Breakpoint

While the loudest voices in our culture continue to insist that men and women are interchangeable, science is offering more evidence than ever that the two sexes are anything but interchangeable. Nowhere is this uniqueness more apparent than in the distinct and very real transformation that both men and women undergo on becoming parents.

          Of course, having children changes a woman—both body and mind—but it turns out men experience changes, too. They may not be as outwardly obvious as those in women, but they are dramatic and life-altering.

          Writing at The New York Times, Oxford anthropologist Anna  Machin cites a decade of findings on how men are designed to respond physically, emotionally, and neurologically to the arrival of a baby. And those changes, she observes, aren’t the same as those seen in women.

          For example, a five-year study of over 600 men in the Philippines found that those who became fathers experienced a significant drop in testosterone—the hormone associated with male aggression, strength, and sex drive.

          While this may herald the arrival of the stereotypical “dad-body”—which I may or may not know something about—it also marks a critical transition in a father’s behavior. Lower testosterone makes way for a cast of new hormones that draw him toward his partner and infant, and encourage him to participate in “caregiving and baby-related household tasks…”

          Machin points to studies indicating that the lower a man’s testosterone, the more likely his brain is to experience surges of bonding and reward hormones like oxytocin and dopamine when he spends time with his child. These are partly responsible for that feeling of warmth and contentment new parents know so well—a feeling that helps make up for the sleepless nights and dirty diapers that come with a newborn.

          But here’s where things become really interesting, and where science is showing how biologically distinct dads are from moms. A 2012 study by Israeli neuroscientists found that the parts of the brain that light up most dramatically in fathers aren’t those most active in mothers. Machin writes: “For moms, regions closer to the core of the brain—which enable them to care, nurture and detect risk—were most active. But for dads, the parts that shone most brightly were located on the outer surface of the brain, where higher, more conscious cognitive functions sit, such as thought, goal orientation, planning and problem solving.”

          This difference between maternal and paternal brain activity, she writes, “may reflect a difference in role, and different but equally strong attachments, between mothers and fathers.”

          The old cliché that kids run to mom for hugs and kisses when they scrape their knees, and to dad when they want to play and laugh may have more basis in biology than many would like to admit.

          Remember those reward hormones I mentioned earlier? It turns out moms and dads experience surges of them while engaging in very different activities with their kids. A woman’s oxytocin and dopamine peak when nurturing and comforting her children. For a man, these same hormones peak when he engages in horse-play with his children. Machin writes that wrestling with dad “not only cements bonds between father and child, but also plays crucial roles in a child’s social development.”

          All this talk of “roles” and “differences” between moms and dads—in the New York Times, no less!—isn’t politically correct. But reality often isn’t. The roles moms and dads play in reproduction and child-rearing are anything but socially-constructed. As Ryan Anderson is fond of saying, there is no such thing as “parenting.” There’s only mothering and fathering.

          Of course, God is gracious in tough situations when either a mom or a dad is absent, but both moms and dads play unique and non-interchangeable roles in a child’s development. Machin attributes this to evolution, but Christians recognize the design of God, who made us male and female, and who inscribed the family into our very bodies.

Is Christian morality harmful to sexual minorities? That’s the question author, poet, and hip-hop artist Jackie Hill-Perry tackled at the 2019 Wilberforce Weekend. Having left the gay lifestyle through the love of Jesus Christ, Hill-Perry argues that while Christianity of course isn’t harmful to LGBTQs, it does require them—and all of us—to lay down cherished idols.

When the Communist party took over mainland China in 1949, there were an estimated 5 million Christians. Three-plus decades of severe persecution under Mao nearly succeeded in eradicating Chinese Christianity.

Nearly. By 1976, less than four decades after Mao’s death, Christians in China numbered between 60-80 million. That’s a low estimate. The actual number could be even higher.

As Evan Osnos of The New Yorker wrote a few years ago, “as I traveled around China, I stopped being surprised by my encounters with Christians.”

Today, as we’ve discussed many times on BreakPoint, the Communist Party is cracking down on religious minorities, including Christians. Among the reasons is that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has embraced a Mao-like cult of personality.

The current crackdown includes raids and even bulldozing churches, arresting pastors, and discrimination in employment against people holding religious beliefs.

Given this increasingly hostile environment, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that, as Fox News recently reported, many Chinese Christians are fleeing the country. Included in the report was the story of Liao Qiang, a member of the Early Rain Covenant Church, which was raided in December 2018. More than 100 of its members were taken into custody. After the raid, as she told the Associated Press, Liao’s daughter had to “report her whereabouts to police using social media whenever she left her home.” And she was informed that “her safety would not be guaranteed.”

This caused Liao to conclude China was no longer a safe place for him or his family. So he fled with them to Taiwan, with hope they will be allowed to enter the U.S. as refugees.

Given recent realities in China, including the mass detention of Muslim Uighurs, even more drastic forms of persecution could be in in the future for Chinese Christians. All of this means we will likely see more Christians fleeing from China as refugees. The question is: Where will they go?

Back in April, World Magazine reported that “Under [the Trump] administration, refugee admissions have plunged to historic lows, with persecuted Christians in the Middle East suffering from the fallout.”

To be clear, these “historic lows” are really low. “The number of Middle East Christians admitted into the United States in 2018 fell by a staggering 98 percent from 2016. Christians from countries that Open Doors ranked highest for religious persecution saw a 76 percent decline from 2016 to 2018.”

The numbers in 2019 will be even lower: In the first few months of this year, “30 Iranian Christians, 25 Iraqi Christians, and zero Syrian Christian refugees” had been admitted to the United States.

Absent a major change of heart and policy, there’s no reason for Chinese Christians to expect refuge in the United States. Other countries could pick up the slack, of course, but why would we expect them to when the world’s leader in protecting religious freedom around the world has stopped leading by example? And, we have stopped.

I will repeat what I said back in April, “Christians have enjoyed nearly-unprecedented access to the White House, to administration officials and many of the promises made to us have been kept. Unfortunately, the promise to aid persecuted Christians around the world has not been kept.”

I understand we are in the midst of a nation-wide and deeply divisive struggle over how to handle illegal immigration, especially on the southern border. The issue of Christian refugees should not be conflated with that conversation. The Trump administration specifically promised to help persecuted Christians around the world and is, this week, holding its second annual ministerial on the issue of religious persecution.

We need to make it clear that, knowing what may await our Chinese brethren, we must back up any talk about religious freedom with real, tangible actions. That must include giving Christian refugees a place of refuge.

If that sounds harsh, ask Liao Qiang about what harsh really looks like.

Mountain Horse Farm offers visitors a “Horse & Cow Experience.” The “experience” consists of spending quality time petting, brushing, and even cuddling the animals. According to the website Healthy Food House, cow cuddling is “the hottest [wellness] trend of the moment.”

And it isn’t cheap: $300 for a ninety-minute cuddle, but the potential benefits are considerable, we’re told. “Cuddling with animals has shown to reduce stress and help us bond with nature.” The horses and cows at Mountain Horse Farms can, and I quote, “feel your happiness, sadness or anxiety . . . these animals will respond to you without any judgment.”

The results will be “relaxation, healing, awareness, comfort, and mindfulness,” and improved “assertiveness and confidence.”

Cow cuddling is one example of a larger, and still growing, trend. Increasingly, people are looking for emotional support from animals, instead of from each other.

Another example is “goat yoga,” which is exactly what it sounds like: “yoga practiced in the presence of — and in tandem with — live goats.”

The goal of “goat yoga” “isn't to sweat. It's to have a baby goat climb on your shoulders during your plank,” a position that resembles the top of a pushup. According to the L.A.Times, all of that bleating cuteness promotes emotional and physical wellness.

And of course, the sheer number of “emotional support animals” joining us in supermarket aisles or crowded airplanes has led to, let’s say, challenges.  United Airlines recently announced it is limiting “emotional support” animals to dogs and cats. That policy change came in response to complaints from passengers and crew members about all of the “emotional support” pigs, turkeys, ducks, and even a peacock or two biting people and soiling the cabin.

Having grown up on a farm with dogs, cats, a pet calf, a few pigs and even a turtle, I love animals. A few years ago at our Wilberforce Weekend event, we featured an incredible ministry that emotionally helps abused women and children by utilizing therapy involving horses. But the goal was to help these people heal, and trust people again. Today, the proliferation of emotional support animals in all forms and places highlights a real and growing problem across Western culture: loneliness and a lack of connection with other people.

We are, as former Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy put it, in the midst of a “loneliness epidemic,” which is causing a “reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and it’s greater than the impact on life span of obesity.”

The cure for loneliness, however, isn’t “company,” it’s connection. As we’ve said before on BreakPoint,  many of our greatest ills, such as addiction and depression, can be traced back to a lack of meaningful connection to other people.

Societies like ours, as one of my BreakPoint colleagues put it, “are loneliness-producing machines.” Because of our obsession with individualism and autonomy, the average American has gone from having three close friends, on average, to just one.

Because, as one commentator described, “far too many of us [are] alienated, anxious, despairing, and lost,” we find ourselves paying $300 to cuddle with a cow or carry ducks around for emotional support.

And let’s be clear. Though I have not seen any church-sponsored goat yoga groups-- yet-- Christians are not immune to the “loneliness-producing machine” that is our culture, or the worldview that fuels it. Still, we of all people should understand the God-given created need for connectedness. And that the church has an opportunity to offer to the world a community of connected people, connected with our Creator and with each other, like no other institution across our society can.

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast Colson Fellows director Bill Brown interviews Pastor Chris Brooks about his landmark book, “Urban Apologetics: Why the Gospel Is Good News for the City.”

Pastor Brooks, who is also a member of the Colson Center Board of Directors, discusses a wide range of issues facing the urban church, including criminal justice, abortion, fatherhood and family, and economic development.

The interview was part of a Colson Fellows webinar. To learn more about the Colson Fellows program, go to colsonfellows.org.

• Chris Brooks, Kregel Publications, 2014

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith start the show by sharing the good news of Joni Eareckson Tada's recovery from cancer--and her unwavering commitment to advocate against euthanasia and assisted suicide. Which led them to discuss the case of Vincent Lambert, a 42-year old French citizen who died this week after a French judge allowed doctors to withhold hydration, despite pleas from his mother and the Catholic Church. Clearly, France is marching to the drum of the culture of death.

Also in this episode: The strange morphing of the hit series "Stranger Things" from family friendly to, well, not; WORLD magazine's report on secular feminists rallying against porn.

Resources

Joni Eareckson Tada implores Christians to combat assisted suicide movement

• Leah MarieAnn Klett, Christian Post, June 19, 2019

Euthanasia by Any Other Name

• John Stonestreet and David Carlson, The Point, July 11, 2019

U.S. women's team snub of Christian player roils soccer

• Valerie Richardson, Washington Times, July 10, 2019

Allies against porn

• Sharon Dierberger, WORLD Magazine, July 4, 2019

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One of the defining features of God’s Word is how often it points us to God’s world. Much of Scripture, in fact, assumes a certain level of understanding about nature. So, it would seem, if we fail to go outdoors, if we fail to experience and engage in God’s creation, our faith could suffer.

Nearly every book of the Bible is bursting with references to creation, chronicling in soaring prose the making of the universe, identifying God’s covenant promise with colors in the sky, and inviting us to gaze with Father Abraham at the starry hosts, where an even greater promise was written for us.

The psalmist compares the longing of his soul for God with the thirst of a deer running to water, fully expecting his readers to get the word picture! He sings of the heavens’ divine declaration, he praises the Lord for making mankind ruler of “all flocks and herds…animals of the wild…birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea…”

“Ask the beasts, and they will teach you,” exclaims Job, “the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.”

The prophets, too, foretell the restoration of all things using imagery of a transformed created order: wolves lying down with lambs, lions eating straw like oxen, and myrtles and cypress replacing the thorns and briars of the curse.

And of course, Jesus Himself announced the Kingdom of God on earth with parables about trees, seeds, birds of the air which God feeds, along with lilies of the field which He clothes. The Bible at length promises that the consummation of history, like its beginning, will take place in a garden-city atop a mountain, with a river of life and trees whose leaves are to heal the nations.

Faced with this forest of references, it’s hard to see how someone who never spends time outside could fully grasp the things Scripture wants us to. Today, the benefits of modern technology have effectively cut us off from the natural world and the general revelation of God that it offers, perhaps more than any other time in history. Whether it’s our temperature-regulated homes and offices, our glowing screens, or our asphalt jungles, much of our lives happen in an artificial world designed to insulate us from nature.

There are costs to this insulation. Last May, the Washington Post reported that children today spend less time in unstructured outdoor play than any prior generation which, research indicates, results in worse school performance, less creativity, higher levels of obesity, fewer friends, and increased rates of depression and hyperactivity. Even more critically, the world kids experience today bears little resemblance to the backdrop of the Bible.

Writing at The Gospel Coalition, Scott Martin calls this modern isolation from creation not only physically, but spiritually dangerous. Citing studies demonstrating how time in nature reshapes our brains, he suggests that our manmade worlds of concrete and climate control rob us not only of the practical vocabulary to understand Scripture, but actually make unbelief easier. Our Babel-like convenience can delude us into thinking we are self-sufficient and can conceal our own frailty—how we depend on the God of creation for, as Paul says, “life and breath and everything.”

Thankfully, there’s a simple solution: Go outside!

Now, I realize I’m a bit privileged, living in Colorado Springs, where Pike’s Peak is visible from just about every west-facing window. But opportunities to experience the majesty of God’s creation are everywhere. Martin suggests intentionally getting wet in the rain once in a while, working on your church’s landscaping, or visiting local, state, or national parks.

And when we do one of these things, the Scripture asks us to be intentional and think about God and His created intention. Not only will it lead us to a greater sense of awe about God and His world, we’ll better understand His Word, as well.

The scene is movie legend: Morpheus sits with Neo beside a fireplace while a storm rages outside, and tells him that the world he calls reality—what he sees when he looks out the window or turns on the television, when he goes to work—it’s all an illusion. If he takes the blue pill, Neo can remain comfortably in the illusion—you know, “The Matrix.” But if he takes the red pill, he will wake up to a very uncomfortable real world.

It’s a cool movie, but some scientists are entertaining an idea almost exactly like its premise. The “simulation hypothesis” proposes that the world around us, our bodies, and even our own minds might not be real. Instead, they could be the illusions of a sophisticated computer program created by a super-intelligent being or beings.

In fact, writing at NBC, Dan Falk quotes top scientists and philosophers who think that it’s not just possible, it’s likely. They think we could exist in some version of the Matrix. “If we are living in a simulation,” writes Oxford philosopher Nick Bostram, “then the cosmos we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence.” The world we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell, may not be “located at the fundamental level of reality.”

Before you laugh: This idea is surprisingly hard to disprove—at least on secular assumptions. One M.I.T. scientist and author of the book, “The Simulation Hypothesis,” recalls playing a virtual reality game and forgetting he was alone “in an empty room with a headset on.” The game was just so realistic, it became his reality.

If it’s that easy to get lost in a simulation we’ve designed with our limited technology—or so goes the thinking—what must it be like in a simulation designed by an advanced race? We could live our entire lives in such a simulation, and never know it.

And what would be the purpose of such a virtual-reality reality? The answer in the Matrix was sentient robotic overlords who kept us distracted so they could use humans to generate energy to survive. Believe it or not, some who seriously argue for the simulation hypothesis have similarly outlandish guesses as to the identity and intent of the programmers.

Some suggest a race of extraterrestrial beings running a kind of experiment on us. Rich Terrile of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory thinks the programmers could be us—that is, future, highly-advanced (read: further evolved) humans who have decided to create a simulation of an earlier stage of their own civilization.

Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that these advanced beings controlling our reality quickly get deified.

If the simulation hypothesis turns out to be true, says Terrile, that means “there’s a creator, an architect—someone who designed the world.” He even recognizes he’s wrapping ancient religious ideas—specifically Eastern Monism—in “mathematics and science rather than just faith.” But he’s fine with that.

Taking the simulation hypothesis seriously forces us to deal with serious questions. For instance, could our own minds and everything we know and love be mere created computer code designed to trick itself into believing it can think? And if all of this is a simulation, does anything matter at all?

According to Harvard astronomer Abraham Loeb, such thinking could lead to massive social unrest. After all, if the world is just a computer program, it would “relieve us from being accountable for any of our actions.” And if our world is the creation of an advanced race, where did they come from? Much like the theory that says life on earth was seeded by extraterrestrials, the simulation hypothesis just moves the origin of intelligent life back a step. But it doesn’t ever explain it.

Of course, there’s a much more direct way of answering these ultimate questions. What if the improbable design of the universe, our planet, bodies, and minds were, in fact, created by an advanced Being, who instead of programming a supercomputer, called everything into existence by His Word. What if this Creator is a moral being, and so we are morally accountable to Him?

Apparently, for a few of the world’s top scientists, that’s just too much of a stretch… too unlikely, and who wants to be morally accountable anyway? And, so instead, they prefer The Matrix.

Here’s something you may not realize… officially speaking, the emerging generation are not “the millennials.” Anyone born after 1997 is part of the generation that has been dubbed, for reasons I’m not completely sure about, “Generation Z.”

The distinction is more than just one of different names. Millennials and Gen Z have been shaped by different experiences and ideas. Most Millennials can remember a time when the new sexual orthodoxy wasn’t orthodox, and people who opposed—or at least were ambivalent about it—weren’t called “bigots.”

This is much less true of “Generation Z,” who even before Obergefell, were being catechized in the new sexual orthodoxy at school and by mass culture.

Even more important—and distressing—is that members of “Generation Z” are leaving the church at an unprecedentedly high rate. Now, I confess that I feel a bit like the boy who cried “wolf” even saying that, given the overblown and often unsupported claims of the rates of young people from previous generations leaving the faith. It’s always been “bad”—not as bad as you’ve heard—but let me be clear: it’s worse for Gen Z.

And, I’d add, I have significant anecdotal evidence that older generations feel a greater generation gap between them and their Gen Z kids and grandkids.

All of this to say, we’ve got some serious thinking to do about how we can transmit the truths of the Gospel and the worldview that flows from it to Generation Z. To start with: what has worked for previous generations may not work for them.

Thankfully, two of the best thinkers and communicators I know have jumpstarted the conversation. Sean McDowell and Colson Center Senior Fellow J. Warner Wallace have just published a book, So the Next Generation Will Know: Preparing Young Christians for a Challenging World.

Both writers are already well-known for their ability to make the case for the reasonableness of Christian truth and morality. And while there is some of this in their new book, it isn’t the primary focus. The focus is on what they call a “biblical way forward” to confronting the challenges posed by GenZ’s lack and/or loss of faith.

This “way forward” starts with taking into account the interplay between truth and relationships. As they put it, “doing a better job of teaching truth and making the case for Christianity” is “only part of the answer.”

To the “reasonable explanations” that we must offer young people, we also have to add “authentic relationships.” And that can be harder than we think.

First, there’s a strong temptation to emphasize the relationship part over the truth part. We can be so desperate to preserve the relationship that we’ll hesitate to speak the truth in love for risk of offending the person. For example, I do not know of a single biblical or theological authority who has changed their mind on any of the contemporary sexual issues of our day, who didn’t have a son, daughter, or close family member struggling with one of those letters of the acronym.

On the other hand, these kinds of authentic relationships take work, time, and patience. We can’t pre-empt the relationship part and think our job is done. McDowell’s and Wallace’s “way forward” requires taking this to heart. We must be willing to invest the time necessary and build the trust necessary to get at what the next generation is really thinking and feeling. That’s why this book about transmitting a Christian worldview to the next generation includes a section on something as important—and yet as simple as—eating together.

This book is a necessary read for parents, grandparents, pastors, educators—anyone invested in the faith of Gen Z.

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast we present Mama Maggie Gobran, this year’s winner of the Colson Center’s William Wilberforce Award

Recognized for her decades of work among the poorest of the poor in Cairo’s garbage slums, Mama Maggie tells us what makes a true hero of the faith.

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