In the competitive world of online status-mongering, courage involves little more than clicking "like" or earning a "mention" in a post that could risk losing a follower or two. Real courage is, of course, something else entirely. It's about doing the right thing when there are real costs. It's taking an unpopular stand, even a dangerous one when sitting back and doing nothing would be far easier. During the dark days of Communist tyranny in Europe, governments spouted their dangerous nonsense, ...
Dec 07, 2023•6 min
Once again, a media outlet has discovered that Christian people believe Christian things. Recently, CNN unearthed audio of new House Speaker Mike Johnson saying things like abortion is a holocaust, people are "inherently evil," homosexuality is wrong, and government should work to restrain evil. In other news, my 6-year-old likes pizza and Spider-Man. Part of what's going on here is how far apart a progressive, secular vision of the world is from a Christian one. Part is that, at root, our natio...
Dec 06, 2023•1 min
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of a mass shooting at the "Club Q," a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs. The shooter, who killed five people and wounded 19 others, received multiple life sentences in June for his crimes, as well an additional sentence for "bias-motivated" crimes. This seemed to confirm the popular narrative that the shooter targeted the LGBTQ community out of hate. That narrative was quickly and deliberately spread almost immediately after the shooting. In fact, just ...
Dec 06, 2023•6 min
According to a recent study, nearly one-third of Gen Z women now "identify as lesbian, bisexual, or something else." To be clear, these numbers only indicate how young people are identifying, not behaving, since Gen Z'ers are not as sexually active as previous generations. At the same time, these numbers do reflect how many teenage girls who are experiencing normal adolescent changes are being told they're transgender . Is it any wonder that so many young women think being "straight" and "cisgen...
Dec 05, 2023•1 min
One of the best features of our smartphones is the ability to apply a few tweaks to our photos before sending them to relatives or sharing them on social media. Using a phone's built-in tools, we can bump up the brightness or fix red eye, with the desired result of a photo that looks more like the real-life moment when we snapped it. Of course, these same tools can now deliver photos even "better" than what we saw in real life. We can even create moments that didn't happen in real life. Is it ok...
Dec 05, 2023•5 min
The three-digit number 988 is quickly becoming as much a part of our shared life as 911. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a national hotline that provides 24/7, free, and confidential mental health support to anyone in need. Within the first year, 5 million contacts were responded to . The numbers are staggering, and the hotline continues to find high-risk populations, including indigenous people, people with disabilities, and rural men. But this remains a culturewide problem. From 2021 to...
Dec 04, 2023•1 min
A few years ago, my colleague Dr. Glenn Sunshine wrote an introduction to one of the greatest works of Christian antiquity, Athanasius' On the Incarnation of the Word . Athanasius (born in Alexandria in the 290s) is best known for defending the divinity of Christ against the heresy of Arius, who taught that Jesus was not equal with God the Father but a lesser, created being. Arianism had gained significant ground in the Church, but Athanasius fought to preserve the biblical view that Jesus is " ...
Dec 04, 2023•5 min
Since the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israel, there has been a noticeable increase in antisemitism in America. John and Maria will look at the reasons. Some are claiming that abuse is more prevalent in marriages involving evangelical men. Is that true? And a new theory claims homophobia can be blamed on a faulty translation of scripture. Segment 1: Rise in Antisemitism The World and Everything in It: December 1, 2023 The Global Resurgence of Antisemitism Israel, Hamas, and Just War: Interviews ...
Dec 01, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, died this week at age 100. He was the last of a controversial group of leaders from the Watergate era. Chuck Colson once described that at staff meetings , "Kissinger would always be the last one to arrive. And he would sit down at the end of the table and say, 'Mr. President, the decision we are going to make today is going to change the whole future course of human history.' I mean every day of the week for five d...
Dec 01, 2023•58 sec
Since October 7, the world has seen a resurgence of antisemitism, open and raw. In America, this has come especially from institutions of higher education though also from secondary schools and at city council meetings in Oakland . In New York, highschoolers brandished signs that read "keep the world clean" with an image of a Star of David in a trash can. If anything, the past few weeks should put an end to our decades-old illusion that history won't repeat itself. Looking back on the horrors of...
Dec 01, 2023•4 min
When it comes to public controversies, a handful of phrases have become de facto "conversation stoppers." One of these is "scientists say ..." Well, last year, a quantum physicist named John F. Clauser won the Nobel Prize . If anyone has earned the right to make debate-stopping claims about science, it's a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. However, according to The Washington Post , Clauser does not believe humans are facing imminent extinction due to fossil fuels. This view puts him at odds with w...
Nov 30, 2023•1 min
Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2010, has a distinct reputation different from baby boomers, Gen X, and millennials. Exactly what the differences are and why they exist is a growing area of interest in research. For example, a new report from the American Enterprise Institute's Survey Center on American Life analyzes data collected from a survey of baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z about their experiences during adolescence. One finding is that Gen Z—or Zoomers—are less lik...
Nov 30, 2023•5 min
A week before Thanksgiving, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a new public health crisis . While it's great that global leaders are recognizing the dangerous social and even physical risks of social isolation, this crisis is anything but new. The WHO's new declaration will lead to more research into the detrimental effects loneliness can have on our health and a new "Commission on Social Connection," to "promote social connection as a priority and accelerate the scaling up of sol...
Nov 29, 2023•1 min
A few years ago, when professional athletes were criticized for kneeling during the national anthem, it wasn't always because critics disagreed with the cause that athletes were claiming or because of the irony of multi-millionaires denouncing the nation to which they owed their success. Many fans just didn't want to see football turned into yet another stage for political activism. Even when a cause is just, healthy societies have spaces where differences can be put aside in pursuit of a common...
Nov 29, 2023•5 min
If you find your mind darting from one thing to the next and struggling to concentrate for even short periods of time, there are two things to know. First, you're not alone and, second, it's probably related to technology. In an article published at Motherboard, Kaleigh Rogers described her experiment banning all screens from her home for a month: no TV, no tablet, no smart phones, no computers. The results were dramatic, and unlike with exercise or dieting, immediate. She experienced better con...
Nov 28, 2023•1 min
The United States has seen a dramatic increase in the number of syphilis cases among newborn babies, according to a recent report from the Center for Disease Control. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection that can be passed from moms to babies in utero. Last year, more than 3,700 babies tested positive for the disease, a 30% increase in a single year and a tenfold increase in the past 10 years. According to the CDC, the situation is "dire." To reverse the trends, the report proposed, "[a]...
Nov 28, 2023•5 min
I didn't think cancel culture would ever come for Anne Frank, but here we are. Parents of a German daycare center named after Frank proposed a name change because, they said, it was too difficult to explain the significance of Frank to their children. The director of the school agreed, and explained that a name "without political background" would be better. After public backlash, the trustees reversed course, and for that we can be grateful. Anne Frank was a real girl who faced real horrors and...
Nov 27, 2023•57 sec
November marks the death of Johannes Kepler, one of the most important figures of the Scientific Revolution and a scientist who was motivated by his Christian beliefs. The significance of Kepler's work can only be understood in light of what he faced and risked. The settled science of his day was that the Earth stood at the center of the universe. To challenge that meant to challenge the entire, accepted understanding of physics. When Copernicus published On the Revolution of the Heavenly Sphere...
Nov 27, 2023•5 min
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently conceded that the kingdoms of David and Solomon may have actually existed. New studies have revealed that "[r]emains of gates, defensive walls and a large administrative building at Gezer date to the early 10th century B.C.E., putting them in the right time frame to have been built by King Solomon, just as the Bible claims." In recent decades, skeptics suggested that these structures belonged to a later, supposedly more advanced time. Though the new studies...
Nov 24, 2023•1 min
The Biden administration is accepting comments as it considers rule changes for foster care and adoption. The Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs was a year ago but the media keeps pushing a false narrative. And the devastating effects of the Covid lockdowns on education. - Recommendations - Submit a Comment on "Safe and Appropriate Foster Care Placement Requirements for Titles IV-E and IV-B" Prepare the Way of the Lord – Advent 2023 The Promise by Michael Card Joy of Every Longing Heart by Sara...
Nov 24, 2023•59 min
In November of 1928, A.W. Tozer accepted a pastoral position at the Southside Alliance Church in Chicago, a move that launched a ministry career that would eventually impact thousands. A central theme of Tozer's work was recovering a sense of the holiness of God. In his book The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer wrote, The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulte...
Nov 24, 2023•5 min
Tough conversations on controversial topics don't have to be a disaster, even if had over holiday visits and meals. The key to civil and productive conversations is to ask good questions. The right question can turn monologues into dialogues, surface-level discussions into deeper ones, and might even open a closed mind or two. Here are six questions I've found helpful for creating good conversations: First: What do you mean by that? The definition of words shapes debate. Don't assume you are alw...
Nov 23, 2023•57 sec
Revisionist attempts to reinterpret the first Thanksgiving have muddled the history of Plymouth Colony and the Pilgrims. Some on the right call the historical events a "triumph of capitalism," getting the chronology of events wrong. Voices on the left often accuse Thanksgiving of being a celebration of genocide against the Native Americans, citing the Mystic Massacre in the Pequot War, ignoring the context of that event, not least of which that it occurred 16 years after the celebration in Plymo...
Nov 23, 2023•5 min
Even before the Israel-Hamas war, there was an increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S.: 3,697 such incidents in 2022; in fact, a 36% increase from the year before. Now, it's just getting worse. Jon Rettinger, a father of three, told CNN that one of his children asked if they were going to be kidnapped like the victims in Israel, "It's horrible for any family to have to explain to children that people hate them because of who they are," he said. "And to have to kiss your kids goodbye every ...
Nov 22, 2023•1 min
The month of November marks the death of John Witherspoon, one of the most important and most underrated of the American founding fathers. Born in Scotland in 1723, Witherspoon received a Master of Arts at age 16 from the University of Edinburgh, where he would continue his studies in divinity. In 1745, he became an evangelical minister in the Church of Scotland. Witherspoon was no fan of the monarchy and was imprisoned the following year for opposing the royalist Jacobite uprising, an experienc...
Nov 22, 2023•6 min
According to English teacher Tim Donahue, academic inflation is as real as economic inflation. In the 1960s, around 15% of grades given at colleges were "A." As of 2017, it was nearly 50%. Meanwhile SAT scores fell by 20 points and, by 2023, ACT scores reached the worst scores in three decades . This, Donahue says, could explain why "65 percent of Americans feel they are smarter than average. " The purpose of grades is to provide feedback, a way humans learn and grow. But in a world where it is ...
Nov 21, 2023•1 min
According to modern retellings, the American story is one long tale of violence and oppression, with founders who should be universally condemned as hypocrites, thieves, and racists. Of course, our nation's history is, like all nations, about sinful and flawed people. However, in our modern attempts to deconstruct the past, it's easy to miss how remarkable the American experiment was. In a Breakpoint commentary years ago, Chuck Colson described one especially significant part of our nation's his...
Nov 21, 2023•4 min
Back in September, jiu-jitsu athlete Taelor Moore fought an opponent who was not only more than 60 pounds heavier than her, but was a male. She was not warned she would be fighting a man. Afterward, the North American Grappling Association clarified its policy to say that women should be informed when facing a male opponent who identifies as a female, and given the option to opt out. As policies go, this one isn't worth the paper it's written on. In October , a man took four gold medals at a wom...
Nov 20, 2023•59 sec
In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton observed that even insane explanations for the world can have a perverse consistency. A madman who thinks he's the king of England has a ready explanation for anyone who denies his claim: They're conspirators trying to keep him from his throne. "His mind," wrote Chesterton, "moves in a perfect but narrow circle." Chesterton's asylum example also applies to a recent article published at Phys.org about a scientist who has written a book to convince everyone t...
Nov 20, 2023•6 min
Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, announces she's now a former atheist and exploring Christianity. Also, the growth of homeschooling continues in the US. John and Maria look at some of the reasons why. - Recommendations - Bari Weiss: You Are the Last Line of Defense Why I am now a Christian HaTikva Project Segment 1: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Converts There Is No 'Second America' If This One Fails Segment 2: Homeschool Growth Experiencing God Colson Educators For more resources to li...
Nov 17, 2023•48 min
