Breakpoint

The pitfalls and perils of marijuana legalization are well-documented. But whenever we discuss that research here on BreakPoint, we’re accused of not having the right research. What that means is that we’ve used studies that contradict the very vocal advocates of weed.

Well, let’s see what happens when we cite The British journal The Lancet, which, along with the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, is considered the “gold standard” for peer-reviewed medical research. It doesn’t get more “real” than being published in The Lancet.

A just-published study in The Lancet involving, among others, researchers at King’s College London, compared 900 people who had been treated for psychosis with 1,200 people who had not. Sample participants were drawn from across Europe and Brazil.

Both groups were surveyed on a host of factors, including their use of marijuana and other drugs. The study’s authors concluded that “people who smoked marijuana on a daily basis were three times more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis compared with people who never used the drug. For those who used high-potency marijuana daily, the risk jumped to nearly five times.”

By “high-potency” the researchers meant marijuana with a THC content of more than ten percent. To put that figure in context, a study of the weed seized by the DEA between 1995 and 2014 found the THC content went from about 4 percent in 1995 to 12 percent in 2014.

Today, it’s not uncommon to read of marijuana that’s legally-sold in places like Colorado with THC content above 20 percent, occasionally 30 percent! Legalization advocates minimize the exponential growth in potency by saying that twenty or more years ago, Americans didn’t have access to “the good stuff.”

Well, that misses the point by several astronomical units. The point is that those people who daily use “the good stuff” are five times more likely to find themselves in a hospital suffering from delusions and hallucinations, to name only two symptoms of psychosis.

Now, critics will respond, “That’s correlation, not causation.” And that’s the criticism leveled at journalist Alex Berenson, author of “Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence,” a book I recommend highly. But as I heard Berenson say just last week in Denver, of course it’s correlation and not causation. The only way to prove causation would be to ask half a sample group to experiment with something that may harm them. That’s not ethically possible. By the way, all the studies that made us believe that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer were correlated studies too, but that was enough to convince us all.

Even so, writer Ron Powers doesn’t need a peer-reviewed study to convince him of the link between marijuana use and psychosis. In his 2017 book, “Nobody Cares About Crazy People,” he tells the moving story of his two sons, Dean and Kevin, who were both diagnosed with schizophrenia in their late teens.

As Powers tells readers, while there is a strong genetic component to schizophrenia, there is no “schizophrenia gene.” Instead, it’s a constellation of genetic and environmental factors that make people susceptible to schizophrenia. One of these, as Powers painfully learned, is heavy marijuana use, especially in the teenage years.

Of course, some people will tell you that they and most people aren’t mentally ill, so there’s little if any risk. But for a host of reasons, no one can know that with certainty. In fact, all pronouncements about how safe marijuana legalization is simply overstates the case.

That’s exactly what happened here in Colorado. The possible pitfalls were denied or downplayed. And so, Colorado now holds the dubious distinction of leading the country in first-time drug use. And the rate of monthly marijuana use among 18-to-25-year-olds in states with legal weed is nearly three times as much as states that haven’t legalized it.  By the way, 18-25 is the age when schizophrenia often begins to manifest.

And since legalization, Colorado has seen a a spike in marijuana-related emergency room visits by people between the ages of 13 and 20.

Given the well-documented mental health risks, especially to not-fully-formed adolescent brains, the rush to legalization is the height of irresponsibility. An irresponsibility that can shatter lives. And don’t just take our word for it.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/breakpoint-marijuana-and-psychosis/

For the past several years, social scientists have been increasingly aware of what is called the “replication crisis” in their disciplines.

In 2015, the Reproducibility Project at the University of Virginia tried to replicate the results of nearly 100 studies published in psychology journals. Even after going “through extensive measures to remain true to the original studies,” they could only replicate the original findings in 36 percent of the studies, and even then, the effects “were smaller than the initial studies effects.”

This problem with replicating results isn’t limited to psychology or the social sciences. As Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has noted, medicine is often afflicted with a similar replicability problem.

As the saying goes, the first step in fixing a problem is acknowledging you have one. However, given the personal, professional, and political stakes often at work here, that’s easier said than done.

That’s why a recent bit of honesty by a publication you may never have heard of is so welcome.

Back in 2014, the journal Social Science & Medicine published a study entitled “Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations.” The study attempted to measure the impact of anti-gay prejudice on the death rate of gay men and lesbians.

The study concluded that “Sexual minorities living in communities with high levels of anti-gay prejudice experienced a higher hazard of mortality than those living in low-prejudice communities.” Specifically, this increased “hazard of mortality” “[translated] into a shorter life expectancy of approximately 12 years . . . for sexual minorities living in high-prejudice communities.”

The study was used as scientific confirmation of an emerging cultural narrative. Not only is anti-gay prejudice wrong, we are often told, it can even be lethal.

Well, not so fast. Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas did what social scientists in the peer-review process are supposed to do… He set out to replicate the results of that study.

Going over the same data set, he found multiple errors, flawed assumptions, and possible “confounding variables,” possible factors that the researchers failed to take into account: ethnicity, age, sex, and smoking, to name but four.

In a 2017 study published in the same journal, Regnerus, who by the way is a Christian, concluded “Attempts to replicate the study . . . repeatedly failed to generate the original study’s key finding on structural stigma.”

To put it mildly, questioning the findings didn’t go over so well. Nathaniel Frank of the What We Know project, which is a gay research portal, summed up the views of many who commented when he wrote that, “Mark Regnerus destroyed his scholarly credibility when . . . he allowed his ideological beliefs to drive his conclusions,” and that “there’s an enormous body of research showing the harms of [sexual] minority stress, and Regnerus is simply not a trustworthy critic of this research.”

Except, as it turns out, Regnerus is trustworthy. Earlier this month Social Science & Medicine announced that the original study had been retracted at the original authors’ request. In response to Regnerus’ findings, they hired another group to try and replicate their original findings, and that group came to the same conclusion as Regnerus.

As one social science website put it, “It was a mistake of the journal Social Science & Medicine to publish that original paper, but, on the plus side, they published Regnerus’s criticism. Much better to be open with criticism than to play defense.”

Exactly. Mistakes like this are inevitable. All we can ask is that, once the mistake has been pointed out, ideology should not be allowed to get in the way of the truth.

The journal did the right thing, which is as welcome as it is rare.

Don’t forget that BreakPoint’s book offer is John Lennox’s “Can Science Explain Everything?” Until the end of the month, you can download a free sample chapter by coming to BreakPoint.org/free.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/breakpoint-social-science-and-cultural-narratives/

How do you build a case—based on evidence—for the existence of God? On today’s BreakPoint podcast, cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace shares what he learned in his years of solving crimes and how it applies to making the case for God. What is evidence in the first place? His definition may surprise you. What’s the difference between “possible” and “reasonable”? What role does common sense play? And why is developing what he calls a “cumulative case” such a powerful way to present evidence for God’s existence?

Today we present J. Warner Wallace, with his presentation entitled, “Mastering the Rules of Evidence.”

And did you know that J. Warner Wallace is just one of several top-flight Christian worldview instructors in our Colson Fellows Program?  Every year more than 100 Christians committed to deepening their worldview and preparing themselves to make a difference in their sphere of influence join this intensive 10-month program.

The Colson Fellows Program involves studying the Christian classics, participating in online webinars, attending 3 residencies, and developing—with the help of your fellow participants and our Colson Fellows staff—a concrete plan for putting what you learn into action.

Interested? Come to ColsonFellows.org. We’re taking applications right now.

All parents remember how annoying it can be when a baby drops their pacifier on the floor. Whenever it happens, parents face a choice. First time parents typically opt for the hazmat suit route, carrying the pacifier to the kitchen and sanitizing it in boiling water. By the time your fourth kid comes around, you pick it up, you may or may not suck on it, and then give it back to your son or daughter. Not that I speak from experience or anything.

Well, as it turns out, the second option may actually be better for the baby. According to a 2013 Swedish study, parents who just sucked binkies clean and gave them back ended up with kids who had measurably fewer incidences of eczema. A 2016 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Amish children, who grew up on traditional farms with animals, had dramatically lower rates of asthma compared with children raised in more sterile environments. In fact, a surprising amount of evidence suggests that exposure to some germs is good for children and can stave off autoimmune diseases and allergies later in life.

As all the first-time parents prepare to send me hate mail, let me just say that this is true intellectually, too. Just as exposure to foreign microbes is critical in developing a healthy and responsive immune system, exposure to foreign ideas is critical in developing a healthy and responsive mind—and, dare I say, a resilient worldview.

That’s what Irshad Manji thinks. The author of “Don’t Label Me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times,” Manji was featured on TIME magazine’s website this month making her simple but countercultural argument. In an age when everyone seems to be offended, learning how not to have that allergic reaction to differing viewpoints is a crucial life skill—one she thinks schools ought to be teaching.

Considering how fragile students have become at our nation’s Universities, it’s hard to argue with her. For years now, conservative college speakers have been greeted by raging protests when students find out that those speakers don’t conform to a narrow set of politically correct views.

More often than not, school administrators cave, and speakers get disinvited. Sometimes they’re even chased off or shouted down. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Charles Murray are just a few recent examples. Even the Huffington Post admitted that so-called “safe spaces” on campus are making students more intolerant by insulating them from diverse ideas and views—which ironically, are precisely what higher education is supposed to offer!

Reactions to differing opinions have gotten so intense that USA Today reports that many universities in 2018 didn’t even allow controversial speakers. Manji thinks that’s a tragedy. I agree. She says being offended from time to time is part of how we learn to be truly tolerant.

“Giving offense is the price of diversity,” she tells TIME, “not an impediment to diversity.” Manji is mainly addressing secular liberals at TIME and in her book but, as a reform-minded Muslim, she knows what it looks like when new ideas are treated as a threat. She’s very open about how her views on women’s rights and freedom of speech and religion have gotten her in trouble with those who share her faith. And standing up to more traditional Muslims has prepared her to stand up to insulated progressives who would rather shut down those with different views than hear them out.

“Schools are teaching young people how not to be offensive,” she says, but “they also need to be teaching a new generation how not to be offended.”

I imagine that this author and I would disagree on a lot of things, but it sounds like she’d be great at it! The value she’s espousing is right at home in a Christian worldview. After all, we affirm that those with whom we disagree aren’t mere “mascots” for ideas they hold but are first and foremost creations of God with objective value—image-bearers worth engaging, loving and persuading.

Years of exposing Christian kids to alternative ideas and teaching at Summit Ministries has taught me first-hand how it leaves young people more confident in their beliefs, and more able to talk across worldview lines. They end up better prepared to give that reason for the hope that’s in them, and less dependent than many of their secular peers on sterile safe spaces free of disagreement.

You can check out Summit Ministries and learn more about their summer conferences for high school and college students at Summit.org.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/breakpoint-allergic-to-disagreement/

John Stonestreet and Warren Smith discuss the ultimate irony of the New Zealand terror attack. The murderer claimed to defend Western civilization, but openly attacked the very foundation of Western civilization itself: The idea of our shared humanity, that all are created equal.

They also discuss the Trump Administration's order on transsexuals in the military, the work--and professional courage--of University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, and Azusa Pacific University's confusing--and ultimately harmful--reversal on its policies regarding student behavior.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/bp-this-week-an-attack-on-our-shared-humanity/

Resources

Looking for Evil in All the Wrong Places

John Stonestreet, BreakPoint, March 19, 2019

The Equality Act and the Threat to Religious Freedom, with Andrew Walker

The BreakPoint Podcast, March 18, 2019

Apply to the Colson Fellows Program

Attend the Wilberforce Weekend

If you think of American Christianity as a pendulum, we’re currently at the opposite extreme from the First Great Awakening. When Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” he compared human beings with spiders, dangling by a thread over the fires of God’s just judgment, upheld only by His mercy. Accounts from the time tell of listeners who clung to the pillars of their churches, lest they fall through the floor into the Lake of Fire. Like I said, we’re no longer in this territory these days.

In fact, according to Professor Michael McClymond, a very different idea is gaining popularity, even in evangelical churches. It’s called “universalism,” the belief that in the end, God will redeem every human being, and maybe even Satan and the demons.

McClymond has written a book on the history and beliefs of universalism, as well as its recent resurgence in American Christianity. In “The Devil’s Redemption,” he documents how authors like Rob Bell revived and popularized an old but fringe idea: that God will never finally judge anyone, but will continue wooing the wicked into eternity, until even the worst come to repentance and faith.

In an interview with Christianity Today, McClymond calls this doctrine not just a theological mistake, but a “symptom of deeper problems.” It’s easy to see what he means. We live in a time when many Christians eagerly downplay God’s condemnation against sin—especially sexual sin—in favor of a more therapeutic, feelings-centric approach. In these theological waters, universalism thrives. McClymond calls it “the opiate of the theologians,” since it allows them to tell a live-and-let-live culture exactly what it wants to hear: that God is a cosmic grandpa who will never finally hold anyone to account for their rebellion against Him.

Now look, I get the appeal of universal salvation. So did C. S. Lewis. In “The Problem of Pain,” he wrote: “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this...[B]ut,” he added, eternal punishment for sin “has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason.”

Jesus, in fact, spoke more often and vividly about Hell than anyone else in the New Testament. That’s part of why Lewis concluded that real, eternal judgment, as horrible as it might seem, is the only way Christians can affirm the holiness of God and the moral freedom of human beings.

The kind of love universalism demands from God wouldn’t really be love at all. Imagine a God who never put an end to evil, and who never quarantined those determined to continue committing evil—a God who never told school shooters, genocidal dictators, rapists, gossips, or cheats who refuse to accept His help or authority that enough is enough. There could be no ultimate restoration of creation, and no ultimate peace for the redeemed.

Lewis’ insight, which he developed in both “The Problem of Pain” and “The Great Divorce,” was describing Hell not so much as a place, but as a process. Many alive on this earth, he wrote, have already embarked on the early stages of Hell by trying to live life without God. In the end, he suggested, God would give them what they want. And they wouldn’t like it.

To those who object that this isn’t fair, Lewis replied with a piercing question: “What are you asking God to do?” To wipe out your past sins, and at all costs, to give you a fresh start, offering every miraculous help? “He has done so, on Calvary.” Do you want Him to forgive you? He has offered forgiveness in Christ. Do you want Him to leave you alone? “Alas,” wrote Lewis, “I am afraid that is what he does.”

The one thing God will not do—and cannot do—is allow those who refuse His love to “blackmail the universe.” Hell will not be allowed to eternally “veto” Heaven.

The promise of coming judgment—something we confess every time we say the Apostles' Creed—is essential to the Christian hope of a restored world. Not only is it motivation to take the Great Commission seriously, it makes the Good News of forgiveness in Christ so good.

So, I’m with Michael McClymond. For Christians who take their faith seriously, eternal consequences, as taught in Scripture, still must have a place. Universalism isn’t an option.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/breakpoint-a-lack-of-judgment/

Resources

How Universalism, ‘the Opiate of the Theologians,’ Went Mainstream

Michael McClymond, Interview by Paul Copan | Christianity Today | March 11, 2019

To Reach Unsaved Christians, First Help Them Get Lost

Dean Inserra | Christianity Today | March 5, 2019

Are You More Loving Than God?

Derek Rishmawy| Christianity Today | December 28, 2018

The Devil's Redemption, 2 Volumes

Michael J. McClymond, Baker Books, 2018

Sinners wanted to be with Jesus. On today’s podcast, Sean McDowell asks why. What was it about Jesus that drew sinners to Himself? How do we Christians today appeal to non-believers, those in need of a savior? And how do we maintain our convictions about truth, and yet resonate the Grace of Jesus?

African-American Actor Terry Crews has been a vocal supporter of many progressive causes for years. You’d think if anyone would be safe from so-called “woke” callout culture on Twitter, it would be this guy.

Think again. Crews recently tweeted that fathers and mothers give different kinds of love, and that children need both.

The backlash against this heresy was swift and merciless, and Crews deleted the offending tweet and apologized profusely…which of course wasn’t good enough for many. One writer at Teen Vogue called Crews’ beliefs “toxic” and said they support “violence.” The solution she suggested was “comprehensive political education” for celebrities.

Increasingly, the politically correct are eating their own. Just believing that moms and dads aren’t interchangeable—something obviously true, by the way—is condemned as toxic and unacceptable—requiring re-education. It’s also Orwellian. This isn’t how truth wins. It’s how those in the grip of lies suppress the truth.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/the-point-pc-cannibalism/

Recently, archaeologists working in northern Peru made a discovery they called “disturbing and disquieting.”

Digging in the outskirts of the pre-Columbian city of Chan-Chan, they found the remains of about 140 children and 200 animals, mostly llamas. The condition of the children’s remains made it clear that they had been sacrificed along with the animals, perhaps in response to some emergency or dire threat. According to the Washington Post, it’s the site of “the largest known child sacrifice in the world.”

While this is a very unpleasant subject, it serves as a gruesome reminder of how biblical religion, especially Christianity, changed the course of human history.

Chan-Chan was the capital of the Chimú empire. Before their disturbing find, the archaeologists were not aware that this ancient people practiced child sacrifice. Their hypothesis is that the sacrifices were in response to a severe weather event, perhaps a strong El Niño, which caused catastrophic flooding.

Whatever precipitated the child sacrifice, the Chimú were far from alone in their attempts to placate the gods by slaughtering their children. Their conquerors, the Incan Empire, also practiced child sacrifice in times of emergency.

In the Old World, the Carthaginians, who were descended from the biblical city of Tyre, sacrificed children to their gods at shrines the Hebrew Bible called “tophets.” The Romans made a big deal out of this fact in their anti-Carthaginian propaganda, conveniently omitting the fact that they did the same in response to the Carthaginian general Hannibal’s invasion of Italy.

The Carthaginians weren’t the only ancient people who emulated Canaanite child sacrifice. Pre-exilic Israel practiced this demonic rite, as well. In Jeremiah 7, the Lord denounces the “high place of Topheth” where the people “burn their sons and daughters in the fire.”

On account of this abomination, the Lord said that “I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for the land shall become a waste.”

Then, of course, there’s that one specific example cited by the Washington Post in its article about the find in Peru: the “Binding of Isaac” in Genesis 22. While parts of this story are perplexing and even troubling, it’s inclusion along with the other examples misses a crucial point: There was never a chance Isaac would be sacrificed.

If Abraham, to quote Bob Dylan’s paraphrase, had replied to God “Man, you must be putting me on,” Isaac lives. If, as actually happened, Abraham was willing to be fully obedient to God’s instruction, Isaac lives because God prevents the sacrifice.

Jewish Rabbis have long taught that this story of Abraham and Isaac condemns the practice of child sacrifice, especially in light of the repeated subsequent condemnations of the practice throughout the Old Testament. It was part of Abraham’s coming to understand that the God who’d called him to leave his homeland was a very different God than the gods he left behind.

This God, as Christianity would later teach the world, doesn’t demand our children as a sacrifice, but rather sacrificed His own Son on our behalf.

In fact, early Christians took the Jewish prohibition on child sacrifice and extended it to cover contemporary Roman practices such as abortion and infanticide. Ultimately, it’s because of Christianity’s clarity on the killing of children that we find the discovery at Chan-Chan so chilling today, despite our own culture’s embrace of moral relativism.

Chilled or not, we still fail to see the obvious parallels between what happened at Chan-Chan and recently-enacted laws that permit the killing of infants who could easily survive outside the womb. Just as biblical religion made the world a far safer place for young children, the decline of Christian influence over our culture threatens to reverse the moral progress we’ve made since the ancient world.

It may be that future archaeologists, as they dig through the remains of our civilization, will find themselves disturbed and disquieted, too.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/breakpoint-god-vs-child-sacrifice/

Over the past week, Senior Colson Fellow Glenn Sunshine has taken to Facebook to do something that much of the mainstream media—to its discredit—has neglected to do: alerting people to what is happening to Christians in places like Nigeria.

Last summer on BreakPoint, I talked about the violence targeting Christians in what’s known as the “middle belt” of Nigeria. The population of Nigeria is almost evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. That religious split largely follows geographic lines: The northern part of the country is predominantly Muslim, the eastern and southern parts of the country heavily Christian.

The “Middle Belt” is, as you probably guessed, ethnically and religiously diverse. In this part of the country, Christians have been on the receiving end of a campaign that Open Doors calls “religious cleansing,” that is, an attempt “to eradicate Christianity” from the region.

One of the most notorious Islamist groups in the world, Boko Haram, is responsible for killing thousands of Christians and displacing countless more in northern Nigeria. But Boko Haram isn’t the only group targeting Christians there.

In late June, Christian leaders claimed that “over 6,000 persons—mostly children, women and the aged—have been maimed and killed in night raids by armed Fulani herdsmen.” The Fulani are an ethnic group that are overwhelmingly Muslim, and for the record, their raids are not always at night.

In their statement, Nigerian Christian leaders also complained about the “continuous abduction of under-aged Christian girls by Muslim youths…” These girls “are forcefully converted to Islam and taken in for marriage without the consent of their parents.”

While Open Doors calls what is happening in the Middle Belt “religious cleansing,” Nigerian Christian leaders have called it genocide, and not without good reason. Under the International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, genocide consists of action intended to destroy in whole or in part, “a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” The actions can include “killing members of the group,” “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” and “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group,” among other things.

All three of these things are happening in Nigeria right now.

Where is the Nigerian government in all of this? At best, nowhere to be found. Officials are downplaying, if not outright denying, any religious dimension of what’s happening. Instead, they’re calling this a conflict over resources, in this case, over land.

This denial conveniently glosses over the one-sided nature of the violence in the region: The Fulani and Boko Haram are the hammers and the Christians are the nails.

Did I mention that the president of Nigeria is the son of a Fulani chief?

Since I told you about this campaign of extermination last summer, the violence against Christians has continued unabated. Since February alone, according to the Baptist Press and the Barnabas Fund, nearly 300 Christians have been killed and thousands more displaced.

Yet, the mainstream media here in the States remains mum. Which is why Glenn is using his Facebook to bring this to people’s attention.

As tempting as it is to speculate why we aren’t hearing about it, that won’t do our Nigerian brethren a bit of good. It won’t put pressure on our government to speak up, or on the Nigerian government to do its basic duty and protect all of its citizens.

What will help is emulating what people like Glenn Sunshine and Mindy Belz of WORLD Magazine are doing–using the channels and forums available to them to spread the word.

What will help is becoming knowledgeable about what is happening to Christians in Nigeria and around the word. We are living in a new age of religious persecution and even martyrdom.

This kind of intentional and thoughtful engagement—along with, of course, our most important efforts of consistent and concerted prayer—is our brethren’s best chance at relief. It’s a task we all must embrace.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/breakpoint-christians-die-media-mum/