Breakpoint

In “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon blames Rome’s demise, at least in part, on Christianity. He wrote, “The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged, and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister [and] a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion . . .”

Gibbon was making the same argument that the pagan critic Celsus made more than 1,500 years earlier. Arguments which most historians have largely rejected. Still, like zombies in “The Walking Dead,” the idea that Christianity destroyed the classical world and ushered in the “Dark Ages” is a notion that refuses to stay dead.

In fact, a recent book, “The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World,” by Catherine Nixey resurrects this notion that the “Triumph of Christianity” was really the “annihilation” of the classical world,  including its literature, philosophy, science, and art.

In the book, Nixey not only depicts Christianity as a “savage tyrant,” she insists on the goodness of the Roman civilization it had “annihilated.”

Historical silliness abounds in this book. For example, Nixey claims, “For two and a half centuries the Roman imperial government left Christianity alone.” All those stories of Christian persecution? Well, according to Nixey, those are “less that the Romans wanted to kill -- and more that the Christians wanted to die.”

Nixey even claims that “Christian belief, if anything, led to a lowering of moral standards in the community.”

So let me get this straight, the ideas of Roman philosopher Seneca, that “Unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children who at birth are weak or abnormal,” is morally superior to the Christian author of the Didache, who wrote that one should “not murder a child by abortion, nor kill it at birth.”

Throw in Roman slavery and the absolute subjugation of women, regardless of social class, and an obvious question I have for Nixey is whether she would really prefer to live in the classical world whose passing she laments, or the one we live in now that’s been shaped by Christianity.

Another important but less obvious question would be, “How do we know so much about the lamented classical world?” The answer is “Christianity.”

As a prime example of the “savage tyranny” of Christianity, Nixey points to the murder of a fifth-century pagan philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob, which was an outrage and a black mark against the Christian faith.

That’s not just Nixey’s opinion. The Christian Emperor Theodosius launched an investigation into her murder. And most of what we know about Hypatia comes from sympathetic Christian sources.

The same is true of the above-mentioned Celsus. The only reason we know of his scathing criticisms of Christianity is because they were faithfully preserved by the Church Father Origen.

While some Christians did destroy pagan art and repress pagan literature, they came nowhere near to destroying the Classical World. On the contrary, Christianity preserved its greatest achievements, not only in philosophy but also in science and literature.

As Jeremiah Johnston documents in his book, “Unimaginable,” Christianity made the world that we all take for granted today possible. It wasn’t always pretty, and certainly there was plenty to regret in Christian history. But thank God Christian morality did supplant classical pagan morality. The very idea that human beings are created equal, that we share a common dignity, that we possess “inalienable” rights would have been laughable to the ancient Romans.

These ideas owe their cultural existence only to Christianity.

The fact that people think otherwise only proves that the real zombies out there are arguments and historically-revised assertions.

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith discuss the two Democratic debates and just how far left these presidential candidates are willing to go.

Also on today's episode: U. S. women's soccer star Jaelene Hinkle left off the World Cup squad because of her outspoken Christian beliefs; Aussie rugby star Israel Folau banned from rugby for telling homosexuals to repent; why are young people (known for their tolerance) less accepting of the LGBT lifestyle than they were just a few years ago? And finally, John  and Warren discuss great resources for you to understand and refute the very unscientific ideology of scientism.

Resources

The U. S. Women’s Soccer Team and Jaelene Hinkle

John Stonestreet and David Carlson, BreakPoint, June 27, 2019

An Aussie Scrum over Freedom of Religion

John Stonestreet and David Carlson, The Point, June 27, 2019

Science Uprising

The Discovery Institute

Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology

1. P. Moreland, Crossway, 2018

Last week, as the world focused attention on the Hong Kong protests, a report came out that gruesomely underscored why the protesters felt led to protest. The report, issued by a London-based panel of international and medical experts, was entitled “Forced Organ Harvesting of Prisoners of Conscience in China.”

The “prisoners of conscience” are practitioners of Falun Gong, a combination of Buddhist-derived meditations, physical exercises, and morals. While this sounds harmless enough to Western ears, the Communist Party views Falun Gong as an existential threat. Twenty years ago, the government began a systematic crackdown on the practice and its practitioners, who numbered then around 70 million. Several hundred thousand practitioners were imprisoned without trial, and within ten years, an estimated 2,000 had died in custody.

Around 2006, Western media began reporting that the Chinese government was harvesting the organs of Falun Gong prisoners. Lending credibility to this report was that Confucian culture values keeping the body intact after death. Thus, there was no voluntary organ donation system in China until 2015.

And yet, in the decade before this, Chinese hospitals were performing tens of thousands of organ transplants every year, raising the obvious question: Where are these organs coming from?

The panel, known as “The China Tribunal,” looked into the question and concluded, “Since 2000, the Chinese government prioritized organ transplantation in its national strategy and continuously incorporated organ transplantation into its Five-Year Plans for multiple ministries.”

In the Tribunal’s words, “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale,” and “Falun Gong practitioners have been one - and probably the main - source of organ supply.”

Before being imprisoned, Falun Gong prisoners would be thoroughly examined, with blood tests, x-rays, and ultrasounds to determine the condition of their internal organs. Such tests make no sense for prisoners facing forced labor, brainwashing, torture, and death. But the strategy enabled the People’s Republic to “perform more transplants than any other country in the world in just a few years, all this despite the lack of a voluntary organ donation system.”

More recently, evidence suggests that Muslim Uighurs have joined Falun Gong practitioners on the list of involuntary donors. And it’s hard to imagine that Christians will not soon be added to that list, unless something changes.

The Chinese Communist Party’s violations of basic human decency are revolting, but they should not be surprising tous given the regime’s history.

Among the Party’s most consistent and enduring characteristics has been a flagrant disregard for human suffering. Between 1958 and 1962, an estimated 45 million people died as a result of the “Great Leap Forward,” which was Mao’s attempt to reinvent China’s economy overnight. In addition to the tens of millions that dead from famine and famine-related disease, 2.5 million people were tortured to death or just executed.

Four years later Mao, in an attempt to consolidate his power, launched the “Cultural Revolution,” which killed another three million people.

Now since current leadership resembles Mao more and more, consolidating power and cracking down on perceived threats, this recent report’s findings should come as almost a thing expected.

This is why the resistance of Hong Kong’s people to Beijing’s encroachment on their freedoms, especially religious freedom, should not surprise us at all. They know the history of Communist Party rule. They know what’s going on in the rest of China. They know what Chinese leadership is capable of. And they know that many of them could be next.

That’s why they protest, and it’s also why we should support them.

Recently, the U. S. women’s soccer team thumped Thailand 13-0 in the Women’s World Cup. It got ugly, and led to criticism: some felt the American ladies wrongly ran up the score and that their goal celebrations were a bit over the top.

Well, whether that criticism is just or unjust, you can’t blame the best left back in U. S. women’s soccer. That’s because Jaelene Hinkle wasn’t on the pitch during the multiple celebrations. In fact, she’s not even on the team.

Hinkle’s saga began back in 2015 after the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex “marriage.” Hinkle posted the following on Instagram: “I believe with every fiber in my body that what was written 2,000 years ago in the Bible is undoubtedly true …. This world may change, but Christ and His Word NEVER will.”

As you can imagine, this made Hinkle a marked woman, especially among soccer fans who identified as LGBT.

Then, in 2017, Hinkle chose to withdraw from the national team rather than wear a U. S. team jersey sporting rainbow numbers in order to celebrate gay pride.

Hinkle explained her decision, “I just felt so convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear this jersey… I gave myself three days to just seek and pray and determine what (God) was asking me to do in this situation. If I never get another national team call-up again then that’s just a part of His plan, and that’s okay. Maybe this is why I was meant to play soccer, to show other believers to be obedient.”

Well, her obedience came at a price. Playing for the North Carolina Courage team in the National Women’s Soccer League, Hinkle is the recipient of boos and jeers almost every time she touches the ball.

And in the run-up to this year’s Women’s World Cup, U.S. Coach Jill Ellis invited Hinkle to try out for the team. After three days of workouts, Ellis, who is gay and “married” to her lesbian partner, cut Hinkle, citing “footballing reasons.”

Many were skeptical that the best women’s fullback in the country—something even her pro-LGBT critics admit—isn’t good enough to play on the U. S. Women’s World Cup team. According to SB Nation’s Kim McCauley, who by the way called Hinkle a “vocal homophobe,” “there isn’t a better pure tactical fit available [for the U. S. team] than Hinkle.”

Now, McCauley posits that Coach Ellis only invited Hinkle to tryout to avoid a lawsuit. Nonetheless, the mere fact that Hinkle was invited to try out sent LGBT fans into conniptions, with the usual complaints of feeling betrayed and hurt, that someone with traditional religious views might dare represent the U. S.

More rationally, some fans expressed concern about “team chemistry.” After all, as I already mentioned, coach Ellis is gay, and team star Megan Rapinoe has posed without clothes on the cover of ESPN Magazine with her girlfriend.

Of course, chemistry isn’t a problem for Hinkle’s North Carolina Courage team. Coach Paul Riley and teammate Jessica MacDonald both have stated publicly that Hinkle’s faith has not negatively affected that team or its play.

Hinkle’s saga is only the most recent evidence that American Christians need to develop a theology of getting fired, or if you happen to be in Hinkle’s profession, a theology of getting cut from the team.

It’s simply more likely than not that we too will face a choice at some point between our career and our convictions. We aren’t the first Christians who have had to face this choice, and thank God the choice isn’t our life and our convictions, as it is for our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world.

Jaelene Hinkle chose well. Will we?

Eugenics is a bad idea, a bad idea that, like all bad ideas, has victims. Efforts to keep those deemed inferior from reproducing or even existing were a central part of the Nazi experiment in Germany, which upended the entire world and led  to the extermination of millions of so-called “lives unworthy of life.”

And yet, eugenics is still with us. Not (thank God) the eugenics of the Nazi variety, but the West has long been unable to shake the sort of eugenics that’s reminiscent of the kind practiced before the Third Reich. This quieter type of eugenics is sold with the claim to have the best interests of victims and society in mind. Proponents wear clean white lab coats or judges’ black robes, while still dehumanizing and advancing evil.

Just a few days ago, a British judge ordered that a woman with mental disability, who is in her twenties and in her second trimester of pregnancy be forced to have an abortion. This order was contrary to the communicated wishes of both the anonymous woman and her mother, who is an immigrant from Nigeria and a former midwife.

Judge Nathalie Lieven of the Court of Protection, which adjudicates cases involving mentally disabled persons, acknowledged that her order for a forced abortion was “an immense intrusion” into this young woman’s life, but she insisted the state was acting in her “best interests…” Having this child, Judge Lieven argued, would be more traumatic than killing it, because this disabled woman couldn’t possibly understand what it means to be a mother.

In a shockingly patronizing note, the judge went on: “I think she would like to have a baby in the same way she would like to have a nice doll.” So, presumably, the decision should be taken out of her hands and the hands of her family—who promised to care for the baby.

Thank God, as the Catholic News Service reported on Monday, the English Court of Appeals overturned this frightening ruling and halted the forced abortion, at least for now. The three justices on the Court promised to release the reasons for their decision at a later date. It’s anyone’s guess what they’ll say.

What we must demand, however, is that the horrifying logic that Judge Lieven used in her original decision is confronted and confined to the dustbins of judicial history. After all, her words were far too reminiscent of the words Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used, writing for the majority in Buck v. Bell, in 1927. In that decision the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the forced sterilization of a woman with mental disability. Holmes’ infamous justification for violating this woman’s dignity: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Those words were later cited during post-World War II Nuremberg trials by Nazi defendants as proof of their innocence. Though forced sterilizations of the mentally disabled are, hopefully, a thing of the past, forced and selective abortions are every bit as much a form of eugenics, and are grounded in the same terrifying worldview.

In America, as in other developed countries, the vast majority of babies diagnosed in the womb with disabilities like Down syndrome are aborted. Again, this is done in the name of compassion, complete with the platitudes like, “Life with Down syndrome is not a life worth living.” How eerily similar to other phrases used by the Nazis to support the killing of those whom they deemed to be “unfit.”

You should know that prenatal tests that lead to our contemporary eugenics practices are nowhere near as reliable as advertised. According to a 2014 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, over half of women who were told their child likely had Down syndrome either delivered or aborted babies which turned out to be healthy. And a whopping 60 percent of babies diagnosed in utero with Edward syndrome, another chromosomal disorder, turned out to be healthy, too.

Even so, let’s be clear: all life is worth living, disability or not, and affirming the profound, inherent, and equal value of people with disabilities is an ancient, bedrock Christian practice.

The idea that there are certain people unworthy of life or of human rights is a tree that’s borne nothing but poisonous fruit for over a hundred years. Despite the historical horrors of the 20th century, it seems that too many are still willing to eat that fruit.

Our theme for this year’s Wilberforce Weekend was “Is Christianity Still Good for the World?”

Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, we present one of the absolute highlights of the weekend: John Lennox’s riveting talk on “Is Christianity Good for Science?” Or, as he also put it, is Christianity a good worldview in which to do science?

If you’ve ever been wary of defending Christianity from the false accusation that it’s anti-science, or that science is the only reliable explanation of reality, this presentation is for you.

Dr. Lennox is a Professor of Mathematics (emeritus) at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford.

He is introduced by Warren Cole Smith.

A recent story in New York Magazine asked readers how many bones they would be willing to break in order to attain intimacy—or something to that effect.

They weren’t referring to injuries from fighting with another man over a woman. They were referring to cosmetic surgery.

Nor were they referring to surgery performed on an older man to make him look younger. They were referring to surgeries performed on young, twenty-something men who hate the way they look and are convinced that they are doomed to involuntary celibacy unless they go under the knife.

Such men are known as “Incels,” described as “an online community of men united by their inability to convince women to have [intimate relations] with them.” “Incels” is short for involuntary celibates.

The central character in the article goes by the moniker “Truth4lie.” This young man in his 30’s has spent time in a psychiatric hospital; he’s exchanged blows with his father. He even punched his sister in the head as a child.  To put it gently, he’s got some problems.

However, after spending time on Incel forums, “Truth4lie” became convinced that his real problem was his appearance.

His friends and family, on the other hand, are convinced that he suffers from “body dysmorphic disorder,” an extreme anxiety “about an imagined physical defect that others often cannot see.” People with the disorder often resort to plastic surgery “to try to improve their appearance.”

That’s exactly what “Truth4lie” did. In 2016, he flew from the Netherlands to Indianapolis to see a surgeon who specialized in what’s called “aesthetic surgery.” He returned to Indianapolis three times in the next year in pursuit of an ideal face. As he told New York Magazine, “The prospect of a better surgery result is keeping me alive.”

We’re clearly intended to see “Truth4lie” as a sad, even pathetic figure, according to this article. To further drive home the point, the article notes how many cosmetic surgeons refuse to operate on people if they suspect they suffer from body dysmorphic disorder. Surgery is not a cure for a psychiatric disorder.

But of course, gender dysphoria is another psychiatric disorder. In this condition, “a person experiences discomfort or distress because there's a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity.”

As with body dysmorphic disorder, people who suffer from gender dysphoria often suffer from other psychiatric illnesses, such as major depressive disorder and various phobias. A study published in 2014 found this was true of 62 percent of the people studied.

There’s an obvious question here for our culture: If surgery will not solve “Truth4lie’s” psychiatric problems, why are we so certain that surgery is the solution for those suffering with gender dysphoria?

After all, a 2011 study of Swedes who had sex reassignment surgery found that “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.”

Increasingly today, the message is that nothing should keep someone with gender dysphoria from the surgeon’s blade, except maybe hormone treatment, and that includes children. Anyone who suggests otherwise—that those who suffer from gender dysphoria might consider some sort of intervention, maybe even counseling—are quickly accused of “transphobia.”

The obvious parallels between incels and those with gender dysphoria, as well as our culture-wide suppression of those obvious parallels, would be funny if the consequences weren’t so tragic.

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. And the idea that our looks, our so-called “gender identity,” even our psychiatric disorders, define who we are, well, that’s a victim-maker if there ever was one.

Back on October 22, 1844, tens of thousands of Americans who followed a preacher named William Miller, eagerly awaited the Second Coming of Christ. By “await,” I don’t mean that they had a general hope or belief, as in, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”

I mean they expected Jesus to return on that day. In anticipation, many had settled their debts and given away what remained of their property. Some had slaughtered their animals to feed others and freed their slaves.

To put it in contemporary language, they were all-in. But the day came, and the day went. Eventually, it became known as “The Great Disappointment,” leaving people disillusioned and financially unprepared for a future they were certain wouldn’t exist.

Today, the Millerites are regarded as, at best, pitiable, and at worst, fools. They are often held up as an example of the dangers of religious thinking run amok.

A recent story in MarketWatch shows that the Millerites aren’t the only ones who let apocalyptic thinking get in the way of prudence.

According to the National Institute on Retirement Security, two-thirds of those born between 1981 and 1996, a.k.a., “Millennials,” have saved nothing for retirement.

There are many reasons this shouldn’t surprise us. In addition to the sense of immortality associated with being young, this generation came of age during the Great Recession. Between student loans and lower-than-expected earnings, they often have trouble making ends meet, much less planning for retirement.

But there’s another, somewhat surprising reason some have offered for their lack of savings: climate change.

One 27-year-old told MarketWatch that, while she wanted to “hope for the best and plan for a future that is stable and secure,” she didn’t see how “things could not be chaotic in 50 years.” She even used the word “apocalyptic.”

When we first came across that story, I wondered if she was an outlier. She wasn’t. Another person interviewed for the article said he wasn’t saving for retirement for the same reasons he wasn’t planning to marry or have children: “The more you read the more you feel like, unless something very radically changes soon, it’s going to be downright cruel to have children in the future.”

They’re not alone in this bleak view of the future. A 2018 report from the American Psychological Association found that 72 percent of Millennials reported that their “emotional well-being is affected by the inevitability of climate change.”

For some, this “inevitability” overshadows their hopes and dreams for the future, including any desire to save for the future. One executive of an online investment firm told MarketWatch that “[f]rom a perception point of view, I hear a lot of cynicism about the ability to build retirement savings or whether they will be able to retire at all.”

The resemblance to those people who, back in 1844, sold their possessions awaiting the apocalypse is not coincidental. As I’ve said before on BreakPoint, modern discourse is often a parody of Christian ideas and concepts. Even after people cease to believe in Christianity, their way of thinking and talking about the world reflects what philosopher John Gray called “secular reincarnation of Christian beliefs.”

An obvious example is the use of the word “apocalyptic.” But so is the idea that history comes with an “expiration date,” which no amount of human planning can forestall.

As my colleague Shane Morris noted on Facebook, “The more you study climate change as a political and cultural phenomenon, the more you realize how much it's replaced fundamentalist, rapture-centered religion.”

Of course, today’s religious fervor differs from the 19th century Millerites in one very important way. The Millerites' disappointment came from a dashed hope. But hope is one thing that holders of this 21st century climate-apocalypticism sorely lack.

Have you planned for your retirement? And I don’t mean just financially. Are you planning for relaxation and golf, or are you planning for ministry, for helping others, for living out your faith in a new phase of life?

In other words, as Bruce Bruinsma discusses with Warren Cole Smith today on the BreakPoint podcast, you know what you’re going to retire from, but what are you going to retire to?

Resources

The Retirement Reformation Manifesto

Website

The Retirement Reformation Manifest: Purpose, not Pastime

John Stonestreet and Warren Cole Smith, BreakPoint Commentary, March 8, 2019

In this week’s program, John Stonestreet and Warren Cole Smith tell the story you won’t hear about pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which have taken on an explicitly Christian tone. This has become not just a political struggle over extradition laws, but a clash of worldviews with Christianity and freedom on one side, and Communism and oppression on the other. The question at stake is whether the people of China, or any country, belong to the state, or owe their allegiance to a higher Power. Our hosts also explore two milestone moments for religious liberty at the U.S. Supreme Court, a new Vatican statement reaffirming the traditional Christian understanding of gender, and a plucky Oklahoma deacon who keeps serving those in need, despite his age.