Given the mounting tension at the Russian-Ukrainian border, Maria and John discuss insights on how Christians should think through Russia's preparation for conflict. A recent New York Times highlighted a phenomenon known as "Birds Aren't Real," leading to Maria and John commenting on the state of young adults in America. To close, John recommends the new series the Colson Center is conducting with Focus on the Family: Lighthouse Voices. -- Resources -- From Peter the Great to Putin the Bully — A...
Feb 12, 2022•1 hr 6 min
An Atlantic reporter who visited last month's March for Life in Washington, D.C., painted an encouraging picture: This year's march was full of teenagers. "Liberals might not know just how young the March for Life crowd tends to be," the reporter wrote , describing groups of high schoolers and college students who'd come from several states away to march in the freezing cold. Statistics routinely show that younger people are the most pro-abortion demographic in the country. If that's true, the y...
Feb 11, 2022•1 min
Before the Glasgow climate summit in November, British ecologist and futurist James Lovelock wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian , entitled "Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth." "Gaia" is the ancient Greek goddess who personified Earth , and the theory behind it is one Lovelock pioneered in the 1970s. The idea is that Earth is a single complex organism with its vast amounts of life striving to balance and correct its ecology, sort of like a huge immune system. From th...
Feb 11, 2022•6 min
John and Shane answer a question on whether or not abortion rates are impacted by who is President. They also give context for how spending money on gambling is different from other forms of entertainment. Shane asks John for some worldview structures for a listener starting a worldview group in his church. To close, Shane asks John why it seems society doesn't recognize the LGBTQ movement as a religion or worldview? -- Resources -- Snopes: Abortion Rates Fall During Democratic Administrations a...
Feb 10, 2022•1 hr 5 min
According to The Washington Post , undergraduate enrollment nationwide dropped by over 3% last year—some 465,000 students. Maybe the pandemic led more students to stick closer to home, or maybe a job-friendly labor market tempted more to work instead. Either way, it's forcing the question of what college is actually for ? In too many universities, true critical inquiry has been replaced by ideological conformity. For example, Republicans comprise just 4% of historians, 3% of sociologists, and 2%...
Feb 10, 2022•1 min
Since the contentious 2016 election, many have publicly questioned whether evangelical support for Donald Trump "hurts the Church's witness." Others assert that to vote for anyone but Donald Trump warrants excommunication. Over the last two years of the pandemic and all its associated controversies, some have confidently proclaimed that if Christians choose to not wear a mask or not be fully vaccinated they've harmed the cause of Christ. Others announced that to wear a mask or be vaccinated is t...
Feb 10, 2022•5 min
Weighing just 11 ounces, newborn Hannah Stibbles is considered the smallest baby born in the U.K. —certainly in the last 20 years. Glasgow doctors told Hannah's parents she had "next to no" chance of survival, but delivered her by C-section anyway. For Hannah's mother, 17-year-old Ellie Patton and her partner Brandon, Hannah became a living miracle. "She came out fighting for her life and proved everyone wrong," says Ellie . "She is a wee smasher." Hannah's survival—and the natural joy so many f...
Feb 09, 2022•1 min
Writing in The Washington Post last week, prominent columnist George Will described the heart-wrenching account of 29-year-old California man dying a slow and agonizing death from cancer. The man's wife has documented his painful decline in photos. In his column, the writer argues that it would have been better if this man had obtained a medical suicide and praises states like Oregon that make this option available. In Will's ideal world, medical aid in dying would be available for all terminall...
Feb 09, 2022•5 min
As NBC News reported via Twitter, the Chinese Communist Party chose a member of the Uyghur minority to complete the torch relay and deliver the Olympic flame to the opening ceremonies of the winter Olympics. The Uyghurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic minority in China's western regions that have been targeted in Chairman Xi Jinping's nationalistic and totalitarian agenda . Uyghur are being sent to concentration camps, subjected to systematic rape, forced abortions, and sterilization . By every measu...
Feb 08, 2022•1 min
"Trust is to capitalism what alcohol is to wedding receptions," suggests Jerry Useem in an article in The Atlantic last November, "a social lubricant... 'If trust is sufficiently low,'" he continues, quoting economists Paul Zak and Stephen Knack, "'economic growth is unachievable.'" Public trust, specifically of the federal government , began to erode in the 1960s. The series of unfortunate events in the decades that followed—wars, Watergate, economic struggles, impeachments, ever-deepening poli...
Feb 08, 2022•5 min
Several Nordic countries that, for decades, have had among the world's lowest birthrates, experienced a baby boom during the pandemic. In the second half of 2021, Iceland saw an incredible 16.5% more births than usual, and Finland and Norway experienced 7 and 5% more births, respectively. Typically, a global crisis results in lower fertility rates. In the U.S., for example, the birthrate dropped by 4% . In China, it was a staggering 15% . For years, Nordic countries have offered generous incenti...
Feb 07, 2022•1 min
It should go without saying that, in 21st century America, most of the assumptions at work in contemporary culture are not Christian assumptions. And whatever new "normal" is, it's constantly changing, it's anything but worldview neutral. As my friend and author Natasha Crain puts it in her new book Faithfully Different , "We are in a culture where feelings are the ultimate guide, happiness is the ultimate goal, judging is the ultimate sin, and God is the ultimate guess." That means that Christi...
Feb 07, 2022•5 min
John and Maria discuss a recent situation where Neil Young pressured Spotify to remove Joe Rogan from their lineup due to what is being discussed on his show about the coronavirus. John explains how this situation is a sample of our society's loss of trust in many institutions. He shares why institutions are important for a flourishing culture and offers a short course from the Colson Center. The course explains how institutions are important and how we can rebuild trust that is informed and has...
Feb 04, 2022•1 hr 12 min
So many indications reveal just how much young men are struggling in our culture… mentally, spiritually, and relationally. And new research reveals how much women are struggling, too. A recent survey from The Roots of Loneliness Project found that middle-aged women reported the sharpest rise in loneliness when the pandemic lockdowns began in 2020. According to The Wall Street Journal, women in this group, particularly moms, spend a lot of time on social media but feel increasingly stressed and i...
Feb 04, 2022•1 min
Twenty-six years ago, Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly made a $1,000 dollar bet with author Kirkpatrick Sale. The wager was about whether or not, by the year 2020, society as we know it would have collapsed entirely. Back in 1995, Sale was known for his critique of the internet, which was just starting to overhaul daily life. His book Rebels Against the Future praised the Luddites , a group of English textile workers who opposed industrialization by aggressively destroying the technology th...
Feb 04, 2022•5 min
As Kate Shellnut with Christianity Today writes, "Evangelicals under 40 are twice as likely as their seniors to want more substance from the pulpit." She's referring to a new survey on church satisfaction from Grey Matter research group . Not only do 3 in 10 evangelicals want more in-depth teaching, but the strong majority are happy with how their church handles even tougher topics like giving or politics. It correlates with a 2017 Gallup poll , which showed that 83% of Protestants consider lear...
Feb 03, 2022•59 sec
In case you haven't heard, Major League Baseball is in the middle of a lockout. Later this week, the players' union will meet with team owners to negotiate on new contracts, hopefully in time for spring training. Imagine, if all of this haggling over salaries and contracts and terms happened with out the players being at the table? What if MLB team owners were negotiating with sportscasters or concession stand workers or third-base umpires over the terms and million-dollar conditions of the base...
Feb 03, 2022•5 min
John explains the reason the Colson Center is involved in the group Evangelicals and Catholics Together. A listener asks what the group does and what recent developments have come out of the organization. Shane pushes John to answer a question from a listener he knows about praying for one's enemies. And to start the show John outlines the challenges present in China's worldview after a listener asks for clarity on a video he shows to his students. -- Resources -- Making Sense of Your World: a B...
Feb 02, 2022•1 hr 4 min
"If liberty means anything at all," wrote George Orwell in the original preface to Animal Farm, "it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Recently, the University of Northampton demonstrated where they stand on that matter, adding a trigger warning to another iconic Orwell book 1984. Students are now warned that Orwell's seminal critique of totalitarianism, censorship, and thought control might contain material some find "offensive and upsetting." You just can't make thi...
Feb 02, 2022•1 min
There's a new genre of literature that most people have never heard of: " hopepunk . " Coined in 2017 by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland, "hopepunk" was a reaction to a different kind of writing dominating the market that year, a genre that Rowland and others refer to as "grimdark." Grimdark emphasizes the cruelty that so often defines human interaction. Think, for example, of HBO's hit series Game of Thrones , a show which hit its highwater mark in 2017 and capitalized on a trifecta of gore, n...
Feb 02, 2022•6 min
In a recent essay , Oxford Professor Roger Crisp toyed with the idea that human extinction may not be a bad thing after all. With so much suffering on Earth, he argues, if NASA were to locate a massive asteroid hurtling towards our planet, we would be justified in letting it obliterate us. "I am not claiming that extinction would be good;" Crisp clarified, "only that, since it might be, we should devote a lot more attention to thinking about the value of extinction than we have to date." This is...
Feb 01, 2022•1 min
In his book The Last Word , atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel talked about "the fear of religion": "… I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, ...
Feb 01, 2022•6 min
Os Guinness shared an important message at a recent Colson Center event in Phoenix, Arizona. He spoke to the situation of the church in this cultural moment, where institutions are failing and people are losing trust. Os offered a way forward, for Christians to ground themselves in truth, repentance, and forgiveness. Out of this event, the Colson Center is launching a short course on the loss of trust and our crisis of authority. Society needs a Christian response to the breakdown we are witness...
Jan 31, 2022•38 min
Recently, online magazine Fatherly sent out this prompt to their readers: "What would you tell your younger self about being a dad?" The answers are worth sharing. "It only gets better." wrote one 39-year-old from Vancouver. "I wasn't ready for my prior life to end until I held my baby on the first day…. There's a place for having fun while you're young, but don't think that's meant to be it. Life really starts to get good when you feel your children enjoying your presence and loving every minut...
Jan 31, 2022•1 min
Anabaptist theologian Stanley Hauerwas once said that in 100 years, if Christians are known as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we would have been doing something right. May we, in fact, be known for nothing less than these things, but I hope we'll be known for far more. Specifically, Christians must be known as those who acknowledge created reality, in particular the goodness of the human body. This won't be easy. Unthinkable a couple decades ago, it's now normal to deny t...
Jan 31, 2022•5 min
Maria asks John to revisit a few commentaries from the week, specifically our piece recognizing Holocaust Remembrance Day and a new report on the state of Christians passing on the faith to younger believers. Then John explains the significance of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's retirement and what him stepping down does to the court. He also explains how President Biden will likely respond, based on campaign promises. To close, Maria asks John about a recent comment from author Jordan Pe...
Jan 28, 2022•51 min
Last week, an Oklahoma state representative who describes himself as a "pragmatic progressive" announced on Twitter , "This week I filed HB3129, which codifies that a father's financial responsibility to his baby and their mom begins at conception. If Oklahoma is going to restrict a woman's right to choose, we sure better make sure the man involved can't just walk away from his responsibility." What he intended as a gotcha instead went viral with pro-lifers. They loved the proposal, and filled h...
Jan 28, 2022•1 min
There's a new ad playing on radio stations in Ohio as part of a PR push called the Stop the Stigma campaign . The ad is a game show skit, where contestants must guess the biggest risk factor for substance addiction. One guesses "making bad choices" and gets the buzzer; another guesses "hanging out with the wrong people" and is also wrong. The right answer, we're told, is family history. Ohio officials said the ads are meant to encourage people to "practice empathy, not judgment" for people suffe...
Jan 28, 2022•5 min
Most of the time, Twitter's a wasteland, a dark world of rancor, recriminations, and moral posturing. But every once in a while, to quote the classic movie Dumb and Dumber, it goes and redeems itself… Anthony Bradley, professor at The King's College in New York, recently noted on Twitter that most father/son photos on social media are of younger sons. It's like they stop once the boy hits teenage years, the time when a father's influence becomes most crucial in a young man's development. So he c...
Jan 27, 2022•1 min
Two weeks ago, in Colleyville, TX, a monster reappeared. Malik Faisal Akram walked into Congregation Beth Israel and demanded that the United States release a scientist connected to Al Qaeda. At first, news outlets and even the FBI seemed hesitant to ascribe any motive to the attack or even to name him. Yet, the assailant himself said, " I want to kill Jews ." This sort of thing is far too common. As Social commentator Abigail Shrier described on Twitter: "10 years ago, my synagogue and my kids'...
Jan 27, 2022•5 min
