John and Maria discuss the challenge in culture to toxic masculinity. This week the nation reacted to displays by Will Smith and Volodymyr Zelensky. John and Maria consider a recent commentary by comedian Bill Maher who challenges the view we have of masculinity and how we value it. In this vein, Maria asks John to comment on a recent HHS announcement to push so-called "gender affirming" surgeries on minors. John references a commentary by Maria on BreakPoint that discusses the role of women, an...
Apr 01, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Tomorrow is the start of Ramadan, a month of prayer and fasting for Muslims worldwide. It's also a good month for Christians to pray for Muslims to find Christ. During this intense time for Muslims, not only are they are seeking atonement for their sins, they are actively seeking to know God. Christianity Today cites five reasons Muslims are attracted to Christ: "the lifestyle of Christians," "the power of God in answered prayers and healing," "dissatisfaction with the type of Islam they [have] ...
Apr 01, 2022•1 min
In 1996, American political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote a book called The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order . In it, he proposed a remarkable thesis, that while in the past, especially in the 20th century, global conflicts had been primarily between nations, countries, and kingdoms, in the future, especially in the 21st century, global conflicts would increasingly be not between nation-states but between cultures, between civilizations. These cultural fault lines, as h...
Apr 01, 2022•4 min
According to National Geographic , "More than 80 percent of the ocean has never been mapped, explored, or even seen by humans." That's pretty incredible, given how much the ocean matters to our lives. And new research is showing us a much smaller frontier with just as much mystery: the cell. As Yasemin Saplakoglu recently described in Quanta Magazine , scientists at the University of Illinois have embarked on an ambitious project to map, using computers, a complete simulation of a "minimal cell....
Mar 31, 2022•1 min
Every once in a while, someone who doesn't profess Christianity will stumble upon some sort of natural or moral law that Christians have professed for centuries. To avoid agreeing with the Bible, or maybe because they legitimately think they've discovered something new, they'll often give the old idea a cool new re-brand. Case in point is a new piece at the edgy news-and-culture outfit Vice. The author reports on a brand-new type of progressive relationship structure: "radical monogamy." Not to ...
Mar 31, 2022•5 min
John and Shane explain what happened at the Supreme Court nomination hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Many are talking about the fact that she failed to define a woman when asked. John explains that what we saw in the hearing explains a lot about where political parties are. Shane goes on to ask John about a listener's question related to J.I. Packer's book Knowing God. Shane explores the question, asking John to unpack how Jesus death and resurrection fulfilled the justice of God. To cl...
Mar 30, 2022•35 min
As the Economist reports , the number of homeless Californians has surged by "more than a third in the past five years, compared with a rise of less than 6% nationally." By some estimates, half of America's unsheltered homeless population live in the Golden State. We ought never reduce people to mere statistics on this or any issue, or worse, to inconveniences. Proverbs 21 warns: "Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered." In fact, reducing the home...
Mar 30, 2022•1 min
In 2014, physicist Michio Kaku wrote, "We are now entering the golden age of neuroscience. We have learned more about the thinking brain in the last 10–15 years than in all of previous human history." One particularly fruitful area of this science has to do with, of all things, gratitude . In a culture that values authenticity and prioritizes feelings, telling someone to "be grateful" can sound a lot like cheap pop psychology, or even worse, a tone-deaf lack of empathy. However, plenty of studie...
Mar 30, 2022•5 min
Few are standing for the inherent dignity and rights of children against the innovations of our age. But in this cultural moment, defending children against gender ideology and misguided interpretations of parenting is our version of "running into the plague and caring for victims" while everyone else is running away. John Stonestreet introduces author Katy Faust, the founder and director of the children's rights organization Them Before Us and author of the new book " Them Before Us: Why We Nee...
Mar 29, 2022•34 min
According to Pew Research , a growing number of Americans are realizing the importance of the nuclear family. Just three years ago, 40% of Americans agreed with the statement "single women raising children on their own is bad for society." That number has now jumped to 47%. The same is true of cohabitation, which nearly a quarter of U.S. adults say is "generally bad for society." That's up 5% from three years ago. It's an encouraging swing for public opinion, especially with both trends still on...
Mar 29, 2022•1 min
In 1969, President Richard Nixon formally requested the formation of a commission to study the effects of population growth on the United States: "One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population. Whether man's response to that challenge will be a cause for pride or for despair in the year 2000 will depend very much on what we do today." Revealed in President's Nixon words are a number of controlling assumptions: that huma...
Mar 29, 2022•7 min
For over four decades, William Wilberforce fought against the inhumane practice of slavery. He also worked for what he called the "reformation of manners." In the words of one biographer, he "made goodness, compassion and integrity fashionable." Wilberforce's work highlights the challenging reality Christians face in every cultural moment: the deep brokenness of this fallen world. Wilberforce engaged the culture of his time by highlighting the inherent dignity of humanity, most notably by fighti...
Mar 28, 2022•1 min
Our culture has long struggled with the realities of sexual difference, or "gender." While first- and second-wave feminism generally asserted that women were equal in value to men, transgenderism now asserts that women are interchangeable with men. Notice the underlying assumption: in order for men and women to have equal value, they have to be the same thing . Yielding to this fallacy has been a disaster, not just for the concept of gender, but also for the concept of human dignity. It's as if ...
Mar 28, 2022•5 min
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson sat before the Senate this week and boldly stated that she does not know what a woman is because she's not a biologist. Her statement says a lot, not necessarily about the judge, as John points out, but more about how we view the judiciary in this cultural moment. John and Maria also explain that the so-called trend of "radical monogamy" and society's need for more than consent are actually best housed inside Christianity. As John describes, these moments are a revisi...
Mar 25, 2022•1 hr 5 min
When we think of Christ's call to love our enemies, we often think of work rivals or political opponents. Loving these "enemies" isn't easy, but not impossible. What if, however, our enemies are evildoers, responsible for acts of evil and violence? We can respect the brave protestors that have been arrested for standing up to Putin. We pity teenagers conscripted into a fight they neither sought nor understand. But are we really called to love Putin and his cronies or the Russian troops rejoicing...
Mar 25, 2022•59 sec
In the historical dockyards at Chatham in England is the largest collection of Royal National lifeboats in the U.K.. On many of the lifeboats, printed numbers show how many times the boat has launched, and how many lives it saved. It's a haunting presentation of how life can sometimes hang on a precipice, and what it takes to rescue souls lost at sea. The dockyard is also an interesting analogy for the Church in this cultural moment. Sometimes churches seem more like a museum of saints, a place ...
Mar 25, 2022•5 min
The big problem isn't climate change ... for the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet with The Point. In a recent interview, former Secretary of State John Kerry lamented that the war in Ukraine would cost human lives and disrupt the principles of international law. But then the President's special envoy on climate expressed another concern: carbon emissions. You're going to "lose people's focus," on climate change, he told reporters: "Their attention will be diverted." To highlight the greenhous...
Mar 24, 2022•1 min
In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg was asked to fill out a captcha test to prove once and for all that he's not a robot. In case you were wondering, he passed. It's all a bit funny, given (as John Mulaney observed a couple years ago), just how much time we spend these days proving to robots that we're not robots. Only human brains, apparently—can recognize every square with a stop sign or a boat. It's also a bit ironic, given the most exciting trend in computing technology is building comput...
Mar 24, 2022•5 min
John and Shane review healthy technology use. A listener asks for insight on what practices and habits a mindful parent has in their home as they lead their family in the digital age. Another listener writes in to ask how Christians should respond to the presence of oppression. The listener asks for perspective on what a Christian should do when they don't feel oppression, but are told it is present. John also helps a listener have a whole perspective of critiques of the modern church. The liste...
Mar 23, 2022•49 min
Happy Lent. That's an odd-sounding phrase. One of the chief purposes of Lent, after all, is to confront our mortality. For the last two years, our focus has been on avoiding our mortality, dodging death, and largely hedging life against our fears of death. In this cultural moment, confronting our mortality during Lent is incredibly important. As New Testament scholar Mary Healy said , "We instinctively resist and recoil from everything that reminds us of our mortality—pain, deprivation, weakness...
Mar 23, 2022•1 min
A central claim of the gay rights movement—a claim that won the movement acceptance with the majority of Americans—was that being gay is part of who a person is, and not a choice. "Born this way," declared the title of a popular song. Another song insisted, "I can't change even if I tried." This idea of immutable sexual identity was further extended to other orientations and self-expressions. So, trying to suppress or change orientation or even behavior was labeled "conversion therapy." And, now...
Mar 23, 2022•5 min
It's one of Russian painter Nikolai Yaroshenko's most iconic works . Out of the window of a prison car, a small child feeds a group of pigeons. We're not told who the child, his mother, or their fellow captives are. Yaroshenko's title is our only clue: Life Is Everywhere. As the world watches the situation unfold in Ukraine, we are forced to deal with the world's fundamental brokenness and the stark reality of human evil. But at the same time, there's something even more pervasive than evil and ...
Mar 22, 2022•1 min
If there's a term our culture has little appreciation for, it's "limitations." But that's exactly what makes Kelly Kapic's newest book You're Only Human worth reading. Intentionally or implicitly these days, people are told to ignore their physical, interpersonal, and spiritual limits. Even in Christian circles, it's common to constantly feel exhausted or guilty, as if we haven't done enough for God and His Kingdom. Dr. Kelly Kapic, a professor of theology at Covenant College , provides a compel...
Mar 22, 2022•4 min
Dr. Anthony Bradley of the King's College addresses the very important issue of how we are failing young men. The tyranny of low expectations, soft relationships, absent fathers… ours is a culture failing to transition boys to men. Dr. Bradley explains the current landscape and emboldens listeners to take action to love and support young men. This presentation is part of our Lighthouse Voices Series, done in partnership with Focus on the Family. Click here for more on the Lighthouse Voices Serie...
Mar 21, 2022•37 min
With the " Stop WOKE Act " and unfairly labeled " Don't Say Gay " bill, the Florida legislature is ordering state-run schools to adjust their curriculum, and respond to the will of parents. The U.S. Secretary of Education, in a strong response , threatened the state to follow federal interpretations of Title IX and civil rights laws or risk federal funding. It's not the first time the White House has used federal funds as leverage to get what it wants from Florida. The fundamental question here ...
Mar 21, 2022•1 min
Right in the heart of the Bible are some passages that are uncomfortable. The imprecatory psalms are among the hymns sung by the people of God but are far removed from current cultural conceptions of Christian "niceness" or a gentle Jesus as you can imagine. These are not the psalms of praise and thanksgiving to God for His goodness and mercy, but rather psalms that call for God's mercy to be withheld and His wrath to be unleashed against our enemies. For example, Psalm 69 says: "Pour out your i...
Mar 21, 2022•4 min
John and Maria discuss the rise of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They ponder why the world seems to admire his leadership and what the significance is when the wider culture largely rejects many displays of masculinity. Then, Maria asks John to explain a recent commentary that highlights beauty in the face of the conflict in Ukraine. Sharing about the weight of redemption, John notes that redemption grounds many issues in the world and expounds on the Wilberforce Weekend theme "Life Re...
Mar 19, 2022•1 hr 3 min
During World War II, Jewish teenager Fania Rosenfield lost nearly her entire family to the Nazis. She somehow managed to escape the slaughter happening in her town and find refuge for two years with a Ukrainian family before settling in Israel to begin a new life. Fania repeatedly told the story of the brave Ukrainian family who saved her to her children and grandchildren. And, a few weeks ago when the Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent, Fania's granddaughter made a choice to reach out to ...
Mar 18, 2022•1 min
In his book Life With a Capital L , author Matt Heard (also a speakers at this year's Wilberforce Weekend) describes a famous oil painting by Russian artist Nikolai Yaroshenko. "Five diverse prisoners—a soldier, a worker, a peasant, a mother and a child—are huddled together, peering through the barred window of a halted prison railcar. The child reaches through the steel bars, feeding pigeons on the railway platform. Even in the midst of an awful predicament, the five prisoners were making a cho...
Mar 18, 2022•5 min
Today we revisit a conversation from Shane Morris to commemorate St. Patrick's Day. Getting beyond the shamrocks, green beer, and parades, who was the historical St. Patrick? Today on the BreakPoint Podcast, we welcome back our former Colson Center colleague and expert on St. Patrick, T. M. Moore. Moore describes the events of Patrick's life and gives us an inspiring glimpse into the spiritual life of this giant of the faith, a man whom God used to ignite a revival among the Irish–a revival that...
Mar 17, 2022•30 min
