Breakpoint

John Stonestreet and guest host Trevin Wax discuss the new Alabama abortion law and the strategies behind overturning Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court. As John points out, nothing is certain at the Supreme Court, so even with all the momentum behind the pro-life movement, now is not the time to "take our foot off the gas."  And besides, our ultimate goal is not only to make abortion illegal, but also unthinkable.

They also discuss the attempt to silence pro-life women, whether through intimidation (like that displayed by Rep. Sims of Pennsylvania) or through bias in the media; why the supporters of the transgender movement must resort to intimidation to make their case; and the arrival of persecuted Christian Asia Bibi in Canada.

Resources

Follow Trevin Wax

My teen girls were filmed, harassed by a lawmaker for praying outside Planned Parenthood

Ashley Garecht, USA Today, May 12, 2019

Follow the Wilberforce Weekend Live

CSB Worldview Study Bible

Holman Bible Publishers, 2018

We’ve not seen in the United States, at least in recent memory, so many efforts to force Christians to act in ways that violate their consciences. Almost always, these demands are made in the name of sexual freedom—whether we’re talking about nuns being forced to provide contraception, bakers and florists having to participate in gay weddings, or adoption agencies being forced to place kids with same-sex couples.

What makes these stories even more discouraging is how many Americans—especially Christians—don’t seem to understand our first freedom or even care all that much about it. According to a new survey by Barna, the number of Americans who say that religious freedom means “being able to believe and practice the core commitments and values of your faith” is still a majority, but it’s falling; down 14 percent since 2012.

Even more troubling, pastors seem to be losing interest in the issue. Barna reports that just five years ago, a strong majority of Protestant clergy said they were “very concerned” that religious freedom would become more restricted. In the latest survey, that number fell to a paltry 34 percent.

Barna editor-in-chief, Roxanne Stone says it’s easy to stop caring “when we feel protected by those currently in power.” But in doing so, Christians risk becoming just “another tribal group” jockeying for special favors from Washington. If we want to keep our freedoms after a new president is in the White House, we have to learn to “make the case for religious liberty as a positive social value for all people.” In other words, we have to be able to argue for this freedom as if it’s more than a retreat strategy.

This is, of course, a real challenge in a culture where increasing numbers of people think religion should be kept private, and sexual preferences should be made public. Somehow, we must make the case that religious liberty is not only a good worth preserving, but that it’s essential to a free society.

You might have heard of “S.L.E.D.” It’s an acronym which stands for “Size, Level of development, Environment, and Degree of dependency.” It makes the argument for unborn life simple and focused, even when things get emotional. It’s memorable and reusable.

For a long time now, I’ve wished there were a "S.L.E.D." for religious freedom—something to help us remember the arguments and make the case in a convincing way. Well, my colleague Shane Morris has just came up with one: “F.R.E.E.” Free is an acronym that can walk you through an intelligent conversation about religious liberty.

F is for Forcing. Forcing people to go against their beliefs for no good reason is a bad thing. This is a premise that even most secular people should be able to get behind.

R stands for Reason. Is there a good reason to force a religious person to go against his or her belief in the case you’re discussing? And are there less burdensome alternatives to squashing this freedom, like using a bakery down the street or an adoption agency across town?

The first E is for Examples. Offer examples that the person you’re talking with may not have thought of or heard of. Should a Muslim t-shirt designer be forced to create shirts mocking the prophet Muhammad? Should an Orthodox Jewish club at a university be forced to admit Christians as officers? Should an LGBT baker be forced to bake a cake with anti-gay slogans?

The final E is one I think they’ll love: Equality. Christians who don’t agree with the new sexual orthodoxy should be equally free to live according to their faith, without being compelled to violate their consciences. Don’t hesitate to turn it around as a question: “If you think Muslims and Jews should have religious freedom in the examples we gave, why not Christians?”

It’s not a silver bullet, nor does it say everything that we'll need to about religious freedom, but “F.R.E.E” can help you have a conversation that’s intelligent and focused. If we can discuss religious freedom in a way that cuts through the rhetoric—the way many of us have learned to talk about abortion—we’ll have a chance of preserving this freedom no matter who’s in office.

Around the Colson Center we often talk about “zombie arguments,” ideas that—like the undead so popular on television—just keep getting up and shambling around, no matter how many times you kill them.

For example, there are zombie arguments about abortion—like the one that says the pre-born aren’t really human. There are also quite a few zombie arguments in favor of same-sex relationships. Often, they’re arguments that ran their course, outlived their usefulness in secular circles years ago, but now enjoy a kind of second life, often among self-identified Christians who want to go along with the culture.

I’m talking about arguments like, “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality,” or “How does my gay marriage hurt you?” and of course, “I was born this way.”

That last one showed up in my inbox recently. A gentleman who had attended a talk I gave wrote to tell me how disappointed he was in what he called my “misinformation” about homosexuality. He said (incorrectly) that in the book that I co-authored with Sean McDowell on this topic, we claimed that being gay is a choice, and that the lack of any identified “gay gene” proves this. “...there is no gene for diabetes,” he wrote, “and yet it happens. There is no doubt that the LGBT community is born that way. And since God makes no mistakes,” he continued, “the LGBT community is God-created just like us straight folks.”

I wrote back to correct his misunderstanding. Nowhere in the book did Sean or I claim that the apparent lack of a “gay gene” proves that homosexuality is purely a choice, or purely environmental. In fact, I’ve never made that claim in any book. Rather, I argue that same-sex orientation probably results from a combination of both environmental and biological factors. The best research is on my side here. No expert on this topic—not even those who approve of same-sex relationships—dismisses environmental factors completely. Evidence such as identical twins who are raised separately, but who don’t both identify as gay is just too strong an indicator that nurture must play a role.

I added that leaders in the LGBT movement have long known that the “born this way” argument is bogus. All the way back in 1989, the authors of After the Ball—a sort of manifesto and game plan for the gay rights movement—admitted this. They wrote that “sexual orientation, for most humans, seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors...”

But, they concluded, the public should be led to believe the “born this way” argument, because it’s so useful for creating sympathy and pro-gay policy. Plus, it’s incredibly easy to make.

Nowadays, the LGB movement has largely retired the “born this way” argument to make way for the “T”—transgender identity. So in place of “I was born this way and I can’t change,” we now hear “I was born this way, it was wrong, and I want to change.” In fact these days, the “born this way” argument almost always comes from self-identified Christians who are trying to convince us that homosexuality is compatible with our faith. I think especially of the comments of Mayor Pete Buttigieg that God made him gay and anyone who disagrees has a quarrel with the Maker.

My response is simple, and I’ve given it countless times: Even if there is a biological impulse toward a certain kind of behavior, that doesn’t make it right to act on the impulse. Science tells us of all kinds of biological impulses for behaviors that are harmful, like depression, extreme anger and violence, anorexia, even pedophilia. And of course, biological impulses don’t alter the very clear biblical condemnations of homosexual behavior.

Sadly, the gentleman ended our email discussion with another zombie argument: that the only reason I hold the position I do is because of homophobia and disgust toward gay people.

That’s just not the case. The clear teaching of Scripture, natural law, Christian tradition, and even scientific evidence leads me to reject same-sex behavior, while still loving and seeking the best for those engaged in it. And that will remain true, no matter how many times these zombie arguments shamble into my inbox.

On April 13, 2029, a 370-meter wide asteroid formally known as 99942 Apophis will pass by Earth at a distance of about 19,000 miles.

While 19,000 miles sounds like a long way away, but in astronomical terms it’s the equivalent of having a bullet whiz by your ear. There are man-made satellites that orbit farther from Earth.

Even scarier, it was initially believed there was a slight chance Apophis could strike the Earth in 2036. That’s why, when the asteroid and its trajectory was discovered in 2004, scientists named it after the Egyptian god of chaos who, by the way, is also the villain in the TV series, Stargate-SG1.

Thankfully, that possibility has since been ruled out. Still, as the saying goes “There are plenty more where that came from,” in particular, in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The imminent threat of asteroid-caused destruction was the motivation behind a recent Planetary Defense Conference at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The purpose of the conference was to discuss “the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and comets, and actions that might be taken to deflect a threatening object.”

While the chances of something the size of Apophis or bigger hitting the Earth are remote, it would only take one to dramatically alter or even destroy human civilization as we know it. Thus, we should be grateful that scientists are taking the potential threat seriously.

And yet, all of this underscores how improbable our very existence, never mind human civilization, is. There is something called the “Rare Earth Hypothesis,” which holds that intelligent life is the result of “improbable astrophysical and geological events and circumstances.”

Whereas people like Carl Sagan insisted, based on faulty math and even faultier logic, that intelligent life was common in the Cosmos, the Rare Earth Hypothesis takes note of all the things that had to go exactly right for us to exist.

For instance, not only does a planet have to be just the right distance from its sun, often called the “Goldilocks Zone,” but its tilt and orbit must be just right, too. And, its sun must also be just the right distance from the center of its galaxy.

Even if the astrophysical requirements are met, there’s still geology. The historian Will Durant once wrote that “civilization exists at the forbearance of geology, subject to change without notice.”

For a stark reminder of how precarious human life and civilization are geologically, just recall the 2004 earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Sumatra that killed more than 200,000 people. As horrific as that geological event was, it wasn’t even the deadliest of my lifetime: In 1976, an earthquake in China killed between 240 and 600 thousand people.

Our response to our persistent existence despite the precariousness of our condition shouldn’t be fear or alarm; it should be wonder and gratitude that we are here at all.

Think of Psalm 8, where considering the moon and stars prompts the question “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” Compared to much of the created order, never mind God, we’re fragile, dependent, and not very powerful.

Nevertheless, God is mindful of us and He does care for us. In the climax to the book of Job, the Lord, speaking out of the whirlwind—yet another natural phenomenon we are powerless against—makes it clear that He is not obligated to speak to us. He is the creator. We are the creatures.

And yet, He does speak to us. Even more than that, he became one of us. He took on our fragility, finitude, and vulnerability.

Physicist Freeman Dyson once wrote that the more he examined the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence he found that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.

Actually, its creator did, which is why we continue to beat the odds.

Just how big a threat is the Equality Act to religious freedom? According to the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Greg Baylor, it would pose the biggest threat to religious freedom in the  history of the American republic, placing the full force of the  federal government behind a terribly destructive gender ideology.

Baylor shares his concerns today on the BreakPoint Podcast with Colson Center President John Stonestreet.

Resources

Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty: What Belongs to God, What Belongs to Caesar (Essays for the Tenth Anniversary of the Manhattan Declaration)

John Stonestreet and David Dockery, editors, 2019

The Alliance Defending Freedom

What is Restorative Justice?

“Restorative justice seeks to heal the harm caused by crime. Instead of focusing on retribution, it focuses on rehabilitation. At its core, it is a process that offers both victims and those who caused harm an opportunity to seek answers and accountability to begin to repair the damage caused by crime.”

You might be thinking that I just read a passage from one of Chuck Colson’s books. Chuck devoted many years to promoting this biblically based approach to justice.

But that description of restorative justice, believe it or not, comes from CNN.com, specifically from a promo page for a new series called “The Redemption Project.” In each episode, survivors of violent crime or the deceased victims’ loved ones come face to face with the very people who victimized them.

The Redemption Project is the brainchild of CNN commentator Van Jones, who hosts the series. You most likely know Jones as a very left-of center social justice warrior. But, before you switch off the radio, you should know that Jones was raised in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, and, having “briefly turned away” from Christianity, has once again embraced his faith.

Jones launched this new series in response to our increasingly toxic culture. As he explained in one interview, “I feel we are losing the capacity as a culture for grace, compassion, and forgiveness.”  So he set out to film a series that depicts grace, compassion, and forgiveness in the most unlikely and trying of circumstances.

Take the case of Mariah Lucas. When she was just 15 months old, Jason Wayne Clark murdered her mother in cold blood, stabbing her to death as she sat in her car. Mariah’s family never recovered. Her dad fell apart and eventually ended up in prison himself.

When Mariah married and had children of her own, she realized something was missing in her life. “I had questions about my mom’s murder, I needed to reach out to this man who killed my mom 23 years ago.”

So she wrote Clark a letter, which he received shortly before he was paroled after serving 23 years in prison.

She asked if she could meet him. “It was like a slug to the chest,” Clark said. “She told me about her life . . .. it’s what we call the cycle of violence. I went through a cycle of violence. And my actions started another cycle of violence that she had to live through. She was the one who broke that cycle of violence.”

Their meeting, to say the least, is compelling television. But it’s not suitable for young children. The crimes discussed are heinous. There are ample references to drug abuse, and rare but raw profanity. The damage inflicted on these peoples’ lives is horrific. At times, it’s a struggle to have any empathy at all with the offenders, much less remember that they are made in the image of God who still loves them with an incalculable love.

But that’s where “the grace, compassion, and forgiveness” part of the series comes in, and is so remarkable. Listen to how Jones described the meetings he facilitated and witnessed, “Nine times out of ten in this series, peoples’ faith was a big factor, on both sides.”

I’m not surprised at all, and I wish “The Redemption Project” offered us more about the faith lives of the offenders and the victims. Hearing the occasional mention of God or a prayer is fine, but there’s obviously much more to the faith aspect of these stories than we see in the series.

Still, this series by CNN and Van Jones helps to refocus reform on victim-offender dialogue. And what an opportunity it provides to believers to have conversations about grace, forgiveness, and justice—all three of which are only fully realized in Jesus Christ.

Come to BreakPoint.org and click on this commentary. I’ll link you to CNN’s “Redemption Project,” as well as to Prison Fellowship’s work for restorative justice.

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith discuss the dangers of the Equality Act, which would extend the federal level protections of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Meaning that these would now be on the same protected level as race and religion. As Warren and John observe, this would be a grave threat to religious freedom, as it would equate those who want to defend traditional sexual morality with the likes of the KKK and white supremacists. It's particularly alarming that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce is endorsing the act, which, as John says, could be a "game changer."

Please, if you own a business, let the U.S. Chamber of Commerce know your objections. We have talking points for you in our resource section.

John and Warren also discuss the recently passed hearbeat bill in Georgia, the plight of the Boy Scouts, and notable passings:  Warren Wiersbe, Jean Vanier, and Rachel Held Evans.

Resources

Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty: What Belongs to God, What Belongs to Caesar (Essays for the Tenth Anniversary of the Manhattan Declaration)

John Stonestreet and David Dockery, editors, 2019

Tell the U. S. Chamber of Commerce to Stand with Business: Don’t Support the Equality Act

Stop the Ill-Named “Equality Act”

John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, BreakPoint, May 10, 2019

Learn More about Trail Life USA

After passing the House Judiciary Committee, the “Equality Act” will soon be passed by the House and will then be sent to the Senate. This legislation would extend the federal level protections of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Until recently, most of us believed there wasn’t much of a chance of the Equality Act ever becoming law. That’s because it was assumed that the GOP-majority Senate, which owes its electoral viability to the support of conservative Christians, would not allow it to happen. I hope that’s still the case, but there is reason to be concerned.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently announced its support for the Equality Act. This would be a game-changer because, historically, the Chamber has been a major supporter of the GOP. For instance, in the last elections it endorsed 191 Republicans and only 7 Democrats.

If the act is brought to a vote by the Senate, all that would be required is for a handful of Republicans to vote “Yes.” It appears that Senator Susan Collins of Maine could be one of the Act’s sponsors in the Senate. That’s one down, four to go. Thus, the Chamber’s endorsement could make the difference between defeat and passage.

In their statement, the Chamber of Commerce claimed, “Embracing equality has a profoundly positive impact on business performance,” and that “LGBT-inclusive companies enjoy higher revenue margins, attract better talent, and have lower employee turnover.”

In reality, however, The Equality Act does far more than outlaw discrimination. In the way Title VII would be amended, anyone who dissents from the new sexual orthodoxy would be comparable to the racists whose oppression of African-Americans made the Civil Rights Act of 1964 necessary. In the way the Equality Act would rewrite federal law, discrimination against LGBT people wouldn’t only be anything that would impede access to public accommodations; it would be anything, anything, less than fully affirming their sense of self.

Let me be clear: the Equality Act would do nothing less than reinvent our relationship to the larger society. If it passes, standing for traditional sexual morality would essentially be outlawed.

But that’s not all. The Equality Act is not only bad for people of faith and anyone else who objects to the new sexual orthodoxy. It’s bad for women. So bad, in fact, radical feminists are now joining with conservative Christian women to fight it. Yes, you heard that right.

In a recent article at Real Clear Politics, Natasha Chart, board chair of the Women’s Liberation Front, teamed up with Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America to warn us, “Under this bill, men and boys [who identify as women and girls] will take away women’s small business grants and hard-won spots on sports teams; they will be allowed to live in women’s domestic violence shelters and use our locker rooms. And united as women, we are just not going to stand for it.”

Please, act now. Call your senators and representatives and tell them what I’ve told you: the Equality Act must not become law.

If you are a businessman or businesswoman, please pressure the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to drop its support for the Equality Act. If you don’t know what to say, the Alliance Defending Freedom has prepared a document that tells you exactly who to contact and what to say. It’s complete with phone numbers, email addresses and even a physical mailing address to send letters. Come to BreakPoint.org for the link to a site where you can download this document.

Acting on behalf of all believers and all women everywhere will only take a few minutes of your time. Failing to act risks a result whose impact will be measured in decades. So please act now. Oppose the Equality Act.

On Mother’s Day, most of us take intentional time and effort to show our moms how much we love and appreciate them, and how much we’re thankful for their love and sacrifice. I’m not always as intentional as I should be about honoring the moms in my life, especially the one who gave me life and the one who’s currently doing the really heavy lifting caring for our kids.

But especially in this cultural moment, Christians should be the first, not only to honor current mothers, but also to celebrate and encourage future mothers.

Andrea Burke, writing at For the Church, suggests that we’re not always very good at this. As a result, for too many young Christians, cultural attitudes toward motherhood are setting the tone. And it’s not a positive tone.

Burke calls motherhood “the one life dream that makes a girl blush.” In her work directing her church’s women’s ministry, Burke regularly sits down with single, young women to talk about the future. They often confess that although they could pursue further education or a successful career in any number of fields, what many of them want is to get married and raise a family.

By Burke’s account, these young women are smart and accomplished. They don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Still, they regularly talk as if choosing to be a wife and mom is a silly cop-out—somehow a waste of their lives. “When a 21-year-old sits across the table from me and tells me that she wants to be a mother,” Burke writes, “she blushes and gives a thousand caveats as to why she knows it’s not the optimal choice.”

Where do young women get this low view of motherhood? Well, look around. According to a New York Times article last year, the average age at which women become mothers is now at a record high—30 or older in some parts of the country. The Times reported this as if it were a good thing, talking up the wonders of a “fulfilling career” and all-but-openly suggesting that the only reason any woman would have children young is because she couldn’t achieve the ideal professional life, and needs a substitute rite of passage to adulthood.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the average birth rate failed to rebound after the Great Recession, and now sits at a rock-bottom 1.77 children per woman on average—that’s down over 16 percent from a decade ago.

So now there’s a gap in our culture between the number of children women want to have, and the number they end up having.

The Times explains, “it’s unlikely any future baby boom will be able to fully offset the baby bust of the last 10 years.” This means that “millennial women are likely to experience the largest shortfall in achieved fertility verses their stated family desires of any generation in a long time...”

What does all this have to do with young women embarrassed about wanting to become mothers? Well, they need honesty from us—specifically from their parents, that whatever society says about the wonders of a successful career, they’re statistically likely to regret prioritizing promotions over parenthood.

At BreakPoint.org, my colleague Shane Morris recently wrote a beautiful letter to his six-year-old daughter, in which he encouraged her to think of marriage and motherhood as callings worth pursuing, not as afterthoughts. Shane described how his daughter already is in the habit of tucking her little brother’s trucks to bed. Shane is right in seeing in those nurturing instincts things worth celebrating and cultivating.

His letter reminded me of Martin Luther’s praise for nurturing tendencies in his commentary on Genesis: “How becomingly even little girls carry infants in their arms,” he wrote. “And how appropriate are the gestures with which mothers dandle the little ones when they hush a crying infant or lay it in the cradle...” Elsewhere he says: “In all the world this is the noblest and most precious work.”

If you’ve got daughters (like I do) or granddaughters or even nieces, proudly tell these young women that if motherhood is their dream, they’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.