Over the next five years, the seven installments of C.S. Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia" will turn seventy. Generations of children have found delight in stepping through the wardrobe door to this mythical world, filled with magic, meaning, and a whole cast of fantastic characters. Still, in the end, the appeal of the Chronicles comes back to a single character. Aslan, the Great Lion, who calls the children into Narnia, plays the central role in each adventure. It's not exactly correct to cal...
Oct 20, 2021•5 min
"Remember the signs." In C. S. Lewis' Narnian chronicle "The Silver Chair," Aslan tasks Eustace and Jill with finding a lost prince. To guide them he gives them a list of instructions—or signs—for them to commit to memory. Their success depends on it. Lewis made all of his tales from Narnia, including this quest, an allegory about the Christian life. Christ-followers are to seek the lost as part of joining God's great story to restore all things. But we're useless in this task if we don't rememb...
Oct 19, 2021•1 min
A few weeks ago, Gabriel Gipe, a high school AP Government teacher in Sacramento, was suspended for encouraging his students to take up far Left activism. When students complained about the Antifa flag he'd hung up in his classroom, he dismissed their concerns and suggested that only fascists would be bothered by it. He also offered extra credit to students who attended radical political rallies. And, in an ironic and a-historical twist, this avowed anti-fascist also posted a photo online of him...
Oct 19, 2021•7 min
You may have heard that Eastern story about the six blind men who encounter an elephant. The first touches its side and says, "An elephant is like a wall." Another one touches the trunk and says, "No, an elephant is like a snake." The third touches its tusk and says, "An elephant is like a spear." Another one touches the leg and says, "An elephant is like a tree." Another one touches an ear. "No, an elephant," he says, "is like a fan." And then touching the tail, the sixth one says, "You're all ...
Oct 18, 2021•1 min
If you've followed Breakpoint over the last month you've heard me say more than once that I think The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis could be the most important book for our cultural moment. It's one of those remarkably prophetic works that is increasingly applicable to the cultural moment in which we live. When The Abolition of Man was written, Lewis was uncovering the ways the modern world was logically inconsistent: ideas planted were not bearing the fruit that many moderns hoped they would....
Oct 18, 2021•5 min
John and Maria reflect on Chuck Colson's legacy that endures at the Colson Center, and is also powerfully visible in Prison Fellowship and the Angel Tree ministry. Maria then asks John for clarity on the situation unfolding in Loudon County. There are allegations that the school board in Loudon County failed to act in responding to abuse by a student identifying as a transgender girl. To close, John unpacks the inner workings of the euthanasia movement through the story of a woman in Columbia wh...
Oct 15, 2021•59 min
A little over forty years ago, Soviet dissident and literary giant Aleksander Solzhenitsyn delivered a thunderbolt of a commencement address at Harvard University. Survivor of the Soviet GULAG, a fierce opponent of communism, Solzhenitsyn stunned his elite audience as he took aim at the disastrous social and worldview trends happening in the West. He bemoaned that Western societies had given "destructive and irresponsible freedom . . . boundless space." By which he meant license, what Chuck Cols...
Oct 15, 2021•1 min
The world is a better place because of what Jesus did in the life of Chuck Colson, the founder and namesake of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Though many in younger generations aren't as familiar with Chuck's Born Again story, his legacy is one we are proud of and committed to stewarding for the glory of God. Tomorrow, October 16, would have been Chuck Colson's 90th birthday. His legacy continues, not only in the ongoing work of the Colson Center, but also the continuation of Prison ...
Oct 15, 2021•4 min
Last week, Olympic silver medalist Elinor Barker revealed she's expecting a baby and was, in fact, pregnant while cycling on the British women's team in Tokyo. Barker's happy announcement comes in the wake of an amicus brief signed by 500 female athletes , asking the Supreme Court to keep abortion legal because without it, they argue, women athletes wouldn't be able to reach their full potential. Barker joins a growing group of women with winning records who make the claims in the amicus brief s...
Oct 14, 2021•1 min
Remember the three weeks of lockdown in order to "flatten the curve?" A year-and-a-half later, after life put on hold— delayed graduations, conferences, wedding celebrations, and even funerals—coming out of this society-wide limbo has many feeling downright giddy. Writing recently in the New York Times , Soumya Karlamangla described how, when the pandemic rules began to loosen, she experienced "a small burst of joy." Every return to some old, familiar activity, from hugging people to getting hai...
Oct 14, 2021•5 min
A mother writes in saying, "to my daughter, (Ed Oxford's ideas) is a perfect example of how to have it both ways," looking at the modern issue of homosexuality for Christians. Oxford's idea is that homosexuality was translated as "child-abuser" and other things prior to the 1980s. After the 1980s the translation changed because the issue became more prevalent in culture. A mother writes in to have an understanding of how to respond. Following that, another listener asks if we should use plural p...
Oct 13, 2021•53 min
According to the Associated Press , African scientists have developed the first malaria vaccine, and the World Health Organization has approved it. This is huge. Malaria is one of the deadliest scourges of tropical environments; it still takes the lives of more than 400,000 people each year , many of whom are children living in Africa's poorest regions. Our very ability to achieve medical breakthroughs like this points to our God-given design and role in the created world. God didn't place Adam ...
Oct 13, 2021•1 min
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature," wrote Karl Marx , "...the opium of the people." Decades of often painful historical experience has proven his observation both right and wrong. Believing in God does ease pain and suffering of faithful followers, but he was wrong in thinking that religion, especially Christianity, leaves them with nowhere else to go from there. A recent article in The Economist put it this way: " Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty ." A...
Oct 13, 2021•6 min
Last month, 26-year-old Heidi Crowter lost a legal case against the British government , in which she claimed that UK abortion laws unjustly discriminate against people with Down syndrome. Most abortions are legal in the UK only before 24 weeks, with an exception in cases of "physical or mental abnormalities" that would leave the baby "seriously handicapped." This includes children with Down Syndrome, who can be terminated right up to the moment of birth. Heidi and 40,000 other UK citizens with ...
Oct 12, 2021•1 min
In a recent article in The Atlantic , Emma Green writes that "a third or more of Americans younger than 45 either don't have children or expect to have fewer [children]." This is, of course, not really new news. Birth rates have been falling for years, for various reasons. What's notable in Green's article is the somewhat new reason younger Americans claim they are choosing childlessness: because they are "worried about climate change." Well-known figures including politician Alexandria Ocasio C...
Oct 12, 2021•6 min
A new treatment for depression is undergoing clinical trials at Johns Hopkins . Early results suggest that the two doses of the active ingredient psilocybin, a main ingredient of the hallucinogenic drug known as "magic mushrooms," significantly reduced symptoms of major depression in adults. Some of our most effective treatments come from unorthodox sources. The heart drug Wayfarin , for example, was originally derived from rat poison. Aspirin is taken from willow trees. So, we shouldn't rule ou...
Oct 11, 2021•1 min
Increasingly, when confronted with a person who experiences gender dysphoria, doctors and psychologists are allowed to offer only one diagnosis: the patient is transgender . As recently as a few years ago, this was a mental disorder diagnosis, and steps would be taken to align the mind with the body. Today, it's just the opposite . Gender dysphoria means being born in the wrong body, and treatment is to align the body with the mind. This is the expected diagnosis and path of treatment even when ...
Oct 11, 2021•5 min
John and Maria begin their discussion reflecting on Facebook. They share their experience and the heightened fear around the Facebook outage of 2021. Maria then asks John to reflect on two BreakPoints that he offered this week. The first BreakPoint John revisits was on Jeff Bezos's work to manipulate cells in an effort to live longer, and potentially forever. Maria and John then revisit a piece on Grandparents, both sharing special stories of their relationships with their grandparents. John hig...
Oct 08, 2021•58 min
Oct 08, 2021•1 min
In the 19th century, India was coming to grips with the modern world. While British companies, like the East India Company, helped modernize India through trade, British missionaries, like William Carey, helped modernize India through culture formation. One of the more creative interactions with the west happened in Bengal through the work of Christian missionaries. For example, when Krishna Mohan Bannerjee was a child, he attended the School Society Institution started by David Hare, a watchmak...
Oct 08, 2021•5 min
Oct 07, 2021•1 min
Oct 07, 2021•5 min
John and Shane field a question from one listener for resources to support a Biblical practice of marriage. Another listener asks for resources for a child who enjoys art, but is trying to understand artistic expression from a Christian worldview. In the latter part of the show, a listener asks if secular is a term Christians should use if "every square inch" belongs to God? To close, John and Shane discuss if "agree to disagree" is a good tactic to have in worldview conversations, if it is lovi...
Oct 06, 2021•46 min
Business experts are noticing an increase in Gen Z-ers' need to know they're doing things well. "Sixty-six percent of Gen Z say they need feedback from their supervisor at least every few weeks in order to stay at their job," writes Ryan Jennings, a generation expert, "Considering Gen Z grew up in digital environments full of real-time feedback (likes, comments, shares, etc.), it's not surprising [they have] an elevated appetite for feedback at work." On the other hand, many believe Gen Z is the...
Oct 06, 2021•1 min
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is among a group of billionaires looking for the secret to immortality. Bezos funds Altos Labs , a startup pursuing breakthroughs in biological reprogramming technology. The ambitious new field has already seen some promising, not to mention terrifying, results in animal testing . Biological reprogramming technology attempts to revert cells to an embryonic state. If successful, this could unlock the potential to "rejuvenate" organs , perhaps entire bodies. On the one ha...
Oct 06, 2021•4 min
In 2020, Chinese box office revenue officially surpassed that of North America. Shirli Li writes in the Atlantic , "Filmmakers and actors have always been subject to bosses who decide which movies get to soar at the box office….Now, more than ever before, that boss is Beijing." Fast and Furious star John Cena demonstrated this deference in May when he posted a back-bending apology to China, in Mandarin, for calling Taiwan a country. Another example is the potential ban facing Marvel's The Eterna...
Oct 05, 2021•1 min
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...
Oct 05, 2021•6 min
Recently, the US Census bureau reported, somewhat diplomatically, "It's clear that in an unprecedented environment, families are seeking solutions that will reliably meet [the needs] of their children." That's an understatement. The New York Times reports that just last year, more than 1 million children did not enroll in kindergarten. The impact of learning loss from missed school time has parents worried across every grade. After years of the nationwide percentage of homeschool families hoveri...
Oct 04, 2021•1 min
Last week, professor of religion Mark Silk suggested that we should use the pronoun "they" when referring to God, instead of "He." Writing over at Religion News Service , Silk offered a couple of "textual" arguments to support his admonition, but his primary aim was to update our God-talk with what he called "the imperative of gender-inclusive language." Silk isn't the first to suggest something like this . And, it's not strictly accurate to say his ideas promote gender inclusivity. Calling God ...
Oct 04, 2021•5 min
John and Maria discuss a popular movement that's gaining momentum in how young people build community. Relational minimalism cuts out people who are viewed as toxic, and it's problematic for our sense of unity. Maria shares her thoughts on the media and culture frenzy surrounding Britney Spears. She shares some insight from Neil Postman regarding how we worship pop-culture and lose our bearings in the process. John then introduces a false report that the world is being cured of Down Syndrome. Ne...
Oct 01, 2021•1 hr 8 min
