticist Fyodor Urnov.

As it turns out, that was the least-troubling finding about Dr. He’s experiments. Instead of reproducing the desired genetic variation, the Chinese team “[created] novel [genetic] edits whose effects are not clear.”

By the way, “novel genetic edits” is code language for “mutation,” and I don’t mean the kind that produced the X-Men. I mean “mutation” as in cancer and other illnesses. As the Guardian pointed out, “CRISPR remains an imperfect tool because it can lead to unwanted or ‘off-target’ edits.”

Even the Chinese government, not normally known for its concern over human suffering, cited the potential lethality of these mutations when it punished Dr. He for his unauthorized experiments.

In a morally sane world, this kind of risk would prompt people to re-think the whole “playing god” worldview that is underlying gene-editing research. Of course, our world, especially when it comes to technology, is anything but morally sane.

Even as they were denouncing Dr. He, other scientists were working toward the same goals, albeit more discreetly. In fact, they were using CRISPR themselves.

And now there’s news about a new gene-editing tool called “Prime Editing.” Besides free two-day shipping on most items, “Prime Editing” promises “to make it even easier to precisely and safely re-write genes.”

The head of the team behind “Prime Editing” called it “a step — and potentially a significant step — towards this long-term aspiration of the field in which we are trying to be able to make just about any kind of DNA change that anyone wants at just about any site in the human genome.”

Did you catch that? “Any kind of DNA change.” “Any site.” Hey, no god-like pretensions here.

That line reminded me not of “Casablanca,” but a TV show called “The Expanse,” which is based on a series of novels by the same name. In it, researchers stumble upon alien genetic technology with seemingly god-like powers. Despite not understanding the technology, they insist on playing with it.

Even after millions die, the existential threat to humanity becomes clear, and the original researchers are killed or imprisoned, the rest of humanity still can’t resist trying to exploit the technology for their benefit. They scheme to get their hands on the technology themselves.

It’s tempting to call this whole situation with CRISPR and Prime Editing “life imitating art,” but I suspect it’s other way around.  The authors of “The Expanse” seem to understand something about human nature many scientists don’t: The temptation to become “the architects” of our own evolution is extremely hard to resist even when our knowledge is fragmentary and the consequences of our mistakes are staring us in the face. It’s even true when the threat is potentially existential.

As Chuck Colson often said, there is no limit to the human capacity to rationalize anything.

Is there time to prevent a potential catastrophe? Yes. But unless we convince ourselves and others that “playing god” is a game we cannot win, and settle on living with limits on our knowledge, we should not be shocked at what follows, no matter how monstrous it seems.