John Stonestreet and Maria Baer recount the challenging aspects of what happened in America this week. After recalling the details of the events surrounding the Derek Chauvin verdict following the death of George Floyd, John and Maria discuss a recent shooting in Ohio. They close with the challenging situation Planned Parenthood finds itself in as the organization works to distance from racist roots and the current reality that their abortion services overwhelmingly impact people of color....
Apr 23, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Seven years ago, Bloomberg Businessweek's cover story told professional women, " Freeze Your Eggs, Free Your Career." The story told of a woman in her late 30s, single and successful in her career, who spent $19,000 to have her eggs frozen. She planned to focus on a career now and keep open the possibility of marriage and kids later. It didn't turn out that way. Still single on her 45th birthday, she decided to have a child with the help of a sperm donor. However, her eggs failed to produce a ch...
Apr 23, 2021•5 min
For years, abortion rights activists have attempted to downplay or even deny that Margaret Sanger, the closest thing the movement has to a patron saint, was motivated by racism. Planned Parenthood, the organization Sanger founded, widely celebrated her (even naming an award after her), as if her troubling words and actions could be somehow separated from the causes she championed. To be clear, Sanger considered abortion to be barbaric, but the organization that carries on her vision has embraced...
Apr 22, 2021•6 min
John and Shane field a question from a listener whose workplace is hostile to the Christian faith. Hear how John encourages the committed Christian to live not by lies. Another listener writes-in to ask for resources for the elders of his church. He is looking to help his church respond with truth and love to culture issues, helping the church leadership understand immediate social challenges. To close, John fields a critique on a BreakPoint commentary related to Jack Phillips. The listener seek...
Apr 21, 2021•46 min
Today, on the ninth anniversary of his death, I want you to hear from Chuck Colson about his birth. His new birth, that is. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. This is BreakPoint. Chuck Colson was one of the great evangelical leaders of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. He had an enormous influence on so many different organizations, so many different Christians leaders, and, of course, so many individual people. I can't tell you how many times I meet someone who tells me, "...
Apr 21, 2021•5 min
The practice of foot binding, tightly wrapping the feet of young girls in order to reshape them and prevent them from growing too large, began sometime during the ninth or tenth century in China. Small feet on women were considered attractive in Han Chinese culture and, over time, the practice grew increasingly extreme. In fact, by the sixteenth century, the foot binding process broke the bones in young girls' feet. The goal was to produce "lotus feet," with the ideal feet being no longer than 4...
Apr 20, 2021•6 min
John Stonestreet visits with Dr. Carl Trueman, a Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, Pa, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Faith and Freedom. Dr. Trueman's book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, has been called the most important book of the past decade and is the featured resource for the Colson Center this month. Make any gift to the Colson Center during the month of Apr...
Apr 19, 2021•17 min
Stop and think about this statement, "I'm a woman trapped in a man's body." How did a sentence like this become not just common, and not even just plausible, but unquestionable? Even more, how did it happen so fast? In his new book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, Grove City College professor Carl Trueman explains the answer as thoroughly and clearly as possible. According to Trueman, the transgender moment –...
Apr 19, 2021•5 min
John and Maria discuss the fatal shooting of Dante Wright in Minneapolis. Maria shares how a compassionate response is effective to step forward in love as a community. Maria then introduces a new take on the saga in transgender athletes in collegiate athletics. New actions by the NCAA are putting states in a challenging position to say what isn't true and redesign women's athletics. John and Maria close the program reflecting on the Supreme Court's decision regarding a case out California. Past...
Apr 16, 2021•1 hr 8 min
Who's your favorite poet? Do you even have a favorite poet? Even before COVID, when did you last attend a concert or visit an art museum? When did you last draw a picture, or photograph something beautiful, or write a song, or cook a fancy dinner, or just make something ? Enjoying, engaging in, reflecting on, and creating art is a profoundly divine activity. God is, as theologian T. M. Moore puts it, "the Great Artist." His universe was made with "such wonder, diversity, order, color, sound, dim...
Apr 16, 2021•4 min
One of the most important effects of embracing a deliberate, self-conscious Christian worldview, as well as losing the sacred-secular distinction too many Christians have absorbed from the world around us, is seeing the depth, the breadth, and the width of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every sphere of life. Once we see life this way, our vision of serving Jesus is radically re-shaped in light of the unassailable, undefeatable, and advancing Kingdom of God. Once Chuck Colson embraced this visio...
Apr 15, 2021•5 min
John Stonestreet is joined by Dr. Bill Brown, Dean of the Colson Fellows program that equips attendees with Christian worldview and a ministry plan to reach their communities. Dr. Brown brings questions from the Colson Fellows class of 2021, along with a few questions we've received at the Colson Center related to neighborliness.
Apr 14, 2021•27 min
In the 1992 dystopian novel, The Children of Men , P. D. James tells the story of a world where no child has been born in 26 years. It's a world without hope or purpose. Mass suicide of the elderly is common, and the not-yet-elderly are urged to watch pornography in vain hopes of stimulating libidos and reproduction. Mind you, the story is set in, that's right, 2021. In the book, male sperm counts collapsed in 1994 — called "Year Omega" in the novel — with the last children being born in 1995. W...
Apr 14, 2021•5 min
In 1996 American political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote a book called The Clash of Civilizations . 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 between not nation-states but between cultures, between civilizations. These cultural fault lines, as he called them, sometimes existed ...
Apr 13, 2021•4 min
John Stonestreet visits with Alisa Childers, author of Another Gospel: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity. Alisa is a featured speaker at the upcoming Wilberforce Weekend, May 21-23 in Fort Worth, Tx. Alisa shares how progressive Christianity is working to steal the image of God, providing context for her upcoming presentation at the Wilberforce Weekend. For more information on the Wilberforce Weekend, including a drawing where you could win tickets, hotels,...
Apr 12, 2021•26 min
Back in January, at meeting held at the Royal Society in London, a team of scientists and investors announced the largest prize ever offered to solve a scientific mystery. Organized by engineer and business consultant Perry Marshall, the whopping prize of $10 million (ten times the Nobel Prize payout) will be given to any person or team who can "arrange for a digital communication system to emerge or self-evolve without…explicitly designing the system." The point of the contest is to learn where...
Apr 12, 2021•4 min
John Stonestreet and Maria Baer discuss the ramifications of Major League Baseball moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta as a result of Georgia's new voting law. How do Christians respond when corporate activism falls for a non-factual narrative? And how is it that politics has overtaken every sphere of public life? They also tackle Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison's surprising veto of legislation that would ban transgender surgery and hormone treatment for minors (the veto was immediately overridden...
Apr 09, 2021•59 min
It's easy to think that the story of the last several decades, at least as it comes to Christianity and society, is the story of moral shifting. In other words, things that were once considered wrong are now considered right, and things that were once considered right are now considered wrong. That certainly explains an awful lot, and certainly there have been moral shifts in Western society. However, that's not enough to explain everything. More accurately, maybe we should say that the moral sh...
Apr 09, 2021•6 min
The most recent incarnation of the Equality Act is also the most radical version we have yet seen. It's also worth noting that it's closer to becoming law than any version so far put forward. As a friend of mine would say, this isn't magic; it's math. This Congressional term, the Equality Act passed the House of Representatives. Though unlikely at this point, a 50-50 tie in the Senate broken by a Democratic White House is feasible, making the Equality Act a live option. Last year, it simply wasn...
Apr 08, 2021•5 min
John and Shane deal with a series of questions related to the image of God. John has referred to our inability to articulate the image of God as a debilitating oversight. The first question looks at the issue of immigration and what a Christian perspective of immigration should be. John and Shane then field a question seeking understanding in how we continue to bear God's image, even though we are sinners. To close, John and Shane work through a question on the presence of evil in God's good cre...
Apr 07, 2021•36 min
I have a hunch that if I went from one church to another, or one Christian school to another, or one Bible study to another, and I stood in front and challenged these followers of Christ, saying, "Fill in the blank. The Bible says that humans are made . . . ," my guess is that I'd get a pretty solid answer: "In the image of God!" However, if we followed up that question with another one, asking, "What is the image of God? What difference does the image of God make?" I think the response would be...
Apr 07, 2021•7 min
A pattern emerges whenever a culture tries to fix itself, with only the resources of its own unmoored virtues. A problem is identified, but misdiagnosed. Then, a solution is offered that accomplishes the exact opposite of the goal. Examples of this include trampling on the rights of women in the name of inclusion, firing ethnic minorities for racism , and the new brand of anti-Semitism prevalent on college campuses that are supposed to be (even because they are) "woke." These many examples revea...
Apr 06, 2021•4 min
John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He wraps up our Time of Guided Prayer last week, reflecting on Proverbs as wisdom for the church and nation
Apr 05, 2021•27 min
Last week, the ACLU, an organization typically not friendly to Christian ideals, got one right (albeit unintentionally ) when the organization tweeted out, " Trans children are perfect exactly as they are ." Their attempt to affirm our culture's newest progressive doctrine actually communicated the opposite. After all, trans-activists insist that children, or anyone, who struggle with gender dysphoria are "trapped in the wrong bodies" and given the wrong names. The only way, in fact, for them to...
Apr 05, 2021•5 min
John and Maria discuss a new song and music video by Little Nas X. They also discuss a new development in New York related to marijuana despite recent findings of its link to young male suicide. Through this, John and Maria consider how and why young men aren't o.k.. John also spends time discussing a recent court battle that went in favor of a university professor who elected to live not by lies, referring to a student respectfully while also refusing to use preferred gender pronouns....
Apr 02, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Each year, the most popular meme that I share on social media is a picture of Chuck Colson with a quote where he describes how his experience in the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration helped him believe in the resurrection. Years ago, he described on video how watching the lies of a group of powerful men fall apart made him realize the disciples were, indeed, telling the truth. Here's Chuck Colson: I want to wish you and your families and friends a holy, blessed Easter. We celebra...
Apr 02, 2021•4 min
"Jesus would've baked the cake." "Christians hate LGBTQ people." "You're on the wrong side of history" "Why can't you let them be 'their true selves'?" "That's just your truth, not mine." Perhaps most painful, especially when it comes from a friend of family member: "If you love me, you'd accept me for who I am." All of the slogans that leave Christians silent or shamed today are, at root, different ways of saying the same thing – that truth and love are incompatible. For people to tell the trut...
Apr 01, 2021•5 min
John and Shane field two important questions from parents today. The first looks for guidance on training young people to value marriage and pursue having children in a culture that seems to devalue both. The second parental question is from a grandmother looking to have a shaping influence with her grandchildren in spite of a strained relationship with the parents due to the grandmother's commitment to Biblical standards.
Mar 31, 2021•40 min
Next week, Christians worldwide will celebrate, like the entire cloud of witnesses has before them, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrection is, of course, the central event in the Holy Scriptures, the pivotal moment of the story of Christ, and the foundational belief of a Christian worldview. Even more, if it happened, it is the pivotal event in all of human history. Still, it's not difficult to see why it's so hard to believe, especially today. Both science and experien...
Mar 31, 2021•4 min
A defining characteristic of pagan societies is the sacrificing the well-being of children on the altar of adult happiness and self-fulfillment. Our own pagan society is no different. In a single-minded pursuit of sexual pleasure, career, or lifestyle, we tell ourselves that "the kinds will be fine," even though they're clearly not . Throughout history, across cultures and time periods, Christians bringing the Gospel to pagan cultures found themselves defending and protecting abandoned and abuse...
Mar 30, 2021•5 min
