Breakpoint

Chuck Colson never missed a single Memorial Day opportunity to remind us all to remember the fallen. Often he did so by telling the stories of those who sacrificed their lives so that others might live.

In just a moment, I want you to hear one such story from Chuck himself, from World War II. But before we do, there’s something else we should all remember. Some stories are still being written.

Since 2001, nearly 7,000 American service members have died overseas in any number of conflicts. So far this year, that number is 16. And their stories need to be heard as well. More on that in just a moment. First, here’s Chuck Colson.

It was February 1945—three months before the end of World War II. Eighteen-year-old Sergeant Joseph George was stationed in Lorient, France. It was evening, and George was preparing to go on patrol. The Americans were hoping to locate landmines buried by the Germans.

Sergeant George had been on patrol duty the night before. As he told his friend Private James Caudill, he was tired—tired and scared. Private Caudill offered to take the patrol on his behalf. He pointed out that, at age 36, he was nearly two decades older than George. He told George—who had already been blown off a torpedoed ship—to go home and live a full, rich life. And then Private Caudill went out on patrol. A few hours later, he was killed by a German sniper.

The actions of Private Caudill echo the values and valor of generations of military men and women we remember today. And it’s an example of the sort of behavior we almost take for granted when it comes to our men and women in uniform who fight just wars.

What is a just war? One that is defined as providing a proportionate response to evil, to protect non-combatants, among other considerations. Today, our military men and women around the world are fighting to resist evil. Ridding the world of Islamo-fascism—by just means—is a good and loving act.

This willingness to sacrifice on behalf of our neighbors is why military service is considered such a high calling for Christians—and part of what makes just wars just. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica puts his discussion of just war in his chapter on charity—the love of God and neighbor. John Calvin agreed; he called soldiering justly a “God-like act,” because “it imitates God’s restraining evil out of love for His creatures.”

A world in which free nations refuse to fight just wars would be a world where evil is unchecked and where the strong would be free to prey on the weak—as we are now seeing in Darfur.

Which brings me back to Sgt. George. He returned safely home to West Virginia. He married, fathered five sons. One of them—Princeton Professor Robert George—is a good friend of mine. He’s devoted much of his life to fighting the moral evils of our time: abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and efforts to redefine marriage in a way that would destroy it.

In John 15:13, Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that [he] lay down his life for his friends.” The story of Private Caudill and Sergeant George makes one realize more deeply what a tremendous gift this is. It’s why the George family has remembered Private Caudill in prayers for sixty-one years.

Today, Memorial Day, we ought to remember the sacrifices of all the Private Caudills in all the wars Americans have fought—and we should pray for those who are still in the field—laying down their lives for each other, for us, and for the freedom of strangers. That’s a very Christian thing to do.

John Stonestreet here again.

Today, American service men and women are still making the ultimate sacrifice. Please pray for their families. And in their honor today, why not read their stories. The Military Times website has a photo and a brief story of each and every service member who has perished abroad since 2001.

Come to BreakPoint.org, click on this commentary, and I will link you to the Military Times site—and to those stories of the ones who still today are giving their all.

John Stonestreet and Warren Cole Smith discuss the proposed HHS rules that scale-back the Obama Administration's expansive definition of "sex" to include "gender preference." Among other things, the proposed rules will help protect religious groups from discrimination claims--and once again show that the Trump Administration is following through on religious freedom.

Also on today's show: A couple dozen students and faculty walk out on Vice-President Pence's commencement address at Taylor University, which by the way is a Christian school. Australian conservatives form a coalition government with an outspokenly Christian prime minister; a major left-wing website goes up for sale; and finally, with Memorial Day coming up, John reminds us that our men and women in uniform are still putting their lives on the line for us--and like the brave troops of times past, some are making the ultimate sacrifice.

Resources

Honor the Fallen

The Military Times

The Gods of Our Age: Sex, State, Science, Stuff

Colson Center Short Course. Register Now

A Practical Guide to Culture

John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle

David C. Cook publishers, 2017

If pro-lifers are going to oppose the killing of unborn children, we are told over and over again, then we must be willing to take care of these children and their families even after they’re born. And since we don’t, it’s widely assumed and repeated, we have no right to oppose abortion.

As if this line of argument wasn’t repeated enough, it’s become especially popular in the wake of the new anti-abortion laws in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, and now Missouri.

For example, a recent political cartoon by Nick Anderson depicts pro-lifers gazing in awe at a pregnant woman’s belly and promising the child, “We’ll do whatever we can to protect your life.” In the next frame, the very same pro-lifers scream at the newborn, “Now you’re on your own!” “Get a job, moocher!”

Apparently believing this same caricature of uncaring abortion opponents led Times of Israel journalist Sarah Tuttle-Singer to tweet out a challenge last week: “Dear Pro-Life friends: what have you personally done to support lower income single mothers? I’ll wait.”

Well, at last count, she received some responses—over 13 thousand of them, in fact, answering her rhetorical question. I doubt they were what she and other pro-abortion activists were expecting. A Twitter user named Barbara wrote back: “Great question! Since I am unable to foster, I often babysit for my friends who do. I donate regularly to a foster closet. We help pay bills for people in crisis situations, & my oldest kids help when they are able.”

Another user named Joshua wrote: “[We] became foster parents, which led to adoption. Intentionally worked to build relationship with and support our son’s birth mother. Helped her with buying furniture & more when she got out of prison...We were part of a movement of 30+ foster/adopt families from our church doing the same, with a network of hundreds in our church supporting us in tangible ways.”

A pastor named Hans replied: “Started a non-profit that gives free clothing, diapers, etc...to those in need. Fostered a teen mom. Fostered another mother’s three children while she got her life back on track. Found them housing. Gave them Jesus. Gave them a church family who helps and supports them.”

The stories went on and on. The thousands of replies are more than just anecdotal answers to a journalist’s misfired question. Pro-lifers really have put their money, time, and love where their mouths are.

Think of the nation’s pregnancy care centers—which offer supplies and training and parenting classes to mothers and continue doing so despite being maligned as “fake clinics.” They currently outnumber abortion mills three-to-one, and are overwhelmingly run and staffed by women—most of whom are volunteers. Alabama alone has more than seventy of these centers, all of which rely on the private support of people who believe in their mission.

And that’s not all. Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey—who just signed that state’s newest abortion restriction into law—announced back in November that families in her state set a new record for adopting children out of the foster system.

Is there more to be done? Of course! Could pro-lifers specifically do more? Of course! But here’s an important question asked back to our pro-abortion opponents: Why should an unborn child’s right to life depend on how many social programs, charities, or adoptive parents are available after he or she is born? Think about what’s being implied here: that needy babies are better off dead—that the kindest thing we can do is kill them—and that if you’re unable to take in every single unplanned child, you have no right to speak against abortion.

This is barbaric nonsense. As some have pointed out, it’s kind of like saying you can’t oppose killing homeless people unless you turn your home into a shelter. And it misses the single most crucial fact in the entire debate: that abortion doesn’t prevent a baby. It kills one. Which is why, of the two sides in our current, intensifying debate, it’s clear who is most deeply invested in the lives of unplanned children—those who think they first and foremost deserve to live.

Orson Scott Card’s science fiction novel, “Ender’s Shadow” is a favorite of some of our staff. In it, a twelve-year-old’s medical condition gives him superhuman brilliance. Only after helping mankind win the war against an insectoid alien invader does Julian Delphiki discover he’s the product of a genetic experiment that unlocked the full potential of the human brain.

Julian’s potential comes at a high cost. He will outgrow his heart and die before the age of twenty. The mad scientist who engineered him is driven to make even more like him, eventually replacing the human race with a new and—in his mind—superior species.

Just last year, headlines announced the birth of the world’s first genetically modified children in China. The gene editing technology known as CRISPR has made it possible to tinker with the genetic design of human beings. And so, the world met Dr. He, the first mad scientist to don his lab coat in real life.

In response, many have warned that the time for preventative action is now. Writing in “Nature,” a group of leading bioscience researchers recently called for a global moratorium on the gene-editing of human embryos. “The introduction of genetic modifications into future generations,” they write, “could have permanent and possibly harmful effects on the species. These mutations cannot be removed from the gene pool unless all carriers agree to forego having children, or to use genetic procedures to ensure that they do not transmit the mutation to their children.”

In other words, GMO people, like GMO plants and animals, can pass on their artificial traits, not only making genetic experiments a permanent part of the human genome but also potentially affecting an untold number of lives.

In other words, when we genetically alter children, we not only play God with them. We are experimenting on their children and their children’s children. Even if the result isn’t some nightmare mutation like Julian Delphiki’s drastically shortened lifespan, (which he does pass on to his children in the story, by the way), modified embryos cannot give their consent to our experimentation. They must simply live with the traits and the consequences, beneficial or not, imposed on them by mad scientists.

Despite the warnings, others have glibly declared we have nothing to fear from this new technology. Objections to human genetic engineering, scoffs Ronald Bailey at “Reason,” are “ethically nonsensical.” After basic health screenings, he writes, “gene-edited kids can be released into the wild human gene pool with no special worries about how they might effect [sic] future generations.”

His reasoning behind this, unbelievably, is that mutations happen naturally all the time, and we don’t panic about those. What he misses in this proclamation is an essential aspect of bioethics: intent. The fact that people die naturally doesn’t mean killing is okay. The fact that people have disabilities doesn’t mean we should intentionally disable people. In fact, natural genetic mutations perfectly illustrate how small changes in DNA can be devastating, and will be passed from generation to generation. Just ask those who suffer from hemophilia, or Tay–Sachs or Huntington’s disease.

If there is a legitimate use for gene-editing, it’s in healing, not enhancing. But of course, even that has to be done with the greatest caution, and only by geneticists fully aware that even our best laid plans often fail, and in this case, the consequences will last for generations.

Still, our concerns must be more than pragmatic. Other reproductive technologies have already been used to experiment on children without their consent, and many of these folks are now speaking up with concerns we promised ourselves they would never have.  Reproductive ethics must fundamentally recognize that we don’t own our children. We have no right to remake them. Whether or not the future of gene-editing will look anything like the movies, the idea of engineering the next generation to suit our preferences is definitely the definition of mad science.

Are we about to witness a revival of godly manhood among America’s men? We certainly will if Ken Harrison has his way. Former cop, entrepreneur, and now head of Promise Keepers, Ken talks with the Colson Center’s Warren Smith about his book, “Rise of the Servant Kings: What the Bible Says About Being a Man.”

Ken also talks about the revival of Promise Keepers, how his experiences as a police officer shaped his perception of manhood, and the importance to future generations of men actively living out their faith.

Resources

Promise Keepers

Website

Rise of the Servant Kings: What the Bible Says About a Man

Ken Harrison, Multnomah Books, 2019

On Sunday May 12th, between 20 and 30 gunmen entered a Catholic church during Mass in Dablo, Burkina Faso, and started shooting the congregation. Six people, including Father Simeon Yampa, were killed. The attackers then set fire to the church with some worshipers still inside.

Probably 95 percent of Americans couldn’t find Burkina Faso on a map. But that doesn’t make what’s happening to Christians there any less serious or any less deserving of our attention.

In fact, this was the second such attack on a church in the region in two weeks. The Sunday after Easter, “gunmen on motorbikes” attacked a Pentecostal church in a neighboring province, killing the pastor, Pierre Ouédraogo and five worshipers.

Burkina Faso, which was called Upper Volta until 1984, was not a particularly dangerous place for Christians until just a few years ago. While Christians are only a quarter of the population, the country, unlike other Muslim-majority nations, hasn’t been ranked on lists like Open Door’s.

As the Christian Post put it, “Although Burkina Faso is a majority-Muslim country . . . religious groups have largely coexisted peacefully there.”

These recent attacks owe their origins to neighboring Mali, a nation that is on the Open Doors list. Since 2012, Mali has been locked in a series of conflicts pitting the central government against Islamist and Islamist-backed forces.

Even after the initial conflict was put down by the French military, jihadis have continued to operate in Mali, which has been characterized as “fragile,” with “…weak state legitimacy leaving citizens vulnerable to a range of shocks.” In this case, the violence in Mali has spilled over into Burkina Faso in the form of Islamist attacks on not only Christians but also those deemed insufficiently Muslim.

After killing Father Yampa and his parishioners, the attackers “destroyed all places serving alcohol,” as part of an ongoing campaign to establish a so-called “caliphate” in the part of Africa between the Sahara and the rain forests of Central Africa.

Since 2016, there have been more than 200 attacks, and in the past two months alone more than 70,000 people have been forced from their homes.

As order deteriorates and the government’s authority diminishes outside the capital, jihadis, mostly from Mali and other countries in the region, are free to operate with something close to impunity. That freedom is expressed by attacking Christians both inside and outside of church. In addition to the attacks I just told you about, jihadis have also targeted missionaries. Three years ago, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb killed six Canadians who were in the country on a mission trip.

Given these developments, I suspect Burkina Faso will soon appear on Open Door’s “World Watch List,” given the threat against Christians by those who hate them and the increasing chaos in the country.

Scripture commands us to “always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” This is especially true for our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters. They are paying a price we can scarcely imagine for bearing the name “Christian.” The least we owe them is to become acquainted with their situation so that their suffering doesn’t go unnoticed. Yampa’s and Ouédraogo’s names were known to God. Likewise, they should be known to us.

Every day at BreakPoint we are committed to letting you know what’s happening in the world from a Christian worldview, including what is happening with our persecuted brothers and sisters overseas. As we approach our fiscal year end, please consider supporting this essential ministry of helping Christians think clearly and act in our culture. To support us, come to BreakPoint.org.

The idea of sentient artificial intelligence, complete with a personality, has long been a central theme of science fiction. The Oscar-winning 2013 movie “Her,” starring Joaquin Phoenix and the voice of Scarlett Johansson, told the story of a relationship between a lonely man and an AI named Samantha.

On the small-screen, sentient robots are the stars of HBO’s “Westworld.” In fact, the protagonists of the series, Dolores and Maeve, are scarcely distinguishable, if at all, from the people who have repeatedly brutalized them since their creation, including in their own capacity for brutality. The biggest difference is that the audience is intended to excuse, or at least understand, the robots’ brutality.

Which touches on another theme of science fiction: What are our ethical obligations, if any, to the intelligent machines we build?

Considering that what’s depicted in books and on screen has been light years more advanced than the current realities of artificial intelligence, such philosophical questions have remained in science fiction.

Consider, for example, that seventy years ago, mathematician Alan Turing proposed what’s now called the “Turing Test.” Instead of answering the question “can a machine think?” which presupposes an agreed-upon definition of “think,” the “Turing Test” seeks to determine how well a machine can imitate a person. For example, could a machine fool someone who was asking it a series of non-scripted questions into thinking that it was a person.

Turing thought that a machine would eventually pass his test. Seventy years later, no machine has, and the most optimistic estimate says that it will take at least another decade.

That’s why a recent article in Aeon, which suggested that artificial intelligence should receive the same ethical and moral considerations afforded to laboratory animals, seems, to put it politely, premature.

One of the principal reasons that we feel a moral obligation to the animals in our care is that they can suffer and feel pain and they can let us know that.

A machine can do none of these things. If a person kicks a dog, it will yelp, and the person’s cruelty will be clear. Smash your MacBook because you’re upset with Siri, and the only one suffering will be you, since those things cost over $1000.

In fact, anything we currently call “artificial intelligence” is far more like the software on our laptops than one of “hosts” from Westworld. This will likely be true for the indefinite future.

So a better question to be asking is not what will we be doing to artificial intelligence but, instead, what will the AI we create do to us? It was this question that prompted a recent statement released by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Entitled “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles,” the statement offers necessary guidelines to engage the challenges of AI before the technology becomes a fait accompli. I quickly signed my name to the statement.

While none of us know with any certainty what direction this technology will take, we do know what ethical principles should govern the creation and implementation of technologies like AI.

First and foremost is that no technology should be “assigned a level of human identity, worth, dignity, or moral agency.” Only humans are created in the image of God, and we should never permit technology to subvert that exalted status. Machines will never be people.

You might be rolling your eyes that I would even think it necessary to say that. We must say it—out loud and to each other—for at least two reasons. First, there is much talk of AI and other technology merging with human biology to create a new kind of species. While that’s definitely still the stuff of science fiction, even discussing the possibility is the kind of subversion the Statement warns against.

Second, on a personal level, AI already threatens to replace real people in many of our lives. Artificial worlds, conversations, and friends too often distract us from the real ones, and for some, can even become replacements for real ones.

It’s worth repeating, the damage our technology can do to us is far graver than anything we can do to it. And again, machines are not people.

Besides God Hiimself and humanity, what living thing is mentioned most in Scripture. As our guest on the BreakPoint Podcast Matthew Sleeth points out, the answer is “Trees.”  From the tree of life to the first Psalm, to the tree on which Christ was nailed, trees play an enormous role in the Scriptures—a role we modern Christians have largely forgotten. And, according to Sleeth, trees tell us a lot about God Himself.

Here is Colson Center President JOhn Stonestreet with Matthew Sleeth, author of the new book, "Reforesting Faith: What Trees Teach Us About the Nature of God and His Love for Us."

Reforesting Faith: What Trees Teach Us About the Nature of God and His Love for Us

Matthew Sleeth, Waterbrook, 2019

God is a big fan of metaphors. He built them into His world in all kinds of ways, and then He points to them throughout Scripture, all to help us understand who He is, who we are, and what our role is in creation. The metaphor God uses throughout the Bible more than any other might surprise you: trees.

On the very first page of Genesis, God places the father and mother of the human race in a garden filled with trees, all of which—save one—He gives them for food. We all know how the disobedience of Adam and Eve in eating the fruit from that tree cost them Paradise. But trees continue to follow humanity throughout the rest of the Bible too, all the way through the story of God’s redemption. On the last page of Revelation, there again, is a tree. The tree of life grows in a Garden-City, bearing leaves and fruit for the healing of the nations.

This week on the BreakPoint Podcast, I interview my friend Matthew Sleeth, who has authored a new book entitled, “Reforesting Faith: What Trees Teach Us About the Nature of God and His Love for Us.” Sleeth is a retired medical doctor, and the author of another book, on the Sabbath—which literally changed the way my family does Sundays.

The natural world might be Sleeth’s greatest fascination, especially trees. As he told me, he’s been planting trees his whole life, and he’s made conserving them a big part of his work. Along the way, he came to realize that most Christians don’t realize how central trees are to God’s story.

Sleeth told me how he once offered to plant trees around his church because, as he told his pastor, doing so is scriptural. In response, he was chided for his “tree-hugger theology.” Now, this kind of suspicion of environmentalism is common among Christians, and it’s understandable. Radical environmentalists have, in the words of the Apostle Paul, exchanged worship of the Creator for the worship of creation. Many of them actually revere nature as a god or goddess—often a mother-deity named Gaia—and thank her for life and provision instead of God.

This is a grave, mortal error. It is un-distilled idolatry. There is a huge difference between worshiping nature and worshiping in nature, or worshiping because of nature, responding to the majesty of the world around us by worshiping the One who fashioned it.

But the answer to the idolatry of nature isn’t to ignore God’s creation in all its verdant glory; it’s to rediscover it, both in our backyards and in our Bibles. That’s exactly what Sleeth did years ago when he was challenged on this “tree-hugger theology.” He searched the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation to see what God really says about trees. And what he found was a forest.

Every major biblical character is associated with a tree in one form or another. Noah and his family knew it was safe to leave the ark because the dove brought back an olive seedling. God met Moses through a burning bush and sent him with a limb in his hand to free the people of Israel.

God’s Tabernacle and later, Temple, were packed with garden-and-forest imagery, the latter built with the mighty cedars of Lebanon. Even the menorah—that famed seven-branched candelabra in the Holy Place—was a symbol of the tree of life.

The psalmist compares the man of God to a tree beside a stream. Proverbs likens wisdom to a tree. When Israel’s prophets describe the restored creation and God’s renewed covenant with His people, they speak of majestic trees—myrtle and cypress—replacing the weeds of the curse. And when Isaiah foretells the Messiah, he describes Him as a shoot from the stump of Jesse.

If anything, the New Testament is even more densely-forested. John the Baptist warns that unfaithful Israel will be chopped down. Jesus calls Himself the true vine, and we are the branches. And of course, He bore our sins in His body on a tree—the cross.

Matthew Sleeth’s book is available in our online bookstore at BreakPoint.org. And I hope you’ll listen to my BreakPoint Podcast interview with him.

Christians don’t have to become tree-huggers to get excited about the beauty that God has put in the world around us. But we should be moved to worship the God who invented metaphors—and even gave some of them leaves.