Shane Morris invites Colson Center Director of Equipping and Mobilization, Michael Craven to answer a host of questions about the church. A number of listeners have written in to ask how the church can engage this cultural moment. One listener asks what things we can celebrate inside the church, rather than simply critiquing what is happening in the church.
Atheist comedian, Stephen Fry, once said (quite ironically) that you are who you are when nobody's watching. When social restraints are removed, when the cameras aren't rolling, what sort of person are you? What sort of choices do you make? All of us—especially men—need to ask these questions of ourselves in the wake of the daily flurry of scandals from Hollywood and Washington. This isn't a problem "out there" in someone else's sound studio, office, or home. It's a problem "in here," at the dep...
One of the most beloved and quotable scenes in The Chronicles of Narnia is from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the children learn that Aslan is a lion, "the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." Though we love the idea that God is not "safe," we often live as if ...
"There's some order in this chaotic universe." Those are the words of Noam Libeskind a postdoctoral researcher at Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam. He was referring to recent breakthrough findings in astrophysics . Scientists have long thought that the entire universe is interconnected by a "cosmic web" of dark matter and gas structures. What Libeskind and his team found was that these colossal filaments are rotating, which makes them "the largest objects known to have angular momentum...
Max McLean is bringing Lewis to life for a generation of theatergoers. His Fellowship for the Performing Arts has toured the country bringing C.S. Lewis from the page to the stage. During Covid, McLean pivoted their in-person presentations to transform one of their most popular presentations into a feature film. The Most Reluctant Convert chronicles the faith journey of C.S. Lewis. Drawing from the canon of Lewis, McLean presents how Lewis realized the need for God in the world, realized his nee...
For years now, my friend Max McLean has brought incredible stories to life on stage through his organization, Fellowship for Performing Arts . He's doing this in the heart of the arts world, in New York City. I've appreciated his work bringing the life and work of C.S. Lewis to life on stage. Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I were able to see Lewis's The Great Divorce brought to life on stage in a compelling presentation and one of the first performances Max led after the Covid lockdowns. Howe...
As Inc.com's Bill Saporito reports , a new innovation called "controlled environment agriculture" is poised to shake up how we grow food. By stacking greenhouses vertically in abandoned buildings, entrepreneurs are growing food in less time with higher yields, using up to 95 percent less water, no pesticides and a dramatically shorter supply chain. As a result, vertical farms can be up to 400 times more productive than traditional farms. This approach may help mitigate environmental problems lik...
Why is there something instead of nothing ? This is a question that has long haunted scientists, beyond the what to the why . For a long time, the widely accepted answer from astrophysicists, astronomers, and others was that the universe always existed. This so-called "steady-state theory" was a favorite of materialists because it sidestepped any need for a Creator. However, in the 20th century, the collective evidence became overwhelming, forcing scientists to accept that space, matter, energy,...
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said: "We shape our tools, and thereafter, our tools shape us." That's certainly true of books, one of humanity's oldest tools. New research confirms –yet again—just how good it is for us to read books. Reading doesn't simply teach new facts, it wires various functions of the brain. A recent study out of the University of Rochester confirms that reading fiction measurably boosts emotional intelligence. Stories about playing tennis, for example, light up t...
One line from C.S. Lewis's autobiography Surprised by Joy is both simple and profound: "That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." My friend Max McLean is bringing the story behind this line to life in his new film The Most Reluctant Convert . It premieres in select theaters across the country this Wednesday, November...
Facebook announced a "rebrand" this week. In the announcement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented a vision for social media in the future. Reacting to this news, Maria asks John is this is something we should withdraw from in fear, or whether there is a silver lining to the dystopian vision Mark Zuckerberg offers. Recently, a boy (who identifies as female) was convicted for having molested two teenage girls in two different schools. According to John, this real-world, and painful, situation is a cons...
Handmaid's Tale author Margaret Atwood became a feminist icon for her dystopian novel in which women are enslaved for the purpose of childbearing. Her writing is both the basis for a hit Hulu series and the unofficial mascot of the #MeToo movement. Recently, Atwood retweeted an op-ed criticizing the use of phrases like "pregnant person" instead of "woman." "Why can't we say 'woman' anymore?" the article's author asked. And the backlash to Atwood's retweet was swift and vicious. Opinion pieces in...
In Mere Christianity , C.S. Lewis described faith as "the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods." His is a crucial observation for a world that often pits reason against faith. Lewis understood that faith must always be guarded against the assaults of changing emotion. Lewis powerfully illustrated this point in The Silver Chair, the fourth book of The Chronicles of Narnia series. The story opens with Jill Pole, a typical English schoolgirl, be...
Last week, Guatemala became the latest nation to sign the Geneva Consensus Declaration , the 35th nation to proclaim that human rights extend to unborn children. The declaration rebuffs today's Western imperialism: exporting abortion in the name of so-called "women's rights." When nations like Guatemala sign the Geneva Consensus Declaration, they're committing to fight pressure from the U.S. and other wealthy Western nations pushing them to legalize and publicly fund abortion. The Geneva Consens...
" The Big Quit. " is not just a shift in the employment of millions, it's an expression of our culture-wide search for purpose. According to The Washington Post, "a record 4.3 million people — about 2.9 percent of the nation's workforce — quit [their jobs] in August." And, Gallup polling suggests that nearly half of working Americans are actively considering finding a new job. What's driving this trend away from work? It seems to be a perfect storm with many factors. Clearly, the pandemic has re...
John and Shane answer a listener who asks how we get past the erroneous "new" definition of racism (prejudice + power), and address old racism (prejudice based on pigmentation), when anti-racism and CRT doesn't allow "whites" to participate to the discussion? The pair also discusses how the unity and differences in the definitions of a Christian and biblical worldview before answering a challenge to population control in impoverished or resource-scarce countries.
In 2019, Templeton Prize winner Marco Gleiser made waves when he said that "atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method." In his view, atheism is a "categorical statement of belief," and doesn't depend on evidence as much as assumptions. This, of course, clashes with claims of the so-called " New Atheism, " that science has officially debunked God as an explanation for the universe. Gleiser is an agnostic, and thinks scientists shouldn't close off the possibility of God. This accomplished...
As the "Big Quit" happens across America, the Christian vision of work could be more relevant and impactful than ever. Which, as history attests, is saying quite a lot. Physical labor was devalued in the ancient world. The exception, in classical Greece and the early days of the Roman Republic, was farming, which was considered the proper pursuit of citizens. All other labor was viewed as demeaning. In the later days of the Republic, as plantation agriculture replaced small farms, the work of fa...
Security guards and local police were at a loss about how to deal with the gang violence that was rampant in a Shreveport school, where detention and even arrests weren't enough to curb the violence. So a group of dads stepped up, committing to being present at the school every day. Now there hasn't been a fight in over a month, andow kids say they love going to school. They call themselves "Dads on Duty," replete with sweatpants, gas station coffee, and dad jokes worth rolling your eyes at. The...
Among the prominent buzzwords in Christian social media are variations of the word "deconstruction." The word has been used to describe the deconversions of Kevin Max (from DC Talk ) and Joshua Harris (of I Kissed Dating Goodbye fame), the soul searching of Derek Webb , and the theological revisionings of Jen Hatmaker and Rob Bell . When used descriptively , it helpfully describes something that has become a common feature of evangelical celebrity-ism. Increasingly, however, the term "deconstruc...
There's something poetic about sending the famous Captain Kirk from Star Trek to space, for real, and his emotional response after touching back down was priceless. As he told Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, "I hope I never recover from this. I hope I can maintain what I feel now… I don't want to lose it." Here's a 90-year-old in childlike wonder, experiencing that almost spiritual part of space travel reflected by many astronauts throughout history. Often called the " overview effect ," space t...
Whenever I struggle to understand C.S. Lewis's nonfiction work, I find it helpful to go to Narnia. For example, so many of the concepts Lewis introduced in Mere Christianity are found in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . Throughout each of the Narnia books, Aslan, the Pevensie children, and other characters embody many of the ideas he explored in his nonfiction. Another example is The Abolition of Man , a book critically important for our cultural moment. In the book's opening essay, "Men w...
Maria is joined on BreakPoint This Week by Edward Whelan, a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC's Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies . The two discuss the oral arguments that started in the Supreme Court this month. Ed provides an overview of the court, why Christians should care, and explains some of the finer points of the inner-workings on the Court. He also discusses the most direct challenge to Roe v. Wade that we've seen reach the c...
Is it Narnia? Of course it isn't. But it's good. C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man has been called his most difficult work. It's a short but dense argument about how modern education and culture are removing our capacity for virtue and destroying what makes us human. "Abolition" is a must-read—especially in our cultural moment. And a new companion volume by Michael Ward called After Humanity can help you understand Lewis' message and its background. For instance, did you know that Lewis almost d...
After more than 35 years of various versions of what has come to be called "the one-child policy," which experts estimate cost the country between 200 and 400 million lives , China is attempting an about-face. In 2015 , the government officially ended the one-child policy and allowed couples to have up to two children in some circumstances. In May of this year, that number was increased to three. Now, as of September, Chinese leaders have officially started discouraging "non-medical" abortions. ...
Admiral Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a transgender woman, was commissioned into the U.S. Public Health Service's Commissioned Corps. Officials called Levine's promotion "historic" because, they assured everyone, Levine was the first female four-star admiral in the Commissioned Corps. When something like this is announced the way it was - surrounded by fanfare and reporters constantly reminding us that this is a woman - it's not cynical to wonder whether the job was earned by qualificat...
Today is what some call "the professional sports equinox," the one night of the year where the NBA, NHL, MLB, and the NFL all have games. For sports fans, it's like Christmas, Easter, Labor Day, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. And, because of the new culture-wide push for sports gambling, Friday morning may bring quite the hangover. Between the non-stop commercials for DraftKings and FanDuel, and news segments on ESPN like Scott Van Pelt's "Winners" (where the SportsCenter host not o...
John and Shane answer a concerned mother's question on how to engage her children who are questioning their faith. She notes that they have all sought counseling, specifically asking John for clarity on the practice of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. John and Shane then field two questions regarding Christians in the public square. Specifically, one listener asks if Christian men should pull back from their church involvement to be more involved in local politics. Another listener asks how Christian...
John and Shane answer a concerned mother's question on how to engage her children who are questioning their faith. She notes that they have all sought counseling, specifically asking John for clarity on the practice of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. John and Shane then field two questions regarding Christians in the public square. Specifically, one listener asks if Christian men should pull back from their church involvement to be more involved in local politics. Another listener asks how Christian...
Last Sunday, kidnappers abducted 17 Christian missionaries , including five children, in Haiti. The American missionaries are part of a Mennonite group called Christian Aid Ministries , which has been working in Haiti for years. This time, they were building an orphanage in a town east of Port-au-Prince. Haiti has been ensnared in near-total political and social chaos for decades, as the country's people suffer under inept and corrupt governments, crushing poverty, natural disasters , and increa...
